The president declares himself the GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT, and says he’s going to charge tolls and reinstate the blockade; ICE kills again in Maine; a judge eviscerates Trump’s corrupt bargain with the IRS; and the conspiracist-in-chief prepares to inflict yet another bat-shit crazy conspiracy theory on the nation.
Happy Tuesday.
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A quick reminder, you are not the crazy ones. But this is the fight of our lifetimes, and the challenge of our generation.
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An improper exercise in self-dealing
We’ll get to Trump’s Thursday night lunacy in a moment, but let’s start with his latest slap-down in a court of law. The 56-page decision from Judge Kathleen Williams is banger.
A federal judge ruled on Monday that President Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service was an improper exercise in self-dealing and barred him from claiming that the extraordinary tax protections he received were part of a legitimate settlement agreement.
In the 56-page order, the judge, Kathleen M. Williams, also referred the lawyer who brought Mr. Trump’s case against the I.R.S. to the Florida bar for potential disciplinary proceedings. She added that she would forward her decision to the New York bar for its continuing investigation of the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, who faces a Senate confirmation hearing this week.
The decision by Judge Williams, who sits in Federal District Court in Miami, did not explicitly kill the deal that Mr. Trump had worked out with his own government to receive what amounted to amnesty from I.R.S. investigations. But the scathing ruling exposed the negotiations between Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers and senior officials at the Justice Department for what she says they were: backroom dealings that did not arise from a legitimate legal process.
“The nature of the suit itself and the conduct of the parties and counsel from its filing make plain that this was an attempt to use the court to provide some legitimacy to an agreement to confer immunity to people and entities affiliated with the president,” the judge wrote.
ICE kills again
We have to wait for all the facts to come out, but the shooting of yet another unarmed man in Maine has many of the familiar horrific hallmarks of ICE brutality. ICE admits they targeted the wrong man and initially did not seem to be claiming that he was driving his vehicle toward the agents who shot him in head. His 3-year-old daughter was in the car when her father was shot. Videos show agents pulling the wounded man out of the car, laying him on the ground, and handcuffing him as he lay dying. Via CNN:
Fatal ICE shooting: The Biddeford community is mourning a young father, husband and neighbor after Guerrero was shot by an ICE agent this morning. Local officials have demanded a full and impartial investigation, while protesters took to Biddeford’s streets….
Conflicting accounts: The shooting victim was “NOT the target of the warrant,” Sen. Angus King’s office said after the lawmaker again spoke with DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin.
Who was Joan Sebastian Guerrero?
The victim was a 26-year-old Colombian man living in Maine who, according to immigrant advocacy groups and neighbors, had come to the state to live and work.
The Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and Presente! Maine said Guerrero was authorized to work in the United States and had been issued a Social Security number. Neighbor Nelson Elias told CNN he was a delivery driver who lived with his partner and young daughter in Biddeford.
This comes just days after another killing in Houston. Via Juliette Kayyem:
An ICE agent killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston last week. A father, grandfather and small business owner, Araujo spent decades building a life here. His family said he worked in construction, put three American-born sons through college and was in the process of securing legal status in the United States. He was not a burden on his community. He was a part of it.
ICE agents, masked and driving an unmarked vehicle while searching for someone else, mistakenly identified Araujo as their target and ultimately shot and killed him….
ICE initially claimed that Araujo rammed a law enforcement vehicle. Physical evidence and witness accounts have raised serious questions about that version of events. The agency’s initial response was familiar: justify the shooting by blaming the victim. ICE is part of an immigration enforcement system so unaccountable that federal immigration agents killed two Americans in Minnesota, and no one has been charged in either death.
The biggest lie is yet to come — Thursday night
We don’t know for sure what Trump will say when he addresses the nation, but no one should be surprised if it is certifiable. One report suggests that Trump will announce that Georgia’s two senators — Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock — are “illegitimate” because of election fraud.
WTAF?
That report is unconfirmed, but what we do know is crazy enough: “Trump to claim declassified intel reveals 2020 election interference.”
President Donald Trump plans to claim in a Thursday night speech that newly declassified intelligence reports reveal a foreign nation’s plans to interfere in the 2020 presidential election, two White House officials told MS NOW on Monday.
Trump will be joined by CIA Director John Ratcliffe, acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte, FBI Director Kash Patel, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and others, according to one of the officials, who were granted anonymity to discuss the internal plans, MS NOW reported.
Italian space satellites? Venezuelan moles? Chinese hackers? We’ll find out Thursday night, apparently.
So, once again, conspiracy theories once confined to the far reaches of the fever swamp will be shoved into the spotlight, as Trump weaponizes his Big Lie. We linked to this story yesterday: “Trump election task force to begin releasing classified intel documents.”
