Thom Hartmann is a brilliant journalist who is fast to figure out the stories behind the headlines. Here, he explains why Attorney General Pam Bondi had Milwaukee County Jusge Hannah Dugan arrested and paraded her out of her courthouse in handcuffs. FBI Director Kash Patel tweeted pictures of the judge in handcuffs.

Hartmann writes that the goal was a warning to other judges:

The audience for Pam Bondi‘s performance yesterday — when federal agents swarm-raided a county judge — was not the general public. They don’t care if the story vanishes six or 12 or 24 hours into the news cycle, so long as vanishes. The real audience for their action was a very small number of people: the nation’s judges. They’ve pacified the Article I branch of government, Congress, and now they are in the process of pacifying the article III Judiciary branch. That will leave only the president in charge of the entire country under all circumstances in all ways. That is called dictatorship. Real dictatorship. Vladimir Putin style dictatorship. In fact it appears more and more every day that Putin is Trump’s mentor. If not his handler. And Trump is doing everything he can, with help from a South African billionaire, to destroy the traditional American infrastructure and nation and turn us into the newest member of the dictators club, joining Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Belarus, Hungary, and the rest of the fascist and authoritarian world. And to get there, now that they have pacified Congress, they only have to seize control of the Judiciary and then nothing except we the people will stand in their way. And they know it. First, terrorize Congress. Second, terrorize the media. Third, terrorize the judges and lawyers. (the final step in that process for them will be the Supreme Court, and if they can first terrorize the entire federal judiciary it will be much easier to terrorize the Court). And finally begin terrorizing the individual citizens until the process is complete and we are fully Russia and all dissent is suppressed. And they know that time is running out because elections are coming and their popularity is already crashing. They are at maximum power right now and it is beginning to decline. This is another reason why they are pushing so hard to frighten judges. If Trump can do this as quickly as Hitler or Putin did, it could happen very quickly, possibly even in the next few weeks. Buckle up…

Hartmann also wrote about Trump’s habit of lying:

Busted: Trump stuns Time Magazine with outlandish lies to cover up his trade deal collapse. Donald Trump has lied his entire life, but China’s President Xi is committed to not letting him get away with lying about his trade negotiations with that country. On Tuesday, Trump sat down with two TIME Magazine reporters and repeatedly lied to them, saying that he was negotiating with China and that he’d already cut “over 200” deals with other nations to resolve the trade war he declared roughly a month ago. In fact, as the reporters pointed out, he’s not inked even one single deal so far and, to make things far worse for him, China is actively using social media to tell the world that they’re not even bothering to talk with his people, must less President Xi calling Trump himself. We’ve had some terrible presidents throughout our history and some have done some terrible things; John Adams imprisoning newspaper editors, Andrew Jackson and the Trail of Tears, both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan conspiring with foreign countries to steal American elections. But lying to the press and the people on such a routine basis — over 30,000 documented lies in his first term, and daily lies now — is something new in the American experience. Democracy can’t work when a nation can’t trust its leaders to tell them the truth on issues of consequence, which appears to be exactly Trump’s (and Putin’s) goal: the destruction of our republic from the inside, just as Khrushchev predicted.

Then Hartmann wondered why some of Trump’s Wall Street pals are getting stock tips:

Are Wall Street insiders getting stock tips from Trump? And why is Apple moving their production to India instead of the US? Fox’s senior business correspondent Charles Gasparino told his viewers on Thursday that “senior Wall Street execs with ties to the White House” had informed him that they were getting tips from the Trump administration on trade talks that could (and do) swing markets. When Gasparino approached Treasury Secretary and billionaire Scott Bessent’s press team, they refused to deny the reports. Remember when Martha Stewart went to prison for six months because a doctor friend told her about the results from clinical trials of a new drug and she passed that info along to her stockbroker? Hypocrisy doesn’t begin to describe the astonishing level of corruption across this administration. Of course, they have a hell of a role model to emulate in Donald Trump. Meanwhile, Apple reports they’re considering moving their iPhone production out of China in response to Trump’s tariff threats. But are they bringing it to Texas or Kentucky? Not a chance. India is the new destination, according to news reports. So much for Eisenhower’s “patriotic American companies”; that was so 1950s. The entire concept of doing good by the country that made you rich is long dead, the victim of the Reagan Revolution’s embrace of neoliberal free trade and doctrine of putting profits above people and patriotism.

As you read here, Michael Tomasky said that Trump was taking in millions from suckers by selling his meme coins, a for-profit deal that would have shocked the nation if it had been done by Biden or any other president.

Hartmann warns about the grifting, which the Mainstream Media doesn’t seem to care much about:

While America is burning (both economically and from climate change), professional grifter Trump is making out like a bandit. Are Americans paying attention yet? Can you imagine how Republicans would have responded if President Biden had announced that he and his son Hunter were going to start selling autographed pictures of himself for a few thousand dollars each and would be running the business out of the White House? And that the top purchasers — even if they were foreign nationals — would be having a private dinner with him and get a tour of the White House? They’d be fainting in the streets, screaming in front of the cameras, and convening investigations, grand juries, and criminal prosecutions faster than a weasel in a henhouse. But when Trump announced this week that he was selling his meme coins — which are just serial-numbered digital images of Trump or his wife with no intrinsic value — and the top 220 “investors” would have dinner with him, not even one elected Republican stood up to object. This is how far the party has fallen; they’re all in on the grift, and many are looking for ways to cash in on it as apparently Marjorie Taylor Greene did when it was reported it looked like she was buying and selling stocks based on insider information.