Before getting into the weeds, here’s the big picture baseline.  All documents and records created within the executive branch are created for the benefit of the head of the Executive Branch, the president.

There is no entity, organization, assembly, institution, person or individual, above the President of the United States. The president holds absolute power and absolute immunity. Everyone within the executive branch works at the pleasure of the president, and all work products are created for his administration. This is the plenary power of the president.

The entire documents case in Florida rests on the principle that another entity supersedes the president within the executive branch.  Some unknown, unnamed bureaucracy can override the president and decide for themselves what would be called a “presidential record” and what would be called “classified information.”

Jack Smith, Norm Eisen (pictured left, red tie) and Andrew Weissmann each argue that some other entity rests atop the president and can make this decision.

Judge Aileen Cannon has not determined which constitutional argument is correct, and has told the parties to create jury instructions both ways. The Lawfare crew of Smith, Eisen and Weissmann are going bananas.

[…] Cannon’s first scenario would allow the jury to make a factual determination about whether a former president deemed a record to be personal or official under the PRA. That is nonsensical – presidents are not allowed to designate official records as personal ones, so there is no factual issue for a jury to resolve.

A different set of laws govern the classification process and the rules for handling highly sensitive classified documents — not the PRA. They include Executive Order 13526. One of the authors of this column (Eisen) helped write that executive order. The 11th Circuit has already established that those rules fully apply to former presidents.

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It’s really not a matter of if Republican senators will leave the party in the lame duck session after a President Trump win in November; the question is: how many?

The predictability of the issue is actually quite simple.  {GO DEEP}  Almost all senators kneel at the altar of money, nothing else.  The GOPe senators will exhaust every weapon in their arsenal on behalf of their multinational financial benefactors, prior to the November 2024 election.  Once those narrative attack weapons are exhausted, they will take the deal and quit the party in their final political effort to retain affluence.

Accepting this reality, I asked the question a few weeks ago.  The largest number of respondents said 1 to 3 senators will resign the party.

[Source]

Lisa Murkowski switching parties is a no brainer. Susan Collins and Todd Young are two more possibilities. Mitt Romney has already announced he is leaving. Mitch McConnell has already announced he is stepping down from leadership and will not seek another term. A tenuous John Thune will only remain if he replaces McConnell. …. and so it goes.

I would bet on THREE Republican senators who will switch parties, but it could easily be more.

One thing is certain, those who do not switch/exit will remain as DeceptiCons and oppose: (a) any effort to confront the intelligence community they support; and (b) all Trump nominations, foreign or domestic policy, that threaten their place at the trough.

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The apparatus of the Republican influence system is not happy that President Trump has not reached out to Nikki Haley and her coalition of Democrats in order to solicit their support.  Politico outlines the unhappiness amid the Koch network that President Trump has not called them or asked for their support.

The MAGA movement should anticipate the professional Republican apparatus now looking to embed Bush-Cheney-Haley types to control the outcomes of Donald Trump, and the likelihood of a successful presidential race.  Nothing angers the professional Republicans quite like ignoring them and being successful without their crustless triangle cucumber sandwiches.

WASHINGTON DC – When Nikki Haley exited the presidential race earlier this month, she issued what sounded like an ultimatum: Donald Trump needed to “earn the votes of those who did not support him,” and it was “now his time for choosing.”

So far, Trump hasn’t chosen to do much for the sake of reconciliation after calling for the party to come together. In fact, he hasn’t reached out to Haley or some of her top allies at all.

Art Pope would know. The former chair of Americans for Prosperity, the anti-Trump Republican outfit that boosted Haley in the primary, and a top GOP donor who backed Haley himself, told POLITICO the Trump campaign hasn’t reached out to him.

It’s been less than two weeks since Haley dropped out. But the lack of contact is indicative of rifts that persist even after Trump officially became the presumptive nominee this week. (read more)

As I said before, the Nikki Haley “Republicans” are not Republicans, they are Democrats and official supporters of the DC UniParty.

