#Verdict with Ted Cruz

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Wearing a Ukrainian flag is “virtue signalling” like using a Covid mask, Ted Cruz has said.

“For the Democrats, this has become a virtue signal,” the Texan Senator said on his podcast Verdict with Ted Cruz, pointing to lapel pins often donned by politicians to show solidarity with Ukraine.

“A Ukrainian flag has become like a Covid mask. It’s a sign to show your virtue,” he added.

Both Democrats and Republicans have been spotted wearing scarves, ties and blazers in the colours of Ukraine’s national flag since Russia’s invasion last year.

But Mr. Cruz said “leftists preening around with Ukrainian flags” are driving Americans away.

"As we see all these leftists preening around with Ukrainian flags, and you know almost dancing with their fealty to" Mr. Zelensky, he said, "it is driving millions of Americans away and saying, 'All right if they're for it, I ain't for it.'"

Many Republicans "want Putin to lose", but are dissatisfied with being on the same side as liberals, he added.

Mr. Cruz went on to double down on his criticism of Joe Biden, accusing the US President of missing a "strategic national objective" in helping Ukraine fight back against Russia.

Prominent Republicans are increasingly questioning Mr. Biden’s approach, with many calling for military and financial aid to cease.

“Congressional patience for an open-ended commitment to the Ukraine war is fading quickly, and with a Republican majority in the House, I think you’re going to see much more scrutiny on what funds are going,” he said.

“I think there will still be a willingness to provide actual weaponry, to provide ammunition or weapons that the Ukrainians can use to defend themselves," he continued.

“I think there will be very little interest in unrestrained checks going to the government of Ukraine.”

Mr. Biden’s visit to Ukraine last week was denounced by prominent Republicans, who suggested he should have instead visited the US-Mexico border or East Palestine, Ohio, where a train derailment caused a chemical leak.

During his meeting with Mr. Zelensky, Mr. Biden pledged an additional $500m in military aid.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The Google antitrust remedy should extinguish surveillance, not democratize it

I'm coming to DEFCON! On FRIDAY (Aug 9), I'm emceeing the EFF POKER TOURNAMENT (noon at the Horseshoe Poker Room), and appearing on the BRICKED AND ABANDONED panel (5PM, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01). On SATURDAY (Aug 10), I'm giving a keynote called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification" (noon, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01).

If you are even slightly plugged into the doings and goings on in this tired old world of ours, then you have heard that Google has lost its antitrust case against the DOJ Antitrust Division, and is now an official, no-foolin', convicted monopolist.

This is huge. Epochal. The DOJ, under the leadership of the fire-breathing trustbuster Jonathan Kanter, has done something that was inconceivable four years ago when he was appointed. On Kanter's first day on the job as head of the Antitrust Division, he addressed his gathered prosecutors and asked them to raise their hands if they'd never lost a case.

It was a canny trap. As the proud, victorious DOJ lawyers thrust their arms into the air, Kanter quoted James Comey, who did the same thing on his first day on the job as DA for the Southern District of New York: "You people are the chickenshit club." A federal prosecutor who never loses a case is a prosecutor who only goes after easy targets, and leave the worst offenders (who can mount a serious defense) unscathed.

Under Kanter, the Antitrust Division has been anything but a Chickenshit Club. They've gone after the biggest game, the hardest targets, and with Google, they bagged the hardest target of all.

Again: this is huge:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/boom-judge-rules-google-is-a-monopolist

But also: this is just the start.

Now that Google is convicted, the court needs to decide what to do about it. Courts have lots of leeway when it comes to addressing a finding of lawbreaking. They can impose "conduct remedies" ("don't do that anymore"). These are generally considered weaksauce, because they're hard to administer. When you tell a company like Google to stop doing something, you need to expend a lot of energy to make sure they're following orders. Conduct remedies are as much a punishment for the government (which has to spend millions closely observing the company to ensure compliance) as they are for the firms involved.

But the court could also order Google to stop doing certain things. For example, since the ruling finds that Google illegally maintained its monopoly by paying other entities – Apple, Mozilla, Samsung, AT&T, etc – to be the default search, the court could order them to stop doing that. At the very least, that's a lot easier to monitor.

