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Match Made in Conspiracy Heaven
The photo that conspiracy-monger Alex Jones recently posted of himself alongside Trump DOJ official Ed Martin suggested something was up, but it wasn’t clear what.
Now we may have some idea.
Jones – staring down the barrel of a total of $1.5 billion in defamation judgments for conspiracizing about the Sandy Hook school shooting – is apparently getting an assist from Martin as he tries to fight off paying up.
Martin has sent one of his notorious “letters of inquiry after request” to the lawyer of FBI agent William Aldenberg, who was among the first to respond to the shooting and won $90 million in one of the cases against Jones. In the letter, Martin suggests Aldenberg could be under criminal investigation for participating in the defamation trial of the “Infowars” host.
The letter to Aldenberg attorney Christopher Mattei is dated Sept. 15, two days after Jones posted the photo of him with Martin.
Of Martin’s many hats at DOJ, he emphasizes in the letter his role as director of the Trump DOJ’s so-called Weaponization Working Group. In plain English, this is the retribution task force that Attorney General Pam Bondi has established in response to the President Trump’s retribution executive order.
It’s not clear what the ostensible MAGA logic is for sweeping up Jones’ Sandy Hook liability in Trump’s larger retribution agenda. Jones was present at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, but was never charged in connection with the attack. A then-Infowars associate, Owen Shroyer, was sentenced in 2023 to 60 days in jail for breaching the restricted area around the Capitol.
The accusation that Martin freely throws around in the letter is that Aldenberg benefited personally from his involvement in the Jones case and therefore may have broken the law. Martin warns:
As you may know, there are criminal laws protecting the citizens from actions by government employees who may be acting for personal benefit. I encourage you to review those.
Martin asked Mattei to keep the letter confidential. “I do not wish to litigate this in the media,” he wrote. But Jones posted the letter on X yesterday.
Mattei blasted Martin for the letter and defended the Sandy Hook families, in a statement to ABC News: “In his last gasps, Jones is once again harassing them, only now with the corrupt complicity of at least one DOJ official. It’s as disgusting as it is pathetic, and we will not stand for it.”
Didn’t See This Coming: Trump Makes U-Turn On Ukraine?
European diplomats are scurrying to make sense of President Trump’s apparent reversal on the terms of a Ukraine peace deal. In a social media post, Trump sharply departed from his long insistence that Ukraine will have to give up territory lost to Russia.
“After getting to know and fully understand the Ukraine/Russia Military and Economic situation and, after seeing the Economic trouble it is causing Russia, I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form,” Trump said in the lengthy post.
As significant as the shift in language is, Trump’s reliability remained very much in question, Politico reported:
EU officials trying to make sense of the apparent shift were caught between elation and skepticism, pointing out that Trump frequently changes his position — and may well do so again after a persuasive call with another leader, a reality that has made it all the more difficult for leaders to craft a response to the ongoing war and recent provocations from Moscow in European airspace far away from Ukraine.
‘Your Countries Are Going to Hell’
A glimpse of how cringey Trump’s authoritarianism can be when displayed on the world stage:
Absurdity of the Day: UNGA Edition
French President Emmanuel Macron called President Donald Trump after getting stuck on the wrong side of the barricades for Trump’s motorcade during the UN General Assembly:
A Cruel Demonstration of Bad Faith
Eleven West African nationals deported by the U.S. to Ghana were sent to their home countries over the weekend despite concerns they may face persecution, their lawyer told a court in Ghana on Tuesday.
It appears to be a work-around to the U.S. law that bans chain refoulement, the practice of using a middleman country to transfer migrants to their home countries when the U.S. is barred by courts from doing so directly. In this instance, the Trump administration has told at least one court that Ghana made assurances it would not engage in this practice, but demurred that it has no control over what Ghana does or recourse if Ghana reneges on its assurances.
Too Much Cringe to Take
Ben Terris on Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski, the dynamic duo running DHS, among other alleged extracurricular activities.
Routh Convicted in Trump Assassination Attempt
Ryan Routh was convicted for his 2024 attempt to kill Donald Trump at a Florida golf course where the then-candidate was playing. A federal jury in Florida found Routh guilty on all five charged counts in a case presided over by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon.
ICYMI
TPM’s Josh Kovensky: Experts Watch in Horror As Trump Admin Hides Record of Right-Wing Violence
PBS To Shut Down in New Jersey
Facing a cutoff in government funding, New Jersey PBS, the state’s only public television station, announced it will cease operations next year.
Good Read
In a delightfully acerbic and self-aware piece, Caitlin Flanagan tackles RushTok: This Isn’t Dubai; It’s Tuscaloosa.
Kimmel Returns To Public Airwaves
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