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Earlier today in Florida, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon carefully listened to lengthy oral arguments about the initial charges brought against President Donald Trump in the classified documents case.

While listening to a debate on terminology and odd interpretation of application to the statute of the Espionage Act, a case study in Lawfare as presented, Judge Cannon decided in a later ruling to defer the nuances of legislative interpretation until later in the trial pleadings.  Her 2-page Ruling is here.

While many voices say this initial motion to dismiss failed, there are several indications the ruling was more about targeting the issue of statutory definitions to latter phases in the pretrial legal process.  Essentially, allowing the DOJ to try and square the circles that are seemingly unsquarable.

Cannon is avoiding the trap of removal from the case by carefully and meticulously following a very routing process to allow the full sunlight of judicial consideration to apply at the moment when the interpretation has the greatest importance.  Despite ruling against dismissal, this is not a loss for the Trump legal team, as the issues behind the dismissal motion have not been rectified.  These issues will surface again at more critical moments.

If the Lawfare case is going to be dismissed in whole, as opposed to part by part, Julie Kelly was present in the court and also noticed that Judge Cannon appears to be positioning herself to dismiss the case on “selective prosecution” grounds. See this Great Thread HERE.

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The AP delayed their reporting of the delegate count, but with bigly wins in Georgia and Mississippi, President Trump has officially garnered enough delegates to be the presidential nominee for the Republican party.

[AP Delegate Count Link]

None of the contests were even close, which further highlights just how ridiculous it was for the professional financial apparatus to spend so much money trying to boost an alternative candidate against the overwhelming intent of the Republican base.

Congratulations to the movement that Trump represents on behalf of all commonsense pragmatic Americans.  Giddy up, the fight against the communists is officially designated.

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NBC is clutching their pearls as Texas AG Ken Paxton celebrates dozens of victories for his endorsed state candidates who primaried Bush-supported Republicans.  Additionally, his endorsements and support for the challengers in Texas has led to an additional ten runoff elections, including the potential removal of Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan who led impeachment proceedings against him.

The media uses terms like “revenge” and “anger,” however, most of the MAGA coalition smile and think of Paxton as the leading candidate to be nominated by President Trump for U.S Attorney General next year.  Yeah, this article is buckets of awesome.

TEXAS – Out of the 70 candidates on the ballot yesterday that Texas GOP Attorney General Ken Paxton endorsed, 33 won their primaries outright, while 10 have advanced to a runoff.

Paxton helped defeat seven Republican state House members who voted to impeach him last year on corruption charges. He also boosted nine other GOP candidates for state House seats.

His endorsed candidates unseated three Republican judges on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, who had angered Paxton by keeping his office from prosecuting voter fraud, and a handful of other incumbents.

“Texans have spoken loud and clear,” Paxton wrote on X, the platform once known as Twitter. “The victory of Judges David Schenck, Gina Parker, and Lee Finley, endorsed by my office, marks a significant moment in our state’s legal history. It sends a powerful message that Texans demand judges who prioritize the Constitution and uphold the rule of law.”

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Trying to convince people is an endless quest, that’s why it is better to just lay out the truth without agenda, then wait until the predictable pressure builds and it just floats to the surface and people find it.  The truth has no agenda; remember that!

You might remember as you read this that Henry Barbour is Harmeet Dhillon’s RNC compatriot.  Then, suddenly, things from last year in California will start to make sense.

(Via The Hill) – The Republican National Committee (RNC) failed to earn enough support from states to bring a resolution to ban paying former President Trump’s legal bills to a vote.

Henry Barbour, who serves as Mississippi’s national committeeman, confirmed to several news outlets that the resolutions he drafted that would have prohibited the committee from covering the former president’s growing legal bills is dead.

The RNC is meeting Friday in Houston to elect a new chair after former Chair Ronna McDaniel announced she would resign on March 8.

