Paris Through the Window, Marc Chagall
There’s some big news in the stolen documents case today. Special prosecutor Jack Smith has asked Judge Aileen Cannon for a gag order to stop Trump from claiming that the FBI planned to assassinate him when they searched Mar-a-Lago for classified documents that he stole from the government. This is significant, because if Cannon refuses, Smith could appeal to the 11th Circuit court and request that she be removed from the case.
Here are the basics, from Katelyn Polantz at CNN: Special counsel asks judge for gag order in Trump classified documents case.
Special counsel’s office prosecutors on Friday asked a federal judge in Florida to place a gag order on Donald Trump that would limit his ability to comment about law enforcement that searched his Mar-a-Lago resort.
The request – a first in the classified documents mishandling case – comes after the former president has repeatedly and misleadingly criticized the FBI for having a policy in place around the use of deadly force during the search and seizure of government records at his resort in August 2022.
While Trump has told his supporters he could have been in danger because of the policy, the policy is standard protocol for FBI searches and limits how agents may use force in search operations. The same standard FBI policy was used in the searches of President Joe Biden’s homes and offices in a separate classified documents investigation.
Polanz is minimizing what Trump has said. He actually accused the FBI of trying to kill him and claimed President Biden ordered them to do it.
Prosecutors for special counsel Jack Smith wrote to Judge Aileen Cannon in a filing Friday night that the conditions that allow Trump not to be in jail awaiting trial should be updated.
The request will force Cannon into the center of an intensely charged and politicized battle, grappling with Trump’s ongoing presidential campaign and the First Amendment at the same time prosecutors are escalating their concerns to her about proceedings she oversees. The judge so far has moved slowly to resolve disputes in Trump’s criminal mishandling and obstruction of justice case before her, and no trial date is set.
“Trump‘s repeated mischaracterization as an attempt to kill him, his family, and Secret Service agents has endangered law enforcement officers involved in the investigation and prosecution of this case and threatened the integrity of these proceedings,” prosecutors wrote.
His recent comments, they added, “invite the sort of threats and harassment that have occurred when other participants in legal proceedings against Trump have been targeted by his invective.”
The use of deadly force policy is included among several pages of paperwork governing FBI search protocol and policies when they went to Mar-a-Lago, which was made public in Trump’s case in federal court this week. The paperwork also lays out that agents would wear unmarked, business casual attire, and specifies that if Trump were to arrive at Mar-a-Lago during the search, leadership on site would speak to him and his Secret Service detail.
Alan Feuer writes at The New York Times: Prosecutors Seek to Bar Trump From Attacking F.B.I. Agents in Documents Case.
Federal prosecutors on Friday night asked the judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents case to bar him from making any statements that might endanger law enforcement agents involved in the proceedings.
Prosecutors tendered the request after Mr. Trump made what they described as “grossly misleading” assertions about the F.B.I.’s August 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida. This week, the former president falsely suggested that the F.B.I. had been authorized to shoot him when agents discovered more than 100 classified documents while executing a court-approved search warrant there.
In a social media post on Tuesday, Mr. Trump falsely claimed that President Biden “authorized the FBI to use deadly (lethal) force” during the search.
Mr. Trump’s post came in reaction to an F.B.I. operational plan for the Mar-a-Lago search that was unsealed on Tuesday as part of a legal motion filed by Mr. Trump’s lawyers. The plan contained a boilerplate reference to lethal force being authorized in cases of emergency, which prosecutors said that Mr. Trump badly distorted.
Utagawa Kuniyoshi Cat in a window
“As Trump is well aware, the F.B.I. took extraordinary care to execute the search warrant unobtrusively and without needless confrontation,” prosecutors wrote in a motion to Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who is overseeing the classified documents case.
“They scheduled the search of Mar-a-Lago for a time when he and his family would be away,” the prosecutors added. “They planned to coordinate with Trump’s attorney, Secret Service agents and Mar-a-Lago staff before and during the execution of the warrant; and they planned for contingencies — which, in fact, never came to pass — about with whom to communicate if Trump were to arrive on the scene.” [….]
Prosecutors did not seek to impose a gag order on Mr. Trump in the classified documents case, but instead asked Judge Cannon to revise his conditions of release to forbid him to make any public comments “that pose a significant, imminent and foreseeable danger to law enforcement agents participating in the investigation.”
Still, if Judge Cannon agrees to the request, it would mean that Mr. Trump could be placed in custody were he to violate the revised conditions.
You might also want to read Marcy Wheeler’s post: Jack Smith Invites Aileen Cannon to Protect the Country Rather than Just Donald Trump. I’m not going to excerpt from it, because it’s mostly long quotes from the filing.
