"You want your Republican opponent locked up?"

Angie Nixon: "They're spreading lies about me saying I want to abolish prisons... Why would I want to do that when I want [Ashley Moody] locked up and jailed." CNN: "You want your Republican opponent locked up?" Angie Nixon: "Yeah basically. I absolutely want that to happen." https://t.co/KkfiWKhIi6

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) October 14, 2026

Was it "remarkable"? I'd like to think it's totally normal — the part about the grand jury.

I'm reading "Grand Jury Rebuffs Justice Dept. Attempt to Indict 6 Democrats in Congress The rejection was a remarkable rebuke, suggesting that ordinary citizens did not believe that the lawmakers had committed any crimes" (NYT).

Federal prosecutors in Washington sought and failed on Tuesday to secure an indictment against six Democratic lawmakers who posted a video this fall that enraged President Trump by reminding active-duty members of the military and intelligence community that they were obligated to refuse illegal orders, four people familiar with the matter said. It was remarkable that the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington — led by Jeanine Pirro, a longtime ally of Mr. Trump’s — authorized prosecutors to go into a grand jury and ask for an indictment of the six members of Congress, all of whom had served in the military or the nation’s spy agencies. But it was even more remarkable that a group of ordinary citizens sitting on the grand jury in Federal District Court in Washington forcefully rejected Mr. Trump’s bid to label their expression of dissent as a criminal act warranting prosecution.

I agree that it was remarkable (and awful) to seek this indictment. It was an ugly abnormality that needs to be rejected. But what the grand jury did was — or should be — the norm. 

You know what this made me think of? This post from 2010:

Someone in the comments questioned my use of quotation marks around "heroic father," but I absolutely meant to do that. I said the father "behaved instinctively and even if he thought about [it, he did] pretty much all the only thing he could do to avoid a life of terrible pain and shame if the girl had died after he let her fall in.."

The grand jury was like the father. Not remarkable. Normal.

"Many Democrats still cannot see how their legal aggression against Trump during his four years out of power set the stage for the dangerous revenge tour on which he is now embarked."

Writes the Editorial Board of The Washington Post, in "Jack Smith’s lawfare and James Comey’s arraignment on pathetically weak charges/Good people will be deterred from public service if they see a meaningful risk of winding up in jail afterward" (free-access link).

"Some Trump allies rationalize what’s happening by saying that they can escalate to deescalate — that is, respond to the legal attacks on Trump with wilder legal attacks on his enemies, thus deterring conflict in the future... Republicans are naïve if they’re confident they can deliver the final blow or that Trump can stop the cycle with blanket preemptive pardons come January 2029...."

"If the precedent set by Mr. Trump takes hold, America may be entering a period when each new administration takes aim at the last one in a cycle of retaliation..."

"... a what-goes-around-comes-around pattern more familiar in authoritarian countries than in developed Western democracies. Even presidents more restrained than Mr. Trump may succumb to the temptation to follow at least some of his example."

Writes Peter Baker, in "In Going After His Foes, Trump Sets a Precedent That Could Haunt His Allies/President Trump’s retribution campaign risks ushering in a cycle of retaliation in which each new administration takes aim at the last one" (NYT).

"Even presidents more restrained than Mr. Trump"? You mean, like Biden?

But, we'll be told, what Biden did to Trump is different. I mean, it wasn't "ushering in a cycle of retaliation." That's something that can only be done by someone who didn't start it.

ADDED: From a column Jonathan Turley published last Friday:

Comey will continue to be vilified and lionized by different parts of the population. Yet, this is an ignoble moment that he helped bring about.... Now the man who bragged about nailing Michael Flynn will face the same false statement charge. The man who celebrated the charging of Donald Trump (including obstruction-related charges) will face his own obstruction charge. Whether karma or lawfare, Comey will now have his day in court.

"Donald Trump was maliciously prosecuted repeatedly—from the New York state level by Letitia James to the federal level by Jack Smith—over and over, on the basis of manipulated charges."

"These were stretched charges, charges that were literally read in unique ways for the first time in order to go after him. So should you be surprised that Donald Trump is now doing this to the people he believes targeted him in the first place? He promised this was going to happen. It’s not exactly a shock. It is the reality that these methods were used against him. Now, the thing about Trump that frustrates so many people on the left is that he’s not genteel about doing this sort of stuff. Joe Biden would lie."

