Posted: February 21, 2024 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Donald Trump, Joe Biden, religion, Russia | Tags: Alexander Smirnov, Christian nationalism, FBI, Hunter Biden, Judge Aileen Cannon, Russian intelligence, Save America PAC, Special Counsel David Weiss, Special Counsel Jack Smith, stolen documents case |
Good Day!!
Portrait of Vsevolod Emilievich Meyerhold, by Pytr Konchalovsk, 1938
Today’s big political story: House Republicans’ efforts to impeach President Biden for supposed corruption involving his son Hunter is in deep trouble. You probably heard that their star witness has been indicted and arrested for lying to the FBI. On top of that, his “evidence” came from the Kremlin. Republicans are the Putin Party. Here’s the latest:
Hannah Rabinowitz and Cheri Mossburg at CNN: Indicted ex-FBI informant told investigators he got Hunter Biden dirt from Russian intelligence officials.
The former FBI informant charged with lying about the Bidens’ dealings in Ukraine told investigators after his arrest that Russian intelligence officials were involved in passing information to him about Hunter Biden, prosecutors said Tuesday in a new court filing, noting that the information was false.
Prosecutors also said Alexander Smirnov has been “actively peddling new lies that could impact US elections” after meeting with Russian spies late last year and that the fallout from his previous false bribery accusations about the Bidens “continue[s] to be felt to this day.”
Smirnov claims to have “extensive and extremely recent” contacts with foreign intelligence officials, prosecutors said in the filing. They said he previously told the FBI that he has longstanding and extensive contacts with Russian spies, including individuals he said were high-level intelligence officers or command Russian assassins abroad.
Prosecutors with special counsel David Weiss’ team said Tuesday that Smirnov has maintained those ties and noted that, in a post-arrest interview last week, “Smirnov admitted that officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story about Businessperson 1,” referring to President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.
The revelations about Smirnov’s alleged foreign contacts were disclosed as part of prosecutors’ arguments to keep him jailed ahead of trial – though a federal judge later granted Smirnov’s release with several conditions, including GPS monitoring and the surrender of his two passports. Smirnov declined to answer questions as he left the courthouse Tuesday evening.
Prosecutors alleged that Smirnov “claims to have contacts with multiple foreign intelligence agencies,” including in Russia, and that he could use those contacts to flee the United States.
The explosive revelation comes amid backlash over how Smirnov’s now-debunked allegations played into House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into the president.
Read more details at CNN.
From the Associated Press:
A former FBI informant charged with making up a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme involving President Joe Biden, his son Hunter and a Ukrainian energy company had contacts with Russian intelligence-affiliated officials, prosecutors said Tuesday.
Prosecutors revealed the alleged contact as they urged a judge in Las Vegas to keep Alexander Smirnov behind bars while he awaits trial. But U.S. Magistrate Judge Daniel Albregts allowed Smirnov to be released from custody on electronic GPS monitoring.
Joan Brown, Noel in the Kitchen (circa 1964).
He is accused of falsely telling his FBI handler that executives with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid Hunter and Joe Biden $5 million each around 2015 — a claim that became central to the Republican impeachment inquiry in Congress….
According to prosecutors, Smirnov admitted in an interview after his arrest last week that “officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story” about Hunter Biden. They said Smirnov’s contacts with Russian officials were recent and extensive, and said Smirnov had planned to meet with one official during an upcoming overseas trip….
Prosecutors said Smirnov, who holds dual U.S.-Israeli citizenship, falsely reported to the FBI in June 2020 that executives associated with Burisma paid millions of dollars to Hunter and Joe Biden in 2015 or 2016.
But Smirnov had only routine business dealings with the company starting in 2017 and made the bribery allegations after he “expressed bias” against Joe Biden while he was a presidential candidate, according to prosecutors.
He is charged with making a false statement and creating a false and fictitious record. The charges were filed in Los Angeles, where he lived for 16 years before relocating to Las Vegas two years ago.
Smirnov’s claims have played a major part in the Republican effort in Congress to investigate the president and his family, and helped spark what is now a House impeachment inquiry into Biden. Democrats called for an end to the probe after the Smirnov indictment came down last week, while Republicans distanced the inquiry from his claims and said they would continue to “follow the facts.”
More details from Tori Otten at The New Republic: Republicans’ Star Hunter Biden Witness Is an Epic Disaster.
Republicans’ main witness in their efforts to impeach Joe Biden has already been charged with lying to the FBI. Now he has also admitted to having ties to Russian intelligence officers.
Alexander Smirnov, a longtime FBI informant with ties to Ukraine, had claimed to have proof of Biden and his son Hunter accepting bribes from a Ukrainian oligarch. Republicans repeatedly touted Smirnov’s claims in their quest to impeach the president. But last week, the Justice Department announced that it was charging Smirnov with making a false statement and creating a false record related to the bribery allegation.
Now, in a detention memo filed Tuesday, the Justice Department revealed that Smirnov confessed that Russian intelligence officers helped him smear Hunter Biden.
“During his custodial interview on February 14, Smirnov admitted that officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story about” the younger Biden, the filing said.
Smirnov also told the FBI that he had had repeated contact with a Russian official who, as Smirnov told it, was “the son of a former high-ranking Russian government official, someone who purportedly controls two groups of individuals tasked with carrying out assassination efforts in a third-party country, a Russian representative to another country, and … someone with ties to a particular Russian intelligence service.”
Laurie Simmons, Blonde-Aqua Sweater-Dog (2014).
Smrinov initially tried to spread the Biden Ukrainian corruption story just before the 2020 election, but Justice Department prosecutors are warning that Smirnov’s “misinformation” goes far beyond that.
“He is actively peddling new lies that could impact U.S. elections after meeting with Russian intelligence officials in November,” they said in the filing.
The memo notes that Smirnov himself reported several meetings with Russian officials as recently as December 2023.
The charges against Smirnov are the latest major fail in Republicans’ attempts to impeach Biden, which has been nothing but a comedy of errors. For almost a year, the GOP has insisted that Biden and his son are guilty of corruption. Republicans have not produced a shred of concrete evidence of their claims, but they have repeatedly upheld accusations from a supposedly credible but confidential FBI source (whom we now know is Smirnov) as reason enough to keep investigating the president.
Hunter Biden and his attorney’s are back in court. Here’s a brief summary of their court filings from ABC News: Attorneys for Hunter Biden file motions to dismiss tax charges in California.
Attorneys for Hunter Biden on Tuesday moved to dismiss tax-related charges brought by special counsel David Weiss in California, accusing prosecutors of selectively targeting President Joe Biden’s son, violating a statute of limitations, and filing duplicative charges on three counts of failure to pay and tax evasion.
“The special counsel has gone to extreme lengths to bring charges against Mr. Biden that would not have been filed against anyone else,” Hunter Biden’s attorney Abbe Lowell said in a statement.
“Prosecutors reneged on binding agreements, bowed to political pressure to bring unprecedented charges, overreached in their authority, ignored the rules and allowed their agents to run amok, and repeatedly misstated evidence to the court to defend their conduct. It is time to hold the special counsel accountable and dismiss these improper charges,” Lowell said.
Weiss’ office charged Hunter Biden in December with nine felony and misdemeanor charges stemming from his failure to pay $1.4 million in taxes for three years during a time when he was in the throes of addiction. Hunter Biden has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
The back taxes and penalties were eventually paid in full by a third party, identified by ABC News as Hunter Biden’s attorney and confidant, Kevin Morris.
In his motions on Tuesday, Lowell reiterated many of the arguments he waged in his efforts to dismiss three additional felony counts Biden faces in Delaware – charges to which Biden has also pleaded not guilty.
Lowell claimed that the tax indictment is the result of a selective and vindictive prosecution stemming from political pressure, that Weiss was not properly appointed special counsel and therefore lacks authority to file charges, and that an immunity agreement struck by the two parties last summer remains in effect.
Lowell also argued that the statute of limitations for Biden’s alleged failure to pay taxes in 2016 expired in April 2023.
Marcy wrote in detail about the new filings at Emptywheel. You can wade through that if you want to: Hunter Biden’s Motions to Dismiss: The Technical Complaints.
The latest legal and political Trump news
Roger Sollenberger at The Daily Beast: Donald Trump’s Cash Crunch Just Got Much, Much Worse.
As Donald Trump’s legal troubles consume more and more of his time, they’re also consuming more of his donors’ money—and there’s a huge hole in the bucket.
On Tuesday, Trump’s “Save America” leadership political action committee reported raising just $8,508 from donors in the entire month of January, while spending about $3.9 million, according to a new filing with the Federal Election Commission.
Nearly $3 million of that overall spending total was used for one purpose: to pay lawyers.
At the same time, the Trump campaign itself reported a net loss of more than $2.6 million for the month of January. It raised about $8.8 million while spending around $11.5 million, according to a separate filing made public on Tuesday.
The filings reveal that Trump is continuing to burn through his donors’ funds as he struggles to feed two massive cash drains—astronomical legal bills stemming from numerous civil cases and four criminal indictments, plus the costs of a national presidential campaign….
Jean-François Millet, Shepherdess and Her Flock (1862–63).
Despite reporting almost no donations in January, the Save America PAC—a group Trump launched days after the 2020 election, ostensibly to fund legal challenges—actually increased its bottom line by more than $1 million, ending the month with nearly $6.3 million on hand.
However, that increase can’t be chalked up to new donations. It’s entirely due to a $5 million transfer from a different pro-Trump super PAC, which is still in the process of refunding $60 million that the former president demanded back last year, as his legal bills threatened to put Save America, his legal slush fund, into bankruptcy.
Despite reporting almost no donations in January, the Save America PAC—a group Trump launched days after the 2020 election, ostensibly to fund legal challenges—actually increased its bottom line by more than $1 million, ending the month with nearly $6.3 million on hand.
