Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas was appointed under very suspicious circumstances and now that mistaken appointment has come home to roost. He is likely the most corrupt and compromised Supreme Court judge in US history. He needs step down. Lyrics by David Cohen – A Parody about Judge Clarence Thomas based on the song Tom Dooley, as made famous by The Kingston Trio. Performance by Don Caron. Executive Producers Don Caron and Jerry Pender
According to MAGA the indictments are fake, the judges are paid off, the grand juries are comprised of anti-Trump Democrats or actors, the justice department is being weaponized, it’s a witch hunt blah blah blah. What else can we call them but puppets? Parody of I’m Your Puppet by Dan Penn & Spooner Oldham. Parody Lyrics by Greg Trafidlo, performance and video by Don Caron Executive Producers Don Caron and Jerry Pender
It’s been in the news a lot lately – the blatant corruption of certain justices on the Supreme Court and the obvious fact that no one seems to have the power to force them to comply with the rules of ethics. So why not sing about it instead? Executive Producers Don Caron and Jerry Pender
A Parody of I Thank You. The original song was written by David Porter and Isaac Hayes and originally recorded by Sam & Dave and later by ZZ Top. Parody written and performed by Don Caron | Executive Producers Don Caron and Jerry Pender
Parody of Stand by Your Man with vocals by Deborah Bowman – Written by John Emory of The Freedom Toast – Video by Parody Project Executive Producers Don Caron and Jerry Pender
Prosecutors have alleged in court that the Trump Organization offered former chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg more than $1 million to keep his mouth shut.
Jose Pagliery
Political Investigations Reporter
Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Reuters
In a turn that is oh-so-meta, a brand new hush money deal is now at the center of attention in Donald Trump’s ongoing hush money trial: $750,000 that prosecutors say the business mogul is dangling above Allen Weisselberg’s head to keep him testifying against his former boss.
For the first time on Friday, prosecutors disclosed the strict terms of a severance agreement that the Trump Organization used to promise more than $1 million to its outgoing chief financial officer—as long as he kept his mouth shut.
The 76-year-old disgraced accountant is currently serving a five-month jail sentence on Rikers Island for perjury, having lied to try sparing Trump from legal trouble in a separate case that ultimately fined the tycoon nearly $500 million for bank fraud.
But Weisselberg has conspicuously remained the missing witness at Trump’s first criminal trial. Prosecutors allege he was the finance guy who helped manage the hush money deal that kept the porn star Stormy Daniels quiet about her sexual affair with Trump in the final weeks of the 2016 election. Documents in court show that Weisselberg structured the $420,000 repayment to Michael Cohen (then Trump’s personal attorney) after the so-called “fixer” had fronted the $130,000 initial payment to the porn star.
In court on Friday, prosecutors revealed that the Trump Organization has promised to pay Weisselberg three installments of $250,000 due later this year in June, September, and December—if he doesn’t “cooperate” with law enforcement.
One part of the contract, read out loud in court, says Weisselberg promises “not to verbally or in writing disparage, criticize, denigrate” the company or any of its executives. Another section says “he will not communicate with” and “otherwise will not cooperate with” any entity seeking “adverse claims” against the company.
And while the law generally punishes people for “aiding or abetting” a criminal, Weisselberg’s contract by contrast punishes him if he decides to “aid, abet, or cause” any action against the Trump real estate empire.
This whole other kind of hush money deal came up because prosecutors are planning to wrap up their presentation of the case next week without calling Weisselberg to the stand, which might seem confusing to jurors. That’s why they asked the judge to let jurors see the severance agreement.
“What we’re trying to do is explain his absence. This agreement offers a real explanation as to why he’s not going to be here at this trial,” said prosecutor Christopher Conroy.
This legal debate ensued after the 18 jurors considering the case were sent home for the weekend. The discussion made clear that prosecutors will likely call Cohen as a final witness, then wrap up their presentation against the former president. It would then be Trump’s turn to tell his side of the story, if he even has plans to do so.