The big guns, though are the structural remedies. The court could order Google to sell off parts of its business, like its ad-tech stack, through which it represents both buyers and sellers in a marketplace it owns, and with whom it competes as a buyer and a seller. There's already proposed, bipartisan legislation to do this (how bipartisan? Its two main co-sponsors are Ted Cruz and Elizabeth Warren!):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/25/structural-separation/#america-act

All of these things, and more, are on the table:

https://www.wired.com/story/google-search-monopoly-judge-amit-mehta-options/

We'll get a better sense of what the judge is likely to order in the fall, but the case could drag out for quite some time, as Google appeals the verdict, then tries for the Supreme Court, then appeals the remedy, and so on and so on. Dragging things out in the hopes of running out the clock is a time-honored tradition in tech antitrust. IBM dragged out its antitrust appeals for 12 years, from 1970 to 1982 (they called it "Antitrust's Vietnam"). This is an expensive gambit: IBM outspent the entire DOJ Antitrust Division for 12 consecutive years, hiring more lawyers to fight the DOJ than the DOJ employed to run all of its antitrust enforcement, nationwide. But it worked. IBM hung in there until Reagan got elected and ordered his AG to drop the case.

This is the same trick Microsoft pulled in the nineties. The case went to trial in 1998, and Microsoft lost in 1999. They appealed, and dragged out the proceedings until GW Bush stole the presidency in 2000 and dropped the case in 2001.

I am 100% certain that there are lawyers at Google thinking about this: "OK, say we put a few hundred million behind Trump-affiliated PACs, wait until he's president, have a little meeting with Attorney General Andrew Tate, and convince him to drop the case. Worked for IBM, worked for Microsoft, it'll work for us. And it'll be a bargain."

That's one way things could go wrong, but it's hardly the only way. In his ruling, Judge Mehta rejected the DOJ's argument that in illegally creating and maintaining its monopoly, Google harmed its users' privacy by foreclosing on the possibility of a rival that didn't rely on commercial surveillance.

The judge repeats some of the most cherished and absurd canards of the marketing industry, like the idea that people actually like advertisements, provided that they're relevant, so spying on people is actually doing them a favor by making it easier to target the right ads to them.

First of all, this is just obvious self-serving rubbish that the advertising industry has been repeating since the days when it was waging a massive campaign against the TV remote on the grounds that people would "steal" TV by changing the channel when the ads came on. If "relevant" advertising was so great, then no one would reach for the remote – or better still, they'd change the channel when the show came back on, looking for more ads. People don't like advertising. And they hate "relevant" advertising that targets their private behaviors and views. They find it creepy.

Remember when Apple offered users a one-click opt-out from Facebook spying, the most sophisticated commercial surveillance system in human history, whose entire purpose was to deliver "relevant" advertising? More than 96% of Apple's customers opted out of surveillance. Even the most Hayek-pilled economist has to admit that this is a a hell of a "revealed preference." People don't want "relevant" advertising. Period.

The judge's credulous repetition of this obvious nonsense is doubly disturbing in light of the nature of the monopoly charge against Google – that the company had monopolized the advertising market.

Don't get me wrong: Google has monopolized the advertising market. They operate a "full stack" ad-tech shop. By controlling the tools that sellers and buyers use, and the marketplace where they use them, Google steals billions from advertisers and publishers. And that's before you factor in Jedi Blue, the illegal collusive arrangement the company has with Facebook, by which they carved up the market to increase their profits, gouge advertisers, starve publishers, and keep out smaller rivals:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue

One effect of Google's monopoly power is a global privacy crisis. In regions with strong privacy laws (like the EU), Google uses flags of convenience (looking at you, Ireland) to break the law with impunity:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/15/finnegans-snooze/#dirty-old-town

In the rest of the world, Google works with other members of the surveillance cartel to prevent the passage of privacy laws. That's why the USA hasn't had a new federal privacy law since 1988, when Congress acted to ban video-store clerks from telling newspaper reporters about the VHS cassettes you took home:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act

