Trump is pissed because he can't play with the jet Qatar gifted him, so a disgusted judge reminds DOJ lawyers they still must abide by First Amendment in NY Times case

(Richard Ray, FOX 4, Facebook)

A Trump administration attempt to short-circuit the U.S. Constitution met an ignominious end yesterday as a federal judge grew impatient with Department of Justice lawyers who seemed to have a hard time explaining their questionable actions, and after some tense interplay, wound up forcefully telling them it might be 2026, but you still have to play by the provisions of First Amendment law. The judge's words drew cheers from free-press advocates and made it clear that Trump's efforts to chill The New York Times' reporting on a matter close to his heart were not going to end well.

In the midst of war in Iran; a string of fatal ICE shootings from Maine to Minnesota to Texas,; and an outbreak of a parasitic illness that causes "explosive diarrhea," how did it become one of the biggest days for the First Amendment in quite some time? Courthouse News Service has the story under the headline "Ripped by judge, DOJ drops subpoenas of New York Times reporters." The piece comes with this sub-header: "Justice Department lawyers initially refused to withdraw the requests, despite admitting they were rife with 'inadvertent errors.'” Erik Uebelacker writes:

The Department of Justice on Thursday agreed to withdraw grand jury subpoenas of a group of New York Times reporters who covered President Donald Trump’s new Qatari-donated Air Force One jet — only after a federal judge grilled the department for issuing them in the first place.

The Times was seeking to quash the subpoenas, claiming they were issued in bad faith to deter the journalists from continuing to produce reporting that enraged the president. The stories at issue cited anonymous sources and surrounded security concerns aboard Trump’s new plane that prevented him from using it during a recent trip to the Middle East.

At a Thursday hearing, U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian chided the government for hastily issuing the subpoenas that even the DOJ’s own attorneys acknowledged were rife with “inadvertent errors.”

“Subpoenas are the last step -- not the first step, but the last step,” the Joe Biden appointee said.

In other words, to remain within the framework of the First Amendment, the government must first try to get the information it seeks from sources other than journalists. But instead of following black-letter law, administration lawyers went straight to subpoenas, which can include invasive and intimidating measures, such as depositions of reporters and editors, copies of internal communications, even questioning of reporters' friends and family members. DOJ lawyers made an effort to explain why they "took the road that is not supposed to be taken." Their tack essentially was this: "We aren't trying to interfere with The Times' reporting; we are just trying to find the source of leaks about the president's new Qatari jet." In short, the government's exercise in press intimidation was driven by the fact Trump was pissed because he could not immediately play with his new toy. 

To be fair, the DOJ's argument might have worked with some judges. It did not, however, work with Subramanian. Uebelacker writes:

The roughly 90-minute hearing got increasingly tense as Subramanian pressed Sean Buckley, chief counsel to the U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, on the department’s apparent neglect of regulations set to protect First Amendment rights. He lambasted the government for not trying to secure the information it sought before rushing to send out the subpoenas.

“When you see something like this, if this were a civil proceeding, what I’d normally do is ask the parties to show cause why sanctions should not be issued or steps shouldn’t be taken with respect to the incorrect statements or misstatements,” Subramanian said.

He told Buckley that he effectively had two options: quash the subpoenas from the bench or allow Buckley to agree to withdraw them.

Those words should have sent an unmistakable message to Buckley: "Your argument is a loser." But the Trump lawyer, not surprisingly, must have a thick skull because it took a while for the words to register:

Buckley had initially sought to merely suspend the subpoenas as the department continued its investigation into the source of the information leaked to The Times. But after the dressing-down from Subramanian and a brief recess to consult with the newspaper’s counsel, he eventually agreed to withdraw them altogether.

Perhaps trying to make it clear that he meant business, Subramanian brought a new actor up to the stage, Uebelacker reports:

At one point, the judge called Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Sullivan, who was seated in the gallery, to the well to answer questions about additional subpoenas into the reporters’ phone records. According to Subramanian, Sullivan misled another judge about the publicity of the investigation when seeking a sign-off on those subpoenas.

