(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . L.L. 32, June 7; Truth Is Complex [1] ['The Geogre', 'Greg Dworkin'] Date: 2026-06-07 [Preface:] This is laudable links, and I’ve been out of sorts, under the weather, and above the ground for a few days. At the same time, the news stories that fall into my ambit have been so recursive that I have been unable to find a clear, concise, link that isn’t half a conversation. I would like to resist speaking in my own voice or act as if I know anything. That said, simple truths, beyond predicate nominiatives, are suspect. True things are rarely simpler than their components, just as machines are never simpler than their parts. Thus, policy, like “renewal of section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,” is just plain big, even if the decision can be focused by emergent abuse. Anyway, my sad contents: Better that one in sixteen guilty men go free than that any guilty man serve a prison or custodial sentence. That’s the view of Donald, as Katherine Pompillo points out that at least 97 of 1,500 goons and seditionists from January 6, 2021 who were granted full pardons by Donald Trump have been arrested and charged again for other stuff. Read all about it at Lawfare in “The Jan. 6 Pardons: How Many Clemency Recipients Have Faced Other Charges?” It’s not the deepest piece, but it’s satisfyingly depressing. A whistleblower told Congressman Raskin that the US Attorney for Alabammy had been pressured to indict the SPLC with a shoddy, first draft, garbage charge. At Above the Law, Joe Patrice has read the superseding indictment, and he has a question, now that the Department of Justice has fixed all the errors it made in its first slapdash job: “New SPLC Indictment Has Us Wondering If The DOJ Is Trying To Lose.” The Schedule F Troupe is now called the Schedule/Policy Career track. Remember Donald’s “Schedule F” (for art)? Well, it got slapped down, so, for Projectile 2025 he came back with Schedule/Policy Career, and it’s basically the same thing: no protections for great numbers of civil servants. Legal consideration couldn’t go forward until Donald actually named the positions he was going to make spoils system, and now he’s done that. Nick Bednar did research on the announcement and has a fine article at Lawfare called “Inside the Implementation of Schedule Policy/Career.” Ian Absentia writing: about Bill Pulte and why letting Section 702 of FISA lapse makes sense now, when it didn’t before, but my title for this L.L. is really at play. This is really compound and complex. I’ll just link to Josh Richman’s “Pulte Appointment Underscores Need to Reform Section 702 Spying” at Electronic Frontier Foundation, even though it’s not the best or most in-depth piece published recently. What’s more, I won’t discuss it. Section 702 is the “bucket” of intelligence collected by NSA where Americans are “caught” and, normally, “minimized.” FBI has a chance to query this bucket under 702, but it needs a warrant. FBI has, even with “good” FBI, lied or “forgotten” to specify in their warrant applications, and some federal judges have been very trusting of law enforcement. Put Bill Pulte in as DNI, even for just 120 days, and there better not be warrantless wiretap capacity. Bonus: Because I’m not going to jump into the horrible complexity of Section 702, what it has done to Americans, what it did not do to MAGA heroes, and what it would do to everyone if it were renewed with K$ Patel and Bill Pulte getting to play with it, here is a bonus article that I will discuss: “Lawmakers Demand Answers After the White House Initiated a $620M Loan to a Firm Tied to Donald Trump Jr.” at ProPublica. Anyone remember Soylindra? Major scandal that one. Oh, and Hunter Biden? That nepotism was so horrible that his father needed to be tarred and feathered. Robert Faturechi has what is likely a first draft of a cause. Nathan Hale was hung in the Banana Republic Very fine people with very fine crimes. Katherine Pompillo has a story that may seem trite at this point. After all, you know that “some” or “many” of the January 6th rioters whom Donald Trump pardoned have, upon release from prison, gone on to be arrested for other, new (and sometimes recidivous) crimes, but you (and I) are wrong to feel bored by this. It’s a sign of enervation. A symptom of poisoning. The known number is 97 of > 1,500. Some of the crimes were, in fact, only possible because there had been a pardon in place. In other words, a “but for” shows that Donald is responsible for the criminal act. [Quote:|] A Lawfare study reveals that almost one in 16 insurrectionists subject to the president’s clemency order has been arrested for and charged with—and in the vast majority of cases convicted of—other crimes, at least some of which were actively enabled by the clemency actions. [|End Quote] Remember that the total is 97, right? Well, fourteen of ninety-seven have been charged with sex crimes, including CSAM (underage child abuse or pornography). That’s quite a