DIVIDED HOUSE - Wednesday, July 3, 2024 - C&C NEWS
Split forming in Democrat party evokes 1860's election; Biden gains new celebrity advisor; tons of great legal news from jab cases; Florida judge discloses Epstein grand jury transcript; more.
JEFF CHILDERS
JUL 3
Good morning, C&C, it’s Wednesday! Yesterday’s post is a tough act to follow, but I’ll try. In today’s essential news roundup: Biden leads Democrat party off a cliff toward an historic schismatic implosion; president receives briefings from an unlikely source; terrific legal news roundup; and Governor DeSantis’s new law leads judge to early Epstein document dump.
WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY
Back in 1858, two years ahead of the Civil War, while describing the awful, unbridgeable, ideological gap dividing Democrat slavers and Republican freedom lovers, Abraham Lincoln sagely observed, “A Biden divided against itself cannot stand.” Or words to that effect. It doesn’t matter. At least he was enunciating. The point is, corporate media (and whoever controls it) has savagely turned against the President Peters coalition. Yesterday, Politico ran a good example story headlined, “‘We’ve all enabled the situation’: Dems turn on Biden’s inner sanctum post debate.”
Prepare to grind your teeth, if you haven’t already ground them down to little white stubs. Try to look past Politico’s annoying admission that Joe’s dementia has been obvious “long before last week,” and its cowardly deflection of blame onto the White House for the cover up. The more interesting part was about how Joe’s crack staff is managing the Nation’s top executive:
Wait … what? Did Politico really quote senior White House officials saying they hide the bad news from Joe because he throws temper tantrums? Because that’s what it looked like. The next paragraph answered that question and tripled down:
It’s bad enough that Joe’s synapses are sparking out worse than a downed power transformer and his grey matter has the consistency of a boiled catfish. But his team isn’t telling him anything bad, because Joe is not a pleasant person to be around. The staff is scared shirtless. So now, thanks to Politico, we can add wild mood swings to Joe’s dementia diagnosis.
It’s not a pretty picture. Between his forgetfulness, his misremembering things that never happened, and his not even being briefed on stuff that might upset him … what does Joe Biden actually know?
Even that is not most important. Look deeper. For the first time, we see “senior officials” leaking damaging insider information about Joe. And for the first time, corporate media is running long articles like this one, confirming the damaging leaked information from other sources, instead of smothering the story in the middle of the night with a journalistic pillow.
Let’s continue. Politico next rambled about official White House denials that Joe has ever been sheltered from anything —he’s sharp as a tack!— and then got around to interviewing some very skeptical Democrats. One “Democrat operative close to the campaign” —another leaker— offered this excellent diagnosis:
He’s right. Defying all predictions, at this point the election isn’t really about Trump, regardless of his criminal convictions and whatnot. It’s become about Biden. Which was the last thing Democrats expected to happen. After all, in 2020, Joe won by not campaigning. Now, one debate later, a basement campaign strategy has become completely untenable.
The press pile-on continued yesterday, and got even more horrifying. NBC ran a remarkable, 2024-style, unscriptable story headlined, “Hunter Biden has joined White House meetings as he stays close to the president post-debate.” The short drive-by story made three quick leaks and then printed a paragraph that, before this year, would have been unbelievable.
The three points were the leaked facts that, since last weekend, (1) Hunter “has joined meetings with President Joe Biden and his top aides,” (2) Hunter has been directing “senior White House staff members,” and worst, (3) Hunter “has been closely advising his father.” Meaning, he has been closely advising the President of the United States.
Hunter! The crackhead. The laptop loser. The scam artist. The sister-in-law stealer. The smartest man Joe ever met. Even Democrats admit Hunter is a lost cause. But they have always gamely insisted he’s far from the levers of power, so who cares? I don’t need to ask the follow-up question, do I? No, as it happens, I don’t, because NBC said it first. Behold the anonymous quote that spawned a hundred more headlines:
More leaks! And this leak was a bad one. NBC prudishly stopped there, just reporting the facts, but other platforms took up the baton and sprinted away with it. For instance, the UK Guardian’s typically British, sarcastic headline:
Newsweek:
The Hill:
UK Daily Mail:
The Democrat party is rapidly becoming schizophrenic. In a remarkable story that didn’t even mention this latest bad Hunter news, corporate media giant The New York Times ran this astonishing headline this morning:
The story was a long series quoting donor after donor, by name, saying Democrats want Joe out of the race. Paragraphs like this one:
It’s not like it’s any kind of secret. Reuters, late last night:
These example headlines were mere drops in the corporate media smear bucket. It’s all over corporate media. But stubborn Joe and his sidekick Hunter aren’t going anywhere. Make us.
