There’s been a lot of news about the recent negotiations over the Ukraine War, but I haven’t yet written about the topic for the simple reason that I’m waiting for something more definitive. First there was a report about a plan that supposedly was the US proposal but then was said to be Russia’s (there was a fair amount of back and forth bickering about that). Everything else so far seems to me to be rumors and spin. But I thought I’d put up a post so you could discuss it if you want.
Over the years, I’ve learned to ignore early reports about such negotiations where Trump is concerned. Whether alarmist or reassuring, they don’t often seem to accurately represent what ends up happening in a deal. The Ukraine War is an especially intractable-seeming problem. But here are a few articles for your perusal: this, this, and this. There are plenty more where those came from.
NOTE: I may as well put this news here, too: Trump is planning on declaring the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group, but he’s doing it carefully to circumvent the inevitable legal challenges:
… [T]he president has instructed the secretaries of State and Treasury to deliver a report within 30 days addressing whether any “Muslim Brotherhood chapters or subdivisions” meet the legal criteria for designation as terrorist groups, with a final decision to follow within 45 days.
The order specifically requires evaluation of the movement’s branches in Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt.
In Chicago, there was another terrible crime in which a woman on a train was doused with gasoline and set on fire. The alleged perp, Lawrence Reed (44), is what used to be called a “career criminal.” Byron York writes about his long rap sheet – which included acts of arson as well as assault on women – for which he seems to have gotten something called “mental health probation.” While in a hospital this past August, he assaulted and injured a social worker there.
By that time, Reed had had “72 arrests, eight felony convictions, and seven misdemeanor convictions — a total of 32 years in and out of the criminal justice system.” And yet the judge refused to incarcerate him, instead setting him free with an ankle bracelet monitor which turned out to be pretty much worthless.
Reed couldn’t have been locked up forever for his crimes, but he certainly should have been locked up again and not free to attack still another person. Let’s say he really is mentally ill; the mental health system doesn’t seem to be able to cure him any more than the criminal justice system can. Not all crimes can be predicted and prevented, to be sure. But this one could have been, and was not.
This was no error, either. And just to make that clear, the mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, said this:
And yet, just days later, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson declared, “We cannot incarcerate our way out of violence.”
For MaGee — and countless others — the incarceration of a repeat offender with Reed’s record would have prevented a nightmare.
But that’s exactly what he told reporters at a Tuesday press conference, insisting, ”We have already tried that, and we have ended up with the largest prison population in the world, without solving the problems of crime and violence.
“The addiction on jails and incarceration in this country, we have moved past that,” he said, adding, “It is racist. It is immoral. It is unholy and it is not the way to drive violence down.”
Actually, although it hasn’t solved the problem, nothing else has, including all the social work and social justice theories in the world. And until that problem is solved, criminals need to be incarcerated. At least, while they are locked up, they’re not roaming around assaulting the innocent.
But – and this is the point of the word “anarcho-tyranny” in the title of this post – way too many of our leaders no longer understand this simple truth. Just because a problem isn’t totally solved by a certain approach doesn’t mean that, until there’s a better one, it shouldn’t be used. It is immoral to allow criminals free reign to harm the population, although perhaps it makes Mayor Johnson and so many others on the left feel good about themselves.
Chicago has a very high crime rate and many of the victims are black, but anarcho-tyranny means that no one on the left seems to care when black people kill black people, either. AI Google, which certainly isn’t always my go-to resource, has a pretty good definition and so I’ll use it:
Anarcho-tyranny is a political theory describing a government that is simultaneously oppressive toward law-abiding citizens while being ineffective at controlling criminal behavior. This theory posits that a government fails to perform its basic functions of protecting the public and maintaining order, while instead using its power to punish or control innocent citizens, creating a state that is both anarchic (lacking order) and tyrannical (oppressive).
Six members of Congress made a video telling members of the military to disobey any illegal orders from Trump. Now the FBI is investigating them to see what may have prompted this action, since the six didn’t cite any illegal orders he had made:
Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan confirmed the investigation on social media.