This is from Andrew Weissmann on Twitter (I refuse to use that other stupid name):
Smart move by Smith as Judge Cannon won’t be likely to grant the gag order, will show her patent bias, and Smith can then appeal to the 11th Circuit.
Asha Rangappa asked him:
Can she just avoid ruling on it, like she has everything else?
Weissmann:
in theory yes, but I don’t think if she tries that ploy that Smith won’t mandamus her, and her lack of action one way or the other will look really bad on appeal.
I’ll be waiting anxiously to see what Loose Cannon does or doesn’t do.
Some analysis of Trump’s victimization strategy by Juliette Kayem at The Atlantic: Trump’s Assassination Fantasy Has a Darker Purpose.
When Donald Trump insinuated this week that his successor and the FBI were out to kill him, he showed how central violence has become to his conception of political leadership. The former president declared Tuesday on Truth Social, his social-media platform, that he “was shown reports Crooked Joe Biden’s DOJ, in their illegal and UnConstitutional Raid of Mar-a-Lago, AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL FORCE).” [….]
The genesis of the former president’s complaint is that, when the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago in August 2022 to obtain classified documents that were at the center of an investigation, agents were explicitly authorized to use force. This was not remotely unusual: FBI agents are routinely armed. The “reports” that Trump saw misinterpreted the parameters of the search, which—as the security analysts Asha Rangappa and Tom Joscelyn explained in Just Security—was guided by elaborate restrictions on when weapons could be used. The FBI subsequently said it followed a “standard policy statement limiting the use of force.” Attorney General Merrick Garland noted today that similar conditions were used in a search related to classified documents at Biden’s home in Delaware.
Victor Lukyanov, Summer Rain
The FBI had also carefully arranged to enter Trump’s property when he would be out of state—an odd way of carrying out an assassination. Still, the idea that Trump had been at physical risk rocketed across Truth Social. The X account of the House Judiciary Committee Republicans reposted—with the addition of siren emojis—a thread insinuating that FBI agents were acting like the “Gestapo” and had “risked the lives of Donald Trump, his family, his staff, and MAL guests.” Trump’s campaign upped the hysteria with a fundraising email declaring that “BIDEN’S DOJ WAS AUTHORIZED TO SHOOT ME!” and that “Joe Biden was locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger.” By evening, the longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon was asserting that “this was an attempted assassination attempt on Donald John Trump or people associated with him.” [….]
The claim that Biden and the FBI were looking to kill Trump is easy to dismiss as the typical hyperbolic ranting of the ex-president and his fans, and it competes in the news with other disturbing things he says and does. The assassination claim initially seemed to have come and gone in the news cycle. But the story was still out there, to be absorbed by Trump’s audience.
Since the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol, Trump has become more and more apocalyptic in his language. This week, he sent another dangerous signal to his supporters: FBI agents are an armed enemy, ready to assassinate the former president. Unless, of course, Trump and his mob get to them first.
On Thursday, Trump held a rally in the Bronx, and, as usual, created some controversy that the mainstream media pretty much ignored.
Edith Olmstead at The Daily Beast: Trumpworld Claims 25,000 People Attended His Rally. Aerial Shots Show Otherwise.
Trumpworld is once again splintering from reality. This time, the diversion relates to counting—specifically, how many people attended Donald Trump’s rally in the Bronx on Thursday.
Trump, who has long obsessed over the size of crowds at his events, shared an article from Right Side Broadcasting Network to his Truth Social account that quoted the Trump campaign as saying 25,000 people attended the “electrifying” event. The New York Times reported that Trump’s team had acquired a permit for an event for 3,500 people.
“The sheer numbers show the great enthusiasm that President Trump has gained among voters in even the bluest areas of the United States,” the Right-Side Broadcasting Network article crowed.
That number later appeared on Fox News, was shared across various MAGA social media accounts, and also popped up on the official X account of the Republican Party.
But aerial footage of the event, and The Daily Beast’s reporter on the ground, told a different story. ABC7’s coverage of the event showed a much smaller crowd located in an amphitheater at Crotona Park.
While law enforcement told the New York Post that the crowd was between 8,000 and 10,000 people, The Daily Beast had a reporter in attendance, who estimated about 1,000 people were there.
You can see photos at the Daily Beast link.
Oscar, by Annie Troe
At the rally, Trump invited some local criminals to share the stage with him. Talia Jane at The New Republic: Trump Proudly Accepts Endorsements From Rappers Charged With Murder.
