Wagner Group

For the life of me, I couldn't figure out where the Wagner Group – that impressively armed mercenary organization founded, financed and led by billionaire thug Yevgeny Prigozhin and who were messing around in Ukraine for the bidding of Russian president Vladimir Putin – got its name.

"Wagner" certainly isn't Russian. But, when pronounced "Vahg-ner", it sounds more like German. Which is odd because there is a bitter history between Russians and Germans. Check World War II for reference.

I was confused, which happens often when I parse my way through world events. I am just a humble retired sports writer, after all. Figuring out earned run averages is hard enough.

A quick Google search said the origin of the name "Wagner" for the group is unknown, but it also suggested that others refer to Dmitri Utkin, a Lt. Col. in the early years of the group. Utkin used the call sign "Wagner" because he had an appreciation of German composer Richard Wagner. Interestingly enough, Adolf Hitler also had an appreciation for Wagner. And Utkin, apparently, has a passion for the Third Reich. Hmm.

Consequently, Utkin is believed to be a neo-Nazi and, as The Economist reports, he has several Nazi tattoos.

Nazis and Russians. In concert. Hohhh-kay. Wagner it is.

This is already getting more complicated than I intended, but apparently, there are reportedly some neo-Nazi units within the Wagner Group, which might help explain some of the atrocities we've seen on the Ukraine battlefield. But the UN University Center for Policy Research said the Wagner Group is not ideologically motivated (un-huh), but is rather a "network of mercenaries linked to the Russian state." Russia, laughably, denies this and said officially the Wagner Group doesn't exist.

Well, the group that doesn't exist turned on Putin yesterday and began a march on Moscow, setting into motion any number of potential outcomes. A rebellion in the works.

As an amateur military historian, the whole thing seemed really, really bizarre to me. The Wagner Group is marching down a highway, vulnerable to air attack (recall the Highway of Death in the Iraq war when US aircraft obliterated 2,700 Iraqi vehicles that were in the process of retreating), when suddenly a deal is struck between Putin and Prigozhin. The march stops. Prigozhin gets to live (for a little while, at least. Stay tuned).

Meanwhile, what of the Wagner Group, Putin's hirelings who were actually outperforming the Russian army on the Ukraine battlefield?

Ukraine is said to be starting a counteroffensive in an effort to push the Russians off Ukrainian soil. Without the Wagner Group in the field (essentially the equivalent of a corps, totaling between 20,000 to 40,000 men, many of them former prisoners who were recruited and released to fight Ukrainians. Some of them are said to be pedophiles and sex offenders, much less murderers, which might further explain some of the atrocities on the field) it could be beneficial for Ukraine and the cause for democracy. That, of course, remains to be seen.

A lot, in fact, remains to be seen. Putin has become weaker, allowing a group of rebels to advance within 120 miles of the capital. What does that say for Russian military intelligence? His manufactured war against Ukraine is already in shambles, overextending his military, which in turn has resulted in a stronger NATO alliance.

This could be revolutionary stuff.

Presidential Records Act

I don't do this often. Actually, up until this moment, I've never done it at all.

But I decided to take former President Donald Trump up on his particular plea as he stubbornly tried to explain his claim that he could retain boxes and boxes of top secret and confidential records that he stole from the White House after his term ended in January 2021.

"I can declassify them," asserted Trump. "They're mine. When I declassify them, I can do whatever I want with them according to the Presidential Records Act. You can look it up." 

Okay. So I did. I went to Google, typed in "Presidential Records Act," and this is what I found:

§2202. Ownership of Presidential records

"The United States shall reserve and retain complete ownership, possession, and control of Presidential records; and such records shall be administered in accordance with the provisions of this chapter."

That seems pretty clear cut. If you read further, there's a section describing management and custody of records. A sitting president can dispose of records, usually going through the National Archives and Records archivist, although there are specific procedures to follow with Congress. Trump said he could declassify material simply by thinking about it. That procedure is not found in the PRA.