However, that increase can’t be chalked up to new donations. It’s entirely due to a $5 million transfer from a different pro-Trump super PAC, which is still in the process of refunding $60 million that the former president demanded back last year, as his legal bills threatened to put Save America, his legal slush fund, into bankruptcy.
Read more bad news for Trump at the link above.
At Slate, Norman Eisen and Joshua Kolb speculation on the possibility that: Aileen Cannon Might Actually Get Herself Kicked Off the Trump Classified Docs Case.
The recent news about possible Russian space nukes reminds us that we live in a very insecure world. That is why perhaps none of Donald Trump’s four criminal cases is more troubling than the federal prosecution brought by special counsel Jack Smith for mishandling classified documents. Unfortunately, the judge handling the case, Aileen Cannon—a last-minute appointment rushed through in the waning days of the Trump administration—has proved herself to be by far the worst of the jurists overseeing these momentous cases. Her decisions during the investigative phase of the case strayed wildly from precedent, leading to brutal reversals by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. Now Smith appears to be preparing to ask that body to overturn at least one and possibly two of her decisions. In our view, while he is there on those other issues, he should also petition them to remove her from the case.
Why do we think Smith might be headed to the court of appeals? In part because he has already sought reconsideration for the latest of Cannon’s unlawful orders. This is a step that is warranted only in rare circumstances, including when a judge has made a “clear error” that led to “manifest injustice.” In this instance, at Trump’s behest, Cannon has decided to unseal the identities of two dozen potential witnesses, along with sensitive information they provided to the government. The “clear error” Smith identifies is striking: He alleges that Cannon applied the wrong legal standard in making this decision, requiring him to make a far more stringent showing than should be needed to protect these names. In his motion for reconsideration, Smith shows that the case law—including the very cases Cannon herself cited in her order—does not establish the unreasonable hurdles she wants him to clear.
The recent news about possible Russian space nukes reminds us that we live in a very insecure world. That is why perhaps none of Donald Trump’s four criminal cases is more troubling than the federal prosecution brought by special counsel Jack Smith for mishandling classified documents. Unfortunately, the judge handling the case, Aileen Cannon—a last-minute appointment rushed through in the waning days of the Trump administration—has proved herself to be by far the worst of the jurists overseeing these momentous cases. Her decisions during the investigative phase of the case strayed wildly from precedent, leading to brutal reversals by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. Now Smith appears to be preparing to ask that body to overturn at least one and possibly two of her decisions. In our view, while he is there on those other issues, he should also petition them to remove her from the case.
Why do we think Smith might be headed to the court of appeals? In part because he has already sought reconsideration for the latest of Cannon’s unlawful orders. This is a step that is warranted only in rare circumstances, including when a judge has made a “clear error” that led to “manifest injustice.” In this instance, at Trump’s behest, Cannon has decided to unseal the identities of two dozen potential witnesses, along with sensitive information they provided to the government. The “clear error” Smith identifies is striking: He alleges that Cannon applied the wrong legal standard in making this decision, requiring him to make a far more stringent showing than should be needed to protect these names. In his motion for reconsideration, Smith shows that the case law—including the very cases Cannon herself cited in her order—does not establish the unreasonable hurdles she wants him to clear.
Mary Cassatt, Little Girl in a Blue Armchair (1878).
In his motion for reconsideration, Smith also argues that Cannon minimizes the risk of real-world harm and witness intimidation these individuals would face. He notes that there is a “well-documented pattern in which judges, agents, prosecutors, and witnesses involved in cases involving Trump have been subject to threats, harassment, and intimidation.” Cannon’s cavalier attitude is dangerous for the potential witnesses whose identities could be revealed. As Smith asserts in his brief, “a court’s duty is to prevent harms to the witnesses or the judicial process ‘at their inception.’ ” Cannon appears willing to abdicate that duty.
In response to Smith’s reconsideration motion, Cannon ordered Trump to respond by Friday. That will set up a dramatic ruling by Cannon: Either she reverses her position—which would be an admission that she was fundamentally mistaken about the law in a way that caused “manifest injustice”—or she leaves her ruling in place, putting individuals in jeopardy and twisting the law to help Trump. At that point, Smith may have enough ammunition to seek her reassignment from the 11th Circuit.
Beyond that contretemps, there is a second possible dispute that may be headed to the court of appeals shortly. Earlier this month saw two days of hearings on whether the defendants in the case will get access to highly classified documents under the Classified Information Procedures Act. That statute allows the government to petition the court to redact, summarize, or even withhold classified information in a criminal case. Notably, the CIPA provides the government with the ability to immediately and swiftly appeal. Thus, even if Smith loses a ruling related only to a single document, the statute allows him to go straight to the 11th Circuit.
Some stories out today provide details on Trump’s plans for the U.S. if he somehow gets back into the White House.
Politico’s Alexander Ward and Heidi Przybyla on Trump’s plans for our country: Trump allies prepare to infuse ‘Christian nationalism’ in second administration.
An influential think tank close to Donald Trump is developing plans to infuse Christian nationalist ideas in his administration should the former president return to power, according to documents obtained by POLITICO.
Spearheading the effort is Russell Vought, who served as Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget during his first term and has remained close to him. Vought, who is frequently cited as a potential chief of staff in a second Trump White House, is president of The Center for Renewing America think tank, a leading group in a conservative consortium preparing for a second Trump term.
Christian nationalists in America believe that the country was founded as a Christian nation and that Christian values should be prioritized throughout government and public life. As the country has become less religious and more diverse, Vought has embraced the idea that Christians are under assault and has spoken of policies he might pursue in response.
One document drafted by CRA staff and fellows includes a list of top priorities for CRA in a second Trump term. “Christian nationalism” is one of the bullet points. Others include invoking the Insurrection Act on Day One to quash protests and refusing to spend authorized congressional funds on unwanted projects, a practice banned by lawmakers in the Nixon era.
CRA’s work fits into a broader effort by conservative, MAGA-leaning organizations to influence a future Trump White House. Two people familiar with the plans, who were granted anonymity to discuss internal matters, said that Vought hopes his proximity and regular contact with the former president — he and Trump speak at least once a month, according to one of the people — will elevate Christian nationalism as a focal point in a second Trump term.
The documents obtained by POLITICO do not outline specific Christian nationalist policies. But Vought has promoted a restrictionist immigration agenda, saying a person’s background doesn’t define who can enter the U.S., but rather, citing Biblical teachings, whether that person “accept[ed] Israel’s God, laws and understanding of history.”
Read the rest at Politico, if you can stomach it.
At Salon, Amanda Marcotte has some thoughts on the Politico story: Donald Trump may not believe in God, but he still plans to turn America into a Christian theocracy.
If there were only some way to prove it, I would happily bet everything I own that Donald Trump does not believe in God. Not because he’s carefully engaged the many philosophical proofs for atheism that are out there, of course. He’s simply too much of a sociopathic narcissist to believe in anything higher than himself. He also, as recent court verdicts regarding sexual assault and massive fraud demonstrate, has no moral compass. He’s only too happy to be party to attempted murder, in fact, as long as it’s someone else who takes the risk of prison for it.
Alas, there’s no way to force Trump to tell the truth about his lack of belief in God, but there are plenty of signs of his deep contempt for religion. Multiple witnesses have described how he laughs at Christians behind their backs, calling their faith “bullshit.” When he play-acts belief in public, he struggles to hide his scorn, failing to acknowledge basic precepts of Christianity that even most non-believers understand.
I suspect most Americans, even Republican voters, understand that Trump is not a believer. (He does seem to think he’s a god himself, a view his voters are all too willing to endorse.) Unfortunately, this can incline folks to feel that, if re-elected, Trump will govern as a secularist. Focus groups, for instance, regularly show that voters disregard the threat Trump poses to legal abortion, even though he’s the reason Roe v. Wade was overturned. They correctly surmise that Trump would be fine with any woman he has sex with aborting an inconvenient pregnancy, but forget that, for Trump, rules are for other people. He’d only be too happy to send every woman who got an abortion to prison, so long as he personally is off the hook.
The grim reality, however, is that should Trump win (or steal) the White House this November, he will govern as a theocrat. There’s a reason that Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has attached himself like a suckerfish to Trump’s rear end. Johnson wants the U.S. to abandon freedom of religion, and instead run it according to his far-right view of a “biblically sanctioned government.” He sees Trump as the single best route to turning the country into a Christian dictatorship.
On Tuesday, Politico published an exposé of the secret plans of The Center for Renewing America think tank, described as “a leading group in a conservative consortium preparing for a second Trump term.” Led by Russell Vought, who once worked as Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, the group has drafted a blueprint to turn the U.S. into a “Christian nationalist” country. The group argues that “freedom is defined by God, not man,” which is a fancy way of saying that they oppose most human rights. Subsequently, they are calling for an end to free speech, by using the Insurrection Act to quell protests. The coalition also expressed support for “overturning same-sex marriage, ending abortion and reducing access to contraceptives.”
One more outrageous/WTF Trump story before I bring this post to a close. Politico: Trump calls his civil fraud verdict a ‘form of Navalny.’
Former President Donald Trump likened the $355 million judgment against him in a New York civil trial to the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny during a Fox News town hall on Tuesday evening.
“It is a form of Navalny. It is a form of communism or fascism,” he said, before going on to attack the judge in the case, Arthur Engoron, who he called a “nut job.”
Trump compared himself to Navalny, the outspoken critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who died in prison on Friday, on several occasions during the event. Earlier in the town hall, Trump praised Navalny as a “very brave guy” because he chose to return to Russia, where he had been jailed since 2021, though Trump said he “probably would have been a lot better off staying away and talking from outside.”
