Today is Thursday, January 12, 2023. This was the day when a former president spit his venom at Special Counsel Jack Smith appointed to take him down by the Attorney General of the United States, Merrick Garland. This rant by the former demagogue appears in an online Raw Story by Brad Reed entitled “‘He’s a terrorist – his wife hates Trump!’ Former president spits new venom at special counsel.” During an appearance on Mark Levin’s show (who the hell is Mark Levin?), the psychotic known as Donald J. Trump raged at Smith, calling him a “terorrist.” He then demanded that Smith resign from the case and accused him of being unfairly biased against him. The raging bully stated without any evidence (this is his modus operandi, by now) that “The prosecutor should resign, he’s got a conflict.” What is the conflict, you might ask, and that conflict, according to the former liar-in-chief, is that Smith is allegedly a Trump hater. Also, his best friends are former Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann and others. Aren’t these grounds for dismissal, wouldn’t you say? Then the deranged Orange Fiend went on a tear, saying that Smith’s wife is a Trump hater. Dumpf even went further, stating that Smith’s sister is a Dumpf hater. Doesn’t this guy get it yet? He is hated by millions by now. This kind of whining by the resident of Mar-a-Lago should be easily dismissed as just the rantings of someone who knows he will be indicted very soon by the Justice Department. I’m glad there was very little press focus on this sad story. This pathetic person should be totally ignored until his indictment is announced.

The more salient story is the discovery of classified documents found at President Joe Biden’s private office in Washington, D.C. – and subsequently his home in Wilmington, Delaware – with the appointment of a special counsel to oversee the investigation by Garland. These files were from the Obama presidency when Biden served as Vice President. The special counsel appointed by the attorney general is Robert Hur, who has had a long career at the Justice Department.

Unlike the Dumpf situation with sensitive, classified documents ending up at Mar-a-Lago, Biden’s team was far more cooperative with investigators than Dumpf’s team was. For example, Biden’s lawyers say they notified the National Archives on the same day in November that they found there classified documents at his private office in downtown D.C. Archives officials picked up the material one day later without incident.

So far, there is no – I repeat, no – equivalence between the Dumpf investigation and this latest imbroglio in the Biden administration. As you might recall, it was Dumpf who spent months haggling with the Archives over the return of these top-secret documents. Dumpf’s team only partially complied with a June subpoena demanding the return of all documents, and his lawyers falsely asserted in a sworn affidavit – so these alleged lawyers perjured themselves while at it – that all the documents were given back. Agreeing that both cases are quite different, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe said “These cases are entirely different.”

So if you really think these cases are similar in intent, then you must be a Dumpf supporter. An online CNN article by Kevin Liptak, Phil Mattingly, Jeff Zeleny, and Arlene Saentz posits the argument that Biden’s found documents were the result of a scramble to close his White House office in the waning days of his vice presidency, not something intentional. The title of the article is “Biden’s whirlwind final days as Vice President had aides scrambling to close his White House office.”

This scrambling took place in the early days of 2017 when a new administration was coming in. At the time, Biden was keeping busy as his office was shutting down. Aides rushed to pack up his workspaces in the West Wing, the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, and at his official residence, the Naval Observatory.

Here aides were packing boxes of documents and papers late into the night, even as more material kept arriving. The White House and the now-president’s lawyers have refused to say who, precisely, packed and moved the material.

One of the found materials was a manilla folder marked “VP personal” that contained one of the classified documents that was first discovered last November by the Biden attorney which set off the chain of events, according to one person familiar with the discovery. Among the items from Biden’s time as vice president are 10 classified documents, including U.S. intelligence memorandums and briefing materials that covered topics involving Ukraine, Iran, and the United Kingdom, according to that person.

Among the materials discovered was also a memo from Biden to President Barack Obama, as well as two briefing memos preparing Biden for phone calls – one with the British prime minister, the other with Donald Tusk, the former prime minister of Poland who served as president of the European Council from 2014-2019. It’s still unclear how much of this material remains sensitive.

The packing of these documents was carried out by members of Biden’s staff, including lower-level aides and assistants who were provided boxes to store the vice president’s things. “Among the aides working in Biden’s office at the time were his chief of staff Steve Ricchetti, senior adviser Mike Donilon, and communications director Kate Bedingfield, who now all hold senior roles in Biden’s White House.”

As the second misplacing of sensitive documents besets the current occupant of the White House, what seems to be emerging is more of an accidental storing of top-secret documents rather than the intentional storage of sensitive materials as in the first instance. Again, Biden is fully cooperating with the investigation and not calling the special counsel names like the adolescent at Mar-a-Lago. Biden has not asserted that the materials all belong to him; he is also not stating that he could declassify all of the materials just by thinking about it, like the Orange fiend asininely remarked. So let’s see where the investigation of Biden’s misplaced handling of classified materials leads us.

It’s getting late here. Elliot and I were watching our new bingeable series, this time on Hulu, called Welcome to Chippendales, the series based on the founding of the male strip club Chippendales in the 1980s and its undoing years later. It tells the story of enterprising Indian immigrant Somen”Steve” Banerjee who becomes the unlikely founder of the once-popular male revue that becomes a cultural phenomenon. It’s based on a biography of the strait-laced entrepreneur written by K. Scot Macdonald and Patrick MontesDeOca called Deadly Dance: The Chippendales Murders. The series boasts a full-bodied performance by Murray Bartlett as Nick De Noia who is originally hired by Banerjee as the club’s principal choreographer. Bartlett, as you might recall, was seen in the first season of The White Lotus. When he was introduced in the second episode, I didn’t even recognize him at first. He took off his distinctive mustache which he wore in the HBO series. In the role of Banerjee, comedian Kumail Nanjiani portrays the businessman with stiff reserve who is torn between two cultures: that of avaricious, sleazy America and the more restrained, middle-class values of India. Guess which ones he eventually follows and falls off the precipice with?

My dinner with my cousins at Cafe D’Alsace was very pleasant last night. The only glitch was that I had forgotten to make a reservation before the 11th at the venue; so when 12 p.m. came, I called the restaurant immediately and spoke to someone to schedule a close-enough time to the original rendezvous time I had mentioned. I was given a 7:45 p.m. reservation, which was close enough. I did write to my cousin to mention this 15-minute discrepancy, and I received word back quickly that it was all right.

Since the restaurant was on 2nd Avenue and 87th Street, we left the apartment early, and as expected, we arrived a half hour or more before the scheduled time. So we sidled up to the bar and ordered nonalcoholic drinks from the good-looking, blond bartender. At around 7:45, the other half of our party walked in and ambled right up to us.

We were having such an engrossing conversation that I think we stayed until closing time, which was after 10. After dinner, we walked my cousins to their car parked right at front and we walked to 86th Street to take the 6 downtown to link up with the E train.

Stay safe and be well.