Classified: The Justice Department said in a court filing last night that Donald Trump had falsely claimed that all the sensitive documents in his possession were returned to the government before the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago found more.

  The filing was in regard to Trump’s demand to have an independent “special master” review the documents taken by the FBI. The Justice Department’s filing included pictures of documents marked “Secret//SCI” and “Top Secret//SCI.” 

  The filing also said that agents had found classified documents in desks inside Trump’s office as well as more than 100 classified documents in 13 boxes or containers in the residence.

  Possibly anticipating criminal indictment, Trump has hired a high-profile lawyer to handle the criminal investigation into his handling of the secret documents.

  The lawyer, Christopher Kise, is a former Florida solicitor general who has won four cases before the US Supreme Court and worked as a transition adviser for Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor. Trump is reported to have trouble hiring lawyers because he has a history of not paying and insists on running the legal show.

The Obit Page: Mikhail Gorbachev, whose engagement with the West ended the Cold War and lifted the Iron Curtain, but who also accidentally oversaw the dissolution of the Soviet Union, has died in Moscow at age 91. 

  Partly by accident, but also by intention, he was one of the most influential leaders of the 20^thCentury. The Soviet Union’s command economy left the basics of life scarce, with grocery shelves gap toothed. Gorbachev said, “I began these reforms and my guiding stars were freedom and democracy without bloodshed so the people would cease to be a herd led by a shepherd, they would become citizens.”

  He was the man with the iconic port wine mark at the top of his bald head, the subject of cartoonists all over the world. His policies of perestroika and glasnost, economic reorganization and open government, made the Soviet Union part of the world economy while also exposing the corruption of the satellite states from the Baltics to the Balkans, Ukraine among them, that eventually broke away and established their independence.

  Gorbachev led the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1991, resigning after surviving a failed coup.

  Leaders who loved the old Soviet Union, current president Vladimir Putin among them, have reviled Gorbachev as a disaster for Russia. Some had called for him to be put on trial. Putin, a veteran of the KGB secret police, called the collapse of the Soviet Union the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” His seizure of the Crimean peninsula and invasion of Ukraine are attempts to take back some of what Gorbachev lost.

Water, Water: Jackson, Mississippi has the problem of “Water, water everywhere nor any drop to drink.”

  After flooding disabled the city’s water system, the more than 150,000 residents of the state’s capital are without drinkable tap water. They can’t use it to brush their teeth or shower. Some don’t have water at all, even to flush toilets. Schools have closed and gone to remote teaching.

  People waited in cars lined up for miles to be issued a single case of bottled water.

  “Until it is fixed, it means we do not have reliable running water at scale,” Gov. Tate Reeves said during a briefing after declaring an emergency. “It means the city cannot produce enough water to fight fires, to reliably flush toilets, and to meet other critical needs.”

  Jackson is paying the price for not dealing with a water system that’s been crumbling for years. The city’s white population has been leaving for years and at last report, the water systems in the suburbs were working just fine.

Trump World: Former President Trump is demanding a re-run of the 2020 election or to be outright declared the “rightful winner” all because of the laptop computer Hunter Biden dropped off at a repair shop in Wilmington, Delaware in April 2019 and never reclaimed.

  Trump posted on his Truth Social website, “So now it comes out, conclusively, that the FBI BURIED THE HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP STORY BEFORE THE ELECTION knowing that, if they didn’t, ‘Trump would have easily won the 2020 Presidential Election.’”

  The younger Biden’s laptop and copies of its contents got into the hands of political opponents who say it reveals Hunter’s addictions to drugs and sex, possibly involving his president father in scandal as well. The veracity of what’s been offered to the press is hard to nail down so legitimate news outlets, as well as Facebook and Twitter, were careful about it.

  Trump in his posting this week revealed a new level of desperation, saying, “This is massive FRAUD & ELECTION INTERFERENCE at a level never seen before in our Country. REMEDY: Declare the rightful winner or, and this would be the minimal solution, declare the 2020 Election irreparably compromised and have a new Election, immediately!”

 High Times: More Americans smoke weed that cigarettes, according to a new Gallup Poll. Only 11 percent of Americans say they smoke cigarettes, down from 45 percent in the 1950s. 

  Sixteen percent of Americans say they smoke marijuana, with 48 percent saying they have tried it at some point in their lives. Back in in 1969, only 4 percent of Americans said they smoked marijuana.

The Spin Rack: Taking the traditional mantle of “law and order” from the Republicans, President Biden in a speech decried right wing calls for defunding the police and the FBI. “Let me say this to my MAGA Republican friends in Congress: Don’t tell me you support law enforcement if you won’t condemn what happened on the 6th,” Biden said yesterday in Pennsylvania, referring to the January 6^th insurrection. “For God’s sake, whose side are you on?” — New York City’s Times Square officially becomes a “Gun Free” zone tomorrow.

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