In other words, a gigantic rupture has appeared in the Democrat party, between the Pro-Joe and Anti-Joe wings of the party. However unprecedented it looks, this has happened once before. Let’s learn a little history.
In 1860, Abraham Lincoln, controversial candidate of a brand-new political party, hated by democrats worse than they hate President Trump, still won his election — with only 40% of the popular vote, and despite that Lincoln wasn’t even on the ballot in most Southern states. How that miracle happened is especially fascinating in light of the current Democrat meltdown.
In 1860, Democrats called the fledgling Republican Party the party of abolition — a fearmongering smear the Democrats flung at Republicans, the anti-slavery party. The fact that President Lincoln represented anti-slavery politics automatically earned him the undying hatred of all Democrats. They hated Lincoln so much they went to war over his election.
But before the war, during the 1860 presidential campaign, the Democrat party shattered into three parts. Northern Democrats supported popular sovereignty, letting new territories decide on slavery or freedom for themselves. But Southern Democrats demanded a federal guarantee preserving slavery in new territories. At their April 1860 Convention in Charleston, the Dems argued so much that the convention imploded. They failed to confirm a party platform or nominate a candidate, and went home spitting lead bullets.
They tried again in June, in Baltimore this time. The arguments worsened, and Northern Democrats got stuck with the check on the first night, resulting in fisticuffs and harsh language. It created an angry split, resulting in two Democrat platforms and two Democrat candidates.
Northern Democrats nominated Stephen “Little Giant” Douglas on a popular sovereignty platform. Southern Democrats nominated former Vice-President John C. Breckinridge on a pro-slavery platform. Then, fragmenting things even worse, a separate new ‘third party’ emerged from the fracas, nominating Former Speaker of the House “Honest John” Bell on a platform of preserving the Union and the Constitution.
Heading into the 1860 election were four major candidates: Lincoln, Douglas, Breckinridge, and Bell. The Democratic Party’s division split the anti-Republican vote, sweeping Lincoln to victory despite him not even appearing on the ballot in ten Southern states (there were only 33 total states at that time). The trick of kicking the Republican off the ballot wasn’t new in 2023.
Today’s fracturing Democrat party and the fragmenting politics seem eerily familiar. There’s a popular liberal independent (third-party) candidate, Robert F. “Don’t Jab Me” Kennedy, Jr.. There is an irresolvable political issue, this time over the Israel/Gaza conflict, and “Genocide Joe” is squarely affixed to the pro-Israel wing of the party. And now, we can see the stirrings of a split in the party, with large numbers of influential Democrats desiring a different candidate following Biden’s disastrous debate performance.
It’s July. There’s still time for Democrats to turn this around, but time is growing short.
Beyond this week’s historic Supreme Court session, we have even more wonderful news to celebrate on the legal front. First up, the Topeka Capital-Journal ran a story this morning headlined, “Federal judge sides with Kris Kobach, blocking Title IX protections for trans students.” Yesterday, joining two other courts who entered similar orders last week, a federal judge in Kansas entered a broad injunction stopping Biden’s grotesque Title IX rules that would have forced schools to treat biological boys as girls, and declaring the entire month of July “girls who are really boys month.”
The judge’s rationale was similar to the other two injunctions, which was that the Biden Administration is totally deranged, almost as if it were being run by someone with dementia or something. But unlike the previous two injunctions, this newest injunction extended not only to the four states who joined the lawsuit but also to co-plaintiff Moms for Liberty, which now has chapters in all fifty states.
I will add, for context, that Moms for Liberty did not exist before the pandemic. They were peacefully minding their own beeswax, making sandwiches and driving kids to and fro, to this lesson and that game and so on. But after masks and jab mandates, they are now impatiently nesting all up in Grandma Garland’s wavy hair and causing him to always look sort of pained and surprised, like he just tasted something strange and sour that wasn’t supposed to be in his mouth.
