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  • Thursday Reads

    bostonboomer

    Good Morning!!

    Everyone is talking about the shocking story about Clarence Thomas published early this morning at ProPublica. We knew that Thomas was corrupt, but the scale of the corruption revealed by authors Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott, and Alex Mierjeski is beyond mind-boggling. And they provide plenty of photos of Thomas enjoying luxury accommodations alongside the wealthy and powerful. Thomas never reported any of these gifts.

    From the article:

    IN LATE JUNE 2019, right after the U.S. Supreme Court released its final opinion of the term, Justice Clarence Thomas boarded a large private jet headed to Indonesia. He and his wife were going on vacation: nine days of island-hopping in a volcanic archipelago on a superyacht staffed by a coterie of attendants and a private chef.

    If Thomas had chartered the plane and the 162-foot yacht himself, the total cost of the trip could have exceeded $500,000. Fortunately for him, that wasn’t necessary: He was on vacation with real estate magnate and Republican megadonor Harlan Crow, who owned the jet — and the yacht, too.

    For more than two decades, Thomas has accepted luxury trips virtually every year from the Dallas businessman without disclosing them, documents and interviews show. A public servant who has a salary of $285,000, he has vacationed on Crow’s superyacht around the globe. He flies on Crow’s Bombardier Global 5000 jet. He has gone with Crow to the Bohemian Grove, the exclusive California all-male retreat, and to Crow’s sprawling ranch in East Texas. And Thomas typically spends about a week every summer at Crow’s private resort in the Adirondacks.

    The extent and frequency of Crow’s apparent gifts to Thomas have no known precedent in the modern history of the U.S. Supreme Court.

    These trips appeared nowhere on Thomas’ financial disclosures. His failure to report the flights appears to violate a law passed after Watergate that requires justices, judges, members of Congress and federal officials to disclose most gifts, two ethics law experts said. He also should have disclosed his trips on the yacht, these experts said.

    Get this: Thomas even went with Crow to the legendary Bohemian Grove.

    More from the ProPublica article:

    In a statement, Crow acknowledged that he’d extended “hospitality” to the Thomases “over the years,” but said that Thomas never asked for any of it and it was “no different from the hospitality we have extended to our many other dear friends.”

    Through his largesse, Crow has gained a unique form of access, spending days in private with one of the most powerful people in the country. By accepting the trips, Thomas has broken long-standing norms for judges’ conduct, ethics experts and four current or retired federal judges said.

    “It’s incomprehensible to me that someone would do this,” said Nancy Gertner, a retired federal judge appointed by President Bill Clinton. When she was on the bench, Gertner said, she was so cautious about appearances that she wouldn’t mention her title when making dinner reservations: “It was a question of not wanting to use the office for anything other than what it was intended.”

    Virginia Canter, a former government ethics lawyer who served in administrations of both parties, said Thomas “seems to have completely disregarded his higher ethical obligations.”

    “When a justice’s lifestyle is being subsidized by the rich and famous, it absolutely corrodes public trust,” said Canter, now at the watchdog group CREW. “Quite frankly, it makes my heart sink.”

    ProPublica uncovered the details of Thomas’ travel by drawing from flight records, internal documents distributed to Crow’s employees and interviews with dozens of people ranging from his superyacht’s staff to members of the secretive Bohemian Club to an Indonesian scuba diving instructor.

    https://twitter.com/petestrzok/status/1643944883785289731?s=20

    I haven’t finished reading the article yet, but I definitely will go back to it today.

    This is from John Wagner at The Washington Post: Justice Thomas accepted luxury travel for years from GOP donor, report says.

    Federal law mandates that top officials from the three branches of government, including the Supreme Court, file annual forms detailing their finances, outside income and spouses’ sources of income, with each branch determining its own reporting standards.

    Judges are prohibited from accepting gifts from anyone with business before the court. Until recently, however, the judicial branch had not clearly defined an exemption for gifts considered “personal hospitality.”

    Revised rules adopted by a committee of the Judicial Conference, the courts’ policymaking body, seek to provide a fuller accounting. The rules took effect March 14.

    Gifts such as an overnight stay at a personal vacation home owned by a friend remain exempt from reporting requirements. But the revised rules require disclosure when judges are treated to stays at commercial properties, such as hotels, ski resorts or corporate hunting lodges. The changes also clarify that judges must report travel by private jet….

    While the wide scope of Crow’s funding of Thomas’s travel has not been previously reported, the largesse of the billionaire donor directed at the justice has provoked controversy previously.

    In 2011, the New York Times reported that Crow had done many favors for Thomas and his wife, notably financing the multimillion-dollar purchase and restoration of a cannery in Pin Point, Ga., that was a pet project of the justice.

    The Times also reported that Crow helped finance a Savannah, Ga., library project dedicated to Thomas, presented him with a Bible that belonged to Frederick Douglass and reportedly provided $500,000 for Ginni Thomas to start a tea-party-related group.

    Thomas, who joined the court in 1991, has drawn scrutiny on other ethical issues in recent years, several related to the political activism of his wife. She has been allied with numerous people and groups that have interests before the court, and she has dedicated herself to right-wing causes involving some of the most polarizing issues in the country.

    https://twitter.com/BradMossEsq/status/1643969181371465728?s=20

    In other news, reporters and legal experts are busy critiquing Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against Donald Trump. Here’s one of the worst:

    Shugerman writes: The Trump Indictment Is a Legal Embarrassment.

    Tuesday was historic for the rule of law in America, but not in the way Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, would have imagined. The 34-count indictment — which more accurately could be described as 34 half-indictments — was a disaster. It was a setback for the rule of law and established a dangerous precedent for prosecutors.

    This legal embarrassment reveals new layers of Trumpian damage to the legal foundations of the United States: Mr. Trump’s opponents react to his provocations and norms violations by escalating and accelerating the erosion of legal norms.

    The case appears so weak on its legal and jurisdictional basis that a state judge might dismiss the case and mitigate that damage. More likely, the case is headed to federal court for a year, where it could lose on the grounds of federal pre-emption — only federal courts have jurisdiction over campaign finance and filing requirements. Even if it survives a challenge that could reach the Supreme Court, a trial would most likely not start until at least mid-2024, possibly even after the 2024 election.

    Instead of the rule of law, it would be the rule of the circus.

    Let’s start with the obvious problem that the payments at issue were made around six years ago. The basic facts have been public for five years. There are undoubtedly complicated political reasons for the delay, but regardless, Mr. Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus Vance Jr., had almost a year to bring this case after Mr. Trump left office, but did not do so, and Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Justice Department also declined. To address the perception of a reversal and questions of legitimacy, Mr. Bragg had a duty to explain more about the case and its legal basis in what’s known as a “speaking indictment,” which the team of former counsel Robert Mueller made famous in its filings.

    Legal experts have been speculating about the core criminal allegation in this case, because the expected charge for “falsifying business records” becomes a felony only “when his intent to defraud includes an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.”

    Astonishingly, the district attorney’s filings do not make clear the core crime that would turn a filing misdemeanor into a felony. Neither the 16-page indictment nor the accompanying statement of facts specifies, though the statement of facts does drop hints about campaign laws. In a news conference, Mr. Bragg answered that he did not specify because he was not required to by law. His answer was oblivious to how law requires more than doing the minimum to the letter — it demands fairness, notice and taking public legitimacy seriously. 

    Phew! Now that’s a smackdown! 

    Here’s different point of view from high profile attorney Harry Litman:

    From the Los Angeles Times: Column: Don’t underestimate the strengths of Alvin Bragg’s case against Donald Trump.

