Posted: August 3, 2023 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because | Tags: mainstream media |
Good Afternoon!!
Yesterday, the two most important newspapers in the U.S. published articles in which they “both-sided” the indictment of Donald Trump in the January 6 case. Reporters Michael Schmidt and Maggie Haberman at the New York Times and Devlin Barrett and Josh Dawsey at The Washington Post published articles that–at least in their headlines and the early paragraphs characterized Jack Smith’s case against Trump as a First Amendment case even though Smith explained very clearly in his statement announcing the indictments that it is a conspiracy case–based on lies that led to actions.
This is exactly what Republicans want Americans to believe–that Trump is being prosecuted for lying about the results of the 2020 election or even for his belief that the election was stolen from him. I’m not even going to quote from the two articles, but here are the links if you want to read them.
The New York Times: Trump Election Charges Set Up Clash of Lies Versus Free Speech.
The Washington Post: Heart of the Trump Jan. 6 indictment: What’s in Trump’s head.
David Kurtz spells this out clearly at Talking Points Memo: No, The Jan. 6 Indictment Of Trump Is Not A First Amendment Case.
As soon as I saw the headline, I knew this NYT story was going to be bad: “Trump Election Charges Set Up Clash of Lies Versus Free Speech.” No. No, it does not.
Both-sides coverage in politics is toxic; in legal coverage it’s so bad it becomes almost funny. But of course in typical legal matters we rarely get both-sides coverage. Instead, it skews heavily in favor of the narrative of law enforcement and prosecutors. But when a politician (let alone Trump) is the defendant, suddenly there’s a detached remove from the underlying facts. Conspiracy to overthrow the government or just political puffery in the spirit of stump speaking? Who can say, really? We’ll leave to you, dear reader, to decide.
Take the core graph of the story:
The indictment and his initial response set up a showdown between those two opposing assertions of principle: that what prosecutors in this case called “pervasive and destabilizing lies” from the highest office in the land can be integral to criminal plans, and that political speech enjoys broad protections, especially when conveying what Mr. Trump’s allies say are sincerely held beliefs.
Trust me, folks. This is not going to be a showdown over the limits of the First Amendment. How do I know? Well, one way is by reading the bottom half of the same NYT story, where legal experts shred the Trump defenses.
Kurtz recommends reading this thread on Twitter, which I read yesterday.
There’s a bit more on Twitter.
Kurtz notes (at TPM) that the Wall Street Journal did the same thing:
Another example of covering a criminal prosecution like it’s politics, courtesy of the WSJ: “Trump Is Being Prosecuted, but Justice Department Is on Trial, Too”
Oh boy, this sentence: “On the issue of whether it can persuade the public of the righteousness of its prosecution, the Justice Department has taken on a huge and politically polarizing target in an atmosphere already ripe with mistrust over its motivations.”
Not literally untrue. But notice the way this turns it all into a messaging contest, like a political campaign
This is from Lisa Needham at Aaron Rupar’s Public Notice: Trump’s J6-related indictment isn’t about his words. It’s about his deeds.
Special Counsel Jack Smith’s indictment distills the whole of the January 6 investigation into 45 pages. The story it tells is already familiar. There is the sheer number of lies told by Trump and his allies, such as that over 10,000 dead people voted in Georgia, that there was a suspicious late-night “vote dump” in Michigan, and that Pennsylvania issued 1.8 million absentee ballots but processed 2.5 million.
Smith makes clear that the issue here isn’t Trump’s lies as such, particularly right after the election. In fact, the indictment states that Trump “had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won.” Nor is the issue the dozens of unsuccessful court cases Trump brought. Instead, the issue is that Trump worked with his co-conspirators to disenfranchise voters by interfering with the collection, counting, and certifying of votes.
Put another way, Trump isn’t being indicted for what he said. He’s being indicted for what he did.
The indictment tells the story of the fake elector scheme, where swing states, at the behest of Trump and his conspirators, put forth GOP electors in states won by Biden. It also details the pressure put on Mike Pence to throw out the election while Trump whipped his supporters into a frenzyuntil they attacked the Capitol.
The indictment reveals that even after the January 6 rioters were finally cleared from the Capitol, Trump and his co-conspirators were pounding the phones and sending emails late into the evening trying to reach elected officials who would agree to block certification. Around 7 pm on the 6th, one of Trump’s co-conspirators called five US senators and a House rep, all within 20 minutes, and left a voicemail for one senator asking them to “try to just slow it down” and saying that “the only strategy we can follow is to object to numerous states.”
Even as the joint session of Congress finally met at 11:35 pm on the 6th to certify the election, one of Trump’s co-conspirators emailed Mike Pence’s counsel, urging Pence to violate the law and adjourn for 10 days to “allow the legislatures to finish their investigations as well as to allow a full forensic audit of the massive amount of illegal activity that has occurred here.”
Read the rest at the link.
Marcy Wheeler has been ranting about this for a couple of days. Today, she wrote: The Elements of Offense in the January 6 Indictment.
In the last day, Maggie and Mike and Devlin and Dawsey came out with twin pieces that purport to assess the legal strength of the indictment
against Trump, but instead simply say, “well, Trump believes his bullshit and so do we and so the charged conduct may be First Amendment protected.”
Neither of these articles even mention that 18 USC 371, conspiracy to defraud the US, is about lying to the US, even though one of the lawyers cited by WaPo attempted to explain that to them.
Here’s why all those claims that Trump knew he was lying are in the indictment: because his false claims were the means Trump used to carry out the conspiracy to defraud.
The Defendant widely disseminated his false claims of election fraud for months, despite the fact that he knew, and in many cases had been informed directly, that they were not true. The Defendant’s knowingly false statements were integral to his criminal plans to defeat the federal government function, obstruct the certification, and interfere with others’ right to vote and have their votes counted. He made these knowingly false claims throughout the post-election time period, including those below that he made immediately before the attack on the Capitol on January 6:
This indictment will be measured not by what Maggie and Mike and Devlin and Dawsey claim about legal statutes they haven’t bothered to explain.
It will be measured by whether the government presents evidence to prove the elements of offense for each charge beyond a reasonable doubt.
Read the details on the Emptywheel blog.
This afternoon, at 4:00, Trump will be arraigned for the third time. Kyle Cheney at Politico: Donald Trump returns to Washington. Just not the way he’d planned.
Two and a half years after a mob attacked the Capitol in his name, Donald Trump is making the trip down Pennsylvania Avenue he promised he’d make — but never did — on Jan. 6, 2021.
But this time, it’s to be arraigned in federal court.
Trump’s expected arrival on Thursday afternoon in Washington — to face charges that he sought to derail the transfer of power to Joe Biden — will bring him to the federal courthouse that sits just across the street from the Capitol his supporters defaced on Jan. 6. He’s expected to plead “not guilty” to four criminal charges leveled by special counsel Jack Smith.