Next, NPR ran another encouraging story yesterday headlined, “Former President Trump's criminal sentencing in New York is delayed.” Following the Trump Immunity Decision, Judge Merchan entered an order yesterday delaying Trump’s sentencing, and holding off sending him to prison for egregiously writing “legal expenses” on his checks to his lawyer. The sentencing hearing has been originally scheduled for July 11th —just four days before Trump was due to attend the Republican National Convention to be nominated.
But now, Trump’s sentencing hearing is rescheduled for late September —right before “October Surprise” season. Totally coincidentally, so don’t start. Seriously though, this gives his lawyers the time to try to stay sentencing altogether.
It got better. Chatanooga ABC affiliate Channel 9 News ran a story yesterday headlined, “Tennessee woman fired for refusing employer's COVID-19 vaccine mandate wins almost $700K.” A federal jury awarded $687,000 to a woman who was fired for refusing to take the covid shots mandated by her employer, BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee. Tanja Benton invoked a religious exemption but was fired anyway, despite never having contact with patients, and having worked from home.
A Blue Cross HR flunky told Tanja that "there are no exceptions" to the jab mandate and then fired her. But the jury found she had a sincere religious belief precluding the shots. The jury, get this, awarded Tanja $177,240 in back pay, $10,000 in compensatory damages, and a whopping $500,000 in punitive damages.
That massive punitive damages award means the jury was pissed. More lawsuits are pending against Blue Cross. They should consider settling generously.
And even better, three U.S. circuits have also hammered employers over jab mandates over the last month.
Two weeks ago, the National Law Review ran a story headlined, “Religious Relief: Eighth Circuit Decides Employees’ Failure-to-Accommodate Claims Can be Heard Under Minnesota Law.” The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals allowed a case to proceed against Mayo Clinic, holding that the five plaintiffs may sue Mayo for failing to accommodate their religious beliefs, even if their views were “in the minority” within their religious group. In other words, it’s none of the employer’s business and nobody cares what the Pope thinks about the shots.
During the pandemic, Mayo had adopted a “vaccinate or terminate” policy for its employees. The hospital giant refused to accept any religious exemptions, exempting only employees with “valid” medical issues.
This is likely the end of the line for Mayo in this case, because it is unlikely the Supreme Court would accept any appeal of this decision. Now the plaintiffs’ case proceeds to trial.
Around the same time, Law360 ran a story with the difficult headline, “9th Circ. Nixes City's Win In Wash. Firefighter Vax Order Suit.” Late last month, the Ninth Circuit revived a dismissed lawsuit by a group of firefighters who alleged Spokane, Washington violated their constitutional rights when it fired them for refusing to take the jabs.
The Ninth Circuit held that lower courts could not allow secular groups —those raising medical exemptions— to be treated more favorably than religious groups. The Ninth said that allowing temporary firefighters hired from a different city who were not vaccinated (under the other city’s allowed exemption), to stand in for firefighters that Spokane had fired for not taking the vaccine (having denied their religious exemption requests) violated those firefighters' religious rights.
A couple weeks before that, in late May, Colorado Politics ran a story headlined, “'Hostile and discriminatory': 10th Circuit slams Colorado University for treatment of religious vaccine exemptions.” In the most fiery opinion yet, the Federal Appellate court ripped into covid shot policies the University of Colorado imposed on its medical staff in late 2021, concluding CU discriminated against religion and the 15 affected plaintiffs, who should have received exemptions.
The stinging order could best be described as a nasty rebuke, describing CU’s jab policies as “permeated with animus.” Colorado University had issued a rule allowing religious exemptions, but only if the teachings of a particular employee’s religion were “opposed to all immunizations."
Meaning, the exemption was only available if that person’s religion opposed all vaccines, not just the covid shots. Which totaled up to about one religion, the Christian Scientists.
Once again, like the other two Circuit Courts of Appeal, the Tenth Circuit held that employers must stay out of their employees’ heads and quit trying to figure out whether their religious beliefs were sufficiently sincere or not.
There are more cases! It is fair to say the legal dam has burst, and the tide has turned. We are in a new phase now. Courts and juries are starting to show some serious irritation with employers who were stingy with religious exemptions. Large jury verdicts are like catnip to lawyers, and as the verdicts roll in, more and more lawyers will eagerly file the lawsuits.