“It was an oversight on the government’s part,” Sullivan said.

The department also admitted its subpoena of one of the journalist’s mothers and two of their spouses was unintentional. Of that, Buckley said “that is an error that we own.”

The judge seemed to enjoy making one of Todd Blanche's chief lieutenants look foolish:

“It seems like the inadvertent errors and ‘we should’ve done things differently’ are piling up,” Subramanian quipped.

Does all of this mean the party's over for Trump's DOJ on this particular issue? Not necessarily, Uebelacker writes:

While the DOJ agreed to pull the subpoenas, the department could potentially issue them again in the future if it fails to get the information it’s seeking in its investigation.

The government claims it’s targeting the source of the leaks to The Times reporters, not the reporters themselves, who revealed that the new Air Force One plane lacked antimissile and other defensive features.

A DOJ spokesperson railed against Subramanian in a statement following the hearing, claiming the judge “blocked us from presenting the meticulous process of this investigation.”

“The grand jury has a right to hear testimony from all material witnesses in a federal criminal investigation,” the spokesperson said. “This judge’s conduct overrides clear longstanding principles and common sense — blocking the grand jury from receiving core evidence in a national security investigation. Make no mistake, this investigation remains ongoing, and we will pursue justice against those threatening national security by leaking classified information, a serious federal crime.”

A senior official with The New York Times saw the ruling as a win for freedom of the press. Uebelacker reports:

David McGraw, senior vice president and deputy general counsel at The New York Times, said the court appearance was “an important affirmation of our country’s commitment to a free press.”

“We are pleased that the government finally conceded that the subpoenas violated the law, but they should never have been issued in the first place,” McGraw said in a statement. “The Times and our journalists will continue to report and seek the truth without fear or favor. We will not be deterred in the face of tactics like these."

That last sentence appears to be a not-so-subtle dig at Trump for consistently trying to chop away at rights that are enshrined in the First Amendment. This is a president who makes a habit of ignoring laws and constitutional rights with which he does not agree. Trump almost seems proud of the lawlessness that has come to pervade his administration, meaning he has earned the disdain that David McGraw expressed. 

This hardly is the first time the White House has tried to wring information out of journalists. In fact, it almost has become a calling card of Trump loyalists. From the Courthouse News report:

The Trump administration has come under fire from critics and First Amendment activists over its persistent bids to get information from journalists about their reporting. DOJ officials recently withdrew similar subpoena requests from The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, compelling them to testify in front of a grand jury.

“The second Trump administration is being particularly aggressive when it comes to leak enforcement and, in particular, going after journalists to identify their confidential sources,” Gabe Rottam, vice president of policy at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, told Courthouse News on Thursday.

Rottam added that he doubts this is the last time this DOJ tries to subpoena reporters for this information, but he hopes “the department’s track record in court would give them pause before they do this again.”

The administration has also faced heat for taking the luxury jet as a gift from Qatar last year. The administration announced in May 2025 that it was taking the $400 million Boeing 747-8 to be used as Air Force One, with plans to eventually transfer it to Trump’s presidential library. 

Donald Trump paid E. Jean Carroll $5.6 million in lawsuit proceeds less than two weeks ago; now he wants it back, using tactics that range from dubious to corrupt

(Radar Online, Facebook)

Donald Trump's attorneys are asking a federal judge in New York to order E. Jean Carroll to repay lawsuit proceeds Trump paid her less than two weeks ago. Carroll's legal team responded with fierce words that roughly translate to "No way, no how." Like many court cases, this one has moved slowly -- and Trump is doing his best to drag it out even further. So what's the latest, and where is this headed? For that, we turn to the UK Independent, which broke the story of Trump's latest legal maneuver. Under the headline "E. Jean Carroll's lawyers blast Trump's attempts to claw back money he was ordered to pay her; President Donald Trump already paid out millions in the sexual abuse and defamation case. Now he wants it back," Alex Woodward writes:

President Donald Trump is trying to force E Jean Carroll to pay back the $5.6 million he was ordered to pay the former Elle magazine writer after a federal jury found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation.