Venn diagram. Now, five walked from the clemency to the crime: [Quote:|]These include: Andrew Paul Johnson, who was freed from prison as a result of the pardon in 2025, was convicted of five charges, including child molestation, in February 2026, and sentenced to life in prison. The criminal conduct for which he was convicted took place both before and after his pardon. Zachary Alam, who was convicted of felony charges of grand larceny and burglary just months after his pardon. Ryan Nichols, who was charged with deadly conduct and harassment on May 10, 2026, after allegedly threatening a person with a gun in a church parking lot. Another defendant’s charges are still pending. And still another, Enrique Tarrio, was arrested for simple assault in March 2025, but the then-interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia ultimately declined to bring charges. [|End Quote] Remember that interim Actor US attorney? It was “Mister” Ed Martin — the man who had trouble signing documents but who loved to write threatening e-mails to entities outside of the district threatening them for being unfair to Donald. Ms. Pompillo points out that Tod Blanche says these folks could get the $1,776,000,000 “anti-weaponization” fund payments. (N.b. Donald and Tod saying that they don’t want the fund is NOT a resolution. Letting the matter lie is tantamount to admitting the money is Donald’s to claim whenever he wants it. Congress MUST act to establish that no President can self-deal with taxes this way.) Why to click on the link: The article attempts to give a full list of all the recurrent criminals Donald pardoned. The list was assembled by Lawfare staff, and they know that they are missing a number of crimes/criminals. After all, they need reporting of charges to find a crime, and the Donald Department of Trumplaw has, as in the case of Eddie the Eagle Martin, a tendency to look the other way with politically embarrassing criminals. Instead of “weaponization” of law, it is a shielding of criminals that Blanche has brought in. We have a lot to cover, so moving right along. That, by the way, is a live oak. Whistling “Dixie.” Singing “Moonshiner.” The Department of Justice started with what is likely a corrupt indictment of the SPLC, although we don’t call such things “corrupt.” Rather, we call them vindictive and selective prosecution. As I alluded to, up top, Jamie Raskin was tipped off to the fact that the US Attorney for Northern Alabama was pressured to indict SPLC, regardless, and to do so on a timer. “Pressured” by Main Justice. The indictment that came down was self-destructing. It couldn’t even match the laws it cited for “fraud” and ended up having nothing to charge. Hence the need for a superseding indictment, which came this week. It isn’t much better. At Above the Law, Joe Patrice has to wonder, “New SPLC Indictment Has Us Wondering If The DOJ Is Trying To Lose.” Given such epic prosecutions as James Comey and Laeticia James, I would say that it really is incompetent. Given the loss of talent and the scraps who remain at Justice, I would speculate that this actually is the cream of the tailings left at Justice. The first attempt at an indictment came in April, when SPLC was supposed to have defrauded banks by super sekritly using money to fund right wing organizations! Even though the banks knew what SPLC does, knew the organizations were fronts, and knew that the funds were for informants, Justice was going to plow ahead with faulty law and faulty facts. [Quote:|] The fraud theory of the case never made much sense since every genuine donor knew that the SPLC gathers information on hate groups through informants. On top of that, the indictment failed to even properly plead the elements of one of its core charges. Just an all-around clown show. [|End Quote] Surprising no one, SPLC retained good counsel and was making hash out of the “case,” so Justice sent away in the mail for a sooper seeding indictment, which it just got: [Quote:|] securing a superseding indictment. And then they appear to have promptly leaked it to right-wing media because this case is more about winning points on Twitter than in court. Did the DOJ fix the deficiencies in the original indictment? [|End Quote] My argument from the start is that the case isn’t about winning a conviction. It is solely about “dirtying the brand.” Remember who has stocked the Donald administration. Its brain trussed is Heritage Action figures, and that’s the organization where Christopher Rufo works in a high position. He was behind the “critical race theory” effort. He said, at the time, that no one knew what it was, but they could “dirty up the brand” and use it to attack civil rights. It worked. He was rewarded with the president’s position at New School in Florida, where he has been busy trying to dirty up that place, too. I think the goal is to ensure that corporations and funds cannot give to SPLC because it is “controversial” and “scandal plagued” and “accused of fraud.” Mr. Patrice points out