    Manhattan Dist. Atty. Alvin Bragg’s indictment of former President Trump takes an open-ended approach to the charges that some critics of the unprecedented prosecution see as a weakness. What the detractors have overlooked are the substantial and unanticipated legal and factual strengths in the case Bragg outlined.

    A key question in advance of Tuesday’s unsealing of the indictment concerned how Bragg would augment the easily proven misdemeanor charges of falsifying business records. Under New York law, those offenses become felonies only if they’re in furtherance of another crime. Many theories were circulating as to what second crime Bragg would allege, and most of the possibilities had noteworthy shortcomings.

    Bragg’s answer was essentially “I’ll tell you later.” He took advantage of the wording of the state law, which requires only that the misdemeanor be done in service of “a crime,” to buy himself maximum time and flexibility.

    Bragg may have to pick his crime down the line, perhaps in answer to an expected defense motion for a “bill of particulars” — that is, a fleshing out of the Delphic indictment to enable Trump’s team to prepare an appropriate defense.

    On the other hand, the prosecutor may not have to specify a second crime. The jury instructions on falsification of business records say it’s a felony if the defendant acted “with intent to defraud that included an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.” It’s therefore not clear that they require the jury even to agree on what the augmenting crime is.

    But Bragg this week also added a potent possible second crime beyond what many observers expected. It emerges from the fact that in making his lawyer Michael Cohen “whole” for the hush money he paid to Stormy Daniels, Trump included enough to compensate Cohen for the taxes he would have to pay on the “income” — that is, on the phony legal retainer that camouflaged the hush money.

    It’s not clear whether Cohen in fact declared and paid taxes on the reimbursement or whether the Trump Organization declared it as a business expense. The Bragg team’s insight is that it doesn’t matter: The language that elevates business record falsification to a felony only requires “an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.”

    That purposely encompasses what lawyers call “inchoate” crimes. The law would plainly be satisfied by the inclusion of money intended to commit or conceal another crime — namely, a false tax filing — whether or not that crime occurred.

    Importantly, this theory could be a way around the legal questions inherent in alleging that the second crime was a state or federal campaign finance violation.

    Read the rest at the LA Times.

    Another big and disturbing story is happening in Tennessee.

    From Reuters: Tennessee Republicans likely to expel three Democratic lawmakers from statehouse.

    Republicans who control the Tennessee House of Representatives will vote on Thursday on whether to expel three Democratic members for their role in a gun control demonstration at the statehouse last week.

    Last Friday’s protest saw hundreds of demonstrators flood into the statehouse, four days after a Nashville school shooting ended with three 9-year-old children and three school staff members dead.

    Three Democratic lawmakers stood on the House floor and used a bullhorn to lead protesters in chanting demands for stricter gun laws. In the resolutions calling for their expulsion, Republicans accused the three of engaging in “disorderly behavior” and said they “did knowingly and intentionally bring disorder and dishonor to the House of Representatives through their individual and collective actions.”

    The expulsion vote is likely to easily pass in the Republican-dominated House and lead to the ouster of Rep. Gloria Johnson, Rep. Justin Jones and Rep. Justin Pearson. They say they were within their First Amendment rights to take part in the protest.

    “It’s morally insane that a week after a mass shooting took six lives in our community, House Republicans only response is to expel us for standing with our constituents to call for gun control,” Jones wrote on Twitter this week. “What’s happening in Tennessee is a clear danger to democracy all across this nation.

    Republicans Rep. Andrew Farmer, Rep. Gino Bulso, and Rep. Bud Hulsey filed three resolutions on Monday to expel their Democratic colleagues. The resolutions on Monday passed in a preliminary vote along party lines, 72-23.

    Imagine if this insanity spreads to other Republican-controlled legislatures–and it very likely will, if it’s successful.

    Commentary from Margaret Renkl at The New York Times: As Young People March for Their Lives, Tennessee Crushes Dissent and Overrides Democracy.

    NASHVILLE — Yesterday the eyes of the country were on the indictment of a former president, along with the all too real possibility that political or public chaos would erupt as a result. Here in Tennessee, we were watching a different kind of chaos unfold as our state government doubled down on its love affair with guns, even in the immediate aftermath of a horrific school shooting. I wish I could tell you that guns were the worst of it.

    Last Thursday, in the wake of the shooting, peaceful protesters at the Tennessee State Capitol rallied for gun reform. Activists waved signs in the statehouse gallery, and Representatives Justin Jones, Gloria Johnson and Justin J. Pearson, all Democrats, led them in chants from the House floor during breaks. Between bills, the lawmakers also approached the podium to speak. They did not wait to be formally recognized.

    On Monday, statehouse Republicans stripped all three of their committee memberships and deactivated their ID badges. The Democrats “did knowingly and intentionally bring disorder and dishonor to the House of Representatives,” the formal resolutions against them read. Tomorrow, the House will vote on whether to expel the three lawmakers for talking out of turn.

    Expulsion is extremely rare in Tennessee history. As the Politico reporter Natalie Allison pointed out on Twitter, the Tennessee House didn’t even vote to expel a Republican legislator who had been accused of sexually assaulting three teenage girls.

    The resolutions against Mr. Jones, Ms. Johnson and Mr. Pearson were filed against a backdrop that highlights the absurdity of the actions Republicans have taken against them.

    On Monday at 10:13 a.m., one week to the minute after a shooter armed with military-style weapons entered the church-affiliated Covenant School and murdered three children and three adults, more than 7,000 Nashville students staged a walkout to demand gun reform. It was a sight to behold: Vanderbilt University students marching down one street, Belmont University students marching down another, all of them joining a large crowd of high school and college students from around town. They were determined to speak as one voice directly to their government — to the only people with any power to reduce the risks they take just by going to class.

    No place in this firearm-besotted country is safe from gun violence, but Tennessee students are at particular risk, and not just in school. They live in a state with some of the nation’s most permissive gun laws, as well as the highest rate of gun theft — and perhaps unsurprisingly, one of the highest rates of gun deaths.

    Read the rest at the NYT.

    Those are the top stories today, as I see it. I’ll add a few more in the comment thread. What do you think? What other stories have captured your interest?

  • Tuesday Reads: Trump Arrest and Arraignment Day

    bostonboomer

    Good Day, Sky Dancers!!

    Trump has succeeded in turning his indictment and arrest into a complete circus. The media will never learn. They will continue giving Trump endless publicity until the day he finally becomes a dictator and shuts them all down.

    Yesterday CNN and MSNBC spent hours showing Trump’s motorcade leaving Mar-a-Lago, proceeding to the airport and, flying to New York City and then another motorcade driving to Trump Tower. They showed video of his 35-year-old plane take off and landing and showed shots of it in the air.

    Paul Farhi writes at The Washington Post: 

    It was the airport trip seen round the world — or at least all over cable news.

    With all the breathless reporting of a major event, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC broke into their midday newscasts to cover the mundane spectacle of former president Donald Trump … leaving his house and getting on an airplane.

    Multiple network cameras followed Trump as he departed his Mar-a-Lago resort and was driven to Palm Beach International Airport, where he boarded a Trump-branded plane en route to New York City.

    The news peg, of course, was that Trump was on his way to report on Tuesday for arraignment on still-undisclosed charges handed down last week by a New York grand jury. The first president in history to be indicted is a major story — or will be when Trump actually surrenders.

    In the meantime, the cable guys were on the scene — live! — for what CNN anchor Phil Mattingly called an “O.J.-like convoy,” a reference to the live TV coverage in 1994 of accused murderer O.J. Simpson traveling in the back seat of a white Ford Bronco as a posse of Los Angeles police cars slowly tailed him down the Santa Monica Freeway. So many made the reference online, in fact, that “O.J. Simpson” briefly trended on Twitter.