“People thought that could happen and it did happen,” Trump said, referring to Navalny’s death. “And it’s a horrible thing.”
Asked about outrage over Navalny’s death, Trump said, “It’s happening here.” He said his indictments are “all because of the fact that I’m in politics.”
Trump refrained from blaming Putin for the death, as President Joe Biden and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, Trump’s sole remaining credible primary opponent, have done.
Trump’s remarks amounted to a doubling down on his controversial post on Truth Social on Monday that “the sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country.”
Lock him up.
That’s all the news I have for you today. What are your thoughts? What other stories are you interested in?
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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 |
Happy Caturday!!
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.
More stories to check out today:
The New York Times: Trump Allies Plan New Sweeping Abortion Restrictions.
The Washington Post: Trump’s anger at courts, frayed alliances could upend approach to judicial issues.
Politico: ‘I Have to Say Goodbye. But I Don’t Want to Go to Jail.’ One of Navalny’s closest friends mourns his death, and Russia’s future.
Press Release from DOJ: Justice Department Transfers Approximately $500,000 in Forfeited Russian Funds to Estonia for Benefit of Ukraine.
Politico: Biden, lawmakers hammer Ukraine aid holdouts after Navalny death.
The Hill: GOP House chair: Johnson has no way out of Ukraine floor vote.
Los Angeles Times: Opinion: I’m an American doctor who went to Gaza. What I saw wasn’t war — it was annihilation, by Ifran Galaria
The Milwaukee Journal: Wisconsin fake elector tells ‘60 Minutes’ he was afraid of Trump supporters.
What do you think about all this? What other stories have captured your interest?
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Posted: February 10, 2024 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: 2024 presidential Campaign, cat art, Cats, caturday, Donald Trump, just because | Tags: Climate change, Japanese cat art, Judge Aileen Cannon, Merrick Garland, President Joe Biden, Special Counsel Jack Smith, Special Counsel Robert Hur |
Happy Caturday!!
By Utagawa Kuniyoshhi
Yesterday the press again focused on the Hur report that found no crimes in President Biden’s inadvertent possession of classified documents from his time as Vice President. But reporters only cared about one tiny portion of the report, in which Hur said Biden would be sympathetic to a jury because he comes across as a “well meaning elderly man with a poor memory.”
The gossip columnists at the NYT and WaPo were out in force. I’m not going to dignify these yellow journalists by excerpting their articles. It’s James Comey in 2016 all over again, except that the Hur report didn’t come out less than 2 weeks before the November election.
Meanwhile, the mainstream media overlooks Trump’s confusion, verbal flubs, and inability to form coherent sentences. Just last night he gave a speech full of examples of his cognitive issues.
David McAfee at Raw Story: ‘Yikes’: Internet erupts after ‘Dementia Trump’ makes several verbal slip-ups at NRA rally.
The former president slurred when saying the word “subsidies,” said “dino-dollars” instead of “dollars,” and even said he doesn’t like being frontpage news every time he “said one word a little bit mispronunciation.” He also said that three years ago things were great, despite that being when Joe Biden became president, and he claimed twice there were no terror attacks during his tenure as president. He also said that Biden hasn’t spoken in months despite him addressing the press last night.
The flubs drew wide criticism from online onlookers.
Democratic youth activist Harry Sisson, in response to the ex-president’s “subsidies” flub, said, “Yikes.”
“Trump is slurring his speech again claiming that ‘Rich people are given $7,000 subsies.’ Uh…subsies?” he asked. “I’m not sure what that is and I don’t think anyone else does either. He can’t say subsidies properly so he must have dementia. Right, Republicans?”
Regarding the “subsies,” former prosecutor Ron Filipkowski said, “Dementia Trump is staring at the teleprompter, pauses to think about it, and still can’t say it.”
In yet another instance pointed out by the Biden-Harris HQ account on social media, Trump “gets distracted with bizarre story.”
“I know all about the marbles. I can tell you every marble,” Trump said.
Trump also appeared to mistake what day it was, saying, “If I wasn’t here, I’d be having a nice Saturday afternoon.” He said that, of course, on a Friday. This one was also picked up by Biden-Harris HQ.
Imagine if Biden were that befuddled? The press would have a field day.
From Mike Memoli at NBC News: ‘Cheap shot’: Biden allies go on the attack against the special counsel and the media.
The Biden campaign and the White House have landed on an initial strategy for responding to special counsel Robert Hur’s report that has spurred questions about the president’s fitness to hold office: Attack Hur and the media covering the report.
Woman Holding Black Cat, by TAkehisa Yumeji, 1919
The morning after Biden flashed anger at Hur for what he and other senior advisers argue was an inappropriate and excessive focus on his age, Ian Sams, a spokesperson for the White House counsel, sparred with the press corps for cherry-picking findings in the report, which he suggested was written in a way to shield Hur from political pressure from Republicans.
“I know it’s hard to wade through 400 full pages,” he said. “The report lays out example after example of how the president did not willfully take classified documents.”
Behind the scenes, Biden advisers in both the White House and his campaign were more scathing. One Biden ally said the report angered some of his supporters and, as a result, it was rallying them to his defense.
“People who are supporters of Biden are looking at that thinking that’s a cheap shot and he was playing politics,” the ally said.
The White House’s simmering animosity toward the media also burst into the public. One Biden aide said the media was “shameful” in its handling of the highly sensitive political moment.
“Hur couldn’t make his case and he takes partisan, personal and untrue swipes at Joe Biden,” one aide, who requested anonymity to speak frankly about internal views of the president’s team, said. “[He] did it so the media would take the bait, and none of you have learned a damn thing since 2016.”
The aide was referring to another fraught episode when then-FBI Director James Comey determined that while Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton had been “extremely careless” in handling classified information, she would not face charges for using a private email server.
Yair Rosenberg at The Atlantic: What Biden’s Critics Get Wrong About His Gaffes.
On Sunday, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson went on television and mixed up Iran and Israel. “We passed the support for Iran many months ago,” he told Meet the Press, erroneously referring to an aid package for the Jewish state. Last night, the Fox News prime-time host Jesse Watters introduced South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem as hailing from South Carolina. I once joined a cable-news panel where one of the participants kept confusing then–Attorney General Jeff Sessions with Representative Pete Sessions of Texas. I don’t hold these errors against anyone, as they are some of the most common miscues made by people who talk for a living—and I’m sure my time will come.
Yesterday, President Joe Biden added another example to this list. In response to a question about Gaza, he referred to the Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as the president of Mexico. The substance of Biden’s answer was perfectly cogent. The off-the-cuff response included geographic and policy details not just about Egypt, but about multiple Middle Eastern players that most Americans probably couldn’t even name. The president clearly knew whom and what he was talking about; he just slipped up the same way Johnson and so many others have. But the flub could not have come at a worse time. Because the press conference had been called to respond to Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report on Biden’s handling of classified documents, which dubbed the president an “elderly man with a poor memory,” the Mexico gaffe was immediately cast by critics as confirmation of Biden’s cognitive collapse.
Tama the Cat by Hiroaki Takahashi
But the truth is, mistakes like these are nothing new for Biden, who has been mixing up names and places for his entire political career. Back in 2008, he infamously introduced his running mate as “the next president of the United States, Barack America.” At the time, Biden’s well-known propensity for bizarre tangents, ahistorical riffs, and malapropisms compelled Slate to publish an entire column explaining “why Joe Biden’s gaffes don’t hurt him much.” The article included such gems as the time that then-Senator Biden told the journalist Katie Couric that “when the markets crashed in 1929, ‘Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed. He said, “Look, here’s what happened.”’” The only problem with this story, Slate laconically noted, was that “FDR wasn’t president then, nor did television exist.”
In other words, even a cursory history of Biden’s bungling shows that he is the same person he has always been, just older and slower—a gaffe-prone, middling public speaker with above-average emotional intelligence and an instinct for legislative horse-trading. This is why Biden’s signature moments as a politician have been not set-piece speeches, but off-the-cuff encounters, such as when he knelt to engage elderly Holocaust survivors in Israel so they would not have to stand, and when he befriended a security guard in an elevator at The New York Times on his way to a meeting with the paper’s editorial board, which declined to endorse him. And it’s why Biden’s key accomplishments—such as the landmark climate-change provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, the country’s first gun-control bill in decades, and the expected expansion of the child tax credit—have come through Congress. The president’s strength is not orating, but legislating; not inspiring a crowd, but connecting with individuals.
Former federal prosecutor Shan Wu at The Daily Beast: Special Counsel Robert Hur’s Report on Biden’s Classified Documents Is Partisan and Unprofessional.
As part of his Don Quixote-like quest to avoid criticism, Attorney General Merrick Garland has binged on special counsel appointments throughout his tenure at the U.S. Department of Justice.
Now, following a string of debacles, including allowing Special Counsel John Durham to continue his useless four-year probe of the Mueller investigation—elevating the Hunter Biden prosecutor, David Weiss, to special counsel status after a half-decade of investigation—Garland’s hand-picked Special Counsel Robert Hur has produced a report on President Joe Biden’s handling of classified information that rivals former FBI Director James Comey’s infamous political hatchet-job on Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
Hur concludes what everybody already knew—namely that no criminal charges are warranted in Biden’s handling of classified materials—but gratuitously slams Biden’s fitness for office by describing him as a “sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.” By allowing this unprofessional, partisan dig to be published, Garland plays right into the hands of former President Donald Trump and the extreme right’s ageist attacks on the president.
by Ayako Ishiguro
To be fair, maybe Hur was only trying to exercise what he thought was proper prosecutorial discretion in not bringing a weak case. Or perhaps, he may just be an inept, clumsy writer/editor.
