Georgia GOP and Trump campaign's suit in Chatham County is in court this morning.

GOP witness conceded that he did not know whether a stack of 53 challenged ballots were received on time.

The board's witness testified they were.

Background:

Good morning.

Hours after a federal judge in Michigan REJECTED their election-toppling request, Lin Wood and Sidney Powell go to another U.S. judge seeking to overturn Georgia's results.

I'll cover the hearing for @LawCrimeNews in this thread.

ICYMI:

Background:

This is a case where the 11th Circuit rejected an interlocutory appeal seeking a restraining order.

ICYMI: "Eleventh Circuit Dismisses Sidney Powell and Lin Wood’s Appeal in Georgia Kraken Case: The Answer Is ‘No’" via @Matt_Naham

We begin.

Judge Batten recites the conspiracy theory behind the lawsuit and repeats Ga. officials' question:

"Why would Georgia's Republican governor and Republican Secretary of State," whom he notes are Trump supporters, "conspire to throw the election" to POTUS-elect Biden?

It's a question that many people are thinking, Judge Batten notes.

Judge Batten explains the doctrine of laches, which has killed many a Trump suit.

"The law is pretty clear that a party cannot obtain the extraordinary remedy of injunctive relief unless he acts quickly."

Judge Batten notes that Lin Wood and Sidney Powell ask him to throw out the election and declare Trump the winner.

Spotted at the U.S. Capitol insurrection with his mother and hopping around the Senate while holding tactical restraints, so-called “zip tie guy” Eric Gavelek Munchel's bail hearing is about to begin.

Live-tweet ahead, for @LawCrimeNews.



A preview for today's detention proceedings is linked at the top of the thread.

Please read it for background for what's up ahead.

A 5-year-veteran FBI special agent is testifying now.

The FBI agent says that he participated in the surveillance and search of Munchel's house in Nashville.

Court papers show what authorities said they found.

Left: Tactical vest with a “Punisher” comic book and Tennessee “thin blue line” patches.

Center: Five pairs of white plastic handcuffs.

Right: A baseball cap depicting a rifle and a flag

Court proceedings are about to begin for Cleveland Grover Meredith, Jr., whom prosecutors say texted "War time" on the day of the insurrection after receiving a message "Pence blew it."

I'll cover it live, @LawCrimeNews.

Previously, via @AlbertoLuperon

This is what prosecutors say authorities found in Meredith's vehicle at the time of his arrest, in a brief seeking his continued pre-trial lockup.

There is a delay in the proceedings owing to the defendant to participate in the hearing from jail.

Stand by.

Judge Harvey calls the case.

AUSA Ahmed Baset argues for the United States.

Defense counsel is Ubong Akpan.

The U.S. Attorney's office announced an update on charges related to the U.S. Capitol insurrection soon.

As I cover that, my colleague @ColinKalmbacher will live-tweet the Aaron Mostofsky hearing.

The briefing is about to begin.

FBI Washington Field office's Steven M. D'Antuono is up first.

"We have opened 160 case files, and that is just the tip of the iceberg."

D'Antuono:

We have received more than 100K pieces of digital media.

He solicits more at 1-800-CALL-FBI

D'Antuono:

He credits pre-siege intelligence to the arrest of Proud Boy leader Enrique Tarrio before Jan. 6

(THREAD) The Whitaker scandal is deepening, as it becomes clear that Sessions' Russia recusal was a coordinated sham and his firing an act of obstruction—and that his replacement is a White House plant inside the Mueller probe. I hope you'll retweet and read on for more details.

1/ From 2014-17 Whitaker worked for World Patent Marketing—which during his tenure defrauded consumers out of $26 million and was successfully prosecuted by the feds. His involvement in the scam confirmed he had loose morals and that the feds would never want to employ him again.

2/ Despite the seeming impossibility of a man with Whitaker's background getting a job at Justice ever again—he'd been found to have used his former title as a US attorney to fraudulently threaten consumers with valid complaints with criminal penalties—Whitaker found an opening.

3/ Within 60 days of parachuting out of World Patent Marketing as it was being fined $26 million by the feds, Whitaker was working for CNN and telling a fellow attorney panelist that his purpose in working for CNN was to get noticed by one man—Donald Trump—and thereby get a job.

4/ Whitaker spent his time at CNN making ludicrous statements about the Mueller probe: there was no obstruction or collusion, he said; Mueller had no authority to look into any aspect of Trump's finances or to subpoena him, he said. All the while, he hoped Trump was watching him.

(MAJOR NOTE) The reason Manafort took over Trump's campaign in just 3 weeks despite being hired as a mere delegate counter is that ROGER STONE initiated a whisper campaign against Corey Lewandowski. That campaign started...days after Manafort returned from meeting with WikiLeaks.

2/ Stone and Manafort are longtime business partners; we'd expect Manafort to tell Stone what Assange told him, and for him to expect Stone to then pressure the campaign not only to hire him but quickly elevate him.

And who was Stone in touch with at the campaign? Trump himself.

3/ I bet you Manafort's late March emails are very interesting and that some of them are to/from his longtime business associate Roger Stone. And I bet Roger Stone's late March phone calls are very interesting and that some of them are to/from his longtime friend Donald Trump.

4/ At the end of March 2016, Trump suddenly convenes a NatSec meeting. At that meeting he directs his NatSec team to change the RNC platform in July to benefit Putin. Who later takes credit for that change?

Paul Manafort's business associate, Kremlin agent Konstantin Kilimnick.

5/ Why did Donald Trump suddenly convene a NatSec meeting 3 days after he finally hired Manafort? Why did he issue a pro-Kremlin directive at that meeting that Manafort's camp would later take credit for? What did Manafort tell Trump in the days leading up to that NatSec meeting?

Transition, 'inclusion' etc all have political ramifications. Instead of buying into the remarkably masculinist assumptions of queer theory that the dissolution of boundaries is always good, we should be examining them from the point of group power relations.

Transactivists try to conflate identifying as trans with gay marriage, in attempts to demonstrate the progressiveness of their cause, but the comparators are actually transracialism, trans-abledness, identifying as w/c etc.

The diagram shows the asymmetrical nature of such identifications. Identifying down is colonisation. Identifying up is impossible. The most you can do is improve your individual status relative to your class of origin, which leaves everyone else behind.

It also shows that the classes are occupied. If you identify as disabled, or as a woman, or as black, you are demanding access to spaces and facilities which were set aside for people based on a characteristic which you don't share.

How well tolerated this is gives us a clear insight into which oppressions are tolerated. We're rightly paying a lot more attention to racism, so Rachel Dolezal was fired by the NAACP. Other white women in the US who've tried this have been heavily criticised.

For my followers who aren't experts on middle eastern politics, here's a summary and explanation of all that stuff I've been tweeting about for the last few days - Turkey, Gare, all that stuff.

Gare is a mountain in the autonomous region of Kurdistan, in Northern Iraq (also known as Başur, or South Kurdistan). It's held by the Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK), a formerly Maoist group who share an ideology with the YPG. They're pretty great.

Last week the Turkish Army launched an operation in the area, bombarding it with planes and dropping troops from helicopters. They're a long way from home here, and had to rely on the bases of local collaborators to launch the attack.

The initial assault appears to have gone badly, with Turkish troops forced to retreat some way down the mountain. A second front, seemingly aimed at preventing PKK reinforcements from arriving, may have been more successful.

The full aim of the operation isn't clear. They may have hoped to cut Gare from other nearby mountains, and they may have been trying to destroy specific facilities. The only thing we're sure of is that an attempt was made to free a group of high value POWs.