Posted: April 3, 2024 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: 2024 Elections, 2024 presidential Campaign, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, just because | Tags: 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, Benjamin Netanyahu, Gaza hunger, Israel-Hamas war, Jose Andres, Judge Aileen Cannon, Judge Juan Merchan, Ruby Garcia, Special Counsel Jack Smith, Tom Fitton, World Central Kitchen |
Good Afternoon!!
It’s spring, but here in New England, we are awaiting a winter storm–a Nor’easter with high winds, torrential rains, and even snow in some areas. The storm is expected to last from this afternoon into Friday. It’s supposed to get stormy later this afternoon, but I can see outside my window that it is already raining. It’s a good day to read book and maybe take a nap.
The world news is awful. Benjamin Netanyhu is a monster. Yesterday, we learned that 7 workers for José Andrés’ World Central Kitchen were killed in 3 Israeli strikes in Gaza that sound targeted. The charity said they had coordinated with the IDF and had large signs on the roofs of their vehicles identifying them as aid workers.
David Graham at The Atlantic: A Deadly Strike in Gaza.
Seven people working for a humanitarian aid group led by the chef José Andrés were killed in an Israeli air strike in the central Gaza Strip today. The strike is a black mark for the Israel Defense Forces, and likely to turn world opinion further against the Gaza campaign. But more than its geopolitical significance, the strike is a horrifying moment on a human level. Innocent people, doing good work to feed a starving population, have died for no reason at all.
The group, World Central Kitchen, has been engaged for months in efforts to feed severely malnourished Palestinians in Gaza. WCK said the workers were “traveling in a deconflicted zone in two armored cars branded with the WCK logo and a soft skin vehicle,” and that the strike happened despite the group coordinating its movements with the Israel Defense Forces. Footage shows a puncture directly through the WCK emblem prominently displayed atop a vehicle.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged the strike, which he described as an accident. “Unfortunately, there was a tragic incident in which our forces unintentionally hit innocent people in the Gaza Strip,” he said. “As it happens in war, we are investigating the matter fully, we are in contact with the governments, and we will do everything possible to prevent this from happening again.”
When Netanyau made this statement, there was an obvious smirk on his face.
Back to the Atlantic:
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the trucks were traveling along a route approved by the IDF when they were struck by an Israeli drone. Security forces believed that there was an armed Hamas member in the convoy, but the target was not actually traveling in any of the vehicles at the time of the strike. After each of the first two vehicles was struck, the passengers moved the wounded to a third, before another strike hit that one, killing the seven people. A Haaretz source inside the defense establishment blamed units in the field for acting rashly.
Writing on X, Andrés mourned the deaths: “The Israeli government needs to stop this indiscriminate killing. It needs to stop restricting humanitarian aid, stop killing civilians and aid workers, and stop using food as a weapon. No more innocent lives lost. Peace starts with our shared humanity. It needs to start now.” [….]
The deaths are the latest senseless act of violence in a cycle that began with Hamas’s October 7 attacks, which killed more than 1,000 Israelis. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have died in Israel’s campaign in Gaza since. Netanyahu says the operation will destroy Hamas, though many commentators inside and outside of Israel find that goal unrealistic. The IDF has blamed civilian casualties on Hamas, which has intertwined its operations with noncombatants. Many aid workers have died, as well as nearly 100 members of the media, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
The New York Times: José Andrés: Let People Eat.
In the worst conditions you can imagine — after hurricanes, earthquakes, bombs and gunfire — the best of humanity shows up. Not once or twice but always.
The seven people killed on a World Central Kitchen mission in Gaza on Monday were the best of humanity. They are not faceless or nameless. They are not generic aid workers or collateral damage in war.
People gather around the carcass of a car used by US-based aid group World Central Kitchen, that was hit by an Israeli strike the previous day in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on April 2, 2024. (Photo by AFP) (Photo by -/AFP via Getty Images)
Saifeddin Issam Ayad Abutaha, John Chapman, Jacob Flickinger, Zomi Frankcom, James Henderson, James Kirby and Damian Sobol risked everything for the most fundamentally human activity: to share our food with others.
These are people I served alongside in Ukraine, Turkey, Morocco, the Bahamas, Indonesia, Mexico, Gaza and Israel. They were far more than heroes.
Their work was based on the simple belief that food is a universal human right. It is not conditional on being good or bad, rich or poor, left or right. We do not ask what religion you belong to. We just ask how many meals you need.
From Day 1, we have fed Israelis as well as Palestinians. Across Israel, we have served more than 1.75 million hot meals. We have fed families displaced by Hezbollah rockets in the north. We have fed grieving families from the south. We delivered meals to the hospitals where hostages were reunited with their families. We have called consistently, repeatedly and passionately for the release of all the hostages.
All the while, we have communicated extensively with Israeli military and civilian officials. At the same time, we have worked closely with community leaders in Gaza, as well as Arab nations in the region. There is no way to bring a ship full of food to Gaza without doing so.
That’s how we served more than 43 million meals in Gaza, preparing hot food in 68 community kitchens where Palestinians are feeding Palestinians.
We know Israelis. Israelis, in their heart of hearts, know that food is not a weapon of war.
Israel is better than the way this war is being waged. It is better than blocking food and medicine to civilians. It is better than killing aid workers who had coordinated their movements with the Israel Defense Forces.