Back in 2021, I warned employers their stupid jab policies were going to result in a tsunami of lawsuits that would make the tobacco lawsuit bonanza look like a lone, scrawny, tobacco bush. Or tree, I can’t remember. You get the idea.
Monday, PBS —PBS!— ran a story headlined, “Newly released Epstein transcripts: Florida prosecutors knew billionaire raped teen girls years before cutting deal.” It should have said, “Federal prosecutors knew.” But otherwise, it reported the story straight.
Florida Circuit Judge Luis Delgado’s release on Monday of about 200 new pages from the Epstein Grand Jury transcript surprised everyone, since the judge had scheduled a hearing for next week on when and how to release them, and the bookies were giving 7-1 betting odds on whether the judge would survive to hold the hearing.
But the bill Governor DeSantis signed in February allowed the release on Monday, or any time thereafter, and the judge apparently, for some reason, decided to go early. Probably good thinking.
Judge Delgado was not amused by what he’d seen. Delgado wrote, “The details in the record will be outrageous to decent people,” meaning everyone except many people who are in a political party that starts with the same letter as Donald. The judge pointedly continued, “The testimony taken by the Grand Jury concerns activity ranging from grossly unacceptable to rape — all of the conduct at issue is sexually deviant, disgusting, and criminal.”
In my view, there’s much too little calling out of disgusting sexual deviance these days. Just saying. But I digress.
In the order, Delago properly called Epstein “the most infamous pedophile in American history.” He wrote, “For almost 20 years, the story of how Jeffrey Epstein victimized some of Palm Beach County’s most vulnerable has been the subject of much anger and has at times diminished the public’s perception of the criminal justice system.” Not to quibble, but it’s diminished our perception of the criminal justice system more often that just “at times.” Other than that, I agree.
The new documents related to Epstein’s wrist-slapping 2008 plea deal. The transcripts from his Grand Jury indictment show that the jury heard testimony from victims that Epstein, who was then in his 40s, had raped teenage girls as young as 14 at his Palm Beach mansion. The teenagers testified that Epstein also paid them to find him more girls.
“The younger, the better,” Epstein told them.
In 2019, the Daily Beast ran a story about the sweet deal Federal prosecutors gave Epstein at the time. Former prosecutor Alexander Acosta approved the pathetic plea deal in 2008 that completely immunized Epstein, in exchange for just a year of house arrest. In 2019, when Acosta was applying to be Secretary of Labor, he was asked whether the Epstein deal would pose a problem for his confirmation. Acosta answered no, because Epstein belonged to intelligence:
Because of that non-prosecution deal, because Epstein belonged to intelligence, Epstein would go on to continue his pedophilic crime spree and massive blackmail operation for twenty more years. Nobody has ever forced Acosta to explain his comment or say who told him that. No so far, at least.
Here is a link to Judge Delgado’s order with the newly-released documents attached. Obviously, it includes some very adult material. On an aside, the order suggested that Judge Delgado is not super convinced that Epstein is actually dead:
The Miami Herald, with which I almost never agree, and usually would use it only to soak up spilled lubricating oil or line the cat’s litter box, is actually doing commendable yoeman’s work on the Epstein story. It has nearly single-handedly pushed for these disclosures over the last 16 years, and I happily acknowledge that.
The Herald, finally vindicated after all these years, is bringing the heat. On Monday it ran this ugly headline:
As the judge noted, the new pages included no new names, no magic bullets. But they did show the scope of what Assistant US Attorney Acosta knew when he signed the plea deal, and how he stage-managed the Grand Jury to help get Epstein off the hook. Thanks to these new pages, the government is losing its ability to obfuscate about Epstein’s connections to intelligence, and the reasons why he got such a sweetheart deal.
It raises questions that demand answers. Alex Acosta should be testifying before Congress. Our real limit is how many un-blackmailed Congressmen there are. It’s not “the” Epstein disclosure we’ve long hoped for. But this is nevertheless remarkable progress. One of these days, we’re going to get the answers. And there will be a reckoning.
Bless Judge Delgado. And bless Governor DeSantis for passing the law requiring publication of the Grand Jury transcript and its exhibits.