That money was disbursed to Carroll from a court-controlled escrow account on July 9.

But the president’s legal team is seeking an emergency injunction that would order Carroll to return the payment to the account in the hopes that the Supreme Court will grant him a legal Hail Mary and reverse the judgment, sending the money back to him.

Carroll's lawyers aren't the only ones displeased with Trump's latest legal stunt. U.S. Judge Lewis Kaplan (S.D. of New York) is not too keen on it either, as we learn in a report from People magazine: 

Trump’s legal team is seeking an emergency injunction that would force Carroll to return the amount she was paid following a judge’s July 8 ruling that ordered the payment process to begin, according to The Independent. 

The money, sent to Carroll from an escrow account overseen by the court, came three years after a federal jury found Trump, 80, liable in the case.  In ordering Trump to pay the $5.6 million, Judge Lewis Kaplan said that the president had spent years delaying the case despite repeated losses in court.

“Defendant has been stalling this case for years,” Judge Kaplan wrote in his ruling. “A jury unanimously concluded that he sexually abused and defamed plaintiff and awarded her damages accordingly. The judgment on that verdict has been upheld on appeal.”

Kaplan also noted that the U.S. Supreme Court — including three justices appointed by Trump — declined to review the case “without dissent,” adding that “it is time” for the president to “pay the judgment.”

Court documents show Carroll's lawyers fired a blitzkrieg of disdain in Trump's direction, making it clear they find his tactics deplorable. From People: 

Carroll’s lawyers opposed Trump’s request for the injunction, writing that the request is “procedurally improper, substantively meritless, and yet another example of Defendant’s pattern of ‘slow-roll[ing] his defenses, asserting or inventing a new one each time his prior effort to delay the case fails.

“But rather than accept the reality that he lost, [Trump] has engaged in a series of maneuvers trying desperately to forestall payment.”

A report at The New Republic (TNR) notes the juxtaposition of Trump trying to skate from paying E. Jean Carroll while using the power of the presidency to significantly pad his personal bank account. The president certainly has no grounds to seek the court's mercy by pleading poverty, per TNR:

Donald Trump has made billions of dollars grifting the American public since returning to office, yet he’s still trying to find a way to weasel out of paying E. Jean Carroll. 

That sounds like the Donald Trump many Americans have come to know and despise. As for the history of the case, and the many procedural machinations involved, we return to Alex Woodward at the UK Independent: 

The payment to Carroll — more than three years after the jury’s verdict — “should have been the end of this case,” her lawyers said. “But Defendant now demands yet another unprecedented remedy. … The judgment here is final, the money has already been disbursed, and Carroll is entitled to keep it.”

Trump’s request also comes to the court “with very unclean hands” after repeating the same defamatory attacks against Carroll that lost him his case in the first place, her lawyers wrote.

A seven-year legal battle follows the first of two defamation lawsuits from Carroll, who accused Trump of assaulting her inside a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s.

A federal jury unanimously awarded her $5 million after finding him liable for sexual abuse and then defaming her with his denials. A separate jury in 2024 ordered the president to pay Carroll another $83 million in additional defamation damages.

On July 8, Judge Kaplan ordered a court-monitored escrow account to begin payments from the initial verdict after the Supreme Court rejected the president’s appeal.

She then received $5,625,005.48.

That is a lot of money, but the tab does not end there. Perhaps that is why Trump appears desperate to avoid having to pay $83 million on top of the $5.625 million he already has paid -- and is trying to claw back. In essence, Trump created his own legal bog by failing to keep his mouth shut. Woodward writes:

Trump’s lawyers said Carroll should wait until the ​Supreme Court “fully” decides whether to re-hear the president’s attempt to overturn the verdict, otherwise he faces an “unrecoverable loss” of millions of dollars that will cause him "irreparable harm.”