    Trump’s brief ride from Mar-a-Lago to the airport mostly wasn’t like that. There were no gendarmes on Trump’s tail, no threat of violence or self-harm, no real suspense. Unlike the O.J. moment, there were also no multitudes drawn to the overpasses and sidings to cheer for their hero….

    Instead, Trump’s six-minute trip to the airport in a motorcade of black SUVs was uneventful, even ennui-inducing. “We’ve got some cars coming out,” a disembodied reporter on MSNBC narrated excitedly. “A second car, a third car. … He is currently on Ocean Boulevard, and it’s going to be turning right on Southern Boulevard.”

    The TV cameras lingered for many long moments on his 757, parked on the runway as it received its famous passenger. The jet with “TRUMP” stamped on its tail then lined up behind others as it awaited its turn to take off. Then it did: All three networks stayed with the plane as it rose into a blue sky over the Atlantic and banked up the East Coast.

    Since Trump arrived at Trump Tower, the cable networks have set up remote broadcasting booths nearby. This morning they are still at it–waiting breathlessly for Trump to emerge for his arrest and arraignment. Trump must be thrilled to be getting so much attention. The only thing he hasn’t gotten yet is violence from his cult supporters, but that could still happen.

    Trump himself chose to create this circus. He was offered the chance to be arraigned via Zoom, but he preferred to travel to New York and create more chaos.

    I can’t get past the Rolling Stone paywall, unfortunately.

    This is from Time Magazine: How Trump Is Negotiating the Details of His Indictment to Maximize the Drama.

    Donald Trump didn’t choose to be indicted. He didn’t pick the date he’d have to show up in court. But once the Manhattan District Attorney filed charges against him, he began to choreograph the spectacle that would follow.

    As Trump made the journey from Florida to New York on Monday to face the prosecution brought by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, supporters waved Trump flags along the road outside, news cameras followed his motorcade roll out of the gates of his Mar-a-Lago Club, and the major networks aired live footage of him at Palm Beach International Airport walking up the stairs of his newly refurbished red-white-and-navy-blue plane, which he has characteristically branded Trump Force One.

    It was one of the few times since leaving office that Trump garnered the ubiquitous media attention he once enjoyed as president—except it was all on his way to being booked for an alleged crime.

    Trump’s legal team spent the weekend negotiating the details of how and when Trump would turn himself in. The former president plans to spend the night in Trump Tower in Midtown before surrendering himself at the lower Manhattan courthouse on Tuesday, where he will be arraigned and forced to provide fingerprints and pose for a mug shot. Though New York does not normally release mug shot photos, Trump’s is widely expected to leak.

    Trump’s supporters are already prepared to lionize the image. “We’ll have a mug shot. For the record, it will be the most manly, most masculine, most handsome mug shot of all time,” joked Hogan Gidley, a former Trump White House spokesman who still speaks regularly with Trump. “I can say that definitely, before having even seen it.”

    It turns out there won’t be a mug shot, because Trump will be arrested and arraigned at the courthouse, where they don’t have the equipment for much shots

    Marjorie Taylor Greene is in New York at a protest organized by the Young Republicans Club, but she’s being drowned out by counter protesters making noise. NBC’s Ben Collins is reporting live from the scene.

    Last night Michael Isikoff got some information about the charges against Trump. From Yahoo News: Trump to be charged Tuesday with 34 felony counts, but spared handcuffs and mug shot.

    Donald Trump will be placed under arrest on Tuesday and informed that he has been charged with 34 felony counts for falsification of business records, according to a source who has been briefed on the procedures for the arraignment of the former president.

    A New York City police arrest report summarizing the charges against Trump will then be prepared and entered into the court system before he is led into a courtroom to be formally arraigned on the charges, none of which are misdemeanors.

    But, the source said, Trump will not be put in handcuffs, placed in a jail cell or subjected to a mug shot — typical procedures even for white-collar defendants until a judge has weighed in on pretrial conditions. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, which has been consulting with the Secret Service and New York City court officials, concluded there was no reason to subject the former president to handcuffs or a mug shot….

    The charge of falsification of business records can be prosecuted in New York state as a misdemeanor. But Bragg’s office bumped up all the charges to Class E felonies — the lowest level of felonies in the New York state penal code — on the grounds that the conduct was intended to conceal another underlying crime, according to the source.

    Under the New York State penal code, a conviction for the Class E felony of falsifying business records can result in a prison term of up to four years. But as a practical matter, that seems extremely unlikely. “No one gets jail time for that as a first offender,” said a New York law enforcement official.

    The evidence for the underlying crime that escalated Trump’s alleged misdemeanors to felonies is still not clear and won’t be until the indictment is unsealed on Tuesday. But it is believed to relate to the payment of $130,000 in hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels during the closing weeks of the 2016 election to conceal an extramarital encounter with Trump.

    Here’s how Harry Litman interpreted this information about the charges:

    The Daily Beast reports on how Trump is spending his time while awaiting his big moment in court: Trump Spends Last Hours Before Arrest Doing What He Loves Best: Posting.

    Former President Donald Trump spent his last few hours before being arrested Tuesday doing what he loves the most—posting every last one of his thoughts online. In a series of rants on his own personal social media platform, Truth Social, he accused Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg of leaking his indictment, debuted a new nickname for The Washington Post (Washington COMPost), called for Bragg to indict himself for some reason, and tried to turn the tables on his past—and likely future—opponent by saying that it is Joe Biden, and not him, who is guilty of obstruction. “Now, if [Bragg] wants to really clean up his reputation, he will do the honorable thing and, as District Attorney, INDICT HIMSELF,” Trump wrote. “He will go down in Judicial history, and his Trump Hating wife will be, I am sure, very proud of him!”

    Yahoo News has a story on the judge in Trump’s case: Who is Juan Merchan, the NY judge handling Trump’s case?

    His caseload has featured charges against former President Donald Trump’s company and some of Trump’s closest associates in business and politics.

    Now Judge Juan Manuel Merchan is poised to take the historic hush-money prosecution of Trump himself.

    00trump-trial-judge-1-9942-mediumSquareAt3X
    udge Juan Manuel Merchan

    Merchan, a former prosecutor with 16 years on the bench, is expected to preside Tuesday over the unprecedented arraignment of a former U.S. commander in chief. Trump will appear to answer charges arising from a grand jury investigation into payments made during his 2016 campaign to bury allegations that he had extramarital sexual encounters….

    The Colombian-born Merchan, 60, emigrated as a 6-year-old and grew up in New York City. The first member of his family to go to college, he worked his way through school and went on to earn a law degree from Hofstra University in 1994.

    He was a Manhattan prosecutor and worked in the state attorney general’s office before then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg appointed him as a family court judge in 2006.

    Three years later, Merchan was assigned to a trial court called the Supreme Court in New York. His particular duties now include overseeing a Manhattan mental health court where some defendants get a chance to resolve their cases with treatment and supervision, a program he views as a success story.

    Like a lot of New York judges, he’s had experience with headline-making stories.

    After skydivers were convicted of misdemeanors for leaping from the World Trade Center’s now-signature tower while it was under construction in 2013, Merchan sentenced them to community service, saying they had ” sullied the memories of those who jumped on 9/11 not for sport but because they had to.”

    Merchan also oversaw the real-life case underlying the 2021 Lifetime movie “Soccer Mom Madam,” about a suburban mother with a secret sideline running a high-end Manhattan escort service. The woman, Anna Gristina, now wants to unwind her 2012 guilty plea.

    Read more at the link above.