You can see for yourself (see here). Happy reading.

Even though the PRA is United States Code, it does not carry the weight of any enforcement. That's probably why it wasn't referred to in the 37-count indictment against Trump. What does carry the weight of enforcement is the Espionage Act of 1917, particularly the section regarding the retention of classified documents. A total of 31 of the 37 counts are filed under the Espionage Act. Each count is worth 10 years in prison if Trump is found guilty of any of them.

Trump insists the PRA allows him to keep presidential documents, whether they are classified or not. Apparently, he doesn't appear to be able to read or to understand what it is he's reading when he does read. And that's why, in part, this entire sorry episode could have been avoided if he had simply returned the documents to the National Archives when NARA asked for their return. It's that simple.

But he didn't. My guess is that perhaps it has something to do with an apparently underdeveloped brain that only understands doubling down on confrontation with curious moments of projection, confession and cognitive dissonance. It's the same underachieving brain that ran the country for four years.

•   •   •

 I had another laughable moment when I read the comments of a Trumper who wondered why we don't wait for evidence anymore.

Ahem. Well, we do. The evidence is gathered by the special prosecutor and presented to a grand jury, a collection of the defendant's peers, who then vote to decide whether or not to prosecute the case. That's how it works. And that's what happened. It's the system that's the bedrock material of our country's democracy.

It's my understanding that many Republicans have not bothered to read the 37 counts because, well, why should they? It's clearly nothing more than the political persecution of "the best president we've ever had." Right?

But just in case you haven't read the 37 counts, here they are: (see here). Happy reading.

The parts that really bothered me were the ones that included words like "nuclear", "military" and "foreign countries." You know, those eyes-only words. Not the words you want to see strewn across the floor of a bathroom in Mar-a-Lago. You know Mar-a-Lago, right? It's Trump's vacation resort for Chinese spies. (See here).

This guy is reckless, careless, clueless and incredibly dangerous with our national security.

•   •   •

The 37-count indictment against Trump has ignited some elements of the GOP (GOP used to be an acronym for Grand Ol' Party. Now, in my mind, it stands for Grievance is Our Platform) to complain about a perceived two-tier justice system that offers one set of rules for Democrats and another set of rules for Republicans. 

All you have to do is look at Hillary Clinton and the missing 30,000 emails for proof. All you have to do is look at Hunter Biden and his laptop. All you have to do is look at the Biden crime family and the bribes they've accepted. (Note: Trump and his father, Fred, have been arrested three times between them. A crime family?).

Never mind that two separate attorney generals under Trump (Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr) could not find evidence to prosecute Clinton, try as they might. Never mind that the FBI is led by Trump-appointed director Christopher Wray.

Nevertheless, both the FBI and the Department of Justice are seen as complicit in maintaining this supposed two-tier system and thus many Republicans seek to defund the FBI and restructure the DOJ. Presumably in their image. All because they lost an election.

Bwa ha ha ha.

It's all rather cynical.

My theory is that Republicans are still reacting to Richard Nixon's resignation in the wake of the Watergate scandal 50 years ago. It's a moment engraved into American history and there's no expunging it and how could this happen to Republicans anyway because we don't elect criminals to high office? Surely, it can't happen again, can it?

Can it?

 

 

37 counts

A democratic society such as our own, I think, is anchored to an idealistic mooring.

By that, I mean it's a society that we truly aspire to be: honest, caring, peaceful, thoughtful, secure. As such, we gave ourselves guidelines to follow, and labeled the document the Constitution of the United States. In the government that we set up for ourselves, our elected, military and law enforcement officials take an oath to protect and preserve the Constitution in order to help us continue our pursuit of happiness as we try to make this nation a more perfect union.

They take an oath to an ideal, not to an individual.

Since perfection can never be attained (except in baseball. You can have a perfect game in baseball), our quest for national perfection is called an experiment, because the quest is ongoing. It's never ending.

