Archives says documents were not returned even though White House lawyer said Trump should hand them over

 https://edition.cnn.com/2022/08/24/politics/national-archives-email-cipollone-trump-documents/index.html

Trump-era records were not returned to the government during the waning days of Donald Trump's presidency despite a determination by one of his lawyers that they should be, an attorney at the National Archives said in an email reviewed by The Washington Post.

"It is also our understanding that roughly two dozen boxes of original presidential records were kept in the Residence of the White House over the course of President Trump's last year in office and have not been transferred to NARA, despite a determination by Pat Cipollone in the final days of the administration that they need to be," Gary Stern, the National Archives and Records Administration's chief counsel, wrote in an email to members of Trump's legal team in May 2021, according to the Post.

GOP's Midterm 'Red Wave' Risks Becoming Ripple, Post-Dobbs Voting Suggests

 https://www.newsweek.com/gop-midterm-red-wave-post-dobbs-voting-suggests-1736658

But the bigger story, the data suggests, is increasingly anemic turnout among the rural Republican base in a number of key races around the country, signaling potential a potential enthusiasm gap among Republicans entering the final months of the midterm elections.

Justice Department releases unredacted Barr memo detailing decision not to charge Trump with obstructing Russia probe

 https://edition.cnn.com/2022/08/24/politics/barr-mueller-report/index.html

Mueller concluded that there were several incidents with strong evidence of obstruction by Trump. But Barr's deputies argued that Trump mostly "attempted to modify the process under with the Special Counsel investigation progressed," but didn't try to "intentionally alter evidence," which would be more serious and could be criminal.

Russia's Ex-Chief of Human Rights Says Ukraine War Provides World Security

 https://www.newsweek.com/russia-human-rights-ukraine-war-konstantin-dolgov-state-tv-world-security-1736381

"Security guarantees for the Ukrainians, the population of Ukraine, our soldiers are creating these security guarantees as well as our officers and the militia in Donbas. " Dolgov said, according to the video's English subtitles.

"These are the security guarantees for the people of Ukraine, I am absolutely certain of everything I just said.

"These are the security guarantees from Nazism, from provocateurs, big and small, the security guarantees from atomic radiation."

Far-Right Activist Laura Loomer Refuses to Concede, Sobs About Voter Fraud

 https://www.newsweek.com/far-right-activist-laura-loomer-refuses-concede-sobs-about-voter-fraud-1736325

Far-right activist and congressional candidate Laura Loomer broke into tears as she claimed without evidence that she was illegally robbed of a Republican primary victory on Tuesday.

Loomer, a self-described "proud Islamophobe" and white nationalist who backed former President Donald Trump's false claims of a "stolen" 2020 presidential election, had been endorsed by prominent far-right figures such as conservative commentator Michelle Malkin and received an early endorsement from Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.In addition to being a political candidate, Loomer is a contributor to Alex Jones' far-right conspiracy media platform Infowars. She has previously pushed conspiracy theories that falsely claim mass shootings, including the 2018 shooting at Florida's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, were faked.

‘Donald kept our secret’: Mar-a-Lago stay saved Giuliani from drink and depression, book says

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/aug/24/donald-trump-secret-mar-a-lago-stay-rudy-giuliani-drink-depression-wife-andrew-kirtzman-book

Giuliani has repeatedly denied having a drinking problem. But reports of his drinking while fulfilling his late-career role as Trump’s personal attorney are legion, whether regarding his behavior around reporters or in his presence at the White House on election night in 2020, when he exhorted Trump to declare victory before all results were counted.

Meet the hi-tech man who manages to combine work with his Orthodox lifestyle

https://www.jpost.com/business-and-innovation/tech-and-start-ups/article-715385

“I think that workplaces that try to push one agenda on the opposite side are making a mistake. At the very beginning of my career I encountered such a place, and I only stayed there for two months. The secret to success is that everyone in the company understands that we share a common goal – that the business will succeed, and that’s what matters.” (Maariv)

Team Trump leaks National Archives letter, hurts its own cause

 https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/team-trump-leaks-national-archives-letter-hurts-cause-rcna44432

I have no idea why someone from Team Trump would voluntarily show this to the public. It not only bolsters damaging reporting about the Mar-a-Lago scandal, it also makes the former president look worse, not better.

