Gold Bar Bob convicted (Update: Jonathan Turley says DC pols turned their backs on Bob because his type of corruption was so gauche)

I was away today, and just saw this good news:

Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez guilty on all charges in federal corruption trial

Unlike the recent trial of another politician, Menendez was actually guilty of a crime (s): selling his office, and accepting bribes to influence foreign policy. Further, the man was a crook while he was mayor of Union City from 1986-1992, and continued wallowing in graft for the next three years as he made his way up the Jersey Democrqat political machine. Yes, he was just following a time-honored tradition of New Jersey pols, but stashing gold bars in shoes in the closet and hundreds of thousands of cash in his wife’s own closet(s) was beyond the pale, even for the Garden State. Or so it was declared, once he got caught.

Just to balance things out, on the west coast, the Menendez brothers are claiming that newly discovered evidence entitles them to a new trial after 30 years of incarceration. Two for one, so to speak.

Turley:

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said Washington elites appear to look down upon Democratic New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez for his “prehistoric” corruption style.

A jury found Menendez guilty of all 16 counts of federal corruption and bribery charges relating to the Egyptian government and three New Jersey businessmen paying him thousands of dollars in cash and gold bars in exchange for information. Turley said the senator’s form of corruption is old-school, as opposed to modern corruption, which often takes the form of influence-peddling.

“His form of corruption views in the beltway as virtually prehistoric,” Turley said Tuesday. “I mean, the idea of getting envelopes filled with cash and cars is really sort of Capone-era corruption stuff. I mean, in some ways, some people have contempt just for the lack of sophistication. That’s not how corruption works anymore… Corruption is influence-peddling, like we’ve seen in the Hunter Biden case, where you have all of these rather curious and dubious positions with millions of dollars being passed through accounts. This is really something that Washington has long ago turned its back on.

Riverside NoPo sale reported

135 Lancer Road came on the market May 31st @$1.250 million, was off the market 10 days later, and closed today at $1.465. That’s pretty much what these 60s houses on a former farm, then golf driving range are going for, so no surprise here.

But … gosh.

NYC buyers.

If you haven't read it, it's on sale cheap today: $7.45

PRIME DAY DEAL: From J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.

Attention campers: this one may be a little too rustic for the Bloomingdale's set, but it's approaching a Filene's Basement price

Creamer Hill Road, 82 acres, one house and nine building lots, has cut its price from $39,500,000 to a mere $24,750,000.

The shadow president is now running the country

A friend of Glenn Reynolds predicted this yesterday:

Earlier today, Trump called for RFK to get Secret Service protection, and a friend messaged me: “Haha, when they do that, our crazy orange former president official becomes shadow chief executive. Making the common sense calls the Biden admin can’t quite manage.”

And later today, they did that, with Sec. Mayorkas announcing that RFK will get Secret Service protection. To which my friend comments: “Prediction: Here through Jan 20  will be the first six months of the second Trump admin.”

What makes Biden look so weak in this situation (as in all other matters) is that he has previously denied six different requests for such protection for his own political purposes. Certainly, the assassination attempt forced his hand, but his handlers must have known as the shots still echoed that, politically they had to give Kennedy protection immediately, and had they acted swiftly, they’d have come through unscathed. Instead, they hemmed and hawed until Trump demanded that they act, and then their reversal made it appear that they were bowing to Trump’s will; bad optics.

John Fund, National Review:

>>>

A Kennedy aide told me that the campaign has already spent $3 million on private security that accompanies Kennedy everywhere he goes. I asked why RFK didn’t have Secret Service protection despite his family history (his uncle, John F. Kennedy, and his father, Robert F. Kennedy, were assassinated).

I got a stunning answer. The Biden Department of Homeland Security has six times rejected requests from the Kennedy campaign to provide such protection. Ironically, it was RFK’s death in 1968 that led the Secret Service to expand its protective coverage to leading presidential candidates. Some Kennedy advisers believe that Biden is worried enough about Kennedy’s support in key swing states as to be satisfied that Kennedy has to allocate millions in scarce campaign dollars to security.

But as the shooting at former president Trump’s latest rally in Pennsylvania has just proven, American politics can be suddenly volatile. Newsweek reports that 775 pages of documents obtained by the Freedom of Information Act detail 34 instances of direct threats and bizarre rants directed at RFK Jr. by various entities and individuals. One promised, on social media, to “kill rfk jr lawfully on USA soil. Bullets right into the head,” while another wrote, “RFK is not immune from a 7.62 caliber bullet.”

Kennedy’s lawyers have sent six letters to U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas formally requesting protection, to no avail. Last month, cousin of RFK Jr. and former House member Patrick Kennedy weighed in with his own request: “I struggle to understand the administration’s persistent refusal to grant Secret Service protection to a presidential candidate deemed by the Secret Service itself to be at elevated risk.”

Even Democrats are starting to question the Biden administration’s preposterous refusal. Colorado governor Jared Polis and Arizona representative Ruben Gallego have demanded protection for Kennedy.