“The President directing the FBI to target us is exactly why we made this video in the first place. He believes in weaponizing the federal government against his perceived enemies and does not believe laws apply to him or his Cabinet,” she wrote. “He uses legal harassment as an intimidation tactic to scare people out of speaking up.”
Anyone who’s followed the events of the last ten or so years might find that bleakly humorous. Obviously, unless Slotkin is a time-traveler, the FBI’s present investigation can’t be the reason they made the statement. As for past use of “weaponizing the federal government against perceived enemies,” the Democrats are the champions at that.
Also:
“All servicemembers are reminded that they have a legal obligation under the [Uniform Code of Military Justice] to obey lawful orders and that orders are presumed to be lawful,” the Defense Department said in a statement. “A servicemember’s personal philosophy does not justify or excuse the disobedience of an otherwise lawful order.”
That’s restating the basic principle, with the addition of the idea that orders are presumed to be lawful.
People in the military already know they can refuse illegal orders. However, there was absolutely no need for this reminder; the goal was obviously to stir things up in the military and cause trouble for Trump. But his calling the six “traitorous” and saying they broke the law is hyperbole, IMHO, and only gives them ammunition to play the righteous victims. And that’s exactly what they’re doing.
This story is about a man whose green card was revoked because he'd been convicted—not accused, but *convicted*—of murder, armed robbery, and forcible theft with a deadly weapon. https://t.co/goz0lcLGNo
Orville Etoria, a Jamaican national, held a green card that was revoked after being convicted of multiple serious felony offenses, including murder, criminal possession of a weapon, armed robbery, and forcible theft with a deadly weapon, DHS said. …
Etoria served 25 years for his crime and was issued a final removal order by an immigration judge in 2009. Upon his release in 2021, immigration officials allowed him to stay, provided he completes annual check-ins, according to The New York Times. On July 17, 2025, he was deported. …
In a press release, DHS criticized The New York Times for publishing a “sob story” about Etoria, expressing concern about media focus on the deportee rather than his offenses or the victims.
“Why does the New York Times continue to peddle sob stories of criminal illegal aliens? When will they finally shed light on their victims?”
Etoria was among a group of five men with criminal convictions who were deported under President Trump’s immigration enforcement policies. The group was sent to a prison facility in Eswatini, a southern African nation, where none of them are citizens.
Etoria’s aunt, Margaret McKen, told The New York Times that he should have been deported to Jamaica, where he holds a valid passport. …
Margaret McKen told The New York Times: “He paid the penalty for what he did. Why is he in prison again?”
When I read that, I thought that yes, he probably should have been deported to Jamaica. But then I noticed the date of the Newsweek story – it’s from early September. It turns out that not long after that, Etoria was sent to Jamaica, where he now resides. I’d like to know the circumstances of the murder, why he was set free after serving 25 years, how he got his green card status, why it was decided in 2021 not to deport him, and a host of other details. Perhaps the information is available behind various paywalls; perhaps not.
And speaking of New York, there’s this from Mamdani:
NYC Mayor-elect Mayor Zohran Mamdani claimed on the campaign trail he no longer wants to “defund the police,” but a lefty political strategist he tapped to oversee his transition team is an impassioned supporter of the anti-cop movement.
Elena Leopold, executive director of an all-female transition team, was among the more than 230 past and present staffers of then-Mayor Bill de Blasio who signed an June 2020 “open letter” to de Blasio demanding “radical change” on criminal justice policies – especially at the NYPD.
Then again, Mamdani has retained Jessica Tisch as Police Commissioner. She is somewhat more traditional in her approach.
There was an interesting discussion between commenters “om” and “Bauxite” yesterday about the dismissal of the Comey and James cases. It went like this – first, Bauxite:
You’d think that a man whose bacon was saved in Florida because the previous administration failed to legally appoint the prosecutor might be a little more sensitive about making sure that the prosecutor bringing his retribution indictments would be legally appointed.