That's why this week's 37-count indictment of former president Donald Trump is so shocking, even when we knew it was coming. Never in the 234 years of our government (going back to 1789, when the Constitution was adopted) have we seen this. Maybe we've been lucky in our experiment up to this point.

But the Grand Jury (not President Joe Biden, as many Republicans wrongfully insist) that indicted Trump determined that there were 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information. This means that those hundreds of boxes of the nation's secret documents (that we know of), which should never have been removed from the end of Trump's term in the White House, should be returned to the National Archives.

All Trump had to do was return them, like Biden did when it was learned he inadvertently had acquired top secret documents, or like former Vice President Mike Pence did when it was learned he, too, had inadvertently taken possession of secret documents. Oops, my bad. Here, take them back. Please.

Not Trump. For some reason, he arrogantly thinks the documents are his. So he is stubbornly keeping them. Willful retention, under the law. 

It got him an indictment ... after 18 months of pleading by the FBI and the Department of Justice to get them back. 

All this was avoidable if he had returned the documents. Instead, he is being charged under the Espionage Act of 1917. If guilty, he becomes a traitor. He's already been found liable for sexual assault, which essentially makes him a sexual predator.

We now know that at least two unauthorized persons have seen the documents, some of which include top military secrets, some of which include nuclear secrets, some of which include government secrets. It's phenomenal that this is where we are in our ideal quest for a more perfect government.

In addition to those 31 counts, there is one count of making false statements, one count of conspiracy to obstruct (with cohort Walt Nauta, who Trump ordered to move the boxes at Mar-a-Lago to hide, believe it or not, from his own lawyers. Two of his lawyers quit on the day of the indictments. He's shedding lawyers like a dog sheds fleas); one count of withholding a document; one count of corruptly concealing a document or record; one count of concealing a document in a Federal investigation, and one count of a scheme to conceal.

Sweet Jesus. And to think that this guy – already a court-approved sexual predator – is considered by his Republican base to be one of our nation's best presidents. Can you believe it?

The evidence that special prosecutor Jack Smith has discovered appears to be overwhelming: audio tapes with Trump's own voice, videotapes, testimony from nearly everybody or worked or set foot in Mar-a-Lago could be damning for Trump. 

The fact that Trump did not return the documents makes him a security threat of the highest order. It also makes him a fool with one of the lowest political IQs in national memory, if not in our national history.

And just think: there are indictments looming in Washington D.C. for Trump's actions during the Jan. 6 insurrection, as well as indictments in Georgia for his actions in meddling with the 2020 elections asking for more votes.

It's astounding that the Republican Party still bows to this guy and rushes to his defense, as if this were the ideal government of which we are seeking. As if he were above the law.

Two indictments (so far). Two impeachments. He's already a confirmed national embarrassment.

The guys

We've done this for five straight years now, but I always look forward to catching up with the guys every season for a minor league baseball game at Truist Stadium in Winston-Salem.

The first thing I noticed when we gather is that we're all still here. I do a head count just to make sure.

We are Kevin Brafford, Jim Buice, Larry Lyon, Donnie Roberts, me and Neill Caldwell (as pictured). We are all former employees of The Dispatch – sports coverage guys – who probably didn't realize it during their overlapping employments but also who were creating a strong and lasting bond while putting in obscenely long hours and driving thousands of miles across the state to bring you the news.

At least, that's how I see it.

Two of us are in our 70s, and the others are at various stages of their 60s. While I don't mean for this to be a Last Man Standing Club, it's why I do the head count. Some of us have had replacement surgeries – or need to – and some of us have had nonessential internal organs sucked out of our bodies.

The guys.

  We talk about these things while the Dash are turning a double play. We talk about getting older while a .300 hitter homers to deep left field. We talk about our aches and pains. We talk about our families, where we go on vacations, how are the grandchildren. 

We talk about sports and how many games have we seen this year while the shortstop bobbles an easy grounder.

We talk about our years at The Dispatch while some bonus baby who makes more money in a single season than any of us did in an entire career hits a weak pop fly to right.

