#mark navarro

[my-life-on-parade]

Mark and I are off to Disneyland this week. We both grew up going to Disneyland. I was five years old my first time in 1958 (when they were still building the Matterhorn) and I even worked there as a teenager in the early 70s) Anyway, Mark and I are super excited as this will be our first time together at the magic kingdom. Never say never, but this will also probably be my last time, cause at the age of 70, don’t know how much longer I can be jumping on and off rides! Oh well, all good things eventually come to an end. Here are some of our memories from past Disneyland adventures.

[texaschainsawmascara]

by David LaChapelle

[ffi-stuff-xcept-its-memes]

[digitalfountains]

Bibi Van der Mark, Carla Guetta & Araceli Navarro Torres by Delphine Brunner

[giveamadeuschohisownmovie]

Pitch for a HBO adaptation of “Uncharted” (you know, in case the movie franchise gets shelved and the execs want another Naughty Dog franchise after the success of “The Last of Us”):

1) Showrunner: Jonathan E. Steinberg (co-creator of Black Sails)

2) Brett Dalton as Nathan Drake

3) Teresa Palmer as Elena Fisher

4) Stephen Lang as Victor Sullivan (I know he did the live-action short, but he’s legitimately who I feel would be best in the role)

5) Pedro Pascal as Atoq Navarro

6) Mark Strong as Gabriel Roman

7) Bill Hader as Sam Drake (cameo appearance in season 1 in order to set the show up for the 4th game/season)

8) 9 episodes, same as “The Last of Us”

[absencesrepetees]

spawn (mark a.z. dippe, 1997)

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

A federal judge on Thursday rejected a last-ditch effort by Peter Navarro, a former adviser to former President Donald Trump, to dismiss the contempt of Congress charges he faces for defying a subpoena from the Jan. 6 select committee, keeping his late January trial on track to begin.

U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta said Navarro had failed to prove that the former president wanted him to assert executive privilege over his potential testimony — a key claim that Navarro has long maintained justified his decision to simply blow off the select committee’s subpoena.

But Navarro provided no evidence of his claim, asserting only that Trump privately asked him to invoke executive privilege. Without at least a shred of proof that Trump made a “formal” assertion of executive privilege, Mehta said, he could not grant Navarro’s motion.

“Defendant has failed to come forward with any evidence to support the claimed assertion of privilege. And, because the claimed assertion of executive privilege is unproven, Defendant cannot avoid prosecution for contempt,” Mehta wrote in the 39-page ruling.

It’s a significant decision in an area with little precedent: what current and former presidents must do to assert executive privilege. Mehta acknowledged that there’s not much to guide how courts should determine when a proper assertion has been made. But he said limited court rulings on the subject suggest there must be at least some formal evidence it occurred.

Mehta noted that two other Trump aides whom the House sought to hold in contempt — Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino — produced letters from Trump ordering them to assert executive privilege on his behalf. The Justice Department declined to prosecute the men, and Mehta indicated that the absence of a similar letter from Trump to Navarro led to a reasonable conclusion that Trump had not asserted executive privilege over his testimony.

Mehta’s ruling means that Navarro’s trial on two charges of contempt of Congress is likely to commence later this month. He faces a maximum sentence of a year in prison on each charge — one for refusing to testify and the other for refusing to provide documents — if convicted.

The select committee had hoped to interview Navarro about his coordination with former Trump adviser Bannon and efforts to strategize with members of Congress seeking to challenge the 2020 election results on Jan. 6, 2021, during the counting of Electoral College ballots. The committee recommended that Navarro be held in contempt in April 2022, and the full House quickly followed suit. The Justice Department charged him in June.

Mehta’s ruling also gutted a series of defenses Navarro had hoped to raise at his trial, including that he had a “good-faith belief” that he was immune from the committee’s subpoena. Mehta also agreed to prohibit Navarro from arguing that the select committee’s subpoena was invalid because the panel didn’t have a full complement of 13 members or a ranking Republican member appointed by GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy.

Although he declined to say whether the committee was operating improperly, Mehta noted that Supreme Court precedent required Navarro to first raise his rules complaint with Congress itself. Because he didn’t do that, he effectively waived that argument. Navarro had argued that raising his complaints to Congress would have been “futile” because the House would have simply rejected them. But Mehta said the rules were clear.

“Neither the Supreme Court nor the D.C. Circuit has recognized a futility exception. … And, given the rationale of the rule, it is doubtful that higher courts would recognize one,” Mehta wrote.

The ruling essentially puts Navarro on a track similar to his close ally Bannon, who was tried and convicted of contempt of Congress in July. Bannon, like Navarro, had hoped to argue that he believed he was immune from testifying and that longstanding Justice Department precedents precluded Congress from subpoenaing advisers to former presidents. But in that case, U.S. District Court Judge Carl Nichols relied on a decades-old appeals court ruling — United States v. Licavoli — to reject Bannon’s proposed defenses, ruling that prosecutors simply needed to show that Bannon deliberately refused to appear before Congress.

Mehta cited the case, as well, in tossing most of Navarro’s defenses.