You would think. But with Trump, you would be wrong.
Om countered with this:
Concerned Conservative makes the rulings of another activist judge into another inditement against The Great Orange Whale.
How unexpected (and pathetic).
Then Bauxite responded:
Not all of these are about activist judges, om. Trump’s administration is playing games with interim US attorney appointments because they want lackeys who can’t be confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate. They got nailed for it.
Lots of things are activist judges. This isn’t one of them.
However, this was a situation with an explanation that can’t be reduced to a few sentences. And the details reveal – in my opinion – that the explanation is “none of the above.” I’ll try to explain.
The prosecutor whom the court ruled yesterday had been improperly appointed was Trump loyalist Lindsey Halligan. Her predecessor, Erik Siebert, had been an interim appointment of Trump’s on January 21, 2025, one day after Trump’s inauguration. Therefore it was one of the earliest acts of his second term. Why the rush? Probably at least one reason was that the statute of limitations on Comey’s case was due to run out on the last day of September, and it takes quite a while to prepare a case and so time was flying.
Later it came time for the Senate to approve the 120-day interim nomination and make it more long-lasting, and among those who recommended (in May of 2025) that Siebert get the Senate nod were Virginia’s Democrat senators, Tim Kaine and Mark Warner. But the Democrats had allowed very few of Trump’s judicial nominees to be approved by the Senate. Back then, it does not seem to have been apparent yet (and perhaps had not even been decided) that Siebert would not be approving the indictments of either Comey or James. Did the two Democrat senators already suspect Siebert would refuse? I certainly have no idea, although it’s a distant possibility. At any rate, Siebert’s final approval by the Senate was blocked by the Democrats, as were so many others.
On September 11, the news somewhat drowned out because of the Kirk assassination which had occurred the day before, Senate Republicans finally decided to use the nuclear option to end the Democrat block of judicial nominees. Only a little more than a week later, on Friday, September 19, the news came out that Siebert was leaving. Events were coming together, all at once:
Erik Seibert, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, resigned on Friday after the White House gave him the option to step down or be fired, Fox News has learned.
Siebert’s perceived unwillingness to bring local charges against New York Attorney General Letitia James, one of Trump’s top political nemeses, was the main reason for his ouster, according to multiple sources.
Note that no official word was never given on the reason, but I’m going to assume that this is correct and it was because Siebert did refuse to indict both James and Comey. However, a different reason for Siebert’s leavetaking was given by Trump:
Trump said later on Friday to reporters that he had withdrawn Siebert’s nomination; however, the president attributed it to the support Siebert had garnered from the two Democratic senators of Virginia. Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner had approved Siebert’s nomination through the Senate’s blue slip tradition. U.S. attorney nominees typically require blue-slip approval from home state senators as part of the confirmation process.
“When I saw that he got approved by those two men [Kaine and Warner], I said, ‘Pull it because he can’t be any good,” Trump said, adding that he wanted Siebert “out.”
Trump said as much on social media, too, when on September 20 he called Siebert a “Democrat-supported” “woke RINO” “with a really bad Republican past,” and said “That’s why two of the worst Democrats PUSHED him so hard.”
However, at least according to Siebert’s Wiki entry, the two senators had already given their approval to Siebert in May, so although that might have made Trump uneasy, I assume it was not the reason Siebert was asked to leave, and that his refusal to indict Comey and James was, if not the total reason, in the nature of a final straw.
The sequel vote comes as Republicans begin their process to invoke the so-called “nuclear option” in the Senate to break the Democratic hold on scores of President Donald Trump’s nominees for various executive branch vacancies.
Democrats have for months leveraged the upper chamber’s procedure to grind consideration of Trump nominees to a screeching halt. Many of those appointments, such as U.S. attorneys, are traditionally confirmed in the Senate on voice votes or by a process known as unanimous consent. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has framed the blockade as a necessary move to scrutinize the president’s nominees, but Republicans have lambasted it as rank partisanship.