Is anyone out there shedding a tear for Donald Trump's financial "woes," especially considering a report out yesterday from Thom Hartmann, indicating Trump appears to be making big bucks off Venezuelan oil? Hartmann writes:

In January, American troops captured Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro and replaced him with Vice President Delcy Rodriguez. Since then, the Trump administration has seized control of Venezuela’s oil exports, which make up roughly a quarter of that country’s entire economy.

The Financial Times reports that the move has generated about $13 billion in revenue so far. And the White House has been unusually quiet about what happened to all that money.

Maybe the judge in the Carroll case should force Trump to testify under oath about the missing $13 billion? That might solve a lot of legal issues in a hurry? Meanwhile, Trump seems to have other slick tricks up his sleeve, but the information highlighted in yellow below should bring Trump's challenge to a conclusion. Woodward reports:

Carroll’s lawyers now say he has run out of options.

“Defendant has lost before a jury, the district court, a unanimous Second Circuit panel, the full Second Circuit, en banc, and the Supreme Court of the United States. He agreed — in a signed stipulation — that Carroll could collect her judgment once his certiorari petition had been denied. That happened,” they wrote Monday. “Carroll should not have to wait any longer.”

Meanwhile, Trump’s Department of Justice (acting once again as his personal lawyer, at taxpayer expense) has joined his Supreme Court fight to prevent Carroll from receiving another $83 million from the president. Woodward writes:

Trump took the extraordinary step of trying to replace himself as a defendant with the U.S. government as he fights for “immunity” from having to pay her. 

A brief court filing signed by top Justice Department officials earlier this year claims there is “good cause” to pause the case and let the administration argue Trump’s immunity claims on his behalf.

The Supreme Court has not yet decided whether to hear that case. 

Can Trump lawfully claim immunity in a civil matter such as the Carroll case? We will consider that question in an upcoming post.

As Team Trump repeatedly drains the Reflecting Pool, evidence washes away, meaning vandalism charge against U.S. Olympian likely will sink in courtroom

(FOX 13 News, Facebook)

The Trump administration's destruction of government property case against a former U.S. Olympian, all  because he apparently touched water in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, appears to be on life support. And that is a good sign because the case never should have been given life to begin with. 

Norm Eisen, attorney for former U.S. canoeist David "Davy" Hearn, was interviewed after his client's recent arraignment (where Hearn pleaded not guilty) and said, "Every American is at risk, and every American should be alarmed by this prosecution. Mr. Hearn is innocent."

To drive that point home, Eisen correctly added, "It's not a crime to touch the Reflecting Pool, to touch water in the United States of America. This is a case that never should have been brought."

A crowd had gathered for the court proceeding, and when Eisen finished speaking, chants of "Davey! Davey" could be heard around the courthouse.

With that, we learned that both the law and public sentiment are on Hearn's side. He also has the advantage of going up against a Trump team that appears to be so incompetent that it would struggle to boil an egg. We learn more about that from an article at The New Republic (TNR) under the headline "DOJ's Reflecting Pool 'vandalism' case falls apart with pool draining; the Justice Department's entire case against U.S. Olympian David Hearn is on the brink of collapse." Hafiz Rashid writes: 

The Trump administration’s case against the former Olympic canoeist accused of damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is about to fall apart.

Following the draining of the Reflecting Pool last week, David Hearn filed a motion to dismiss the federal indictment against him. In his motion, Hearn argued that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia failed to preserve the physical evidence against him: the lining of the pool that he is accused of damaging.

Hearn’s attorneys said in their motion that they had made a written request for federal prosecutors to preserve the evidence, but the pool has repeatedly been drained more than once since his arrest, and large sections of the liner are missing.

