August 24, 2023

Thursday, August 24, 2023. Annette’s News Roundup.

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Joe is always busy.

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Today, Trump will surrender in Atlanta, Georgia, and be arrested and have his mug shot taken. He hasn’t had a great week.

Last night, we learned one witness in the Mar-a-lago document case had turned. Then this 👇 happened.

The document alleges that two witnesses had lied to the Grand Jury about Trump, but have recently changed their testimony to implicate Trump. The filing reads:

“When Trump Employee 4 testified before the grand jury in the District of Columbia in March 2023, he repeatedly denied or claimed not to recall any contacts or conversations about the security footage at Mar-a-Lago. In testimony before the same grand jury, De Oliveira likewise denied any contact with Trump Employee 4 regarding security footage. The Government’s evidence indicated that the testimony by Trump Employee 4 and De Oliveira was false. Immediately after receiving new counsel, Trump Employee 4 retracted his prior false testimony and provided information that implicated Nauta, De Oliveira, and Trump in efforts to delete security camera footage.”

This is also what had justified the use of the federal grand jury in Washington after the Florida grand jury indicted Trump.

One more thing.

On the witnesses who flipped.

As I wrote last night, the witness who turned seems to be Yuscil Taveras — who held the title of director of information technology at Mar-a-Lago (Trump Employee 4). The 2nd witness who turned has not yet been identified.

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Indictments of the day in Georgia yesterday.

7 of Trump’s co-defendants surrendered yesterday.

Trump ally Rudy Giuliani is booked in Georgia racketeering case.

Rudolph W. Giuliani spoke with members of the media after being booked at the Fulton County jail in Atlanta on Wednesday.

Rudy Giuliani has surrendered in Atlanta to be booked as part of county prosecutors' investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia.

Giuliani, a prominent purveyor of baseless claims that the election was stolen from former President Donald Trump, faces 13 felony counts as part of the sweeping racketeering indictment unveiled last week.

The former New York City mayor leaned heavily on the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization law to pursue charges when he was a federal prosecutor — and now is a defendant in a RICO case himself.

Giuliani has called the indictment "an affront to American Democracy." (NPR).

EdKrassen (@Ed Krassenstein) posted on Twitter. BREAKING: The mugshots of Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell have just been released.

Both former Trump associates and attorneys were booked today on RICO and other charges at the Fulton County Courthouse.

Powell was given a $100,000 bond while Giuliani was given a $150,000 bond.

Mugshots of multiple other defendants were released as well, including of John Eastman, Kenneth Chesebro, David Shafer, Cathy Latham, Ray Smith, and Scott Hall.

Tomorrow Donald Trump will follow suit. Trump also will get a mugshot taken.

This mugshots will definitely go down in history. History books will one day look back on this for better or for worse.

Do you think this is something future generations will look at as a case that helped set a precedent in protecting Democracy, or an action that harmed America?

One more thing.

1. Defendants Mark Meadows and Jeffrey Clark asked to remove the Georgia case under Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to federal auspices. The Atlanta-based U.S. District Court Judge Steve Jones refused their “emergency” requests, declaring that the legal proceedings against the two men can proceed until a federal judge decides whether it is appropriate to shift the case into the federal system. Meadows and Clark will face arrest this week. Jones himself, a federal judge, will decide the second half of the case on Monday.

2. Defendant Cheseboro, one of the fathers of the Trump “fake elector” strategy, asked for a “speedy trial.” A “speedy trial” is permitted to a defendant by the law in Georgia. If Chesboro’s “speedy trial” request is granted, it would apply to all 19 defendants and trial will need to be held before November 6th. Trump, who always likes delay, delay, delay, won’t like this request by Cheseboro. We wait for what the Judge says.

3. Politico reported, “Federal courts have repeatedly denied requests to interfere in state criminal prosecutions,” Willis’ team noted in the 13-page response to the effort by Meadows, who served as White House chief of staff during the last nine months of Trump’s term. “Generally, only in cases of proven harassment or prosecutions taken in bad faith without hope of obtaining a valid conviction is federal intervention against pending state prosecutions appropriate.” Her response is worth reading.

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Then there is this 👇. Wonder if they know.

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Will Georgia’s fake electors now flip?

Georgia’s fake electors acted at Trump’s direction, indicted ex-GOP chair says.

David Shafer, former chairman of the Georgia Republican Party and one of the 19 defendants in the Georgia election interference case, claimed in a court filing that he and the other Republican electors who tried to falsely certify Donald Trump as the winner in Georgia were acting at the former president's behest.

Why it matters: As defendants in the sprawling case begin to turn themselves inahead of the Friday deadline, Shafer's position signals that some may be poised to turn on the former president.

Flashback: Shafer and 15 other Republican electors met at the state capitol on Dec. 14, 2020 and signed a document falsely declaring that Trump had won Georgia.

