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L.L. #4, April 22 [1]

['The Geogre', 'View Profile', 'Back Of Bourke']

Date: 2026-04-22  

Preface: I’m going to stop explaining what these are pretty soon and, instead, preface with a table of contents. That will allow folks to know quickly whether they want to scroll down to the end first or skip the whole endeavor. That said, this is “Laudable Links” — a curated discussion of stories I found. I generally recommend the articles, but I hope to add to the content and neither replace the click-out nor simply reiterate the source.

If you’ve seen “Joe DiGenova” come up in the news feed, I’ll tell you why. It’s a miscarriage of mentality. The Big River swamps all boats. Even when the law is against it, its silt can “settle” and make everything smooth running again. Wahoo!

What Conflict of Interest? There Is Only What Donald Knows.

Kathryn Rubino, at Above the Law, tells us about the new rules for conflict of interest at the Department of Blanched Justice — which is to say that picking up a case to evaluate for prosecution is only appropriate if you have already been loudly on social media saying that the accused is scum, a traitor, and guilty. After all, Donald wrote a “truth” to Bondo Pam Bondi saying “Pam. . . What about Comey, Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff, Leticia???. . . They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done.” He is “the boss,” and Blank Todd Blanche has said, in his Good Buy World speech to the DOJ, that he works for his “client,” Donald J. Trump. In other words, prejudice is investigation, and political motivations are justice.

In “Meet The New Prosecutor On The Brennan Case. He Already Called The Defendant A ‘Real Traitor,” she tells us that Justice must have loved what happened in the Siebert firing and the Lindsey Halligan fiasco, because it’s trying it again. Look, it’s not a mystery: Donald is still mad, so “his” lawyers are still going to try illicit prosecutions. They have nothing to lose but the credibility of the Department of Justice and American tax dollars. . . and litigator/docket space that could have been used on a different case.

Hardly worth considering!

|[Quote]|CNN reported Friday that Maria Medetis Long, the career national security prosecutor in Miami who had been leading the criminal investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan, was removed from the case. The reason? The Associated Press confirmed she had told her superiors she didn’t believe there was sufficient evidence to support a criminal prosecution.

Her successor? CNN reported Saturday that the DOJ has brought in Joseph diGenova, an 81-year-old attorney, longtime Trump surrogate, Fox News and Newsmax regular, and member of Trump’s 2020 election-overturn legal team, to take over as “counselor to the attorney general” on the Brennan investigation. He will be working out of Fort Pierce, Florida. |[End Quote]|

I have never written about diGenova here, but he was an attorney representing a Ukrainian gas oligarch against Ukraine. He hung around with Sidney Powell. He was considered sub-Sidney in terms of litigation strategy, but he was better at filing forms. Empty Wheel is promising a post on him, but, honestly, those of us who followed the morass of 2020 hoped we were done with him.

Can’t imagine what’s so attractive about Fort Pierce, Florida. I’ve heard it has a large Cannon.

|[Quote]|The investigation stems from a 2023 referral from the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee, specifically, from Chairman Jim Jordan, alleging that Brennan lied to Congress about whether the CIA relied on the so-called Steele dossier when drafting the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment that found Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump. Brennan denies it. |[End Quote]|

The Steele Dossier was, obviously, not the basis of the FBI’s investigation into 2016 Russian aid to the Trump campaign. CIA and FBI determined that it was not entirely reliable. Only later — much later — did we in the open community find out why. Christopher Steele relied on a source who was being controlled by a Russian misinformation agent. Therefore, as with other Russian efforts, it had true and false mixed together. However, because Fusion GPS worked for the JEB campaign and then the Clinton campaign, and because FBI looked at the Dossier, Donald’s gibbering apes want to say that “The Russia hoax is all based on the Steele Dossier.”

|[Quote]|DiGenova represented Trump’s campaign in its efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, and has spent years on cable news calling John Brennan a “real traitor” and demanding criminal charges against him, which makes him a choice for the prosecutor overseeing the case against Brennan. He also, in 2020, said on television that Christopher Krebs — the cybersecurity official who confirmed the election was secure — should be “drawn and quartered” and “shot.” |[End Quote]|

And that’s the prosecutor? No animus, right? A prosecutor who will surely investigate and determine whether there is sufficient evidence to seek an indictment, right? Not someone who will fail to get an indictment.