It sounds like government lawyers have not been paying attention to documents filed in the case. It's also possible that, like a frighteningly high number of Trumpers, they simply aren't very smart. In their defense, it probably was not their choice to bring this case. That decision apparently rests with Jeanine Pirro, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, and her desire to score points with Trump seems to have overridden any good judgment that she, as a former Fox News host, might have had. Rashid writes:

The case against Hearn has always been weak, considering that other people have noticed sections of the pool’s paint and lining, applied on President Trump’s orders, coming apart and peeling. Hearn is accused of “forcefully and violently” tearing two square feet of the pool’s newly added blue paint, and he maintains that he merely touched an already peeling piece of paint.

Trump has blamed vandalism for the sorry state of the pool, when in reality the addition of hydrogen peroxide to the water in a futile attempt to kill algae probably led to the paint and liner peeling away. The judge in the case, D.C. Superior Court Judge Carmen McLean, rebuffed the government’s attempt to bar Hearn from the pool earlier this month, in effect recognizing the case’s weakness.

Meanwhile, the White House has enlisted the FBI to bolster the case, but considering that the pool has been repeatedly drained, they’re not likely to come up with any new evidence, wasting even more tax dollars. Over $14 million has already been spent on the Reflecting Pool, and that number can only be growing as it seems to get worse every day.

In trying to show that China worked against him in the 2020 election, Donald Trump releases documents that show his bromance with Vlad Putin remains fervent

(PBS News hour, Facebook)

We knew Donald Trump's "election integrity" speech last week was a dreadful bore. But it did provide evidence of just how underhanded and incompetent Trump can be -- as if we needed more evidence of that.

Citing the work of Mother Jones' David Corn, we showed that Trump spent much of his 25-minute oratory focusing on claims that China had meddled in the 2020 U.S. election. But documents Trump declassified and released to the public tell a much different story. They show it was Russia and president Vladimir Putin -- one of Trump's "best bros" -- who actually meddled in the race against Joe Biden and did it by falsely linking Biden to alleged corruption in Ukraine. In short, Trump stepped to the podium for a prime-time address and knowingly lied to the American people. He knew Putin had tried to help him win in 2020, much as he did in 2016, based on facts unearthed in the Mueller Report. 

The speech did have one worthwhile impact. Trump has whined for roughly six years that "Deep State" operatives worked AGAINST him in 2025, when in fact, he had Putin and Russian proxies trying to HELP him. How is this for irony of a sick variety? Trump apparently knew Putin was trying to rig the election in his favor, so it's little wonder he was beside himself upon learning the cheat job didn't work. After all, how do you lose when the world's most notorious dictator is trying to help you win? Trump must struggle to handle that, and it might explain his exhaustive, and failed, campaign to prove he was robbed -- acting under the theory that "if Putin had it rigged to help me win, and somehow I still lost, that means someone rigged it against me." Considering that Trump has an ego the size of Jupiter, that thought must be the source of much inner conflict for him. Maybe that's why he struggles to string words together into a simple sentence. Here is how David Corn sums up the key point we learned from Trump's speech:

Russia ran an extensive operation to help Trump. China did not do much, if anything. 

One of the best takes I've seen on the speech and documents released comes from Dean Blundell, who wrote at his Substack page that Trump's speech marked "the most humiliating night in America's 250-year history." I think Blundell is on target with that assessment. When have we ever seen a U.S. president (perhaps inadvertently) declassify documents that show he has been in a long and loving embrace with a murderous and untrustworthy dictator? When have we ever seen a U.S. president step to a microphone and knowingly lie about such an arrangement with a Hitleresque figure?

Blundell is a self-described "media guy, content provider, dog whisperer, Canadian raconteur, and muckraker," based in Toronto. As I wrote in a June 29 post: "I discovered Blundell's work a few months back and have become a big fan. He's insightful, timely, original, and fearless -- unafraid to throw a punch, especially in the direction of the Trump administration." His pieces usually contain a heavy dose of zingers directed at the powerful -- not a surprise for a one-time Canadian "shock jock."