Have a wonderful Wednesday, and a terrific Fourth of July!
Split forming in Democrat party evokes 1860's election; Biden gains new celebrity advisor; tons of great legal news from jab cases; Florida judge discloses Epstein grand jury transcript; more.
JEFF CHILDERS
JUL 3
Good morning, C&C, it’s Wednesday! Yesterday’s post is a tough act to follow, but I’ll try. In today’s essential news roundup: Biden leads Democrat party off a cliff toward an historic schismatic implosion; president receives briefings from an unlikely source; terrific legal news roundup; and Governor DeSantis’s new law leads judge to early Epstein document dump.
WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY
Back in 1858, two years ahead of the Civil War, while describing the awful, unbridgeable, ideological gap dividing Democrat slavers and Republican freedom lovers, Abraham Lincoln sagely observed, “A Biden divided against itself cannot stand.” Or words to that effect. It doesn’t matter. At least he was enunciating. The point is, corporate media (and whoever controls it) has savagely turned against the President Peters coalition. Yesterday, Politico ran a good example story headlined, “‘We’ve all enabled the situation’: Dems turn on Biden’s inner sanctum post debate.”
Prepare to grind your teeth, if you haven’t already ground them down to little white stubs. Try to look past Politico’s annoying admission that Joe’s dementia has been obvious “long before last week,” and its cowardly deflection of blame onto the White House for the cover up. The more interesting part was about how Joe’s crack staff is managing the Nation’s top executive:
Wait … what? Did Politico really quote senior White House officials saying they hide the bad news from Joe because he throws temper tantrums? Because that’s what it looked like. The next paragraph answered that question and tripled down:
It’s bad enough that Joe’s synapses are sparking out worse than a downed power transformer and his grey matter has the consistency of a boiled catfish. But his team isn’t telling him anything bad, because Joe is not a pleasant person to be around. The staff is scared shirtless. So now, thanks to Politico, we can add wild mood swings to Joe’s dementia diagnosis.
It’s not a pretty picture. Between his forgetfulness, his misremembering things that never happened, and his not even being briefed on stuff that might upset him … what does Joe Biden actually know?
Even that is not most important. Look deeper. For the first time, we see “senior officials” leaking damaging insider information about Joe. And for the first time, corporate media is running long articles like this one, confirming the damaging leaked information from other sources, instead of smothering the story in the middle of the night with a journalistic pillow.
Let’s continue. Politico next rambled about official White House denials that Joe has ever been sheltered from anything —he’s sharp as a tack!— and then got around to interviewing some very skeptical Democrats. One “Democrat operative close to the campaign” —another leaker— offered this excellent diagnosis:
He’s right. Defying all predictions, at this point the election isn’t really about Trump, regardless of his criminal convictions and whatnot. It’s become about Biden. Which was the last thing Democrats expected to happen. After all, in 2020, Joe won by not campaigning. Now, one debate later, a basement campaign strategy has become completely untenable.
The press pile-on continued yesterday, and got even more horrifying. NBC ran a remarkable, 2024-style, unscriptable story headlined, “Hunter Biden has joined White House meetings as he stays close to the president post-debate.” The short drive-by story made three quick leaks and then printed a paragraph that, before this year, would have been unbelievable.
The three points were the leaked facts that, since last weekend, (1) Hunter “has joined meetings with President Joe Biden and his top aides,” (2) Hunter has been directing “senior White House staff members,” and worst, (3) Hunter “has been closely advising his father.” Meaning, he has been closely advising the President of the United States.
Hunter! The crackhead. The laptop loser. The scam artist. The sister-in-law stealer. The smartest man Joe ever met. Even Democrats admit Hunter is a lost cause. But they have always gamely insisted he’s far from the levers of power, so who cares? I don’t need to ask the follow-up question, do I? No, as it happens, I don’t, because NBC said it first. Behold the anonymous quote that spawned a hundred more headlines:
More leaks! And this leak was a bad one. NBC prudishly stopped there, just reporting the facts, but other platforms took up the baton and sprinted away with it. For instance, the UK Guardian’s typically British, sarcastic headline:
Newsweek:
The Hill:
UK Daily Mail:
The Democrat party is rapidly becoming schizophrenic. In a remarkable story that didn’t even mention this latest bad Hunter news, corporate media giant The New York Times ran this astonishing headline this morning:
The story was a long series quoting donor after donor, by name, saying Democrats want Joe out of the race. Paragraphs like this one:
It’s not like it’s any kind of secret. Reuters, late last night:
These example headlines were mere drops in the corporate media smear bucket. It’s all over corporate media. But stubborn Joe and his sidekick Hunter aren’t going anywhere. Make us.