But it was Garland’s responsibility to ensure that Hur’s report did not stray from proper Justice Department standards. Garland should have known the risks when he picked Hur—who had clerked for conservative Chief Justice William Rehnquist, served as the top aide to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who assisted Bill Barr’s distortion of the Mueller Report, and who was a Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney.
The bottom line is that Hur has produced a report that should have reassured the American people that President Biden did nothing wrong, but instead supplies Biden’s political rivals with ammunition for baseless attacks on Biden’s fitness for office.
Hur opens his report in a way that invites misinterpretation, by stating he “uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials.” But Hur waits until the next paragraph to state that the evidence does not establish Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
The verb “uncovered” suggests evidence was hidden and only Hur’s skillful investigation discovered it. Nothing could be further from the truth, as the rest of the report demonstrates that President Biden hid nothing from the investigation and was entirely forthcoming. Hur’s wording also makes it sound like he believes Biden committed a crime, but he just can’t prove it when his report actually concludes there is a lack of evidence of Biden possessing criminal intent to commit a crime.
A report explaining the reasons for declination should be written in a very factual, non-pejorative way. Hur should have simply said that the evidence found in the investigation did not support a recommendation of criminal prosecution, and then gone on to explain what evidence had been evaluated.
There’s much more at the Daily Beast link.
Wu is not the only one who blames Merrick Garland for this fiasco. At Politico, Jonathan Lemire and Sam Stein write: White House frustration with Garland grows.
Joe Biden has told aides and outside advisers that Attorney General Merrick Garland did not do enough to rein in a special counsel report stating that the president had diminished mental faculties, according to two people close to the president, as White House frustration with the head of the Justice Department grows.
Cats practicing their music, Utagawa Kuniyoshi
The report from special counsel Robert Hur ultimately cleared Biden of any charges stemming from his handling of classified documents that were found at Biden’s think tank and his home. But Hur’s explanation for not bringing charges — that Biden would have persuaded the jury that he was a forgetful old man — upended the presidential campaign and infuriated the White House.
Biden and his closest advisers believe Hur went well beyond his purview and was gratuitous and misleading in his descriptions, according to those two people, who were granted anonymity to speak freely. And they put part of the blame on Garland, who they say should have demanded edits to Hur’s report, including around the descriptions of Biden’s faltering memory.
In White House meetings, aides have questioned why Garland felt the need to appoint a special counsel in the first place, though Biden has publicly said he supported the decision.
While Biden himself has not weighed in on Garland’s future, most of the president’s senior advisers do not believe that the attorney general would remain in his post for a possible second term, according to the two people.
A bit more:
“This has been building for a while,” said one of those people. “No one is happy”
Frustration within the White House at Garland has been growing steadily.
Last year, Biden privately denounced how long the probe into his son was taking, telling aides and outside allies that he believed the stress could send Hunter Biden spiraling back into addiction, according to the same two people. And the elder Biden, the people said, told those confidants that Garland should not have eventually empowered a special counsel to look into his son, believing that he again was caving to outside pressure.
Garland moved sooner in his investigation into former President Donald Trump’s election interference, a trial may already be underway or even have concluded, according to two people granted anonymity to discuss private matters. That trial still could take place before the election and much of the delay is owed not to Garland but to deliberate resistance put up by the former president and his team.
Here’s another point of view on President Biden from Republican Stuart Stevens at The New Republic: Just Say It, Democrats: Biden Has Been a Great President. His achievements have been nothing short of historic.
A plea to my Democratic friends: It’s time to start calling Joe Biden a great president. Not a good one. Not a better choice than Donald Trump. Joe Biden is a historically great president. Say it with passion backed by the conviction that it’s true.
Because it is.
Yes, the desire to see the 2024 election as a choice between a normal, stable president versus an erratic thug under indictment in multiple states is seductive. But don’t base a campaign on that contrast. Don’t go into 2024 with the game plan to win because Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy. That’s true, he is, but that’s only making the case that Donald Trump shouldn’t be president. It’s not the reason Joe Biden should be reelected.
Joe Biden should remain president because of his historic level of achievement here at home while standing on the side of freedom versus tyranny in the largest land war in Europe since World War II, a role no American president has played since the Roosevelt-Truman era. Be bold. Walk into this campaign with swagger and confidence and pride.
It’s become a 2024 trope that Donald Trump is the only Republican whom President Biden could beat, and that Biden is the only Democrat whom Trump could defeat. Like a lot of things in politics, it’s true if you accept it. But that acceptance is voluntary. Reject that framing for the industrial political complex bullshit that it is, brought to you by the same class of experts who knew without question that Bill Clinton was dead in June 1992, when he was running third to Ross Perot and George Bush, with 24 percent of the vote.
Stop the nonsense that only a weak opponent gives Joe Biden a chance to win. It’s more than wrong—it’s dangerous, completely misjudging Donald Trump’s strength. Trump is dominating a contest for a presidential nomination like no candidate in modern history because he’s the weakest candidate?
No. Donald Trump is going to win the Republican nomination easily, be endorsed by all his opponents not named Christie or Hutchinson, and emerge from the primaries better positioned to face an incumbent president than any candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1980. If you don’t want to wake up with Trump as your president a year from now, stop fantasying that Trump might not be the Republican nominee. End the whining about a Trump-Biden choice that only helps Trump and get about the business of uniting behind a great president.
A bit more:
As someone who worked in Republican campaigns for almost 30 years, I say without hesitation that the Democratic Party is the only pro-democracy party in America. But guys, why do so many of you have this need to act like ungrateful children of wealthy parents—impossible to please and always demanding more? Name a president who accomplished as much in his first term.
A shapeshifting cat, by Utagawa Kuniyoshi
The stock market is hitting record highs. Unemployment is at a record low, with 14 million new jobs. Talk to small-business owners, and the biggest problem they are facing is finding workers. A child born in the first Republican “infrastructure week” would have been entering grade school by the time President Biden passed the largest public spending initiative in American history. As a Republican media consultant, I made hundreds of ads about the high cost of prescription drugs. But it took President Biden to give Medicare the power to directly negotiate with Big Pharma to lower prices and cap the cost of insulin for Medicare beneficiaries at $35. For all the bitching about gas prices, the United States is now producing more oil than any country in history. Yes, more than Russia or Saudi Arabia, and that’s one of the reasons gas prices are now lower in inflation-adjusted prices than in 1974. Yeah, I know, fossil fuels suck, and the world should run on solar power. But the Biden administration also launched a $7 billion solar power investment project.
What is most amazing is that Biden got this done in a world in which the majority of Republicans believe he is not a legal president. Ponder that for a minute. You are a White House staffer working to help pass Biden initiatives, and you are dealing with members of Congress and senators who don’t just disagree with your boss—they think he’s an illegitimate president.
Wake up and show some gratitude. You wanted student loan forgiveness. You got it, for three million borrowers. You wanted a president who would finally pass gun safety legislation. You got the most comprehensive bill in nearly 30 years, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which passed with the support of 15 Republican senators and 14 Republican House members, opening the door to some hope that laws on gun violence might finally start to reflect the wishes of the majority of the country. Maybe you’re a Democrat who actually cares about the federal deficit, unlike the Republicans who fake concern. Since Biden took office, the deficit has decreased by $1.7 trillion.
Yesterday, Dakinikat wrote about Jack Smith’s arguments to Judge Aileen Cannon that secret grand jury information from government witnesses should not be made public or given to Trump and his co-defendants. Yesterday Cannon ordered Smith to hand over the files today. It’s not clear yet what will happen, but Smith could appeal this to the 11th Circuit. One reason Smith wants to keep the documents sealed is because there is an active investigation of witness intimidation involved.
From ABC News: Authorities investigating online threats made to potential witness related to Trump classified docs case.
Federal authorities are currently investigating a series of threats made online to a potential witness related to special counsel Jack Smith’s classified documents case against former President Donald Trump, according to a new court filing from Smith’s team.
In the filing late Wednesday in federal court in Florida, Smith’s team asked U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, the judge overseeing the case, to let them file an exhibit under seal because, they wrote, “The exhibit describes in some detail threats that have been made over social media to a prospective Government witness and the surrounding circumstances, and the fact that those threats are the subject of an ongoing federal investigation being handled by a United States Attorney’s Office.”
“Disclosure of the details and circumstances of the threats risks disrupting the investigation,” the filing said.
The targeted witness was not identified.
The three-page filing discussing the probe was submitted as part of a dispute between Smith’s team and Trump’s lawyers over how much information should be redacted — or totally withheld from public view — in certain court filings.
In their filing Wednesday, Smith’s team urged Judge Cannon to let them file the exhibit completely under seal because, they said, simply redacting names or other parts of the document could still “provide information to the suspect to which he/she may not otherwise be entitled.”
Newsweek: Donald Trump Handed Boost by Judge Cannon After Jack Smith Fury.
Donald Trump and his legal team will receive unredacted FBI witnesses’ reports as part of the classified documents case after Special Counsel Jack Smith failed in his bid to withhold the information.
Beauty and the Cat , by Kunisada Utagawa
Judge Aileen Cannon, who is overseeing the trial against the former president, ordered federal prosecutors to hand over unredacted materials sought by Trump’s legal team in discovery, as well as the two other co-defendants in the case, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira….
On Thursday, Smith accused Cannon of making a “clear error” when she allowed that the documents be handed over. He said in filings that the move would reveal the identities of numerous potential witnesses, as well as potentially exposing them to “significant and immediate risks of threats, intimidation, and harassment.” Newsweek contacted the Department of Justice on Saturday via email.
Cannon had originally paused deadlines for Smith’s team to hand over the documents while she considered the special counsel’s motion. However, the stay lasted only a few hours, and later she ruled on Friday that the information must be delivered to Trump and the other defendants by Saturday, February 10.
