The Messenger: “On Thursday morning, Trump is expected to return to New York Supreme Court for the defense’s final expert witness: New York University research professor Eli Bartov, who focuses on accounting.”

“Bartov is expected to be the second-to-last witness, and Trump himself is anticipated to be the final witness on Monday.”

“Former President Trump, if elected, would build a Cabinet and White House staff based mainly on two imperatives: pre-vetted loyalty to him and a commitment to stretch legal and governance boundaries,” Axios reports.

“Trump would fill the most powerful jobs in government with men like Stephen Miller, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio and Kash Patel — with the possible return of Steve Bannon. If Trump won in 2024, he’d turn to loyalists who share his zeal to punish critics, purge non-believers, and take controversial legal and military action.”

Tim Miller: “This is about the most dystopian article ever written. Like asking ChatGPT to write about a fantasy Trump administration cabinet that blends Nazis and celebrities in the style of 2008 Politico playbook.”

“Fulton County prosecutors could call several senior officials who served in the Trump administration and Georgia’s top elected leaders as witnesses during the trial for their election interference case,” the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.

“Among the names prosecutors have included on their almost 200-person witness list: former Vice President Mike Pence; ex-Attorney General Bill Barr; onetime Justice Department officials Jeffrey Rosen and Richard Donoghue; U.S. Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania; and Steve Bannon, the conservative provocateur and former aide to former President Donald Trump.”

“Prosecutors in the Georgia election subversion case against former President Donald Trump have officially listed former Vice President Mike Pence as one of the witnesses who could be called to testify at trial,” CNN reports.

“Pence, who has appeared before a federal grand jury as part of special counsel Jack Smith’s probe into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, has not been considered a major part of criminal proceedings in Georgia.”

“Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, two Georgia election workers who have been tormented by harassment and threats since 2020, were prepared Tuesday to confront the man they view as the chief instigator of their suffering: Rudy Giuliani,” Politico reports.

“But Giuliani was a no-show at a federal court hearing in the duo’s defamation lawsuit, prompting a lashing for his attorney by U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, who had ordered Giuliani to be present.”

“We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media… We’re going to come after you—whether it’s criminal or civilly, we’ll figure that out. But yeah, we’re putting you all on notice and Steve, this is why they hate us. This is why we’re tyrannical.”

— Trump adviser Kash Patel, in an interview with Steve Bannon, saying Donald Trump is serious about revenge.

Washington Post: “In a new court filing, prosecutors working for special counsel Jack Smith went further than in their August indictment in attempting to tie him to that day’s violence, saying they intended to introduce evidence of his other acts both before the November 2020 presidential election and subsequent alleged threats to establish his motive, intent and preparation for subverting its legitimate results.”

From the filing: “Evidence of the defendant’s post-conspiracy embrace of particularly violent and notorious rioters is admissible to establish the defendant’s motive and intent on January 6 — that he sent supporters, including groups like the Proud Boys, whom he knew were angry, and whom he now calls ‘patriots,’ to the Capitol to achieve the criminal objective of obstructing the congressional certification.”

They added: “At trial, the Government will introduce a number of public statements by the defendant in advance of the charged conspiracies, claiming that there would be fraud in the 2020 presidential election,” laying the “foundation for the defendant’s criminal efforts.”

Special Counsel Jack Smith told a federal court that he intends to introduce evidence that Donald Trump was lying about elections and voting procedures as early as 2012 as part of the prosecution’s case in the Washington, D.C. election subversion trial.

Adam Serwer: “The federal judiciary has become a battleground in a right-wing culture war that aims to turn back the clock to a time when conservative mores—around gender, sexuality, race—were unchallenged and, in some respects, unchallengeable. Many of the federal judges appointed during Trump’s presidency seem to see themselves as foot soldiers in that war, which they view as a crusade to restore the original meaning of the Constitution. Yet in practice, their rulings have proved to be little more than Trump-era right-wing punditry with cherry-picked historical citations.”

“The 2016 Trump administration was focused on quickly filling the judiciary with judges who are not just ideologically conservative but dedicated right-wing zealots. But that administration ‘didn’t have all of the chess pieces completely lined up’ to get right-wing ideologues into every open seat, Jake Faleschini, of the liberal legal-advocacy group Alliance for Justice, told me. More restrained conservative jurists filled some of those seats. Trump and his allies will be better prepared next time, he said. ‘Those chess pieces are very well lined up now.'”

