Townhall published a documentary on X, formerly known as Twitter, titled “David vs. Goliath: Big Government’s War on an Amish Farmer.” The film shows big government raiding the business of a small-town Amish farmer tucked away in Virginia’s heartland. 

Samuel B. Fisher and his family farm, Golden Valley Farms, was raided unannounced in June by the Virginia Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services (VDACS) and Cumberland County sheriff’s deputy for selling meat from his 100-acre farm because the meat was not processed in a United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) facility. 

“They went through everything, house, every building, in the barn. They just raided through everything, put their nose in everything, and wanted to know every detail of everything. They went out back, trying to find all the failure they can find on a farm, which, of course, some of their stuff, which they think is wrong, is just normal stuff on a farm,” Fisher stated.

“I wasn’t on the farm at the time” of the raid that lasted four hours, Fisher added.

Townhall said the state government tagged Fisher’s walk-in freezer, placing the meat under “administrative detention.” In other words, his own meat was now under state control and no longer for sale, nor could he feed his family. 

Mindy, the farm’s officer manager, said there is “nothing illegal” about Fisher processing his own meat and eating it for his own consumption — even though the state prevented him from doing so.

“So, he decided he was gonna go and feed his family, and since he would most likely be fined for doing that, he decided to open up meat sales again. Because if he’s going to be fined, he’s going to be fined, and you might as well do it,” she said. 

“Anybody can go and raise animals for their own family to eat. That’s where I got to the point: He [the VDACS inspector] crossed the line, so I’m going to cross the line,” continued Fisher. The state “crossed the line by telling me I cannot feed my own family with this meat. So, I decided I’m going to cross the line. I’m going to sell it. And that’s why I didn’t honor the state,” he added. 

“This ain’t right,” Fished expressed. He said, “We’re going to feed our family. We’re going to feed our customers […] So, we did not honor that tag. We sold the meat, some meat, out of there [the tagged freezer], whatever customers ordered. Then, the state came back and saw what we did. They really gave me a mouthful for doing that.” 

… and then the state took Fisher to court. This led to a court-ordered seizure of all the meat. 

The state returned to the farm with U-Haul trucks and loaded all his product, which was then dumped for disposal. 

“We had all this meat. We worked hard to get it in the freezer, process it, package it, stack it in there to sell and bring income. And, here comes the state, puts everything in their truck, and takes it to the dump, pays us nothing for it, so that definitely affects our income. We do have a big struggle to pay our bills right at the moment,” Fisher said. 

The Amish farmer explained his 500 customers believed in his products because it was “fresh,” unlike “when you go to the store, you don’t know what’s in your food.” 

Fisher said big corporations that control the food supply sometimes process “partly rotten” meat dipped in chloride, as a chemical preservative, to manufacture a red, pinkish look “just like it be fresh.” He said big corporations can’t track all the animals that are butchered. 

“So, that’s why I say if you buy food from a farmer, go to that farm, ask the farmer you want to see their animals, you want to see the farm, you want to know where your food comes from. You do have the full rights. Ask for that. If you are not given it, take it as a warning,” Fisher said.

David vs. Goliath: Big Government’s War on an Amish Farmer pic.twitter.com/p5U9MmLa18

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) August 18, 2023

He once sold USDA-inspected meat, but after a customer survey, 92% of them wanted Fisher to process on the farm. He built out slaughter and processing operations to avoid his meat being tainted with chemicals at meat packing plants.  

This situation sounds similar to Oliver Anthony’s blue-collar anthem, “Rich Men North of Richmond,” in which he says, “Lord knows they all just wanna have total control.”

Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

Living through the late stages of an empire in decline, coming unhinged, flailing about in a death throes of debt, depravity and denial, is not a pleasant experience.

But, it is just the cycle of history playing out once again, with the name of the empire changed, different villains and fools, civil and international strife, and a debt default to end all debt defaults. As the chart below portrays, the existing social order, controlled and dominated by America since the beginning of the 20th Century, is rapidly hurtling towards its demise, to be swept away by a tsunami of debt default, social chaos, and global war.

That’s how Fourth Turnings roll.

I know the ignorant masses choose the ostrich method of keeping their heads buried in the sand, but that will not save them from the consequences of actions taken and not taken over the last fifty years by the political and business leaders installed by wealthy globalist psychopaths bent on controlling the world and reaping the riches from their despicable efforts.