The judge ruled that the information, including the names of potential witnesses, will be sealed from the public until a later court order.
Cannon, who was nominated to the bench by Trump, has long faced calls to recuse herself from the case after she made a number of decisions that favored the former president; these include ones that could potentially delay the start of the trial, scheduled for May.
Twitter lawyers are still suggesting that Jack Smith may take his case to the 11th Circuit. I’ll post in the comments if anything happens.
I’ll end with this climate change story from CNN: Critical Atlantic Ocean current system is showing early signs of collapse, prompting warning from scientists.
A crucial system of ocean currents may already be on course to collapse, according to a new report, with alarming implications for sea level rise and global weather — leading temperatures to plunge dramatically in some regions and rise in others.
Using exceptionally complex and expensive computing systems, scientists found a new way to detect an early warning signal for the collapse of these currents, according to the study published Friday in the journal Science Advances. And as the planet warms, there are already indications it is heading in this direction.
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (the AMOC) — of which the Gulf Stream is part — works like a giant global conveyor belt, taking warm water from the tropics toward the far North Atlantic, where the water cools, becomes saltier and sinks deep into the ocean, before spreading southward.
The currents carry heat and nutrients to different areas of the globe and play a vital role in keeping the climate of large parts of the Northern Hemisphere relatively mild.
For decades, scientists have been sounding the alarm on the circulation’s stability as climate change warms the ocean and melts ice, disrupting the balance of heat and salt that determines the currents’ strength.
While many scientists believe the AMOC will slow under climate change, and could even grind to a halt, there remains huge uncertainty over when and how fast this could happen. The AMOC has only been monitored continuously since 2004.
Scientists do know — from building a picture of the past using things like ice cores and ocean sediments — the AMOC shut down more than 12,000 years ago following rapid glacier melt.
Now they are scrambling to work out if it could happen again.
This new study provides an “important breakthrough,” said René van Westen, a marine and atmospheric researcher at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands and study co-author.
Read the rest at CNN. Maybe Quixote will comment on this story if she comes by.
I hope everyone is having a great weekend!
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Posted: February 7, 2024 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Corrupt and Political SCOTUS, Donald Trump, immigration, SCOTUS | Tags: 14th amendment, Allen Weisselberg, Colorado, DC Circuit Court, James Lankford, Judge Arthur Engoron, Mike Johnson, Mitch McConnell, Supreme Court, Trump's immunity claims |
Good Day!!
Hugo Scheiber, Man Reading Newspaper, 1918
Yesterday was a huge news day. The top story was the decision by the DC Circuit Court ruling stating that Trump does not have immunity from prosecution for crimes committed as president. Now Trump must decide by Monday whether to take the case to the Supreme Court.
On Thursday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments regarding the Colorado case arguing that the 14th Amendment makes Trump ineligible to appear on the state’s primary ballot.
Trump is also awaiting a decision from Judge Engoron in the New York fraud case that could potentially bankrupt him.
In addition, Republicans in the House and Speaker Mike Johnson failed miserably as he lost two votes he put on the floor: aid to Israel and impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. On top of that, the head of the RNC announced her resignation.
In the Senate, Mitch McConnell knifed Senator James Lankford in the back after assigning him to negotiated a border bill that included aid to Ukraine and Israel. Democrats gave Republicans everything they wanted, but they backed down on Trump’s orders.
I’ll get to as many of these stories as I can.
Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein at Politico: Trump is not immune from prosecution for bid to subvert the 2020 election, appeals court rules.
Former President Donald Trump — and indeed any other former president — may be prosecuted for alleged crimes they committed while in office, a federal appeals court panel ruled Tuesday.
The unanimous 57-page decision from a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is a major win for special counsel Jack Smith, who is seeking to put Trump on trial this year on federal felony charges stemming from his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Trump quickly vowed an appeal, which could be at the Supreme Court by Monday.
“For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant,” the D.C. Circuit judges wrote. “But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as President no longer protects him against this prosecution.”
The ruling affirms U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan’s historic conclusion that former presidents may be prosecuted for crimes they committed in office, even if those alleged crimes arguably related to their official duties. Trump had argued that former presidents could not be prosecuted for such actions without first being impeached and convicted by Congress.
The judges put their decision on hold only until Monday to allow Trump to ask the Supreme Court to take up the immunity fight on an emergency basis. If he does so, the decision won’t take effect until the high court acts on his request, the appeals panel decreed.
Trump could also ask the D.C. Circuit to rehear the case. But the panel said doing that won’t delay the return of the case to Chutkan, the trial judge, unless the full bench of the D.C. Circuit agrees to a rehearing, which requires a majority of the 11 active appellate judges.
The force of Tuesday’s unanimous ruling Tuesday, backed by two liberal judges and one staunch conservative, may have been worth the wait for Smith. Rather than a splintered decision that could be picked apart more easily, the ruling lays out a groundbreaking legal and political framework for bringing a former president to trial.
The Newspaper, by Aldo Luongo
At The Atlantic, George Conway writes: An Airtight Ruling Against Trump. In a masterful opinion, the D.C. Circuit rejected the former president’s bid for immunity.
On July 24, 1974, when the Supreme Court issued its decision in United States v. Nixon, ordering President Richard Nixon to produce the Watergate tapes, the president turned to his chief of staff, Alexander Haig, to understand what had just happened. He later recounted the exchange in his memoirs:
“Unanimous?” I guessed.
“Unanimous. There’s no air in it at all,” he said.
“None at all?” I asked.
“It’s tight as a drum.”
These words echoed through my mind today, nearly 50 years later, as I read the historic opinion of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in United States v. Trump, holding that former President Donald Trump does not enjoy immunity from prosecution for any crimes he committed in attempting to end constitutional democracy in the United States.
The result was no surprise. As I said last month, no one who attended the oral argument could have believed Trump had any chance of prevailing. The question was timing: How long would an appeal delay Trump’s trial, originally scheduled for March 4? Many of us thought that the decision might come sooner, perhaps within days of the argument, given how quickly the court had scheduled briefing and argument. And by the end of last week, some commentators had, by their own reckoning, reached the “freakout stage” as to why the decision was taking so long.
They—and we—needn’t have worried. Issued exactly four weeks after the argument, the court’s decision came plenty fast. It’s not that often that you get a unanimous 57-page decision on novel questions of law in 28 days. And you almost never get an opinion of this quality in such a short period of time. I’ve read thousands of judicial opinions in my four decades as a law student and lawyer. Few have been as good as this one.
Unanimous. No air. Tight as a drum. The court’s per curiam opinion—per curiam meaning “for the court,” in that no individual judge authored it—is all that and more. It’s a masterful example of judicial craftsmanship on many levels. The opinion weaves together the factual context, the constitutional text, the judicial precedent, history, the parties’ concessions, and razor-sharp reasoning, with no modicum of judicial and rhetorical restraint, to produce an overwhelmingly cohesive, and inexorably convincing, whole. The opinion deserves a place in every constitutional-law casebook, and, most important—are you listening, members of the Supreme Court?—requires no further review.
The opinion far exceeds any commentator’s poor power to add or detract, so I’ll mostly let it speak for itself. The bottom line:
For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant. But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as President no longer protects him against this prosecution.
I shared this as a gift link (see above), so you should be able to read the whole piece without a subscription.
You can also check out this article at Just Security: How Long Will Trump’s Immunity Appeal Take? Analyzing the Alternative Timelines.
On the Colorado case, Anne E. Marimow writes at The Washington Post: In Trump’s Colorado case, Supreme Court will make and face history.
The Supreme Court on Thursday will confront the critical question of Donald Trump’s eligibility to return to the White House, hearing arguments in an unprecedented case that gives the justices a central role in charting the course of a presidential election for the first time in nearly a quarter-century.
Reading the Newspapers, by Aristarkh Lentulov
The justices will decide whetherColorado’s top court was correctto apply a post-Civil War provisionof the Constitution to order Trump off the ballot after concluding his actions around the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol amounted to insurrection.Primary voting is already underway in some states. Colorado’s ballots for the March 5 primary were printed last week and include Trump’s name. But his status as a candidate will depend on what the Supreme Court decides.
Unlike Bush v. Gore in 2000, when the court’s decision handed the election to George W. Bush, the case challenging Trump’s qualifications for a second term comes at a time when a large swath of the country views the Supreme Court through a partisan lens and a significant percentagestill believes false claims that the last presidential election was rigged.
The justices — especially their cautious, consensus-building chief, John G. Roberts Jr. — may be reluctant to wade into such a politically fraught dispute, experts say. The court could rule more narrowly, finding, for example, that Colorado was wrong to bar Trump from the ballot because of a technicality.
But election law experts have implored the justices to definitively decide the key question of whether Trump is disqualified under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, settling the issue nationwide so that other states with similar challenges to Trump’s candidacy follow along.
They warn of political instability not seen since the Civil War if the court was to overturn Colorado’s ruling but leave open the possibility that Congress could try to disqualify Trump later in the process, including after the general election.
“You can see this one coming. There are flashing red lights warning 10 months before the election that chaos this time is not only possible but more than likely given that 2020 broke the norm and dented the guardrails,” said veteran Republican election lawyer Benjamin Ginsberg, who played a central role for Bush in the Florida recount.
Note the other SCOTUS cases coming up:
Trump’s eligibility is not the only question before the court that could affect the former president’s political future. Later this term, the justices are set to review the validity of a law that was used to charge hundreds of people in connection with the Jan. 6 riot and is also a key element of Trump’s four-count federal election obstruction case in Washington. Trump’s claim that he is protected by presidential immunity from being prosecuted for trying to block Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory also appears headed to the high court after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled against Trump this week.