Franklin Foer: “It didn’t happen all at once. Trump spent the early days of his presidency testing boundaries. He used his bully pulpit to unabashedly promote his real-estate portfolio. His properties charged the Secret Service ‘exorbitant rates’—as much as $1,185 a night, per a House Oversight Committee report—for housing agents when Trump or his family members visited. By the time Trump and his cronies left the White House, they had slowly erased any compunction, both within the Republican Party and outside it, about their corruption. They left power having compiled a playbook for exploiting public office for private gain.”

“That know-how—that confidence in their own impunity, that savvy understanding of how to profitably deal with malignant interests—will inevitably be applied to plans for a second term. If the first Trump presidency was, for the most part, an improvised exercise in petty corruption, a second would likely consist of systematic abuse of the government. There’s a term to describe the sort of regime that might emerge on the other side: a Mafia state.”

Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) told the Today Show that Donald Trump would install himself as a permanent president and refuse to leave office after the mandated two-term limit if he is reelected.

Said Cheney: “There’s no question. Absolutely. He’s already done it once… He’s already attempted to seize power, and he was stopped, thankfully, and for the good of the nation and the republic. But he said he will do it again. He’s expressed no remorse for what he did.”

“When you have a president who’s willing to go to war with the rule of law, to ignore the rulings of the courts if he doesn’t agree with them, that has the potential to unravel everything.”

— Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), talking to Rachel Maddow about Donald Trump.

McKay Coppins: “When Donald Trump first took office, he put a premium on what he called ‘central casting’ hires—people with impressive résumés who matched his image of an ideal administration official. Yes, he brought along his share of Steve Bannons and Michael Flynns. But there was also James Mattis, the decorated four-star general who took over the Defense Department, and Gary Cohn, the Goldman Sachs chief operating officer who was appointed head of the National Economic Council, and Rex Tillerson, who left one of the world’s most profitable international conglomerates to become secretary of state.”

“Trump seemed positively giddy that all of these important people were suddenly willing to work for him. And although his populist supporters lamented the presence of so many swamp creatures in his administration, establishment Washington expressed pleasant surprise at the picks. A consensus had formed that what the incoming administration needed most was “adults in the room.” To save the country from ruin, the thinking went, reasonable Republicans had a patriotic duty to work for Trump if asked. Many of them did.”

“Don’t expect it to happen again.”

Barton Gellman: “To begin with, there is little to stop Trump from firing Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is overseeing both of the federal investigations. Justice Department regulations confer a measure of protection on a special counsel against arbitrary dismissal, but he may be removed for ‘misconduct, dereliction of duty, incapacity, conflict of interest, or for other good cause.’ That last clause is a catchall that Trump could readily invoke.”

“The regulations state that a special counsel may be fired ‘only by the personal action of the Attorney General,’ but that would not stop Trump either. In the unlikely event that his handpicked attorney general were reluctant, he could fire the attorney general and keep on firing successors until he found one to do his bidding, as Richard Nixon did to get rid of Archibald Cox. Alternatively, Trump could claim—and probably prevail, if it came to a lawsuit—that the president is not bound by Justice Department regulations and can fire the special counsel himself.”

“Smith’s departure would still leave Trump’s federal criminal charges intact, but no law would prevent Trump from ordering that they be dropped. He could do so even with a trial in progress, right up to the moment before a jury returned a verdict. No legal expert I talked with expressed any doubt that he could get away with this.”

“Potential jurors in former President Donald Trump’s federal election interference trial may know they are in the pool now,” NBC News reports.

“The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has sent prospective jurors a ‘pre-screening’ form asking about their availability to appear in person Feb. 9 to fill out a written questionnaire for use in the jury selection process for a March 4 trial.”

“Though the form does not name or refer to the defendant directly, the court had earlier set those dates for the questionnaire and the start of Trump’s trial. The form advises potential jurors that their trial ‘may last approximately three months after jury selection is completed,’ which is consistent with estimates of the timetable for Trump’s trial.”

Donald Trump will likely attend his civil fraud trial on Thursday, ABC News reports.

He is not expected to be in attendance on Wednesday when his son Eric testifies.

“The Fulton County District Attorney’s office has grounds to seek jail time for a Chicago publicist after she posted a video which seems to target an ex-poll worker at the center of Georgia’s election subversion case,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.

“Trevian Kutti made the remarks recently in an Instagram Live video about Ruby Freeman, the former Fulton poll worker. The comments could amount to witness intimidation, which violates the terms of Kutti’s bond agreement.”