I believe Ray Dalio‘s chart of the changing world order is accurate as to where we stand in the cycle, even though he is one of those global elitists. The beginning of the decline can be pegged to the start of the 21st Century, with the dot.com crash and 9/11 ushering in an astronomical increase in debt, money printing, and despotism, as each crisis created by debt and money printing was met with the “solution” of more debt and money printing. With interest on the national debt about to surpass $1 trillion per year and unfunded future debt obligations exceeding $200 trillion, there is no way out. The American economic system will implode in a matter of a few years.

The internal conflict since the election of Trump in 2016 and the subsequent coup, election fraud, scamdemic, and now unwarranted un-Constitutional persecution of Trump, leaves the country on the brink of civil war. I know the regime media and distracted masses scoff at the possibility of civil war, but the same was true in 1859. There are a lot of rightfully angry people in this country with a seething rage for those who have destroyed this country for their own gain. The 2024 election sure seems like a spark that could ignite this powder keg, and the 300 million weapons owned by the angry people are waiting to be put to proper use.

I believe we are already in the midst of stages 16 – Loss of Reserve Currency and 17 – Weak Leadership. The American empire initiated war in the Ukraine has set in motion the demise of the USD as the reserve currency of the world, ending its seventy seven year reign as the one and only settlement currency for global trade. Biden, the weakest, dumbest, most corrupt, illegitimate president in the history of our country, has succeeded in pushing Russia, China, India, Brazil, and now the Middle East and South American oil producers towards an economic alliance which will accelerate the demise of the USD.

Biden, as the puppet of evil globalist forces, has encouraged an invasion of our southern border by barbarian hordes, has destroyed our economy, flaunted the Constitution, and has set us on a path towards global conflict. He makes James Buchanan and Jimmy Carter look like Mount Rushmore candidates compared to his “accomplishments”. They were just ineffective and weak. He is corrupt, evil and destructive. 2024 would be the sixteenth year of this Fourth Turning, right in the wheelhouse of civil war, revolution, and global conflict.

We have entered the endgame and now it’s just a matter of how much destruction, death, and retribution will be required to achieve a new world order better than what we have today. Not winning is not an option.

Five months since the epic failure of Silicon Valley Bank – due to “a significant supervisory failure,” according to Dan Tarullo, a former Fed governor who oversaw financial regulation and supervision at the board – the man responsible for that ‘oversight’ at the San Francisco Fed is ‘retiring’.

Azher Abbasi will retire from his role as the head of supervision and credit at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco effective Oct. 31, according to an email from the bank’s spokesperson.

Abbasi, along with San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly, came under scrutiny in March following the sudden collapse of SVB and other lenders.

Those episodes revealed management shortcomings at the regional Fed outpost, which is responsible for the on-the-ground supervision of small and medium-sized banks.

But we all know what really took SVB down – ZeroHedge and Putin!!!

*SAN FRANCISCO FED’S HEAD OF BANK SUPERVISION WILL RETIRE

Someone inform this idiot https://t.co/bNhN5nCGDB

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 28, 2023

The San Francisco Fed’s supervision unit had undergone multiple personnel changes, according to people familiar with the matter.

In 2021, the branch’s head of supervision, Tracy Basinger, retired after four years in the top job and decades climbing the ranks of that function.

By contrast, her replacement, Azher Abbasi, was formerly head of audit.

It’s not entirely uncommon for supervisory heads at the regional branches to have backgrounds in other areas, and experience is required for some roles.

Abbasi’s appointment was made in consultation with the central bank’s vice chair for supervision at the time, Randy Quarles.

“The real question here is: How come the supervisors didn’t pick up on the fact that SVB had gamed the rules to take on a lot of interest-rate risk without holding an adequate amount of capital against it?” Lev Menand, an associate professor of law at Columbia University who researches money and banking, said on Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast.

“It’s a pretty obvious maneuver and not a novel one — you would think any seasoned supervisor looking at the balance sheet could pick up on this quickly.”

Bloomberg reports that Niel Willardson will join the SF Fed as interim EVP, Supervision and Credit, beginning October 1, the email says.

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

“While [AG Merrick] Garland seems incapable of imagining any crime involving the president, he has made a conclusive — if unintended — case for an impeachment inquiry.”

