News bits: Old Trump crimes moldering away, etc.

From the too little, too late files:  

Donald Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, said he met for 2½ hours Tuesday with Manhattan prosecutors who have revived a years-old investigation into payments made to a porn star to keep her quiet about an alleged extramarital tryst.

Cohen said he had been “ordered not to disclose” any of the people present at the meeting or to discuss prosecutors’ area of interest in any detail.

Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to federal charges that he violated campaign finance law by arranging payouts to porn actor Stormy Daniels and model Karen McDougal to keep them from going public with claims of extramarital affairs with Trump. Trump has denied the affairs.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan decided not to prosecute Trump personally over the hush-money payments. The Manhattan district attorney’s office then began investigating the payments to see if any state laws were broken.

No charges were brought against Trump during the tenure of former Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., who shifted the probe’s focus to the Trump Organization’s business practices. The company was convicted of tax fraud last month and fined $1.6 million. 

After that conviction, Vance’s successor, District Attorney Alvin Bragg, said its Trump investigation was moving to the “next chapter,” but he offered no specifics on where it was headed next.

We all know where the next chapter is heading, i.e., nowhere. That is the same place as the DoJ’s past, next or whatever chapter is going.

Don’t forget. Of Trump’s 56 credibly accused crimes, at least 9 are no longer prosecutable because too much time has passed and the statute of limitations bars prosecution. Trump wins, while democracy, the rule of law and we lose. Again. As usual. 

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Ohio Republicans ramp up anti-election voter restrictions: 

Ohio Republicans quietly enact ‘alarming’ new voting restrictions

Law puts Ohio among states with strictest voter ID rules and will make it harder for elderly people, the disabled and the poor to vote

Ohio Republicans quietly enacted a measure earlier this month that imposes sweeping new restrictions on voting access in the state, including more stringent voter ID requirements, cutting the early voting period and giving voters less time to return their mail-in ballots.

The new law puts Ohio among a handful of states with the strictest voter ID rules in the country. The state had already required voters to show identification at the polls, but allowed an exception for voters who couldn’t produce one, allowing them to present a bank statement, paystub or other document to prove their identity. The new law gets rid of that exception and only allows someone to vote if they provide certain forms of photo ID.

Those new restrictions will make it harder for people who tend to lack identification – elderly people, the disabled and the poor – to vote, voting rights advocates said.

Looks like people who want to vote are going to have to stop messing around and get IDs and do whatever hoops Republican are forcing them to deal with. That is more important for non-Republican voters than for Republican voters. This is what Republican Party fascism looks like.

 

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National Republican groups ramp up anti-election voter restrictions:

Rightwing group pours millions in ‘dark money’ into US voter suppression bid

The advocacy arm of the Heritage Foundation, the powerful conservative thinktank based in Washington, spent more than $5m on lobbying in 2021 as it worked to block federal voting rights legislation and advance an ambitious plan to spread its far-right agenda calling for aggressive voter suppression measures in battleground states. 

The Brennan Center reported that more voter suppression laws were passed in 2021 than in any year since it began monitoring voting legislation more than a decade ago.

The expenditures also signal a dramatic increase in Heritage Action’s advocacy activities. In 2020, Heritage Action had reported no spending at all on outside lobbying.

Heritage Action, whose board includes the Republican mega-donor Rebekah Mercer, is set up as a 501(c)4 under the US tax code which exempts it from paying federal taxes. It operates as a “dark money” group, avoiding disclosing the sources of its total annual revenue of over $18m.

In the past two years the organization through its public messaging has echoed Donald Trump’s lie that US elections are marked by rampant fraud. A private plan prepared by Heritage Action last year set out a two-year, $24m “election integrity” strategy.

This is what Republican Party anti-democracy fascism looks like. This Republican Party voter suppression and election subversion effort called “election integrity” is not going to go away. Anyone who believes otherwise is sorely mistaken, just as is anyone how sees little or no significant threat to democracy, civil liberties, secularism, truth and the secular rule of law.

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From the I'll be baaack files -- Poll indicates that the ex-pres still has major support in the GOP: 

The Hill writes: A Morning Consult poll released Wednesday showed Trump with 48 percent support among potential Republican primary voters, followed by DeSantis with 31 percent. .... DeSantis has an advantage among potential voters who view each of them unfavorably. Only 11 percent said they view DeSantis unfavorably, while 23 percent said they view Trump unfavorably.