Said Ben Shapiro on his podcast yesterday.

"Whether you like Corrupt James Comey or not, and I can’t imagine too many people liking him, HE LIED!"

"It is not a complex lie, it’s a very simple, but IMPORTANT one. There is no way he can explain his way out of it. He is a Dirty Cop, and always has been, but he was just assigned a Crooked Joe Biden appointed Judge, so he’s off to a very good start. Nevertheless, words are words, and he wasn’t hedging or in dispute. He was very positive, there was no doubt in his mind about what he said, or meant by saying it. He left himself ZERO margin of error on a big and important answer to a question. He just got unexpectedly caught. James 'Dirty Cop' Comey was a destroyer of lives. He knew exactly what he was saying, and that it was a very serious and far reaching lie for which a very big price must be paid!"

Signed, "President DJT," on Truth Social, this morning.

What, precisely, is the supposedly simple statement Comey made and why is it supposedly now utterly clear that it was not only wrong but a lie?

The "simple" statement is actually an elaborate back-and-forth with Ted Cruz at a Senate hearing on  September 30, 2020:

Terrifying home invasion by the police in the UK.

You might think this is not possible. I hit the Grok icon and asked if this really is what it appears to be and was told yes:

What the HELL have I just watched?!

Two police officers visit a family home to seize a child's phone for *viewing a social media post*.

If she doesn't comply, they threaten to 'escalate'.

This is terrifying.
The police are out of control.pic.twitter.com/Tn83kV8zIn

— Lee Harris (@addicted2newz) September 21, 2025

ADDED: There's some discussion in the comments about the video being edited in a possibly deceptive way. I confronted Grok, and got this response.

"The FBI under former President Biden launched a sweeping investigation called 'Arctic Frost' that included major Republican organizations and conservative groups..."

"... according to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA). Grassley revealed whistleblower evidence at a Senate Judiciary hearing showing the probe, which began with 2020 election challenges, later expanded to 92 Republican targets such as the RNC, the Republican Attorneys General Association, and Turning Point USA. 'Arctic Frost wasn't just a case to politically investigate Trump,' Grassley said. 'It was the vehicle by which partisan FBI agents and Department of Justice prosecutors could achieve their partisan ends and improperly investigate the entire Republican political apparatus."

From "FBI's 'Arctic Frost' probe into Jan. 6 investigated Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA" (Yahoo, republishing Snopes, quoting the Facebook page The Federalist Papers).

"This was not a case of we say tomayto, you say tomahto. This was we say tomato, while you cannot say anything these days because of the EU and its rules..."

"... not to mention the repressive government of Great Britain. A citizen of that benighted nation had come to Washington to talk about what he had seen: a fellow named Nigel Farage. 'I have come today to be a klaxon,' he said in his opening remarks. The klaxon appeared in a bright blue suit, telling the story of the Irish comedian Graham Linehan, who was arrested at Heathrow airport this week for something he had said on social media. Linehan had been arrested by five armed police officers, he said. While it is perfectly ordinary for police to be armed to the teeth in the United States, 'it is a big deal in the UK,' he said. 'This could happen to any American man or woman that goes to Heathrow that has said things online.' American politicians and businesses and all freedom-loving people should say to the British government, "at what point did you become North Korea?"' Farage said."

From "Farage’s rules for free speech: talk about anything but your lunch/The Reform leader defended Democrats’ right to say dreadful things about him — but said some things were better left unsaid" (London Times).

The headline referred to Farage's "discretion" in refusing to say who he needed to leave to have lunch with — clearly, the President.

Also interesting: Democratic Congressman Hank Johnson talked so much, asking questions and interrupting answers, that "Farage asked the chairman if he could go and 'get a cup of coffee or something' until it was his turn to speak."

Here's the video. I love the freeze frame:

"It’s time this government told the police their job is to protect the public, not monitor social media for hurty words."

Said Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, quoted in "Comedian Graham Linehan arrested over trans tweets/The 57-year-old TV writer says he has been ordered not to use the social media platform X while he has been released on bail after being detained by armed police at Heathrow" (London Times).