In the Colorado case, the justices will have to weigh untested legal issues against the backdrop of broad concerns about democracy. Put simply, should the ramifications of disqualifying the leading Republican candidate in the midst of the primary election outweigh the consequences of allowing a candidate to run again after he tried to subvert the outcome of the last election?
In the civil fraud case in New York, we are awaiting a decision by Judge Arthur Engoron, but there is a problem. The Trump Organization’s former CFO Allan Weisselberg is trying to negotiate a settlement with the Manhattan DA in the election interference case, because he may have committed perjury in that case. Judge Engoron wants to know whether that affects his case.
The New York Times: Judge in Trump’s Civil Fraud Case Asks Whether a Key Witness Lied.
The judge overseeing Donald J. Trump’s civil fraud case has questioned whether a key witness committed perjury during the former president’s trial, a new court filing shows.
The judge, Arthur F. Engoron, asked Mr. Trump’s lawyers to address the truthfulness of the witness, Allen H. Weisselberg, Mr. Trump’s longtime chief financial officer. Mr. Weisselberg and Mr. Trump are both defendants in the case, which was brought by the New York attorney general, Letitia James.
Man Reading Newspaper, by Cliff Wilson
Justice Engoron, who is expected to issue a decision in the nonjury case this month, cited a recent New York Times article about Mr. Weisselberg’s testimony. The article reported that Mr. Weisselberg, 76, is negotiating a potential agreement with the Manhattan district attorney’s office that would require him to plead guilty to perjury for his testimony.
“I of course want to know whether Mr. Weisselberg is now changing his tune, and whether he is admitting he lied under oath in my courtroom at this trial,” Justice Engoron wrote to the lawyers on both sides of the case in a recent email made public on Tuesday.
The complex situation stems from overlapping criminal and civil cases brought by the two New York law enforcement agencies.
The district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, has jurisdiction over perjury and other crimes committed in Manhattan. In addition to scrutinizing Mr. Weisselberg’s testimony in the civil fraud case, Mr. Bragg is preparing to put Mr. Trump on trial next month for criminal charges stemming from a hush-money payment to a porn star.
In the civil fraud case, the attorney general, Ms. James, accused Mr. Trump, Mr. Weisselberg and others of fraudulently inflating the former president’s net worth and is asking the judge to impose a roughly $370 million penalty. The monthslong trial took place in the fall.
Mr. Weisselberg was one of more than 40 witnesses. While it is unclear which of his statements might have caught the district attorney’s attention, the attorney general’s office stopped questioning him shortly after Forbes magazine published an article in which it accused Mr. Weisselberg of having lied under oath about his involvement in valuing Mr. Trump’s penthouse apartment.
As to how Trump will manage to pay the huge settlement that is very likely coming from Judge Engoron, Jose Pagliery writes at The Daily Beast: Inside Donald Trump’s Incredible Cash Crunch.
Donald Trump is just days away from getting slammed with a court judgment that could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars as a punishment for his decades of bank fraud with the Trump Organization. And two little-known New York laws could leave Trump scrambling for cash: a requirement that he immediately front the money to appeal the decision, and a sky-high state interest rate.
During a deposition with the New York Attorney General in April 2023, Trump boasted that he had $400 million in cash, bragging about how it’s “a lot for a developer.” But even if that were true, it likely won’t be enough to simultaneously cover last month’s $83 million verdict at his rape defamation trial—which he needs to immediately set aside to appeal that case—and the $370 million demanded by the AG for his incessant lying to banks.
Woman Reading Newspaper, by Arne Kavli
While the judge deciding the bank fraud case hasn’t come up with a final figure that Trump owes, every indication is that it will be into the hundreds of millions. A message from the judge on Tuesday actually suggested it could be even more than what the New York AG is seeking.
Trump’s sudden cash demands are exacerbated by a quirk in New York law. Not only would the judgment get automatically inflated by an unusually high interest rate of 9 percent, but Trump would need to give the court the enlarged total—plus an extra 10 to 20 percent—in order to appeal and have another day in court. And it would all be due by mid-March.
The self-proclaimed billionaire real estate tycoon is about to be caught in a trap of his own making, forced to front a massive amount of cash and possibly liquidate assets—while potentially unable to access the money, because the court order could limit his ability to tap his Monopoly board of properties.
Meanwhile, Trump also faces mounting difficulty in finding surety companies and banks to guide him through the appeal, because his credibility is the very focal point of the case in question. (Trump also has a long history of stiffing banks and creditors.)
One more interesting read (h/t JJ) by Ankush Khardori at New York Magazine: What Happens, Exactly, If Trump Is Sentenced to Prison? New York Mag. usually allows only one free article, so clear your cashe before you head over there.
On the embarrassing day for House Republicans:
David Kurtz at Talking Points Memo: Republicans Are Flailing Like Never Before And It’s Amazing To Behold.
In a nearly unprecedented failure, Johnson brought articles of impeachment to the House floor and lost. He lost! He didn’t have the votes! He couldn’t do the math!
It was a spectacular and unexpected failure. The impeachment was bogus to begin with. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas had not committed any high crimes or misdemeanors and hadn’t even been accused of doing so. This was purely a political impeachment, designed to front the border issue for the House GOP and Donald Trump in an election year. So even on its own terms as a political hatchet job, Johnson was unable to get the job done.
House Republicans insist they can bring the impeachment back to the floor later and win because Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) would have been the deciding vote last night but was absent for treatment for cancer. We shall see.
As a fitting coda to the day, Johnson brought up an Israel funding bill right after the impeachment vote, and it failed, too.
Stephen Collinson: How a botched impeachment laid bare a GOP House that cannot function.
Once Mike Johnson’s speakership was merely implausible. Now it looks incompetent.
The rookie Republican leader – already struggling to wield a tiny, extreme and malfunctioning majority – suffered a spectacular embarrassment on Tuesday night in a failed vote to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
The drama undermined what was already a questionable case for impeachment – more over policy disagreements than the constitutional standard of treason, bribery or high crimes and misdemeanors.
And it told a story of a House in utter disarray.
Joe Reading Newspaper, by David Tanner
Setting up a high-stakes, televised tour de force for the impeachment of a Cabinet official for only the second time in history was a daring act. But failing to actually pull it off by a couple of votes broke the cardinal rule of not putting a bill on the floor until the numbers are rock solid.
The result was a debacle that made the House leadership a laughing stock.
The failure played into the hands of a White House that delights in portraying Johnson’s majority as an engine for Donald Trump’s political stunts more than a serious governing force. And it raised serious doubts over the GOP’s capacity to pull off another politized maneuver designed to please the former president – an impeachment of President Joe Biden.
The malpractice of Johnson’s impeachment team was encapsulated by Democrats outmaneuvering them to bring a shoeless Rep. Al Green, who was recovering from surgery, to the chamber in a wheelchair to cast a dramatic vote.
Moments after the Mayorkas impeachment failed, Johnson was also unable to pass a standalone bill containing billions of dollars in aid for Israel. It was another busted gambit to jam the Biden administration. The president had threatened to veto the bill in protest of Johnson’s refusal to hold votes on a broader package that also included aid to Ukraine and Taiwan. The speaker said Biden and Democrats should be “ashamed” of failing to support an ally embroiled in a war. But the double failure on the House floor did more to highlight his own deficiencies than discomfort Biden.
On the Senate mess:
Kayla Guo at The Washington Post: As G.O.P. Demolishes Border Deal, One of Its Own Stands in the Wreckage.
It was late on a Thursday afternoon in the marbled halls of the Senate, and a small group of negotiators — one Republican, one Democrat and one independent — had just about finished a painstakingly put together border security compromise it took them months to forge.
But what should have been a triumphant moment felt more like an ordeal for the lone Republican in the trio.
“I feel like the guy standing in the middle of the field in a thunderstorm, holding up the metal stick,” Senator James Lankford, the Oklahoma Republican who was his party’s lead broker of the deal, told reporters last week.
The plight of Mr. Lankford, a slim, understated Baptist minister with a neatly combed shock of red hair and a baritone voice that regularly delivers deadpan quips, reflects the extraordinary rise and fall of the border and Ukraine deal that is expected to collapse in a test vote in the Senate on Wednesday — and the political forces within the Republican Party that brought it down.
For months, Mr. Lankford, a staunch conservative, labored over the package alongside Senators Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, and Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona independent, demanding strict immigration policies his party insisted must be a part of any bill to send a fresh infusion of aid to Ukraine. But when Mr. Lankford managed to extract them, he found his fellow Republicans unwilling to embrace the plan, in a vivid illustration of how the political ground for any compromise on immigration has vanished for a party that has decided the issue is too valuable as a political weapon to resolve….
Just as Mr. Lankford and his fellow negotiators neared a deal, former President Donald J. Trump stepped in, trashing the bill both before and after it was released on Sunday and opening the floodgates of Republican resistance. That left Mr. Lankford fighting to keep the deal alive while being attacked by members of his own party, including in his home state, where the Republican Party tried to censure him late last month for “playing fast and loose with Democrats on our border policy.” (The resolution was later rescinded.)
Mr. Lankford said he was only the latest in a long line of lawmakers who had been burned by failed efforts to push through a bipartisan immigration deal.
Read all the details at the WaPo.
That’s it for me today. What’s do you think about all this? What else is on your mind?
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Posted: February 3, 2024 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Biden Harris 2024, cat art, Cats, caturday, Donald Trump, just because | Tags: conspiracy theories, DC Court of Appeals, Federal election interference case, Joe Biden, Judge Aileen Cannon, Judge Karen L. Henderson, Kamala Harris, Pentagon, Special Counsel Jack Smith, Taylor Swift |
Happy Caturday!!
Taylor Swift
On Wednesday, I wrote about the insane right-wing conspiracy theories about Taylor Swift. Here’s an update from Politico: Pentagon to MAGA world: You need to calm down over Taylor Swift.