• Trump and several of his former lawyers — along with some of the Republican electors and other alleged conspirators — now face charges relating to their alleged roles in trying to overturn the results.

State of play: "Mr. Shafer and the other Republican Electors in the 2020 election acted at the direction of the incumbent President and other federal officials," Shafer's lawyers wrote in the court filing Monday.

• "Attorneys for the President and Mr. Shafer specifically instructed Mr. Shafer, verbally and in writing, that the Republican electors' meeting and casting their ballots on December 14, 2020 was consistent with counsels' advice and was necessary to preserve the presidential election contest," they added.

• Shafer — like co-defendants Mark Meadows and Jeffrey Clark —is seeking to have his state-level case moved to federal court, where his case would be presided over by a federal judge and have a potentially more sympathetic jury pool.

• The big picture: Shafer presented himself as the "chairperson" of the Electoral College of Georgia and filed a fake slate of 16 pro-Trump electors in Dec. 2020, per the New York Times.

  • Shafer is facing eight charges in the indictment handed down by an Atlanta grand jury last week, including false statements and writings, forgery in the first degree, and impersonating a public officer.

  What to watch: Trump indicated on Monday that he'll surrender to Fulton County authorities on Thursday. (Axios).

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South Carolina’s new all-male highest court reverses course on abortion, upholding strict 6-week ban.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina’s newly all-male Supreme Court reversed course on abortion Wednesday, upholding a law banning most such procedures except in the earliest weeks of pregnancy.

The continued erosion of legal abortion access across the U.S. South comes after Republican state lawmakers replaced the lone woman on the court, Justice Kaye Hearn, who reached the state’s mandatory retirement age.

The 4-1 ruling departs from the court’s own decision months earlier striking down a similar ban that the Republican-led Legislature passed in 2021. The latest ban takes effect immediately.

Writing for the new majority, Justice John Kittredge acknowledged that the 2023 law also infringes on “a woman’s right of privacy and bodily autonomy,” but said the state Legislature reasonably determined this time around that those interests don’t outweigh “the interest of the unborn child to live.” (Associated Press)

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Our sad country.

David Leonhardt is a New York Times columnist.

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Russia is an even sadder country.

Mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin is presumed dead after a plane crash outside Moscow.

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, who led a brief armed rebellion against the Russian military earlier this year, was presumed dead Wednesday after a plane crash north of Moscow that killed all 10 people on board.

Prigozhin was on the plane, according to Russia’s civil aviation agency, which cited the airline. The crash immediately raised suspicions since the fate of the founder of the Wagner private military company has been the subject of intense speculation ever since he mounted the mutiny.

At the time, President Vladimir Putin denounced the rebellion as “treason” and a “stab in the back” and vowed to avenge it. But the charges against Prigozhin were soon dropped. The Wagner chief, whose troops were some of the best fighting forces for Russia in Ukraine, was allowed to retreat to Belarus, while reportedly popping up in Russia from time to time.

The crash also comes after Russian media reported that a top general linked to Prigozhin was dismissed from his position as commander of the air force.

plane carrying three crew members and seven passengers that was en route from Moscow to St. Petersburg went down almost 300 kilometers (185 miles) north of the capital, according to officials cited by Russia’s state news agency Tass.

Russia’s civilian aviation agency, Rosaviatsia, quickly reported that he was on the manifest and later said that, according to the airline, he was indeed on board.

Earlier, Vladimir Rogov, a Russia-appointed official in the partially occupied Zaporizhzhia region in Ukraine, said he talked to Wagner commanders who also confirmed that Prigozhin was aboard, as was Dmitry Utkin, whose call sign Wagner became the company’s name.

“I don’t know for a fact what happened but I’m not surprised,” U.S. President Joe Biden said.

Keir Giles, a Russia expert with the international affairs think tank Chatham House, had urged caution about reports of Prigozhin’s death. He said “multiple individuals have changed their name to Yevgeniy Prigozhin, as part of his efforts to obfuscate his travels.”

Flight tracking data reviewed by The Associated Press showed a private jet that Prigozhin had used previously took off from Moscow on Wednesday evening and its transponder signal disappeared minutes later.

The signal stopped suddenly while the plane was at altitude and traveling at speed. In an image posted by a pro-Wagner social media account showing burning wreckage, a partial tail number matching a jet previously used by Prigozhin could be seen.

Videos shared by the pro-Wagner Telegram channel Grey Zone showed a plane dropping like a stone from a large cloud of smoke, twisting wildly as it fell. Such freefalls can occur when an aircraft sustains severe damage, and a frame-by-frame AP analysis of two videos was consistent with some sort of explosion mid-flight. The images appeared to show the plane was missing a wing.

