PRISONER SWAP: The US has traded a man close to Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro for 10 Americans held in Venezuela as well as Leonard “Fat Leonard” Francis, who escaped the US after being convicted of bribing Navy officials.

  Six of the Americans were said to have been wrongfully detained.

  The US returned Alex Saab, a Maduro ally arrested in 2020 for money laundering. Also returned in the deal are 21 other Venezuelans held on a variety of charges in the US.

  “Fat Leonard” Francis was convicted in one of the biggest financial scandals in Navy history. A Malaysian defense contractor, he had pled guilty to bribing Navy officials with cash, prostitutes, luxury travel, and such specialties as “Cuban cigars, Kobe beef and Spanish suckling pig,” officials said. He cut off his tracking bracelet while on house arrest in 2022 and got away. 

ORANGE ALERT: Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court to delay considering whether he has “absolute immunity” from prosecution for actions he took while president to overturn the 2020 election. Special Counsel Jack Smith had moved for the court to take up the question immediately to speed the case toward trial in March and Trump is looking for delay — beyond the 2024 election if he can.

   The matter should be “resolved in a cautious, deliberative manner — not at breakneck speed,” Trump lawyers wrote in their brief, urging the justices not to “rush to decide the issues with reckless abandon.”  

  The March 4^th trial date, Trump lawyers wrote, “has no talismanic significance.”

  Trump’s lawyers accused Smith of political maneuvering in his request for speed. “He confuses the ‘public interest’ with the manifest partisan interest in ensuring that President Trump will be subjected to a monthslong criminal trial at the height of a presidential campaign where he is the leading candidate and the only serious opponent of the current administration,” the brief said. 

FROM THE FRONT: Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said yesterday that if Israel were to shift away from high intensity warfare to more targeted operations it would lessen the threat of regional war in the Middle East.

  Militants acting as a front for Iran have been firing missiles and drones over the Red Sea while Hezbollah and Israel have been trading fire on the northern border.

  Speaking to reporters on the aircraft carrier Gerald Ford about reducing the violence in Gaza, Austin said, “If that happens, when that happens, it’s logical that we would see some of that, you would see some reduction in activity.”

  The US also says Israel is beginning to lose respect having now killed about 20,000 Palestinian civilians, thousands of them children. The living are desperate for food and fuel, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu isn’t backing off. “Those who think we will stop are not connected to reality,” Netanyahu said. 

TEXTING: A federal judge has ordered the outgoing chief of the right wing House Freedom Caucus to allow investigators access to 1,656 text and email messages on his phone for the investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

  Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Scott Perry has been suspected of involvement in the Trump-led scheme to reverse the election. The judge found that the 1,625 messages had nothing to do with Perry’s official work and are not protected by the “speech or debate” clause that would keep them private.

DUPLICATIVE: Having just survived a vote by the board on whether she would be fired following her fumbling testimony about antisemitism on campus before Congress, Harvard President Claudine Gay is under scrutiny once more about whether she committed plagiarism in her 1997 dissertation. Gay has been cleared once of wrongdoing, but now there’s a report of two more instances of “duplicative language without appropriate attribution.”

INFORMATION WARFARE: A false story circulated online that claims Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky bought two luxury yachts with US aid money has contributed to the stall in support by Republican members of Congress.

  Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of the dumbest members of Congress, posted on Twitter/X a link to the yacht story with the statement that, “Anyone who votes to fund Ukraine is funding the most corrupt money scheme of any foreign war in our country’s history.” 

  This is the woman who once said she was “allowed” to believe QAnon conspiracy theories.

  A website founded by a former US Marine now living in Russia has fueled the phony yacht story. The BBC reports that not only did Zelensky not buy two yachts, the yachts in question have not been sold to anyone.

THE SPIN RACK: A federal judge has ordered expedited payment for two Georgia election workers the former New York mayor had accused of switching votes. The judge agreed with the two claimants that Rudy might try to stiff them. Of course, no one thinks Giuliani has the $148 million awarded, but in 30 days the women can start moving to seize Giuliani’s assets. — After a court order was lifted, workers yesterday began to dismantle the 32-foot high confederate monument in Arlington National Cemetery. The monument had been commissioned by the United Daughters of the Confederacy and was unveiled in 1914. 

BELOW THE FOLD: Police in White Settlement, Texas discovered a drunk Texas driver passed out in his car with the legless body of a man sitting in the passenger seat, believed to be a homeless pedestrian the driver had hit. Police say Nestor Luján Flores, 31, had driven 38 miles with the body next to him.

  Now … what’s the most shocking thing about this story, the body in the front seat, or that there’s still a town in Texas named “White Settlement”?

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