Lazy Caturday Reads

Posted: March 16, 2024 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: 2024 Elections, 2024 presidential Campaign, cat art, Cats, caturday, Donald Trump | Tags: "absolute immunity", Alvin Bragg, Benjamin Netanyahu, Chuck Schumer, E. Jean Carroll, Elon Musk, Fani Willis, Gaza, israel, Jared Kushner, Judge Scott McAfee, Letitia James, Mike Pence, SpaceX, Stormy Daniels, Supreme Court, Tommy Tuberville | 2 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

Walter Chandoha plays with one of his subjects at his home studio in 1955.

Today I’m featuring cat photos by Walter Chandoha. Chandoha was a famous photographer of animals–mostly cats. You can read about him and see more photos in this 2019 New York Times obituary by Richard Sandomir: Walter Chandoha, Photographer Whose Specialty Was Cats, Dies at 98.

Taking pictures of cats soon began to look like a more fulfilling career path than the one in advertising that Mr. Chandoha had planned while attending New York University, after serving in World War II. So, after graduating, he turned to freelance photography for a living — and, by the mid-1950s, he had begun a long period as the dominant commercial cat photographer of his era.

“Walter Chandoha’s cat models, shown on this page, must be alert, graceful and beautiful,” read a newspaper ad in 1956 for a cat food brand that featured his photos. “To keep them that way, Mr. Chandoha feeds them Puss ‘n Boots because Puss ‘n Boots is good nutrition.”

On a winter’s evening in 1949, Walter Chandoha was walking to his three-room apartment in Astoria, Queens, when he spotted an abandoned gray kitten shivering in the snow. He put it in a pocket of his Army coat and brought it home to his wife, Maria.

The kitten’s antics — racing through the apartment each night as if possessed, shadowboxing with his image in a mirror — inspired the couple to name him Loco. Mr. Chandoha (pronounced shan-DOE-uh) was moved to photograph Loco and quickly sold the pictures to newspapers and magazines around the world.

By the time he died, on Jan. 11, Mr. Chandoha had taken some 90,000 cat photos, nearly all before cats had become viral darlings of social media. He was 98.

Now, on to the day’s news:

It’s becoming very clear that the courts are not going to protect us from a possible Trump dictatorship. Thank goodness for E. Jean Carroll and NY AG Letitia James. At least two New York courts have hit Trump where it hurts–his finances. But the two federal cases seem stalled and the Georgia case just took a bit hit. Those three prosecutions of Trump are unlikely to take place before the election now. We are going to have to defeat him at the ballot box.

At The New Republic, Michael Tomasky writes: We Have to Beat Donald Trump. Clearly, the Broken Legal System Won’t.

Judge Scott McAfee has ruled that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis can stay on the case against Donald Trump in that jurisdiction, provided that Nathan Wade, the prosecutor on the case with whom she had a relationship, withdraws. I guess we count that a win, although to be honest, Willis has so damaged herself by her colossally terrible judgment that it probably would have been better if she were out of the picture.

Cats play together in 1962.

The other problem with Willis’s scandal is how it slowed the case down, giving Trump’s lawyers a chance to make this not about the defendant but about her—and another chance to delay, delay, delay.

Meanwhile, Thursday, down in Florida, we saw Trumpy Judge Aileen Cannon issue yet another ruling in the classified documents case that helps Trump. She didn’t support Trump’s lawyers’ motion to dismiss the case, but she kicked the can down the road in a way that’s very helpful to Trump. MSNBC analyst Andrew Weissmann even called it the “worst possible outcome” for the government. “If the judge had simply said, ‘I agree with Donald Trump, and I find that this is vague, and I’m dismissing it,’ the government could have appealed it to the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, as they have done twice before and won twice before,” Weissmann said. “But she also did not want to rule in favor of the government. So what she did is said, ‘Why don’t you bring this up later? I think there’s some real issues here.’”

Also this week, in the Stormy Daniels hush-money case against Trump, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg shocked us all by asking for a 30-day delay in the trial, which was scheduled to start March 25. Trump’s lawyers had requested a 90-day delay. Bragg conceded that some delay was appropriate.

Why? It looks like it’s the fault of federal prosecutors. Bragg’s office requested certain documents a while ago from the Southern District of New York, and it shared them with Trump’s lawyers during the discovery process. Trump’s lawyers suspected there was more, especially relating to Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, so they subpoenaed the SDNY. That happened in January. It was only earlier this month that the Southern District turned over all the documents….

It’s more than fair to ask: Why did the Southern District take so long to produce these documents? And we must also ask this: Did Merrick Garland know his prosecutors were taking so long to hand over documents, and thus playing into Trump’s hands? And if he knew, did he do anything about it?

And then there’s the most significant case of all–the one about Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Finally, let’s recall the status of the fourth criminal case against Trump, the biggest one, at least to my mind—the January 6 insurrection case. On that one, we’re basically waiting on the Supreme Court, which announced on February 28 that it would hear arguments in Trump’s claim of complete immunity but set the argument date for April 25. The high court could easily take another month—or even two—to hand down its decision after that, meaning that this crucial trial, about whether a sitting president initiated an insurrection against the government of the United States, may not happen before Election Day.

How in the world did all this happen? A few weeks ago, it looked like the wheels of justice were finally turning, catching up on a man who has flouted and broken laws not only during his presidency but for his entire adult life,

going back to when he and his father wouldn’t rent apartments to Black people in Queens. There was the judgment in the E. Jean Carroll case. And then the whopping penalty in the New York attorney general’s case against the Trump Organization.

But this week, it looks like everything is falling apart.

An American shorthair in 1966.

We can’t count on the courts. They move slowly and they favor the rich and powerful. We can’t count on the media either. They seem to favor another Trump presidency because the bosses believe the insanity and chaos would be good for their bottom line.

CNN on the Fani Willis case:

Another problem comes from MAGA threats. MSBNC’s Kyle Griffin wrote on Twitter that

“Judge Scott McAfee had written his order on Willis and Wade early last week, according to NBC News, but because he had been receiving threats, he waited until today to make it public in order to allow for proper security to be in place for him and his family.”

At NBC, Rebecca Shabad, Adam Reiss and Tom Winter write about the status of the Stormy Daniels election interference case: Trump hush money trial postponed until mid-April, judge rules.

The trial in the New York hush money case against former President Donald Trump has been delayed until the middle of April, Judge Juan Merchan ruled Friday.

Merchan said the trial — originally scheduled to begin March 25 — would be pushed back 30 days from Friday.

He also scheduled a hearing for the trial’s initial start date, to discuss a motion filed by Trump’s attorneys regarding document production in the case.

Merchan said he will set a new trial date “if necessary” when he rules on that motion, meaning it’s possible the trial proceedings could be delayed beyond the middle of next month.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg had previously said he would support the trial being delayed at least 30 days, into late April. Trump’s legal team requested that it be postponed 90 days.

Bragg said Thursday that Trump’s request to delay the trial was the result of the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan providing over 100,000 pages of discovery, which Bragg said were “largely irrelevant to the subject matter of this case.” The U.S. Attorney’s Office provided an additional 15,000 pages of discovery on Friday, which Bragg’s office said were also “likely to be unrelated to the subject matter of this case.”

The documents relate to Michael Cohen’s guilty plea in 2018 to numerous criminal charges, including making secret payments to women who claimed they had affairs with Trump, lying to Congress about Trump’s business dealings with Russia and failing to report millions of dollars in income.

Echoing MIchael Tomasky, WTF is going on with the Southern District and the DOJ. Are there MAGA people still in place that are helping Trump delay justice?

This 1955 photo is one of Walter Chandoha’s most famous shots. “My daughter Paula and the kitten both ‘smiled’ for the camera at the same time. … But the cat’s not smiling, he’s meowing.”

Speaking of the rich and powerful, why is Elon Musk still getting federal contracts after his support for Nazis and white supremacists and his support for Russia’s war against Ukraine?

Joey Roulette and Marisa Taylor at Reuters: Exclusive: Musk’s SpaceX is building spy satellite network for US intelligence agency, sources say.

SpaceX is building a network of hundreds of spy satellites under a classified contract with a U.S. intelligence agency, five sources familiar with the program said, demonstrating deepening ties between billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s space company and national security agencies.

The network is being built by SpaceX’s Starshield business unit under a $1.8 billion contract signed in 2021 with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), an intelligence agency that manages spy satellites, the sources said.

The plans show the extent of SpaceX’s involvement in U.S. intelligence and military projects and illustrate a deeper Pentagon investment into vast, low-Earth orbiting satellite systems aimed at supporting ground forces.

If successful, the sources said the program would significantly advance the ability of the U.S. government and military to quickly spot potential targets almost anywhere on the globe.

The contract signals growing trust by the intelligence establishment of a company whose owner has clashed with the Biden administration and sparked controversy, opens new tab over the use of Starlink satellite connectivity in the Ukraine war, the sources said.

The Wall Street Journal reported, opens new tab in February the existence of a $1.8 billion classified Starshield contract with an unknown intelligence agency without detailing the purposes of the program.

Reuters reporting discloses for the first time that the SpaceX contract is for a powerful new spy system with hundreds of satellites bearing Earth-imaging capabilities that can operate as a swarm in low orbits, and that the spy agency that Musk’s company is working with is the NRO.

Will Musk have access to this program, as he does with Starlink? How do we know he won’t share information with Russia? Am I an idiot to ask that?

Chandoha’s backlighting technique dramatizes the defensive posture of a kitten seeing a dog in 1957.