The lack of privacy law and privacy enforcement means that Google can inflict untold privacy harms on billions of people around the world. Everything we do, everywhere we go online and offline, every relationship we have, everything we buy and say and do – it's all collected and stored and mined and used against us. The immediate harm here is the haunting sense that you are always under observation, a violation of your fundamental human rights that prevents you from ever being your authentic self:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2013/jun/14/nsa-prism

The harms of surveillance aren't merely spiritual and psychological – they're material and immediate. The commercial surveillance industry provides the raw feedstock for a parade of horribles, from stalkers and bounty hunters turning up on their targets' front doors to cops rounding up demonstrators with location data from their phones to identity thieves tricking their marks by using leaked or purchased private information as convincers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/06/privacy-first/#but-not-just-privacy

The problem with Google's monopolization of the surveillance business model is that they're spying on us. But for a certain kind of competition wonk, the problem is that Google is monopolizing the violation of our human rights, and we need to use competition law to "democratize" commercial surveillance.

This is deeply perverse, but it represents a central split in competition theory. Some trustbusters fetishize competition for its own sake, on the theory that it makes companies better and more efficient. But there are some things we don't want companies to be better at, like violating our human rights. We want to ban human rights violations, not improve them.

For other trustbusters – like me – the point of competition enforcement isn't merely to make companies offer better products, it's to make companies small enough to hold account through the enforcement of democratic laws. I want to break – and break up – Google because I want to end its ability to bigfoot privacy law so that we can finally root out the cancer of commercial surveillance. I don't want to make Google smaller so that other surveillance companies can get in on the game.

There is a real danger that this could emerge from this decision, and that's a danger we need to guard against. Last month, Google shocked the technical world by announcing that it would not follow through on its years-long promise to kill third-party cookies, one of the most pernicious and dangerous tools of commercial surveillance. The reason for this volte-face appears to be concern that the EU would view killing third-party cookies as anticompetitive, since Google intended to maintain commercial surveillance using its Orwellian "Privacy Sandbox" technology in Chrome, with the effect that everyone except Google would find it harder to spy on us as we used the internet:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/googles-trail-of-crumbs

It's true! This is anticompetitive. But the answer isn't to preserve the universal power of tech companies large and small to violate our human rights – it's to ban everyone, especially Google, from spying on us!

This current in competition law is still on the fringe, but the Google case – which finds the company illegally dominating surveillance advertising, but rejects the idea that surveillance is itself a harm – offers an opportunity for this bad idea to go from the fringe to the center.

If that happens, look out.

Take "attribution," an obscure bit of ad-tech jargon disguising a jaw-droppingly terrible practice. "Attribution" is when an ad-tech company shows you an ad, and then follows you everywhere you go, monitoring everything you do, to determine whether the ad convinced you to buy something. I mean that literally: they're combining location data generated by your phone and captured by Bluetooth and wifi receivers with data from your credit card to follow you everywhere and log everything, so that they can prove to a merchant that you bought something.

This is unspeakably grotesque. It should be illegal. In many parts of the world, it is illegal, but it is so lucrative that monopolists like Google can buy off the enforcers and get away with it. What's more, only the very largest corporations have the resources to surveil you so closely and invasively that they can perform this "service."

But again, some competition wonks look at this situation and say, "Well, that's not right, we need to make sure that everyone can do attribution." This was a (completely mad) premise in the (otherwise very good) 2020 Competition and Markets Authority market-study on "Online platforms and digital advertising":

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5fa557668fa8f5788db46efc/Final_report_Digital_ALT_TEXT.pdf

This (again, otherwise sensible) document veers completely off the rails whenever the subject of attribution comes up. At one point, the authors propose that the law should allow corporations to spy on people who opt out of commercial surveillance, provided that this spying is undertaken for the sole purpose of attribution.

But it gets even worse: by the end of the document, the authors propose a "user ID intervention" to give every Briton a permanent, government-issued advertising identifier to make it easier for smaller companies to do attribution.

Look, I understand why advertisers like attribution and are willing to preferentially take their business to companies that can perform it. But the fact that merchants want to be able to peer into every corner of our lives to figure out how well their ads are performing is no basis for permitting them to do so – much less intervening in the market to make it even easier so more commercial snoops can get their noses in our business!