– Jonathan Turley

Beach boy “Joe Biden” will be well-rested when the plan for his impeachment rolls out after Labor Day. Just because you’re not hearing any news about it now, with the county fairs on all over the USA, and the pols busy scarfing corn-dogs and kissing heifers, doesn’t mean that the key players aren’t confabbing among themselves. Hey, have you noticed, you’re hardly hearing about anything else these dwindling days of summer, either? Got any idea what’s up with that war in Ukraine? Of course you don’t.

A preview for you then: Rep James Comer’s House Oversight Committee has already assembled a bundle of evidence tracking the exact ways and means of how the Biden family’s global bribery operation worked. That includes the bank records, the emails and deal memos, the chronology of meetings, the FBI documents, the phone recordings, the photos of “JB” schmoozing with Hunter’s “clients,” and the famous video of “Joe Biden” bragging onstage at the Council on Foreign Relations about how he strong-armed Ukraine President Poroshenko into firing General Prosecutor Viktor Shokin.

Next, Speaker McCarthy has to form an actual impeachment inquiry committee. (If he tries to demur, there could be a new Speaker of the House in short order.) That committee will entertain witnesses, including figures in Justice Department who have been reluctant to discuss these matters previously.

This might entail a Part B of the inquiry: the blatant obstructions of justice by DOJ officials in the long-running case on various charges against Hunter Biden, as supervised by federal attorney in Delaware, now Special Counsel, David Weiss. Mr. Weiss dawdled so strenuously for five years that he let the statute of limitations run out on the major tax evasion charges, while he ignored all the allegations of Hunter’s FARA violations in seeking money from officials of many foreign governments.

There’s reason to believe that botching that case was well-coordinated with help from the Biden family DOJ “mole,” one Alexander S. Mackler, who had served as Senator Joe Biden’s press secretary in 2007-08, was campaign manager in 2010 for the Senator’s son, Beau Biden (deceased 2015), when he ran for Delaware Attorney General, and from 2014-16 was Deputy Counsel to Veep Joe Biden. Mr. Mackler was later inserted into the Delaware US attorney’s office as a prosecutor under David Weiss, from August 2016 to May 2019, while Hunter B’s case was under investigation. Did he function as the Bidens’ consigliere?

Mr. Mackler was logged-in as a White House visitor five times after “Joe Biden” came to occupy it in 2021. Mr. Mackler is alleged to be currently serving as Chief Deputy Attorney General of Delaware (since 2019), but his name has been scrubbed by the agency’s website.

See for yourself: https://attorneygeneral.delaware.gov

Perhaps all this will be reserved for the separate impeachments of Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Wray. Bribery, racketeering, and treason may be enough for a presidential impeachment. Would the gravity of an impeachment proceeding override witnesses’ refusal to testify on the grounds of “an ongoing investigation?” How could it not, if those investigations are themselves a subject of the inquiry? Would the mainstream news media ignore the spectacle to suppress it? They can try, and then maybe we’ll get a test of how irrelevant they’ve become. The House will surely televise the proceedings. There are too many other alt.channels that will broadcast impeachment hearings, probably led by X (formerly Twitter).

All of which raises the question: will “Joe Biden” really endure this ordeal? Or will the next thirty days be his window for exiting the scene? He is, after all, a mere prop in a show directed by others. Those others would include Barack Obama, who could easily be dragged into an inquiry about the Biden family’s criminal adventures in global money-grubbbing when Joe was Veep. How is it possible that President Obama didn’t know what the Bidens were up to? (The Intel Community can’t be that incompetent.) You see how ugly this thing could get?

So far, the cabal running the “Joe Biden” show has avoided nuclear war as a distraction from what is hands-down the worst scandal in American history, way worse than Watergate.

The four absurd Trump prosecutions are all ginned-up now, but may have peaked for distraction power — months of dull procedural wrangling lie ahead.

An awful lot of rumors are pinging around lately about a new Covid-19 operation to be sprung on the public any day, with the usual kit of masks, lockdowns, and mandatory vaccinations.

Do you really think Americans will comply with another round of this malicious nonsense? Fuggeddabowdit.