Another tale of the rich and powerful from Eric Lipton, Jonathan Swan, and Maggie Haberman at The New York Times: Kushner Developing Deals Overseas Even as His Father-in-Law Runs for President.

Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of Donald J. Trump, confirmed on Friday that he was closing in on major real estate deals in Albania and Serbia, the latest example of the former president’s family doing business abroad even as Mr. Trump seeks to return to the White House.

Mr. Kushner’s plans in the Balkans appear to have come about in part through relationships built while Mr. Trump was in office. Mr. Kushner, who was a senior White House official, said he had been working on the deals with Richard Grenell, who served briefly as acting director of national intelligence under Mr. Trump and also as ambassador to Germany and special envoy to the Balkans.

One of the proposed projects would be the development of an island off the coast of Albania into a luxury tourist destination.

A second — with a planned luxury hotel and 1,500 residential units and a museum — is in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, at the site of the long-vacant former headquarters of the Yugoslav Army destroyed in 1999 by the NATO bombings, according to a member of Parliament in Serbia and Mr. Kushner’s company.

These first two projects both involve land now controlled by the governments, meaning a deal would have to be finalized with foreign governments.

A third project, also in Albania, would be built on the Zvërnec peninsula, a 1,000-acre coastal area in the south of Albania that is part of the resort community known as Vlorë, where several hotels and hundreds of villas would be built, according to the plan.

Mr. Kushner’s participation would be through his investment firm, Affinity Partners, which has $2 billion in funding from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, among other foreign investors. In a statement, an official with Affinity Partners said it had not been determined whether the Saudi funds might be a part of any project Mr. Kushner is considering in the Balkans.

How does Kushner get away with this? Why aren’t Congressional Democrats investigating him, even if the DOJ is too busy or corrupt? I don’t get it.

Commentary from Carl Gibson at Raw Story: ‘Corrupt’: Jared Kushner’s overseas business deals under fire as Trump runs for president.

Former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner (who was also a senior adviser in his White House) has been ramping up his overseas business dealings undeterred by the optics of doing so in the midst of his father-in-law’s presidential campaign.

A Friday report in the New York Times scrutinized Kushner’s real estate deals in Balkan countries of Albania and Serbia, in which he stands to reap significant financial benefits once they’re completed. The Times reported that Kushner has been working with Richard Grenell, who was Trump’s former acting Director of National Intelligence who also served as German ambassador and a special envoy to the Balkans.

An American shorthair squeezes into a glass in 1960.

Notably, two of the three projects Kushner is aiming to finalize this year involve the transfer of land currently owned by Albania and Serbia, meaning a member of the president’s immediate family (Kushner is married to Trump’s daughter, Ivanka) stands to receive money directly from foreign governments. According to the Times, the first project involves redeveloping an island off the Albanian coast into a high-end luxury resort, and the second would be a 1,500-unit apartment building, museum and luxury hotel in the Serbian capital city of Belgrade. The third — which doesn’t involve a direct land acquisition from a foreign government — is a planned resort development in coastal southern Albania.

Kushner has been capitalizing on his foreign connections since leaving the White House. After Kushner’s departure became official, he launched his investment firm, Affinity Partners, which received a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund as well as from other foreign business interests in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.

The former president’s son-in-law worked closely with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin-Salman while he was in the White House, as Trump frequently put him in the driver’s seat in negotiations with Middle Eastern countries. In 2018, bin-Salman was accused of playing a direct role in the dismemberment and murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi (President Joe Biden made it clear in 2022 that the Saudi crown prince was immune from any legal action in relation to Khashoggi’s assassination)….

Meanwhile, Republicans continue to investigate Biden’s son, Hunter, for his own foreign business deals even as Kushner plows ahead in the Balkans. House Oversight Committee chairman Rep. James Comer (R-Kentucky) and House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) both maintain that the president improperly influenced foreign governments in his son’s favor, though their respective investigations have yet to yield any smoking gun evidence.

In Israel-Hamas war news, Senator Chuck Schumer spoke out this week about Israel’s conduct in Gaza. Jonathan Weisman at The New York Times: A Watershed Moment for the Politics of Israel, Courtesy of Chuck Schumer.

Over 44 painstakingly scripted minutes on the floor of the Senate on Thursday, the majority leader, Chuck Schumer, spoke of his Jewish identity, his love for the State of Israel, his horror at the wanton slaughter of Israelis on Oct. 7 and his views on the apportionment of blame for the carnage in Gaza, saying that it first and foremost lay with the terrorists of Hamas.

Then Mr. Schumer, a New York Democrat and the highest-ranking elected Jew in American history, said Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was an impediment to peace, and called for new elections in the world’s only Jewish state.

The opposition was not nearly so painstaking.

Within minutes, the House Republican leadership demanded an apology. The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, using Mr. Netanyahu’s nickname, declared: “Make no mistake — the Democratic Party doesn’t have an anti-Bibi problem. It has an anti-Israel problem.” And the Republican Jewish Coalition proclaimed that “the most powerful Democrat in Congress knifed the Jewish state in the back.”

Walter Chandoha, 1962

The months that have followed the slaughter of Oct. 7 and the ensuing, calamitously deadly war in Gaza have been excruciating for American Jews, caught between a tradition of liberalism that has dominated much of Jewish politics and an anti-Israel response from the political left that has left many feeling isolated and, at times, persecuted.

But Mr. Schumer’s speech was potentially a watershed moment in a much longer political process, pursued initially by Republicans but joined recently by left-wing Democrats — to turn Israel into a partisan issue. Republicans, as they see it, would be the party of Israeli supporters. Democrats, as the rising left would have it, would be the party of Palestine

At the root of that divide is a fundamental question: Is support for the Jewish State separable from the support of Israel’s democratically elected government? For years, Republicans have said no. Increasingly, the Democratic left agrees but from a different perspective: Israel is bad, regardless of who governs it.

“The pressure — electoral, social, cultural — on American Jews right now to declare themselves” on the justice of the war in Gaza and on the legitimacy of the Israeli prime minister has been “unrelenting, unforgiving and sometimes downright vicious,” said David Wolpe, a prominent rabbi in Los Angeles and a visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School.

Mr. Schumer’s speech and the ensuing partisan response have made that pressure even more intense.

“It’s impossible to understate the seismic event this was,” said Matthew Brooks, the longtime chief executive of the Republican Jewish Coalition, who made it clear that the group would use the speech to drive Jewish voters to the G.O.P.

Wednesday Reads: Robert Hur Is a Lying Liar.

Posted: March 13, 2024 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: 2024 presidential Campaign, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, just because | Tags: Adam Schiff, Bill Barr, classified documents, cognitive decline, Eric Swalwell, House Judiciary Committee, James Comey, memory issues, President Joe Biden, Special Counsel Robert Hur | 2 Comments

Good Day!!

The self-satisfied Mr. Robert Hur

Yesterday Robert Hur testified before the House Judiciary Committee. Before his appearance, Hur resigned from the Department of Justice and reportedly worked with Republicans in preparing his testimony. Hur and his Republican pals made every effort to make Biden look bad, but Democrats were well prepared to counter those efforts. And, unfortunately for Hur, the transcript of his interviews with Biden was also released yesterday.

You probably recall that Hur’s final report included gratuitous claims about President Biden’s age and cognitive abilities. Some observers have compared Hur’s behavior with that of James Comey’s attack on Hillary Clinton just before the 2016 election. Fortunately, we are months away from the 2024 vote.

Molly Jong-Fast at MSNBC: Robert Hur took a page from the James Comey playbook — and made it worse.

I remember where I was on Oct. 28, 2016, the day James Comey released his letter. I was at a health food restaurant with a Republican friend of mine. “This is going to lose her the election,” I told my friend. I felt like I was going to throw up. I knew what a Donald Trump presidency would mean for women, for all of us.

“Don’t be silly,” said my friend, who I suspect later voted for Trump. The New York Times had the story on the front page: “Emails in Anthony Weiner Inquiry Jolt Hillary Clinton’s Campaign.” On Nov. 8, 2016, Clinton lost the election to Trump 304 to 227. The Comey letter had created just enough muddiness to make it seem like both candidates were ethically challenged. It was the false equivalence that Trump was able to ride to the White House. Data guru Nate Silver wrote that the Comey letter “was probably enough to change the outcome of the Electoral College.” Not only did Comey make Trump president but then he wrote numerous very tedious books. He became a resistance hero, riding his regret all the way to the bank.

Fast-forward to Feb. 8, 2024, when Republican special counsel Robert Hur released his 345-page report. The report is being seen by some as an exoneration, saying that no criminal charges are warranted in the classified documents case against President Joe Biden. But Hur, who used to work for the Trump administration, couldn’t let Biden off the hook entirely, especially 269 days before an election. Hur, a member of a Republican Party that now largely works as a campaign arm for the former president, delivered the goods for his party. Sure, he found no legal basis to charge Biden, but but but… Hur proceeded to editorialize ad nauseam about Biden’s mental acuity, delivering right-wing talking points up on a platter. He wrote, “[At] trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

Saying you don’t remember stuff in a deposition is pretty much standard. For example, Dr. Anthony Fauci said “I don’t recall” 174 times during a deposition about alleged collusion between the Biden administration and social media platforms — but because there isn’t a narrative about Fauci’s age crafted by Trump World, no one thought this had anything to do with his mental acuity….

Lies, by Edel Rodriguez

Hur’s report was a partisan hit job, but it didn’t matter, as former Obama chief of staff Jim Messina tweeted: “Let’s be clear — the special counsel isn’t a dummy and we should be very careful not to take the bait after Comey pulled this in 2016. Hur, a lifelong Republican and creature of DC, didn’t have a case against Biden, but he knew exactly how his swipes could hurt Biden politically.”