Then again, if it’s in the Aileening court. . . . But wait. Is Di Genova the US Attorney? No. Is he then some un-confirmed “special employee?” Not that he’s been listed. That leaves only a special counsel, and that has a bit of history with the Cannon:

|[Quote]|The formal legal authority and office structure for diGenova’s title have not been publicly detailed. Given that Judge Cannon herself — the very judge in whose courthouse this grand jury sits — previously dismissed an indictment because she concluded the appointment of a special prosecutor violated the Appointments Clause, defense lawyers in the Brennan case already have a well-lit roadmap for a constitutional challenge that could unwind any indictment diGenova might produce. Of course, Cannon is more political hack than disciplined jurist, should it come to it, don’t hold your breath expecting her to apply the made-up standard in a way that hurts Trump’s personal priorities. |[End Quote]|

This is what Tod does for his client. The good news for Brennan is that, whatever happens, it will take five years to get anywhere and cost tens of millions in legal fees. I’m sure that is a heartening quality that Cannon brings to the courtroom and DiGenova will bring to a DOJ budget.

The Little Weasel Saves the Hippolyta

(She was the queen of a tribe of female warriors who cut off their left breasts to be better archers, among other things. The Greeks were fascinated by them. As for the little weasel, The National Review was obsessed with them.]

Harold Meyerson, at The American Prospect, tells us that the National Labor Relations Board from President Biden’s day, which was not entirely a crusader, muckraker board (due to hangovers from Trump 1 and dragged feet), had Amazon in its sights. The amazement is only that it took this long. After all, Amazon has too many persistent labor violations to hide under asterisks at this point. Enter Donald 2 and his new NLRB general counsel slithering to the rescue: “Amazon and Trump’s NLRB: So Happy Together!“

Dude, Jeff Bezos has to get SOMETHING for his company credibility, the destruction of Washington Post, and reversing his corporation’s stances on environmental issues! Immiserating alienated labor is the least he can expect.

|[Quote]|Until earlier this month, Board attorneys were prosecuting (to all appearances, successfully) Amazon for sundering its contract with one of the many hundreds of companies that make Amazon’s last-mile deliveries, in Amazon trucks whose drivers wear Amazon uniforms and guide themselves in every particular by Amazon’s rule book. The NLRB had charged Amazon under the joint-employer rule established by the Trump-dominated NLRB during his first term as president, which determined that when a company actually controls the independent contractors that fulfill the company’s work, that company—in this case, Amazon—is to be considered a joint employer and, in this case, legally liable for laying off the delivery company’s drivers because they had voted to join the Teamsters. |[End Quote]|

In case that isn’t clear, I watched this case as it developed, as Mr. Meyerson brought it up earlier. Multiple trucking companies have contracts with Amazon to do the “last mile” delivery. When they do, they wear Amazon livery, have the rictus painted on their trucks, have to abstain from sweating, eating, and peeing like Amazon employees, etc. Most of them don’t unionize, but one, Battle-Tested Strategies, did. It voted to join Teamsters, and Amazon said, “We won’t bargain. We don’t see your union. The union can deal with the local company, but not us!”

Trump 1’s NLRB — and this was probably to try to stress the last mile deliveries — created the rule that last mile contractors that use the parent company’s rule/guide are the parent company in terms of unionization.

|[Quote]|When the company’s 84 drivers voted to join the Teamsters, Ervin bargained a contract with them that raised their wages. With that, Amazon severed its contract with the company, lest it be found to be a joint employer that thereby had a contract with, horror of horrors, a union.