This is an idea that keeps popping up, like in this editorial by a UK lawyer, where he proposes fixing "Google's dominance of online advertising" by making it possible for everyone to track us using the commercial surveillance identifiers created and monopolized by the ad-tech duopoly and the mobile tech duopoly:

https://www.thesling.org/what-to-do-about-googles-dominance-of-online-advertising/

Those companies are doing something rotten. In dominating ads, they have stolen billions from publishers and advertisers. Then they used those billions to capture our democratic process and ensure that our human rights weren't being defended as they plundered our private data and put us in harm's way.

Advertising will adapt. The marketing bros know this is coming. They're already discussing how to live in a world where you can't measure clicks and you can't attribute actions (e.g. the world from the first advertisements up until the early 2000s):

https://sparktoro.com/blog/attribution-is-dying-clicks-are-dying-marketing-is-going-back-to-the-20th-century/

An equitable solution to Google's monopoly will not run though our right to privacy. We don't solve the Google monopoly by creating competition in surveillance. The reason to get rid of Google's monopoly is to make it easier to end surveillance.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/07/revealed-preferences/#extinguish-v-improve

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[rabbits-of-negative-euphoria]

.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Dean Obeidallah at The Dean's Report:

Donald Trump was NOT convicted by Joe Biden, he was NOT convicted by the Judge, he was NOT convicted by the District Attorney.  Donald Trump was convicted by a jury of his peers. A jury, I should note, that Trump was personally “very much involved” in picking per his lawyer Todd Blanche on CNN Thursday night. And that conviction happened in the state where Trump committed his crimes after a full trial that lasted more than a month where Trump was represented by a team of very experienced lawyers who presented his best defense. That is how our Constitution and criminal justice system works. There were no surprises here. As I predicted in my article before the trial began, “Trump is going to be a Convicted Felon by June." That was based on my experience as a trial lawyer and after reviewing the evidence the prosecutors had laid out in their pleadings. Common sense said that the only reason Trump paid Stormy Daniels “hush money” ten years after their affair —but just a week before the 2016 election—was to defraud voters of the truth. To that end, Trump falsified business records to conceal his illegal scheme. The jury saw the facts as they were, hence Trump was found guilty on all 34 counts and is now a CONVICTED FELON.

Yet now we see Trump and MAGA reject the jury verdict by attacking it as “rigged,” a “sham,” etc. MAGA House Speaker Mike Johnson called the verdict, “the weaponization of our justice system.”  Marco Rubio weighed in on Twitter, writing, “The verdict in New York is a complete travesty that makes a mockery of our system of justice.”  The always awful MAGA Rep. Elise Stefanik, posted, “Today’s verdict shows how corrupt, rigged, and unAmerican the weaponized justice system has become under Joe Biden and Democrats.”  Spineless Tim Scott said on CNN Thursday night, “This was certainly a hoax, a sham” with the even worse Ted Cruz stating, “This entire trial has been a sham, and it is nothing more than political persecution.” And the list goes on and on. But this is no surprise, it’s part of MAGA telling us they reject our Constitution and the foundations of our democratic Republic. After all, Trump and MAGA rejected the 2020 election results because Trump lost. They rejected the criminal justice system when they smeared the indictments against Trump as being a sham. And now they publicly reject our jury system, which is one of the cornerstones of the US Constitution as laid out in the Sixth Amendment.

The question that must be asked is given Trump and MAGA reject our elections, our criminal justice system, the rule of law and our Constitution, what exactly do they support?! The answer is simple: Convicted Felon Trump. That’s it. [...] Let me repeat what I’ve been writing and saying for months: Don’t count on the courts, the prosecutors or a jury to save us from Donald Trump. We are the only ones who can do that by coming out in huge numbers to defeat him this November. This may sound jarring but it’s the truth: MAGA is a cancer. If allowed to metastasis, it will kill our democratic Republic that so many sacrificed so much to defend. The good news though is that the cure to MAGA cancer is right in front of us. All it takes is voting in big numbers this November.

The butthurt MAGAs crying and whining about Convicted Felon Donald Trump being convicted on 34 charges for business records falsification is more proof that the extremist anti-American MAGA cult needs to be crushed at all costs.

