Tommy Carcetti
Tommy Carcetti's JournalBREAKING NEWS: Special Counsel Jack Smith forced to cancel planned Russian vacation
Jack Smith, the Special Counsel charged with the investigation of former President Donald Trump regarding allegations of misappropriated classified documents as well as his actions leading up to the January 6th Capitol Insurrection, has been forced to cancel a personal vacation he planned to take to Russia this summer.
Smith was among a list of over 500 American individuals who were sanctioned by the Kremlin earlier this week, thus foreclosing any possibility of him traveling to the country that is currently embroiled in a bloody war with neighboring Ukraine.
Smith had reportedly been planning a vacation to Norilsk, located in Siberia well inside the Arctic Circle which holds the distinction of being the northernmost city in the entire world. Norilsk has a population of roughly 200,000 and is best known for its short life expectancies and heavy mining and smelting of the nickel deposits held beneath its frozen surface.
Sources close to Smith describe him as “extremely disappointed” that he will be unable to make the trip.
“They say one has not truly lived until he or she has breathed the thick, heavy metallic air of Norilsk,” one of Smith’s close friends explained. “Jack was so looking forward to taking it all in.”
The sanctions mean Smith will not be taking the approximately 25-hour flight (with several layovers) to the area, not including the additional hour and a half it takes to get from the airport to the city proper via snow truck.
Additionally, Smith will be forced to eat the cost at the Hotel Norilsk—one of only a few lodging options in the city—where he had upgraded to a premium “Smokestack View Room” package.
Had his plans not been derailed, Smith reportedly had planned several days’ worth of recreational activities in Norilsk, including taking in the city’s many Khrushchyovkas (Soviet era apartment buildings), aimlessly riding the city’s street cars back-and-forth from one end of the town to the other, and a day-trip excursion to nearby Talnakh, presumably also for the purposes of looking at more Khrushchyovkas.
“Jack was perhaps most looking forward to spending an entire carefree day of fun, adventure and whimsy visiting the Norilsk Golgatha,” Smith’s friend noted, referring to the city’s monument erected in memory of the tens of thousands of Gulag prisoners who died from harsh forced labor conditions during the Soviet era.
Smith was also said to have wanted to take some personal reflection time during his now-canceled Norilsk holiday.
“He told me all he really wanted to do was to walk alone through the streets of Norilsk, huddled up tightly in a heavy winter coat, while the wind mercilessly blew snow and ice against his frozen cheeks,” Smith’s friend said. “All of this to remind himself that in the end, life is really not that much different than death, Heaven no different than Hell. But alas, it will never come to pass for him.”
With the time he was scheduled to be spending on his Siberian getaway now unexpectedly open, Smith will have to find other ways to spend his free time.
“I guess he’ll just have to use that all time working to indict Donald Trump instead,” Smith’s friend remarked. “Such a pity. Such a shame.”
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BREAKING NEWS: DOJ promises to give Durham Report "exactly the amount of attention it deserves"
Following the release of a report by Special Counsel John Durham into the FBI investigation of Donald Trump’s connections to Russia during the 2016 US Presidential campaign, the Department of Justice vowed to give the report “exactly the amount of attention it so, so justly deserves.”
Durham—who was appointed as Special Counsel during the Trump Administration by then-Attorney General Bill Barr to probe the FBI’s investigation of Trump’s Russia ties in 2016—issued his report on Monday. The report issued harsh criticisms against the FBI’s bases for launching its inquiry against Trump, although it did not make any recommendations for any further criminal indictments of any individuals. Durham did prosecute two individuals during the course of his investigation for process-related offenses; both trials resulted in swift acquittals.
“When we received [the Durham Report], the first thing I heard from my superiors was, ‘This is going straight to the circular file!’” noted one DOJ official.
“Er, um…circulating file,” the official quickly corrected himself with a nervous laugh. “You know, a file that, uh, circulates around the office, so everyone can get a chance to read it and be all like, ‘Oh! Wow! This is such a well-written report!’ I mean…that works, right? Yes? No?”
Critics of the Durham Report have criticized it as a blatant effort to whitewash concerns about the relationship the 2016 Trump campaign appeared to have with numerous individuals and incidents associated with the Russian government, including a campaign meeting with Russian officials offering to provide dirt on Hillary Clinton, Trump’s campaign manager providing Kremlin oligarchs with polling data, and Trump himself on live television appearing to encourage Russian hackers to infiltrate Clinton’s campaign computer data.
Some within the DOJ, however, were slightly more charitable towards Durham’s efforts.
“John’s like one of those terminally ill Make-a-Wish kids whose dream it is to be a major league baseball player,” one source said. “So they give him a uniform, bring him out onto the field, soft toss him a few balls during batting practice, the whole shebang. I mean, no way in hell do they actually bring him into a real game--because that would be absurd--but you do what you have to do to make him feel good about himself in what is otherwise a terrible, terrible situation for him.”
Others angled for more of a constructive criticism type of approach.
“Four years and seven million dollars later, and what did we get?” a DOJ official said. “Well, we got a grand total of two trials where the respective juries took about as much time to decide the cases were nonsense as one would take to watch an episode of HGTV’s House Hunters. So, in other words, you had a grand total of 24 people who were deprived of the opportunity to see if John and Sally from Omaha decide to go with the suburban new build, or that classic craftsman right in the heart of the city. And that’s a shame. But, hey, I guess the man tried. Can’t fault him there, right?”
A few in the DOJ went so far as to compliment Durham’s choice of font for his report, and praised him on his spelling and grammar proofreading abilities.
“306 pages and not once—not once!--does he end a single sentence with a preposition,” one individual remarked. “Sure, the ultimate legacy of Durham’s report may be that it was nothing more than a bald-faced attempt to re-write history and manufacture an alternate narrative that a major party’s presidential campaign wasn’t actually blatantly corrupted by a hostile foreign power. But at least his ninth-grade English teacher has something to be proud of…err, I mean…something of which to be proud.”
At least one high-ranking official within the DOJ went on record finding that the Durham Report could prove very useful in the end.
“I promise you this, I fully intend give the Durham Report the proper weight that it deserves,” the official said. “I mean that literally. It will be a wonderful paper weight for my desk. The stupid thing works absolutely beautifully for that purpose.”
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Message to all non-Floridians on this website:
We're 1) very aware of the problem, and we're 2) working our hardest to fix it.
Now, put down the Bugs Bunny gifs and tired "FloriDUH" references for right now, m'kay?
Thank you.
The most critical thing to remember when it comes to Trump's statements about the Georgia election:
Whether it was his original statement to Raffensperger asking him to "find 11,780 votes" or his recent statement at the CNN Town Hall that Raffensperger "owed him votes."
Keep this in mind:
Trump has never claimed a Trump undervote in Georgia.
He's always thrown out these wild crazy, unsubstantiated fantasies of ballot stuffing and dead/underaged votes all to Biden's benefit.
But what he hasn't been saying is that there are supposedly thousands upon thousands of Trump votes out there that for whatever reason were never actually counted.
So why is this important?
Well, it's because his likely defense to any charges in Georgia is that he was just engaging in some sort of wishful thinking with Raffensperger, that maybe by re-opening the vote count he would miraculously happen upon enough votes for him to win, but they would never know if they never re-opened the vote.
But that's not what his claims are.
He told Raffensperger to "find" the votes full knowing in his heart that there were never any Trump votes for them to find, and he never claimed there were votes for him to find.
He wanted Raffensperger to commit fraud and make up a vote count, plain and simple.
It's not any more complicated than that.
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