For a few minutes, lawyers on both sides sparred over whether to allow jurors to see the severance agreement. The judge initially seemed open to the idea. That is, until he discovered that prosecutors haven’t even tried.
“Has anyone attempted having him come in in some way… serving him with a subpoena or trying to compel his testimony?” Justice Juan Merchan asked.
“Judge, the people have not,” a prosecutor responded.
The reality is a tad bit complicated. The fact is, neither side wants jurors to hear from Weisselberg—because no one knows what a pissed off old man suffering in jail for the second time around after once again taking the fall for his boss might say.
He’s a loaded gun, and he could point in either direction.
Donald Trump and his son Donald, Jr., with Allen Weisselberg (C).
Timothy A. Clary
Joshua Steinglass, a prosecutor, readily admitted that his team saw it as a “strategically bad decision to put a witness on the stand who has an agreement like that.”
Meanwhile Trump’s defense team fought against the notion of having Weisselberg testify. But then he also complained that it would be unfair to let jurors see the agreement.
Emil Bove, a defense lawyer, tried to have the judge consider this cushy retirement package in total isolation. In reality, that deal followed years of Trump’s top accountant refusing to flip on his boss.
Weisselberg has been grilled by federal prosecutors who initially looked into the deal six years ago, pressured to testify about his cooking of the books at the company’s tax fraud trial in 2022 (before this same judge), later spent three months at Rikers for dodging taxes, played a reluctant witness at Trump’s bank fraud trial last year, and is now serving time for lying during that trial.
“That he entered into a settlement agreement after the fact… is not relevant to what’s going on at this trial,” Bove tried to convince the judge. “Mr. Weisselberg is in prison right now and not available to anyone.”
But the judge saw right through the uncomfortable dance being performed on both sides.
“It would be helpful to make my decision if I see that there were some efforts taken,” he said, accusing all the lawyers of “jumping the gun.”
The judge pointed to a narrow provision in Weisselberg’s retirement deal that allows him to testify if he’s dragged into court by a subpoena, calling it “a factor for me in making that decision.”
At that point, Steinglass pivoted, warning the judge that having prosecutors approach Weisselberg at all could cost the Trump associate dearly but still ultimately prove futile on the witness stand if he decides to plead his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Merchan suggested an alternative, one that would subject Weisselberg to a bus ride from the dreaded island jail in the East River to the criminal courthouse in downtown Manhattan. Once there, he could be ordered to testify in a courtroom without the jury present—and once lawyers know what he’ll say, decide whether to put him in front of jurors.
Merchan said the entire exercise would be important. After all, there’s a key difference between that and what he’s hearing now from lawyers who have a common interest in not hearing from a complicated key player in this saga.
“Then it”s on the record, and I’ve seen it,” Merchan said.
In the final moments of the fourth week of Trump’s ongoing trial, Bove made one last try to keep Weisselberg from showing up next week, complaining that the accountant was never on the government’s witness list.
“We were entitled to notice of that long before the trial started,” Bove argued.
At that, the judge turned down his gray bearded chin, shaking his head while his eyes pierced into Bove from behind his thick-rimmed black glasses.
“You didn’t think it was a possibility the people might call Allen Weisselberg to testify?”
As the article says church attendance is declining. That means less money in the donation plates. That happened when gathering in groups was banned during Covid pandemic, churches lost a lot of revenue. So they fought Covid prevention messures. It was not religious, it was financial. That is what drives a lot of the church stances, putting more asses in the pews which puts more money in donation plates. That is why they were against gay marraige, as same sex couples did not breed like opposite sex couples and bring those crotch fruit to church. Hugs. Scottie
by Darrell Lucus
Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)
Keith Giles tells me He Gets Us caved and admitted it sold data after publicly maintaining it didn’t do so. He’s working on a follow-up now. But we now have an admission that #TheyExploitUs.