National security officials are used to shaking off absurd conspiracy theories, but the latest rumor that’s gripped MAGA world just hits different.
The claims by Fox News and far-right influencers that pop star Taylor Swift is part of a Pentagon “psychological operation” to get President Joe Biden reelected, and somehow rig the Super Bowl to benefit Kansas City Chiefs tight end (and Swift’s boyfriend) Travis Kelce, has been met with forehead slaps in the national security world.
“The absurdity of it all boggles the mind,” said one senior administration official, granted anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly on the matter. “It feels like one of those ‘tell me you are a MAGA conspiracy theorist, without telling me you are a MAGA conspiracy theorist’ memes.”
Let’s go back to December: A wild theory gained traction on far-right corners of social media after Swift was named Time magazine’s person of year on Dec. 6. Last month, Fox News host Jesse Watters did a segment about the idea, playing a clip from a NATO conference that he said backed up the theory that Swift was part of a Pentagon “psy-op,” or psychological operation, for combating online information.
“It’s real. The Pentagon psy-op unit pitched NATO on turning Taylor Swift into an asset for combating misinformation online,” Watters said.
Robert Downey Jr.
The Pentagon responded at the time, but the rumors continued to proliferate on social media. Influential MAGA types are now promoting the dizzying notion that Swift’s relationship with Kelce — another right-wing anti-hero after appearing in an ad for pharmaceutical giant Pfizer promoting the Covid and flu vaccines — is part of a plot by the NFL and Democratic Party for Swift to endorse Biden at the Super Bowl.
Faced with an onslaught of journalist questions about the theory, spokesperson Sabrina Singh was ready for it.
In the name of being honest, Singh vehemently denied Swift is part of a DOD operation.
“We know all too well the dangers of conspiracy theories, so to set the record straight — Taylor Swift is not part of a DOD psychological operation. Period,” Singh told POLITICO.
I’m sure MAGA world will just find a way to work this denial into their nutty theories. Unfortunately, Swift is going to need serious protection from the Trump crazies.
In more serious news, yesterday President Biden ordered strikes on Iranian-linked targets in Syria and Iraq. ABC News: U.S. strikes more than 85 targets in Iraq and Syria in initial barrage of retaliatory attacks.
The United States launched attacks Friday against 85 sites in Iraq and Syria used by Iranian forces and Iran-backed militants, its first retaliatory strikes for the killing of three American soldiers in Jordan last weekend, U.S. officials said.
U.S. military forces struck targets at seven facilities tied to attacks on U.S. personnel in the region, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters. U.S. Central Command said the facilities included command and control operations, intelligence centers, rockets and missiles, and drone storage sites.
Stephen King
“Our response began today. It will continue at times and places of our choosing,” President Joe Biden said in a statement. “The United States does not seek conflict in the Middle East or anywhere else in the world. But let all those who might seek to do us harm know this: If you harm an American, we will respond.”
The military action is a significant escalation in Washington’s bid to deter the growing threat from Iran-backed groups across the Middle East — a step fraught with risk abroad and at home, as Biden seeks to prevent the Israel-Hamas war from spiraling into a wider conflict while working to secure his re-election.
The Biden administration had made clear that the U.S. would take military action after the drone attack by Iran-backed militants at a remote U.S. base in Jordan, in which more than 40 others were wounded. Biden attended the dignified return of the three slain U.S. soldiers at Dover Air Force Base earlier Friday.
Also yesterday, Biden met with families of three dead soldiers. The HIll: Biden attends solemn ceremony for troops killed in Jordan drone strike.
President Biden met Friday with the families of American service members killed last month in a drone strike in Jordan and participated in a dignified transfer, a solemn ceremony in which the troops’ remains return to the U.S.
The president and first lady Jill Biden attended the ceremony at Dover Air Force Base along with other U.S. officials, including Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Gen. C.Q. Brown, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The president and first lady looked on with their hands over their hearts as three flag-draped coffins were removed from a C-5 plane and taken by military personnel to a van.
The Pentagon on Monday identified the soldiers, who all served in the Army Reserve and were assigned to Georgia’s Fort Moore. The soldiers are Sgt. William Jerome Rivers, 46, of Carrollton, Ga.; Spc. Kennedy Ladon Sanders, 24, of Waycross, Ga.; and Spc. Breonna Alexsondria Moffett, 23, of Savannah, Ga.
Biden spoke Tuesday with the families of the fallen service members to express his condolences, and he met with them in person Friday.
“They risked it all,” Biden said Thursday at the National Prayer Breakfast. “And we’ll never forget [their] sacrifices and service to our country.”
The three troops were killed, and roughly 40 others were injured in a drone strike in Jordan near the Syrian border Sunday. The White House has attributed the attack to the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group that contains different militias backed by Iran.
Dick Van Dyke
Trump didn’t care for these ceremonies when he was in the White House. From HuffPost:
In the world of President Donald Trump, he has paid his respects to “many, many” returning soldiers killed in the line of duty, with daughter and top presidential aide Ivanka Trump adding that “each time” she has stood by his side at one of these ceremonies, it has hardened his resolve to bring troops home.
In the real world, Trump has traveled to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware exactly four times ― fewer than half as many times as his vice president ― and avoided going at all for nearly two years after getting berated for his incompetence by the father of a slain Navy SEAL, according to a former White House aide who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Bill Owens, the father of William “Ryan” Owens, refused to shake Trump’s hand at that Feb. 1, 2017, encounter, the aide said, and then told Trump that he was responsible for his son’s death for approving the disastrous raid in Yemen without bothering to understand the risks.
“He refused to go back for two years, he was so rattled,” the aide said, adding that the main reason Trump had approved the raid just five days after taking office was that predecessor Barack Obama had refused to do so.
What’s more, Trump made the decision at a social dinner that included his son-in-law and top adviser, Jared Kushner, and then-chief strategist Stephen Bannon, rather than his National Security Council staff.
“You can count on one hand the number of times Donald Trump has been to Dover,” said Jon Soltz, chairman of the progressive political group VoteVets and an Iraq War veteran. “There simply is no bottom when it comes to what he’ll lie about. I wish there was more outrage about Trump lying about the dignified transfer of the fallen for political reasons, because as a veteran it really disgusts me.”
Just a reminder of the embarrassment to his country Trump was and is.
Before I get to the new about Trump’s legal woes, I was amazed that The New York Times actually published a somewhat positive story about Vice President Kamala Harris: Kamala Harris Bolsters Biden for 2024 and Lays Groundwork for 2028, by Reid Epstein and Maya King.
When President Biden pushed Democrats to place South Carolina first on their presidential primary calendar, the geography for the party’s political strivers changed. They are now working to build support not in mostly white Northern places but in a Southern state with a predominantly Black primary voting base that better represents the modern Democratic Party.
So when Vice President Kamala Harris arrived on Friday in Orangeburg, S.C., for her ninth visit to South Carolina since taking office, she came as a known quantity. While she and Mr. Biden are running for renomination without serious challengers, the relationships she has developed in the state are expected to play a part in lifting their ticket to a comfortable triumph on Saturday in the party’s first recognized primary election.
Sigourney Weaver
Ms. Harris’s trip, as well as her college tour last year and an ongoing circuit to defend abortion rights and promote the Democratic agenda, also served two larger purposes: working to shore up Mr. Biden’s lingering vulnerabilities with Black voters and young voters, and keeping the first woman and first woman of color to serve as vice president at the forefront for the next presidential contest in 2028.
Perhaps the most influential Democrat in South Carolina is already on board with Ms. Harris as a future White House candidate.
“I made very clear months ago that I support her,” said Representative James E. Clyburn, whose 2020 endorsement of Mr. Biden before his state’s primary election helped rejuvenate the former vice president’s struggling campaign and carry him to the nomination. “That’s why we got to re-elect the ticket. Then you talk about viability after that.”
Ms. Harris, who ended her 2020 presidential campaign months before the South Carolina primary, has sought to deepen her ties here.
“There is an unspoken language between the vice president and African American women in this state,” said Trav Robertson, a former chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party. “She doesn’t have to go into a room and say things — because they already know they have a shared experience.”
Read the rest at the NYT.
The legal news is kind of depressing–Trump is succeeding with his delay tactics.
NBC News: Judge delays Trump’s federal trial as court considers his presidential immunity claim.
Former President Donald Trump’s federal election interference trial in Washington, D.C., will no longer begin on March 4, Judge Tanya Chutkan wrote in a court order released Friday.
It is unclear when exactly the trial will now start, but the case has been on pause for nearly two months — Trump’s team requested a stay on Dec. 7, and it was granted on Dec. 13 — which would mean the soonest the trial could start would likely be late April or early May.
A start date in early May could easily mean the trial won’t conclude until after the Republican National Convention, scheduled for July 15-18 in Milwaukee.
In a previous order, Chutkan reiterated that a total of seven months was “sufficient time” for Trump to prepare for trial, not including the time the case has been on pause.
Friday’s ruling comes as the D.C. Circuit Court has not yet decided on whether the former president is immune from prosecution. A panel of federal appeals court judges heard oral argumentson Jan. 9, and the case is on an expedited schedule.
“The court will set a new schedule if and when the mandate is returned,” said the court orderfrom Chutkan.
About that “expedited schedule”:
Alan Feuer and Charlie Savage at The New York Times: After Speedy Start, Appeals Court Slows Down on Trump Immunity Decision.
In December, when a federal appeals court agreed to hear former President Donald J. Trump’s sweeping claims to be immune from charges of plotting overturn the 2020 election, it laid out a lightning-fast briefing schedule, asking the defense and prosecution to file their papers on successive Saturdays during the Christmas and New Year’s holidays.
