‘Breathtaking.’ That’s how CNN describes the fourth round of criminal charges filed against Donald Trump this year—late last night, in Fulton County, Georgia …
■ … where the state’s using a law normally used against mobsters to prosecute Trump for efforts to overturn his 2020 loss in Georgia.
■ You can read the full 98-page indictment here …
■ … or The New York Times’ annotated version here (gift link, courtesy of Chicago Public Square supporters).
■ Public Notice: It explains that Trump’s effort to overturn his loss began before he lost.
■ Forbes: Here are the crimes he’s been charged with and the prison sentences they carry.
■ They can be easier to prove than an ordinary conspiracy case, which could help prosecutors flip his associates …
■ … who, in this case, include 18 other defendants and 30 unindicted co-conspirators.
■ Politico’s winning headline: “Trump’s midnight pain from Georgia.”
■ The Associated Press: “This may be the last of the Trump indictments, but it was the big one.”
■ Columnist Jonathan Chait: “Maybe, just maybe, the reason Trump keeps getting indicted for crimes is not that the criminal justice system is in the grips of a vast liberal conspiracy but that he is, in fact, a criminal?”
■ Time’s Philip Elliott: Republican voters considering Trump for president again now must consider “whether someone in the clink can also have the nuclear codes or have visiting hours limited by local wardens. This is no longer some academic exercise.”
■ Rex Huppke at USA Today: “A jailed Trump would present major merchandising opportunities.”
■ But the apparently errant premature web publication of the charges gives Trump’s lawyers a stick.
■ The Onion offers a satiric—but not entirely false—rundown of “Everything Trump Did In Georgia To Try To Overturn The 2020 Election.”
‘People around the world are watching.’ In a landmark Montana case, a judge has ruled in favor of 16 young people who complained the state violated their right to a clean environment by promoting the use of fossil fuels.
■ It’s the first time a U.S. court has ruled against a government for violating a constitutional right based on climate change.
■ Young Hawaiians are following a similar path.
■ As cadaver dogs scoured wildfire-ravaged Lahaina, Hawaii, for victims, officials planned to begin releasing the names of the dead.
■ The latest assault of rainy weather inflicted a fresh round of pain on Chicago.
■ At The Nib, cartoonist Tom Tomorrow offers a glimpse in six panels of “Future Schlock,” including these two:
■ Asked to explain, the mayor descended into doubletalk.
■ Arwady to Ch. 5, on getting fired—not by the mayor, but by the mayor’s chief of staff: “What really was disturbing to me is I said, ‘Let’s talk timeline,’ and he said, ‘It’s effective immediately.’”
■ A Sun-Times editorial: It looks like “petty payback on behalf of the Chicago Teachers Union, which clashed with Arwady over a return to in-person schooling amid the pandemic.”
‘Anxious’ for answers. Kansas’ governor is among those awaiting an explanation for a widely condemned police raid on a small-town newspaper’s offices and its owners’ home …
■ … a law enforcement action that the AP explains is “very rare.”
■ Want to support the Marion County Record? Buy a subscription—print or digital. (They’re cheap. Get one for a friend, too.)
TV trouble. For the first time ever, broadcast and cable—a.k.a. “linear”—TV viewing last month accounted for less than half of all U.S. TV usage.
■ Kings of the nonlinear hill? YouTube and the long-running legal dramedy Suits.
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■ Thanks. Marj Halperin made this edition better.