For the last two-plus years, we’ve seen numerous ads for the “He Gets Us” advertising campaign, which has bought billions of dollars in advertising for the last two Super Bowls, as well as on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. While it bills itself as an effort to overcome the bad rap that Christians have gotten over the years, it was actually funded by outfits with unmistakably right-wing underpinnings.
One of the major donors for the campaign is David Green, the founder of the unshakably conservative craft store chain Hobby Lobby, which proudly touts its successful push for the right to restrict its employees’ access to birth control. Additionally, the nonprofit that originally started the campaign, Servantly, donated scads of money to the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christianist legal advocacy group that is listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Rebekah Slager diaried about it here in 2023.
But it turns out “He Gets Us” has problems more fundamental than just possible astroturfing. Christian left blogger and retired pastor Keith Giles recently discovered that the people behind “He Gets Us” have no qualms about selling your information to local churches, despite public claims to the contrary. What is more, He Gets Us partners with a data-mining company that makes it all too easy for bad actors to get said information.
Giles relates the story of “Kathy Wilson,” a woman from his hometown of El Paso who happened to see a He Gets Us ad on Instagram. Wilson had been going through a rough time of late. She clicked on a link that connected her with someone in her area who could offer support and prayer if she wanted it.
Shortly after entering her information, she began getting texts from “Janice,” who co-pastors a church in El Paso alongside her husband. Kathy thought she was getting a sympathetic ear in her time of need. But a few weeks later, Janice was speaking at a women’s conference about the need for women to reach out to their unsaved friends. She used that talk to reveal that her church partnered with Christian data-mining company Gloo (no relation to the British electronic music group) to get cell data from women looking for support in partnership with He Gets Us—a direct contradiction of He Gets Us’ own claim that it is “not a back to church campaign.” She then whipped out her phone and read several personal texts from Kathy about how she felt lonely at times, even going as far as to share information about her occupation and her work schedule. A recording of that talk soon appeared on the Website of Janice’s church.
A few weeks later, Giles was sitting for coffee with one of his friends, “Gustavo,” who revealed he’d recently gotten an invite to a local prayer meeting after years of being out of church. However, he had second thoughts about going when he happened to check out the church’s Website and discovered Janice’s talk at that women’s conference. Gustavo was dumbfounded that anyone could be so cavalier with someone else’s trust—even more so after a quick Google search revealed a trove of personal information about Kathy.
Giles did his own search and corroborated what Gustavo told him. He then reached out to Kathy on Facebook and let her know Janice had essentially blasted out her information for all to see and hear. Kathy confronted Janice, who immediately offered an unreserved apology. That didn’t go far enough for Kathy, who retained a lawyer and sent a further message asking her to publicly apologize to her and give written assurance that she would never pull a stunt like this again. The talk was deleted soon afterward, and Janice promised to record another message apologizing to Kathy and post it to her church’s Website.
Giles soon discovered how Janice got her hands on Kathy’s information. It turned out that the Instagram ad was one of many ways Christian organizations “capture the personal data of people who are emotionally and spiritually vulnerable.” They then sell this data to Gloo, who then sells it to “local pastors seeking to grow their churches.” How does it work?
According to GLOO, a US-based Christian Data-Mining Company started by Scott and Theresa Beck in 2013, their mission is to “help ministry leaders scale their impact through technology.” To do that, they purchase meta-data from a variety of groups like He Gets Us, K-Love, Barna Research, and other organizations, to create a database of potential targets – like Kathy Wilson – and then they sell that data on their platform to more than 38,000 churches who sign up for their “Explorer” program.
Here’s how it works, according to GLOO’s own website:
“GLOO enables cooperative outreach by partnering with a wide range of campaign partners, including K-LOVE and He Gets Us. One partner, Churches Care, runs digital ads on channels like Facebook, Instagram, and Google on topics including faith, relationships, vocation, finance and health. When a person responds to an ad, they can provide their information to be connected to a church in their local area. The church can message the individual directly through the Gloo platform and help them with their inquiry, often resulting in the person receiving prayer, help for a need and even visiting that church in person.” (the emphasis is Giles’)
If that isn’t unnerving enough, Giles discovered that Gloo has almost no means of keeping people’s information from bad actors. He was able to sign up for a Gloo account with just his email address and a credit card. Once he paid $49.99 to set up an account, he immediately got a phone number to allow him to get texts forwarded to him from Gloo’s many partners—including He Gets Us. No one asked if he had any written evidence to prove he was affiliated with a church or religious organization.