that the superseding indictment did NOTHING to fix the original’s failures. [Quote:|] But they did manage to make it worse, forcing us to ask the question: are the prosecutors on this case trying to lose or just stupid? If the theory of the case — that a civil rights group secretly finances extremist groups — makes no sense, that’s because you haven’t let your brain rot be indulging in the sort of right-wing fever dreams that cast George Soros as the central architect of wokeness. The DOJ’s case enjoys a lot of popularity with the Elon Musk types who want to convince themselves that ripping immigrant children from their parents doesn’t put them in league with their fellow travelers in the Klan because those people are just actors paid by liberals. [|End Quote] See? There are no right wing extremists! Those are all paid actors from the SPLC. The case had been that SPLC had been hiding the fact that informants were inside the KKK from the banks (fraud!) under cover companies that only existed for fraudulent purposes. However, in the superseding indictment, they state, outright, that the two undercover KKK members who got paid were indeed in the KKK and trying to quit, that they feared for their safety, and therefore they needed to have a falsified source of income to protect themselves from the Klan. [Quote:|] The government’s new marquee evidence is that the informants were genuinely working against their hate groups and legitimately feared for their own safety? That’s… the whole SPLC argument. The indictment adds even more allegations about moles wanting to quit or fearing for their personal safety or both. The SPLC’s lawyers could not have written it better. [|End Quote] Now, to actually make a case, they needed to show. . . you know. . . fraud. That has more than one element. [Quote:|]What the DOJ did need to do, to fix this case, was plead some sort of scheme to defraud a financial institution. The government brought charges under the bank deception statute — 18 U.S.C. § 1014 — that criminalizes knowingly making false statements for the purpose of influencing a bank’s action on an application, loan, or agreement. [|End Quote] Plenty of people commented that DOJ didn’t understand the bank fraud law. It requires deceptive statements meant to influence a bank’s decisions, so the DOJ this time just came out and said, “They done it to influence a bank’s decisions.” Remember gang: circular reasoning works because circular reasoning works because circular reasoning works. [Quote:|] the second part of § 1014 entirely, which posed a problem for them since the Supreme Court already held that merely alleging false or misleading statements is not enough to make a crime. So this time they’ve amended that section to read: On or about the dates listed below, the following false or misleading statements were made to an FDIC insured financial institution for the purpose of influencing the actions of that financial institution.[|End Quote] Abbe Lowell already moved to dismiss for vindictive prosecution. He suggests that this is why an unsigned copy of the superseding indictment was leaked to FoxMax Getaway pundit and the like before it was filed. Dirty up the brand. Rufo will be so proud. Right to work for Donald state Nick Bednar remembers “Schedule F” from Trump 1, which was struck down by the courts. Donald swore to put it back this time. It was to be a way to drain the swamp in favor of a festering pit of burning sulfur, as it would end civil service protections and make the entire executive branch “right to work,” with Donald the one with the rights and everyone else the work. He couldn’t putin something already ruled illegal, so he gave it a name that the public wouldn’t remember and issued an executive ordure over “Schedule Policy/Career.” (Pause after “schedule.”) An old whine in a new skein. “Inside the Implementation of Schedule Policy/Career” explains what has come to be, now that Donald has gotten most of what he wants without the changes. [Quote:|] Trump signed an executive order establishing “Schedule Policy/Career,” which promised to strip approximately 50,000 employees in positions of a “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating” character of their tenure protections. The order also authorized the removal of employees who failed to “faithfully implement administration policies to the best of their ability.” [|End Quote] See that second part? Don’t do the will of the administration and lose your job. It’s far, far more than just the theory of the unitary executive. It’s thought control and a command for a monoculture in government. I.e. it is autocracy. There were a number of powerful civil service unions that sued, but the courts could not rule until a second executive order came along that actually specified which positions would be made Schedule Policy/Career. In other words, a court could not rule on the abstract principle of a President ordering a personnel change (well, it can, but they wouldn’t have the harms yet and therefore