Donald Trump rants on his own social network on a regular basis. Most days we just ignore him, because what he says is as false as it is predictable as it is boring. But on days like this, when the January 6th Committee referred him to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution, it can be useful to check in with Trump and see how bad he thinks it is for him.

Sure enough, Trump seems to be particularly troubled by this criminal referral. He may have convinced himself that these widespread major media reports about the DOJ grand jury indictment process against him weren’t real. He may have even convinced himself that Special Counsel Jack Smith isn’t going to do anything. After all, Trump is delusional in his rationalizations. When Congress feels so confident that Trump will be indicted and convicted that it’s willing to put its own stamp on the process, it’s probably difficult for Trump to rationalize it away.

Trump is now insisting that he was already acquitted on the criminal charges he was referred on today. He’s making the argument, presumably with a straight face, that his second impeachment trial means the DOJ can’t bring criminal charges due to “double jeopardy.”

There’s an episode of The Office in which the idiot manager accidentally hits an employee with his company car in the company parking lot, and tries to make the argument that it’s “double jeopardy” because he hit her with company property on company property. Trump’s argument really isn’t any less ridiculous. If Trump goes into trial and tries to use something like this as his defense, he’ll get convicted almost automatically. If that’s how he wants to play this, more power to him.

The post Donald Trump has total meltdown after he’s referred for criminal prosecution appeared first on Palmer Report.

A United Nations summit approved on Monday a landmark global deal to protect nature and direct billions of dollars toward conservation but objections from key African nations, home to large tracts of tropical rainforest, held up its final passage.

The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, reflecting the joint leadership of China and Canada, is the culmination of four years of work toward creating an agreement to guide global conservation efforts through 2030.

The countries attending the U.N.-backed COP15 biodiversity conference had been negotiating a text proposed on Sunday and talks addressing the finer points of the deal dragged on until Monday morning.

Delegates were able to build consensus around the deal’s most ambitious target of protecting 30% of the world’s land and seas by the decade’s end, a goal known as 30-by-30.

“We have huge achievements in this text now,” EU Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevicius told reporters after the deal passed. “It was huge effort to find the landing zone and get everyone on board.”

Another negotiator said he thought it was a balanced agreement but that “a good deal always leaves everyone somewhat unhappy.”

Canada Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault called the agreement “a major win for our planet and for all of humanity, charting a new course away from the relentless destruction of habitats and species.”

The deal also directs countries to allocate $200 billion per year for biodiversity initiatives from both public and private sectors.

Developed countries will provide $25 billion in annual funding starting in 2025 and $30 billion per year by 2030.

The agreement, which contains 23 targets in total, replaces the 2010 Aichi Biodiversity Targets that were intended to guide conservation through 2020. None of those goals were achieved, and no single country met all 20 of the Aichi targets.

“Governments have chosen the right side of history in Montreal,” said World Wildlife Fund International Director General Marco Lambertini.

Unlike Aichi, this deal contains more quantifiable targets — such as reducing harmful subsidies given to industry by at least $500 billion per year — that should make it easier to track and report progress.

But the agreement “can be undermined by slow implementation and failure to mobilize the promised resources,” said Lambertini. “It also lacks a mandatory ratcheting mechanism that will hold governments accountable to increase action if targets are not met.”

More than 1 million species could vanish by the century’s end, from plants to insects, in what scientists have called a sixth mass-extinction event. As much as 40% of the world’s land has been degraded, and wildlife population sizes have shrunk dramatically since 1970.

Investment firms focused on a target in the deal recommending that companies analyse and report how their operations affect and are affected by biodiversity issues.

The parties agreed to large companies and financial institutions being subject to requirements to make disclosures regarding their operations, supply chains and portfolios – but the word “mandatory” was dropped from previous drafts.

“We think this is something that is going to push the financial sector to step up,” said Ingrid Kukuljan, head of impact and sustainable investing at fund manager Federated Hermes.

“This time around we actually need implementation …. we are facing an unprecedented rate of decline,” she said.

Division over how to fund conservation efforts in developing countries led to fiery negotiations at the end.

With China holding the COP15 presidency, Minister of Ecology and Environment Huang Runqiu appeared to disregard objections from the delegation of the Democratic Republic of Congo on Monday, declaring the deal passed minutes after they said they were not able to support it.

A Congolese representative argued that developed nations should create a separate fund to help support conservation efforts in developing countries.

DRC is the second-largest tropical forested country in the world and home to the greatest extent of African tropical rainforest, giving it a crucial role in the future of the planet’s biodiversity.