In other words, a gigantic rupture has appeared in the Democrat party, between the Pro-Joe and Anti-Joe wings of the party. However unprecedented it looks, this has happened once before. Let’s learn a little history.
In 1860, Abraham Lincoln, controversial candidate of a brand-new political party, hated by democrats worse than they hate President Trump, still won his election — with only 40% of the popular vote, and despite that Lincoln wasn’t even on the ballot in most Southern states. How that miracle happened is especially fascinating in light of the current Democrat meltdown.
In 1860, Democrats called the fledgling Republican Party the party of abolition — a fearmongering smear the Democrats flung at Republicans, the anti-slavery party. The fact that President Lincoln represented anti-slavery politics automatically earned him the undying hatred of all Democrats. They hated Lincoln so much they went to war over his election.
But before the war, during the 1860 presidential campaign, the Democrat party shattered into three parts. Northern Democrats supported popular sovereignty, letting new territories decide on slavery or freedom for themselves. But Southern Democrats demanded a federal guarantee preserving slavery in new territories. At their April 1860 Convention in Charleston, the Dems argued so much that the convention imploded. They failed to confirm a party platform or nominate a candidate, and went home spitting lead bullets.
They tried again in June, in Baltimore this time. The arguments worsened, and Northern Democrats got stuck with the check on the first night, resulting in fisticuffs and harsh language. It created an angry split, resulting in two Democrat platforms and two Democrat candidates.
Northern Democrats nominated Stephen “Little Giant” Douglas on a popular sovereignty platform. Southern Democrats nominated former Vice-President John C. Breckinridge on a pro-slavery platform. Then, fragmenting things even worse, a separate new ‘third party’ emerged from the fracas, nominating Former Speaker of the House “Honest John” Bell on a platform of preserving the Union and the Constitution.
Heading into the 1860 election were four major candidates: Lincoln, Douglas, Breckinridge, and Bell. The Democratic Party’s division split the anti-Republican vote, sweeping Lincoln to victory despite him not even appearing on the ballot in ten Southern states (there were only 33 total states at that time). The trick of kicking the Republican off the ballot wasn’t new in 2023.
Today’s fracturing Democrat party and the fragmenting politics seem eerily familiar. There’s a popular liberal independent (third-party) candidate, Robert F. “Don’t Jab Me” Kennedy, Jr.. There is an irresolvable political issue, this time over the Israel/Gaza conflict, and “Genocide Joe” is squarely affixed to the pro-Israel wing of the party. And now, we can see the stirrings of a split in the party, with large numbers of influential Democrats desiring a different candidate following Biden’s disastrous debate performance.
It’s July. There’s still time for Democrats to turn this around, but time is growing short.
Beyond this week’s historic Supreme Court session, we have even more wonderful news to celebrate on the legal front. First up, the Topeka Capital-Journal ran a story this morning headlined, “Federal judge sides with Kris Kobach, blocking Title IX protections for trans students.” Yesterday, joining two other courts who entered similar orders last week, a federal judge in Kansas entered a broad injunction stopping Biden’s grotesque Title IX rules that would have forced schools to treat biological boys as girls, and declaring the entire month of July “girls who are really boys month.”
The judge’s rationale was similar to the other two injunctions, which was that the Biden Administration is totally deranged, almost as if it were being run by someone with dementia or something. But unlike the previous two injunctions, this newest injunction extended not only to the four states who joined the lawsuit but also to co-plaintiff Moms for Liberty, which now has chapters in all fifty states.
I will add, for context, that Moms for Liberty did not exist before the pandemic. They were peacefully minding their own beeswax, making sandwiches and driving kids to and fro, to this lesson and that game and so on. But after masks and jab mandates, they are now impatiently nesting all up in Grandma Garland’s wavy hair and causing him to always look sort of pained and surprised, like he just tasted something strange and sour that wasn’t supposed to be in his mouth.
