WRAL has a report out this morning that state representative Republican leaders Jason Saine and Jon Hardister have their underwear in a tangle about TikTok, calling on Governor Cooper to ban the social media app from state-owned devices, calling it a “matter of national security”. They say if Cooper doesn’t act, they move to create a law with such a ban next year.
Cooper spokesman Jordan Monaghan said the state is "constantly updating guidance to ensure cyber security and is reviewing state government use of TikTok and considering potential additional safety measures."
TikTok's media relations office didn't immediately respond to a request for comment sent through the company's website.
WRAL isn’t quite giving you all the background on this story, however.
The idled plant on St. Croix, formerly known as the Limetree Bay refinery, experienced a series of accidents over the course of last year that spewed noxious fumes and showered oil droplets onto nearby homes, sending some residents to emergency rooms. Now deteriorating conditions at the massive facility, which was sold in a bankruptcy auction in December, pose a major test of the Biden administration’s commitment to environmental justice.
In September, the EPA conducted an inspection of the refinery and observed “significant corrosion” of equipment including valves, pipes and pressure relief devices, the agency said in a letter sent to the owners’ lawyers Oct. 13 and made public this week.
This facility was originally constructed over 50 years ago, and has been shut down several times for various reasons. But the Trump administration's negligent approach to environmental stewardship created an opportunity to squeeze more dollars out of it:
Last year, David DePape posted links on his Facebook page to multiple videos produced by My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell falsely alleging that the 2020 election was stolen. Other posts included transphobic images and linked to websites claiming Covid vaccines were deadly. “The death rates being promoted are what ever ‘THEY’ want to be promoted as the death rate,” one post read.
He also posted content about the “Great Reset”– the sprawling conspiracy theory that global elites are using coronavirus to usher in a new world order in which they gain more power and oppress the masses.
It looks like Paul will make a full recovery, but if I had any doubts about an earlier declaration today to boycott Twitter (including here on BlueNC), this attack quashed those doubts. Elon Musk has already inspired the nut-jobs to slide out from under their rocks and spew their hateful and dangerous rhetoric:
While the subpoena was anticipated, it is a remarkable escalation in the investigation into whether the deadly violence on Jan. 6 was the direct result of Trump’s actions in the weeks after he lost his bid for reelection.
“As demonstrated in our hearings, we have assembled overwhelming evidence, including from dozens of your former appointees and staff, that you personally orchestrated and oversaw a multipart effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election and to obstruct the peaceful transition of power,” Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) and vice chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said in a statement, part of a 10-page letter to Trump.
It's no coincidence that Steve Bannon was just sentenced to 4 months in prison for Contempt of Congress at roughly the same time this subpoena was issued:
In a sealed decision that could clear the way for other top Trump White House officials to answer questions before a grand jury, Chief U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell ruled that former Pence chief of staff Marc Short probably possessed information important to the Justice Department’s criminal investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol that was not available from other sources, one of those people said.
Trump appealed, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit refused to postpone Short’s appearance while the litigation continues, the people said, signaling that attempts by Trump to invoke executive privilege to preserve the confidentiality of presidential decision-making were not likely to prevail.
I've noticed several friends asking, "What is Merrick Garland waiting for?" He's not waiting. Hasn't been waiting. A true bill of indictment handed down by a Grand Jury is the proper approach in any controversial prosecution, and this one is without a doubt the most controversial one. No former/current President has ever been prosecuted for a crime, so we're in unexplored territory here. Of course this is taking a long time, because Trump is fighting every move the DOJ makes:
Trump is on the hook for a quarter-billion in fraud restitution:
The lawsuit, filed in New York Supreme Court, is the result of a more than two-year investigation by James and names 23 properties in the Trump Organization portfolio, including his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida, his Seven Springs estate in Westchester County, N.Y., and the D.C. hotel he leased from the federal government until he sold it in May.
“The inflated asset valuations in the Statements cannot be brushed aside or excused as merely the result of exaggeration or good faith estimation about which reasonable real estate professionals may differ,” it says.
Damn right it can't be brushed aside. In just four years, Trump inflated the value of his triplex apartment in Trump Tower from $80 million to $327 million, in order to leverage loans and impress idiots. Here's the complaint if you have the stamina. Speaking of disgusting fraudsters, these crooks stole (another) quarter-billion earmarked for feeding hungry children:
In case you were wondering, the US DOJ has been very busy:
By early summer, the grand jury investigation had taken another turn as several subpoenas were issued to state lawmakers and state Republican officials allied with Trump who took part in a plan to create fake slates of pro-Trump electors in several key swing states actually won by Biden.
At least 20 of these subpoenas were sent out and sought information about, and communications with, several lawyers who took part in the fake elector scheme, including Giuliani and John Eastman.
Why is this story so important? Because it clearly demonstrates (a few of) the dangers of Republicans being in charge of state legislatures. They may not have broken any windows, but their desire to disregard the will of the people is much worse than that. Speaking of petty tyrants, Mike Lindell is going to need a much fluffier pillow after the FBI (and a civil court) take bites out of his ass:
In addition, the FBI was concerned that the classified information was treated carelessly. The National Archives wrote to the bureau that the boxes it retrieved from Mar-a-Lago contained: “newspapers, magazines, printed news articles, photos, miscellaneous printouts, notes, presidential correspondence, personal and postpresidential records, and ‘a lot of classified records.’ Of most significant concern was that highly classified records were unfoldered, intermixed with other records, and otherwise unproperly identified.”
As innocuous as it may sound, the "unfoldered" part is the most damning, and it speaks volumes about the day-to-day operations in the office of America's worst President. This will give you an idea of what basic document control looks like:
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