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Morning Briefing: Tr*mp's Legal Woes Mount; Cheney's Out; and Fetterman's Crudité Own

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | August 17, 2022 |

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | August 17, 2022 |


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Good morning: Let’s start with TFG (The Former Guy/That F**king Guy): He’s trying desperately (along with Lindsey Graham) to get the Justice Department to unseal the affidavit in support of the search warrant for the search of Mar-a-Lago. There will be a hearing on this tomorrow. Merrick Garland and the DOJ object because they don’t want to reveal witness names or otherwise reveal where the investigation is heading. TFG, meanwhile, is hoping to score a short-term political win that I suspect will result in a long-term legal loss. He doesn’t know what’s in the affidavit, either, and I suspect that he’s eager to go full mafia on the witnesses. Of course, he has millions of followers to make those threats on his behalf.

Here’s the thing that, if I were TFG, I’d be most concerned about, from the WashPo:

And surveillance video from Mar-a-Lago that was captured over 60 days and subpoenaed by the Justice Department shows people going in and out of the storage area where the classified documents were kept, said a person with knowledge of the footage.

From the NYTimes:

But officials then used a subpoena to obtain surveillance footage of the hallway outside a storage room at Mar-a-Lago and saw something that alarmed them.

If I’m TFG, that’s what I’d be afraid of. Political wins will not escape the clutches of the DOJ. It doesn’t help, either, that TFG cannot seem to find decent legal representation. No seasoned lawyers with experience with the DOJ wants to work for him because he’s a bad client: He doesn’t listen, and he doesn’t pay. Right now, his legal team is a Florida insurance lawyer, a lawyer for a parking garage, and a former host at One America News. They’re not exactly legal titans, and I’m not sure TFG really appreciates how much sh*t he is in.

It’s not going to get any better in Georgia, either, where Rudy Giuliani is set to testify today in a case where he is the target of an investigation in a probe into TFG’s attempt to overturn election results there. And it’s not like TFG has any friends in Georgia in either the Governor’s office or the Secretary of State’s office.

Politically, however, TFG scored another win last night after Liz Cheney — who has been the leading voice on the January 6th Select Committee — was trounced in her reelection bid for her House seat in Wyoming. She lost by 37 points in her primary, although I would not expect her to go away anytime soon. In Alaska, Lisa Murkowski — who voted to impeach Trump — advanced in her at-large primary, and will likely win in November. Elsewhere, TFG-backed Sarah Palin came in second (behind the Democrat) in her effort at a political comeback, where she’s running for a seat in the House of Representatives. Three people advance in that election, too, but it’s ranked-choice voting, so I have no idea how that will turn out in that state, where there are a lot of Trump supporters but also a lot of folks who do not align with either party. If Democrat Mary Peltola — who is Yup’ik — wins, she would be the first Alaska Native in Congress.

Finally, if you haven’t seen it yet, this video Dr. Oz posted in April has recirculated in recent days, and Oz is taking a beating for it because he both misidentifies the grocery store and he calls a veggie tray “crudité.” In Pennsylvania. How awful is this guy at politics?

John Fetterman has had a field day and has raised over half a million dollars from stickers and donations mocking Oz.

A Fox News poll gives Fetterman an 11-point lead in that race, where Republicans are very unenthusiastic about their candidate. Oz is getting crushed by a guy in a hoodie who looks like a roadie for Nickelback. I love it. I wish other Democratic politicians knew their constituents as well as Fetterman knows his.