Huang declared shortly after 3:30 a.m. (0830 GMT) that the deal was agreed, drawing outrage from other African delegates.

A representative from Cameroon said through a translator that the agreement was passed by force of hand. Another from Uganda invoked a “coup d’etat”.

However, at a second meeting Monday evening, the DRC appeared to walk back its outright objection, downgrading them to “reservations” on financing and resource mobilization.

“We’d like to have this clearly placed on record,” said DRC Environment Minister Eve Bazaiba. “I would like to reiterate our readiness to participate in any process of negotiations until COP16. We do hope our voice will be heard”.

The DRC statement followed a 30-minute huddle of roughly a dozen members of delegations from Brazil, Indonesia and the DRC – the world’s three most rainforest-rich nations – witnessed by Reuters.

Brazil ultimately helped to broker a solution, with the support of Indonesia, “whereby no questions would be left regarding the legality of the approval of the (deal),” a negotiator said. “There are no longer grounds to question the legality and legitimacy of the agreement.”

Minister Huang highlighted the DRC’s important influence in global biodiversity governance and thanked the country for its support.

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Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has been appointed Australia’s next ambassador to the United States at a time when both countries are deepening security cooperation in response to a rising China.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called Rudd one of the world’s most sought-after experts on China and said he would bring significant experience to the role at a time when the region was being reshaped by strategic competition.

“Kevin Rudd is an outstanding appointment,” said Albanese at a news conference on Tuesday ahead of Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s state visit to China.

“He brings a great deal of credit to Australia by agreeing to take up this position as a former prime minister, as a former foreign minister.”

Rudd, who speaks fluent Mandarin, has written and spoken widely on foreign relations with China since he quit politics in 2013. He completed an Oxford doctorate on the world view of China’s president, Xi Jinping, in September and heads international relations institute the Asia Society in New York.

His office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Albanese said the appointment of Rudd, which follows the September appointment of former foreign minister Stephen Smith to the UK ambassadorship, reflected the importance of the AUKUS nuclear submarine security deal with the United States and the United Kingdom

“It is no accident we are engaged in AUKUS and that those decisions require significant diplomatic but also of course a knowledge of the political structures that are in place,” said Albanese.

Rudd will take up his post in early 2023.

President Vladimir Putin said the situation in four areas of Ukraine that Moscow has declared are part of Russia was “extremely difficult” as Kyiv renewed calls for more weapons after Russian drones hit energy targets.

In comments made on Security Services Day, which is widely celebrated in Russia, Putin also ordered the strengthening of Russia’s borders and instructed special services to keep greater control of society and ensure the safety of people in Russian-controlled parts of Ukraine.

In September, a defiant Putin moved to annex a swathe of Ukraine — some 15% of the country — in a Kremlin ceremony, but earlier this month, he said the war “can be a long process.”

To Russian security agencies operating in Ukraine, he said late on Monday in comments translated by Reuters: “Yes, it is difficult for you now. The situation in the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions is extremely difficult.”

Putin’s move to annex the areas was condemned by Kyiv and its Western allies as illegal.

On Monday, Putin made his first visit to Belarus since 2019, where he and his counterpart extolled ever-closer ties at a news conference late in the evening but hardly mentioned Ukraine.

Kyiv, meanwhile, was seeking more weapons from the West after Russian “kamikaze” drones hit energy targets.

“Weapons, shells, new defence capabilities…everything that will give us the ability to speed up the end to this war,” President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his evening address.

The Ukrainian military high command said their air defences had shot down 23 of 28 drones — most over the capital Kyiv — in what was Moscow’s third air strike in six days. Russia has targeted Ukraine’s power grid, causing blackouts amid sub-zero temperatures.

The drone strikes caused no casualties, though nine buildings were damaged in the Kyiv region, it said.

The Ukrainian atomic energy agency accused Russia of sending one of the drones over part of the South Ukraine Nuclear Power Plant in the Mykolaiv region.

The “kamikaze” drones used in the attacks are cheaply produced, disposable unmanned aircraft that fly toward their target before plummeting at speed and detonating on impact.

To the northwest of Ukraine, there has been constant Russian and Belarusian military activity for months in Belarus, a close Kremlin ally that Moscow’s troops used as a launch pad for their abortive attack on Kyiv in February.

Putin’s trip was his first to Minsk since the pandemic and a wave of Belarusian street protests in 2020 that Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko crushed with support from the Kremlin.

Ukraine feared the discussions would be about the broader involvement of Belarusian armed forces in the invasion. Putin and Lukashenko scarcely touched on Ukraine at a post-talks news conference, instead extolling the benefits of defence and economic alignment.

