Who's Who in Jack Smith's presidential immunity brief

 Here's my best effort, informed by Adam Klasfeld's at Just Security and others I came across. P1 = Steve Bannon.P2 = Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien (post July 2020).P3 = Trump deputy campaign manager Justin Clark.P4 = Trump senior campaign advisor Jason Miller.P5 campaign operative Mike Roman.P6 = Roger Stone.P7 = Hope Hicks.P8 = Pence Chief of Staff Marc Short.P9 = Eric Herschmann.P10 = Joe DiGenova.P11 = Victoria Toensing.P12 = Jenna Ellis.P13 = Jared Kushner.P14 = Ivanka Trump.P15 = Trump WH Assistant to the President and Director of Oval Office Operations Nicholas F. Luna. P16 = AZ Gov Doug Ducey.P17 = GA Gov Brian Kemp.P18 = Speaker of the AZ House Rusty Bowers.P19 = Trump staffer Christina Bobb (4 Dec 2020 tweet https://x.com/christina_bobb/status/1334996485075836936, ref p. 20).P20 = Kory Langhofer (Bowers' attorney).P21 = Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows.P22 = campaign attorney (p. 22) Alex Cannon.P23 = Trump GA lawyer Ray Smith (Roy Stallings Smith III, a real estate attorney).P24 = volunteer Trump GA attorney Jackie Pick.P25 = GA Sec of State Chief Operations Officer Gabriel Sterling.P26 = GA Attorney General Christopher M. Carr.P27 = US Senator David Perdue (proof is ref in Trump tweet on p. 18).P28 = Kelly Loeffler (ditto).P29 = GA election worker Wandrea "Shaye" Moss.P30 = GA election worker Ruby Freeman (Shaye's mother, p. 25).P31 = Cleta Mitchell, private attorney introduced on Trump v Kemp call as "who is not the attorney of record but has been involved" (p. 29, see WaPo "Here’s the full transcript and audio of the call between Trump and Raffensperger").P32 = Kurt R. Hilbert, lead attorney for Trump in Trump v. Kemp.P33 = GA Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.P34 = GA Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan.P35 = GA Secretary of State General Counsel Ryan Germany.P36 = Trump private attorney on Raffensperger call Alex Kaufman (Fox Rothschild, subsequently resigned Jan 7, 2021; however, Kaufman stated he never represented Trump).P37 = MI Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey.P38 = MI House Speaker Lee Chatfield.P39 = RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel.P40 = not referenced.P41 = ? Scott Gragson ?, "Michigan campaign associate" (p. 34)P42 = Trump executive assistant Molly Michael.P43 = RNC Chief Counsel Justin Riemer.P44 = RNC spokesperson Liz Harrington (recipient of email from Riemer: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/rnc-trump-stop-the-steal/2021/07/12/79e58a02-e320-11eb-934f-7e6c1927f261_story.html).P45 = White House Deputy Chief of Staff/Social Media Director Dan Scavino.P46 = PA GOP Chair Lawrence Tabas.P47 = Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt.P48 = former NYPD commissioner and Giuliani-Kerik partner Bernard B. Kerik (p. 40 tweet: https://x.com/BernardKerik/status/1334944478180888586).P49 = WI Supreme Court Justice Brian Hagedorn.P50 = Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Chris Krebs.P51 = Tucker Carlson.P52 = Trump admin Attorney General William "Bill" Barr.P53 = AZ attorney Jack Wilenchik (p. 51).P54 = Trump campaign staffer Tim Murtaugh--in text thread on fake electors with P3 Clark/P4 J Miller/P9 Herschmann "certifying illegal votes" (https://www.newsweek.com/arizona-gold-fake-electors-trump-allies-indictment-1894131).P55 = ? ? "Star Wars bar" thread (Jason Miller quote).P56 = ? "Star Wars bar" (p. 151: P56 but not P55 attends meeting at VA campaign HQ).P57 = former US Rep & US Attorney elector nominee who opted out of fake elector scheme Thomas Marino (p. 53).P58 = VP Pence Counsel Greg Jacob (p. 70) "Pence lawyer".P59 = WH Counsel Pat Cippolone.P60 = WH press secretary Kayleigh McEnany.P61 = AZ Senate president Karen Fann.P62 = TX AG Ken Paxton.P63 = MO AG, now US Senator Eric Schmitt.P64 = J6 Ellipse rally organizer Carolyn Wren.P65 = J6 Ellipse rally funder Julie Fancelli. (https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-campaign-fundraiser-ellipse-rally)P66 = ? Katrina Pierson ?  campaign employee working on J6 Ellipse rally who had most contact with Trump and was a private citizen after December 31, 2020.  (p. 119) (https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/18/capitol-riot-panel-interview-katrina-pierson-00010154)P67 = WH photographer Shealeah Craighead.P68 = Gen Michael Flynn.P69 = WH trade advisor Peter Navarro.P70 = Ivan Raiklin (https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/january-6-hearings-june-16#h_5cb75e4babd00cc7b68a62e35a09fa68) (p. 137).P71 = Deputy WH Counsel Pat Philbin.P72 = Matt Morgan (On pg. 151, P72 gives Herschmann a “tutorial on campaign basics and operations,” and is repeatedly mentioned along with P3, who is campaign attorney & Deputy Campaign Manager Justin Clark).P73 = ? Michael Best ? assured Eric Herschmann he could trust P22 (p. 152)P74 = ? J. Christian Adams or Matt Braynard ? (testified at December 10 Georgia hearing: https://www.gpb.org/news/2020/12/10/at-georgia-house-hearing-republicans-baseless-claims-of-voting-fraud-persist)P75 = Ken Block, managing director of C2.P76 = Jay Sekulow (see https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/03/22/pence-trump-grand-jury/ ).P77 = Stefan Passantino (p. 151, WH Counsel’s office person “who handled ethics issues”; "former member of President Donald J. Trump’s Office of White House Counsel. In that capacity, Mr. Passantino was charged with overseeing compliance and ethics, policing conflicts of interest, and approving and enforcing ethics requirements" per the ethics complaint against him: https://ldad.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Ethics-Complaint-against-Stefan-Passantino.pdf ).CC1 = Rudy Giuliani.CC2 = John Eastman.CC3 = Sidney Powell.CC4 = Jeffrey Clark.CC5 = Ken Chesebro.CC6 = Boris Epshteyn.C1 = Berkeley Research Group.C2 = Simpatico Software Systems.C3 = Dominion Voting Systems.[p. 73, no P#--unnamed US Senator is likely Ron Johnson of WI].Corrections gladly accepted.