Smith has accused Trump of orchestrating a breathtakingly broad campaign to unravel American democracy and cling to power despite decisively losing the 2020 election. In service of that goal, Smith says, Trump deputized six co-conspirators — including attorneys Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro — to carry out a campaign of disinformation, cloaked in legal action, to convince state legislatures, Congress and then-Vice President Mike Pence to block Biden’s election.
Smith alleges that Trump used his unique platform as president to stoke false claims about election fraud and rile up supporters, harnessing their energy to pressure Republican elected officials to attempt to undo Biden’s victories in a handful of states. When that failed, Trump helped assemble slates of false presidential electors who would be used to stoke a conflict in the certification of Biden’s victory. Then, Trump and Eastman leaned on Pence — who would soon preside over Congress’ counting of electoral votes — to assert unprecedented authority to reject Biden’s electors or postpone the count altogether. The failure of that effort culminated in a burst of rage, with thousands of Trump’s faithful storming past police barricades and into the Capitol, while Trump — according to Smith — exploited the violence to continue salvaging his schemes.
As his supporters rioted, Trump wanted to join them, according to evidence amassed by the Jan. 6 select committee. Several witnesses described a heated altercation with Secret Service agents after they refused to take him to the Capitol because of security concerns. Instead, the Secret Service insisted he return to the White House, where he watched the attack unfold on television….
His arraignment on Thursday is scheduled for 4 p.m. Trump, represented by attorneys Todd Blanche and John Lauro, is expected to face Magistrate Judge Moxila Upadhyaya, who received the initial indictment from prosecutors on Tuesday. It will be Trump’s third arraignment on criminal charges since April but his first in Washington, D.C. There’s little of substance likely to occur beyond Trump’s initial plea in the case, but officials at the federal courthouse and the Capitol are bracing for crowds and potential security threats.
Cheney is one of the good guys, even though he writes for Politico.
That’s all I have for you today. I’m still dealing with the aftermath of my mother’s death, and it has been difficult and exhausting. Seeing Trump charged for trying to end our democracy might make me feel a little better.
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Posted: August 1, 2023 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because |
Good Afternoon!!
The grand jury investigating Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election is meeting today, and the press is waiting with bated breath for the next indictment. From Politico reporter Kyle Cheney:
CNBC: Trump grand jury in 2020 election probe arrives at court, fueling speculation an indictment is imminent.
Members of the grand jury hearing evidence in the special counsel probe of possible 2020 election interference by former President Donald Trump and others arrived at a federal courthouse Tuesday morning, fueling speculation that an indictment against the former president could come later in the day.
It has been two weeks since Trump announced he was a target in the federal investigation into the efforts to overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. The probe, lead by special counsel Jack Smith, is also focused on the events surrounding the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
Trump’s receipt of a target letter gave the strongest indication yet that the former president would likely be charged in the election probe.
The grand jurors met last Thursday, but left for the day without any hint that they had voted to return indictments.
On Tuesday morning, they headed up to their area on the third floor of the E. Barrett Prettyman courthouse in Washington, D.C., according to NBC News reporters in the building.
The grand jury typically works until 5PM.
NBC News is providing live updates on the grand jury and other Trump legal news: Trump live updates: Grand jury in election probe meets to consider indictment.
Grand jury appears to break for lunch
The grand jury hearing evidence in the special counsel’s probe of Trump’s attempts to overturn the election appears to be breaking for lunch. NBC News has spotted members of the jury walking down the courthouse stairs and towards the cafeteria.
Grand jurors typically receive a one-hour lunch break, and their days usually begin at 9:00 a.m. and end at 5:00 p.m., according to the D.C. court website.
Another update from Kyle Cheney:
If anything exciting happens, I’ll update.
In other Trump legal news:
The New York Times: After Paying Lawyers, Trump’s PAC Is Nearly Broke.
Former President Donald J. Trump’s political action committee, which began last year with $105 million, now has less than $4 million left in its account after paying tens of millions of dollars in legal fees for Mr. Trump and his associates.
The dwindling cash reserves in Mr. Trump’s PAC, called Save America, have fallen to such levels that the group has made the highly unusual request of a $60 million refund of a donation it had previously sent to a pro-Trump super PAC. This money had been intended for television commercials to help Mr. Trump’s candidacy, but as he is the dominant front-runner for the Republican nomination in 2024, his most immediate problems appear to be legal, not political.
The super PAC, which is called Make America Great Again Inc., has already sent back $12.25 million to the group paying Mr. Trump’s legal bills, according to federal records — a sum nearly as large as the $13.1 million the super PAC raised from donors in the first half of 2023. Those donations included $1 million from the father of his son-in-law, Charles Kushner, whom Mr. Trump pardoned for federal crimes in his final days as president, and $100,000 from a candidate seeking Mr. Trump’s endorsement.
The extraordinary shift of money from the super PAC to Mr. Trump’s political committee, described in federal campaign filings as a refund, is believed to be larger than any other refund on record in the history of federal campaigns.
It comes as Mr. Trump’s political and legal fate appear increasingly intertwined. The return of money from the super PAC, which Mr. Trump does not control, to his political action committee, which he does, demonstrates how his operation is balancing dueling priorities: paying lawyers and supporting his political candidacy through television ads.
Save America, Mr. Trump’s political action committee, is prohibited by law from directly spending money on his candidacy. When Save America donated $60 million last year to Mr. Trump’s super PAC — which is permitted to spend on his campaign — it effectively evaded that prohibition.
As with everything he does, Trump’s questionable actions are bigger than ever before.
Trump has been grifting off of his indictments, sending out whiny demands for money from his cult, but he may be wearing out his welcome with his small donors.
Jessica Piper at Politico: Trump’s indictments are having diminishing returns for his political fundraising.
Donald Trump’s legal troubles have created windfalls for his political fundraising in the past. And his team has not been shy about using various investigations, indictments and court appearances to turbocharge his donor base.
But new data filed with the Federal Election Commission by WinRed, the premiere GOP donation processor used by Trump and most other Republican candidates, shows that trend may be ebbing.
The former president’s fundraising did not spike as high after his second indictment in June compared to his first one in the spring.
All told, Trump raised nearly $4 million via WinRed from nearly 80,000 distinct donors April 4, the day he pleaded not guilty in a Manhattan court on charges of falsification of business records related to payouts to porn star Stormy Daniels. It was his best online fundraising day of the year.
By contrast, when Trump appeared in Miami court June 13 to plead not guilty to his second indictment on charges related to classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago, he raised only $1.3 million from just over 35,0000 donors, according to WinRed data.
Trump’s joint fundraising committee is outperforming his rivals among small-dollar donors. But the new data is a warning sign that further legal jeopardy for Trump may not be the fundraising savior it once was as his committees burn through cash.
Overall, roughly one-quarter of Trump’s total WinRed fundraising this calendar year — $11.3 million — came in between March 30 and April 5, according to a POLITICO analysis of the group’s FEC filing.