Criminals of a feather flocked together on Thursday as Trump hosted two Brooklyn rappers out on bail for murder conspiracy during a campaign rally in the Bronx.
Rappers Sheff G and Sleepy Hallow were indicted in 2023, alongside some 30 other people, as part of a massive investigation into two rival Brooklyn gangs. Sheff G—real name Michael Williams—allegedly used his accomplishments to help fund widespread violence. According to the New York Daily News, Williams was released on a $150,000 cash or $1 million bond in April after being charged with conspiracy, multiple murder counts, criminal possession of a weapon, assault with a weapon, and 12 shootings. Williams’s lackey Sleepy Hallow—real name Tegan Chambers—was released with a $200,000 cash or $150,000 bond bail for conspiracy charges.
Trump proudly brought the rappers on stage with him to give remarks to the red behatted crowd on Thursday. Williams told the crowd, “They’re always going to whisper the accomplishments and shout your failures. Trump gonna shout the wins for all of us.”
Chambers kept it even more brief and simply shouted, “Make America Great Again.”
Justin Jouvenal and Ann E. Marimow at The Washington Post: Wife of Justice Alito called upside-down flag ‘signal of distress.’
The wife of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. told a Washington Post reporter in January 2021 that an upside-down American flag recently flown on their flagpole was “an international signal of distress” and indicated that it had been raised in response to a neighborhood dispute.
So if the NYT hadn’t reported on this, the WaPo would have stayed silent?
The Post subsequently reported on May 17 that residents said the flag was raised following a heated confrontation between Martha-Ann Alito and a neighbor over political yard signs, one of which carried a profane anti-Trump message and another that carried a message along the lines of “you are complicit.” One resident, who like the others spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their privacy in a sensitive situation, said the flag flew for between two and five days.
Samuel Alito told Fox News last week that the signs attacked his wife directly. Martha-Ann Alito has not publicly commented on the recent reports.
Now the Post tells us what really happened in 2021:
On Jan. 20, 2021 — the day of Biden’s inauguration, which the Alitos did not attend — Barnes went to their home to follow up on the tip about the flag. He encountered the couple coming out of the house. Martha-Ann Alito was visibly upset by his presence, demanding that he “get off my property.”
As he described the information he was seeking, she yelled, “It’s an international signal of distress!”
Alito intervened and directed his wife into a car parked in their driveway, where they had been headed on their way out of the neighborhood. The justice denied the flag was hung upside down as a political protest, saying it stemmed from a neighborhood dispute and indicating that his wife had raised it.
Martha-Ann Alito then got out of the car and shouted in apparent reference to the neighbors: “Ask them what they did!” She said yard signs about the couple had been placed in the neighborhood. After getting back in the car, she exited again and then brought out from their residence a novelty flag, the type that would typically decorate a garden. She hoisted it up the flagpole. “There! Is that better?” she yelled.
Wow. She sounds kind of unhinged.
Abbie VanSickle at The New York Times: Justice Sotomayor Describes Frustration With Being a Liberal on the Supreme Court.
Some days, after Justice Sonia Sotomayor listens to the Supreme Court announce its decisions, she goes into her chambers, shuts the door and weeps.
“There are days that I’ve come to my office after an announcement of a case and closed my door and cried,” Justice Sotomayor told a crowd on Friday at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, where she was being honored. “There have been those days. And there are likely to be more.”
The comments about the challenges of being a liberal on a court dominated by conservatives came at the tail end of a public conversation with her friend and law school classmate, Martha Minow, a former dean of Harvard Law School and human rights scholar.
Kyohei Inukai, Cat resting on a window sill
The justice set a tone of optimism even as she voiced frustration with some of the court’s rulings, a possible signal that the end of the term, when the most high-profile decisions typically land, could bring more conservative victories. She urged a long-term view of pushing for the values she views as guiding principles — equality, diversity and justice.
“There are moments when I’m deeply, deeply sad,” she said, without citing any specific cases. “There are moments when, yes, even I feel desperation. We all do. But you have to own it, you have to accept it, you have to shed the tears and then you have to wipe them and get up.”
Decisions in dozens of cases are still pending, including on abortion, guns, the free speech rights of social media companies, the regulatory power of government agencies and whether former President Donald J. Trump is immune from prosecution on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election.
Today Trump will speak at the Libertarian Convention and it may not go well for him.
NBC News: Libertarian convention crowd appears hostile to Trump ahead of Saturday speech.
Trump is set to deliver a speech Saturday at the 2024 Libertarian National Convention, and if Friday night’s program is any indication, he could be facing a hostile crowd.
