Trump World:   Donald Trump’s company was found guilty yesterday in a New York State court of 17 counts of tax evasion and fraud in a stunning rebuke to the real estate empire operated by the former president of the United States.

  Yesterday also, Chairman Benny Thompson of the House January 6^th committee said he expects to send criminal referrals to the Justice Department. He did not list any names, but Trump could be one of them. 

  In the trial of Trump’s company, the former president himself was never indicted, but prosecutors salted his name throughout the trial, telling jurors that he had approved perks like free apartments, luxury cars, and school tuition on which no tax was paid by the employees who received them. They accused Trump of “explicitly sanctioning tax fraud.”

  The core evidence for the conviction was provided by former Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg, who pleaded guilty in exchange for his testimony. The company issued a statement saying, “The notion that a company could be held responsible for an employee’s actions, to benefit themselves, on their own personal tax returns is simply preposterous.” 

  Weisselberg was not the only employee to receive untaxed perks.

  Although an embarrassment, the guilty verdict is not a death sentence for the Trump Company, which hauls in hundreds of millions of dollars a year. The maximum penalty is $1.62 million and the company spent more than that defending itself.  

  In reference to the criminal referrals from the January 6^th Committee, Thompson said, “There’s a general agreement we will do some referrals, but we’ve got to get there. We’re not there yet.” 

Georgia On My Mind: Georgia Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock won re-election by a hair yesterday in the runoff vote over Republican Herschel Walker. 

  The margin was just 1 percent.

   Walker, the barely educated former football player who once said about climate change, “Don’t we have enough trees around here?”, would probably have won if he was not such a limited intellect with a messy personal life and distant relationship with truth.

  In his victory speech, Warnock told his crowd; “I want to say thank you to my mother, who is here tonight. You’ll see her in a little while. But she grew up in the 1950s in Waycross, Georgia, picking somebody else’s cotton and somebody else’s tobacco. But tonight she helped pick her youngest son to be a United States senator.”

The War Room: Ukraine carried out its third drone strike in Russian territory in two days. Yesterday’s attack blew up fuel tanks at a Russian air base while giving the Russian population a clue about the reality of the war. 

  After months of being pummeled by Russia, Ukraine’s decision to attack over the border appears to be taken out of confidence that there isn’t much worse Russia can do than it already has.

  Putin appears to be dealing with growing discontent.  Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov  has been trying to tamp down rumors of a second military draft to feed fodder to the front. 

  The Institute for the Study of War reports that, “Putin, for example, signed a law banning rallies in government buildings, universities, schools, hospitals, ports, train stations, churches, and airports—likely to suppress riots and protests among mobilized men and their families.”

The Hunter Thing: While the dust flies over Donald Trump’s call to suspend the Constitution, the rabid right is in a twist about Twitter and the Hunter Biden laptop.

  Twitter before Elon Musk is accused of burying NY Post stories about Hunter and information on the laptop computer he left in a repair shop. There was some personally embarrassing material.  But both Facebook and Twitter were leery of Post story about business links to Ukraine purportedly involving then Vice President Joe Biden.

  Texas Rep. Ronny Jackson indignantly posted, “Twitter ATTACKED our democracy. They SILENCED Americans on behalf of the Biden campaign. They CENSORED the most EXPLOSIVE story EVER about a presidential candidate.” 

  After a big buildup, Musk posted communications between Twitter officials debating whether to restrict sharing of a Post story based on information from the laptop.

  Much of  how the tech companies handled it was known and reported at the time. Facebook sent the story to third-party fact-checkers. Twitter allowed the story to reach No. 3 on the trending list before blocking it. 

  Firebrand Republicans have accused Twitter of acting in cahoots with powerful Democrats. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, for instance, tweeted that, “The #TwitterFiles have exposed corruption in the highest levels of government, FBI, and Big Tech.”

   But the files revealed by Musk and journalist Matt Taibbi show that Twitter decided on its own to limit spread of the article, without Democratic politicians, the Biden campaign, or the FBI exerting influence.

The Spin Rack: The Capitol and the Metropolitan Police departments yesterday were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for their actions during the January 6^th insurrection. The officers receiving the medals for their departments, as well as the mother of the late Officer Brian Sicknick shook the hands of Democratic leaders then ignored Republican leaders Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy. — A federal court yesterday dismissed a lawsuit accusing the Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman with responsibility for the murder of Saudi newspaper columnist Jamal Khashoggi because Salman has diplomatic immunity as a head of state.  — German authorities in raids across the country have arrested 25 people on suspicion of plotting to overthrow the government.

Below the Fold: Sal Durante, a Yankees fan who was a 19-year-old truck driver in 1961 when he caught Roger Maris’s 61^st home run, has died at age 81. 

  Durante tried to give the ball to Maris, but the slugger told him to sell it for a promised $5,000. Durante sold it, and the man who bought it gave it to Maris, who kept it until donating it to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1973.

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