Lukashenko has said repeatedly he has no intention of sending his country’s troops into Ukraine, where Moscow’s invasion faltered badly with a string of battlefield retreats in the face of a major counter-offensive.

The Kremlin on Monday dismissed the suggestion that Putin wanted to push Belarus into a more active role. The RIA Novosti news agency quoted Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov as saying such reports were “groundless” and “stupid”.

Both Putin and Lukashenko were also at pains to dismiss the idea of Russia annexing or absorbing Belarus.

“Russia has no interest in absorbing anyone,” Putin said. “There is simply no expediency in this … It’s not a takeover, it’s a matter of policy alignment.”

Asked about this comment, U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said it should be treated as the “height of irony”, given it was “coming from a leader who is seeking at the present moment, right now, to violently absorb his other peaceful next-door neighbor.”

Russian troops that moved to Belarus in October will conduct battalion tactical exercises, Russia’s Interfax news agency reported, citing the defence ministry. It was not immediately clear when they would start.

The 10-month-old conflict in Ukraine, the largest in Europe since World War Two, has killed tens of thousands of people, driven millions from their homes and reduced cities to ruins.

Ukraine’s General Staff said Russian artillery hammered 25 towns and villages around Bakhmut and Avdiivka in the east and several areas around Kupiansk, a northeastern town retaken by Ukraine in September.

It also said Ukrainian air and artillery forces carried out more than a dozen strikes on Russian troops and hardware, including ammunition dumps, and shot down two helicopters.

Alexei Kulemzin, the Russian-installed mayor of the city of Donetsk, said Ukrainian shelling hit a hospital wing, along with a kindergarten, posting on Telegraph a photo of what appeared to be a waiting room with smashed furniture and fittings.

Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield accounts of either side.

Russia says it is waging a “special military operation” in Ukraine to rid it of nationalists and protect Russian-speaking communities. Ukraine and the West describe the Kremlin’s actions as an unprovoked war of aggression.

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North Korea on Tuesday criticised South Korea for undermining its weapons development, saying additional sanctions will not stop its missile programme, state media KCNA said.

Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said the isolated country’s initiative to develop a spy satellite is a “pressing priority directly linked to our security.”

South Korea would “cry out for some kind of international cooperation and try hard to impose additional sanctions on us,” she said in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency.

“But with our right to survival and development being threatened, why are we afraid of sanctions which we have seen repeatedly so far and is not even the first time, and why would we stop?”

Her remarks came days after Pyongyang launched two mid-range ballistic missiles, which it called an “important” test for the development of a spy satellite.

President Joe Biden on Monday used a Hanukkah celebration to call on Americans to get off the sidelines and join the fight against rising anti-Semitism in the United States.

“Today, we must all say clearly and forcefully that anti-Semitism and all forms of hate and violence in this country have no safe harbor in America. Period,” Biden said.

He also said that “silence is complicity.”

Biden delivered the remarks during a Hanukkah reception that included adding the first-ever official White House menorah. It is the first Jewish artifact to be added to the White House archives.

“The White House has never had its own menorah, until now. It is now a cherished piece of this home, your home, tonight,” first lady Jill Biden told the crowd gathered at the White House.

The Democratic president’s move comes as reports of anti-Semitism have increased nationwide. Last week, Biden launched a new effort to develop a national strategy to counter anti-Semitism.

The issue has drawn headlines in recent weeks after Republican former President Donald Trump hosted white supremacist Nick Fuentes and the musician formerly known as Kanye West at his private club in Florida.

Last year saw the largest number of anti-Semitic incidents, including murder, physical assaults, harassment and vandalism, since the Anti-Defamation League began collecting records 40 years ago, the racism watchdog said in its most recent annual audit.

According to FBI data released earlier this month, more than 7,200 hate crimes were reported in 2021 in the United States. Over 60% of the reported incidents were based on race, ancestry or ethnicity, while about one in six were classified as sexual orientation-bias crimes and one in seven as religion-bias crimes.

Ahead of the omnibus spending bill set to be released late Monday night, one of the staunchest defenders of press freedom and whistleblower rights in the Senate — Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa — told The Intercept he doesn’t think that the PRESS Act will be included in the year-end legislation. “I don’t think so,” Grassley said. The legislation, also known as the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying Act, seeks to protect journalists from government efforts to compel them to disclose the identities of their sources.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., a rabid opponent of the legislation and the protections it seeks to advance, argued on the Senate floor that the Pentagon Papers represented an example of criminal behavior by the media intended to influence public opinion against the war in Vietnam, and stood in as a reason to block the PRESS Act.