*  *  *

Support his blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page

A quiet day for macro – ahead of a week chock full of ‘event risk’ signals from PCE to ISM to NFP – was dominated early on by China’s 5th try-and-fail to ignite some momentum in its stock market…

Source Bloomberg

That, as well as the new negative gamma regime (see below) prompted a giant short-squeeze at the cash open (but note no follow-through)…

Source Bloomberg

And despite the opening mess, all the majors ended the day higher with Small Caps leading the charge…

The S&P stalled 4 times at a critical CTA level (4447)…

That late-day surge was the biggest buy-program since July 27th…

Source Bloomberg

NVDA was ugly early on but we suspect the buybacks stepped in and lifted the AI angel back to pre-earnings spike resistance…

Treasuries were mixed with the long-end underperforming. All but the 30Y yield (unch) were down today. NOTE, Treasuries were bid during the Asia session and then bid again during the early US session…

Source Bloomberg

The 2Y yield fell back to pre-Powell levels today, but remains above 5.00%…

Source Bloomberg

The dollar traded in a very narrow range all day ending unch…

Source Bloomberg

Bitcoin rallied back above $26k early but then puked back below as the equity market closed…

Source Bloomberg

Gold (spot) rallied back above $1925 today – 3 week highs…

Oil prices were also higher on the day with WTI managing to get back above $80…

Finally, as SpotGamma notes, we entered into a negative gamma regime earlier this month and remain there. The expected result of this is a relatively wider range of price action, but also daily trends that tend to continue more often in one direction without retracing.

Source: SpotGamma

The market can be more difficult to read when market gamma is negative. This is partly because the occasional faceripping rally tends to bring it right back up to its resistance points, and testing into neutral territory. However, with key levels dropping, a structural path keeps reopening itself for the market to sneak down over time.

Authored by Michael Maharrey via SchiffGold.com,

Gov. Ron DeSantis issued a state of emergency for 33 Florida counties on Saturday in anticipation of Hurricane Idalia, thus activating one of the most misguided and counterproductive economic policies imaginable.

Yes, with the sweep of his pen, DeSantis banned “price gouging.”

“I have activated our Price Gouging Hotline to take complaints about extreme price increases on commodities needed to prepare for a potential storm strike,” Attorney General Ashley Moody said in a statement on Saturday.

This will make a lot of people feel better, but it won’t do anything to help the flow of goods and services in the state. In fact, it will create more problems than it solves.

People have a visceral emotional reaction to people raising prices during a disaster. But it is nothing but feelz. In fact, “price gouging” serves an important economic function. Not allowing prices to rise actually causes more harm.

But trying to explain this is like spitting into the wind. (Hurricane pun intended.)

Most people cheer price gouging statutes. After all, they are going after “greedy people” who are taking advantage of other people in difficult situations.

And you know what? Price gougers might be greedy. But that doesn’t mean prices shouldn’t go up during an emergency.

In fact, there are sound economic reasons that so-called price gouging really isn’t such a bad thing. It’s a natural function of supply and demand. Prices rise as demand goes up and supplies tighten. That’s economics 101.

Pretend you know it’s going to rain for a month straight. You would probably buy an umbrella, right? A lot of people would. And that means the price of an umbrella would go up. Now, if umbrella prices stayed really low, say because some knuckleheaded politician passed a law that said you can’t raise the price of an umbrella when the weatherman is predicting rain, you might buy one for each member of your family. But if prices spiked in response to demand, you would probably make do with one or two, leaving some umbrellas for somebody else.

Nice, right?

The rising price would also help boost supply. If umbrellas get expensive enough, some guy in a less rainy locale where there is less umbrella demand might be willing to bring in a shipment of bumbershoots. It would be worth his while to pay higher transportation costs to take advantage of the higher price. But if the knuckleheaded politician has his way, the price won’t rise and our budding umbrella entrepreneur will just stay home and sell sunglasses.

This makes sense, right?

Doesn’t matter.

No matter how much sense it makes, or how you explain it, people will get angry about price gouging. I can’t win this argument. People just react negatively to rising prices during a crisis. Muh feelz trump logic.

Every. Single. Time.

Of course, these same people will pay $12 for a beer at a baseball game. But when you ask them to pay $3 for a bottle of water before a storm, it’s a crime of epic proportions. Never mind that while people are yelling and screaming about “price gouging,” there’s nothing left on the shelf to buy. Too bad there were no price signals to direct supply and demand.

Here’s an important thing to remember. Economic reality doesn’t care about your feelings.