See Also:

Vox: Why the ludicrous Republican response to Trump’s conviction matters

MMFA: MAGA media rage in response to Trump's 34 guilty verdicts

RWW: MAGA Martyrdom Machine Portrays Felon Trump as Victim, Vows Revenge

HuffPost: Right-Wingers Are Already Promising Vengeance After The Trump Verdict

Daily Kos: Republicans choose MAGA lunacy over the law after Trump's conviction

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Steve Brodner, It was all rigged!

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

May 30, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

MAY 31, 2024

After slightly less than ten hours of deliberation, a jury today found former president Donald J. Trump guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records in order to unlawfully influence the 2016 election.

For the first time in our history, a former president of the United States is a convicted felon.

For the first time in our history, a former president of the United States has been convicted of committing crimes to steal an election. 

Republican senators could have convicted Trump of high crimes and misdemeanors in 2019. In that year, the House impeached Trump after he tried to rig the 2020 presidential election by withholding congressionally appropriated funds to support Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s 2014 invasion. He withheld the funds to try to force Ukraine president Volodomyr Zelensky to manufacture dirt on Democrat Joe Biden.

Republican senators could have convicted Trump, but they acquitted him.

Republican senators could have convicted Trump of high crimes and misdemeanors in 2021. In that year, the House impeached him after he tried to seize the presidency by instigating an attack on the U.S. Capitol and trying to rig the count of the electoral vote after Americans had elected Democrat Joe Biden. 

Republican senators could have convicted Trump, but they acquitted him.

Today, twelve ordinary Americans did what Republican senators refused to do. They protected the rule of law and held Trump accountable for his attempt to rig an election.

Trump stared blankly ahead as the verdict was read. “Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.” 

Trump has managed to escape accountability from the political system, but in a court of law, where prosecutors brought facts, witnesses were under oath, and jurors did not need him to keep them in positions of power, he lost.

And so he continued his assault on the rule of law. MAGA lawmakers, including House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), both of whom were involved in the events of January 6, 2021, joined him in attacking the system that produced the guilty verdicts, although they steered clear of defending Trump himself.

After the verdict, Trump turned back to politics. He went directly to the television cameras outside the courtroom, where he gave his usual speech, saying the trial was rigged, he was “a very innocent man,” and that “our country has gone to hell.” Within four minutes of the verdict, his campaign posted a fundraising pitch on social media, proclaiming, “I am a political prisoner!” 

Trump has repeatedly urged his supporters to defend him with violence, but there was none reported. In some cities, there was cheering. Shares in Trump media fell sharply in after-hours trading.

Judge Juan Merchan will sentence Trump at 10:00 in the morning of July 11, four days before the Republican National Convention begins. 

A spokesperson for the White House said: “We respect the rule of law, and have no additional comment.”

Tonight, for the first time in our history, a former president of the United States is a convicted felon.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[mariacallous]

Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, rebuked GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Monday and said that he would “rather be leader than have a Republican majority."

Cruz made the remarks on his podcast called “Verdict with Ted Cruz!”. 

The Texas senator said McConnell pulled campaign support via the Senate Leadership Fund from races of candidates who said they wouldn’t support him as Senate GOP leader.

Asked why the PAC with ties to McConnell pulled funds out from Arizona, Cruz said, “because (Blake) Masters said he would vote against Mitch McConnell.”

“So, Mitch would rather be leader than have a Republican majority,” he continued. “If there’s a Republican who can win who’s not going to support Mitch, the truth of the matter is he’d rather the Democrat win.”

He added, “Mitch made a decision, it’s more important to him to have Republicans who will back him, than it is to have 51 Republicans. I understand why there’s a certain selfishness that justifies that it just doesn’t make any sense if you give a damn about the country.”  

McConnell’s office didn’t immediately reply to CNN’s request for comment.

The Texas Republican also reiterated his call to delay Senate leadership elections until after the Georgia runoff on Dec 6. 