"Hurty words" is a useful and musical phrase. Badenoch didn't coin it. I'm seeing, from back in March 2024 in the London Times, "Islamophobic tweets just ‘hurty words’, says mayoral candidate/Susan Hall, the Tory hoping to run London, was responding to claims about Sadiq Khan and Londonistan.'" Someone in the comments there writes: "Anyone using the infantile term 'hurty words' calls into question their suitability for high office." Is it infantile or is it a satirical way to accuse those who are complaining about hurtful speech of being big babies?

Also in the London Times, from last April, there's "Police make 30 arrests a day for offensive online messages/Civil liberties groups say that the authorities are over-policing the internet and threatening free speech using vague laws": Quoting Toby Young, the founder and director of the Free Speech Union: "Given that only 11 per cent of the violent and sexual offence cases in England and Wales were closed after a suspect was caught or charged in the year to June 2024, a steep decline on previous years, it seems extraordinary that the police are wasting so much time arresting people for hurty words."

The OED has not yet acknowledged "hurty" — other than as a word in heraldry:

1828 Hurty, charged with hurts, or semée of hurts, that is, strewed over with hurts. W. Berry, Encyclopaedia Heraldica Gloss.

I believe hurts are blue dots — azure roundels.  

"The sculptures were meant to be provocative: 'Miss Mao' shows Mao as a topless woman with distorted, babyish features..."

"... while 'the execution of Christ' depicted a firing squad of life-size Mao statues aiming rifles at Jesus. But Gao denies they were defamatory.... Gao is accused of breaking a law that wasn’t even enacted until nearly a decade after these artworks were first exhibited. In 2018, China criminalized acts that 'distort, smear, desecrate' or otherwise 'damage the reputation and honor of heroes and martyrs.'... Gao, who is a Christian, maintains that his artwork was not intended to defame Mao but rather to explore, through cartoonish depictions of a symbolic figure, the concepts of original sin and repentance.... For [his wife] Zhao, who was not married to Gao when he made the statues, it makes no sense for authorities to claim her leaving with her child would 'endanger state security,' as officials claimed...."

From "Seven-year-old New Yorker stuck in China over father’s political art/Gao Jia, the American-born son of a well-known Chinese dissident artist, has missed first grade because his parents have been stopped from leaving China" (WaPo).

"It means that the Justice Department is prepared to go out and use its criminal powers, the power of subpoena, the power to compel witnesses to testify, the ability to go to a judge and try and get a search warrant.... the federal government's most powerful tools...."

Words intoned unironically on today's episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast, which is titled "The Sprawling Government Effort to Prosecute Barack Obama."

Transcript and audio at Podscribe, here.

I was out on my sunrise walk, listening with earbuds, and when I heard "get a search warrant," I had to restrain myself from voicing my sarcasm: Who could have thought that a former U.S. President would have a search warrant executed against him? Is there a plan to invade his home in the early morning hours? To root through the underpants and bras of the former First Lady? Inconceivable — wasn't it? — before this tyrant fought his way back into the White House.

"Are you admitting that the case against Trump in New York was part of the organized Democratic Party resistance?"

I can't believe it. They finally admitted it on live TV:

The prosecution of President Trump was an organized effort by the Democratic Party "resistance."

Lawfare is real. The justice system was weaponized against President Trump. pic.twitter.com/uvMKTHcA53

— Scott Jennings (@ScottJenningsKY) May 15, 2025

Andrew Cuomo "blames the leftists in the State Legislature, who never liked him no matter how many left-wing priorities he passed..."

"... gay marriage, a $15 minimum wage, paid family leave, a fracking ban, free state-college tuition, legal marijuana, and stricter gun laws—and who were lying in wait to take him down. The allegations [of sexual harassment] were just a pretext, in his view, especially at a moment when the progressive wing of the party had the upper hand in the Democratic coalition."

From "The (Partial) Reinvention of Andrew Cuomo/He says he’s grown and learned. His brute-force takeover of the mayor’s race, at least, looks familiar" (NY Magazine).