Joe Scarborough put it even more succinctly: “He couldn’t indict Biden legally, so he tried to indict Biden politically.” Yet again, a Republican special counsel had put his finger on the scale, just like Comey did in 2016. Hur isn’t a neurologist; he has no idea what Biden’s mental acuity is. Former attorney general Eric Holder condemned the report: “Special Counsel Hur report on Biden classified documents issues contains way too many gratuitous remarks and is flatly inconsistent with long standing DOJ traditions,” he posted on X, adding: “Had this report been subject to a normal DOJ review these remarks would undoubtedly have been excised.” Shame on Attorney General Merrick Garland for letting this partisan hit job be released.

Some background information on Hur from AP (written before yesterday’s testimony): Who is Robert Hur? A look at the special counsel due to testify on Biden classified documents case.

The special counsel who impugned the president’s age and competence in his report on how Joe Biden handled classified documents will himself be up for questioning this week.

Robert Hur is scheduled to testify before a congressional committee on Tuesday as House Republicans try to keep the spotlight on unflattering assessments of Biden.

Some Biden aides and allies have suggested that Hur, a Republican appointed to his role as U.S. attorney by Donald Trump, is a political partisan. Hur’s defenders say he has shown throughout his career that his work is guided by only facts and the law — not politics.

A review of Hur’s professional life shows he’s no stranger to politically charged investigations. He prosecuted former elected officials as Maryland’s chief federal law enforcement officer. And as a Justice Department official, he helped monitor special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election….

The Naked Truth and the Masked Lies, by Rosita Allinckx

Hur held one of the most powerful jobs in the Justice Department during a tumultuous time in the Trump administration, serving as the top aide to [Rod] Rosenstein, the department’s second-in-command.

As the principal associate deputy attorney general, Hur helped run day-to-day operations of the department in 2017 and early 2018. He also helped Rosenstein stay on top of Mueller’s progress in the Russia investigation. Hur held bi-weekly meetings with the special counsel’s team and reported back to Rosenstein, the former deputy attorney general said in an interview.

Rosenstein said he hired Hur because he knew he would maintain a calm and steady demeanor and “approach cases in a nonpartisan way.”

Um . . . Sure, Jan. Read more background at the link.

Why did Hur resign from the DOJ before testifying? Doesn’t that seem suspicious?

Igor Deyrsh at Yahoo News: Biden special counsel Robert Hur’s resignation from DOJ makes his testimony “even more problematic.”

Hur, a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney who was tapped to lead the Biden probe by Attorney General Merrick Garland, formally stepped down one day before his Tuesday appearance at the request of Republicans led by Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio. He drew criticism from Biden and the Democrats for criticizing the president’s memory in the report even as he declined to charge him.

Former Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann explained that the Justice Department “cannot give instructions” to a former employee about what he “can and cannot testify to.”

“That makes it even more problematic from our perspective … if he was still a federal employee, DOJ would have to approve his testimony and they’d be involved in his appearance tomorrow,” a Democratic Judiciary Committee source told The Independent.

“It’s hard not to anticipate some real ugliness with Robert Hur’s testimony,” tweeted former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman. “He already showed his partisan colors in the inappropriate parts of his report. And he and the [Republicans] obviously contemplate he can vilify Biden now that he’s testifying as a ‘private citizen.’”

So it appears Hur’s motivation was to have the freedom to attack Biden without any DOJ influence on what he would say. Before I get to the testimony, here are some stories about Hur’s final report:

Adam Serwer at The Atlantic: How Hur Misled the Country on Biden’s Memory.

“First impressions stick,” writes Serwer. No matter that clarifications follow–it’s what people hear first that stays with them.

Five years ago, a partisan political operative with the credibility of a long career in government service misled the public about official documents in order to get Donald Trump the positive spin he wanted in the press. The play worked so well that a special counsel appointed to examine President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents, Robert Hur, ran it again.

In 2019, then–Attorney General Bill Barr—who would later resign amid Trump’s attempts to suborn the Justice Department into backing his effort to seize power after losing reelection—announced that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had not found sufficient evidence to indict Trump on allegations that he had assisted in a Russian effort to sway the 2016 election and had obstructed an investigation into that effort. Mueller’s investigation led to indictments of several Trump associates, but he later testified that Justice Department policy barred prosecuting a sitting president, and so indicting Trump was not an option. Barr’s summary—which suggested that Trump had been absolved of any crimes—was so misleading that it drew a rebuke not only from Mueller himself but from a federal judge in a public-records lawsuit over material related to the investigation. That judge, Reggie Walton, wrote in 2020 that the discrepancies “cause the court to seriously question whether Attorney General Barr made a calculated attempt to influence public discourse about the Mueller report in favor of President Trump despite certain findings in the redacted version of the Mueller report to the contrary.”

Truth and Lies, by Louise Fletcher

As my colleague David Graham wrote at the time, the ploy worked. Trump claimed “total exoneration,” and mainstream outlets blared his innocence in towering headlines. Only later did the public learn that Mueller’s report had found “no criminal conspiracy but considerable links between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia, and strongly suggested that Trump had obstructed justice.”

Now this same pattern has emerged once again, only instead of working in the president’s favor, it has undermined him. Hur, a former U.S. attorney in the Trump administration, was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate Biden for potential criminal wrongdoing after classified documents were found at his home. (Trump has been indicted on charges that he deliberately mishandled classified documents after storing such documents at his home in Florida and deliberately showing them off to visitors as “highly confidential” and “secret information.”)

In Hur’s own summary of his investigation, he concluded that “no criminal charges are warranted in this matter,” even absent DOJ policy barring prosecution of a sitting president. But that part was not what caught the media’s attention. Rather it was Hur’s characterization of Biden as having memory problems, validating conservative attacks on the president as too old to do the job. The transcripts of Hur’s interviews with Biden, released yesterday by House Democrats, suggest that characterization—politically convenient for Republicans and the Trump campaign—was misleading.

Read the rest at the Atlantic.

And how did Hur mislead?

Andrew Prokop at Vox: Robert Hur’s report exaggerated Biden’s memory issues.

When special counsel Robert Hur released his report last month explaining why he wouldn’t charge President Joe Biden with mishandling classified documents, his claim that Biden displayed a “poor memory” and “diminished faculties” in their interview received enormous attention.

But now, the full transcripts of Hur’s interviews with Biden have been released — and they make Hur’s claims about Biden’s memory appear cherry-picked and exaggerated.

Biden sat for more than five hours with Hur’s team over two days. In that time, he said he did not recall specifics about how particular boxes ended up in his residences or offices after his vice presidency. But he engaged at length about his process for handling classified information and many other topics.

Hur’s claim that Biden had demonstrated some sort of general “poor memory” hangs almost entirely on mix-ups by Biden about in what specific year several years-old events occurred. The transcript makes clear Biden remembers all those events. But it seems Biden just doesn’t pay a lot of attention to which specific year stuff happened in.

So why did Hur hype this up so much?

His report and his House testimony Tuesday suggest one reason. Hur proposed a theory, outlined in the report, about Biden’s deliberate wrongdoing — that Biden kept classified documents about Afghanistan policy deliberations to help burnish his reputation and legacy.

However, Hur couldn’t prove this theory, in part because Biden said he couldn’t recall why these documents were in his garage. Hence, the special counsel bashed Biden for his “poor memory” — knowing full well how that would play when the report became public.

truth-hidden-between-the-lies-jeff-klena

Truth Hidden Between the Lies, by Jeff Klena

This is a good article, and it also deals with Hur’s testimony and how Democrats’ countered his claims. After breaking down problems with Hur’s report, Prokop quotes Adam Schiff:

Hur’s report looks less like a smoking gun proving Biden’s supposed age-related decline, and more like dirty pool, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) argued.

“You know this, I know this, there is nothing more common with a witness of any age, when asked about events that are years old, than to say ‘I do not recall.’ Indeed, they’re instructed by their attorney to do that, if they have any question about it,” Schiff said.

Hur argued back that his consideration of Biden’s memory was relevant to his charging decisions, and that he was perfectly willing, indeed required, to explain his thinking on that topic in his report to the attorney general.

Schiff disputed this. “What is in the rules is, you don’t gratuitously do things to prejudice the subject of an investigation when you’re declining to prosecute. You don’t gratuitously add language that you know will be useful in a political campaign.”

“You were not born yesterday,” Schiff added. “You understood exactly what you were doing. It was a choice.”

Why on earth did Merrick Garland appoint this guy?

Chris Megerian at AP: Hur said Biden couldn’t recall when his son died. The interview transcript is more complicated.

The White House knew it had a political problem on its hands when a special counsel report questioned President Joe Biden’s memory last month, but Biden saw a much more personal affront as well.

Robert Hur, who had been appointed to investigate whether Biden mishandled classified documents, wrote that the president couldn’t recall in an interview with prosecutors the date when his adult son, Beau, died of cancer. It was a shocking contention about a keystone event in Biden’s life, and it fed into questions about whether the 81-year-old president is fit to serve another term….

Hur didn’t ask the president about his son’s death; Biden brought it up himself during a discussion about how he stored documents at a rental home in Virginia after leaving the vice president’s office in 2017.

And Biden recalled the specific date that Beau died, although he briefly wondered aloud about the year as the conversation toggled between various events.

“What month did Beau die?” Biden mused. “Oh, God, May 30th.”