“It would be insane if we reelect the same leadership two days from now,” he said. “If we say, 'Hey nothing happened everything’s good,' keep rowing off the waterfall, crash into the rocks everything’s awesome. Listen if you have the number one team in the nation and you get crushed… you know what happens? They fire the coach. The idea that we would have leadership elections on Wednesday is insane.”  

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

I’d love to see this mother f—ker going down in flames. He’s a pathetic pawn of a every right-wing oligarch and political group. He could give Mike Pence boot licking lessons. Nearly all Republikkkan propaganda and hit pieces emanate from his office. Most Republikkkans hate him more than we do.

[plantanothertree]

Three liberal DC Circuit Federal Judges call out January 6 prosecutors for their prosecution of over 100 people!!!

[foreverlogical]

I didn't even know that he had a podcast, this is very disturbing.

The complaint stems from Senator Cruz and iHeart entering into a syndication deal, in which iHeart will fund production of Senator Cruz’s podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz (Verdict), as well as market the show across 850 stations, and provide it with a co-host. 

Senate Rule 35 prohibits senators from accepting gifts from registered lobbyists, including gifts of service. HLOGA prohibits registered lobbyists from giving gifts to senators. Given that iHeart is a registered lobbyist that has spent over $3.5M in lobbying efforts in 2022, this syndication deal clearly violates Senate rules and HLOGA. 

The public has a right to know whether their elected officials are acting impartially in performing their duties, or in their own financial interest. Allowing Senator Cruz to receive a gift potentially worth millions of dollars from iHeart would call into question Senator Cruz’s impartiality on legislation impacting iHeart’s interests. 

This is not a hypothetical concern. iHeart has already lobbied on at least two bills before Senator Cruz’s committee, the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, this year: A bill that would allow the Federal Communications Commission to require an announcement if a foreign governmental entity paid for a broadcast, and bill to create a report about the feasibility of funding the Universal Service Fund.  

Tweetable quote:The Ethics Committee has a responsibility to uphold the ethics rules and laws that exist to ensure that senators are acting in the public interest.  Tweet this quote.

Unfortunately, the Ethics Committee seems to ignore blatant ethics violations. Part of the issue at hand is an ongoing lack of ethics enforcement in the Senate in general. Currently, ethics enforcement in the chamber relies on a system of self-policing, in which members are responsible for enforcing ethics rules against their own colleagues. As a result, the Senate Ethics Committee regularly fails to hold its members accountable. 

This syndication deal is yet another instance of senators acting unethically, and we hope that, this time, the Ethics Committee will take action.  

[bllsbailey]

Biden Says He's Firm On 'No Pardon For Hunter,' But Skeptics Aren't Buying It

Hunter Biden, son of U.S. President Joe Biden, arrives to the J. Caleb Boggs Federal Building

The White House has doubled down and reiterated that President Joe Biden will “not” be pardoning his son, Hunter Biden, after he was found guilty of three federal firearm charges.

However, skeptics on the right and the left still aren’t convinced.

In all, Hunter Biden was found guilty of making a false statement during the purchase of a gun, making a false statement related to information required to be kept by a federally licensed gun dealer, and possession of a gun by a person who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance.

The first son previously lied in October 2018 after checking the “no” box on a federal firearm form that asked if he was a user or addicted to controlled substances.

Additionally, Hunter Biden’s long history of drug abuse has been widely known, as Hunter himself published a memoir in 2021 titled Beautiful Things in which he recounts his lengthy history of addiction.

During the trial, Hunter’s attorneys did not deny his history of substance abuse, but rather, opted to argue that on the day Hunter bought the firearm, he “did not consider himself” to be an active drug addict.

Last month in an interview with ABC News, President Biden claimed to have ruled out pardoning his son, saying that he would choose to accept the verdict of the case as he trusted the judicial system.

Although White House Press Secretary Andrew Bates re-confirmed on Tuesday that the president would not pardon Hunter, skepticism is beginning to mount now due to Biden recently dropping out of the 2024 presidential race. 

“The president spoke to this in his ABC interview. His comments stand,” said Bates.