"Cuomo... maintains that much of the whole affair was concocted by [state attorney general Letitia] James, whom Cuomo endorsed for the position and who, in a kind of gubernatorial attempted coup, ran for the job herself after he resigned.... 'That women’s issue was so electric that once somebody lights that fuse, you can’t stop it in that environment. Politicians were like dominoes—boop, boop, boop, boop,' he said, mimicking with his fingers the tumbling of the play tiles...."

"At one point, Le Pen whispered: 'Incredible.' She then abruptly left without warning, before her sentence had been handed down."

From "Marine Le Pen barred from running for French presidency in 2027/Far-right leader found guilty of embezzlement of European funds and immediately barred from running for office" (The Guardian).

What kind of "embezzlement" was this? Is it anything like what Elon Musk and DOGE are finding in the United States?

"President Barack Obama... claimed the right to kill U.S. citizens abroad without trial, used the Espionage Act against whistleblowers and expanded domestic counterterrorism."

"He helped perfect the arsenal that Trump would later inherit. It was the left, not the right, that normalized censoring disfavored online speech during the pandemic, often using intelligence-linked partners to do so. It was establishment liberals who applauded when the FBI investigated Trump-world operatives — not on the basis of principle, but because they liked the target. Now the weapon is back in circulation, only in different hands.... That’s how weapons work.... Power, once created and normalized, rarely stays dormant — and never stays partisan...."

From "Trump is using weapons that liberals helped build," by Vinnie Rotondaro (at The Hill).

ADDED: It's as though Trump is saying: I am your mirror image — don't you hate it?

"Bob Woodward has spent an entire career trying to infiltrate groups like this. So how could you possibly have just been added to a group chat?"

The NYT "Daily" podcast interviewer prompts Jeffrey Goldberg, in this morning's new episode, "Inside the Group Chat Planning to Bomb Yemen" (Podscribe).

Goldberg responds: "Yeah. I mean, you know, and, and, and also it's weird that substantive government conversations we taking place over Signal, because Signal is not by the US government standards secure in part because obviously it's open — technically open — to anyone, including yours, truly. And I, I know that previous administrations have used different messaging services, but not for, not for substance. Right? I mean, I think in the Biden administration, it's a, it's a good example. They used Signal. But my impression is based on, on some reporting, my impression is that they use Signal to do things like setting up lunch appointments or, Hey, I've just left Saudi Arabia. I'll call you from a skiff when I get to whatever."

Only once the bombings in Yemen occurred did Goldberg — as he tells it — realize "this is almost certainly a real Signal group and not some sort of deceptive disinformation campaign." He's being careful, it seems, to protect himself. Did he do something wrong by failing immediately to drop out of the chat? He would like the timeline for judging his behavior to begin at the point when he knew "almost certainly" that the conversation was what it appeared to be:

And so then I had to begin to make a serious decision...

Key word: then. And: begin.

... consulting with colleagues that ultimately led me to remove myself from the Signal group later that day....

What was said in these conversations?

How did they analyze the legal problems and journalism ethics? What we know is that Goldberg signed out of the Signal group.

... knowing that the group administrator and Signal and the members, I believe, of a group as well, are notified that you have left the group.

That is, to withdraw he would have to expose himself as the eavesdropper he chose to be. Presumably, that problem was bandied about in those consultations with colleagues. During the time he was talking to colleagues, he was still in the group and he knew it wasn't a hoax. Now, to get out, he'd have to target himself. But, bottom line, he got out. 

I assumed at that point that Mike Waltz was gonna call and say, Hey, who, who is this? Or call and say, why'd you leave the group? And, and, and then I would say, you know, director Waltz or whatever, do you know, do you even know who this is? But nobody look the, I mean, here's the, the, the truth of it is nobody noticed when I was added and nobody noticed when I was left.

The truth is, you don't know what other people notice when they say nothing. 

The "Daily" interviewer invites Goldberg to reveal why he left the group. He says:

You know, I, I think people can make their own deductions here, but I can't get into for various reasons. The conversations I subsequently had with colleagues and others about my decision making, all I will say is that I, I removed myself from the group understanding the consequences of that....

He doesn't want to talk about it. And who knows the meaning of things not said?