October 7, 2024 · 4 min

Kevin Roberts' dog-killing story

 Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation and head of Trump's Project 2025, was previously a history professor at New Mexico State University. While at the university, he told colleagues and dinner guests that he was irritated by the barking of a neighbor's dog, so he killed it with a shovel. Kenneth Hammond, then chairman of the history department, told The Guardian: ...

September 24, 2024 · 2 min

Tips on using OpenBSD's pledge and unveil in perl scripts

 OpenBSD 5.9 (current as of this post is 7.5) introduced the "pledge" system call and 6.4 introduced the "unveil" system call, which together provide a means of more granular control of system access by processes running on the system to enforce least privilege.  When a program calls "pledge", it provides a list of categories of system calls (called "promises") that it is planning to make during the life of the running process (children have to make their own pledges and are not restricted), and attempts to make calls outside of those areas will cause the call to be blocked and the process to be killed. Additional calls to pledge cannot add new categories but it can remove them, so access can become more restrictive but not less restrictive. ...

August 4, 2024 · 7 min

Wikipedia, Skeptical Inquirer, and AI on Robert A. Baker plagiarism accusations

 The Wikipedia entry for University of Kentucky psychologist and skeptic Robert A. Baker recently (December 2023) restored a section on plagiarism accusations against him, which originated in a 1994 letter to the editor of Skeptical Inquirer from Jody Hey and were compounded by further accusations by Terence Hines and by me the same year. Unfortunately, the Wikipedia entry currently leaves the debate the same way the Skeptical Inquirer did in 1995, giving Baker the final word with a transparently false explanation.  Here's how the Wikipedia entry currently presents the issue: ...

May 15, 2024 · 30 min

Bill Frist's cat-killing story

 After adding a post about Kristi Noem's dog-killing story, I realized I hadn't mentioned former House Majority Leader Bill Frist's (R-TN) cat-killing story. Jeff Woods gave a quick overview of the story, which appeared in Frist's 1989 autobiography, Transplant, in his review of Frist's later book in The Nashville Scene in 2009: Never say Frist doesn't learn from his mistakes. In his 1989 autobiography Transplant, he admitted that as a medical student he adopted cats from animal shelters, "treat[ed] them like pets for a few days," then took them to a lab to die in research experiments. He blamed this conduct on the pressures of med school. ...

May 5, 2024 · 1 min

Kristi Noem's dog-killing story

 Before the release of South Dakota Governor (and prospective Trump VP running mate) Kristi Noem's book, No Going Back: The Truth on What's Wrong With Politics and How We Move America Forward, the Guardian published an account of her story in the book of becoming angered with her 14-month-old family dog Cricket when it (running loose off-leash) killed a farmer's chickens. She took the dog to a gravel pit and shot and killed it, and then, for good measure, decided to kill a goat as well. She wrote that the dog was "untrainable" and that she "hated that dog." She proudly described this impulsive act of killing a family pet without consulting with her family and in an inhumane manner as an illustration of her willingness to deal with things that are "difficult, messy, and ugly." But her first response to the Guardian story was to call it "fake news," then to defend herself by claiming that the dog was "a working dog and not a puppy. It was a dog that was extremely dangerous." ...