“Defendant apparently believes the law applies differently to him,” he wrote of Navarro. “Because he is a former aide to the President of the United States, he contends, a more stringent state-of-mind standard applies, meaning that the government must be held to a higher burden of proof to convict him as opposed to the average person.”

[mandoreviews]

📽️ Uptown Girls (2003)

Have you ever watched a movie when you were young, and you can remember snippets of it but never the whole thing or the name of it, and you spend years wondering what the movie was until you finally find it, and it’s nothing like what you thought you remembered even though you’re sure it’s the right movie? Yeah, that was this movie for me. I did not remember Brittany Murphy’s character being so annoyingly immature. And Dakota Fanning’s character is a total brat. Even though both of those character traits are main parts of the movie, and they do get better at the end, they’re still tough to sit through. That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy the movie. It ends up being very cute, and both characters help each other. The teacups scene is especially touching. I would probably watch it again.

Sex/nudity: 3/10 (upper female back and side nudity, some sexual content with the adult lead)

Language: 3/10 (the little girl flips people off several times, a lot of God’s name)

Violence: 2/10 (comedic fighting, some slaps/hits/kicks)

Overall rating: 6/10

[y2k-2day]

P. Diddy feat. Black Rob & Mark Curry - Bad Boy 4 Life (2001)

[my-life-on-parade]

Our road trip through New Mexico, part two, Carlsbad Caverns, the historic luxury hotel The Lodge in the Sacramento Mountains town of Cloudcroft (Judy Garland and Clark Gable carved their names above the fourth banister in a small sitting room at the top of the tower back in 1940).

[ffi-stuff-xcept-its-memes]

[digitalfountains]

Carla Guetta, Bibi Van der Mark & Araceli Navarro Torres by Delphine Brunner

[overlydependant]

Posting here to mark down the day that I've finished 20020: The Future of College Football!!!!!!1! !1!!! :D

i will never emotionally recover

[baseballjerseynumbers]

Spring Training:

Danny Mendick assigned 0

Brett Phillips assigned 1

Kevin Pillar assigned 12

Chuckie Robinson assigned 27

Zach Remillard assigned 28

Rafael Ortega assigned 30

Carlos Pérez assigned 36

Chad Kuhl assigned 41

Jake Woodford assigned 44

Mark Payton assigned 46

Jake Cousins assigned 48

Joe Barlow assigned 49

Justin Anderson assigned 52

Nicholas Padilla assigned 61

Edgar Navarro assigned 66

Lane Ramsey assigned 68

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Former Trump White House trade adviser Peter Navarro rejected a plea offer from the Justice Department, prosecutors said in court on Friday.

The deal would have allowed Navarro to plead guilty to one of two contempt of Congress charges for not cooperating with the House's ongoing January 6 investigation. Navarro would also be required to comply with the House Select Committee's subpoena "to the satisfaction of the Justice Department," prosecutors said, and would cap Navarro's potential jail sentence at 30 days.

"No one in his position has ever been prosecuted with criminal contempt of Congress" for following a "presidential directive," John Rowley, Navarro's defense lawyer, said of rejecting the plea offer. Navarro has said he can't comply with the subpoena because former-President Donald Trump informed him he was shielded by executive privilege.

"In essence, this is a dispute between the Office of the President and Congress, and Mr. Navarro was placed on the horn of the dilemma," Rowley told reporters outside the courthouse, "either to follow the executive direction or risk prosecution."

Navarro is charged with contempt of Congress after failing to appear for testimony or turn over documents in the House Select Committee's investigation. He has pleaded not guilty. If convicted, Navarro faces one year in prison for each of the two counts against him.

Navarro's team also raised that he was put in "leg irons" the day of his arrest and that he was arrested at the airport, even though his apartment is just a short walk from the FBI headquarters. (After Friday's hearing, Navarro clarified that the leg irons were used at the courthouse that day, not by the FBI). When Navarro's lawyers raised the issue at the hearing, US District Judge Amit Mehta said, "It is curious to me why the government treated Mr. Navarro's arrest in the way that it did."

His case is the second contempt charge brought by the Justice Department for refusing to cooperate with the House probe, with Trump adviser Steve Bannon set to go to trial on similar charges next week.

Bannon, like Navarro, has tried to argue that the executive privilege surrounding the presidency shields him from being prosecuted for defying a subpoena. But a federal judge sided with the Justice Department in ruling recently that Bannon could not present most aspects of that argument to the jury when his case goes to trial next week. Bannon's judge concluded that, under appeals court precedent that will also cover Navarro's case, that argument was largely irrelevant to what the government has to prove for a conviction, making that evidence inadmissible for trial.

Though Navarro has a different judge presiding over his case, he could face similar hurdles to presenting arguments about executive privilege to a jury. Furthermore, the House January 6 Committee has also noted that while Navarro still worked for Trump's White House at the time of the riot, he has already publicly written about many of the topics the Committee wanted to discuss in detail in his book.

Lawyers for Navarro also said in court on Friday that his criminal case amounts to "selective prosecution," citing the Justice Department's decision not to indict Mark Meadows, former-Chief of Staff to then-President Donald Trump, and Dan Scavino, former-Deputy Chief of Staff to Trump. Both Meadows and Scavino also defied aspects of subpoenas from the House Select Committee, and were found in contempt by the Committee.