ADDED, after listening to more of the podcast. The interviewer comes back to the material I've highlighted. She says:

I respect the fact that you can't go into the details, but I do want to ask you whether part of the reason why you left was that you were concerned you could get in trouble for it. Like were you worried at all that you had stayed in that chat too long? And, and not just you, but the people that you're talking to at the Atlantic that presumably you're getting advice from? 

Goldberg's answer shows that he needs to worry that he could be accused of a crime. He says:

I'm going to, your Honor, I'm gonna respectfully decline to answer that question on the grounds that I can't answer the question. I take the nation's laws very seriously, but I am not in a position to discuss decision making related to the type of material that I was seeing.

Then, Goldberg brings up something that shocks me into seeing why Trump hates Goldberg: "Four years ago, five years ago, I reported that Donald Trump referred to the World War I and World War II War dead as suckers and losers."

And then I had to wonder whether Goldberg was put on that Signal chat deliberately to entrap him into committing what would be characterized as a crime, and that's what I'm guessing he talked about with his colleagues that led him to withdraw from the chat. 

Of course, on the Trump side, they congealed very quickly around the story that it was a stupid mistake, but no harm, no foul. But isn't that what they would do if it were deliberate entrapment?

Another suspicion I developed listening to this podcast is that Goldberg is not the first journalist to be added to a chat like this and fed information, but other journalists have just written stories about the substance of what they heard. Look at that line: "Bob Woodward has spent an entire career trying to infiltrate groups like this." Well, maybe Bob Woodward is in groups like that. He just doesn't write articles about what happened to him. And maybe Goldberg knows that, but he chose to make the story about himself because he knows he's high on Trump's enemies list, and he and his colleagues/lawyers gamed it out and decided he needed to protect himself from criminal prosecution.

Why would Goldberg, of all journalists, be included in that chat?

Occam's razor says entrapment.

There's never been a speech like this: Trump's epic tirade at the Justice Department.

It was pure Trump and his critics are hot to portray it as the desecration of a place where decent Presidents dare not tread. There he is, for over an hour, in front of the Department of Justice sign, trashing his predecessors for weaponizing the justice system. He's out in the open, speaking his mind. Biden — we couldn't even tell if he had a mind.

Here's an example of the anti-Trump take on the speech: "Trump calls his opponents ‘scum’ and lawbreakers in bellicose speech at Justice Department/For more than an hour, he delivered an insult-laden speech that shattered the traditional notion of DOJ independence" (Politico): "It was, even by Trump’s standards, a stunning show of disregard for decades of tradition observed by his predecessors, who worried about politicizing or appearing to exert too much control over the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency. Trump, instead, called himself the 'chief law enforcement officer in our country' and accused the DOJ’s prior leadership of doing 'everything within their power to prevent' him from becoming the president."

Key word: "appearing." 

And here's a free-access link to the NYT fact-check of the speech.

"The same basic separation-of-powers principles that counsel against a court maintaining a prosecution over the executive's objection support dismissal with prejudice here."

"The executive's unilateral option for ending a prosecution—namely, a pardon—more closely resembles a dismissal with prejudice. And the executive's undoubted power to decline to initiate a prosecution leaves a citizen's liberty untouched. But a dismissal without prejudice creates a palpable sense that the prosecution outlined in the indictment and approved by a grand jury could be renewed, a prospect that hangs like the proverbial Sword of Damocles over the accused. Such an ongoing prospect of re-indictment is particularly problematic when it comes to the sensitive task of prosecuting public officials. There is an inherent risk that once an indictment has been procured, the prospect of re-indictment could create the appearance, if not the reality, that the actions of a public official are being driven by concerns about staying in the good graces of the federal executive, rather than the best interests of his constituents.... Dismissal with prejudice avoids those concerns and promotes another important separation-of-powers virtue— namely, accountability."

So writes Paul D. Clement, responding — at the request of the judge — to the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss charges against Eric Adams.

Here's the full text of Clement's response.

Here's the NYT article about it: "Lawyer Appointed in Adams Case Says Charges Should Be Dropped/Paul D. Clement also said a judge should not allow the Trump administration to use the court’s authority to compel Mr. Adams’s support in the White House’s mass deportation efforts."

"I was the target of corrupt politicians for 4 years and then 4 years after that. So don't talk to me about targeting."