But Trump has a new grift to fleece his supporters with.
Roger Sollenberger at The Daily Beast: Trump’s New Legal Fund Is a Lean, Mean Grift Machine.
When allies of former President Donald Trump launched his new legal defense fund, they created a group with few restrictions on how much it can raise, even fewer on how much it can spend, and the ability for deep-pocketed donors to remain anonymous.
In essence, Trump’s legal costs have gotten so high that he’s been forced to find a new way around campaign finance laws—a route that will allow him to draw massive donations from megadonors who could not otherwise write checks large enough to replenish his attorney costs.
While the plans for launching the group, called the “Patriot Legal Defense Fund,” were first reported on Sunday by The New York Times, it turns out the entity was created on July 19. That filing, however, won’t be found in the campaign finance database maintained by the Federal Election Commission, where political campaigns typically register.
Instead, the PLDF was registered with the IRS as a special type of political nonprofit under section 527 of the tax code—as what’s loosely known as a “527” or “shadow” group.
Trump has reportedly asserted for years that only guilty people open legal funds. And while that describes a number of convicted former political advisers—George Papadopoulos, Roger Stone, and Mike Flynn, for instance—others haven’t been found guilty of crimes, like Rudy Giuliani, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), or even Trumphimself.
The new fund reportedly won’t pay Trump’s own lawyer costs. But it will float allies, including possible witnesses in any number of legal threats facing the former president.
And yet experts said the shadiest, most notable part of the legal defense fund was not that it would pay for lawyers for potential witnesses against Trump. That part isn’t all that new. The Trump team reportedly worked hand-in-hand with CPAC chair Matt Schlapp’s “First Amendment Fund” earlier this year to provide legal help to Jan. 6 committee subpoena targets, and Trump’s “Save America” leadership PAC also bankrolled handpicked attorneys for Jan. 6 witnesses.
Instead, experts pointed to the group’s unique tax status opening an array of new fundraising opportunities for Trump as the most unsettling element—including for unlimited donations from individuals and corporations.
One more Trump legal story: The Manhattan DA may used Trump’s videotaped deposition in from the E. Jean Carroll case for evidence in the Stormy Daniels prosecution.
Jose Pagliery at The Daily Beast: Trump’s Rape Trial Testimony Is Already Coming Back to Haunt Him.
The Manhattan district attorney seeking to jail Donald Trump over his hush money payment to a porn star is seeking to potentially weaponize the same piece of damning evidence that nailed the former president at his rape trial: the deposition where he said stars like him get away with sexual harassment “unfortunately—or fortunately.”
It’s now up to a federal judge to decide whether those prosecutors can get a video that shows Trump at his worst: unapologetic about sexual assault, uttering misogynistic comments, and willing to lie to the American public to save his own skin.
It’s a testament to the breadth of Trump’s legal problems that we’re witnessing the collision of two totally separate cases: a civil defamation case about rape and a criminal case about a cover-up. And it all comes down to a closed-door question-and-answer session Trump had on Oct. 19, 2022.
That shocking testimony first came out in a federal courtroom in May in New York City, where jurors ultimately decided that Trump did indeed sexually abuse the journalist E. Jean Carroll decades ago. In the video, the former president talked about his previous gloating that he could grab women “by the pussy”—and answered whether he felt that the rich and famous could get away with it.
“Historically that’s true with stars. If you look over the last million years, that’s largely true, unfortunately—or fortunately,” he said, later adding that he considers himself a star.
At the time, the video stunned those in the federal courtroom, going a long way to show how Trump remained defiant about his predatory sexual behavior. He called Carroll a liar and viciously attacked her female lawyer. At one point, he told the attorney, “You wouldn’t be a choice of mine either.”
Now, the Manhattan DA wants that video for his own criminal investigation.
According to court records, Manhattan prosecutors plan to use it to show the way Trump “dealt with allegations of a sexual nature,” which could get them closer to proving that he was desperate to keep the lid on bad news that could have sunk his 2016 campaign.
Here’s hoping we’ll get another indictment announcement tonight or tomorrow. Take care everyone!!
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Posted: July 29, 2023 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because |
Happy Caturday!!
My Mom and me
I haven’t been around much this week, because my Mother died last Sunday afternoon. She was 98. Even though her death was expected, the loss has hit me pretty hard. She was really my best friend for most of my life. We talked on the phone nearly every day; and after my father died in 2010, she asked me to check in with her more often. We often talked 3 or 4 times in a day. I loved talking politics with her!
For the last several years Mom was at home, I drove out to Indiana and stayed with her for extended times once or twice a year. I’m so glad I did that now, because we had opportunities to talk at length, and she share many memories with me.
My Mother was a very kind, caring, and strong woman. With my father, she raised 5 children. They were married for 63 years. When her children got older, she became very active in politics and community affairs. She was very involved in the League of Women Voters, and served as chapter president. In the 1970s, she was an Indiana delegate for the Equal Rights Amendment. She also volunteered for years in a local program devoted to alleviating poverty.
She was good Mom, and I will miss her terribly.
The latest on Trump’s legal problems
Everyone is waiting with bated breath for the next Trump indictment. When the January 6 grand jury meets on Tuesday, perhaps Trump will be indicted for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and end American democracy. We can only hope that eventually this monster will be stopped. He cannot be permitted to become president again. In the meantime, we got the superseding indictment in the stolen documents case. Dakinikat wrote about it yesterday. Here’s the latest:
Kaitlan Collins and Katelyn Polantz at CNN. ‘Trump Employee 4’ in superseding indictment identified as Yuscil Taveras.
The Mar-a-Lago employee referenced in the superseding indictment adding major accusations against former President Donald Trump and a new co-defendant to the case has been identified by two people close to the investigation as Yuscil Taveras, an information technology worker.
Taveras oversaw the surveillance camera footage at the property….
Special counsel Jack Smith’s team had previously heard testimony about odd conversations between Taveras, Walt Nauta and the new co-defendant Carlos De Oliveira, the property manager, regarding surveillance footage. The grand jury in Washington, before the case was fully relocated to southern Florida, had also heard testimony specifically regarding De Oliveira’s unusual behavior toward the footage, three people told CNN.
By Eva Fialka
Taveras is at the center of the new accusations added to the indictment, including an exchange he had with De Oliveira on June 27, 2022. In that conversation, De Oliveira asked to have a private discussion in an “audio closet” with Taveras, including questioning how long the footage from the security tapes lasted and whether it could be deleted.
When Taveras said “he would not know how to do that, and that he did not believe that he would have the rights to do that,” De Oliveira said “the boss” wanted it deleted, according to the indictment.
Prosecutors for months now have circled around the questions of how much their actions day-by-day during the summer of 2022 were prompted by Trump’s direction, leading the criminal inquiry at times to look even into suspicious but still unexplained events like the draining of the pool at the Florida beach club, which caused flooding in an IT room, CNN previously reported.
