“If they can do this to populist billionaires like Donald Trump and Elon Musk, just imagine what they can do to the rest of us.”

- Former conservative Supreme Court clerk Mike Davis seemingly confused about the problems that affect 99.9% of regular Americans. 

The 2024 campaign season was already messy enough for our liking, but it just got messier.
 

• Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D-GA) admitted on Friday that she had a personal relationship with the outside prosecutor she appointed to manage the election interference case against disgraced former president Donald Trump and his band of corrupt lackeys, after accusations surfaced in January. She denied claims that the relationship has tainted the proceedings but damn, this doesn’t look good! 
   

• In a 176-page court filing on Friday, Willis insisted the situation created no conflict of interest that could warrant removing her from the case. She called the claims against her “meritless” and “salacious” and asked a judge to reject motions from Trump and his other co-defendants seeking to disqualify her office from the case. She denied claims of misconduct and said there was no evidence that the relationship between her and special prosecutor Nathan Wade had corrupted the proceedings. The filing includes a sworn affidavit from Wade, who said that his personal relationship with Willis did not pre-date his appointment as special prosecutor. He also denied that his role financially benefited Willis, as Trump’s co-defendant Mike Roman had claimed.
   

• Still: So messy. Republicans were always going to shove a crowbar in the smallest opening of impropriety, and now they can. The unhinged psychos in the House GOP were already hot on Willis’s trail because her two-year investigation into their precious daddy god Donald Trump resulted in major charges against him and his co-conspirators. On Friday, the House Judiciary Committee led by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) subpoenaed Willis, demanding documents from her office. The Judiciary Committee is investigating allegations that Willis fired a whistleblower who tried to stop a campaign aid from misusing federal funds. Jordan is trying to prove that she used federal funds in her investigation of Trump. Willis’s office has shot back at Jordan and the committee’s requests, writing in a letter last year that there is “no justification in the Constitution for Congress to interfere with a state criminal matter.”

The all-important question now is whether the judge will kick Willis off this case, after a hearing scheduled for February 15. Some legal experts insist that there’s no technical or legal reason to do this—but, in theory, he could. If that happens, it will take months to find a new prosecutor and likely push the start date of the trial past the election, which would be good for Trump and bad for everyone else. If not, Republicans will just yell and scream about impropriety—which is fine because they yell and scream about everything to begin with. 
 

• So where does this leave the man at the center of the allegations? Well, Trump has breezed past all of his primary challengers and is swiftly on his way to the GOP nomination. Sources told Axios that he privately expressed a belief that he would likely be convicted if the January 6 case came to trial in Washington. On Friday, he caught a break when a federal judge in Washington formally postponed the trial, which was slated to begin in March, because a key legal appeal resting on the idea of “presidential immunity” remains unresolved in the court system. That means the New York hush money case—largely considered to be the least legally perilous for Trump—is now likely to go first. Any postponement of his myriad criminal cases will be a boon to his campaign.
   

• Trump has made his legal battles a central focus of his presidential campaign as a way to portray himself as a beleaguered hero under constant siege by The Libs. But after raking in the big bucks around the time of his first court appearances last year, his recent deranged clashes with judges have produced diminishing returns in campaign fundraising. In fact, his legal problems are showing more and more signs of adversely affecting the financing of his campaign. There’s also the fact that Trump’s legal bills are causing his PACs to hemorrhage money. 

Despite the cloud of perceived impropriety that now hangs over the Fulton County RICO case, the four indictments and 91 felony counts hang even more heavily on Donald Trump.

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American forces launched a broad attack against Iran’s military and its affiliated militant groups in Iraq and Syria on Friday. The latest escalation in Middle East violence delivered a blow to the groups that Washington accused of attacks on U.S. forces that killed three American service members in Jordan on Sunday. U.S. Central Command reported that low-range bombers hit more than 85 targets affiliated with the Quds, a powerful unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), and the local militias it supports. The Biden administration has blamed Iran for expanding violence in the Middle East in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war. Iraqi military spokesman Yahaya Rasool described the U.S. strikes as a violation of Iraqi sovereignty and would “undermine the efforts of the Iraqi government, and pose a threat that could lead Iraq and the region to dire consequences.”

President Biden released a statement on Friday afternoon, which, in part, read: “[Our military response] will continue at times and places of our choosing. The United States does not seek conflict in the Middle East or anywhere else in the world. But let all those who might seek to do us harm know this: If you harm an American, we will respond.”

A federal judge found all five members of a group of January 6 insurrectionists who heaved a line of linked barriers onto a group of Capitol Police officers guilty of assaulting law enforcement and convicted three of them for obstructing the confirmation of the 2020 presidential election. Prosecutors said these five defendants set a heightened precedent of violence for the deadly chaos that ensued that day. 

After other European Union members strong-armed Hungarian President Viktor Orbán into signing on to a new aid package to Ukraine, pressure is mounting on the country to ratify Sweden’s bid to join NATO. 

The Intenational Court of Justice ruled on Friday that it will hear a case brought by Ukraine seeking to debunk the claim that Russia used as pretext for its invasion two years ago: that Kyiv committed genocide in eastern Ukraine.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau condemned the attack of an Ontario mosque on Thursday, which is being probed as a hate crime. Activists have described the attack as part of a rise in Islamophobia. 

American auto safety regulators have turned up their probe into Tesla vehicles over power steering loss. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said the investigation covers about 334,000 Model 3 and Model Y vehicles from the 2023 model. 

Lawmakers in Northern Ireland are set to elect an Irish nationalist First Minister for the first time on Saturday, which will bring the unionist party Sinn Féin to power in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

As the world waits for Hamas’s response to the triphasic hostage exchange plan submitted to them by Israel last week, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant seems undeterred in his plans to continue the military campaign against Gazans. Gallant said on Friday that Israeli ground forces will advance on Rafah—one of the last cities in southern Gaza they have not yet reached—raising new concerns about the fate of the hundreds of thousands of people from other parts of the enclave who have crowded there. Roughly half of Gaza’s population are crammed into Rafah and its surrounding area, according to a United Nations report released Friday. Many there have fled multiple times since the war began. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted that Israel will continue fighting in Gaza until “complete victory” is reached, even as he faces growing pressure at home and abroad to make a deal for the release of hostages and to ease fighting in the enclave to limit the harm of civilians.

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U.S. job growth picked up speed in January and wages increased by the most in nearly two years, signs of a persistently-strong labor market. 

Europe moved one step closer to adopting rules governing the use of artificial intelligence such as ChatGPT on Friday. The rules aim to set a global standard for use of the technology. I vote "Don't use it to hurt my feelings" for Rule Number 1. 

Did you hear? The economy is doing way better than anyone expected. That could be good news for President Biden’s reelection campaign. 

Democrats might be fighting for their lives at the federal level, but they’re having big-time success in special elections at the state and local levels. The secret? Voter turnout.