A White House lawyer interjected by saying, “2015.”

“Was it 2015 he had died?” Biden asked. When someone responded affirmatively, the president added, “It was 2015.” [….]

Hur, in his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, said his report’s discussion of Biden’s memory was “necessary and accurate and fair” because his state of mind was an important part of evaluating whether he committed a crime.

“I did not sanitize my explanation nor did I disparage the president unfairly,” he said.

What an asshole! As Adam Serwer wrote, Hur made sure that the first impression he gave of Biden’s interviews was on of a doddering old man with cognitive issues.

Fraud, by Carl Bowlby

Yesterday, Eric Swalwell got Hur to admit that during one of the interviews he characterized Biden as having a “photographic memory!” From HuffPost, via Yahoo News: Robert Hur Admits Telling Biden He Seemed To Have ‘Photographic Recall.’

Although special counsel Robert Hur impugned Joe Biden’s memory in his investigation over whether the president mishandled classified documents, he actually told Biden that he appeared “to have a photographic understanding and recall.”

The comment, which appears in transcripts of Hur’s interviews with Biden, did not make it into Hur’s final report. Hur concluded in the report that Biden should not be charged over the documents, but made sure to mention his doubts about the president’s memory.

But Hur admitted he made those comments during an exchange with Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) during his Tuesday meeting with the House Judiciary Committee.

The California Democrat asked Hur about a comment that appears on “Day 1, Page 47” of the transcript.

“You said to President Biden, ‘You appear to have a photographic understanding and recall of the House,’” Swalwell said. “Did you say that to President Biden?”

Hur conceded that “those words do appear on Page 47 of the transcript.”

Swalwell pressed further.

“‘Photographic’ is what you said, is that right?” he asked.

“That word does appear on Page 47 of the transcript,” Hur responded.

“Never appeared in your report, though. Is that correct? The word ‘photographic’?” Swalwell asked.

“It does not appear in my report,” Hur said.

Interesting that he chose to leave that out.

Andrew Weissman and Ryan Goodman at Just Security: The Real “Robert Hur Report” (Versus What You Read in the News).

The Special Counsel Robert Hur report has been grossly mischaracterized by the press. The report finds that the evidence of a knowing, willful violation of the criminal laws is wanting. Indeed, the report, on page 6, notes that there are “innocent explanations” that Hur “cannot refute.” That is but one of myriad examples we outline in great detail below of the report repeatedly finding a lack of proof. And those findings mean, in DOJ-speak, there is simply no case. Unrefuted innocent explanations is the sine qua non of not just a case that does not meet the standard for criminal prosecution – it means innocence. Or as former Attorney General Bill Barr and his former boss would have put it, a total vindication (but here, for real).

But even without the prompting of a misleading “summary” by Barr, the press has gotten the lede wrong. This may be because of a poorly worded (we’re being charitable) thesis sentence on page 1 of Hur’s executive summary. Hur writes at the outset: “Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.” You have to wait for the later statements that what the report actually says is there is insufficient evidence of criminality, innocent explanations for the conduct, and affirmative evidence that Biden did not willfully withhold classified documents. Put another way, that same sentence about “our investigation uncovered evidence” could equally apply to Mike Pence, who had classified documents at his home, which is similarly some “evidence” of a crime, but also plainly insufficient to remotely establish criminality.

The press incorrectly and repeatedly blast out that the Hur report found Biden willfully retained classified documents, in other words, that Biden committed a felony; with some in the news media further trumpeting that the Special Counsel decided only as a matter of discretion not to recommend charges.

Read a details analysis of the report at the link.

Charlie Savage has a very detailed comparison of Robert Hur’s claims about Biden’s memory and the transcript of the interviews: How the Special Counsel’s Portrayal of Biden’s Memory Compares With the Transcript. It’s too long and detailed to excerpt, but it’s worth a read if you’re interested.

One more article that addresses yesterday’s testimony:

Jeremy Herb and Marshall Cohen at CNN: Takeaways from Robert Hur’s testimony on Biden’s mishandling of classified documents.

Former special counsel Robert Hur appeared before Congress on Tuesday to explain his investigation into President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents – which led to no charges against the president but plenty of consternation among Democrats when Hur described Biden as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” in his report.

While Hur came ready to defend his investigation, outlining a specific, legal case — or lack thereof – the members of the House Judiciary Committee were fighting a battle over the much more subjective political consequences to Hur’s report just months before the 2024 presidential election.

Truth Lies at the Bottom of the Well, by Frances MacDonald

Republicans attacked Biden as they pressed Hur on his decision not to prosecute the president, while Democrats criticized Hur for his comments about Biden’s memory – while also focusing much of their attention on former President Donald Trump and the differences in the former president’s classified documents case, which led to an indictment last year.

Hur tried his best to stick to what was in his report, even as he was pushed to go further either to criticize Biden – or to declare his innocence.

Hur was clear on Tuesday that he did not want to play ball with Republicans on whether Biden is “senile,” given the former special counsel’s decision to describe Biden as an “elderly man with a poor memory” in his investigative report.

“Webster’s Dictionary defines ‘senile’ as exhibiting a decline of cognitive ability, such as memory, associated with old age,” Republican Rep. Scott Fitzgerald of Wisconsin said. “Mr. Hur, based on your report, did you find that the president was senile?”

“I did not. That conclusion does not appear in my report,” Hur replied emphatically.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a Washington state Democrat, tussled with Hur over his conclusions, claiming Hur “exonerated” Biden. But Hur immediately took issue with the term during a tense exchange in which they both repeatedly cut each other off.

“This lengthy, expensive an independent investigation resulted in a complete exoneration of President Joe Biden for every document you discussed in your report, you found insufficient evidence that the president violated any laws about possession or retention of classified materials,” Jayapal said.

“I need to go back and make sure that I take note of a word that you used, ‘exoneration,’” Hur said. “That is not a word that is used in my report and that is not a part of my task as a prosecutor.”

“You exonerated him,” Jayapal retorted.

“I did not exonerate him,” Hur said. “That word does not appear in the report.”

Okay then. But he didn’t charge him either. What can I say. Hur is just an asshole. Also, please note that Hur was question about whether he would accept a role in a second Trump administration, and he refused to answer. We can only hope that this controversy will be forgotten by the time we get to November.

Wednesday Reads: Super Tuesday Edition

Posted: March 6, 2024 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: 2024 Elections, 2024 presidential Campaign | Tags: Adam Schiff, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Kyrsten Sinema, Mark Robinson, Niki Haley, Ruben Gallego, Super Tuesday | 6 Comments

Good Day!!

8698f5c2-e1cc-4f85-b3ae-58c450aba789_1920x1080 Yesterday was Super Tuesday, but there were few surprises. Oath-breaking insurrectionist Donald Trump will most likely face President Joe Biden in November unless something happens to either of these old guys. Trump continued his pattern of losing 30-40 percent of the Republican primary votes, and Niki Haley won a second primary–in Vermont. This morning, she withdrew from the race without endorsing Trump.

Although Trump appears to be slightly ahead of Biden according to the polls, it’s clear that Trump’s support among Republicans is weak. The Daily Beast: Alyssa Farah Griffin: Even in Defeat, Haley Exposed Trump’s Demographic Weaknesses.

On the heels of Super Tuesday and Nikki Haley’s departure from the 2024 presidential race, Donald Trump is poised to officially be the GOP nominee for president—despite 91 felony counts, four separate indictments, and being found liable for sexual assault.

In poll after poll, most recently a New York Times/Siena College poll, Trump dominates Joe Biden head-to-head, as well as with key demographics. But those polls seem to be missing a flashing red warning sign for Trump in a general election: his disapproval with Republican voters.

Niki Haley suspends campaign

Haley’s quixotic race for the GOP nomination exposed Trump’s flawed and weakened standing within the Republican Party, but more broadly with the American electorate. A new Associated Press survey found that two in ten Iowa primary voters, a third of New Hampshire Primary voters, and a quarter of South Carolina Republican voters would refuse to vote for Trump in the fall.

voters, 78 percent would not commit to voting for the Republican nominee in November. In California, 69 percent of Haley voters said they wouldn’t vote for Trump in November, according to an NBC News exit poll. Even more striking were exit polls out of North Carolina that found 81 percent of Haley voters would not commit to voting for the eventual GOP nominee.

These numbers are remarkable if you consider that GOP primary voters are historically among the most intense of voters—meaning they will turn out and skew strongly more to the right than the average general election voter.

Read the rest at the link.

I didn’t watch Trump’s speech last night–I can’t stand to watch or listen to him, but here’s a report from David Smith at The Guardian: Trump’s Super Tuesday victory speech: grim visions of an American apocalypse.

If this is what he sounds like when he wins, imagine how he would react to defeat.

Donald Trump swept to victory after victory on Super Tuesday, all but clinching the Republican presidential nomination, but you wouldn’t have known it from his joyless victory speech.

For hours his fans had partied in the gilded ballroom of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, accompanied by Abba’s Dancing Queen, Elton John’s Rocket Man, Queen’s We Are the Champions and other golden oldies. Waiters glided between them serving pastries, prawns and sausage rolls. Each time Fox News – displayed on four giant TV screens – declared another state for Trump, they whooped and cheered and chanted “Trump! Trump! Trump! USA! USA! USA!”

Then, after 10pm, into this gaudy pageant walked the Grim Reaper, raining on their parade with a 19-minute speech laden with doom and gloom about the state of the nation.

This was Trump as Eeyore.

No balloons, no confetti, no parade of family members on stage and no mention of opponent Nikki Haley. No fun.