Elvis Presley
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit also moved with unusual alacrity in setting up a hearing for arguments on the issue, scheduling the proceeding on Jan. 9, just one week after all of the papers were submitted — a remarkably short window by the standards of the judicial system.
But after sending up what appeared to be clear signals that they intended to swiftly resolve this phase of the immunity dispute — which lies at the heart of both the viability and timing of Mr. Trump’s trial on the election subversion charges — the appeals court judges have yet to issue a decision….
The disconnect between the expectations set up by the panel’s early moves to expedite the case and the weeks that have now accumulated without a ruling has captured the attention of some legal experts who are closely watching the case.
It has also caught the eye of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, who have been watching from the sidelines with something akin to quiet glee. Each day that passes without a ruling bolsters their strategy of seeking to postpone the trial until after the presidential race is decided.
So what’s going on? It seems there could be another judge like Aileen Cannon trying to help Trump.
“It is surprising, given how quickly they moved to have this appeal briefed and argued, for the court to not yet have issued a decision,” said Stephen I. Vladeck, a University of Texas at Austin law professor who specializes in federal courts. “It’s surprising both just because of how fast they moved and because of the broader timing considerations in this case — both the March 4 trial date and the looming specter of the election.”
It is impossible at this point to gain real insight into what is going on among the members of the panel, which is composed of two judges appointed by President Biden and one placed on the bench by President George H.W. Bush.
The latter judge, Karen L. Henderson, had previously dissented from expediting the immunity appeal and has voted in Mr. Trump’s favor in several previous politically charged cases. As the panel’s senior jurist, Judge Henderson has the authority to write the opinion if she is in the majority. And she faces no deadline to complete the job.
Professor Vladeck said that many people in the legal community had been speculating about what Judge Henderson’s role in the delay might be, though he also noted that no formal rule prevented the other two judges on a panel from moving ahead in issuing a ruling on their own.
While that would be a “breach of judicial decorum,” he said, Judge Henderson’s colleagues — Florence Y. Pan and J. Michelle Childs — could in theory release a decision without her.
So far that’s not happening–just more obstruction. And after this court gives their opinion, the case might go to the Supreme Court for more delays.
Robert De Niro
Judge Cannon is stalling the stolen documents case, and the case in Georgia is also facing difficulties. It’s looking like the first criminal trial Trump will face is the one over paying hush money to Stormy Daniels. From The Washington Post:
Trump’s legal team had already been preparing for the New York case to be first, according to people familiar with the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal strategy. Some Trump advisers view the New York case as the weakest of the four and believe that indictment last March helped Trump rebuild support among Republicans, these people said. Many advisers think the GOP reaction to Trump’s criminal charges would have been different if another case — related to possession of classified documents — had come first.
So instead of hearing evidence about efforts to block a U.S. election or improperly keep highly classified U.S. secrets, the first jury to weigh alleged crimes by Trump as he again runs for president could be focused on sordid allegations of a long-ago sexual encounter with an adult-film star. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all the charges against him.
“This was the first indictment of Trump but quickly became seen as the runt of the litter, compared to bigger, more consequential cases,” said Ronald Kuby, a veteran criminal defense lawyer in New York. He said the New York trial may be a “garden-variety fraud case,” but its simplicity is also its saving grace.
“Unlike the D.C. case, this does not involve any question of presidential immunity. Unlike the Florida documents case, this does not involve the lengthy proceedings that are needed in cases where classified information is at issue, and unlike the Georgia case, it is not a sprawling indictment of 18 people — there’s one defendant,” Kuby said. “And the evidence that has been made publicly available is compelling.”
I guess one criminal conviction is better than none.
This is crazy: I guess some FBI agents didn’t want to do a surprise search of Mar-a-Lago, and when they did do it, they may have missed something important.
ABC News: Special counsel questioned witnesses about 2 rooms FBI didn’t search inside Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence: Sources.
Special counsel Jack Smith’s team has questioned several witnesses about a closet and a so-called “hidden room” inside former President Donald Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago that the FBI didn’t check while searching the estate in August 2022, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
As described to ABC News, the line of questioning in several interviews ahead of Trump’s indictment last year on classified document charges suggests that — long after the FBI seized dozens of boxes and more than 100 documents marked classified from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate — Smith’s team was trying to determine if there might still be more classified documents there.
According to sources, some investigators involved in the case came to later believe that the closet, which was locked on the day of the search, should have been opened and checked.
As investigators would later learn, Trump allegedly had the closet’s lock changed while his attorney was in Mar-a-Lago’s basement, searching for classified documents in a storage room that he was told would have all such documents. Trump’s alleged efforts to conceal classified documents from both the FBI and his own attorney are a key part of Smith’s indictment against Trump in Florida.
Benedict Cumberbatch
Jordan Strauss, a former federal prosecutor and former national security official in the Justice Department, called the FBI’s alleged failure to search the closet “a bit astonishing.”
“You’re searching a former president’s house. You [should] get it right the first time,” Strauss told ABC News.
In addition to the closet, the FBI also didn’t search what authorities have called a “hidden room” connected to Trump’s bedroom, sources said.
Smith’s investigators were later told that, in the days right after the search, some of Trump’s employees heard that the FBI had missed at least one room at Mar-a-Lago, the sources said.
According to a senior FBI official, agents focused on areas they believed might have government documents.
One more on the stolen documents case from Politico: Special counsel mounts forceful — and unusual — defense of Trump classified documents case.
Special counsel Jack Smith used a routine legal filing Friday to offer a forceful public rebuttal against Donald Trump’s claims that his criminal prosecution for allegedly hoarding classified documents has been infected by politics and legal impropriety.
The 68-page document began with what Smith’s team described as an effort to correct false assertions the former president had made about the nature of the case against him.
“It is necessary to set the record straight on the underlying facts that led to this prosecution,” the prosecutors argued. “The government will clear the air on those issues … because the defendants’ misstatements, if unanswered, leave a highly misleading impression.”
What followed was a lengthy recitation of the events that led prosecutors to suspect Trump had been squirreling reams of classified records at his Mar-a-Lago estate. Rather than the bloodthirsty partisan endeavor Trump describes, prosecutors say federal officials from the National Archives, intelligence community and White House counsel’s office took “measures” and “incremental” steps to retrieve the documents — often in coordination with some of Trump’s own designated advisers — before escalating the matter as the former president continued to resist.
The approach taken in the legal brief is somewhat unusual for the Justice Department. Though the filing was submitted to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, at times it sounded like an opening argument to a jury Trump could face in the future or the first chapter of a report meant to detail investigative findings to the public.
It’s unclear whether the “misimpressions” prosecutors say they’re trying to correct are ones they fear Cannon could fall prey to, whether the target audience for the brief is a larger one, and how the Fort Pierce, Fla.-based Trump appointee will respond to the tactic.
The substance of the prosecution brief is aimed at countering the demands by Trump and his two co-defendants — Walt Nauta and Carlos DeOliveira — for access to a broad range of documents from across the government that the defense attorneys contend could be useful in defending their clients. They’ve asked Cannon to consider massive executive branch agencies and the White House as appendages of Smith’s prosecution team — a decision that could open their files to defendants beyond the typical evidence-sharing that occurs for witnesses in criminal proceedings.
Sam Elliot
Here’s the most shocking part of the brief:
The brief is also peppered with factual claims that make Trump’s behavior sound more serious and egregious. When discussing the defense’s request for more information from the Secret Service, prosecutors assert that their interaction with the federal agency that guards the president and his family underscored Trump’s recklessness in keeping a large volume of classified information at his Florida home, which also serves as a social club and a site for political and social events with lengthy guest lists.
The Secret Service reported that “of the approximately 48,000 guests who visited Mar-a-Lago between January 2021 and May 2022, while classified documents were at the property, only 2,200 had their names checked and only 2,900 passed through magnetometers,” the prosecution filing says.
All while Trump left secret documents in a bathroom, on a ballroom stage, and in a storage room located near the swimming pool.
One more unbelievable piece from Philip Bump at The Washington Post: Most Republicans aren’t aware of Trump’s various legal issues.
There is an assumption, probably particularly among those who cover the news and those who read it, that Donald Trump’s legal travails are common knowledge. We talk about things like the potential effects of a Trump conviction on the 2024 presidential election with the assumption that this would be an event that rose to the nation’s consciousness, triggering a response from both his supporters and detractors.
But this is a sort of vanity: Just because it is interesting to us certainly doesn’t mean it is interesting to others. Polling released by CNN on Thursday shows that only a quarter of voters seek out news about the campaign; a third pay little to no attention at all.
As it turns out, even major developments often fly under the average American’s radar. New polling conducted by YouGov shows that only a bit over half of the country on average is aware of the various legal challenges Trump faces. And among those Republicans on whose political support he depends? Consistently, only a minority say they are aware of his lawsuits and charges.
YouGov presented American adults with eight legal scenarios to judge the extent of the public’s awareness. Two were invented: that Trump faces charges related to emoluments or related to drug trafficking. Happily, less than a quarter of respondents said those legal threats actually existed.
The other six were real. The one that was familiar to the most people was the federal classified-documents case that is moving forward in Florida; 6 in 10 Americans said they were aware of that case. The one that had the least awareness was the civil suit in New York in which a judge determined that he’d fraudulently inflated the value of his assets. Just under 50 percent of Americans knew about that.
But the pattern among Republicans is clear. At most, 45 percent of Republicans said they knew about legal issues: specifically, the documents case and his being found liable for assaulting the writer E. Jean Carroll. Only a quarter knew about the value-inflation suit, and only 4 in 10 knew about the criminal charges in Manhattan related to the hush money payments to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels.
And with that, I’ll turn the floor over to you. What’s do you think about all this? What else is on your mind?
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