He then found the “Explorer” program that Janice’s church had joined. Users with Premium accounts are automatically matched with “Explorers,” or people “reaching out for encouragement, prayer, or answers.” According to a Gloo press release, whenever “Explorers” interact with ads from Gloo partners, they have a chance to connect with a nearby church. Their ultimate goal is to amass data from over a million people.
In a statement, Come Near, the nonprofit that has run He Gets Us since 2023, maintains that it “does not, and has not, sold data to Gloo.” It added that it paused all Gloo-related activities this past February. But Giles discovered that Gloo lists He Gets Us as one of the campaigns with whom it partners, and discovered a screenshot from the Gloo Website that details how Gloo collects data from He Gets Us ads. Giles believes this means one of two things—either Gloo is lying about getting user information from He Gets Us, or He Gets Us may have given the data away for free. After all, Janice had to get Kathy’s information somehow.
Either way, Giles is being way too kind when he suggests a better description of “He Gets Us” is “He Tricked Us.” To my mind, it’s more accurate to say “They Exploit Us”—and are doing so in a textbook case of evangelicalism in its most unacceptable form. And in so doing, it is putting churches and pastors in astronomical reputational and legal danger. If I were Come Near and Gloo, I’d have lawyers on speed dial.
Thanks Ten Bears. In the US profit is king and everything is designed to make profit for the wealthy and push the costs on to the public, the people. These corporate people and their shareholders see the public not as people but as livestock to milk and use until there is nothing left to take from them, then dispose of them and get new ones. We the people are chicken that lay their eggs of profit and when we can’t lay any more they sell what is left for what they can get. They have raided every sector of US life, it is all for profit now. We need to take it back, put public back into public service. Hugs. Scottie
Study confirms Altria, Philip Morris International, Danone, Nestlé, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola are worst offenders
Plastic pollution on a Welsh beach. Volunteers collected and surveyed plastic waste across 84 countries over five years. Photograph: Paul Quayle/Alamy
Fewer than 60 multinationals are responsible for more than half of the world’s plastic pollution, with six responsible for a quarter of that, based on the findings of a piece of research published on Wednesday.
The researchers concluded that for every percentage increase in plastic produced, there was an equivalent increase in plastic pollution in the environment.
“Production really is pollution,” says one of the study’s authors, Lisa Erdle, director of science at the non-profit The 5 Gyres Institute.
An international team of volunteers collected and surveyed more than 1,870,000 items of plastic waste across 84 countries over five years: the bulk of the rubbish collected was single-use packaging for food, beverage, and tobacco products.
Less than half of that plastic litter had discernible branding that could be traced back to the company that produced the packaging; the rest could not be accounted for or taken responsibility for.
“This shows very, very, very well the need for transparency and traceability,” says a study author, Patricia Villarrubia-Gómez, a plastic pollution researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Centre. “[We need] to know who is producing what, so they can take responsibility, right?”
The branded half of the plastic was the responsibility of just 56 fast-moving consumer goods multinational companies, and a quarter of that was from just six companies.
The two tobacco companies Altria and Philip Morris International combined made up 2% of the branded plastic litter found, both Danone and Nestlé each produced 3% of it, PepsiCo was responsible for 5% of the discarded packaging, and 11% of branded plastic waste could be traced to the Coca-Cola company.
“The industry likes to put the responsibility on the individual,” says the study’s author, Marcus Eriksen, a plastic pollution expert from The 5 Gyres Institute.
“But we’d like to point out that it’s the brands, it’s their choice for the kinds of packaging [they use] and for embracing this throwaway model of delivering their goods. That’s what’s causing the greatest abundance of trash.”