“Some people call it an experiment – I don’t call it an experiment,” Trump said of the United States. “I just say this is a magnificent place, a magnificent country, and it’s sad to see how far it’s come and gone … When you look at the depths where it’s gone, we can’t let that happen. We’re going to straighten it out. We’re going to close our borders. We’re going to drill baby drill.”

As the unhappy warrior spoke, 10 guests headed for the exit, apparently worn down by the misery of it all….

If only he had still been running things, he lamented, Russia would not have invaded Ukraine, Israel would not have been attacked and Iran would be broke. Now inflation is “destroying the middle class, it’s destroying everything”. He added morosely that inflation was called the “country buster”.

But wait, there is one bright spot: the stock market! It’s going gangbusters. According to Trump, this has nothing to do with Biden, “the worst president in the history of our country”, but the Republican frontrunner’s own healthy poll numbers indicating his return.

Then it was back to the bad news of border security and immigration….

“It happens in third world countries,” he said. “And in some ways, we’re a third world country. We live in a third world country with no borders … We need a fair and free press. The press has not been fair nor has it been free … The press used to police our country. Now nobody has confidence in them.”

The grim list kept coming: the deadly coronavirus pandemic, the loss of American soldiers in Afghanistan. And Trump naturally could not resist circling back for another bite at the border – no matter that he was the one who ordered Republicans to torpedo bipartisan legislation that might have begun to fix the crisis.

“We have millions of people invading our country,” he asserted. “This is an invasion. This is the worst invasion probably.” For good measure, he tossed out an uncheckable fact. “The number today could be 15 million people. And they’re coming from rough places and dangerous places.”

Ugh.

On Thursday, Biden will get his turn as he delivers the State of the Union address. Katie Rogers at The New York Times: Biden Preps for the State of the Union Speech and Rowdy Republicans.

Fueled by throat-soothing tea, guided by teleprompters and surrounded by six aides and one historian, President Biden spent hours at Camp David last weekend honing a State of the Union speech that will be watched by one of his biggest audiences before the November election.

So the pressure is on.

Mr. Biden, it should be noted, had with him at Camp David a copy of “Possible: How We Survive (and Thrive) in an Age of Conflict,” a book by William Ury, an international negotiation expert.

“You’ll hear me on Thursday,” Mr. Biden said when reporters asked on Tuesday about his preparations.

White House officials have not said what topics the president will address, or whether he will mention Donald J. Trump, his likely 2024 challenger, by name. But Mr. Biden is almost certain to talk about the war in Ukraine, the war between Israel and Hamas, China, abortion, immigration, trade and other topics in a speech he and his aides have been working on since December.

The final speech, which aides say will be edited up until Mr. Biden gives it, will be delivered by a president under pressure to reassure voters that he is not too old for the job and, more than at any point in his tenure, guard against political outbursts that have become commonplace during such speeches. Mr. Biden’s aides say he has prepared for Republicans to heckle him, as Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene did last year.

Getting the speech into shape played out, in true Biden fashion, inside a circle of aides who have been around the president for years and treat such proceedings like a state secret.

The Camp David weekend group included Bruce Reed, the White House deputy chief of staff, who helped guide policy-related additions to the speech; Mike Donilon, the aide who has the best understanding of Mr. Biden’s voice; Anita Dunn, who oversees communications strategy for the White House; and Jeffrey D. Zients, Mr. Biden’s chief of staff. Rounding out the group was Steve Ricchetti, counselor to the president and a longtime friend, and Vinay Reddy, Mr. Biden’s speechwriter.

The historian Jon Meacham, who is called upon to add historical heft, was also there.

In other Super Tuesday news, Adam Schiff beat out two other Democrats to win the California primary for the U.S. Senate, along with Republican and former pro-baseball player Steve Garvey.

Kate Riga at Talking Points Memo: Schiff Beats Out Split Progressives On Glide Path To California Senate Seat.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), using ruthless tactics belied by his cherubic face and upstanding public persona, has won the California Senate primary, according to the Associated Press.

Steve Garvey, a former professional baseball player, is projected to come in second almost entirely thanks to Schiff’s maneuvering. The millions Schiff spent on ads boosting Garvey’s profile with Republican voters helped edge out Reps. Katie Porter (D-CA) and Barbara Lee (D-CA), both of whom would have posed an actual threat to Schiff in the general election (California’s jungle primary lets two candidates of the same party go through to the general).

Porter — Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) protegé, who gained a national profile by taking CEOs to task at committee hearings, armed with her omnipresent whiteboard — and Lee — famous for being the only member of Congress to vote against authorizing military force after 9/11 — are both considered more progressive than Schiff. But a lack of left-wing consolidation around either woman, as well as the lack of involvement by key groups like EMILY’s List, left the progressive flank of the party split. Schiff got the moderate lane to himself.

Schiff has also been incredibly successful in riding his high-profile role in Donald Trump’s impeachment trial to national fame, becoming omnipresent on cable news. It didn’t hurt that he won the endorsement of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), a famed fundraiser.

Schiff will virtually certainly win the seat of the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) in the fall, taking over for Sen. Laphonza Butler (D-CA) who was, ironically, appointed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) so a Black woman would again represent the state. The state will now be without a woman in either of its two Senate seats for the first time in over 30 years.

While Schiff lacks the progressive bona fides of Porter and Lee, he does meet what will be a key Democratic litmus test for candidates for the upper chamber from here on out: He supports ending the filibuster, along with more expansive proposals to nix the Electoral College and expand the Supreme Court.

In Arizona, Kyrsten Sinema announced, in a whiny, narcissistic speech, that she won’t be running for reelection to the U.S. Senate. That’s good news for Democrats and specifically for Ruben Gallego. Again from Kate Riga at Talking Points Memo: Kyrsten Sinema Drove Herself Out Of Politics.

In a video replete with her own accomplishments — “I believe in my approach. But, it’s not what America wants right now” — she on Tuesday delivered her constituents a final “it’s not me, it’s you” farewell.

The senselessness of her trajectory is thrown into even starker relief next to that of Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), inextricably linked to her throughout Joe Biden’s first two years in the White House due to the pair’s devotion to the filibuster and eagerness to buck their party. Manchin comes from one of the Trumpiest states in the country. He’s the last generation of a dying breed, as red state Democrats and blue state Republicans drop or are forced out of their parties.

Sinema’s state, in contrast, has only trended bluer. While certainly still battleground territory, it’s a more comfortable get for Democrats than at any other time in recent history. Had she acted like a normal Democrat — look no further than fellow Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) — she’d be preparing for her reelection right now, relieved to have the kooky Kari Lake to run against, and swimming in a helpful current of money funneled by the national party organs.

But she habitually took loud, splashy stands on issues that not only set her apart from her party, but did so on issues central to its very ideology (she’s now an independent, though never stopped caucusing with the Democrats). This was not taking some swings to look tough on the border, or to distance herself from super lefty proposals. It was curtseying while voting down an increased federal minimum wage, threatening the Inflation Reduction Act over preserving a tax loophole for hedge fund managers and law firm partners, limiting the lift of the corporate tax rate….

Ruben Gallego

She did all of this with a rare disrespect for norms around the Hill, one of the very few senators who refused to do hallway interviews, even when she was a deciding player on major legislation, leaving the public to learn her views through other sources or rare sit-downs she’d grant to friendly press. It helped keep her a cypher to political observers: a lawmaker who’d come up through very liberal politics, who’d been open and admirably proud about her bisexuality, suddenly tacking to the corporate right and infuriating those who’d supported her rise and who she’d need to run again in the process. Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), essentially running in her stead, was drafted by Democrats wholly alienated by her decisions.

This means that Ruben Gallego will face insane conspiracy theorist Kari Lake in November. Here’s hoping he wins.

One more down-ballot race of note, a truly crazy candidate won the primary for governor of North Carolina. Molly Olmstead at Slate: Whew, North Carolina’s Winning GOP Nominee for Governor Sure Has Said Some Things.

Mark Robinson, who easily won North Carolina’s Republican gubernatorial primary on Tuesday, has the misfortune of having spent years on Facebook without thinking about his future political career. The current lieutenant governor of the state—and the first Black man to hold the position—was a furniture manufacturer who was launched into politics in 2018 when he gave a viral pro-gun speech at a city council meeting in the wake of the Parkland school shooting. Two years later he was elected to his current office. He will face Democrat Josh Stein, the state’s attorney general, in the general election in November. The race is expected to be extremely close.

Mark Robinson

He has not, in the time since his profile rose, worked to purge his social media of controversial content. Nor has he played things safe when speaking at churches and other public events in recorded sermons and speeches. So it doesn’t take a lot of probing to find how Robinson really feels about certain hot-button issues.

Robinson, who is also into conspiracy theories, has voiced enough offensive comments for a full accounting to be too unwieldy. But even a sampling of his views like the one below—not a comprehensive list—showcases just what kind of candidate North Carolina Republicans just selected to be their standard-bearer this November.

Abortion
“I don’t care if you’re 24 hours pregnant. I don’t care if you’re 24 weeks pregnant. I don’t care. If you kill that young’un, it is murder.” (Robinson has said he paid for an abortion in 1989 and maintained that that decision was “wrong.”)

Climate Science
“… pseudoscience, junk science that has not proven a single solitary thing.”

The Media
“See through their lies and look at the big picture of their TRUE intent, which is to push US towards their new world order.”

Jewish People
He voiced agreement with a pastor who claimed the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” are the CIA, China, Islam, and the Rothschild family of “international bankers that rule every single … central bank.”