Now, the Senate’s GOP leadership is preparing to implement a rare rules change permitting lawmakers to consider Trump nominees in large batches to speed up the confirmation process. The so-called “nuclear option” alters Senate rules on a simple majority vote rather than the typically required two-thirds majority.
Among the nominees who have been subjected to Democrats’ hold were a group of U.S. attorney nominees for vacancies in 10 states, all of whom had previously been advanced out of the Judiciary Committee on bipartisan voice votes. The panel has historically conducted such informal ballots on White House nominees for federal prosecutor positions.
Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, the panel’s chairman, has twice taken to the Senate floor and requested unanimous consent votes on those appointees, but the Democratic blockade and a separate procedural objection halted their confirmation.
Republicans managed to get this done by September 24, 2025, only six days before the Comey statute of limitations was to ran out. Their action freed up approval of 100 blocked Trump nominees. But by then, the news had broken just five days earlier that Siebert wouldn’t approve the indictments of Comey and Adams, and he’d been forced out. If you consider the timing, no wonder the appointment of Halligan and the subsequent filing of the Comey indictment were so very rushed.
My guess is that, despite Halligan’s inexperience in trying criminal cases, she was nevertheless appointed because Trump knew that, as a Trump loyalist rather than an unknown entity, she would at least try to indict Comey and James in a timely fashion, after Siebert had failed to do so. Who else would be willing to take on the task with so very few days to prepare? It was a longshot, to be sure, but he must have thought it worth the try. And it had to be another interim appointment, because there was simply no time left for hearings and Senate confirmation of a new nominee, and then case preparation. And although the statute actually provided for the district court to name the replacement for interim appointments, there was almost certainly no time left for that, either. In fact, even if someone had been instantaneously appointed, the case preparation would have been rushed to an extreme degree.
Would the Senate have confirmed Halligan had there been time? I have no idea, but I suspect that Trump would not even have appointed her at all had there been more time; he would have chosen someone more experienced.
At any rate, this was not a simple sequence or a simple situation. It was a chain of interlocking events of some complexity.
Here’s Jonathan Turley, whose opinions I nearly always respect, on the ironies in the dismissal of the Comey and James cases:
Law seems to have become entirely improvisational in the age of Trump. James and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg adopted highly novel legal theories to pursue Trump in New York, including Bragg’s revival of a dead misdemeanor charge and its conversion into a multi-count felony indictment. Both cases were denounced by experts across the political spectrum as the raw weaponization of the legal process.
However, James is entitled to every bit of the due process and procedural protection that she denied Trump. Rushed to completion in the final days before the statute of limitations expired, these indictments proved a target-rich environment for defense counsel.
When the Comey and James indictments were filed, many of us in the legal profession noted a couple of problems. First, the James indictment seemed disjointed after the denial of a key charge. With time running out, Acting U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan quickly stitched the remaining counts together and filed the indictment. It was ad hoc and hardly ideal.
The time element was key. Also, note that we still are not absolutely certain what Siebert’s position was – it’s merely “reported” (although I do assume the report is true):
The main problem we identified was Halligan herself. The former private counsel for Trump was appointed acting U.S. attorney after the removal of her predecessor, Erik Siebert, who reportedly resigned after expressing reservations about the legal basis for the indictment.
When did it become clear – if it indeed did become clear, which I will assume was the case – that Siebert would not cooperate with an indictment? The public only heard about it late in the game, in mid-September. Turley also mentions the controlling statute, which doesn’t even require the Senate to act:
The problem is that a federal statute, 28 U.S.C. § 546, governs the appointment of interim U.S. attorneys when a vacancy arises. A president has 120 days to appoint such an official while awaiting a Senate-confirmed replacement. Siebert had already used that 120-day period, and the statute mandates that, after its expiration, the district court appoints the acting U.S. attorney.