    I’m going to end there. Trump should be heading to the courthouse soon. We can use this as a live blog. I hope you’ll share your reactions as we watch history in the making.

  • Mostly Monday Reads: Crooked Donald Edition

    dakinikat

    The Sorrows of the King, Henri Matisse, 1952

    Good Day Sky Dancers!

    So, I couldn’t resist leading off with Never Trumper Charlies Syke’s headline this morning at The Bulwark. “Ready Perp One. Happy Arraignment Eve. ‘As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.’ —Proverbs 26:11, KJV.  Indeed.

    As New York prepares to arraign its most prominent chronic offender, a few things to ponder:

    • We’re about to be tested. Bigly.
    • The spectacle that is sure to unfold will mark an unprecedented moment in American history that will demonstrate once again how dramatically Trump — who already held the distinction of being the first president to be impeached twice — has upended democratic norms. But on a personal level, the indictment pierces the cloak of invincibility that seemed to follow Trump through his decades in business and in politics, as he faced allegations of fraud, collusion and sexual misconduct.
    • The rules are about to change. For years Trump has insulted and slimed judges. But tomorrow, for the first time, he will face a judge presiding over his criminal trial. It’s one thing to bloviate at rallies and bleat insults on social media, a very different thing when he is a man in the dock.
    • Trump may not realize that yet… He’s planning a primetime (televised?) address from Mar-a-Lago tomorrow night.
    • Despite the complaints about the “weaponization” of the justice system, it’s worth remembering that the guy who will be arraigned on dozens of felony charges has been calling for criminal charges against opponents for years. A month before the 2020 election, Trump tweeted, “Where are all of the arrests?” He added: “BIDEN, OBAMA AND CROOKED HILLARY LED THIS TREASONOUS PLOT!!! BIDEN SHOULDN’T BE ALLOWED TO RUN – GOT CAUGHT!!!”
    • The cycle continues: the GOP can’t quit Donald Trump, and (for the most part) the elites can’t bring themselves to say out loud what they fervently hope in private. “Many prominent Republicans want Trump gone,” writes David Frum. “But they are caught in a trap of their own bad faith: They want prosecutors to do for them the job they are too scared and broken to do for themselves.” (See Proverbs 26:11.)
    • The fact that the Decency Lane is so narrow and so small says far more about the Republican base than it does about folks like Asa Hutchinson, who is waging a quixotic campaign to appeal to the party’s battered and bruised better angels.

    1951, Tournament, Adolph Gottlieb
    One of several artists unknowingly funded by the CIA as part of a Cold War propaganda campaign.

    I’ll be surprised if the party has any angels left.  Read the headlines about its governors and what they do with guns and to children and education.  It ain’t that pretty at all to borrow Warren Zevon’s lyrics.

    The Republican Party continues to pretend it cares about children and life.  It wants rules that mean only they can win elections and rule the day and night.  They cling to Trump even though elections and polls show that most of the country wants to lock him up.  A poll of Americans by CNN really brings that home today. “CNN Poll: Majority of Americans approve of Trump indictment.”  The results show two Americas.

    Sixty percent of Americans approve of the indictment of former President Donald Trump, according to a new CNN Poll conducted by SSRS following the news that a New York grand jury voted to charge him in connection with hush money payments made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. About three-quarters of Americans say politics played at least some role in the decision to indict Trump, including 52% who said it played a major role.

    Independents largely line up in support of the indictment – 62% approve of it and 38% disapprove. Democrats are near universal in their support for the indictment (94% approve, including 71% who strongly approve of the indictment), with Republicans less unified in opposition (79% disapprove, with 54% strongly disapproving).

    While views on the indictment are split along party lines, the poll finds that majorities across major demographic divides all approve of the decision to indict the former president. That includes gender (62% of women, 58% of men), racial and ethnic groups (82% of Black adults, 71% of Hispanic adults, 51% of White adults), generational lines (69% under age 35; 62% age 35-49; 53% age 50-64; 54% 65 or older) and educational levels (68% with college degrees, 56% with some college or less).

    CNN has reported that the former president faces more than 30 counts related to business fraud, but the indictment remains under seal and the charges were not publicly known at the time of the survey. The investigation relates to a $130,000 payment made by Trump’s then-personal attorney, Michael Cohen, to Daniels in late October 2016, days before the 2016 presidential election, to silence her from going public about an alleged affair with Trump a decade earlier. Trump has denied the affair. At issue in the investigation is the payment made to Daniels and the Trump Organization’s reimbursement to Cohen.

    Jackson Pollock (1912–1956), Untitled (Composition with Ladders), c.1938,

    So far, the protests in favor of Trump in front of courthouses have attracted tens of people.  However, The Guardian Reports that “Donald Trump vows to escalate attacks against Alvin Bragg – sources. The former president was stunned by the indictment at first, but after 24 hours, he indicated he wanted to politically ‘rough ’em up’.”  Bragg and his family are already under both FBI and NYPD protection.  Trump has some pretty, angry, violent, and ready-to-act-out minions. I hoping the Judge in tomorrow’s hearing does something about this.

    Donald Trump has told advisers and associates in recent days that he is prepared to escalate attacks against the Manhattan prosecutor who resurrected the criminal prosecution into his hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels in 2016 now that a grand jury has indicted him.

    The former president has vowed to people close to him that he wants to go on the offensive and – in a private moment over the weekend at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida that demonstrates his gathering resolve – remarked using more colorful language that it was time to politically “rough ’em up”.

    Trump had already signaled that he would go after the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, weeks before the grand jury handed up an indictment against him on Thursday, saying in pugilistic posts on Truth Social that the prosecution was purely political and accusing Bragg of being a psychopath.

    But the latest charged language reflects Trump’s determination to double down on those attacks as he returns to his time-tested playbook of brawling with prosecutors, especially when faced with legal trouble that he knows he cannot avoid, people close to him said.

    The episode at Mar-a-Lago came on the sidelines of strategy meetings Trump had with advisers and associates about how to respond to the indictment from a legal and political standpoint, sessions which were described by two sources close to the former president

    I can’t help but wonder what kind of things Trump will admit to if given any more air time between now and the copious lawsuits he faces.  This interview with Sean Hannity is gobsmacking.

    This relates to a significant story reported by the Washington Post. “Justice Dept. said to have more evidence of possible Trump obstruction at Mar-a-Lago. Ex-staffer’s emails, texts are guiding investigators, who increasingly suspect Trump went through boxes after subpoena. ”  It was nice of Trump to just confess to it on Hannity’s show.

    Justice Department and FBI investigators have amassed fresh evidence pointing to possible obstruction by former president Donald Trump in the investigation into top-secret documents found at his Mar-a-Lago home, according to people familiar with the matter.

    The additional evidence comes as investigators have used emails and text messages from a former Trump aide to help understand key moments last year, said the people, who like others interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing criminal investigation.

    The new details highlight the degree to which special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the potential mishandling of hundreds of classified national security papers at Trump’s Florida home and private club has come to focus on the obstruction elements of the case —whether the former president took or directed actions to impede government efforts to collect all the sensitive records.

    …

    In the classified documents case, federal investigators have gathered new and significant evidence that after the subpoena was delivered, Trump looked through the contents of some of the boxes of documents in his home, apparently out of a desire to keep certain things in his possession, the people familiar with the investigation said.

    Investigators now suspect, based on witness statements, security camera footage, and other documentary evidence, that boxes including classified material were moved from a Mar-a-Lago storage area after the subpoena was served, and that Trump personally examined at least some of those boxes, these people said. While Trump’s team returned some documents with classified markings in response to the subpoena, a later FBI search found more than 100 additional classified items that had not been turned over.