De Oliveira was involved in the pool incident, two sources familiar with the matter tell CNN. It was not mentioned, however, in the new court filing. Thursday’s indictment signals that prosecutors now believe they have more direct evidence of Trump orchestrating his employees’ efforts to consider tampering with surveillance footage that captured them moving boxes of records the federal government sought.
Graham Kates at CBS News: What to know about Carlos De Oliveira, the latest Trump employee charged in Mar-a-Lago documents indictment.
Carlos De Oliveira on Thursday became the third person charged with federal felonies in relation to alleged efforts by former President Donald Trump to keep classified information after leaving office and impede an investigation. De Oliveira is identified in the indictment as the property manager at Mar-a-Lago and a former valet….
The indictment claims De Oliveira helped move boxes containing classified information for Trump, and requested an employee to delete Mar-a-Lago security camera footage to prevent it from being turned over to a federal grand jury….
The indictment claims that an attorney for Trump’s company received a grand jury subpoena requiring the production of surveillance records, videos and images, on June 24, 2022. Prosecutors claim that the next day, Nauta and De Oliveira went to the security guard booth where surveillance video is displayed on monitors and “walked with a flashlight through a tunnel” to a storage room, pointing to surveillance cameras.
The indictment says days later, on June 27, De Oliveira took another Trump employee to a small room known as an “audio closet,” and asked the employee how many days the server retained security footage. The employee said he believed it was about 45 days.
The indictment does not identify the employee, who multiple sources tell CBS News is Mar-a-Lago I.T. department employee Yuscil Taveras.
De Oliveira allegedly told Taveras that “‘the boss’ wanted the server deleted,” according to the indictment. Taveras, the indictment says, responded that he would not know how to do that, and that he did not believe that he would have the right to do that.
Vera and Lola, by Alberto Morrocco
De Oliveira is charged with lying to investigators about his actions.
Federal investigators spoke with De Oliveira at his home on Jan. 13 and asked him about the location and movement of the boxes stored at Mar-a-Lago, prosecutors said in the filing.
On Aug. 8, 2022, the FBI executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, seizing more than 100 classified documents. The indictment claims that on Aug. 26, Nauta called an unnamed employee and “said words to the effect of, ‘someone just wants to make sure Carlos is good,'” referring to De Oliveira.
In response, the employee said “De Oliveira was loyal and that De Oliveira would not do anything to affect his relationship with Trump,” according to the indictment.
That same day, Trump called De Oliveira and told him he would get De Oliveira an attorney, according to the indictment.
Some analysis of the case by Philip Bump at The Washington Post: The incredibly damaging timeline of the alleged Mar-a-Lago coverup.
When former president Donald Trump was first indicted by a federal grand jury in June, the world got its first peek at the strength of the evidence compiled by special counsel Jack Smith. It was, by all accounts, remarkable, detailing a number of alleged actions by Trump and his aide Walt Nauta that articulated an effort to both retain documents the government had demanded Trump turn over and to keep the government from knowing that’s what was happening….
The original indictment added new details to this series of events, including alleging that Trump had moved boxes out of view of his attorneys before they began their search for documents. After the material that was turned over in early June was collected, Trump also allegedly suggested that maybe any particularly “bad” documents be disposed of.
Prosecutors were aware of the movement of the boxes because they subpoenaed and received surveillance footage from Mar-a-Lago. And it’s that subpoena and the response from Trump and his co-defendants that are the stars of the superseding indictment released on Thursday night.
The new indictment claims that Trump wanted Nauta and another employee Carlos De Olivera to delete the surveillance tapes that the government demanded.
As told in the indictment, the story begins on June 3, 2022. That’s the day on which a Justice Department official was handed a sealed folder containing material marked as classified, purportedly all such material that was at Mar-a-Lago. While there, the feds noticed surveillance cameras near the lower-level storage room where, in August, the FBI would find dozens of documents with classification markings. The government sought and obtained a search warrant for footage from the cameras.
Holding the Place, by Deborah Dewitt
A draft of the subpoena was sent to Trump’s attorneys on June 22 while Trump was in Bedminster, N.J., for the summer. (Everything in this timeline, we should note, is alleged in the indictment and, again, unproved.) The following day, Trump had a lengthy conversation with Carlos De Oliveira, a Mar-a-Lago employee who had also allegedly helped Nauta move a number of boxes back into the storage room after the attorney’s search for material responsive to the May subpoena.
On Friday, June 24, the formal subpoena was received by Trump’s team. At about 1:30 p.m., Trump’s attorney told Trump about it. At a quarter to 4 p.m., Nauta was informed that Trump wanted to see him. Later that evening, Nauta, who had been planning to join Trump on a trip to Illinois, suddenly changed his travel plans to head to Florida.
In text messages to others, he claimed that the change was a function of a family emergency. But, in the same time period that he was changing his travel plans, he also reached out to De Oliveira and the head of IT at Mar-a-Lago (whom the New York Times identifies as Yuscil Taveras) to see if they were going to be around over the weekend. After De Oliveira and Nauta spoke for a few minutes by phone, De Oliveira texted the IT staffer.
“Walter call me earl[ier] said it was trying to get in touch with you,” he wrote. “I guess he’s coming down tomorrow I guess needs you for something.” The IT staffer [now known to be Taveras] then texted Nauta to let him know he was available if needed.
Read the rest of this helpful timeline at the WaPo.
Politico reports on another legal loss for Trump: Judge dismisses Trump’s ‘Big Lie’ lawsuit against CNN.
A federal judge late Friday dismissed Donald Trump’s $475 million defamation lawsuit against CNN, in which the former president argued that the cable network’s statements about his false 2020 election fraud claims likened him to Adolf Hitler.
In the lawsuit, Trump’s team argued that CNN writers and television anchors’ use of the phrase the “Big Lie,” in five specific incidents, incited “readers and viewers to hate, contempt, distrust, ridicule, and even fear” him. But U.S. District Judge Raag Singhal, who Trump appointed in 2019, reasoned that because all of CNN’s statements were opinion, Trump could not legally sue the network for defamation.
“Being ‘Hitler-like’ is not a verifiable statement of fact that would support a defamation claim,” Singhal wrote in his dismissal. “CNN’s statements while repugnant, were not, as a matter of law, defamatory.”
The phrase “big lie” historically has referred to a propaganda technique so powerful that people who believe in its message could not believe that someone could have distorted it. It has popular origins in German from Adolf Hitler in his memoir, Mein Kampf.
Singhal dismissed his lawsuit with prejudice, meaning Trump cannot file another lawsuit under the same reasoning.
“The Court finds Nazi references in the political discourse (made by whichever ‘side’) to be odious and repugnant. But bad rhetoric is not defamation when it does not include false statements of fact.” Singhal wrote. “CNN’s use of the phrase ‘the Big Lie’ in connection with Trump’s election challenges does not give rise to a plausible inference that Trump advocates the persecution and genocide of Jews or any other group of people. No reasonable viewer could (or should) plausibly make that reference.”