And before you know it, we've killed four hours at the ballpark.

It's perfect.

Shortly before we leave the stadium we ask an unsuspecting stranger in the stands if he'll take our picture. He agrees to take the shot. That's the picture you see here. It's the picture you may have seen on Facebook a couple days ago. It's a good picture, fairly well composed, focusing on six guys who did their jobs, did their jobs well (there are perhaps nearly 100 press awards between all of us), did it professionally and really, really liked what we did.

These guys.

 

Making progress

It seemed like a long time in coming, but when Stewart Rhodes, the leader and Cycloptic founder of the far-right extremist Oath Keepers, was sentenced to 18 years in prison on Thursday for his seditious conspiracy role in the Jan. 6 (2021) insurrection at the Capitol, it felt like progress.

It felt like progress even though the sentence didn't seem long enough. But I guess we'll take what we can get at this point.

It felt like progress because even two years hence, this odious person has compared himself as a political prisoner in the mold of South African anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela.

Sweet Jesus.

Rhodes was convicted of seditious conspiracy. He'll be 76 years old when he completes his full sentence if he isn't pardoned by some right-wing fascist president first.

Presiding U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta certainly wasn't impressed with Rhodes' "political prisoner" claim, explaining that seditious conspiracy "is an offense against the government (and) the people of the country. You are not a political prisoner, Mr. Rhodes."

Mehta then went on: "...You, sir, present an ongoing threat and a peril to this country and to the republic and to the very fabric of this democracy."

Slowly, but inexorably, it seems, far right conspiracies, violence, and ideology are unraveling and revealing themselves for what they are. Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio and several other Not-So-Proud Boys are awaiting sentencing for their part on Jan. 6 to block the congressional confirmation of Joe Biden as President. Hundreds of other Jan. 6 rioters have been charged and convicted, already serving well-deserved jail terms.

The whole concept of overthrowing the American experiment in democratic government seems ridiculous, since we change the government every four years with elections anyway. It's our baked-in revolution. Given that, doesn't a democratically elected government have the right to defend itself from insurrection and sedition? It's kind of what the Civil War was about, right? We've already been down this road once.

The charge of seditious conspiracy, interestingly enough, dates back to the post-Civil War era in an attempt to arrest Confederates who might still keep fighting the U.S. government. It's a difficult charge to prove because it requires evidence that can convict two or more people who conspired to "overthrow, put down or destroy by force" the U.S. government, or that they plotted to use force against the authority of the government.

Sentencing Rhodes to 18 years in prison is making progress. So far, so good. Only a few hundred more convictions and sentences to go, ranging from a former ex-president found liable for sexual assault to rioters pummeling Capitol police with the poles of American flags.

When did this happen?

I haven't quite finished with weeding my gardens and topping them off with a nice, rich hardwood mulch that ultimately makes the place look like it was professionally manicured.

The weeding requires me to bend over a lot. I don't have a motorized tiller, so I break the ground with either an adze or a mattock. I'll chop a little stretch of the garden that forms a horseshoe border around the perimeter of my backyard, pick out the churned weeds, then stand up straight to catch my breath.

Ouch. That was my lower back you heard protesting there.

After a moment to recover my resolve, I walk over to the pile of mulch, take my pitchfork and load up the wheelbarrow. I don't know if they make motorized pitchforks for this particular job, but I don't have one in any case. So I do it by hand.

Then I go to the area I just weeded and throw mulch over it. Looks good. Wears me out.

This was a job that once took just a couple of days. But I'm older now. In my 70s, if you must know. I suppose I could still finish the job in a couple of days, but I've gotten to where I work for just a few hours in the cool of the morning each day instead of the heat of the afternoon. I pat myself on the back for being smart about this.

And this coming from a guy who used to play golf in 90-degree weather. But playing golf and weeding are two different things. Most times, anyway.