Next, NPR ran another encouraging story yesterday headlined, “Former President Trump's criminal sentencing in New York is delayed.” Following the Trump Immunity Decision, Judge Merchan entered an order yesterday delaying Trump’s sentencing, and holding off sending him to prison for egregiously writing “legal expenses” on his checks to his lawyer. The sentencing hearing has been originally scheduled for July 11th —just four days before Trump was due to attend the Republican National Convention to be nominated.
But now, Trump’s sentencing hearing is rescheduled for late September —right before “October Surprise” season. Totally coincidentally, so don’t start. Seriously though, this gives his lawyers the time to try to stay sentencing altogether.
It got better. Chatanooga ABC affiliate Channel 9 News ran a story yesterday headlined, “Tennessee woman fired for refusing employer's COVID-19 vaccine mandate wins almost $700K.” A federal jury awarded $687,000 to a woman who was fired for refusing to take the covid shots mandated by her employer, BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee. Tanja Benton invoked a religious exemption but was fired anyway, despite never having contact with patients, and having worked from home.
A Blue Cross HR flunky told Tanja that "there are no exceptions" to the jab mandate and then fired her. But the jury found she had a sincere religious belief precluding the shots. The jury, get this, awarded Tanja $177,240 in back pay, $10,000 in compensatory damages, and a whopping $500,000 in punitive damages.
That massive punitive damages award means the jury was pissed. More lawsuits are pending against Blue Cross. They should consider settling generously.
And even better, three U.S. circuits have also hammered employers over jab mandates over the last month.
Two weeks ago, the National Law Review ran a story headlined, “Religious Relief: Eighth Circuit Decides Employees’ Failure-to-Accommodate Claims Can be Heard Under Minnesota Law.” The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals allowed a case to proceed against Mayo Clinic, holding that the five plaintiffs may sue Mayo for failing to accommodate their religious beliefs, even if their views were “in the minority” within their religious group. In other words, it’s none of the employer’s business and nobody cares what the Pope thinks about the shots.
During the pandemic, Mayo had adopted a “vaccinate or terminate” policy for its employees. The hospital giant refused to accept any religious exemptions, exempting only employees with “valid” medical issues.
This is likely the end of the line for Mayo in this case, because it is unlikely the Supreme Court would accept any appeal of this decision. Now the plaintiffs’ case proceeds to trial.
Around the same time, Law360 ran a story with the difficult headline, “9th Circ. Nixes City's Win In Wash. Firefighter Vax Order Suit.” Late last month, the Ninth Circuit revived a dismissed lawsuit by a group of firefighters who alleged Spokane, Washington violated their constitutional rights when it fired them for refusing to take the jabs.
The Ninth Circuit held that lower courts could not allow secular groups —those raising medical exemptions— to be treated more favorably than religious groups. The Ninth said that allowing temporary firefighters hired from a different city who were not vaccinated (under the other city’s allowed exemption), to stand in for firefighters that Spokane had fired for not taking the vaccine (having denied their religious exemption requests) violated those firefighters' religious rights.
A couple weeks before that, in late May, Colorado Politics ran a story headlined, “'Hostile and discriminatory': 10th Circuit slams Colorado University for treatment of religious vaccine exemptions.” In the most fiery opinion yet, the Federal Appellate court ripped into covid shot policies the University of Colorado imposed on its medical staff in late 2021, concluding CU discriminated against religion and the 15 affected plaintiffs, who should have received exemptions.
The stinging order could best be described as a nasty rebuke, describing CU’s jab policies as “permeated with animus.” Colorado University had issued a rule allowing religious exemptions, but only if the teachings of a particular employee’s religion were “opposed to all immunizations."
Meaning, the exemption was only available if that person’s religion opposed all vaccines, not just the covid shots. Which totaled up to about one religion, the Christian Scientists.
Once again, like the other two Circuit Courts of Appeal, the Tenth Circuit held that employers must stay out of their employees’ heads and quit trying to figure out whether their religious beliefs were sufficiently sincere or not.
There are more cases! It is fair to say the legal dam has burst, and the tide has turned. We are in a new phase now. Courts and juries are starting to show some serious irritation with employers who were stingy with religious exemptions. Large jury verdicts are like catnip to lawyers, and as the verdicts roll in, more and more lawyers will eagerly file the lawsuits.