Ingebjørg Støyva, Norwegian artist
From Adam Rawnsley and Asawin Suebsaeng at Rolling Stone: Trump Privately Called His Team’s Election Lies ‘Crazy.’ The Special Counsel Has Questions.
WHILE DONALD TRUMP was publicly whipping his supporters into a frenzy over claims that the 2020 election was “stolen,” he was privately mocking his own allies’ outlandish conspiracy theories as “crazy.”
It’s a contradiction that Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office would like to know all about.
According to two sources with knowledge of the situation, federal investigators have questioned multiple witnesses, including some in recent months, about Trump privately suggesting, starting in November 2020, that certain conspiracy theories and “evidence” were nonsensical.
Among these witness accounts are moments of the then-president repeatedly calling Sidney Powell, one of the MAGA lawyers and die-hard Trumpists aiding his effort to stop the transfer of power, “crazy,” and dismissing many of her election-fraud arguments as patently absurd.
This included Powell’s assertions that several foreign nations had secretly helped rig the 2020 election in favor of Biden, manipulating Dominion voting technology in what would amount to one of the greatest international scandals in modern history. None of this was true, and even Trump — according to these witness accounts, and other sources who relayed similar experiences to Rolling Stone — initially sneered at the ridiculousness of it all.
However, that did not stop President Trump from publicly continuing to entertain and encourage Powell’s propaganda for weeks. This led to a now-infamous Dec. 18, 2020, gathering at the White House, where Powell, Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn, and others used these conspiracy theories to try to persuade Trump to essentially declare martial law and federally impound voting equipment so that he could remain in power. (That White House meeting is itself part of a series of gatherings that the special counsel has been probing.)
Non-Trump stories to check out, links only
Reuters: Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints. [I have posted this in comments, but wanted to make sure everyone sees it.]
Politico: Musk’s ‘X’ logo atop former Twitter headquarters draws city scrutiny.
Politico: A DeSantis come-from-behind win is looking vanishingly unlikely.
NBC News: Most of Florida work group did not agree with controversial parts of state’s new standards for Black history, members say.
Politico: DeSantis rocked by Black Republican revolt over slavery comments.
The Washington Post: Biden escalates clash with Tuberville over military vacancies.
NBC News: Mass shooting near community event leaves 5 injured in Seattle.
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Posted: July 22, 2023 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: 2024 presidential Campaign, cat art, caturday, Crime, Donald Trump, Economy, education, Florida, Joe Biden, just because | Tags: Agnes Miller Parker, Arizona, Bidenomics, Brian Kemp, Doug Ducey, Fani Willis, Georgia, Judge Aileen Cannon, Kamala Harris, Mark Meadows, Ron De Santis, slavery, Special Counsel Jack Smith, Trump trial dates, women's liberation, Women's Rights |
Happy Caturday!!
The Uncivilized Cat, 1930, by Agnes Miller Parker
Today I’m highlighting the work of Scottish artist Agnes Miller Parker. She is best known for her wood engravings of animals, often used as book illustrations. She was also a woman’s right activist. “The Uncivilized Cat” was an illustration for the book “Love’s Creation,” by Marie Stopes, published in 1928, the year women won the right to vote in the UK. The the image is filled with symbols of women’s liberation. Read about them at this link.
We are still waiting for the expected indictment of Donald Trump in the January 6 case. Special Counsel Jack Smith is till conducting grand jury interviews in the investigation, so maybe it won’t happen right away–or maybe it will come next week. Meanwhile, there is some Trump legal news.
The Latest on the Trump Investigations
Alan Feuer at The New York Times: Trial in Trump Documents Case Set for May 2024.
The federal judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trump’s prosecution on charges of illegally retaining dozens of classified documents set a trial date on Friday for May 2024, taking a middle position between the government’s request to go to trial in December and Mr. Trump’s desire to push the proceeding until after the 2024 election.
In her order, Judge Aileen M. Cannon said the trial was to be held in her home courthouse in Fort Pierce, Fla., a coastal city two and a half hours north of Miami that will draw its jury pool from several counties that Mr. Trump won handily in his two previous presidential campaigns.
Judge Cannon also laid out a calendar of hearings, throughout the remainder of this year and into next year, including those concerning the handling of the classified material at the heart of the case.
The scheduling order came after a contentious hearing on Tuesday at the federal courthouse in Fort Pierce where prosecutors working for the special counsel, Jack Smith, and lawyers for Mr. Trump sparred over when to hold the trial.
The timing of the proceeding is more important in this case than in most criminal matters because Mr. Trump is now the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination and his legal obligations to be in court will intersect with his campaign schedule.
The date Judge Cannon chose to start the trial — May 20, 2024 — falls after the bulk of the primary contests. But it is less than two months before the start of the Republican National Convention in July and the formal start of the general election season.
Mr. Trump’s advisers have been blunt that winning the presidency is how he hopes to beat the legal charges he is facing, and he has adopted a strategy of delaying the trial, which is expected to take several weeks, for as long as possible.
The Challenge, Agnes Miller Parker, 1934
Analysis by Aaron Blake at The Washington Post: Trump’s trial date conjures GOP’s nightmare scenario.
When the trial date for Donald Trump’s Manhattan hush money case was set for March — during the GOP presidential primary schedule — the former president and leading 2024 Republican candidate shook his head.
The Republican Party as a whole might have that reaction to Trump’s latest trial date.
U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon on Friday set Trump’s Florida classified documents case to begin on May 20, 2024. Cannon wound up more or less splitting the difference between the government’s request to begin in December and Trump’s lawyers’ preference to begin after the 2024 election.
The date could still be pushed back, especially given that Cannon has labeled the case “complex.” But it means we’re currently looking at this for a schedule of Trump’s upcoming trials:
- Oct. 2: New York civil fraud trial
- Jan. 15: Second E. Jean Carroll civil defamation trial
- March 25: Manhattan hush-money trial
- May 20: Federal classified documents trial in Florida
That’s a lot of legal issues to face in the heart of a campaign, keeping Trump or at least his lawyers in court for a huge chunk of time he’s supposed to be on the trail. But Trump’s most serious bit of legal jeopardy — at least for now, with potential Jan. 6-related indictments looming federally and in Georgia — won’t fully play out until the end of the primary season.
Nomination contests are often effectively wrapped up by March or April at the latest, with the final contests held in June but generally not consequential to the outcome. Republican National Committee rules effectively require every state to hold its contest by May 31, meaning a two-week classified documents trial would place the meat of the proceedings beyond the window for any GOP voters making their decisions.
More commentary from Bess Levin at Vanity Fair: That Sound You Hear Is Donald Trump Screaming, Crying, and Throwing Up in a Mar-a-Lago Bathroom.
Donald Trump received some no good, extremely bad legal news on Friday, when The Guardian reported that Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney criminally investigating his attempt to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia has “developed evidence to charge a sprawling racketeering indictment next month,” according to people familiar with the matter. Obviously, being charged with racketeering would be exactly as bad as it sounds—and yet somehow, that wasn’t even the worst news the ex-president received today.