    Court papers filed seeking judicial authorization for the FBI to conduct the search of Trump’s home show agents believed that “evidence of obstruction will be found at the premises.”

    Richard Pousette-Dart (1916–1992), Untitled, 1944

    I’ve been seething ever since 60 minutes–a show I watched religiously as a young adult–let Lesley Stahl drag the High Priestess of Conspiracy theories on for an interview this weekend. I did not watch it.  Oliver Willis has this substack post up, which is worth considering again. The press is basically not a friend of liberal democracy. “The Media Isn’t Liberal, And It Hasn’t Learned Anything From Trump Or Iraq. It’s Time To Give Up On This Lost Cause”.

    60 Minutes and Lesley Stahl were putty in the hands of Marjorie Taylor Greene and her in-progress makeover, and it was the most predictable thing in the world. Greene is a deranged person who spouts nonsense and conspiracy every time she opens her mouth.

    The idea that one of America’s premiere news shows would conduct a soft focus profile of a person like that, rather than a hard-edged investigative piece, should be way out of bounds. But this behavior is well within bounds for the mainstream media over the last 30-plus years.

    The pattern is very clear: Elevate right wing garbage, and either the press doesn’t push back on it, or make a so-so attempt at correction, or the move that is the default, elevate very normal mainstream speech from Democrats and liberals to argue that “both sides” engage in extremist behavior. If the media was truly liberal, as conservatives have asserted without evidence for over 50 years, they wouldn’t behave like this.

    The reality is that the mainstream media is an extremely friendly place for conservatism. From the New York Times to CBS News to the Associated Press and Washington Post, the various flavors of conservatism have what amounts to an open-door invitation to spew.

    The press loves to tsk-tsk liberals over spending, embracing the nonsensical tropes of “small government” conservatism with alarmist stories about Social Security running out and concern trolling about spending on social programs, never mind the outrageous spending on the military industrial complex, low taxes for the ultra wealthy, and the shameful wealth inequality in the United States.

    Similarly, the right’s nativist and racist rhetoric has not been a bridge too far for the mainstream press. When Donald Trump smeared Mexican immigrants as rapists, called for a ban on Muslim travel, pursued the racist “birther” conspiracy theory, and referred to countries with nonwhite majorities as “shit holes,” it didn’t give the mainstream press much pause. They continued chugging along, giving him hours of unopposed media coverage during the 2016 cycle, reporting on his offenses with a straight face during his presidency, and churning out book after book after book about the gossip and infighting of his administration, ignoring the very real effect the conservative movement’s backing of bigotry has had on the country.

    This behavior is unfortunately not new or merely a reflection of the Greene and Trump wing’s ascendancy within the conservative movement.

    Willem De Kooning – Ganesvoort Steet, 1949
    More on the CIA’s efforts at Widewalls

    Willis lies out the case with more examples than I wish he’d found.  It’s worth reading.

    The Interview with Tinfoil Girl created a backlash, as reported in the Daily Beast. “‘60 Minutes’ Interview With Marjorie Taylor Greene Prompts Backlash.” The Trumpist apoligista spouts crazy. It’s difficult to understand why she deserved airtime in any news show.

    60 Minutes is set to air an interview with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) on Sunday evening—and people across the media landscape are furious. In response to the news, The New York Times Magazine reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones tweeted, “this is the type of normalizing that mainstream media did of segregationists.” Meanwhile, Adam Kinzinger—CNN senior political commentator—called the decision to conduct the interview “insane.” Greene, a MAGA headliner who has a track record of promoting QAnon conspiracies, was interviewed by Lesley Stahl, whom she praised on Twitter on Saturday morning: “Leslie [sic] is a trailblazer for women in journalism. And while we may disagree on some issues, I respect her greatly.”

    One more very disturbing thing.

    https://twitter.com/twocatsand_docs/status/1642926749221617665

    I’m sure you have more to share.  Meanwhile, I’ll just close here with Randy Rainbow’s latest.  It’s pretty funny.

    What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

    https://twitter.com/RandyRainbow/status/1642875666067517440

    Hmm, I thought Elon was all about not classifying material as unsuitable.  This is odd. Is it the subject or the drag?

  • Lazy Caturday Reads

    bostonboomer

    Happy Caturday!!

    Country Girl and her Kitten by Charles Landelle
    Country Girl and her Kitten by Charles Landelle

    Today is the day that Elon Musk said he would remove the blue checkmarks from “legacy” verified accounts on Twitter unless the users paid $8 per month. For businesses and government entities, the cost is much higher. The blue checks identify notable people who provide most of the engagement on the social media site. But so far today, the blue checks are still in place. Over the past few days, news organizations and the White House have said they will not pay, and a number of celebrities have also declined to pay. It doesn’t look like Musk will get much income from this stupid policy.

    CNN Business: News organizations reject Elon Musk’s demand of paying to keep checkmarks on Twitter.

    The New York Times, Los Angeles Times,the Washington Post, BuzzFeed, POLITICO, and Vox all scoffed at the notion on Thursday that they would pay Twitter for the feature, which has been free since it was introduced years ago but will soon be phased out.

    CNN said it has no intention of paying for Twitter’s subscription service for its accounts but would make a few exceptions for some key staff.

    “As of right now, we do not plan to pay for Twitter Blue subscriptions for either our brand or individual accounts, except for a small number of select teams who need this verification as an essential part of newsgathering and reporting,” said Athan Stephanopoulos, CNN’s chief digital officer, in a staff memo Friday.

    Twitter announced last week that it will begin “removing legacy verified checkmarks” starting April 1. Musk has aimed to charge organizations that want to retain a checkmark adjacent to their account name $1,000 a month, plus an additional $50 a month for each affiliated account.

    Historically, a blue checkmark placed next to the name of an account has indicated that the social media company has confirmed the identity of the person or business operating it. The feature has been helpful to Twitter’s entire community, giving the public an easy way of distinguishing between authentic and inauthentic users.

    But Musk, who has sought to change Twitter’s business model and make it less reliant on advertisers — many of which have fled the company since he took over last year — wants to charge for the coveted check.

    Musk earlier this year launched Twitter Blue, a subscription service that costs $8 a month. The main benefit? A blue checkmark.

    Axios: Scoop: White House won’t pay for Twitter verification.

    The White House will not pay to have its staff’s official Twitter profiles continue to be verified, according to guidance issued to staffers via an email obtained by Axios….

    Official White House staffers rely on their verified accounts to inform the public on behalf of the administration. Verification, combined with the designated Twitter profiles, helped to ensure the public could trust those messages….

    “It is our understanding that Twitter Blue does not provide person-level verification as a service. Thus, a blue check mark will now simply serve as a verification that the account is a paid user,” White House director of digital strategy Rob Flaherty told staffers in an email sent Friday afternoon.

    The guidance, which was sent internally to White House staffers, doesn’t necessarily apply to government agencies, but a source familiar with White House plans said it may send guidance to some agencies and departments in the future.

    This thread by a former Twitter employee provides a great deal of information about the past policies on Twitter verification and why making people who provide most of the content on the site pay for the privilege is really stupid.

    It’s a long thread, but very interesting. Read the rest on Twitter.

    Zeeshan Aleem at MSNBC: It looks like Elon Musk played himself with Twitter Blue. Elon Musk wanted to monetize blue checkmarks. It’s blowing up in his face.

    Beginning April 1, Twitter will start removing “legacy verified checkmarks” from the profiles of celebrities, journalists, civil servants and other public figures. Twitter is making the move in an attempt to force more users to pay for “verified” check marks, as part of its agenda to monetize a service that was previously handled by the company for free.

