IN FURTHERANCE OF LIES: Former President Donald Trump is expected to appear in federal court in Washington this afternoon for arraignment on his third criminal indictment this year.

  Trump and his lawyers are already basing a defense against charges that he tried to illegally overturn the 2020 election on his right to free speech. Basically, they’re saying all he did was claim there was fraud, and that the election was rigged. Trump’s defense lawyer John Lauro said on CBS, “What the government would have to prove in this case, beyond a reasonable doubt, is that speech is not protected by the First Amendment, and they’ll never be able to do that.”

  But Trump’s own former attorney general, Bill Barr, said last night on CNN, “Free speech doesn’t give you the right to engage in a fraudulent conspiracy.”

  The unabashed and unashamed Trump is making it a fight about democracy itself. “If these illegal persecutions succeed, if they’re allowed to set fire to the law, then it will not stop with me. Their grip will close even tighter around YOU,” He wrote to supporters. “It’s not just my freedom on the line, but yours as well — and I will NEVER let them take it from you.”

  The indictment charges that Trump and so far unindicted co-conspirators made “knowingly false claims appear legitimate,” but also committed acts in furtherance of the lies, “discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results.” The actions that went beyond free speech included organizing unauthorized slates of electors in seven states to vote for Trump.

  A key witness could end up being former Vice President Mike Pence, who was pressured by Trump and his allies to refuse certification of the electoral college vote without constitutional power to do so. Pence told reporters yesterday that “Anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States.”

  In a separate interview on Fox News, Pence said, “It wasn’t just that they asked for a pause. The President specifically asked me, and his gaggle of crackpot lawyers asked me to literally reject the vote, essentially to overturn the election.”

DOWNGRADE: The White House is reeling after the announcement this week that the US government credit rating has been downgraded. Any downgrade can cost the government hundreds of millions in higher interest payments.

  Following a successful effort to head off a government shutdown in a budget fight with the Republicans, the Biden administration was feeling pretty good.

  But analysts at Fitch Ratings were still concerned about the ever-increasing national debt in the midst of spending increases and tax cuts. 

  Long term federal debt is now more than $31 trillion and Congress has yet to solve the funding crisis for Social Security and Medicare, both of which could be subject to mandatory cuts by the turn of the next decade.  

THE ANTI-WOKE. The board of the governing district that incudes Florida’s Disneyworld, which has been taken over by appointees of Gov. Ron DeSantis, voted to get rid of all of its diversity, equity and inclusion programs. 

  A statement from the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District says that the policies of Disney’ Reedy Creek Improvement District’s “implemented hiring and contracting programs that discriminated against Americans based on gender and race, costing taxpayers millions of dollars.”

  Gov. DeSantis, who’s at war with Disney, has voted to get rid of “woke” social policies. The theory is that policies designed to vanquish racism are themselves racist.

 The statement from the tourism district goes on to say that “The so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives were advanced during the tenure of the previous board and they were illegal and simply un-American.” 

HORROR MOVIE: A man from Klamath Falls, Oregon is under arrest after a woman he had locked in a cinderblock cell in his garage managed to punch her way out and escape. Police say she likely saved other women by alerting them to a man they now suspect in sexual assaults in at least four more states.

  Investigators say Negasi Zuberi posed as an undercover police officer when he kidnapped the woman in Seattle then drove hundreds of miles to his home in Klamath Falls and locked her in the garage cell. They say she beat her hands bloody breaking down the door. 

  “This woman was kidnapped, chained, sexually assaulted, and locked in a cinderblock cell,” Stephanie Shark, the assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s Portland field office, said in a news release. “Her quick thinking and will to survive may have saved other women from a similar nightmare.”

THE SPIN RACK: Robert Bowers, the gunman who killed 11 worshipers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in October 2018, was sentenced to death yesterday by a federal jury. Before the shooting, Bowers had posted on social media about preserving the white race. — A body was found yesterday entangled in the string of orange buoys Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ordered to be installed in the Rio Grande to block migrants from crossing the river. — Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his wife Sophie Grégoire announced that they have separated after 18 years of marriage. Together with their children ages 9, 14, and 15, they have always presented an image of family wholesomeness. Trudeau has been Prime Minister since 2015. — Following a military coup that toppled the elected government of Niger, the US has ordered the evacuation of all non-essential personnel in the American embassy over there. 

BELOW THE FOLD: Pop singer Taylor Swift gave each of the truck drivers on her Eras Tour a $100,000 tip.  Her promoters say she has doled out a total $55 million in tips to everyone from dancers and riggers to sound technicians and caterers who’ve worked the tour that has raked in a billion dollars.

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