Meanwhile, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) recently spoke on a podcast and speculated what the odds were of President Biden pardoning his son now that he has opted out of the 2024 presidential race

“I’m going to place the odds that Joe Biden pardons Hunter Biden at 100%. Hunter Biden will get a pardon as a result of this decision,” said Cruz. “It will not happen till after Election Day. He’s not going to do it before Election Day. But he’s going to stick around. And after Election Day, I believe it is now 100% that Joe Biden will pardon Hunter,” he explained.

Hunter Biden is set to be sentenced in October on federal charges pertaining to the illegal firearm purchase.

Stay informed! Receive breaking news blasts directly to your inbox for free. Subscribe here. https://www.oann.com/alerts

[realjaysumlin]

GOP Leaders MAKE FOOLS OF THEMSELVES after Verdict

I don't have short term amnesia according to Ted Cruz, but he says he doesn't remember saying this.

[dankusner]

Texans’ responses to verdict stick closely to party lines

From ‘absolute travesty’ to ‘nobody is above the law,’ reactions divided FROM STAFF REPORTS

Texas Republicans reacted to former President Donald Trump’s guilty verdicts Thursday with anger and dismay, including a promise from state Attorney General Ken Paxton to “unleash every tool at my disposal” to fight what he called a political persecution.

Democrats saw Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records as proof that nobody is above the law, and several called on the presumptive Republican nominee to withdraw from the presidential race.

Reaction to the verdicts was swift Thursday.

Many Texas Republicans mirrored the reaction of Gov. Greg Abbott, who blamed the Democrat in the White House for Trump’s legal travails, saying: “We must FIRE Joe Biden in November.”

“This was a sham show trial. The Kangaroo Court will never stand on appeal,” Abbott said on social media. “Americans deserve better than a sitting U.S. President weaponizing our justice system against a political opponent — all to win an election.”

Said Paxton, a close ally to Trump who has been mentioned as a possible choice for U.S. attorney general: “From the beginning of this sham trial, I stood by President Trump, and my support for him is stronger than ever. As Attorney General of Texas, I will unleash every tool at my disposal to fight this blatant corruption and political persecution spewing from New York and the Biden administration.”

Democrats called on Americans to respect the verdict of jurors who heard hours of evidence during a trial that began in mid-April.

“Today’s guilty verdict underscores that nobody is above the law — not even a former president of the United States,” U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth, said on social media.

Said state Rep. Erin Zwiener, D-Driftwood: “This isn’t a joyous moment for me despite my deep opposition to Trump. We’ve sunk so low that one political party is close to nominating a corrupt felon for President. I hope he steps aside, so America can heal.”

Reaction from other Texans included:

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas: “This is already baked in the cake,” Cruz, in Dallas for a roundtable discussion on energy, told The Dallas Morning News . “I don’t believe we will lose any votes for the President. I think there’s a very good chance it will backfire, that even people who are not fans of Donald Trump will be concerned about seeing the justice system abused like this.”

Cruz lashed out at Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and called the process a “kangaroo circus.”

“This is an absolute travesty of justice. I think what we’ve seen in this New York trial is a mockery,” Cruz said. “We have a partisan DA who is a rabid leftist who hates Donald Trump and campaigned promising to get Donald Trump. … This was a mission to destroy Donald Trump.”

U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas: “Whew chile! Guilty on all counts in a state case! No matter what happens in November, he cannot ‘undo’ this verdict. I know many are celebrating & I get it, but my heart … breaks for our country! How did we get here?! When did we stop requiring some darned decency of the most powerful person on Earth?!”

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick: “Today’s guilty verdict against President Trump is an absolute travesty of our judicial system. There was no crime, and the prosecution’s star witness was a convicted liar and an admitted thief.

“The judge was biased against President Trump throughout the entire trial. This will be reversed at some point, but the Democrats got what they wanted — to prosecute and persecute a man they know they cannot beat in November,” said Patrick, head of the Trump campaign in Texas.

State Rep. John Bucy III, D-Austin: “Today, a jury of his peers found Donald Trump guilty of all 34 felony charges levied against him. Trump should withdraw from the presidential primary. We must remove this stain from our democracy.”

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas: “This verdict is a disgrace, and this trial should have never happened. Now more than ever, we need to rally around [Trump], take back the White House and Senate, and get this country back on track. The real verdict will be Election Day.”