Also, regarding Black Panther: “It is absolutely AMAZING to me that people… can get so excited about a fictional ‘hero’ created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by satanic marxist. How can this trash, that was only created to pull the shekels out of your Schvartze pockets, invoke any pride?”

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Read more examples at the Slate link.

I’m going to end there. What do you think? What stories are you following today?

Wednesday Reads

Posted: February 28, 2024 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: 2024 Elections, 2024 presidential Campaign, Donald Trump, Joe Biden | Tags: 2024 Michigan primaries, Alabama IVF ruling, Birth Control, Gaza, low quality polls, Niki Haley, polls, separation of church and state, Simon Rosenberg, uncommitted voters, voters concerned about extremism | 20 Comments

Good Morning!!

Henri Matisse, Three Sisters

I’m going to get this out of the way before I get to the real news. Last night President Biden won 81.1 percent of the votes in the Michigan Democratic primary, but it isn’t easy to find that out from the press reports. All of the focus is on the uncommitted votes, which got 13.3 percent. Here is one representative sample:

The Washington Post: Biden wins Michigan primary but faces notable showing by ‘uncommitted.’

President Biden won Michigan’s Democratic primary on Tuesday but faced a notable challenge from voters selecting “uncommitted” to protest his handling of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, a potential sign of vulnerability for Biden among rank-and-file Democrats.

Democratic leaders in the state were bracing for tens of thousands of “uncommitted” votes, as Biden aides and allies sought to tamp down concerns about the strong showing by those aiming to warn the president he could lose the pivotal state in November if he does not change course and push for a cease-fire in Gaza.

With nearly 99 percent of the ballots counted, there were more than 100,000 “uncommitted” votes….

In the weeks leading up to the Democratic primary, Arab American and liberal activists launched a concerted push to get Democrats to vote “uncommitted” as a way to protest Biden’s handling of the Israel-Gaza war, especially his decision not to call for a cease-fire. The group Listen to Michigan declared victory soon after polls closed, noting that it had surpassed its stated goal of 10,000 uncommitted votes.

manager and sister of Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), said in a statement Tuesday. “Tens of thousands of Michigan Democrats, many of whom who voted for Biden in 2020, are uncommitted to his re-election due to the war in Gaza.”

She added: “We don’t want a Trump presidency, but Biden has put [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu ahead of American democracy. We cannot afford to pay the bill for disregarding Palestinian lives should it come due in November.”

They don’t want a Trump presidency, but they plan to try to enable one anyway, in the process ending American democracy. But here’s some history on uncommitted votes in Michigan:

Biden campaign officials, however, said the group’s goal of 10,000 votes was artificially low, as 20,000 people have voted uncommitted in each of Michigan’s past three Democratic presidential primaries, even without any organized effort urging them to do so. The president’s allies also cited comments by some of those who threw their support behind the campaign that despite their anger at Biden’s policies, they plan to vote for him in November. A campaign official also noted that there were several “uncommitted” delegates for Barack Obama in 2012, coming from North Carolina, Maryland, Alabama and Kentucky.

Family group reading, by Mary Cassatt

I don’t know any Democrat who doesn’t want a cease fire in the brutal Israel-Hamas war, including President Biden. But Biden can’t magically force either Netanyahu or Hamas to agree to one. Negotiations take place behind closed doors; making them public would defeat their purpose.

Other mainstream news sources also emphasize the uncommitted vote against Biden, but there is little attention to the fact that Trump underperformed the polls, just as he did in New Hampshire and North Carolina. He got only 68 percent of the vote in Michigan, while Niki Haley won nearly 27 percent, once again demonstrating that close to 30 percent of Republicans don’t want Trump as their nominee.

From Simon Rosenberg at Hopium Chronicles: Trump Is Not Strong, Or Winning – No Red Waving 2024 Please.

It Is Wrong To Say Trump Is Winning The Election, Or Is Somehow Favored. He Is Weak, Not Strong – In 2022 a narrative developed about the election – that a red wave was coming – that commentators just couldn’t shake even though there was plenty of data suggesting the election could end up being a close competitive one. I feel like that we are beginning to enter a similar moment in 2024 with the various assertions of Trump’s strengths. The “red wave” over estimated Republican strength and intensity, discounted clear signs of Democratic strength and intensity and was it would be ridiculous, given what happened in 2022, for us to do this all over again this year.

Let me say it plainly – Donald Trump is not ahead in the 2024 election. He is not beating Joe Biden. He is not in a strong position. Signs of Trumpian and broader GOP weakness is all out there for folks to see – if they want to see it. Let’s dive in a bit:

Trump is not leading in current polling – For Trump to be “ahead” all polls would have be showing that. They aren’t. The last NYT poll had Biden up 2, the new Quinnipiac poll has Biden up 4.

Given the spike in both junky, low quality polls and GOP-aligned polls the averages can no longer be relied on – this was a major lesson of 2022. Remember using the averages Real Clear Politics predicted that Republicans would end up with 54 seats. They have 49.

Stripping out GOP aligned polls, and less reliable polling, we find the race clearly within margin of error, which means the election is close and competitive. In a recent analysis, “Trump’s lead over Biden may be smaller than it looks,” The Economist broke down recent polling by pollster quality and found the race dead even among the highest quality pollsters [click the link to see the chart]….

Asserting that somehow Trump leads is pushing data beyond what it can tell you. With margin of error a 1-2 point lead is not an actual lead – it signifies a close, competitive election.

It is also early, and Democrats have not had a competitive primary. Lots of folks are not engaged. Look at this chart from Morning Consult. If the Democratic coalition starts coming home as Biden ramps up and Trump becomes the R nominee he will jump ahead by a few points….

We learned in 2022 that centering our understanding of American politics around wobbly polling and polling averages was risky. No reason we should be doing it again this cycle. Lots of other things we can throw into the strategic blender to understand where we are.

Read the rest at Hopium Chronicles. It’s quite interesting.

The mainstream press seems to want another Trump presidency, because that will make them more money. Biden is competent and doing a good job, but that’s so boring. They want the chaos back again–never mind that Trump would likely prosecute journalists in a second term.

Rene Magritte, The Subjugated reader

Apparently, Trump is a bit nervous about how many votes Niki Haley is getting in the Republican primaries.

Adam Wren at Politico: Trump tried to ignore Haley. He barely lasted a day.

For a full 24 hours on Saturday, Donald Trump did not mention Nikki Haley by name, ignoring her both in a freewheeling address to the Conservative Political Action Conference and after he won the primary in South Carolina.

His campaign said they were turning the page, focusing squarely on the general election. One aide, when asked about the absence of Haley, quipped: “Who?”

By Sunday, that strategic restraint was gone.

In a torrent of posts on Truth Social, just weeks before he is expected to clinch the nomination, Trump had no appetite for comity, blasting Haley as “BRAINDEAD” and “BIRDBRAIN.” He relished the news that Americans for Prosperity would stop spending on Haley’s presidential campaign. He touted a polling lead in Michigan’s primary. “When will Nikki realize,” he posted, “that she is just a bad candidate?”

Maybe when she stops getting 30 percent of the Republican primary votes?

This was not a magnanimous candidate looking to mend the intraparty fracture on full display in exit polls from each of the early electoral contests. This was not a competitor looking to pivot to going after President Joe Biden.

This was a former president entering the general election actively exacerbating divisions within the GOP — at a time when some Republicans are openly warning about the risk of alienating even a small segment of the Republican electorate. Trump has every rational incentive to make overtures to Haley and her supporters, who delivered her roughly 40 percent of the vote in New Hampshire and South Carolina and who are the kind of voters Trump will need to turn out in Michigan and Pennsylvania in November. But he refused to do so — or, perhaps, was incapable of it — despite making head feints in that direction.

“In the exit polls in the three early states, roughly 20 percent are saying they’re not going to vote for Trump,” said Christine Matthews, a Republican pollster and president of Bellwether Research and Consulting. “If that’s true, you need to have like 85 to 90 percent of your base. I do think that he’ll have some problems consolidating, particularly your well-educated, suburban Republicans.”

This is interesting, from Reuters: Exclusive: Extremism is US voters’ greatest worry, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds.

Worries about political extremism or threats to democracy have emerged as a top concern for U.S. voters and an issue where President Joe Biden has a slight advantage over Donald Trump ahead of the November election, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll showed.

Some 21% of respondents in the three-day poll, which closed on Sunday, said “political extremism or threats to democracy” was the biggest problem facing the U.S., a share that was marginally higher than those who picked the economy – 19% – and immigration – 18%.

Biden’s Democrats considered extremism by far the No. 1 issue while Trump’s Republicans overwhelmingly chose immigration.

Extremism was independents’ top concern, cited by almost a third of independent respondents, followed by immigration, cited by about one in five. The economy ranked third.

During and since his presidency, Trump has kept up a steady drumbeat of criticism of U.S. institutions, claiming the four criminal prosecutions he faces are politically motivated and holding to his false claims that his 2020 election defeat was the result of widespread fraud.

That rhetoric was central to his message to supporters ahead of their Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol.

Overall, 34% of respondents said Biden had a better approach for handling extremism, compared to 31% who said Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination.

The poll helps show the extent to which Biden’s re-election bid could rely on voters being motivated by their opposition to Trump rather than enthusiasm over Biden’s candidacy.

The fallout from the Alabama IVF ruling is still in the news.

Lisa Neeham at Public Notice: They’re coming for birth control next.