Indeed, the NARA letter confirms that Trump took highly classified national security materials to his glorified country club. It confirms that the Republican’s haul was extensive and wasn’t limited to a handful of documents. It confirms that the National Archives was amazingly accommodating, accepting multiple delays in the hopes that the former president would eventually cooperate and return the secrets he wasn’t supposed to have.

Wait, Why the Hell Did Trump’s Own Buddy Release the ‘Extraordinarily Damning’ National Archivist Letter?

;https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-the-hell-did-trumps-buddy-john-solomon-release-extraordinarily-damning-letter

National security lawyer Bradley Moss said it was ironic that “Trump’s media guy shows how NARA was bending over backwards for Trump before it finally gave the FBI access to the classified records,” wondering if Solomon realizes “how bad that letter is for” the ex-president.

Trump defiance of DOJ on classified docs comes into sharper focus

 https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/3612830-trump-defiance-of-doj-on-classified-docs-comes-into-sharper-focus/

Meanwhile, the letter from Archives came into the public domain after John Solomon, one of Trump’s representatives to the National Archives and a former columnist with The Hill, released it on his conservative news site, Just The News. Archives confirmed its authenticity Tuesday afternoon.

Observers have questioned the decision to publish a letter that shows not only the breadth of classified information held by Trump, but also publicizes the extent the Trump team sought to block the FBI’s work.

“Every single piece of evidence that shows that DOJ tried literally everything they could to get these records back short of the search warrant punctures another hole in the theory that they were just on a witch hunt. They went above and beyond to accommodate an unreasonable individual.”

The Fauci Boogeyman

 https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/02/fauci-gain-of-function-wuhan.html

At the Senate hearing, Fauci responded to Paul with what the NIH has maintained is a technically correct answer: that the institute never funded gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

But there remained one big sticking point. The experiment that was indirectly funded could actually have been classified as gain-of-function, according to several experts. That doesn’t imply that the research was bad or that EcoHealth experiments were necessarily too risky. It was a disagreement about terminology. But the flames of a conspiracy theory were fanned.

Right-wing commentators seized on the technical argument over a scientific definition to reach an absurd conclusion: that the NIH had directly funded the source of the pandemic, and that Fauci lied to the American public. Or as Tucker Carlson so incorrectly and ridiculously put it on Fox News in May: “The guy in charge of America’s response to COVID turns out to be the guy who funded the creation of COVID.”

Again, I must repeat: This is untrue.

Why they hate him: Dr. Fauci triggers the right because he reveals their deepest insecurities

 https://www.salon.com/2021/12/22/why-they-hate-him-dr-fauci-triggers-the-right-because-he-reveals-their-deepest-insecurities/

Dr. Fauci has been the favorite target of "who does he think he is"-style rants by pretty much every right-wing pundit and politician out there for over a year now. He's easily the most reliable hate object they've had since Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Those three are some readers — and that reliably triggers the bullying response in the Jesse Watters types. Despite all of their chest-thumping bravado, this knee-jerk hostility to those perceived as intellectually curious evinces a deep insecurity driving right-wingers.

Trump's Surgeon General Calls Hateful Reaction to Fauci Retirement 'Scary'

 https://www.newsweek.com/anthony-fauci-stepping-down-niaid-ted-cruz-jerome-adams-1736103

Dr. Jerome Adams, who served as surgeon general from 2017 to 2021, tweeted on Monday: "Scary to see so many just truly hateful comments about Dr. Fauci in the wake of news of his retirement.

"Scary because what does the world look like when hard working, nation loving, and well-intended people say, 'nope—not gonna do public service... not worth the vitriol!'?"

Against this background, Fauci has been a Republican target throughout the pandemic. On the news of Fauci's upcoming departure, Republican Texas Senator Ted Cruz tweeted: "Never in our nation's history has one arrogant bureaucrat destroyed more people's lives." He did not reference any examples.

Fox News Says Jesse Watters’ Words Were ‘Twisted Completely Out of Context’ After Dr. Fauci Calls For His Firing

 https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/dr-fauci-calls-on-fox-to-fire-jesse-watters-network-says-hosts-words-have-been-twisted-completely-out-of-context/496448/

“Now you go in for the kill shot,” Watters said, suggesting how members in the audience could confront Dr. Fauci and film the encounter. “The kill shot? With an ambush? Deadly. Because he doesn’t see it coming. This is when you say: Dr. Fauci, you funded risky research at a sloppy Chinese lab. The same lab that sprung this pandemic on the world. You know why people don’t trust you, don’t you?”