The Guardian approached Altria, Philip Morris International, Danone, Nestlé, PepsiCo and The Coca-Cola Company.
The Coca-Cola Company said: “We care about the impact of every drink we sell and are committed to growing our business in the right way.” It has pledged to make 100% of its packaging recyclable globally by 2025, and to use at least 50% recycled material in packaging by 2030.
Nestlé said it has reduced its virgin plastic usage by 14.9% in the last five years, and supports schemes around the world to develop waste collection and recycling schemes.
“Since launching our voluntary commitments to address plastic waste five years ago, we have significantly outperformed the market at large in reducing virgin plastic and increasing recyclability, according to the most recent report from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation,” it said.
The company also supports the creation of a global legally binding regulation on plastic pollution which is being negotiated this week.
Danone said: “We continue to strive to reduce our own plastic footprint – between 2018-2023 we reduced our plastic use by 8% equivalent to 62 000 tons and increased the recyclability of our packaging (84% of our packaging is recyclable, reusable or compostable). We continue to support and push for improved collection and recycling infrastructures to help consumers recycle.” They also support “an ambitious and binding … UN Global Plastic Treaty which would represent a major opportunity to unlock and accelerate progress on plastics circularity.”
Both PMI and Altria contest the accuracy of the data collected.
Plastic in the Depths: how pollution took over our oceans
Read more
However, while many of these companies have taken voluntary measures to improve their impact on plastic pollution, the experts behind the study argue they are not working. Plastic production has doubled since the beginning of 2000 and studies show only 9% of plastic is being recycled.
When the team collected data on self-reported yearly plastic packaging production for each of these multinational companies and compared it with the data from their 1,500-plus litter surveys, their statistical analysis showed that every 1% increase in plastic production was directly correlated with approximately a 1% increase in plastic pollution.
“Actually seeing this one-to-one increase, I was like, wow,” says a study author, Kathy Willis, a marine socio-ecologist from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia.
“Time and time again from our science we see that we really need to be capping how much plastic we are producing.”
However, Kartik Chandran, an environmental engineer at Columbia University, who was not involved in the research, said that while this new data was striking, the observation that 1% plastic production was equal to 1% plastic pollution was “a bit unrealistic” and “simplistic”.
He said the data did not consider plastic pollution in China, Korea and Japan, nor take into consideration recycling or clean-up initiatives under way.
A better analysis could be based on the net plastic flows into plastic production – also accounting for credits from the reuse of plastic materials – and the net plastic load ascribed as plastic pollution.
The team behind the study, some of whom are participating in the talks being held in Ottawa this week to discuss a UN Treaty for Plastic Pollution, said their findings emphasised the urgent need for a globally binding treaty focusing on production measures.
The talks will run to Monday, and Luis Vayas Valdivieso, the Ecuadorian ambassador to the UK, told the Guardian earlier this week he was hopeful that countries would come together to secure an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution.
“It is very important we are negotiating this treaty now. The world is in a triple crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. But while there are agreements in place for the first two, we have no legislation, no global agreement on plastic pollution.”
Aileen Cannon, the judge overseeing Donald Trump‘s classified documents case, has said she declared two “luxury” resort trips to Montana that were mentioned in a National Public Radio investigation.
“Cannon, herself a Trump appointee, attended two seminars at a luxury resort in Montana, but the privately funded seminar disclosures for both events were not posted online until NPR began making inquiries,” NPR’s online investigation states.
“Clerk of court Angela Noble told NPR in an email that the absence of the disclosures was due to technical issues and that ‘Any omissions to the website are completely inadvertent,” it adds.
Cannon is overseeing the case, in which former president Donald Trump is accused of illegally retaining classified documents, hoarding them at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and obstructing attempts by federal officials to retrieve them.
Trump, the presumptive Republican candidate in the 2024 presidential election, has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him. He has denied any wrongdoing in the case and has said the documents he retained were personal.