Asked if he was blocking the bill at Cotton’s behest, Grassley said he wasn’t sure. “Gosh, I’ve been listening to Sen. Cotton on two or three different things so I don’t know for sure,” he said in a brief hallway interview. Sources on and off the Hill involved in the push for the legislation said that Grassley was privately supportive of the bill, but declined to put it forward at the behest of Cotton. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., could override Grassley, but doing so in the direction of advancing press freedom and protection for whistleblowers is unlikely.

Senate leadership attempted to pass the PRESS Act last week, but the unanimous consent vote was blocked by Cotton. “This bill would prohibit the government from compelling any individual who calls himself a ‘journalist’ from disclosing the source or substance of such damaging leaks,” Cotton said. “This effectively would grant journalists special legal privileges to disclose sensitive information that no other citizen enjoys. It would treat the press as a special caste of ‘crusaders for truth’ who are somehow set apart from their fellow citizens.”

Cotton’s hostility to the press, and specifically journalists engaged in uncovering governmental wrongdoing with the help of leakers, stretches back to his military deployment in Iraq, when he advocated for harsh criminal penalties for journalists in the pages of the New York Times. His stance on freedom of the press couldn’t be more different from that of Grassley, who is founder and co-chair of the Senate Whistleblower Caucus.

For decades Grassley has advanced legislation seeking to protect whistleblowers and root out government corruption and wrongdoing. He successfully oversaw the passage of multiple bills which create protections and incentives for government employees to blow the whistle on fraud and corruption, resulting in tens of billions of dollars returned to the U.S. government, and billions more in fines levied by the SEC and CFTC.

He has also worked to strengthen the powers and protection of the U.S. inspectors general charged with overseeing and investigating dozens of federal agencies. More recently he has advanced legislation to enhance and strengthen the Freedom of Information Act to ensure strong transparency in government.

“The press, unfortunately, has a long and sordid history of publishing sensitive information from inside the government that damages our national security,” Cotton said last week while dooming the passage of the PRESS Act on the Senate floor. When asked whether he had successfully convinced Grassley to remove PRESS Act language from the omnibus bill, Cotton told The Intercept, “No comment.”

The post Sen. Chuck Grassley Has Been a Champion for Whistleblowers. Until Tom Cotton Caught His Ear. appeared first on The Intercept.

José Luis Villegas/AP, left; Andrew Winning/Reuters

• Donald Trump didn’t plead the Fifth when deposed for an “Electric Avenue” copyright lawsuit.
• Singer Eddy Grant had sued Trump after the ’80s dance hit was used in a Biden-bashing tweet in 2020.
• Trump’s ex-social media director Dan Scavino is meanwhile fighting being deposed, Grant’s side says.

“Electric Avenue” singer Eddy Grant has accomplished something the January 6 committee and the New York attorney general have failed to do: getting Donald Trump to answer questions at a deposition.

The former president gave a court-ordered deposition earlier this year in Grant’s $300,000 copyright infringement lawsuit, which is filed in federal court in Manhattan, a court filing revealed Monday.

The lawsuit alleges that Grant’s 1983 dance-hall hit was used by Trump and his 2020 campaign without the reggae-disco star’s permission, as part of a Biden-bashing animation posted to Trump’s Twitter.

Some 40 seconds of “Electric Avenue” plays in the background of the animation, which depicts then-candidate Joe Biden puttering along on a slow-moving hand-car as the Trump campaign barrels past in a high-speed train. 

The animation was posted on August 12, 2020, and got 13 million views before it was taken down a month later, the lawsuit says.

“Mr. Trump was deposed in this action and did not object to answering questions about the tweet,” said the new filing by Grant’s lawyer, Brett Van Benthysen.

Trump was scheduled to be deposed in the case in early April in Van Benthysen’s Manhattan offices. 

Trump was to answer questions concerning the campaign’s access to and control over his Twitter account. 

Trump was also to be asked about the process for the campaign deciding to have Trump post the tweet, and what “financial or political benefit” the campaign received from it, according to court documents.

Online court records do not say what day Trump was deposed, or where.

The purpose of Monday’s filing was for Grant’s side to demand a hearing over Trump advisor Dan Scavino’s failure to comply with a subpoena for his own deposition in the lawsuit.

“Mr. Scavino is reported to have frequently authored and/or reviewed Mr. Trump’s tweets and defendants have represented that Mr. Scavino had a role in the alleged tweet containing the infringing video,” Grant’s lawyer wrote in an August 20 court filing that explains why Scavino’s testimony is being sought.