One thing I've noticed is that when I do relax in the afternoon, everything that used to be flexible in my body now becomes stiff as a board. And it stays that way. For days. When did that happen? I used to be loosey goosey Brucie. Now I rise up out of chairs making strange guttural noises. I walk a lot slower. I take acetaminophen. I soak in water hot enough to melt wax. My back still hurts.

Hey, I really do enjoy piddling in the garden. It's mindless stuff, but it gives me time to be mindful, if that makes sense. Look, I'm not complaining. I'm just wondering.

I guess this is all part of the inexorable slide down the hill. Muscles lose mass. Bone density decreases. It doesn't seem to matter that I still go to the gym every morning. I ride a recumbent bicycle for 90 minutes, and it's about the only time of the day I feel myself getting loose.

Then I go back to working in the garden.

 

What a week

For a moment there, a thought crossed my mind immediately after former President and pocket insurrectionist Donald Trump was found liable for sexual abuse and defamation in the civil trial brought against him by 79-year-old writer E. Jean Carroll last week.

Trump, of course, is seeking a second term as President of the United States in his continuing effort to wreck American democracy while at the same time enriching himself and trying to stay out of prison. He's not even attempting to hide his arrogant ambition. It's right there in front of our eyes for all to see. 

If you want to see.

Anyway, after he was ordered to pay Ms. Carroll nearly $5 million in damages for an incident that occurred decades ago, I wondered if he would be put through a vetting process by the Republican National Committee as primary season nears and candidates begin to bob to the surface like moldy detritus from a shipwreck.

Surely, I whispered to myself because I didn't want anyone to hear my naivety, no political party would promote a candidate for President of the United States who is a sexual abuser. What woman could actually vote for a person like this knowing how he assaults women (a fact which has now been acknowledged in court by a jury of Trump's peers)? What man who loves and respects the women in his life – his wife, his daughters, his sisters – could vote for such a malignantly flawed person like this?

Then reality hit. Ahhh, those days are gone. Those were the days, weren't they?

Trump won't be vetted, of course. Consequently, the GOP will be as liable for sexual abuse as Trump, if for no other reason than by association. It's mind boggling that Republicans continue to defend this guy.

As if things couldn't get any gloomier, Trump suddenly appeared on my TV screen in a "town hall meeting" later in the week that was hosted by a revamped CNN, now leaning a little more to the right (one CNN shareholder, billionaire John Malone, said he wanted CNN to be more like Fox. Would that be the Fox that just settled a defamation suit by Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million?). It took only 30 seconds in for Trump's lies to start flowing: that the (2020) election was rigged; that he didn't ask Georgia officials to find the votes he needed to win the state (he did ask – it's clearly on audio tape), or that the violence of Jan. 6 was the fault of then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The familiar playlist of lies is too extensive to go on.

But even more appalling was the audience, purported to be invited New Hampshire Republicans. They mocked Ms. Carroll and clapped and hooted when Trump defamed her again (he never learns) by calling her a "whack job." They hooted and cheered when he said if elected, he would pardon many of the convicted Jan. 6 rioters now serving time in prison for sedition. They cheered and clapped when he labeled moderator Kaitlin Collins as "nasty." Sheesh.

In my view, this is clearly repulsive behavior from Americans presumably raised with principles of fairness and respect for one's fellow man. Those principles were nowhere to be seen Wednesday night.

The audience reactions to Trump, in a word, were deplorable.

We live in strange times. We live in a country that takes away abortion rights when it has no business interfering with a woman's bodily autonomy (it's called control); we live in a country awash with gunfire, where you have to register for a license if you want to drive a car but where there are no effective regulations for citizens to purchase military-style weapons; we live in a country where gerrymandering and voter suppression passes for Constitutional precedent; we live in a country based on an ideal that all men are created equal, but evidence of racism and religious persecution are increasing exponentially, it seems; we live in a country where even the Supreme Court, influenced by the outrageously wealthy donor class, is ridiculously out of step with the majority of the nation.

We live in a country given Constitutional directions on which way to go by the Founding Fathers, yet we appear to be so incredibly lost. We just can't seem to find our way.