Instead, it was likely the decision by Aileen Cannon—a federal judge Trump himself appointed—to set a trial date of May 20, 2024, for Trump to face off with the federal government in the classified-documents case, that had staffers and aides hiding in hallways and coat closets to avoid Trump’s ire (and whatever ketchup bottles he could get his hands on). While the spring date is several months later than prosecutors had requested, it is very much well before the postelection one Team Trump had been angling for in the hopes of putting it off until the ex-president could have won a second term and made all of his legal problems—on the federal level, that is—go away.
Of course, just because Cannon issued a ruling that Trump will undoubtedly be very unhappy about today does not mean she won’t, as many fear, blow up the case in his favor when the trial finally kicks off. (As The Washington Post notes, “In her role, Cannon can have a significant impact on the case, including by ruling on what evidence can be included and deciding on any potential motions challenging the charges.”) On the other hand, the government’s indictment against Trump is said to be extremely strong: After the charges were unveiled last month, former attorney general Bill Barr opined: “I was shocked by the degree of sensitivity of these documents and how many there were, frankly. If even half of it is true, he’s toast.” As one Fox News legal analyst noted, “All the government has to do is stick the landing on one count, and he could have a terminal sentence. We’re talking about crimes that have a 10- or 20-year period as a maximum.” (Trump, along with his alleged co-conspirator, has pleaded not guilty.)
Siamese Cat, 1950, by Agnes Miller Parker
The news about Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis came from Hugo Lowell at The Guardian: Fulton county prosecutors prepare racketeering charges in Trump inquiry.
The Fulton county district attorney investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the state of Georgia has developed evidence to charge a sprawling racketeering indictment next month, according to two people briefed on the matter.
The racketeering statute in Georgia requires prosecutors to show the existence of an “enterprise” – and a pattern of racketeering activity that is predicated on at least two “qualifying” crimes.
In the Trump investigation, the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, has evidence to pursue a racketeering indictment predicated on statutes related to influencing witnesses and computer trespass, the people said.
Willis had previously said she was weighing racketeering charges in her criminal investigation, but the new details about the direction and scope of the case come as prosecutors are expected to seek indictments starting in the first two weeks of August.
The racketeering statute in Georgia is more expansive than its federal counterpart, notably because any attempts to solicit or coerce the qualifying crimes can be included as predicate acts of racketeering activity, even when those crimes cannot be indicted separately.
The specific evidence was not clear, though the charge regarding influencing witnesses could include Trump’s conversations with Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, in which he asked Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 votes, the people said – and thereby implicate Trump.
For the computer trespass charge, where prosecutors would have to show that defendants used a computer or network without authority to interfere with a program or data, that would include the breach of voting machines in Coffee county, the two people said.
The breach of voting machines involved a group of Trump operatives – paid by the then Trump lawyer Sidney Powell – accessing the voting machines at the county’s election office and copying sensitive voting system data.
More details at The Guardian.
Special Counsel Jack Smith is also interested in 2020 election interference in Georgia as well as Arizona. The Hill reports that: DOJ special counsel contacts Kemp, former Arizona governor in Jan. 6 probe: reports.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) has been contacted by the federal special counsel investigating former President Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, Kemp’s office confirmed Friday.
Former Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) was also contacted for the investigation, according to CNN reports.
Special Counsel Jack Smith is investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the election and his actions related to the Jan. 6 insurrection. He served Trump a target letter on Sunday, informing the former president that he is the target of the probe.
By Agnes Miller Parker
The move shows overlap between Smith’s federal investigation and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s investigation into the same conduct in Georgia.
A spokesperson for Kemp’s office confirmed that he had been contacted by Smith, but did not give further details, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
Smith’s probe in Arizona is questioning lawsuits brought by the Trump campaign against the state which alleged that the election was fraudulent. Smith subpoenaed the Arizona Secretary of State’s office earlier this month and subpoenaed state lawmakers in February.
Trump called Ducey multiple times to pressure him to overturn Arizona’s election results. President Biden won Arizona, the first time the state voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1996.
At The Washington Post, some tidbits about Mark Meadows: Before Jan. 6, Mark Meadows joked about Trump’s election claims.
Mark Meadows joked about the baseless claim that large numbers of votes were fraudulently cast in the names of dead people in the days before the then-White House chief of staff participated in a phone call in which then-President Trump alleged there were close to 5,000dead voters in Georgia and urged Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to overturn the 2020 election there.
In a text message that has been scrutinized by federal prosecutors, Meadows wrote to a White House lawyer that his son, Atlanta-area attorney Blake Meadows, had been probing possible fraud and had found only a handful of possible votes cast in dead voters’ names, far short of what Trump was alleging. The lawyer teasingly responded that perhaps Meadows’s son could locate the thousands of votes Trump would need to win the election. The text was described by multiple people familiar with the exchange.
The jocular text message, which has not been previously reported, is one of many exchanges from the time in which Trump aides and other Republican officials expressed deep skepticism or even openly mocked the election claims being made publicly by Trump, according to people familiar with the investigation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the criminal investigation.
Special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading a Justice Department investigation of Trump’s activities in the weeks leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, has focused on exploring whether Trump and his closest advisers understood that claims of fraud in the election were baseless, even as they pressed state officials and others to overturn Biden’s victory and convinced Trump’s millions of supporters that the election had been stolen, people familiar with the probe have said.
The text message is a small part of a broader portrait of Meadows that Smith appears to be assembling as he weighs the actions of not just Trump but a number of his closest advisers, including Meadows.
Ron DeSantis’s Struggles
The New York Times: DeSantis Faces Swell of Criticism Over Florida’s New Standards for Black History.
After an overhaul to Florida’s African American history standards, Gov. Ron DeSantis, the state’s firebrand governor campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination, is facing a barrage of criticism this week from politicians, educators and historians, who called the state’s guidelines a sanitized version of history.
Siamese cats, Agnes Miller Parker
For instance, the standards say that middle schoolers should be instructed that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit” — a portrayal that drew wide rebuke.
In a sign of the divisive battle around education that could infect the 2024 presidential race, Vice President Kamala Harris directed her staffers to immediately plan a trip to Florida to respond, according to one White House official.
“How is it that anyone could suggest that in the midst of these atrocities that there was any benefit to being subjected to this level of dehumanization?” Ms. Harris, the first African American and first Asian American to serve as vice president, said in a speech in Jacksonville on Friday afternoon.
Ahead of her speech, Mr. DeSantis released a statement accusing the Biden administration of mischaracterizing the new standards and being “obsessed with Florida.”
Florida’s new standards land in the middle of a national tug of war on how race and gender should be taught in schools. There have been local skirmishes over banning books, what can be said about race in classrooms and debates over renaming schools that have honored Confederate generals.
