News Break, Sept. 8, 2022

In Great Britain, Queen Elizabeth II has died at Balmoral Castle, the family estate in the Scottish Highlands.  She was 96 and had reigned over the United Kingdom since she was crowned at age 27 in 1953 after the death of her father, King George VI, the previous year.  It’s not just the end of an era for Great Britain, it’s the end of an epoch.  Qualities often ascribed to the Queen and her reign are steadfastness and dignity.

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In this country, former Trump campaign chairman and notorious right-wing bad boy Steve Bannon pleaded not guilty in a Manhattan courtroom this afternoon to state charges of conspiracy, fraud and money laundering connected to an online scheme he and three partners ran that raised some $15 million for “We Build the Wall.”  The scheme supposedly raised the funds to build a section of Trump’s wall on the border with Mexico.  Donors were told that “100 percent” of all the funds would go towards building the wall, and that none of the organizers would take a salary.

Bannon was charged with diverting more than $1 million to one of his co-conspirators and with using hundreds of thousands more of the donated money to pay for his personal expenses.  He was charged federally with essentially the same crimes and had not gone to trial when Trump pardoned him in one of his last acts before leaving office.  None of Bannon’s three co-defendants were pardoned, and one is named as “Co-conspirator 1” in the indictment and is apparently cooperating with the Manhattan District Attorney and the New York State Attorney General who brought the charges against Bannon today.

Bannon hasn’t had a good run of it since his pal Trump left office.  He was recently convicted in a Washington D.C. federal court on two counts of contempt of Congress for defying subpoenas to testify before the House January 6 Committee.  He is scheduled to be sentenced in October.  The charges he was convicted of each carriy a minimum sentence of 30 days in jail and a maximum of one year, along with a fine of from $10,000 to $100,000.  Bannon’s defense included a claim that Trump had asserted executive privilege, which he did not.  The claim would have failed anyway because executive privilege covers communications between a sitting president and aides and members of his administration.  Bannon did not work for Trump or for the federal government during the time covered by the subpoena.

Recently, several people close to Bannon appeared before a New York grand jury investigating Trump’s real estate business.  Bannon was not among those subpoenaed by the grand jury.

As Bannon, in handcuffs, was led by police officers into the Manhattan courtroom this afternoon, he turned to reporters and said, "This is what happens in the last days of a dying regime. They will never shut me up, they'll have to kill me first. I have not yet begun to fight."

He has already begun to fight, of course, when he faced the contempt of Congress charges in Washington in the summer, and before, when he faced federal charges mirroring those he was indicted for today.  He didn’t have to fight very hard that time, because Trump pardoned him.  Even if Trump were to run for election and win in 2024, he will not be able to pardon Bannon this time because presidents can issue pardons only for federal offenses.  Bannon faces New York State charges this time.

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In other subpoena news, federal prosecutors served a grand jury subpoena yesterday to William Russell, a former deputy director of presidential advance in the Trump White House.  Russell was among only a few White House staffers who continued working for Trump after he left office.  He is now a “senior adviser” to the former president.  The grand jury is sitting in Washington and is engaged in an investigation into the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 and the events leading up to it.  A separate grand jury is looking into Trump’s removal of government documents, including several marked Top Secret/Secure Compartmented Information, as well as other materials he took to Mar a Lago.  That grand jury has heard testimony of several former Trump aides and people who worked at Mar a Lago after Trump left office.

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Meanwhile in mass shooting news, yesterday police in Memphis arrested a 19-year-old man for killing four people and wounding three in a shooting rampage that lasted hours and ranged through Memphis and into Northern Mississippi before it was over.  The suspect, Ezekiel Kelly, live-streamed at least one of the shootings on Facebook.  The shootings began at 12:56 a.m. and continued throughout the day.  The gunman shot multiple people all around Memphis while eluding police, who had identified him at the time of the first shooting early in the morning.  By the late afternoon, Kelly had shot a man inside of a store while on Facebook Life, calling himself “Zeke Huncho.” 

Police finally arrested Kelly around 9 p.m. after he had hijacked a car in Mississippi and led them on a high-speed chase. Memphis bus service was suspended for hours and a minor league baseball stadium was evacuated while residents were warned by police to shelter in place, essentially shutting down the entire city of Memphis while the suspect was at large.

There have been 464 mass shootings as of September 4, according to the Gun Violence Archive.  A total of 18 people were killed in mass shootings over the Labor Day Weekend alone, according to Forbes Magazine.  The killings happened in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, Minnesota, and Florida and do not include the shootings in Memphis on Wednesday.

There were 472 mass shootings by September 4, 2021, indicating a slight improvement over last year.

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In late Trump-related news, this afternoon the Department of Justice filed a notice of appeal with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Florida.  The full appeal has not yet been filed, but it is expected to oppose Judge Aileen Cannon’s appointment of a special master to review the documents Trump removed from the White House when he left office in 2021.  Both the DOJ and Trump’s lawyers have until tomorrow to submit lists of potential special masters, along with proposals for the “duties and limitations” of the special master.

It is not known if the DOJ’s notice of appeal will suspend the deadline for proposing potential special masters tomorrow, but hope springs eternal, doesn’t it?