would not have people with standing). They needed to know which jobs would be stripped of protection. [Quote:|] On June 3, President Trump issued an executive order with an accompanying 229-page appendix of positions transferred to Schedule Policy/Career. The order transfers approximately 8,000 employees in over 4,800 positions to Schedule Policy/Career. Many—but not all—of these positions have some supervisory role. Ultimately, the true effect of Schedule Policy/Career will depend on the litigation currently working its way through the federal courts. [|End Quote] BEWARE. Like Blanche saying that he is going to walk away from the $1,776,000,000 party fund, the fact that this is “only” 4,800 positions is misleading. It leaves untouched the notion that Donald can reach into our taxes whenever he wants to say he feels upset by a tax bill, in the one case, or that he thinks the civil service act is unfair very unfair so unfair to him, on the other. [Quote:|] OPM Director Scott Kupor told reporters that the order transfers approximately 8,000 employees to Schedule Policy/Career. According to Kupor, 97 percent of the positions are at or above the GS-15 level, the highest grade on the General Schedule pay scale. The order also transfers some GS-13 and GS-14 employees, mostly those working within the Office of Management and Budget. This initial order transfers significantly fewer employees to Schedule Policy/Career than the 50,000 initially estimated. [|End Quote] Truth is in complexity. Think this through. If the highest levels are now ruled by autocracy, does it help that others are not? What does it mean if the boss of bosses is a servile robot? It’s true that the lower level positions will be protected by civil service tenure, but that doesn’t mean that they will do work in an independent way or in the national interest. In fact, it means that they will have a timid or fearful boss self-censoring or acting as a true believer and making the office one long campaign commercial. I mean to tease, so my tease here is the Nick Bednar did A TON OF WORK on this subject — work I cannot replicate. There are two tables showing the jobs Donald wants to own and a word cloud of the titles and justifications used. You really should see this piece. But Hunter traveled to China with (VP) Biden! Robert Faturechi has a lighter article than the others. You see, Don Don (Donald Jr.) got a mysterious contract for a business he’s associated with. And now “Lawmakers Demand Answers After the White House Initiated a $620M Loan to a Firm Tied to Donald Trump Jr.” The gag’s all here! Peter Navarro and Don Don joined hands to grab cash from warfighter general Pete Hegseth through a venture capital fund. It’s a story with everything the dull witted millionaire could want. [Quote:|] a top aide to the president intervened to secure a $620 million Pentagon loan to a startup linked to the president’s eldest son. ProPublica’s reporting “reveals a staggering level of corruption and influence peddling that superseded this process, enriching the President’s son at the expense of U.S. national security and taxpayer dollars,” wrote the group of Democratic lawmakers, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Mazie Hirono of Hawaii as well as Reps. Jason Crow of Colorado and Mike Levin of California. [|End Quote] All that’s missing at this point is a Polymarket bet on the contract. Also, what’s Ivanka been doing to “architect” her life these days? Has she gotten enough in the way of trademarks in China? My photo, above, is of Mercury. Vulcan didn’t like Mercury much. Don Don does. [Quote:|] the Pentagon announced the loan to Vulcan Elements, a small North Carolina startup, about three months after Donald Trump Jr.’s venture capital firm took a stake of undisclosed size in the rare-earth magnet company. [|End Quote] There were dozens of firms competing for the contract, but Vulcan had a special advantage: Peter Navarro acting as midwife for Don Don. And that, apparently, led to “expedited” contract approval, too. [Quote:|] In their letter, addressed to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, the lawmakers asked a series of questions about Navarro’s involvement in the deal, including whether he intervened at someone else’s direction, if the president was aware or involved, and who Navarro communicated with at the Pentagon. [|End Quote] Tamany Hall was a model of efficiency compared to these stumblebums and rolled drunks. Now, how do we get the “very online” to know about it? [Conclusion:] Took me many days to write all this, but I don’t expect many breathing was baited. What’s worse is that at least two of these articles really do need to be read at their home sites to deliver their content. I tend to pick stuff that can’t be summarized and then try to summarize it anyway. Something’s definitely wrong with me. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/6/7/800050397/community/l-l-32-complexity-is-truth/ Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/