Cleve R. Wootson, Jr. at The Washington Post: Harris, on DeSantis’s turf, blasts Florida curriculum on Black history.
Vice President Harris, taking aim at Gov. Ron DeSantis’s “war on woke” on Friday in his home state, blasted Florida politicians for making changes to the public school curriculum that she said amounted to little more than a “purposeful and intentional policy to mislead our children,” especially when it comes to slavery.
Harris never mentioned DeSantis (R) by name, referring only to “extremists” and people who “want to be talked about as American leaders.” But her fiery speech in Jacksonville focused squarely on the policies of the Florida governor and presidential candidate, as well as on the state’s Board of Education and its Republican-controlled legislature.
Florida’s new standards on Black history lay out numerous benchmarks, but one has especially caught critics’ attention — a statement that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” Since the guidelines were approved on Wednesday, many civil rights leaders have denounced the notion that slavery benefited its victims in some ways.
“Come on — adults know what slavery really involved,” Harris said. “It involved rape. It involved torture. It involved taking a baby from their mother. It involved some of the worst examples of depriving people of humanity in our world.”
By Agnes Miller Parker
She added, “How is it that anyone could suggest that in the midst of these atrocities, that there was any benefit to being subjected to this level of dehumanization?”
Since DeSantis announced his bid for the presidency in May, polls have cast him as former president Donald Trump’s top competition for the Republican nomination, at least for now. As DeSantis makes his pitch in early-voting primary states, he has blasted what he calls “woke indoctrination” in schools and said recent legislative changes in Florida could be a model for the rest of the nation.
Harris’s trip to the governor’s home state to rip into his policies could be a pivotal moment both for the Biden campaign, which has generally resisted going after the GOP presidential hopefuls, and for the vice president, who has sometimes seemed to cast about for a resonant issue.
Read more at The WaPo.
Bidenomics News
It’s difficult to understand why President Biden isn’t more popular. He has really delivered on his promises. What more do voters want? Are people really stupid enough to fall for GOP propaganda about the economy?
Christina Wilke at CNBC: Morgan Stanley credits Bidenomics for ‘much stronger’ than expected GDP growth.
Morgan Stanley is crediting President Joe Biden’s economic policies with driving an unexpected surge in the U.S. economy that is so significant that the bank was forced to make a “sizable upward revision” to its estimates for U.S. gross domestic product.
Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is “driving a boom in large-scale infrastructure,” wrote Ellen Zentner, chief U.S. economist for Morgan Stanley, in a research note released Thursday. In addition to infrastructure, “manufacturing construction has shown broad strength,” she wrote.
As a result of these unexpected swells, Morgan Stanley now projects 1.9% GDP growth for the first half of this year. That’s nearly four times higher than the bank’s previous forecast of 0.5%.
“The economy in the first half of the year is growing much stronger than we had anticipated, putting a more comfortable cushion under our long-held soft landing view,” Zentner wrote.
The analysts also doubled their original estimate for GDP growth in the fourth quarter, to 1.3% from 0.6%. Looking into next year, they raised their forecast for real GDP in 2024 by a tenth of a percent, to 1.4%.
“The narrative behind the numbers tells the story of industrial strength in the U.S,” Zentner wrote.
Morgan Stanley’s revision came at a pivotal time for the Biden White House. The president has spent the summer crisscrossing the country, touting his economic achievements. “Together we are transforming the country, not just through jobs, not just through manufacturing, but also by rebuilding our infrastructure,” Biden said Thursday during a visit to a Philadelphia shipyard.
Read more at CNBC.
Have a fabulous Caturday and a great weekend, everyone!!
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Posted: July 20, 2023 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Afternoon Reads, Donald Trump, just because | Tags: black voting rights, Civil Right conspiracy, Jack Smith, January 6 grand jury, Trump Indictments, Washington DC juries |
Good Afternoon!!
The grand jury investigating the January 6 case is meeting today. Donald Trump had the option to explain himself to them; but since he won’t be doing that, he could be indicted today. The grand jury usually meets on Fridays also.
This is from The Independent’s live blog: Trump could be indicted for civil rights law violation as soon as today in Jan 6 grand jury probe.
Donald Trump could be indicted by a grand jury investigating his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the January 6 Capitol riot as early as today.
The Independent learned that a possible indictment could be handed down as soon as Thursday or Friday, charging the former president in his third criminal case.
Mr Trump announced on Tuesday that he had been sent a letter by special prosecutor Jack Smith informing him that he is the “target” of a grand jury investigation.
The target letter cites three statutes under which he could be charged including conspiracy to commit offence or to defraud the United States, deprivation of rights under colour of law and tampering with a witness, victim or informant, multiple outlets reported.
William Russell, a former White House aide who now works for the Trump presidential campaign and spent much of January 6 with the then-president, is scheduled to testify before the grand jury when it meets today.
Analysis from Stephen Collinson at CNN: All eyes on a Washington grand jury amid signs of possible third Trump indictment.
A White House race that figures to be one of the most fraught in history is again in suspended animation as the political world awaits more potential criminal charges the Republican front-runner is expecting from special counsel Jack Smith.
Trump has lost none of his ability to shatter political conventions. Just months ago, the notion that a former president and potential future commander in chief could be indicted was staggering and unprecedented. Now it’s becoming an almost regular occurrence.
Trump has already been charged in Manhattan in a case triggered by a hush money payment to an adult film star, and separately, is facing federal charges related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents he hoarded in Florida. He announced this week that he’d been named as a target of Smith’s investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and events leading up to the attack on the US Capitol. Receiving such a notification is a procedural step that often leads to an indictment. And he’s waiting to find out whether he’ll be charged in a probe in Georgia over efforts to reverse President Joe Biden’s win there. The ex-president has pleaded not guilty to both indictments and denies wrongdoing in every other case against him.
Trump, his Republican rivals for the 2024 nomination, and much of America will be waiting for any developments out of a grand jury in Washington, DC, that is meeting Thursday. Two sources told CNN that Will Russell, a former special assistant to Trump in the White House who has continued to work for him, is due to testify for at least the third time. Any indictment in the probe, in the days or weeks to come, would likely emerge from this grand jury – a fact that lends its work great historical significance. Trump indicated that the target letter he received on Sunday gave him four days to take up an option to testify. Legal custom suggests that any indictment could come at any time after that.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie – one of the rare Trump rivals who has openly criticized the ex-president – told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday that he was waiting to examine any charges from Smith before forming a judgment. But, given his experience as an ex-prosecutor, Christie suggested that the target letter from Smith was a grave omen.
“I never sent the target letter if I was not completely sure that I had put enough in front of the grand jury for them to return an indictment,” he said on “The Situation Room.”
“My sense is it’ll be a speaking indictment, as we call it in the business, which provides a lot of detail. So, you can really give folks a sense of what the evidence is that backs up the charges.”