Scavino, a longtime aide and adviser to Trump, has also fought a House January 6 committee subpoena for his phone records. 

US District Judge John G. Koeltl set Wednesday, December 21, for a hearing on Scavino’s failure to comply with Grant’s subpoena.

Lawyers for Trump and Grant have agreed to a strict gag order in the case and have repeatedly declined to comment. They did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday.

Trump has sat for at least three other depositions in lawsuits against him this year. He pleaded the Fifth some 400 times when forced to sit for questioning by New York Attorney General Letitia James, who was readying a $250 million lawsuit alleging a longstanding pattern of business fraud.

In October, Trump was deposed by lawyers for E. Jean Carroll, a magazine author and online advice columnist who has accused him of defaming her after she said he had raped her 30 years ago. Trump publicly denied the rape accusation and called Carroll a liar.

Also in October, the former president was deposed in a class action lawsuit that claims he defrauded investors into backing a “doomed” multi-level marketing company he’d repeatedly hyped on “The Apprentice.”

The House Jan. 6 Committee suspects many former aides to Donald Trump falsely claimed not to recall facts while testifying under oath, and that a memoir by former White House chief of Staff Mark Meadows may have played a role in their answers.

That was among the details in the 154-page document the committee released on Monday, which it said was an executive summary to the final report that will be made public later this week.

The committee is winding down its 18-month investigation, which involved over 1,000 interviews, including key members of Trump’s inner circle.

Meadows published The Chief’s Chief in December 2021, at a time when the committee was still interviewing witnesses. By then, Meadows had handed over to the committee thousands of text messages and other documents, but refused other requests for information. The committee was concerned the book’s publication would taint their work, and witnesses would parrot Meadows’s descriptions of events “as if they were the party line.” A few did, the committee found.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

The committee said in the report released Monday that Meadows’ book contains “a number of intentional falsehoods,” and pointed to his description of Trump late in the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, immediately after he told supporters at a rally near the White House, that he would be marching with them to the Capitol as Congress was preparing to certify the results of the 2020 election.

Multiple witnesses have described in detail to the committee how Trump repeatedly demanded to be taken to the Capitol grounds after his speech and was irate that the Secret Service and others refused to help him do this.

But that’s not how Meadows described that episode in his book, which features a photo of Meadows in a red-striped tie standing behind Trump on the cover. Meadows wrote in his book that when Trump got off stage, he “let me know that he had been speaking metaphorically about going to the Capitol.” Later in the book, Meadows writes, it “was clear the whole time” that Trump did not have an intention to go to the Capitol.

The committee found that Meadows description of Trump after his Jan. 6 speech “appeared to be an intentional effort to conceal the facts.”

Other Trump aides like Cassidy Hutchinson, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, as well as multiple Secret Service agents, and a member of the Metropolitan Police, described Trump demanding his motorcade take him to the Capitol building that day. “I recall him wanting to, saying that he wanted to physically walk and be a part of the march and saying he would ride the Beast if he needed to ride in the presidential limo,” McEnany told the committee in recorded testimony.

The committee expressed broader suspicions in the report that some witnesses that were reliant on organizations connected to Trump for their income may have been influenced to not answer certain questions or to coordinate their responses.

“The Select Committee also has concerns regarding certain other witnesses, including those who still rely for their income or employment by organizations linked to President Trump, such as the America First Policy Institute,” the report states. “Certain witnesses and lawyers were unnecessarily combative, answered hundreds of questions with variants of ‘I do not recall’ in circumstances where that answer seemed unbelievable, appeared to testify from lawyer-written talking points rather than their own recollections, provided highly questionable rationalizations or otherwise resisted telling the truth.”

Rep. Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and a member of the Jan. 6 committee, told reporters after the committee’s final meeting on Monday that the stonewalling hindered the committee’s investigation.

“We were stymied by a lot of people refusing to come and testify, refusing to give us information they had, or taking the Fifth Amendment,” Raskin told reporters after the committee’s final meeting on Monday.

The committee concluded their final hearing on Monday by approving criminal referrals to the Justice Department against Trump on charges of obstructing an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the government, making false statements, and assisting an insurrection. The committee also concluded that Meadows and others may have conspired with Trump to defraud the United States by creating slates of fake electors to overturn the 2020 results.

By referring Trump and others to the Department of Justice to consider bringing charges, the committee is banking that federal investigators will use its more powerful legal tools to uncover the actions that led up to the violent assault of the Capitol on Jan. 6 and punish those responsible.

Putin describes talks with Belarusian leader Lukashenko as ‘very productive’; EU leaders finalise gas price cap

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