Russia’s Investigative Committee opened an investigation into the crash on charges of violating air safety rules, as is typical when they open such probes. Interfax, citing emergency officials, reported early Thursday that all 10 bodies had been recovered at the site of the crash and the search operation had ended.

This week, Prigozhin posted his first recruitment video since the mutiny, saying that Wagner is conducting reconnaissance and search activities, and “making Russia even greater on all continents, and Africa even more free. ”

Also this week, Russian media reported, citing anonymous sources, that Gen. Sergei Surovikin was dismissed from his position of the commander of Russia’s air force. Surovikin, who at one point led Russia’s operation in Ukraine, hasn’t been seen in public since the mutiny, when he recorded a video address urging Prigozhin’s forces to pull back.

As news of the crash was breaking, Putin spoke at an event commemorating the Battle of Kursk, hailing the heroes of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said on Telegram that “no matter what caused the plane crash, everyone will see it as an act of vengeance and retribution” by the Kremlin, and “the Kremlin wouldn’t really stand in the way of that.”

“From Putin’s point of view, as well as the security forces and the military — Prigozhin’s death must be a lesson to any potential followers,” Stanovaya said in a Telegram post. According to her, after the mutiny, Prigozhin “stopped being the authorities’ partner and could not, under any circumstances, get that status back.”

“He also wasn’t forgiven,” Stanovaya wrote. “Prigozhin was needed for some time after the mutiny to painlessly complete the dismantling of Wagner in Russia.” But overall, “alive, happy, full-of-strength and full-of-ideas Prigozhin was, definitely, a walking source of threats for the authorities, the embodiment of Putin’s political humiliation.”

Stanovaya doesn’t expect much public outcry over Prigozhin’s death. She said those who supported him will be “more scared than inspired to protest,” while others would see it as a “deserved outcome.”

One more thing.

From the New York Times.

1. As reports of Wagner mercenary tycoon Yevgeny V. Prigozhin’s possible death in a plane crash spread on Wednesday night, some of his supporters immediately began voicing suspicions of an assassination in online posts on the Telegram messaging app.

2. People made claims that Mr. Prigozhin had staged the crash to fake his own death, on the same QAnon message boards in which others said that the U.S. was secretly responsible for his death.

3. President Biden, who is at Lake Tahoe, was asked if he thought the Russian leader, Vladimir V. Putin, was behind the crash. “There’s not much that happens in Russia that Putin’s not behind,” he answered. “But I don’t know enough to know the answer.”

4. My own opinion - Putin murdered 10 people yesterday.

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A.I. Helps a Stroke Patient Speak Again, a Milestone for Neuroscience.

Ann Johnson, a teacher, volleyball coach and mother from Regina, Saskatchewan, had a paralyzing stroke in 2005 that took away her ability to speak.

At Ann Johnson’s wedding reception 20 years ago, her gift for speech was vividly evident. In an ebullient 15-minute toast, she joked that she had run down the aisle, wondered if the ceremony program should have said “flutist” or “flautist” and acknowledged that she was “hogging the mic.”

Just two years later, Mrs. Johnson — then a 30-year-old teacher, volleyball coach and mother of an infant — had a cataclysmic stroke that paralyzed her and left her unable to talk.

On Wednesday, scientists reported a remarkable advance toward helping her, and other patients, speak again. In a milestone of neuroscience and artificial intelligence, implanted electrodes decoded Mrs. Johnson’s brain signals as she silently tried to say sentences. Technology converted her brain signals into written and vocalized language, and enabled an avatar on a computer screen to speak the words and display smiles, pursed lips and other expressions.

The research, published in the journal Nature, demonstrates the first time spoken words and facial expressions have been directly synthesized from brain signals, experts say. Mrs. Johnson chose the avatar, a face resembling hers, and researchers used her wedding toast to develop the avatar’s voice.

“We’re just trying to restore who people are,” said the team’s leader, Dr. Edward Chang, the chairman of neurological surgery at the University of California, San Francisco.

“It let me feel like I was a whole person again,” Mrs. Johnson, now 48, wrote to me. Through the avatar, she said, “I think you are wonderful” and “What do you think of my artificial voice?”

“Hearing a voice similar to your own is emotional,” Mrs. Johnson told the researchers.

The goal is to help people who cannot speak because of strokes or conditions like cerebral palsy and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. To work, Mrs. Johnson’s implant must be connected by cable from her head to a computer, but her team and others are developing wireless versions. Eventually, researchers hope, people who have lost speech may converse in real time through computerized pictures of themselves that convey tone, inflection and emotions like joy and anger. (New York Times).

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Serena has baby #2. No complications. 👼🏼

Touch 👇 to watch the happy and beautiful family.

"You're the GMOAT." 

—Alexis Ohanian on his wife, Serena Williams, welcoming their second child, Adira River Ohanian

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