While the Justice Department has argued in good faith that the law can be more broadly interpreted, other judges have supported the plain meaning, including a New Jersey court that disqualified another former personal counsel for Trump, Alina Habba, from serving as U.S. attorney.
So even the meaning of the statute isn’t as clear as it might initially seem. But the biggest issue by far was time. As Turley writes:
None of this means the defendants are innocent of the underlying criminal acts. Rather, these rushed indictments were highly novel—and novelty is rarely good in a criminal indictment.
Notably, some of us have observed that the indictment against former Trump National Security Adviser John Bolton in Maryland is the strongest of the three cases. The administration has indicated it may in fact be adding charges.
He also pointed out, as I said in my previous post, that the Letitia James case can be re-filed. It’s the Comey case that is especially at risk.
It seems especially ironic. Comey’s crimes – or wrongdoing, whether or not any criminal acts can be proven – were political in nature. Trump’s retaliation is at least partly political as well, although I submit that it would be a terrible thing for the country in general if Comey suffers no consequences. But the reason the prosecution of Comey was rushed and perhaps botched was also politics crossed with time. The Biden administration was never, never ever, going to prosecute Comey or James. Au contraire. And of course if Kamala Harris had been elected, there would have been no indictment of Comey or James, either. Only after Trump’s election could it happen, but by that time the statute of limitations on Comey made the time available to prepare a case short.
Politics also was probably working with Siebert, in that GOP-appointed prosecutors are much less likely to stretch the law than Democrats are. He seems to have used the time-honored rule, jettisoned by the “get Trump!” group, that goes like this:
According to Justice Department guidelines, prosecutors are generally barred from bringing charges unless they can prove a defendant will “more likely than not be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt by an unbiased trier of fact and that the conviction will be upheld on appeal.”
The case against Comey may not have met that high standard, even had there been enough time to prepare properly. I certainly don’t know. But I can assure you that, had the parties been reversed and it had been Democrats trying to do this, the strength or weakness of the case wouldn’t have mattered and the US Attorney would have brought the case anyway. I actually agree with the high standards, but it leaves Comey’s obviously outrageous conduct unpunished, which is also a bad outcome. It’s ironic, but there it is.
Politics (the blocking of judicial approval by Democrats) and then time constraints made it nearly impossible for the Senate to vote on Siebert’s replacement or for the district court to appoint an interim one in time to prepare a proper case. And so Comey may go free, as in the words of Obama’s old buddy Bill Ayers: “Guilty as sin, free as a bird — what a country, America.”
As excellent as Turley usually is on legal matters, Alan Dershowitz is usually even better – as he is here, where he gives a succinct and clear description of what happened with this case and the prosecution, and what the future might hold for both cases. So I’ll just let him have the last word:
It’s a saying that’s probably as old as the internet:
But sometimes it’s possible to tell. And X has just made it a lot easier by rolling out a feature – first temporary but which supposedly will become permanent – that reveals the location of accounts as well as other facts such as where they were first created. And it turns out not just that there were some imposters in the political sphere, there were a ton of them:
And it turns out that some of the most “pro-American” American First or America Only accounts are located in the patriotic states of Turkey, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. …
I’m sure you will not be surprised to learn that the most aggressive Jew-hating “America First” accounts are actually based in Islamic countries. …
“Counter-AIPAC,” which rails against foreign Jews subverting American politics through AIPAC, turns out to be, get this, an Egyptian subverting American politics by representing himself as America First. …
Other accounts seeking to subvert American politics are owned by leftists in Canada. But they claim they’re rootin’-tootin’ American patriots. …
One odd thing: There are apparently a lot of “Native American” accounts calling for hatred and violence against the white man for stealing their land. They turn out to be based in… Bangladesh.
Lots more at the link, as well as here and here and well, just about everywhere on the right. This is my first post on the subject, and I don’t plan for it to be my last. There is so much food for thought here it will take some time to digest it.
It’s clear that a great deal of what transpires online, especially in social media such as Twitter (“X”), is fake. We already knew that – but the question has always been, how much? And what are the forces behind this? And what’s to be done about it?