So too have some Republicans. Ari Fleischer, a former White House spokesman for President George W. Bush, says the Biden administration should have provided Secret Service protection to Kennedy “a long time ago.”

Thomas Balcerski, a presidential historian at Eastern Connecticut State University, says the Biden refusal looks both shortsighted and petty: “Giving Kennedy protection would give him political currency. The speculation is that Biden doesn’t want that.”

If that’s true, sadly, it wouldn’t be the first time that our cognitively failing, peevish, and narcissistic president has lashed out at his political adversaries. The attempted assassination of another presidential candidate, one expects, should be enough to alert the president to his folly.

Elizabeth Warren, eat your heart out: J.D. Vance is married to a REAL American Indian.

Well, Indian-American, but that’s still closer to a tipi than Elizabeth’s ever been.

Usha Vance, née Chilukuri, born in 1986, was raised in San Diego, California, and attended Yale Law School, where she met the future Ohio senator, according to a report from the New York Times.

“I coulda been a contenda, if I wasn’t a pretenda”

A harbinger?

I saw someone post the same Amazon search auto-fills and thought I’d try it myself. I used a fresh third-party browser install and from behind my VPN so none of my previous Amazon history would influence the results.

When Amazon’s own Prime Day comes in seventh behind Trump stuff, just the days before the big annual Prime Day sale begins, you know there’s something up.

Posted at 4:50 pm by Stephen Green

Pending

(Prices shown are asking price; the short time on market for these four suggests that some or all will be selling for more than ask)

50 Sumner Road, $4.995 million, 11 days

You can find a discussion and your comments on this property in my July 1st column, here.

Woodside

3 Woodside Drive, $3.995 million, 19 days

silver beech

6 Silver Beech Road, Riverside NoPo, $1.275 million, 16 days

Rainbow Drive

5 Rainbow Drive, Riverside NoPo, $1.695 million, 24 days.

Final prices reported from Riverside

68 Willowmere Circle, full price, $3.895 million, 10 days

dawn harbor

14 Dawn Harbor Lane, full price, $8.495 million, 10 days.

meyer place

11 Meyer Place, $3.090 million got, $3.135 asked; 23 days.

highgate road

10 Highgate Road, land sale, $2.7 million, 718 days.

I showed this property to clients back in 2009 or 2010, and they almost bit; the house was certainly very livable, and could have been renovated at not too much expense, but even then its value was a land, and they passed. Too bad — they ended up settling for something not, in my opinion, as nice in another town.

It's J.D. Vance, and that's fine with me, though I'm sure there'll be howls on the right. (UPDATED)

Trump’s announced his pick.

Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy showed a compassionate understanding of the drug problem that’s trapped half the population of rural America (up in Maine, as well as his old Kentucky home) balanced by admiration for the other half who, like Vance himself, persevere. The book’s a fine read, and before his critics tear him apart, they should read it (and I don’t mean viewing the Ron Howard TV adaptation, that missed the whole point of the book).

Just read this after writing the above, and, remembering that the mark of a genius is a man who agrees with you, here’s HOTAIR’s managing editor and resident genius, Ed Morrissey, weighing on on the pick:

At 39, Vance will be one of the youngest candidates ever on a national presidential ticket. He only has one partial term as Senator under his belt; his direct opponent, Kamala Harris, had only one incomplete term in the Senate as well when Joe Biden picked her as a running mate. Vance authored Hillbilly Elegy, a book that resonated among Trump's conservo-populist base, and has been a tireless ally for the former and likely future president.

Vance will certainly provide youth and vigor on the campaign trail. He will also be the only veteran on either ticket, and a combat veteran at that in Iraq as a military journalist. He has proven himself articulate on the stump as well as on the page, and has been a promising bench member since joining the Senate less than two years ago. 

The surprising non-surprise comes from the events of the last couple of days, and perhaps since the debate. Trump had already signaled that his strategy was shifting to woo people outside the tent rather than just a base turnout strategy after Biden bombed so badly less than three weeks ago. The question was whether that strategic shift would also impact his selection of running mate, choosing someone who could broaden the appeal rather than excite the base.

Now we have our answer, and a good look at what Trump plans to do. He has already told Salena Zito that he threw out his red-meat acceptance speech for Thursday in favor of a more positive, conciliatory speech to promote unity. We can expect that to continue past the convention too, especially since Biden seems incapable of meeting the moment effectively. 

By choosing Vance as his running mate, though, Trump can keep his base happy and fired up. Plus, it's been clear since Trump's acrimonious split with Mike Pence that he would almost certainly not use the pick to elevate the establishment faction of the GOP again. He wants a partner he can trust, plus someone who can carry on the MAGA agenda and base in case he can't finish the term, and/or into the future. This allows Trump to expand his appeal rather than changing his entire approach. And he can also ask Vance to do some of the rhetorical heavy lifting on the MAGA agenda with certified credibility while Trump himself focuses on conciliation and national leadership.

That's a smart strategy. It's not the only smart strategy that was available to Trump, but it's a rational choice, and not one likely to get much second-guessing this week.