Former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who quickly endorsed Trump after dropping out, was booed during his convention remarks Friday night when he mentioned Trump.
“I’m speaking to you as a libertarian at my own core. I have gotten to know Donald Trump over the course of the last several years and the last several months,” Ramaswamy said as many in the crowd booed in response.
Ramaswamy continued, urging the audience of about 100 to ask themselves if they wanted to influence the next administration.
Separately, as Libertarian party members reviewed procedures and motions, a person at a microphone proposed that “we go tell Donald Trump to go f— himself.”
The audience cheered and roared with applause.
“That was my motion too!” another man yelled. “We are a Libertarian convention looking to nominate Libertarians. We do not need to give that time to non-Libertarians.”
Behind the two men, a third chanted, “F— Donald Trump.”
Politico: Libertarian convention devolves into fighting, obscenities on eve of Trump’s visit.
Donald Trump won’t be speaking to his usual self-selected crowd of adoring red-hatted MAGA fans when he addresses the Libertarian National Convention on Saturday.
As delegates gathered at the Washington Hilton on the eve of his speech, the party’s decision to host the former president, which had split the organization, erupted Friday into open revolt. Fuming delegates at the convention said they plan to protest Trump’s speech, and one group sought unsuccessfully to remove the former president along with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., from the agenda — a move that resulted in thrown punches and obscenities between supporters and opponents of the move.
“I would like to propose that we go tell Donald Trump to go fuck himself!” Kaelan Dreyer, a Libertarian from New Mexico, yelled into a microphone, winning cheers from the crowd. After shouting vulgarities at the convention’s chair and fending off punches, he was led out of the convention hall.
Ralph Hedley, Blinking in the sun
The raucous opening to the convention reflects the pockets of hostility that Trump faces as he appeals to the Libertarians to help him box out a growing, third-party threat from Kennedy’s independent presidential campaign.
“The vast majority of Libertarian Party members are not happy with this invitation,” said Bill Redpath, a 40-year veteran of the Libertarian Party and a former national party chair who’s helped organize their presidential ballot access for decades. “There are some people who call Trump the most Libertarian president of our lifetimes. That’s utterly ridiculous.”
Suburban Philadelphia options trader Jeff Yass, a libertarian and one of the GOP’s biggest donors, who was not in attendance at the convention, said it was “unclear” whether Trump could make inroads with libertarian voters. Yass, who bankrolled an effort to stop Trump from winning the Republican nomination and financed several of his primary opponents, has said he doesn’t plan to contribute to Trump, but will vote for him.
“He has some libertarian instincts for sure. Anti-war is big,” said Yass, who has also praised Trump for his support for education reform policies, which the two have spoken about. “But anti-immigrant, anti-free trade are not good.”
I guess he’s not bothered by Trump’s fascist tendencies.
The New York Times’ Nate Cohn on the current state of the presidential polls: A Polling Risk for Trump. His advantage may not be as stable as it looks.
The polls have shown Donald Trump with an edge for eight straight months, but there’s a sign his advantage might not be quite as stable as it looks: His lead is built on gains among voters who aren’t paying close attention to politics, who don’t follow traditional news and who don’t regularly vote.
Disengaged voters on the periphery of the electorate are driving the polling results — and the story line — about the election.
President Biden has actually led the last three New York Times/Siena national polls among those who voted in the 2020 election, even as he has trailed among registered voters overall. And looking back over the last few years, almost all of Trump’s gains came from these less engaged voters.
Importantly, these low-turnout voters are often from Democratic constituencies. Many back Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate. But in our polling, Biden wins just three-quarters of Democratic-leaning voters who didn’t vote in the last cycle, even as almost all high-turnout Democratic-leaners continue to support him.
This trend illustrates the disconnect between Trump’s lead in the polls and Democratic victories in lower-turnout special elections. And it helps explain Trump’s gains among young and nonwhite voters, who tend to be among the least engaged.
Trump’s dependence on these voters could make the race more volatile soon. As voters tune in over the next six months, there’s a chance that disengaged but traditionally Democratic voters could revert to their usual partisan leanings. Alternately, they might stay home, which could also help Biden.
Read more at the NYT.
I guess that’s enough politics news for today. Have a nice Memorial Day weekend.
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Imagine if Loose Cannon was FINALLY booted off the case.
Part of me does wonder why Smith didn’t also bring a similar case in Bedminster where he could get a less daffy judge.
I wonder about that too. There are very likely more documents there, but they would need some evidence before they could justify a search of the property. The have to have an idea of what would be there and where it would be stored.
Did the search Bedminster?