Cannon’s office told Newsweek that the two trips are likely listed on the U.S government’s federal judge disclosure website. The court clerk stated in an email to Newsweek that “there are two trips listed for Judge Cannon. These are likely the trips you are referring to. You can find them here” with a link to the U.S government’s website.
Related video: Aileen Cannon Makes Unusual Move in Tump’s Classified Docs Case (Daily Reel)
charges against former President Trump in the classified documents case.
Loaded: 85.46%
Daily Reel
Aileen Cannon Makes Unusual Move in Tump’s Classified Docs Case
The links show that the seminars were funded by the George Mason University Foundation.
Cannon attended the seminars, known as the Sage Lodge Colloquium, from September 26, 2021 to October 2, 2021 and from September 25, 2022 to October 1, 2022, according to the federal judge disclosure website. In August, 2023 Newsweek reported on her disclosure of both of these Montana trips.
Newsweek sought email comment from NPR on Thursday.
Federal judges must declare any free trips on their disclosure documents.
NPR’s allegations about Cannon are part of a larger investigation into undeclared free trips taken by federal judges.
The investigation, released on NPR’s website on Wednesday, claims that “dozens of federal judges failed to fully disclose free luxury travel to judicial conferences around the world, as required by internal judiciary rules and federal ethics law.”
“As a result, the public remained in the dark about potential conflicts of interest for some of the United States’ top legal officials,” it adds.
NPR alleges that “federal judges — occasionally with family members or even their dog in tow — traveled to luxury resorts in locations as far-flung as London; Palm Beach, Fla.; Bar Harbor, Maine; and the outskirts of Yellowstone National Park for week-long seminars. The judges received free rooms, free meals and free money toward travel expenses, together worth a few thousand dollars.”
It claims that some federal judges heard from a group that uses “lawsuits in federal court to change environmental policy, as well as from corporate CEOs in the oil and pharmaceutical industries.”
It comes after intense criticism of some Supreme Court judges for undeclared foreign trips.
In December 2023, the Senate Judiciary Committee announced that it issued subpoenas to Leonard Leo, a conservative activist, and the billionaire Harlan Crow, compelling them to appear before the committee to answer questions about their relationship with Justice Clarence Thomas.
The subpoenas were the latest steps in the committee’s inquiry into the Supreme Court justices. The committee’s Republican minority, which supports Thomas, walked out of the committee hearing in protest.
Thomas is facing an investigation for allegedly accepting lavish vacations from Crow—including a $500,000 trip to Indonesia in 2019—getting money from another donor to buy a recreational vehicle and other ethics violations.
In December, Crow’s spokesman said in a statement to Newsweek that Crow had done all he could to cooperate with the committee, despite concerns about his constitutional rights. The statement also said that issuing Crow a subpoena was a headline-grabbing exercise.
It looks like Eileen Cannon is following in the footsteps of Clarence Thomas by taking lavish vacations on Republican donors dimes and not reporting them.
NPR has uncovered multiple trips she took to Montana that she failed to disclose on her mandatory Federal disclosure forms. Apparently donors to the George Mason School of law paid for these trips so judge Cannon could meditate under the beautiful Montana sky. Right as if…
Of course, as soon as NPR asked her for a comment, the trips magically showed up on her disclosure form. She says this was just a mistake by the website. Again as if.…
I am not sure how this will play into Trump’s Mar-A-Lago document case. I am not a lawyer but it seems to me that it is time for Jack Smith to take this and other examples to the 11th circuit court of appeals and ask for her to be removed from the case. But again I’m not a lawyer so I don’t know what effect this has in that case other than it sure seems like a conflict of interest to have a conservative political group funding trips for a judge who is overseeing a case against a leading conservative politician.
You can hear more about this incident on the Midas Touch Network video below.
Plastic pollution on a Welsh beach. Volunteers collected and surveyed plastic waste across 84 countries over five years. Photograph: Paul Quayle/Alamy
Scottie's Playtime 