    But so far, the plan isn’t going well. As CNN reports, many media organizations, including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, BuzzFeed, POLITICO and Vox, are already saying they have no plans to dish out money for Twitter Blue, the fee-based service that includes those blue check marks. The White House will also not be paying staffers for verified accounts, according to Axios. And Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James promises that he “ain’t paying.”

    This was an entirely predictable case of Twitter CEO Elon Musk playing himself. Why would media outlets — or anyone else — rush to pay for verified badges when he’s systematically destroyed their meaning? [….]

    Williard, by Emma Hesse
    Williard, by Emma Hesse

    Musk believed he could turn verified badges into a key source of new revenue for making Twitter profitable, a goal that’s surely growing more difficult as advertisers have fled Twitter en masse after Musk took over the company last year. But now key demographics that he would’ve hoped to have secured for paying for the service — journalists, famous celebrities, and government workers — might be checking out altogether. And that’s because Musk unraveled the purpose of the very thing he wanted to make money off.

    As I’ve explained before, Musk fundamentally misunderstood or disregarded the true value of verified badges to most people who had them. Their original purpose was for Twitter to confirm that public figures were who they actually said they were in order to combat impersonation and misinformation. It was the key feature of what made Twitter a reliable source of news: verified accounts helped separate trustworthy statements and reporting from rumors and false claims.

    But Musk decided that the reason verified badges were important was not because they verified identity, but because of the way they signaled social clout — and that he could cash in on this by trying to get a bigger network of people to pay for them. So now under his paid verification service, users’ identities are not confirmed, but blue checks can be distributed to anyone willing to open up their wallet. In other words, he’s hollowed out their meaning but kept the trappings intact.

    Yesterday, an interesting court case involving Twitter was decided. The case demonstrates how Twitter has been used to promote disinformation.

    The Washington Post: Trump supporter found guilty in 2016 Twitter scheme to undermine Hillary Clinton.

    Douglass Mackey, a supporter of former president Donald Trump who used Twitter to disseminate false information to redirect would-be voters of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, was convicted Friday on a charge of conspiracy against rights, the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn announced.

    A federal jury issued the verdict after a week-long trial in New York. Mackey, 33, faces 10 years in prison.

    “Today’s verdict proves that the defendant’s fraudulent actions crossed a line into criminality and flatly rejects his cynical attempt to use the constitutional right of free speech as a shield for his scheme to subvert the ballot box and suppress the vote,” Breon Peace, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement.

    By Belinda Del Pesco
    By Belinda Del Pesco

    In the months leading up to the 2016 presidential election, prosecutors said Mackey used a Twitter alias with about 58,000 followers — @Ricky_Vaughn99, reportedly derived from actor Charlie Sheen’s character Ricky Vaughn in the 1989 film “Major League” — to circulate messages on Twitter that encouraged Clinton’s supporters to “vote” via text message or social media, methods that were not valid.

    “For example, on November 1, 2016, in or around the same time that Mackey was sending tweets suggesting the importance of limiting ‘black turnout,’ the defendant tweeted an image depicting an African American woman standing in front of an ‘African Americans for Hillary’ sign,” the U.S. attorney’s office said.

    The deceptive ad stated: “Avoid the Line. Vote from Home,” “Text ‘Hillary’ to 59925” and “Vote for Hillary and be a part of history.” It also included fine print at the bottom that mimicked a real ad, stating: “Must be 18 or older to vote. One vote per person. Must be a legal citizen of the United States. Voting by text not available in Guam, Puerto Rico, Alaska or Hawaii. Paid for by Hillary For President 2016.”

    Prosecutors said Mackey also used his Ricky Vaughn persona to tweet a similar deceptive ad in Spanish, which included a copy of Clinton’s campaign logo and her campaign’s oft-used “ImWithHer” hashtag.

    Leading up to Election Day, at least 4,900 unique telephone numbers texted “Hillary” or something similar to the 59925 text number, the U.S. attorney’s office said. At the time, Mackey’s fake Twitter profile was rated the 107th most influential with respect to that year’s election, according to an analysis done by the MIT Media Lab, the U.S. attorney’s office said.

    Read more at the WaPo.

    We are all waiting with bated breath to find out what will happen on Tuesday when Trump is expected to voluntarily surrender and face charges recommended by the grand jury convened by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Trump has been using his social media platform Truth Social to threaten both the DA and the Judge in the case. I hope the judge will issue a gag order to shut him up. So far Trump’s followers haven’t shown signs of organizing as they did for January 6, but New York is preparing for possible violence. Here’s the latest:

    The New York Times: How Alvin Bragg Resurrected the Case Against Donald Trump.

    One year ago this week, the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into Donald J. Trump appeared to be dead in the water.

    The two leaders of the investigation had recently resigned after the new district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, decided not to charge Mr. Trump at that point. Amid a fierce backlash to his decision — and a brutal start to his tenure — Mr. Bragg insisted that the investigation was not over. But a disbelieving media questioned why, if the effort was still moving forward, there were few signs of it.

    “Unless y’all are great poker players,” Mr. Bragg told The New York Times in an early April 2022 interview, “you don’t know what we’re doing.”

    What they were doing, new interviews show, was going back to square one, poring over the reams of evidence that had already been collected by his predecessor.

    For a time, their efforts were haphazard as they examined a wide range of Mr. Trump’s business practices, including whether he had lied about his net worth, which was the focus of the investigation when Mr. Bragg had declined to seek an indictment. But by July, Mr. Bragg had decided to assign several additional prosecutors to pursue one particular strand that struck him as promising: a hush-money payment made on Mr. Trump’s behalf to a porn star during the final days of the 2016 presidential campaign.

    On Thursday, Mr. Trump was indicted on that strand. He is expected to surrender to the authorities in Manhattan on Tuesday and face arraignment on more than two dozen charges, which will be unveiled at that time.

    Read how it happened at the NYT link. It’s a long, interesting read.

    Steve Hanks
    By Steve Hanks

    This is another fairly long read about what will happen on Tuesday. HuffPost: Trump Faces At Least 1 Felony Charge In Manhattan Case: Report.

    Former President Donald Trump is facing multiple charges of falsifying business records, including at least one felony offense, in the indictment handed down by a Manhattan grand jury, two people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press on Friday.

    He will be formally arrested and arraigned Tuesday in his hush money case, setting the scene for the historic, shocking moment when a former president is forced to stand before a judge to hear the criminal charges against him.

    The indictment remained sealed and the specific charges were not immediately known, but details were confirmed by people who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss information that isn’t yet public….

    When Trump turns himself in, he’ll be booked mostly like anyone else facing charges, mug shot, fingerprinting and all. But he isn’t expected to be put in handcuffs; he’ll have Secret Service protection and will almost certainly be released that same day….

    In the meantime, Trump’s legal team prepared his defense while the prosecutor’s office defended the grand jury investigation that propelled the matter toward trial. Congressional Republicans, as well as Trump himself, contend the whole matter is politically motivated.

    “We urge you to refrain from these inflammatory accusations, withdraw your demand for information, and let the criminal justice process proceed without unlawful political interference,” Leslie Dubeck, general counsel in the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, wrote in a letter sent Friday to three Republican House committee chairs that was obtained by The Associated Press.

    New York City is making plans for security and to deal with any possible violence next week.

    Since Trump’s March 18 post claiming his arrest was imminent, authorities have ratcheted up security, deploying additional police officers, lining the streets around the courthouse with barricades and dispatching bomb-sniffing dogs. They’ve had to respond to bomb and death threats, a suspicious powder scare and a pro-Trump protester who was arrested Tuesday after witnesses say she pulled a knife on passersby.