The problem is you can see the results of price gouging. You feel the pain of the higher prices. It’s easy to finger-point at the greedy guy.

Now, you may also feel the pain of shortages. But almost nobody understands that the anti-price gouging policy caused it. There is no obvious cause and effect. So, people just don’t get it. It’s a classic example of economist Frédéric Bastiat’s seen and unseen. Good economists consider both the obvious “seen” effects of a policy as well as the less obvious “unseen” effects.

Unfortunately, most people aren’t good economists.

Authored by Charles Kennedy via OilPrice.com,

• U.S. sanctions have crippled Venezuela’s crude oil production and exports.

• Last year, Venezuelan crude oil production hit a 50-year low of around 700,000 barrels per day.

• Analysts: If the Biden Administration further eases the sanctions and allows other Western oil companies to operate in Venezuela, the South American country could ramp up its production by around 200,000 bpd and reach about 1 million bpd in crude output by 2025.

A potential temporary relief to the U.S. sanctions against Venezuela could jumpstart the oil industry in the South American country where output has slumped to a five-decade low.    

The sanctions, imposed by the Trump Administration, have crippled Venezuela’s crude oil production and exports. But the industry in the nation sitting on the world’s largest crude oil reserves – even bigger than Saudi Arabia’s – had been in a decline for years due to mismanagement, corruption, and a lack of investment in field operations and refinery maintenance by state oil firm PDVSA.

Last year, Venezuelan crude oil production hit a 50-year low of around 700,000 barrels per day (bpd).

The first opening of the Biden Administration to Venezuela occurred at the end of last year when it eased sanctions on Venezuela to allow Chevron to resume its work in Venezuela and export the crude when access to Russian heavy crude was shut off by the sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

In November, the U.S. government granted Chevron a license to operate in Venezuela under its joint ventures with PDVSA there. Profits from the sale of Chevron’s Venezuelan-derived crude oil go towards paying down PDVSA’s debt to Chevron and will not bolster state-run PDVSA’s profits.Related: UK Households To Pay Lower Energy Bills In Q4 2023

Venezuela’s heavy crude oil is prized by U.S. Gulf Coast refiners, who, until recently, looked to Russia’s heavy grades to replace it. Last December, it was reported that several refiners were attempting to get their hands on the rare Venezuelan crude oil.

If the Biden Administration further eases the sanctions and allows other Western oil companies to operate in Venezuela, the South American country could ramp up its production by around 200,000 bpd and reach about 1 million bpd in crude output by 2025, analysts say.

Yet, for this to happen, several conditions need to be met. First, Nicolas Maduro has to agree to hold free presidential elections. Next, the Western oil companies have to be sure that the possible temporary relief in the sanctions regime would open enough of an investment window for them to invest in reviving production at Venezuelan oilfields, many of which have been sitting idled and neglected due to PDVSA’s lack of resources to operate them and the sanctions on Venezuela’s oil exports.

There could be an opening in the U.S. Administration to allow more companies – other than Chevron – to export crude oil from Venezuela.

Federal government officials in Washington are reportedly working on a draft proposal for sanctions relief to be offered to Venezuela if it organizes “free and fair” presidential elections.

The pitch focuses on letting more companies buy Venezuelan crude, Reuters reported, citing unnamed sources.

“Should Venezuela take concrete actions toward restoring democracy, leading to free and fair elections, we are prepared to provide corresponding sanctions relief,” a spokesperson for the National Security Council said, as quoted by Reuters.

If Maduro shows willingness to hold fair and free elections – something he hasn’t been keen on doing for years – Venezuela could be able to increase its oil production. Companies including Eni and Repsol, which are still owed payments by PDVSA, could also receive relief to sell Venezuelan crude.

“Venezuela could add 200,000 barrels a day by 2025 and reach 1 million barrels per day as a result of successful negotiations and new issuing of licenses,” Francisco Monaldi, a fellow in Latin American energy policy at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, told Bloomberg.

Chevron, the only Western firm currently allowed to do business with Venezuela, has already doubled its production in the country, to 135,000 bpd as of May this year compared to October 2022, just before the U.S. sanctions relief.

Chevron could begin drilling new wells in Venezuela next year and could further ramp up its output to 200,000 bpd by the end of 2024, a source with knowledge of the U.S. supermajor’s plans told Bloomberg.