In brief, the reason the Alabama Supreme Court’s opinion implicates and outlaws IVF is that the state has a Wrongful Death of a Minor statute, and the court decided this applies to “all unborn children, without limitation.” But there’s no language in the statute that says this. Rather, it’s just that over the last 15 years, the Alabama Supreme Court has issued a series of rulings saying that the undefined term “minor child” in the statute can be stretched to “unborn children” regardless of what state of development the embryo is at. Once the court created such an expansive definition, the decision that frozen embryos are people was inescapable.

By Utagawa Kuniyoshi

To be fair, though, the Alabama Supreme Court is entirely made up of conservative Republicans, they were a bit hamstrung in their decision. Alabama’s state constitution states that “it is the public policy of this state to ensure the protection of the rights of the unborn child in all manners and measures lawful and appropriate.” But that doesn’t necessarily mean the court was required to, as it did here, extend that “unborn child” definition to what it calls “extrauterine children” — embryos frozen by people pursuing IVF….

For people not saddled with the misguided anti-choice belief that a tiny clump of cells is the same as a person, this is a non-controversial process. It enhances the chance of pregnancy and allows people to plan for future children without undergoing multiple invasive egg retrieval cycles. But if one subscribes to the notion of fetal personhood — that a fetus is quite literally a person, with all the attendant privileges that confers — then those frozen embryos are the same as babies.

This is, of course, a religious, not scientific belief. Chief Justice Parker, in his concurring opinion, made clear that his vote, at least, stems directly from his religious beliefs rather than being grounded in the law. Citing Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, the Ten Commandments, and the King James Bible, Parker concludes that “even before birth, all human beings bear the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.”

Notably, none of those things are legal precedent. Indeed, in a country founded on the separation of church and state, they shouldn’t inform a court holding. However, since religious conservatives dominate the US Supreme Court, that separation has largely collapsed. This has emboldened conservative litigants and conservative state and federal judges to take ever more anti-choice stances.

A bit more:

Reproductive health activists have been sounding the alarm about the anti-choice attacks on IVF for years, particularly in the wake of the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade. At least two prominent anti-choice groups, Americans United for Life and Students for Life, have railed against IVF. The chief legal officer for Americans United for Life, Steve Aden, called IVF “eugenics” and said that IVF created “embryonic human beings” that were destroyed in the process. Students for Life called IVF “damaging and destructive.”

These same anti-choice groups also hate birth control, and the Dobbs decision paved the way for them to mount a theocratic attack on it too. Christopher Rufo, who ginned up a panic over benign diversity initiatives and helped force out the first Black president of Harvard, Claudine Gay, has already telegraphed that this is his next attack.

Over on Elon Musk’s increasingly Nazi-fied social media site, X, Rufo is spewing rhetoric about how “the family structure disintegrated precisely as access to birth control proliferated” and that recreational sex is bad and leads to single-mother households.

Rufo isn’t alone. The Heritage Foundation, which is also busy with a blueprint for a second Trump presidency that would destroy the administrative state and whose leader is still pushing the big lie that Trump won the 2020 election, has also called for the end of birth control. Also over on X, Heritage’s official account posted last year that “a good place to start would be a feminist movement against the pill and … returning the consequentiality to sex” [….]

And there you have it. Religious conservatives are calling for a return to a world where sex isn’t recreational or for pleasure but is instead fraught with consequences — namely, pregnancies that can’t be terminated even when the pregnant person’s life is in danger. To do this, however, they would need to succeed in getting the Supreme Court to overturn Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 case that invalidated restrictions on birth control.

There’s more at the link.

Sarah Lipton-Lubet at Slate: Republicans’ Absurdist Reproductive Policies Are Coming for Us All.

Nearly two years ago, late into the night on a Monday, I had the terrifying realization that I needed to move my embryos. Immediately.

A few hours earlier—just as I was starting to wrap up work for the day—my phone had lit up in what felt like one long, continuous stream of alerts. Politico had just obtained a leaked copy of the Supreme Court’s draft Dobbs opinion overturning Roe v. Wade. As a reproductive rights attorney leading a Supreme Court reform organization, I knew my immediate next steps. Conference call. Media statement. Email to our supporters. I’d been preparing for this moment since Donald Trump was elected.

I am a child, by Gustav Adolph Hennig

But what I had spent less time thinking about was how this would affect me personally. I wasn’t at all prepared for what to do about my embryos. After years of miscarriages and egg retrievals, I did not have a baby. But I had my embryos. Sitting in nitrogen tanks. In a red state—a red state that had recently passed a draconian anti-abortion bill that, among other things, granted “an unborn child at every stage of development, all rights, privileges and immunities available to other persons.”

That legislation was being challenged in federal court, but now Roe would be gone by the end of June. Amid a swirl of unknowns (What would happen with the litigation? How would that law impact IVF? Would I somehow be prohibited from moving my embryos in the future?) I knew one thing with absolute certainty: If I wanted to control what happened to my embryos, I had to get them the heck out of Arizona, and fast.

Unfortunately, the clinics I called in my attempt to find a new home for the embryos didn’t seem to match my urgency. They couldn’t understand why we would move the embryos at all. Their pace and paperwork was business as usual. Even some of my like-minded friends understood my concern, but not my level of panic, and action. I’ll admit, I had momentary doubts about whether my alarm was misplaced.

Needless to say, the recent Alabama Supreme Court decision—effectively outlawing IVF by declaring that embryos are, legally speaking, children—put to rest any lingering questions about whether I was right to be concerned. As Mark Joseph Stern reported, embryo shipping services have already said they will no longer ship to or from Alabama.

And isn’t that the story of reproductive freedom in America in a nutshell? Time and again, advocates sound the alarm only to be told that we are being hysterical. Then we watch in horror as our worst fears materialize.

Read the rest at Slate.

One more on this topic, from Politico: Senate GOP poised to block IVF protection bill.

Senate conservatives are signaling they’ll block Wednesday’s planned Democratic bid to enshrine protections for in-vitro fertilization into federal law – and they’re calling IVF a states-rights issue.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) is planning to seek unanimous consent to pass her proposal to federally protect IVF, which means any one senator can easily block its passage. This isn’t the first time she’s brought up her bill — Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) objected when Duckworth tried to pass it unanimously in 2022.

But Duckworth’s bill is surging back to the forefront as Republicans face uncomfortable questions about an Alabama Supreme Court ruling restricting IVF.

Hyde-Smith’s office did not respond when asked if she would object again to Duckworth’s bill, and the GOP senator ignored Capitol hallway questions from reporters, as is her usual practice. Other Republicans are already expressing reservations about the bill, though – meaning its chances at slipping through the chamber are slim, at best.

“I don’t see any need to regulate it at the federal level,” said Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), an OB-GYN by trade, who would not say whether he’d block the bill. “I think the Dobbs decision puts this issue back at the state level, and I would encourage your state legislations to protect in-vitro fertilization.”

“It’s idiotic for us to take the bait,” said Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), who clarified he was referring not to Duckworth’s bill on its face but to Democrats’ attempts to use the proposal as an IVF messaging tool. Vance said he’s not yet reviewed the actual bill.

Regardless, Republicans’ hesitation over the IVF protection bill highlights their election-year jam: Democrats will continue trying to tie them to the Alabama ruling, which has shut down IVF facilities in the state.

And GOP statements supporting IVF — as the Senate Republican campaign arm and several candidates put out last week — might fall flat with voters if Democrats can point to specific instances when their opponents failed to protect the procedure. Exhibit A: Speaker Mike Johnson, who recently issued a statement supporting IVF but has previously supported legislation that could restrict access to the fertility tech.

That’s all I have for you today. What do you think? What other stories have captured your interest?

Lazy Caturday Reads: Trump is in Serious Trouble This Time.

Posted: February 17, 2024 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: 2024 presidential Campaign, cat art, Cats, caturday, Donald Trump, just because | Tags: Allen Weisselberg, Barbara Jones, Donald Trump Jr., E. Jean Carroll case, Eric Trump, Judge Arthur Engoron, Trump NY fraud trial | 5 Comments

Happy Caturday!!

db84f474e2a1f1bef266231e4bc86b5c Yesterday was truly a momentous day in the Trump saga. Trump has been hit a damaging blow to his identity as a successful businessman.

Judge Arthur Engoron ordered him to pay $355 million dollars penalty for defrauding banks, insurance companies, and taxpayers. In addition, he will have to pay 9 percent interest on the disgorgement. Nearly $100 million in interest is already owed and the interest will continue to accrue as long as he hasn’t paid up.

On top of the financial judgement, Trump will not be able to do business in New York, including borrowing from banks, for 3 years.

Jonah E. Bromwich and Ben Protess at The New York Times: Trump Fraud Trial Penalty Will Exceed $450 Million.

A New York judge on Friday handed Donald J. Trump a crushing defeat in his civil fraud case, finding the former president liable for conspiring to manipulate his net worth and ordering him to pay a penalty of nearly $355 million plus interest that could wipe out his entire stockpile of cash.

The decision by Justice Arthur F. Engoron caps a chaotic, yearslong case in which New York’s attorney general put Mr. Trump’s fantastical claims of wealth on trial. With no jury, the power was in Justice Engoron’s hands alone, and he came down hard: The judge delivered a sweeping array of punishments that threatens the former president’s business empire as he simultaneously contends with four criminal prosecutions and seeks to regain the White House.

Justice Engoron barred Mr. Trump for three years from serving in top roles at any New York company, including portions of his own Trump Organization. He also imposed a two-year ban on the former president’s adult sons and ordered that they pay more than $4 million each. One of them, Eric Trump, is the company’s de facto chief executive, and the ruling throws into doubt whether any member of the family can run the business in the near term.