One thing I strongly believe is that although many of the accounts may be fake, they do influence real people to think a certain way and to think they are part of a larger movement (a partly illusory one). Again, we’ve all known this, but the proportions of fake to real are important and that is unknown as yet. Will it ever be known?
That last part – without prejudice – is important, at least potentially. It means the cases can be refiled – perhaps. The “perhaps” is because, at least for Comey, the statute of limitations has run out. I cannot find a source that explanations whether that means the clock starts again, or whether it started with the original indictment. Comey’s attorneys will argue that it has run out, of course. But will the argument hold? I suppose it depends on the judge, and then might be appealed to SCOTUS.
Not sure why the case was filed so late, but I assume because there was disagreement about filing it at all, and/or the evidence was still being uncovered. At any rate, the whole thing seems to have been sloppily done, for such an important case. The judge – appointed by Bill Clinton – doesn’t seem to believe the case against Comey can be re-opened, since the original filing becomes invalid.
The stated reason the cases against Comey and Letitia James were thrown out was procedural, and had to do with the appointment of the US attorney:
U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie disqualified interim Lindsey Halligan of the Eastern District of Virginia. …
Comey was indicted for obstruction of proceedings (18 U.S. Code § 1505) related to the Trump-Russia investigation.
James was indicted for bank fraud (18 U.S. Code § 1344) and making false statements to a financial institution (18 U.S. Code § 1014) regarding alleged mortgage fraud.
James accused President Donald Trump of violating Section 546 of Title 28 and the Appointments Clause by appointing Halligan.
Currie wrote:
“In sum, the text, structure, and history of section 546 point to one conclusion: the Attorney General’s authority to appoint an interim U.S. Attorney lasts for a total of 120 days from the date she first invokes section 546 after the departure of a Senate-confirmed U.S. Attorney. If the position remains vacant at the end of the 120-day period, the exclusive authority to make further interim appointments under the statute shifts to the district court, where it remains until the President’s nominee is confirmed by the Senate.
“Ms. Halligan was not appointed in a manner consistent with this framework.”
For what it’s worth, I’ve never believed they would be convicted, although it was (and remains) certainly possible. My reason is that Comey in particular was and still is too powerful, and there are too many judges who automatically rule against Trump and the right. Then again, these cases seem to have been rushed and handled in a sloppy manner, as I already stated. However, Trump only has been president since late January and the Comey case would have expired at the end of September, so perhaps it had to be rushed. Turley explains, also, that this decision by Judge Currie can be appealed.
James’ case could be re-filed; I don’t think there’s a statute of limitations problem there. As for Comey, I suppose it’s possible that he could be indicted in a different case – a conspiracy case, perhaps – arising from his behavior, but I wouldn’t sit on a hot stove until that happens. And I will add that the nitty-gritty procedural aspects of law were never my especially strong suit.
It’s that time of year again: Christmas, Chanukah. If you’re like me, you’ve probably postponed your shopping – but there’s still plenty of time.
If you use Amazon, please click on the Amazon link on the right sidebar on desktops and laptops, and towards the bottom of the site as it displays on cellphones and the like. I get a small percentage from every purchase. The Amazon link is in the text below the “donate” button. You may have to disable your ad-blocker to see it. Thanks very much!
And by the way, the Vanderleun poetry book is coming out very soon. I’m waiting for the book proof in the mail, and if I give my approval it will be available about five days after that. I was hoping it would be earlier, but if all goes well it should be ready for purchase in time for Christmas.
(2) Say what you will about Caroline Kennedy’s politics, she has had a very tragic life. There was her father’s assassination when she was a child, and then the loss of her mother when relatively young, and her brother – leaving Caroline the sole survivor of her nuclear family. One child, her son, seems to be highly troubled. And now her daughter, 35, has been given a terminal cancer diagnosis; terrible news. Caroline’s daughter has two very young children.