Venezuela could see higher output in the near term – and the global oil market, more supply – but only if Maduro is open to holding a free and fair election.

Shares of bankrupt (former) Chinese property giant, Evergrande Group, crashed 79% on Monday, their first trading day following a suspension of more than 17 months. The stock of the embattled real estate developer – which trade in Hong Kong under what was supposed to be the “lucky” ticker 3333 – opened 87% lower and ended the day at 0.35 Hong Kong dollars. Trading had been halted since March 21, 2022, when shares were priced at HK$1.65. Evergrande was the most traded stock in Hong Kong on Monday, with about 1.85 billion shares changing hands.

Evergrande said that a meeting with creditors to discuss offshore debt restructuring has been pushed back from Monday to Sept. 26 citing various reasons for the delay, including “numerous media reports which have wholly mischaracterized the restructuring recognition under Chapter 15” of the U.S. bankruptcy code.

As reported previously, the company filed for bankruptcy protection in a New York court on Aug. 17, a technicality since the company had defaulted on its debt almost two years earlier. The company’s bonds remain frozen and do not trade in the secondary market.

Evergrande was once China’s largest real estate developer but defaulted on a number of debt obligations, leaving homeowners with unfinished homes and suppliers with unpaid bills. As Nikkei reports, the company applied for the trading suspension to be lifted on Friday evening after it said it had cleared various conditions set by the Hong Kong Exchange, including the release of financial reports.

The results for the first six months of the year were announced Sunday night, with the company reporting a net loss of 33.01 billion yuan ($4.53 billion), better than the 66.35 billion yuan loss a year ago, but still catastrophic. Then again since Evergrande is bankrupt and insolvent, it hardly matters.

The distressed developer posted long-overdue annual earnings reports for the last two years on Aug. 16, revealing a combined net loss of a record 581.94 billion yuan, a reversal from 8.07 billion yuan in net profit in 2020 prior to a crackdown by Beijing on the industry.

The company said in its Sunday night filing that its financial status is still precarious. Its total cash and cash equivalents, including restricted cash, was 13.38 billion yuan as of the end of June, while net current liabilities were 713.10 billion yuan. The company also said that “it is involved in various litigation and arbitration cases for various reasons.”

Its electric vehicle unit China Evergrande New Energy Vehicle Group on Friday night separately announced a net loss of 6.86 billion yuan for the first six months of the year, compared to a net loss of 13.36 billion yuan a year ago. Similar to its parent, the EV subsidiary’s financial position remains strained, as its cash and cash equivalents including restricted cash came to 117 million yuan as of the end of June, while its net current liabilities stood at 36.61 billion yuan.

The company also revealed that it has 9.34 billion yuan of unpaid debt and 3.59 billion yuan of overdue commercial bills, and has 48 pending litigation cases involving 10.88 billion yuan.

As part of the financial restructuring, China Evergrande Group has proposed selling part of the EV unit to NWTN (Zhejiang) Automobile, a Nasdaq-listed, Dubai-headquartered mobility product company founded by Chinese entrepreneur Alan Nan Wu.

NWTN is willing to acquire 27.5% of the enlarged share capital of Evergrande’s EV unit for HK$3.88 billion to “support [the] business recovery and growth” of Evergrande Group. The new shares will be issued at HK$0.6297 apiece, representing a 63% discount to the stock price when the agreement was signed on Aug. 14.

Evergrande Group and its major shareholders, including founder Xu Jiayin, also known as Hui Ka-yan, have also agreed to convert their loans into a total of 5.44 billion new shares, at a price of HK$3.84 a piece. The Hong Kong-listed shares of the EV unit closed at HK$1.22 on Monday.

Obama-appointed activist Judge Tanya Chutkan – who’s behind some of the most “extreme sentencing of January 6th defendants” while “openly supporting the violent Black Lives Matter riots of 2020” – has denied a request to move Donald Trump’s federal election-interference trial until after the 2024 US election.

Instead, the trial will start March 4, 2024 in what the WSJ framed as ‘seeking a balance’ between prosecutors’ request for a Jan. 2 start date, and Trump’s request to push the trial to April 2026, citing the large volume of evidence they will have to examine, as well as the historic nature of the case.