Ervin was on the stand the day I was there, answering questions about Amazon’s status as controlling employer in all but name. |[End Quote]|

It was over for Amazon. The case was going to go for Battle-Tested Strategies. Amazon would have to re-instate its contract and pay the increased wage, but Donald is not climate — he’s weather, and that means he changes

|[Quote]|On Monday, April 13, the NLRB attorneys announced they’d reached a “settlement” with Amazon in which the charge that the company was really a joint employer was dismissed, in which Amazon was neither penalized for severing its contract with BTS nor penalized for severing it because it illegally refused to recognize its drivers’ union status. Under the terms of the settlement, Amazon did agree to pay the workers, who’d been laid off more than two years ago, an entire two weeks’ worth of wages.

Two weeks. Not two years, not two months. Two weeks. |[End Quote]|

As Mr. Meyerson said earlier, Mister B has enough money to buy Northern Virginia, so his getting $230 million in support for building a second headquarters is mysterious, and he certainly has enough to buy the entire NLRB.

Oh, Virginia. Our Great Virginia.

Ari Berman is a reporter whose face you have seen on MSNBCNOW. He actually writes, though. He has been one of the writers for Mother Jones for a very long time. There he tells us some good news: “Virginia Dems Just Won a Major Battle in Trump’s Redistricting War.”

There are many small stories to spin out from the big story. I’m waiting for any quantifiable analysis of pushback on the AI misinformation and the emetic voting reaction to a party spending too much on advertising, but, for now, we have the big story.

|[Quote]|Trump scored early wins in Texas, Missouri, and North Carolina. But the gerrymandering arms race he started hasn’t resulted in the lopsided victory the White House envisioned. The approval by voters in Virginia on Tuesday of a new congressional map that could net Democrats up to four new seats shows how Democrats have fought Trump to a surprising draw in the redistricting wars.

Right now, the parties are basically even in the states that have redrawn their maps since last summer. |[End Quote]|

With the man riding a man-made auger straight through the basement of his support, Donald Trump is leading the GOP to lose the House and possibly the Senate. The GOP, since Gingrich, has “nationalized” House races. You are in Arkansas, and you need highway funds, but your Republican candidate will talk incessantly about the border with Mexico, fentanyl, child sex trafficking, and the unfair 2020 election. In other words, House members, in particular (of both parties, alas) are unknown. They are lashed to the national scene, but, whereas Democrats, with the exception of Obama very temporarily, have not made their presidents synonyms for themselves, Republicans have.

Trump hated? They’re gone, or at least their voters are staying home.

|[Quote]|how Trump and his allies envisioned things going. After easily securing the new maps in Texas, Missouri, and North Carolina, Trump suffered a humiliating defeat when Indiana Republicans refused to redraw their districts. Other GOP-controlled legislatures, including Kansas and Nebraska, also balked. Ohio passed a compromise map that, while favoring Republicans, could have been much worse for Democrats. The courts in Utah struck down the state’s existing map, leading to a likely Democratic pickup. And Missouri voters could have a chance to block that state’s new gerrymander at the polls in November, all of which helps Democrats. |[End Quote]|

As Mr. Berman says, voters hate gerrymandering. When it looked to voters as if an extraneous and unnecessary gerrymander was being put on the ballot simply for partisan gain, they fought. On the other hand, when they felt that they were “balancing” a gerrymander, and especially if they were frustrating Donald J. Trump, monomaniac, they turned out.

This particular vote was hopelessly confused by advertising and AI. I am gladdened by the result and proud of Virginia — even if Northern Virginia’s annoyed and frustrated federal employees are cited as the tipping point.

Conclusion: This took a bit of time, but I hope it’s a bit better in format and function than the last. Eventually I’ll even like one of these. (Notice that I didn’t put a picture in this one?) Okay. . . here’s one.

I don’t know when or where I was, but they’re golden.

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