Back in 2021, I warned employers their stupid jab policies were going to result in a tsunami of lawsuits that would make the tobacco lawsuit bonanza look like a lone, scrawny, tobacco bush. Or tree, I can’t remember. You get the idea.
Monday, PBS —PBS!— ran a story headlined, “Newly released Epstein transcripts: Florida prosecutors knew billionaire raped teen girls years before cutting deal.” It should have said, “Federal prosecutors knew.” But otherwise, it reported the story straight.
Florida Circuit Judge Luis Delgado’s release on Monday of about 200 new pages from the Epstein Grand Jury transcript surprised everyone, since the judge had scheduled a hearing for next week on when and how to release them, and the bookies were giving 7-1 betting odds on whether the judge would survive to hold the hearing.
But the bill Governor DeSantis signed in February allowed the release on Monday, or any time thereafter, and the judge apparently, for some reason, decided to go early. Probably good thinking.
Judge Delgado was not amused by what he’d seen. Delgado wrote, “The details in the record will be outrageous to decent people,” meaning everyone except many people who are in a political party that starts with the same letter as Donald. The judge pointedly continued, “The testimony taken by the Grand Jury concerns activity ranging from grossly unacceptable to rape — all of the conduct at issue is sexually deviant, disgusting, and criminal.”
In my view, there’s much too little calling out of disgusting sexual deviance these days. Just saying. But I digress.
In the order, Delago properly called Epstein “the most infamous pedophile in American history.” He wrote, “For almost 20 years, the story of how Jeffrey Epstein victimized some of Palm Beach County’s most vulnerable has been the subject of much anger and has at times diminished the public’s perception of the criminal justice system.” Not to quibble, but it’s diminished our perception of the criminal justice system more often that just “at times.” Other than that, I agree.
The new documents related to Epstein’s wrist-slapping 2008 plea deal. The transcripts from his Grand Jury indictment show that the jury heard testimony from victims that Epstein, who was then in his 40s, had raped teenage girls as young as 14 at his Palm Beach mansion. The teenagers testified that Epstein also paid them to find him more girls.
“The younger, the better,” Epstein told them.
In 2019, the Daily Beast ran a story about the sweet deal Federal prosecutors gave Epstein at the time. Former prosecutor Alexander Acosta approved the pathetic plea deal in 2008 that completely immunized Epstein, in exchange for just a year of house arrest. In 2019, when Acosta was applying to be Secretary of Labor, he was asked whether the Epstein deal would pose a problem for his confirmation. Acosta answered no, because Epstein belonged to intelligence:
Because of that non-prosecution deal, because Epstein belonged to intelligence, Epstein would go on to continue his pedophilic crime spree and massive blackmail operation for twenty more years. Nobody has ever forced Acosta to explain his comment or say who told him that. No so far, at least.
Here is a link to Judge Delgado’s order with the newly-released documents attached. Obviously, it includes some very adult material. On an aside, the order suggested that Judge Delgado is not super convinced that Epstein is actually dead:
The Miami Herald, with which I almost never agree, and usually would use it only to soak up spilled lubricating oil or line the cat’s litter box, is actually doing commendable yoeman’s work on the Epstein story. It has nearly single-handedly pushed for these disclosures over the last 16 years, and I happily acknowledge that.
The Herald, finally vindicated after all these years, is bringing the heat. On Monday it ran this ugly headline:
As the judge noted, the new pages included no new names, no magic bullets. But they did show the scope of what Assistant US Attorney Acosta knew when he signed the plea deal, and how he stage-managed the Grand Jury to help get Epstein off the hook. Thanks to these new pages, the government is losing its ability to obfuscate about Epstein’s connections to intelligence, and the reasons why he got such a sweetheart deal.
It raises questions that demand answers. Alex Acosta should be testifying before Congress. Our real limit is how many un-blackmailed Congressmen there are. It’s not “the” Epstein disclosure we’ve long hoped for. But this is nevertheless remarkable progress. One of these days, we’re going to get the answers. And there will be a reckoning.
Bless Judge Delgado. And bless Governor DeSantis for passing the law requiring publication of the Grand Jury transcript and its exhibits.
Have a wonderful Wednesday, and a terrific Fourth of July!