Trump is the first president in US history accused of blocking the peaceful transfer of power to his successor, which his lawyers characterized as “terra incognita.”

“Never in the history of the United States have we seen a case of this magnitude go to trial in four months, and this man’s liberty and life is at stake,” said Trump attorney John Lauro on Monday. “He deserves an adequate representation. He’s no different than any American.”

Chutkan, a US District Court judge in the District of Columbia, previously worked at a law firm that represented Fusion GPS, the company that helped orchestrate the Russia collusion hoax targeting former President Donald Trump. During her stint with Boies Schiller Flexner, the Democrat-friendly law firm also reportedly represented Clinton Cabal foot soldier Huma Abedin, the former wife of disgraced Democrat Anthony Weiner.

Special counsel Jack Smith charged Trump with four crimes on August 1st, including conspiring to defraud the U.S., obstructing an official proceeding and conspiring against the rights of voters, per the Journal.

The indictment points to actions leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump’s supporters. Trump has denied wrongdoing and accused prosecutors of pursuing him to undermine his bid to return to the White House.

One of Smith’s prosecutors, Molly Gaston, acknowledged that the discovery evidence so far amounts to 12.8 million pages, but said most of it had already been turned over to or previously reviewed by the defense. At least 25% of those pages are associated with Trump’s campaign and political-action committee, more than three million came from the U.S. Secret Service, and hundreds of thousands came from publicly available litigation, Gaston said. -WSJ

According to Gaston, grand jury transcripts, notes, exhibits and reports from interviews amount to roughly 58,000 pages, while prosecutors have assembled roughly 47,000 pages of “key documents” for Trump’s defense team, including evidence they thought Trump’s lawyers would find helpful.

“It’s essentially a road map to our case,” she said.

Back to Gaetz… more via the Epoch Times.

“Judge Tanya Chutkan’s extreme sentencing of January 6th defendants, while openly supporting the violent Black Lives Matter riots of 2020, showcases a complete disregard for her duty of impartiality and the rule of law,” Mr. Gaetz said.

He appeared to be referring to remarks the judge made in one Jan. 6-related sentencing.

“People gathered all over the country last year to protest the violent murder by the police of an unarmed man,” she said, referencing violent riots that erupted after the death of George Floyd. “To compare the actions of people protesting, mostly peacefully, for civil rights, to those of a violent mob seeking to overthrow the lawfully elected government is a false equivalency and ignores a very real danger that the January 6 riot posed to the foundation of our democracy.”

Mr. Gaetz’s resolution points to a few other cases of “open partisanship,” including the fact that the Obama-appointed district judge had donated thousands of dollars to his presidential campaign, and that during another Jan. 6-related sentencing she “lamented” that President Trump “remains free to this day.”

“Such partisan commentary by Judge Chutkan has been ongoing and calls into question her fitness as a judge and … Chutkan’s comments and activities on and off the bench violate all 5 canons of the Code of Conduct for United States Judges,” the resolution reads (pdf).

The canons are that a judge should uphold the integrity and independence of the judiciary; avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in all activities; perform the duties of the office fairly, impartially, and diligently; engage in extrajudicial activities that are consistent with the obligations of judicial office, and refrain from political activity.

“It is deeply concerning that a United States District Court judge would exhibit such blatant political bias from the bench,” he said in a press release. “Justice may be blind, but the American people are not—we see Judge Chutkan for her actions, and we rebuke them in the greatest possible sense.”

Moments ago the Treasury completed the first of Monday’s two coupon auctions (the scheduled is truncated due to this week’s economic data barrage), and it was a solid sale of 2Y paper.

The sale of $45 billion in 2Y paper stopped at a high yield of 5.024%, the first auction pricing north of 5% since July 2006. The yield, which was just over 20bps compared to last month’s 4.823%, stopped through the 5.028% When Issued, the 3rd stop through in the past 4 auctions.

The bid to cover was an impressive 2.943, the highest since April 2020 excluding January’s 2.944, and well above the recent average 2.71.

The internals were also solid, with Indirects taking down 65.01%, down from 65.45%, but also above the six-auction average of 63.03%. And with Directs awarded 20.0%, Dealers took down 14.98%, the highest since May.

Overall, this was a strong, if hardly stellar 2Y auction, and one which boosted bond market sentiment helping 10Y yields slide below 4.21% and approaching session lows of 4.20%.