Here is Blundell's take on Trump's speech, which surely put many viewers, including yours truly, into doze mode:

Last night, a sitting American president commandeered the East Room, demanded prime-time airtime like a hostage-taker demanding a helicopter, and spent 25 minutes explaining that the only elections in modern American history that were rigged are, coincidentally, the ones he lost — while the ones he won were pristine, immaculate, kissed by angels.

And before we even get to what he said, we need to talk about how he said it. Because the man delivering the most consequential presidential address of the year sounded like he’d been defrosted twenty minutes before airtime. Hoarse. Flat. Low-T, low-energy, no-pulse delivery — slurring through his own teleprompter like it was written in Aramaic, mushing words together, losing the thread mid-sentence and grabbing for it like a drunk reaching for a handrail. This wasn’t the WWE-heel Trump of the rallies. This was a diminished, wheezing man reading someone else’s conspiracy theory off a screen he could barely track, and it was genuinely uncomfortable to watch. Aaron Rupar cut together a supercut of the worst moments and it plays like a wellness check. Even Trump-friendly corners of the internet spent the night asking the same question the rest of us were: is this man okay? Because he did not look okay. He did not sound okay. I’m not his doctor — but whoever is should be paged immediately, because the guy declaring himself the last line of defence for American democracy couldn’t get through the word “vulnerabilities” without it dissolving into soup.

Then, in that voice, he told everyone to go to the White House website and download the “proof.”

They went to the White House website and downloaded the proof.

And that’s where the humiliation — the genuine, five-alarm, face-first-into-the-wedding-cake humiliation of the United States of America — really begins. 

What did folks find when they went to the White House website? They found documents that proved the president's speech was a con. The incompetence of the Trump administration has been on almost hourly display throughout his second term. But to put documents online and apparently fail to read what was in them . . . that is a screw-up for the ages. Blundell writes:

Among the documents Trump personally declassified (stamped “DECLASSIFIED BY PRESIDENT TRUMP on 3 July 2026,” in red, so nobody could pretend an intern did it) is an August 2020 National Intelligence Council assessment. This is the document Trump waved around as evidence that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

Here’s what his own document(s) actually says: 

It says Putin and senior Russian officials were personally overseeing a proxy operation to smear Joe Biden with fabricated Ukraine-Burisma corruption claims. It says those Kremlin-linked figures — Derkach, Kilimnik, the whole gang — were feeding these narratives to “US officials and other prominent persons.” It says the explicit goal of the operation was to manufacture a high-profile corruption scandal implicating Biden at the peak of the 2020 campaign, in order to defeat Biden “and ensure the President’s victory.”

Yep, "senior Russian officials" wanted Trump to occupy the White House in a pretty bad way. The question that has hung over our heads since 2016 is "why" Several key documents from the White House website can be found at Blundell's Substack page via this link. Here is an example of language that can be found in the document, apparently the work of U.S. intelligence officers who, contrary to Trump's suggestions, were fully awake and keeping a close watch on things:

We assess that Russia is using a range of measures primarily to denigrate former Vice President Biden and what it sees as an anti-Russia establishment. For example, it is directing or encouraging proxies to spread claims about Vice President Biden. Some Kremlin-linked actors are also seeking to boost President Trump's candidacy on social media. More broadly, Moscow's efforts seek to amplify social discord in the US and undermine Washington'a global standing.

As often happens in situations where various parties are trying to deceive and misdirect, trying to summarize what we've learned is a chore. Blundell does a solid job of getting to the crux of what seems to be going on, writing:

The President in [the sentence above] is Donald Trump.

He declassified the receipts of the foreign interference operation that was run on his behalf. He tried to expose a conspiracy against himself and instead published the intelligence community’s paperwork on the conspiracy that was working for him. This is a man attempting to frame someone for his own crime using his own security-camera footage.