    Since no former president had ever been charged with a crime, there’s no rulebook for booking the defendant. He will be fingerprinted and have a mug shot taken, and investigators will complete arrest paperwork and check to see if he has any outstanding criminal charges or warrants, according to a person familiar who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive security operations.

    Cat on a counter, Joanelle Summerfield
    Cat on a counter, Joanelle Summerfield

    From The New York Daily News: Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg inundated with racist emails, death threats amid Trump indictment; ‘We are everywhere and we have guns.’

    Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has been inundated with racist death threats amid his office’s historic indictment of former President Donald Trump, the Daily News has learned.

    Included in a litany of profane, typo-laden emails sent to Bragg on the heels of Trump’s Thursday indictment were overtly racist and anti-Semitic insults and threats on the DA’s life.

    “Hay George Soros a** hole puppet If you want President Trump come and get me to,” read one email. “Remember we are everywhere and we have guns.” [….]

    People apparently unhappy about Bragg’s still-sealed indictment against Trump targeted multiple email addresses associated with Bragg’s website. The correspondence was shared exclusively with the Daily News by a senior adviser to Bragg, who asked to remain anonymous.

    “How do we a a [n—-r] like you removed feom office?” read another email.

    On a section of Bragg’s campaign website, where people can sign up to receive updates about Bragg’s work, scores of people entered fake names using racial epithets targeting the DA. The majority included despicable language like “bl*** trash [f—-r]” and “Aids Infested…” [….]

    The largely anonymous onslaught comes as Trump’s incendiary rhetoric directed at Bragg, widely condemned as both violent and racist, escalates to a fever pitch following his indictment. Bragg is Manhattan’s first Black district attorney.

    Read more at the Daily News link.

    At NBC News, extremism reporter Ben Collins writes: Online threats of violence but few signs of far-right organizing around Trump indictment.

    Minutes after news broke of former President Donald Trump’s indictment, a comment on the pro-Trump internet forum Patriots.win, also known as TheDonald, skyrocketed to the top of the message board.

    “****ACCELERATE,” the comment, written by a user named TheSpeakerfortheDead, reads in its entirety.

    Below that user, others quickly piled on, saying the grand jury that indicted Trump is “guilty of treason” and that their personal information should be made public.

    The word “accelerate” is a reference to the far-right term accelerationism, the idea that the state must be abolished, usually violently, and replaced with a new one.

    It’s one of a variety of comments posted online in far-right forums in the aftermath of Trump’s indictment. Many of those  forums commonly host violent rhetoric, and some were integral in planning around the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.

    Sueellen Ross
    By Sueellen Ross

    While there is little evidence of similar planning for real-world unrest just yet, extremism researchers are keeping a close eye on the varied calls for everything from targeted attacks on the district attorney who brought the case to a new civil war.

    “Accelerationism is a concept on the far right that’s defined by a cynicism and disbelief in the legitimacy of the democratic process or in functions of government,” said Jared Holt, a researcher at the extremism studies nonprofit Institute for Strategic Dialogue. 
“Subscribers to it suggest as a solution a series of actions that are often violent, and meant to compromise or hasten what they believe to be unavoidable collapse of that system.”

    Holt said the term was used earlier in the decade to describe white supremacist extremist groups like Atomwaffen, who frequently agitate for and commit acts of violence. Some users on pro-Trump forums have begun to embrace the nomenclature as more and more radical and violent rhetoric has seeded into their space.

    “The hope is that by advocating for the destruction of those systems or for the destabilizing of society — whether it’s through mass violence or purposeful misinformation — by playing a role in the collapse that they would also cement a position for themselves when they’re rebuilding it in their own image,” Holt he said.

    Read the rest at the link.

    One more from Insider: A gag order for Donald Trump is ‘extremely likely’ once he’s before a judge, legal expert says.

    Former President Donald Trump can’t seem to stop talking about his indictment. But once he’s arraigned, it’s “extremely likely” that he’ll have to, a former senior staffer with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office told Insider.

    His freedom to rant on Truth Social and say what he wants about his case at rallies will likely change once he surrenders and appears in a Manhattan courthouse, according to Duncan Levin, who is also a former federal prosecutor with the Department of Justice.

    Manhattan’s Acting Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, who is expected to arraign Trump on Tuesday, is likely to put conditions on his release, and that’s “most likely” when the judge will issue a gag order, restricting Trump from discussing the case, Levin said. If Trump violates it by speaking about the litigation outside the courtroom, he could face consequences.

    Punishment for criminal contempt, under New York law, is a fine not exceeding $1,000, jail for up to 30 days or both.

    “I think it’s not only a possibility, but it’s extremely likely that there will be a gag order in the case,” said Levin, known for representing clients including Harvey Weinstein and Anna Sorokin. “Gag orders are very common in criminal cases, particularly in cases where there is an enormous amount of pretrial publicity like this one.”

    Irina Kalentieva - Gustave Francois Lasellaz French 1848-1910
    Irina Kalentieva – Gustave Francois Lasellaz French 1848-1910

    A bit more:

    If there’s a gag order, Levin said Trump will be “very limited” in what he’s able to say, even if there may be proxies who speak for him. The court has the ability to set the rules for his conduct while he’s most likely to be out on bail, pending proceedings.

    “This is a criminal case now, so the rules have changed, and the rules are no longer in his purview to make,” Levin said. “He is a criminal defendant and, you know, we see hundreds of thousands of criminal defendants across the country every day who have a lot of rights stripped away from them and he is now one of them. These proceedings are going to change his life.”

    Former Indiana Attorney General Jeff Modisett said he also expected that a judge could narrowly craft a gag order that could survive an appeal. He added that Trump’s status as a presidential candidate certainly complicates the First Amendment questions that are always present when such an order is considered.

    “I could see where in a case like this based upon statements like that a judge could … issue a gag order,” Modisett said after an Insider reporter read to him the former president’s attack on Merchan. “Given Donald Trump’s history in litigation there is likely to be an appeal, but a carefully defined, narrowly restricted gag order would be upheld by the courts on appeal.”

    So that’s what’s happening today as I see it. What do you think? What other stories are you following?

  • Finally Friday Justice Edition: New York Grand Jury Indicts Trump!

    dakinikat

    Good Day Sky Dancers!

    Have you stopped Dancing yet?

    We’re headed to that sweet spot of a democratic republic where no one is above the law.  This is the headline from the Washington Post “Trump indicted by N.Y. grand jury, first ex-president charged with crime. Trump is expected to turn himself in and appear in court Tuesday. Specific charges have not been made public.” May Justice be served cold, quickly, and abundantly.

    A Manhattan grand jury has voted to indict former president Donald Trump, making him the first person in U.S. history to serve as commander-in-chief and then be charged with a crime, and setting the stage for a 2024 presidential contest unlike any other.

    The indictment was sealed, which means the specific charge or charges are not publicly known. But the grand jury had been hearing evidence about money paid to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, allegedly to keep her from saying she’d had a sexual encounter with Trump years earlier. Trump is expected to turn himself in and appear in court on Tuesday at 2:15 p.m., said a person familiar with the matter, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss plans that have not been publicly announced.

    Trump, who is campaigning to return to the White House in 2024 and leading in most polls of Republican voters, is also the focus of criminal probes in Georgia and Washington, D.C., related to his efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory and his handling of classified material at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home and private club.

    Those cases have raised serious questions about national security and the basic functions of democracy. The New York case, in contrast, stems from a hush-money plan and Trump’s alleged conduct before he became president. The indictment follows weeks of speculation about whether and when Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg might take such a momentous step toward a courthouse showdown with one of the most combative politicians in modern American history.