May 5, 2024 · 2 min

If embryos are babies, then in-vitro fertilization is immoral

Alabama and the GOP are discovering what this blog pointed out 15 years ago--if you're going to adopt a policy that embryos are full bearers of moral personhood, then you can't allow in-vitro fertilization (IVF). From my five-part debate with Vocab Malone about abortion in 2009: Once the zygote becomes a blastocyst, it forms into an outer layer of cells, which later becomes the placenta, and an inner cell mass of pluripotent embryonic stem cells, each of which is capable of differentiating into any kind of human cell. Only after this stage does the blastocyst implant in the wall of the uterus, about a week after fertilization, and begin taking nutrients directly from the blood of the mother--a dependency that can itself be of moral significance, as Judith Jarvis Thomson's violinist argument shows. As already mentioned above, a great many fertilized ova do not reach this stage. Further, the percentages of implant failure are higher for in vitro fertilization (IVF), a procedure which Vocab's criteria would have to declare unethical, even though it is the only way that many couples can have their own biological offspring. ...

February 29, 2024 · 3 min

Books read in 2023

 Not much blogging going on here still, but here's my annual list of books read for 2023. Angel Au-Yeung and David Jeans, Wonder Boy: Tony Hsieh, Zappos, and the Myth of Happiness in Silicon ValleyIsaac Butler, The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act (2022)Cory Doctorow, Red Team Blues (fiction)David Edmonds, Parfit: A Philosopher and His Mission to Save MoralityZeke Faux, Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering FallKevin Fedarko, The Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon (2013)Roger Friedland and Harold Zellman, The Fellowship: The Untold Story of Frank Lloyd Wright & The Taliesin Fellowship (2006)James Gleick, The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood (2011)Penn Jillette, Random (2022) (fiction)Mark Holloway, Utopian Communities in America, 1680-1880 (1966, 2nd edition, 1st edition was titled Heavens on Earth)Claire Hughes Johnson, Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building (2022)R.A. Lafferty, The Best of R.A. Lafferty (2019) (fiction)Kevin M. Levin, Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War's Most Persistent Myth (2019)Michael Lewis, Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New TycoonShane Murphy, John Hance: The Life, Lies, and Legend of Grand Canyon's Greatest Storyteller (2020)Erik Reece, Utopia Drive: A Road Trip Through America's Most Radical Idea (2016)Rudy Rucker and Bruce Sterling, Transreal Cyberpunk (2016) (fiction)Chris A. Rutkowski, Canada's UFOs Declassified (2022)Christa Sadler, editor, There's This River... Grand Canyon Boatman Stories (2nd ed., 2006)Bruce Schneier, A Hacker's Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society's Rules, and How to Bend them BackWill Sommer, Trust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged AmericaKatherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism (2019)Leonie Swann, Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story (2005) (fiction)Stephen Vladeck, The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the RepublicSimon Winchester, Knowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge: From Ancient Wisdom to Modern MagicTom Zoellner, Rim to River: Looking into the Heart of ArizonaFinal Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States CapitolTop for 2023 published in 2023: Edmonds, Zoellner, Sommer, Vladeck, Faux; other top reads for the year: Swann, Stewart, Friedland & Zellman, Edmonds, Lafferty, Holloway A few planned reads for 2024 (already in progress): G.A. Cohen, Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality (1995)John Ferris, Behind the Enigma: The Authorised History of GCHQ, Britain's Secret Cyber-Intelligence Agency (2020)Chris Rodda, Liars for Jesus: The Religious Right's Alternate Version of American History, vol. 2 (2016)Peter H. Wilson, The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe's History (2017) The Economist posted this chart of number of books read this year from a YouGov/Economist survey: (Previously: 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005.)  ...

January 1, 2024 · 3 min

A short conversation with ChatGPT about the Grand Canyon

  ChatGPT does fairly well with this, though its selected points don't include any of the more obscure points of interest, it's skewed to the popular highlights. Its claim that there weren't any historic crossings is pretty odd. What are some of the most beautiful and interesting locations in the Grand Canyon along the Colorado River?ChatGPTThe Grand Canyon offers numerous beautiful and interesting locations along the Colorado River. Here are some notable ones: ...

July 7, 2023 · 10 min

AI vs. CEOs on Destroying the World

 After seeing a CNN headline "Exclusive: 42% of CEOs say AI could destroy humanity in five to ten years," I thought it was only fair to get an AI opinion in response. Turns out, 50% of AIs consulted said CEOs of large corporations could destroy the world in five to ten years. Google Bard: How likely is it that CEOs of large corporations will destroy the world in the next five to ten years? The likelihood of CEOs of large corporations destroying the world in the next five to ten years is low, but not impossible. The biggest threats to the planet come from climate change, pollution, and resource depletion. These are all problems that are caused by the activities of large corporations, and if they are not addressed, they could lead to catastrophic consequences.However, there are also many CEOs who are committed to sustainability and environmental protection. These CEOs are working to develop new technologies, products, and practices that will help to reduce our impact on the planet. If these efforts are successful, it is possible to avoid the worst-case scenarios and create a more sustainable future. ...

June 15, 2023 · 3 min
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