And it gets funnier. Another document in the dump — the one he cites as proof of Chinese interference — says the intelligence community detected Chinese state-sponsored cyber actors targeting Biden’s campaign, and then assesses, in plain English, that China did not intend to covertly interfere to sway the outcome of the election. A third assessment notes that while China rhetorically preferred Trump lose, Beijing wasn’t actually trying to affect the election — but hey, some Kremlin-linked actors were actively working to boost Trump’s candidacy online.

Nobody vetted these documents. Nobody read them. They just hit “publish” and told America the arson investigation proved the fire never happened.

In declassifying documents to show China has meddled in U.S. elections, Trump instead revealed it was Putin who tried to help him by hurting Biden in '20 election

Putin and Trump: How do their interests converge? (AP)

In a prime-time televised speech last Thursday, Donald Trump went to considerable pains to show he had declassified documents that prove China meddled in the 2020 election to help Joe Biden win and keep Trump out of office. China undermined his first administration, Trump said, and "they fought like hell not to have a Donald Trump win in 2020." China even worked against the Trump administration's efforts in the 2018 midterms, Trump said, encouraging business leaders to turn against the U.S. president and paying journalists large sums of money to write negative articles about him. The speech seemed to be an effort to provide support for Trump's longstanding complaint that the 2020 election was rigged against him. 

Now four days later, it's clear Trump's declassifying effort backfired spectacularly. Not only did the documents fail to support the president's claims regarding China but, in a case of someone not paying attention to the information being released. the documents showed it was Russia, not China, that actually was meddling. In what should surprise no one who followed Robert Mueller's probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election (the one Trump  "won" over Hillary Clinton), the newly released classified docs show that Russian president Vladimir Putin again went to bat to HELP Trump in 2020. Putin and his associates did this by conducting a coordinated campaign to HURT Biden by spreading false information about his alleged ties to corruption involving Ukraine. It's all there in the documents that Trump himself declassified, with his name prominently listed in red ink.

All of this conjures up memories of steps William Barr, Trump's attorney general at the time, took to deceive the American public about actual findings in the Mueller report. Without Barr's intervention, many reasonably objective Americans likely would have understood that Putin set out to help Trump in 2016. After all, we now know that Putin tried to help Trump in 2020 -- and Trump seemingly tried to cover it up in last week's speech by claiming China sought to hurt him. That leaves us with this question: Did Putin, perhaps with assistance from Elon Musk, help Trump win in 2024? That raises these even more important questions: Has Donald Trump ever honestly and lawfully been elected president of the United States? What damage have his dubious election victories done to our country and its global alliances, because of his own lack of interest in governance and the ineptness of loyalists with whom he has surrounded himself -- plus his determination to go his own way, with little or no respect for U.S. norms or the rule of law?

We will allow those questions to percolate for now and turn our attention to David Corn, of Mother Jones, who has details about how Putin's efforts to help Trump and hurt Biden in 2020 came to light. Under the headline "Trump's election-security speech: A good night for Putin; his China deflection covers for Russia," Corn writes:

On Thursday night, after days of buildup, Donald Trump delivered a speech on election security in which he suggested US elections were threatened by China. He repeatedly pointed to China and its purported efforts to hack voter and election data and to mount influence operations to foment anti-Trump sentiment. But he provided no proof of Chinese interference with US elections or of any voter fraud. And, perhaps more significantly, he left out a big piece of the picture: Russia. As Trump assailed US elections as totally rigged and lacking credibility—again, without offering any evidence of this—he fixated on Beijing. The connection was not clear. He seemed to be saying that China has been involved in subverting US elections, including the 2020 contest that he lost and that he has falsely insisted (ad naseum) was stolen from him. He denounced the supposed Deep State for having “worked to actively suppress and downplay information about the extent of China’s sinister election meddling, covering it up from both the president and the American people.” In 2020, though, the major culprit in terms of election meddling was not China, but Moscow.

Who says so? Trump’s own intelligence community.