Barbour confirmed to Politico that the resolution is “dead” and won’t be voted on during Friday’s meeting because he only received co-sponsors from eight out of 10 required states to bring the resolution to a vote. (read more)

Can you see it now?

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Those who understand the long history of Mitch McConnell as a Machiavellian-minded Senate Leader well understand how this is playing out.

John Thune’s prior endorsement of Donald Trump sets the stage.  Nikki Haley withdrawing from opposition to Donald Trump, on behalf of the financial and professional political class who underwrote her effort, was a transparent predicate.

Now comes the Machiavellian leverage move by Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, who falsely positions his support without conditions as a lull toward a duplicitous intent.

In the background, the DeceptiCon move will be to support something akin to California Democrat Senate candidate Adam Schiff as an installment move within the upper chamber.

Schumer/McConnell planning for Thune’s installation with an agreement to acquiesce appointment of Schiff to replace SSCI Chair Mark Warner as a background move to impede the threat that a successful Trump reelection represents.

That’s the type of senatorial ploy we should expect.

If MAGA has not learned these lessons by now, then nothing has been learned about the nature of opposition.  That is simply the way of the UniParty Senate.

(Via ABC News) – Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, a longtime critic of Donald Trump and a frequent target, on Wednesday endorsed him in the 2024 presidential race.

“It is abundantly clear that former President Trump has earned the requisite support of Republican voters to be our nominee for President of the United States,” McConnell said in a statement Wednesday, just after Nikki Haley suspended her campaign.

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It’s all going to play out the way it is going to play out, and my dearest friends… this is going to be the biggest, ugliest, most consequential and potentially transformative inflection point in modern USA politics.

Trust your instincts; I mean really trust them.  Trust that sense of foreboding you feel, and steel your nerves for some of the most dangerous times ahead.

She knows what is coming.  Senator Sinema may not know the details and/or the specifics, but she knows the scale of conflict that is going to happen, and she’s not internally prepared to participate in it.  It’s not about the current polarization from a left -vs- right conflict; the traditional issues are not akin to debate.

This is full combat bloodletting that is coming into focus, and it is going to be exceptionally ugly.  The stakes are extreme, and we will walk through them in advance. The U.S intelligence apparatus is going to participate on behalf of the worst elements in government.  As if they have not completely dropped pretense already, and on behalf of the administrative state that provides their authority, the powerful institutions of our nation are going to forcefully align in combat against We The People.

Arizona will be one of the “all or nothing” states this year – filled with extreme anger.  Not accidentally clad in purple hues, Senator Sinema is tapping out in advance.

“I love Arizona and am so proud of what we delivered.” … “Because I choose civility, understanding, listening and working together to get stuff done, I am leaving the Senate at the end of this year.”

WASHINGTON – Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) announced that she will not seek reelection this year, avoiding an unpredictable three-way race in the swing state that had many national Democrats worried about holding onto the seat.

“I believe in my approach, but it’s not what America wants right now,” Sinema said in a video announcing her plans that painted a bleak picture of a dysfunctional political system she no longer sees a place in. (read more)

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Hunter Biden spent 6 hours testifying on Capitol Hill Wednesday and giving obtuse answers to questions from a joint panel from the House Oversight and House Judiciary Committee.

Within his testimony Hunter Biden consistently blamed his drug addiction for his memory lapses and suggested he was often too high/stoned to recall events.   Within the testimony he claimed to have attempted to kill himself ‘on a daily basis.’

The majority of the questioning surrounded his father Joe Biden’s involvement in various payment schemes that were part of the foreign businesses Hunter was responsible for handling.   Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky) made the full transcript available to the public earlier today.  The 229-page document is full of information – READ HERE.

[READ FULL TRANSCRIPT]

WASHINGTON — First son Hunter Biden corroborated many of the core facts in what Republicans say is a constellation of interactions between Joe Biden and his offspring’s foreign partners that shows Hunter and his uncle James were selling access to their powerful relative.

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