    Being charged with — or found guilty of — a crime does not disqualify Trump from running for office. Still,the indictment suggests a remarkable possibility: a soon-to-be-77-year-old running for president while simultaneously seeking to beat a conviction. Trump has denied any wrongdoing and says he did not have an affair with Daniels.

    A spokesperson for the Manhattan District Attorney said Thursday evening that the office had contacted Trump’s attorney to coordinate his surrender for arraignment “on an indictment, which remains under seal.”

    I’m interested in finding out if the testimony of The National Enquirer‘s David Pecker will bump this up to a conspiracy with its complicity in catching and killing other stories of infidelity.  Pecker was not only asked by Trump to help deal with Stormy Daniels but was involved with shielding Trump from the publicity about his affair with model Karen McDougal. I’m not a lawyer, but from all the ones I’ve heard on TV, that would possibly lead to felony conspiracy and unreported campaign contributions.

    CNN has more information on the indictment itself.  This should be interesting. “Donald Trump indicted by Manhattan grand jury on more than 30 counts related to business fraud .”  This lede has 4 reporters attributed to the information; Kara Scannell, John Miller, Jeremy Herb, and Devan Cole.  Yes. Thirty Counts.

    Donald Trump faces more than 30 counts related to business fraud in an indictment from a Manhattan grand jury, according to two sources familiar with the case – the first time in American history that a current or former president has faced criminal charges.

    Trump is expected to appear in court on Tuesday.

    The indictment has been filed under seal and will be announced in the coming days. The charges are not publicly known at this time.

    Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office has been investigating the former president in connection with his alleged role in a hush money payment scheme and cover-up involving adult film star Stormy Daniels that dates to the 2016 presidential election. Grand jury proceedings are secret, but a source familiar with the case told CNN that a witness gave about 30 minutes of testimony before it voted to indict Trump.

    The decision is sure to send shockwaves across the country, pushing the American political system – which has never seen one of its ex-leaders confronted with criminal charges, let alone while running again for president – into uncharted waters.

    CNN also reported that Trump was shocked and caught off guard. He lit up Truth Anti-Social with all kinds of right-wing tripe. He supposedly will turn himself in.  The airwaves are now filled with Republicans trying to out-racist one another.

    https://twitter.com/PortiaMcGonagal/status/1641812810996019200

    This opinion from MSNBC is written by By Zeeshan Aleem, MSNBC Opinion Writer/Editor. 

    After a Manhattan grand jury voted to indict former President Donald Trump on Thursday, Republicans came out in droves to describe the charge (or charges) as unwarranted and politically motivated by a corrupt prosecutor. But a number of them did it by blowing racist dog whistles that call attention to the fact that the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, is Black. The consistency of that response is yet another reminder of how the MAGA right will never forgo an opportunity to use racist innuendo to rile up its base and amplify its supporters’ persecution complex.

    Shortly after news of the indictment emerged, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, tweeted: “A week ago a video circulated of a lunatic harassing a family on a New York subway. He hurled racial slurs (the family was white) and threatened them. Alvin Bragg thinks that man should walk free and Donald Trump should go to jail for a fake misdemeanor. It’s despicable.”

    It’s unclear what video Vance is referring to or whether he’s even talking about somebody who was arrested — and presumably many of Vance’s hundreds of thousands of followers won’t know, either — but the intended message is clear: This Black prosecutor is letting people of color get away with attacking white people — and trying to take down our most important avatar, Donald Trump.

    Vance is only the latest Republican to try to frame New York’s criminal justice system as easy on criminals (who are always presumed to be people of color in this narrative) and eager to take down someone it perceives as a political opponent. Never mind that New York doesn’t have a high crime rate by national standards, has long had a draconian criminal justice system and is being run by a tough-on-crime former cop. And never mind that Vance has no way of knowing what legal evidence is being marshaled to charge Trump with a “fake” crime. The facts are beside the point. The story he wants to tell is that white civilization is under attack and that a Black man is helping lead the movement.

    Some protestors are aping these memes in Florida.  I think the idea of it being a fake “misdemeanor” will go away when the indictment details are announced.  Ron De Santis is milking the political possibilities like a machine.

    Pence is also worming his way around MAGA voters.   He’s also calling it a campaign finance misdemeanor. This is from the New York Times. “Republicans Erupt in Outrage and Rush to Defend the Defendant.” 

    Republican leaders in Congress lamented the moment as a sad day in the annals of United States history. Conservative news outlets issued a call to action for the party’s base. One prominent supporter of Donald J. Trump suggested that the former president’s mug shot should double as a 2024 campaign poster.

    Even Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, widely viewed as Mr. Trump’s leading potential presidential primary rival, rushed to condemn the prosecutor who brought the Manhattan case that led to the historic indictment of the former president on Thursday. While not naming Mr. Trump, Mr. DeSantis said Florida would not play a role in extraditing him.

    “The weaponization of the legal system to advance a political agenda turns the rule of law on its head,” Mr. DeSantis said on Twitter.

    Up and down the Republican Party, anger and accusations of injustice flowed from both backers and critics of the former president, even before the charges had been revealed. Many said Mr. Trump could benefit from a wave of sympathy from across the party, with a base of supporters likely to be energized by a belief that the justice system has been weaponized against him.

    “The unprecedented indictment of a former president of the United States on a campaign finance issue is an outrage,” former Vice President Mike Pence told CNN.

    In some quarters, there was a darker reaction. On Fox News, the host Tucker Carlson said the ruling showed it was “probably not the best time to give up your AR-15s.”

    “The rule of law appears to be suspended tonight — not just for Trump, but for anyone who would consider voting for him,” Mr. Carlson said. One of his guests, the conservative media figure Glenn Beck, predicted that the indictment would cause chaos in the years ahead.

    Before Trump gets his day in court to prove his innocence, he will be sent to court to face charges.  This is from William K Rashbaum and the New York Times.  “This is what will happen when Trump is arrested in the coming days. Donald J. Trump will likely face standard processing when he is taken into custody, but the unprecedented arrest of a former commander-in-chief will be anything but routine.”

    He will be fingerprinted. He will be photographed. He may even be handcuffed.

    If he surrenders Tuesday, Donald J. Trump is expected to walk through the routine steps of felony arrest processing in New York now that a grand jury has indicted him in connection with his role in a hush-money payment to a porn star. But the unprecedented arrest of a former commander in chief will be anything but routine.

    Accommodations may be made for Mr. Trump. While it is standard for defendants arrested on felony charges to be handcuffed, it is unclear whether an exception will be made for a former president. Most defendants are cuffed behind their backs, but some white-collar defendants deemed to pose less danger have their hands secured in front of them.

    Mr. Trump will almost certainly be accompanied at every step — from the moment he is taken into custody until his appearance before a judge in Lower Manhattan’s imposing Criminal Courts Building — by armed agents of the U.S. Secret Service. They are required by law to protect him at all times.

    Security in the courthouse is provided by state court officers, with whom the Secret Service has worked in the past. But the chief spokesman for the federal agency, Anthony J. Guglielmi, said he could not comment on measures that would be put in place for Mr. Trump.

    I don’t know about you, but I cannot wait to see that perp walk.  I hope they cuff him.

    What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

    I’m very well acquainted with the seven deadly sins
    I keep a busy schedule trying to fit them in
    I’m proud to be a glutton, and I don’t have time for sloth
    I’m greedy, and I’m angry, and I don’t care who I cross

    I’m Mr. Bad Example, intruder in the dirt
    I like to have a good time, and I don’t care who gets hurt
    I’m Mr. Bad Example, take a look at me
    I’ll live to be a hundred, and go down in infamy