The release of the documents appears to be part of a series of accelerating efforts by Trump and his aides to again question the results of the 2020 election, claim that widespread voter fraud occurs in the country and decrease public trust in the results of pivotal elections this fall that will decide control of Congress.
“I don’t think we’ve ever seen an administration that is this hostile to voting rights and free and fair elections,” said Jonathan Diaz, the director of voting advocacy at the Campaign Legal Center, an ethics watchdog group. “This is a new frontier.”
BONUS: Via Miles Taylor: “I helped oversee election security for Trump. He’s about to swap the ‘Big Lie’ for a Bigger Lie.”
I know what’s in that well of information he’s drawing from, because I helped dig it. During Donald Trump’s first term, I worked on election protection at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), helping to stand up the administration’s response to historic Russian interference in 2016. We built an entire, government-wide response system — intelligence analysts, cyber defenders, and law enforcement agents — who were full-time focused on stopping any such attack from happening again. And I can tell you now, before Trump says a single word, he’s full of shit.
Pardon my language. But I’m virtually certain that whatever he presents on Thursday, it will be twice-warmed leftovers of information, cherry-picked and recast to tell a story our intelligence agencies never told because it was never true. Indeed, the president appears poised to make it sound like a foreign adversary, specifically China, took away the White House from him by helping Joe Biden win. If the Big Lie was bad, this will be even Bigger because now he’s might name the actual boogeyman that has eluded him, over years of delusional claims about an unfair loss.
Exit take: This probably does not need saying, we're going to say it anyway. The point of all of this is not merely to relitigate Donald Trump's obsession with his 2020 defeat. It is to lay the groundwork for undermining confidence in the 2026 and 2028 elections, perhaps providing a pretext for Trump to declare an “emergency” to justify federal interference, and maybe even a takeover, of the electoral process. We have been warned.
Today’s Podcast
Our friend, Justin Wolfers, is a professor of economics at the University of Michigan and author of the Platypus Economics Substack. In this episode, he joins me for a very wide-ranging conversation: We touch on everything from the economic impact of Trump’s renewed war with Iran to Trump’s crypto scam to the impact of AI, and the importance of the humanities in our Age of Tech.
Subscribers can listen to an ad-free version right here… or you can watch on YouTube / Listen (and subscribe) on Apple/ Spotify / iHeart / RSS Feed
Nota Bene
Pushing back on the Lindsey Graham Revisionism. Phillips O’Brien brings the receipts. “Lindsey Graham On Ukraine and Trump”
President Trump ended all US military aid (as opposed to sales) to Ukraine once he became president in 2025. I can find no criticism of Trump by Graham for doing this—but please correct me on this if you can.
Graham, Trump and the Oval Office Attacks On Zelensky
On February 28, 2025, Trump and Vice President JD Vance attacked Ukraine’s President Zelensky in the Oval Office, for not doing what the US wanted. It was at this meeting that it was said Ukraine had “no cards” in its war with Russia. Graham spoke a number of times afterwards and all to support Trump and Vance and attack Zelensky.
February 28, 2025 — RealClearPolitics
Speaking to reporters outside the West Wing immediately after the meeting, and asked his opinion of Trump’s conduct, Graham said: “I have never been more proud of the president.”February 28, 2025 — Matzav
Extending the praise to the vice president, whose intervention had escalated the confrontation, Graham said: “I was very proud of JD Vance standing up for our country.”February 28, 2025 — PBS
Placing the blame for the meeting’s collapse on Zelensky rather than on Trump or Vance, Graham said: “What I saw in the Oval Office was disrespectful” — adding that he didn’t know if the US could ever do business with Zelensky again.February 28, 2025 — Fox News
Asked whether Zelensky should step aside after the Oval Office meeting, Graham supported the idea, saying: “He either needs to resign and send somebody over that we can do business with”.February 28, 2025 — ABC News
Criticizing Zelensky’s manner in the meeting itself, Graham said: “the way he confronted the president was just over the top.”Note. Graham repeated these attacks for weeks afterwards. On March 9, speaking on Fox News, Graham said:
“You know Zelensky blew it in the White House.
You can read the whole thing here.
Tuesday dogs
Our French dog, Zok, waits for his people to return. Here he is in Angouleme.
Obviously, Trump’s event Thursday is meant to deflect from whatever happens Thursday at Blanche’s hearing, which is the day an Epstein witness is expected to be called.
Thanks for quoting the excerpts from O’Brien’s piece. A reminder that Graham didn’t sell his soul to protect Ukraine. He sold his soul to feel like he was a special boy. I have zero respect for that man.