CNN reported Wednesday that the ex-president’s legal team was scrambling to find out whether Smith had evidence about Trump’s conduct they didn’t know about. This raises the possibility that any election-related case Smith might bring against Trump may be far broader than his camp may have expected.
There’s more at the link.
UPDATE: Just now, CNN is is reporting that, according to their sources, the “Trump team [is] expecting new indictment any moment.” I’m watching with the sound off, and will update if that happens.
Both The Guardian and The New York Times have articles explaining the Civil Rights charge mentioned in the target letter Trump received from Jack Smith.
Hugh Lowell at The Guardian: Trump under investigation for civil rights conspiracy in January 6 inquiry.
Federal prosecutors investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results have evidence to charge the former president with three crimes, including section 241 of the US legal code that makes it unlawful to conspire to violate civil rights, two people familiar with the matter said.
The potential charges detailed in a target letter sent to Trump by prosecutors from the office of special counsel Jack Smith, who also charged Trump with retaining classified documents last month, was the clearest signal of an imminent indictment.
Prosecutors appear to have evidence to charge Trump with obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States based on the target letter, two statutes that the House select committee examining the January 6 Capitol attack issued criminal referrals for last year.
The target letter to Trump identified a previously unconsidered third charge, the sources said. That is section 241 of title 18 of the US code, which makes it unlawful to conspire to threaten or intimidate a person in the “free exercise” of any right or privilege under the “Constitution or laws of the United States”.
The statute, enacted to protect the civil rights of Black voters targeted by white supremacy groups after the US civil war, is unusual because it is typically used by prosecutors in law enforcement misconduct and hate crime prosecutions, though its use has expanded in recent years.
The other two statutes, meanwhile, suggest a core part of the case against Trump is focused on the so-called fake electors scheme and the former president’s efforts to use the fake slates in a conspiracy to stop the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s election win on 6 January 2021.
The New York Times: Potential Trump Charges Include Civil Rights Law Used in Voting Fraud Cases.
Federal prosecutors have introduced a new twist in the Jan. 6 investigation by suggesting in a target letter that they could charge former President Donald J. Trump with violating a civil rights statute that dates back to the post-Civil War Reconstruction era, according to three people familiar with the matter.
The letter to Mr. Trump from the special counsel, Jack Smith, referred to three criminal statutes as part of the grand jury investigation into Mr. Trump’s efforts to reverse his 2020 election loss, according to two people with knowledge of its contents. Two of the statutes were familiar from the criminal referral by the House Jan. 6 committee and months of discussion by legal experts: conspiracy to defraud the government and obstruction of an official proceeding.
But the third criminal law cited in the letter was a surprise: Section 241 of Title 18 of the United States Code, which makes it a crime for people to “conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person” in the “free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States.”
Congress enacted that statute after the Civil War to provide a tool for federal agents to go after Southern whites, including Ku Klux Klan members, who engaged in terrorism to prevent formerly enslaved African Americans from voting. But in the modern era, it has been used more broadly, including in cases of voting fraud conspiracies….
A series of 20th-century cases upheld application of the law in cases involving alleged tampering with ballot boxes by casting false votes or falsely tabulating votes after the election was over, even if no specific voter could be considered the victim.
In a 1950 opinion by the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, for example, Judge Charles C. Simons wrote of applying Section 241 in a ballot box-stuffing case that the right to an honest count “is a right possessed by each voting elector, and to the extent that the importance of his vote is nullified, wholly or in part, he has been injured in the free exercise of a right or privilege secured to him by the laws and Constitution of the United States.”
In a 1974 Supreme Court opinion upholding the use of Section 241 to charge West Virginians who cast fake votes on a voting machine, Justice Thurgood Marshall cited Judge Simons and added that every voter “has a right under the Constitution to have his vote fairly counted, without its being distorted by fraudulently cast votes.”
The line of 20th-century cases raised the prospect that Mr. Smith and his team could be weighing using that law to cover efforts by Mr. Trump and his associates to flip the outcome of states he lost. Those efforts included the recorded phone conversation in which Mr. Trump tried to bully Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” enough additional votes to overcome Mr. Biden’s win in that state and promoting a plan to use so-called fake electors — self-appointed slates of pro-Trump electors from states won by Mr. Biden — to help block or delay congressional certification of Mr. Trump’s defeat.
Read more at the NYT.
For a detailed discussion of how the press has until now misunderstood what Special Counsel Jack Smith is up to, see this post by Marcy Wheeler at Emptywheel: Trump’s Attack on Black Votes Was There the Whole Time, We Just Didn’t Call It a Crime.
One more read on the January 6 case by Michael Daly at The Daily Beast: Jan. 6 Rioters Have Bad News for Trump About D.C. Juries.
However Donald Trump fares in the Mar-a-Lago documents case in Florida, he will face a much tougher fight if the target letter he received on Sunday is followed by an indictment for attempting to overthrow the 2020 election.
Those charges would almost certainly be brought in Washington, D.C., where juries have convicted one Jan. 6 defendant after another.
“If I was Donald J. Trump, the last place on Earth I’d want to be tried other than Atlanta, Georgia, is Washington, D.C.,” Samuel Shamansky, attorney for convicted Jan. 6 rioter Dustin Thompson, told The Daily Beast.
Shamansky said he based his opinion partly on pre-trial jury selection and the trial itself, but mostly on speaking with the jury after it returned a guilty verdict. The jurors made it clear that they were deeply offended by the storming of the Capitol.
“The overwhelming sense was this was a personal violation, a personal affront,” Shamansky said. “Folks from outside the D.C. area with an anti-D.C. agenda took over their city and trashed the Capitol building and assaulted their officers, all in the name of a fake stolen election.”
From another defendent:
More insight into what Trump would face in Washington, D.C., comes from attorney Norman Pattis, who represented Joseph Biggs, one of five Proud Boys charged with a seditious conspiracy related to Jan. 6. Pattis told The Daily Beast that more than half of the prospective jurors he interviewed sympathized with the Black Lives Matter movement. Nearly everyone had attended a protest at some time, though not one had been to a ‘Stop the Steal’ rally.
“It is a terrifying panel,” he said. “It took us 12 days to pick a jury and we didn’t like what we had.”
All five Proud Boys were convicted, though the jurors did reject some counts and appear to have taken considerable care in weighing the evidence.
“I’m not saying you can’t get a fair trial there,” Pattis said.
But he did suggest that the nation’s capital is hardly an ideal venue for defendants who rant about “the deep state” and pledge to “drain the swamp.”
“D.C. is a company town and its business is government,” he said.
Pattis figures that Trump would seek a change of venue.
“And it will fail,” Pattis added, citing the current guidelines for such a switch.
I can’t wait for that trial!
I’m going to wrap this up, because I’m really burned out today, and besides, I can’t think of anything else but the coming Trump indictment. This man has done so much damage to this country. I want to see him finally pay the price for his crimes.
Have a nice Thursday, and please feel free to post your thoughts and links on any topic that interests you.
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