State Rep. Armando Walle, D-Houston: “Seems jury determined catch & kill stories about paying off your porn star mistress to stay quiet is not in of itself not against the law if you are an average person. It’s when you become a candidate for public office & hide resources to prevent it from coming out is problem.”

WHAT THEY SAID "This is already baked in the cake. I don't believe we will lose any votes for the president. I think there's a very good chance it will backfire." U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas

"Today's guilty verdict under scores that nobody is above the law —not even a former president of the United States." U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth

"The real verdict is going to be November 5th by the people." Donald Trump, as he was leaving the courtroom "There's only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: At the ballot box." President Joe Biden in a fundraising appeal on X on Thursday

"The stock market has ahistory of tuning out domestic political turmoil. However, the political climate is clearly going to be even more volatile after the Trump verdict, which could increase volatility in the stock market." Ed Yardeni, founder of market research firm Yardeni Research

"Convicted felon Donald Trump is blaming the judge, the jury and New York for being found guilty on 34 counts. He will never accept accountability for his crimes. Americans must not allow this felon anywhere near the White House again." actress Barbra Streisand on X

"And just like that …A former President of the United States has been hounded and found guilty by biased Democrats. Now the Republicans will have to retaliate against Democrats when they regain power." comedian Rob Schneider on X

[rabbits-of-negative-euphoria]

What podcasts do you listen to? I know you listen to Allie Beth Stuckey’ Relatable and Spencer Klavan’s Young Heretics and, as someone who also listens to those, I was wondering several things. A) What other podcasts do we both listen to and B) if you were listening to something I wasn’t so I could check it out.

Lovely question! My most regular ones are:

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey

Young Heretics with Spencer Klavan

The Michael Knowles Show

Verdict with Ted Cruz

The Jordan B Peterson Podcast

and then the ones I don’t listen to quite as often include:

Things Unseen with Sinclair Ferguson

Revolutions with Mike Duncan (I’m taking an extended break between the French and the Haitian)

Men Who Rocked the World with Steven Lawson

Secrets of Statecraft with Andrew Roberts

The Alisa Childers Podcast

The Federalist Papers with Dick Barr

and yesterday I started Cultish

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jonathan Nicholson at HuffPost:

Donald Trump’s “guilty” verdict on 34 counts of falsifying business records in his hush money trial could make it harder for the Senate to get much work done in the next few months — at least, if a group of pro-Trump senators has their way. Eight Republican senators said Friday they would try to slow down the Senate’s business in response to the verdict. Unlike the House, the Senate runs its day-to-day business under small, temporary agreements between the majority Democrats and minority Republicans. It’s a system that can be undermined sometimes by even one obstinate senator.

“The White House has made a mockery of the rule of law and fundamentally altered our politics in un-American ways. As a Senate Republican conference we are unwilling to aid and abet this White House in its project to tear this country apart,” said the eight senators in a letter. Signatories included Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah), J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). Specifically, the group promised three things: to not allow any increase in “non-security” funding or spending bills that fund “partisan lawfare”; to not vote for any of the White House’s political or judicial nominees; and to not allow faster consideration of Democratic legislative priorities “not directly relevant to the safety of the American people.”

“Those who turned our judicial system into a political cudgel must be held accountable,” Lee said in a social media post about the letter. “We are no longer cooperating with any Democrat legislative priorities or nominations, and we invite all concerned Senators to join our stand.”

8 felon-coddling Republican Senators signed a letter that they’ll muck up even more business in the Senate in protest of the guilty verdict handed down by a jury in the Trump business records falsification trial.

The 8 signatories are: Mike Lee, J.D. Vance, Tommy Tuberville, Eric Schmitt, Marsha Blackburn, Rick Scott, Roger Marshall, and Marco Rubio.

Surprisingly, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Tom Cotton didn’t sign on to it.

[yrrj777]

Connecting the Dots - BLM…HAMAS | Verdict Ep.185

BLM embraces Hamas - and every company that funded them to defend their blatant antisemitism.  Plus, media bias on Israel and an unconstitutional Trump gag order.  Hear all the facts in this special Wednesday episode of “Verdict with Ted Cruz.”