The impression Trump left with many viewers last Thursday is that U.S. elections are slipshod affairs, with hardly any effective forms of oversight. That message was clearly sent and likely received by MAGA die-hards, Now we know, thanks to documents Trump himself declassified, that isn't quite so. And we also know that Putin, who can be a persistent fellow, has never given up on the idea pf helping Trump win the presidency and making sure he keeps it. What benefit does Putin see in this for himself? Many smart people have considered that question; some, such as American journalist and writer Craig Unger, have conducted deep research and produced well-received, best-selling books. But without William Barr's intervention, we probably would have a deeper understanding of how the interests of Putin and Trump are aligned -- and that likely would explain much of the mayhem that has transpired in Trump's second term. As Trump's speech proves, that relationship is negatively impacting the United States and world stability right up to this day. David Corn writes:

In August 2020, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a brief statement assessing foreign efforts to influence the ongoing presidential election. It noted that  intelligence agencies had concluded that China and Iran favored Trump’s defeat. But the statement provided no details on what, if anything, China and Iran were doing to thwart Trump’s re-election.

As for Russia, the statement was more direct. It said Moscow was “using a range of measures to primarily denigrate” Vice President Joe Biden, the Democrats’ presidential candidate. It noted that a “pro-­Russia” Ukrainian parliamentarian named Andriy Derkach “was spreading” false claims—alleging that Biden had engaged in corruption in Ukraine—to “undermine” his candidacy. It added, “Some Kremlin-­linked actors are also seeking to boost President Trump’s candidacy on social media and Russian television.”

Asked about this intelligence assessment at the time, Trump said, “I don’t care what anybody says.”

Trump apparently did care because a short time later, his administration took a peculiar action, as Corn explains:

A month later, Trump’s Treasury Department sanctioned Derkach and called him “an active Russian agent for over a decade” and accused him of running an ongoing operation—by putting out bogus information about Biden—to discredit the Democrat. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin declared that “Derkach and other Russian agents” had employed “manipulation and deceit to attempt to influence” the US election.

Trump’s own administration was saying Moscow was actively interfering with the 2020 election.

Months after that contest, the US intelligence community released an assessment of “foreign threats” to the 2020 race. This is what it said about the Russian effort:

We assess that Russian President Putin authorized, and a range of Russian government organizations conducted, influence operations aimed at denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process, and exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the US. Unlike in 2016, we did not see persistent Russian cyber efforts to gain access to election infrastructure…A key element of Moscow’s strategy this election cycle was its use of proxies linked to Russian intelligence to push influence narratives—including misleading or unsubstantiated allegations against President Biden—to US media organizations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, including some close to former President Trump and his administration. 

The report also evaluated Beijing’s involvement in the 2020 election: “We assess that China did not deploy interference efforts and considered but did not deploy influence efforts intended to change the outcome of the US Presidential election.” It added, “We did not identify China attempting to interfere with election infrastructure or provide funding to any candidates or parties.”

That’s a big difference. Russia ran an extensive operation to help Trump. China did not do much, if anything.

This suggests that as Trump stepped to the podium last Thursday night, he knew he was going to lie to the American people . It also makes one yearn for the "good old days" when you had some reason to trust what a president said. At this point, Trump doesn't seem interested in trying to convince anyone he is telling the truth. 

Corn takes a wide-angle view of events over the past 10 years and concludes that Trump is not serious about fighting election meddling by foreign interests. That suggests last week's prime-time speech was little more than an elaborate charade:

Trump has long denied that Putin intervened in the 2016 campaign and helped him win the White House—though various investigations, including a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee inquiry and special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation concluded the Kremlin covertly aided Trump. In this speech, Trump made China the bad guy, ignoring Russia’s interventions in US elections.

If Trump were serious about combating foreign attempts to mess in US campaigns, he’d address Putin’s meddling. Yet that would never happen. This speech was meant to back up his unfounded and hysterical claim that US elections have been wracked with rampant fraud—which is why, in his deluded telling, he lost in 2020—and he sought to blame China for that. The real culprit, Russia, was MIA in the Trump narrative.