The judge also ordered that they pay substantial interest, pushing the penalty for the former president to $450 million, according to the attorney general, Letitia James.

In his unconventional style, Justice Engoron criticized Mr. Trump and the other defendants for refusing to admit wrongdoing for years. “Their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological,” he said.

He noted that Mr. Trump had not committed violent crimes and also conceded that “Donald Trump is not Bernard Madoff.” Still, he wrote, “defendants are incapable of admitting the error of their ways.”

Mr. Trump will appeal the financial penalty but will have to either come up with the money or secure a bond within 30 days. The ruling will not render him bankrupt, because most of his wealth is in real estate, which altogether is worth far more than the penalty.

Mr. Trump will also ask an appeals court to halt the restrictions on him and his sons from running the company while it considers the case. In a news conference from his Palm Beach, Fla., home, Mar-a-Lago, on Friday evening, he attacked Ms. James and Justice Engoron, calling them both “corrupt.”

The bond he has to post would be greater than the total judgment plus the interest. The same requirement holds if Trump wants to appeal the $18.3 million judgment in the E. Jean Carroll case.

Trump will also be under the thumb of Barbara Jones, the independent monitor the judge appointed to oversea the Trump Organization’s business. He will have get her permission for any large transfers of money.

But there might be little Mr. Trump can do to thwart one of the judge’s most consequential punishments: extending for three years the appointment of an independent monitor who is the court’s eyes and ears at the Trump Organization. Justice Engoron also strengthened the monitor’s authority to watch for fraud and second-guess transactions that look suspicious.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers have railed against the monitor, Barbara Jones, saying that her work had already cost the business more than $2.5 million; the decision to extend her oversight of the privately held company could enrage the Trumps, who see her presence as an irritant and an insult.

Mark Joseph Stern and Alexander Sammon at Slate: Trump and His Family Are Fined $355 Million for Fraud—and a Lack of Remorse That “Borders on Pathological.” The ruling, if upheld, marks the end of the Trump Organization as we know it.

New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron ordered Donald Trump to pay $355 million in fines for business fraud in an excoriating decision on Friday that also imposes major penalties on the former president’s family and business associates. Both Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. are each liable for $4 million, while former CFO Allen Weisselberg is on the hook for $1 million.

The ruling, if upheld, marks the end of the Trump Organization as we know it: Engoron barred Trump from serving as an officer in any New York corporation or legal entity for three years, and prohibited him from applying for loans from any financial entity in the state. The judge has effectively hobbled the entire Trump corporate empire….

During trial, members of the Trump family took the stand to defend their father’s business dealings, with little success; Engoron declined to credit their testimony in his Friday opinion, noting that Eric Trump actually reversed himself on the stand after evidence emerged that he had lied under oath. Trump himself took the stand, as well, assuming a combative and antagonistic pose toward the judge, whom he publicly derided as a partisan hack. The former president, Engoron wrote in his Friday opinion, “rarely responded to the questions asked, and he frequently interjected long, irrelevant speeches on issues far beyond the scope of the trial. His refusal to answer the questions directly, or in some cases, at all, severely compromised his credibility.”

This theme of mendacity and impenitence ran throughout Engoron’s ruling. In a remarkable passage, he wrote that the Trump family’s “complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological. They are accused only of inflating asset values to make more money. The documents prove this over and over again. … Defendants are incapable of admitting the error of their ways. Instead, they adopt a ‘See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’ posture that the evidence belies.” This refusal to admit to their unlawful misdeeds persuaded Engoron that they “will engage in [fraud] going forward unless judicially restrained.” He therefore affirmed his earlier decision to have an independent monitor, the retired judge Barbara Jones, oversee the business’s finances and assets.

The $355 million penalty is, to put it mildly, substantial, and not the first time this year Trump has been ordered by a court to cut a check with two commas and at least seven zeroes on it. Just last month he was ordered to pay out over $83 million after losing the defamation case brought by the writer E. Jean Carroll. That was actually the second penalty Trump was compelled to pay her: A New York jury previously found that Trump sexually assaulted and defamed Carroll, awarding her $5 million in damages.

Some quick back-of-the-envelope math here shows just how dire the self-proclaimed multibillionaire’s financial situation is getting. Reporting from late October pegged Trump’s cash holdings at $425 million. This most recent penalty from New York state, combined with the two verdicts in the Carroll cases, tally to $438 million. And actually, it’s worse than that, since Engoron stipulated that Trump is prohibited from borrowing money from any New York bank for the next three years. That ban will handicap his attempt to appeal. Moreover, New York law could force him to pay a hefty 9 percent interest rate on the judgment, which would push the original $355 million north of $450 million.

Trump will undoubtedly appeal Friday’s decision, and he is not required to post bond while he does so. However, if he fails to post bond, the state can begin collecting on the judgment in 30 days’ time. At that point, Attorney General James can seize Trump’s assets, including real property; in other words, his real estate holdings in New York, like Trump Tower, are vulnerable to seizure and potential sale.

Can Trump raise this kind of money without selling one of his properties? From Erica Orden at Politico: Can Trump pay? What if he doesn’t? Here’s what to know about Trump’s massive civil judgments.

A seven-figure verdict, an eight-figure verdict and, now, a nine-figure verdict.

Donald Trump has been hit with all three in the past nine months, with Friday’s $354 million penalty for New York business fraud by far the most massive.

He is now on the hook for over $440 million in civil judgments as he heads toward the Republican nomination — and as he prepares for one or more criminal trials this year….

Trump’s company isn’t public, and he has famously refused to disclose his tax returns, so his cash flow situation is shrouded in mystery.

Even if he has $440 million in cash on hand — and it’s far from clear that he does — paying the judgments could wipe out his accounts, since Trump himself has placed his cash reserves in the ballpark of that amount.

Trump claimed in a deposition last year that he had “substantially in excess” of $400 million in cash on hand….

But it’s unclear whether that number is accurate. That deposition, after all, was part of the very lawsuit in which a judge found that Trump has repeatedly inflated his net worth.

If he doesn’t have enough cash on hand, would he have to sell properties?

Trump would likely have to sell something, although it wouldn’t necessarily have to be property. He could sell investments or other assets.

But what if he outright refuses to pay up?

In the civil fraud case, which is in New York state court, if Trump can’t post the funds or get a bond, then the judgment would take effect immediately and a sheriff could begin seizing Trump’s assets.

The rules are slightly different in federal court, which is the venue for the $83.3 million judgment that Trump owes for defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll after she accused him of raping her. (He also owes Carroll an additional $5 million from a separate verdict last year.) Carroll could pursue post-judgment discovery under the jurisdiction of the judge who oversaw the trial. Through that process, the judge could order Trump to produce his bank account records, place liens or garnish his wages.

“I think he’s going to have to pay. And whether it requires him to sell or to put a lien on something to get a loan, that’s his problem, not ours. He’s going to pay,” Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan said on CNN last month.

The judge, Kaplan added, will use “judgment enforcement mechanisms” to “make sure that he pays.”

If Trump truly can’t afford the judgments, he would have to declare bankruptcy.

He also can’t postpone payments while he appeals. He would have to post bond of 120-125 percent of the total owed first. In other words, Trump is totally screwed. The only thing that could help him is that he can use PAC money to pay. But can his MAGA morons afford that much?

What does this financial disaster mean for Americans? After all, Trump is running for the Republican presidential nomination. Abdallah Fayed at Vox: Trump is suddenly in need of a lot of cash. That’s everyone’s problem.

Two recent verdicts have now left Donald Trump on the hook for nearly half a billion dollars….

For a well-connected billionaire, that might usually amount to nothing more than a temporary inconvenience; after all, Trump could always liquidate some of his assets or borrow even more money to cover his short-term obligations.

But Trump isn’t just one of the country’s richest men, with an estimated net worth in the low billions; he’s also running to serve a second term as president of the United States. And for any candidate for public office — let alone the presidency — being cash-strapped while owing such significant amounts of money could be a serious liability.

“It’s pretty scary from an ethics perspective,” said Virginia Canter, the chief ethics counsel at the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonpartisan watchdog group that has chronicled Trump’s abuses of power and filed lawsuits against him.

You don’t have to look far to find the reasons why. Trump’s first term was riddled with conflicts of interest, and that’s in no small part because of his financial well-being (or lack thereof, depending on how you look at it). At the time that he tried to overturn the 2020 election, he was hundreds of millions of dollars in debt, largely stemming from loans to help rehabilitate his struggling businesses, and most of which would be coming due over the subsequent four years. Throughout his presidency, he refused to divest from his businesses, which made millions of dollars in revenue from taxpayers and continued to do work with other countries while he was in office — a practice he indicated he would repeat in a second term.

The fact that he has so many entanglements with big businesses and other nations leaves plenty of room for things to go awry. That’s why a 2020 New York Times exposé uncovering his staggering debt during his first term wasn’t just embarrassing for Trump, who has a tendency to claim he’s richer than he actually is. It also raised fears about how his debt could implicate national security.

As the former head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division told Time magazine in 2020, “For a person with access to U.S. classified information to be in massive financial debt is a counterintelligence risk because the debt-holder tends to have leverage over the person, and the leverage may be used to encourage actions, such as disclosure of information or influencing policy, that compromise U.S. national security.”

Read the rest at Vox.

Finally, if you’d like a deep dive on Trump and how he took the vast fortune his father left him and fucked up so badly, there’s a fascinating article at The Guardian by Sidney Blumenthal: Trump’s hubris has brought about the downfall of his family’s business empire.

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