The World Central Kitchen has pulled out of Gaza for now, and without them Palestinians will starve.
Reuters: Biden ‘outraged’ by Israeli airstrike that killed aid workers in Gaza.
U.S. President Joe Biden said on Tuesday he was “outraged and heartbroken” by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza that killed seven people working for World Central Kitchen (WCK) and he called on Israel to do more to protect aid workers.
Israel’s investigation of the incident “must be swift, it must bring accountability, and its findings must be made public,” Biden said in a statement.
“Even more tragically, this is not a stand-alone incident,” he said. “This conflict has been one of the worst in recent memory in terms of how many aid workers have been killed.” [….]
Biden said Israel has not done enough to protect aid workers or civilians in Gaza.
“The United States has repeatedly urged Israel to deconflict their military operations against Hamas with humanitarian operations, in order to avoid civilian casualties,” he said.
Biden also spoke to Chef Andres by phone. Read about it at Axios. That’s a start, but Biden needs to do more. I think he should cut off military aid to Israel.
As usual, there is lots of Trump news.
First, late last night Special Prosecutor Jack Smith filed a response to Judge Aileen Cannon’s order that both sides submit jury instructions based on her faulty interpretation of the Presidential Records Act.
Hannah Rabinowitz and Tierney Sneed at CNN: Special counsel blasts judge’s jury instruction request in Trump documents case.
In perhaps prosecutors’ strongest rebuke yet to how Judge Aileen Cannon has handled the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump, special counsel Jack Smith said in court filings late Tuesday evening that the judge had ordered briefings based on a “fundamentally flawed” understanding of the case that has “no basis in law or fact.”
Smith’s team harshly critiqued Cannon’s request for jury instructions that embraced Trump’s claims that he had broad authority to take classified government documents and said it would seek an appeals court review if she accepted the former president’s arguments about his record-retention powers.
In an unusual order last month, Cannon asked attorneys on the classified documents case to submit briefs on potential jury instructions defining terms of the Espionage Act, under which Trump is charged over mishandling 32 classified records. Specifically, Cannon asked the special counsel and defense attorneys to write two versions of proposed jury instructions.
The first scenario would instruct a jury to assess whether each of the records that Trump is accused of retaining fell into the categories of “personal” or “presidential” as laid out by the Presidential Records Act, a post-Watergate law that governs how White House records belonging to the government are to be handled at the end of a presidency.
The second version Cannon asked for assumes that as president, Trump had complete authority to take records he wanted from the White House, which would make it nearly impossible for prosecutors to secure a conviction. If she were to institute this sort of instruction, Smith’s team said, “the Government must be provided with an opportunity to seek prompt appellate review.”
“Both scenarios rest on an unstated and fundamentally flawed legal premise — namely, that the Presidential Records Act and in particular its distinction between ‘personal’ and ‘Presidential’ records, determines whether a former President is ‘authorized,’ under the Espionage Act, to possess highly classified documents and store them in an unsecure facility,” the special counsel’s team wrote.
If allowed to be presented to a jury, prosecutors said, “that premise would distort the trial.” [….]
Prosecutors have repeatedly said that PRA is not relevant to the charges against Trump, as the conduct he is accused of happened after his term as president ended. Trump’s claim that he deemed the records personal are “pure fiction,” invented once the National Archives had retrieved boxes with classified information from Mar-a-Lago two years after he left office, they wrote Tuesday.
Their new filing sheds light on some of the evidence that investigators have collected about Trump’s record-keeping habits during his presidency. According to the prosecutors’ account, there is no evidence that Trump designated the relevant classified records as personal when he left the White House, and the prosecutors said he got the idea that he did have such power many months later, from the leader of a conservative legal organization.
That leader is Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch. Fitton is not an attorney.
Alan Feuer at The New York Times: Frustrated Prosecutors Ask Trump Documents Judge to Act on Key Claim.
In an open display of frustration, federal prosecutors on Tuesday night told the judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents case that a “fundamentally flawed” order she had issued was causing delays and asked her to quickly resolve a critical dispute about one of Mr. Trump’s defenses — leaving them time to appeal if needed.
The unusual and risky move by the prosecutors, contained in a 24-page filing, signaled their mounting impatience with the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, who has allowed the case to become bogged down in a logjam of unresolved issues and curious procedural requests. It was the most directly prosecutors have confronted Judge Cannon’s legal reasoning and unhurried pace, which have called into question whether a trial will take place before the election in November even though both sides say they could be ready for one by summer.
In their filing, prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, all but begged Judge Cannon to move the case along and make a binding decision about one of Mr. Trump’s most brazen claims: that he cannot be prosecuted for having taken home a trove of national security documents after leaving office because he transformed them into his own personal property under a law known as the Presidential Records Act.
The prosecutors derided that assertion as one “not based on any facts,” adding that it was a “justification that was concocted more than a year after” Mr. Trump left the White House.
“It would be pure fiction,” the prosecutors wrote, “to suggest that highly classified documents created by members of the intelligence community and military and presented to the president of the United States during his term in office were ‘purely private.’” [….]
Mr. Smith’s prosecutors told Judge Cannon in their filing on Tuesday that the Presidential Records Act had nothing to do with the case and that the entire notion of submitting jury instructions based on it rested on a “fundamentally flawed legal premise.”
Instead, they asked her to decide the validity of the Presidential Records Act defense in a different way: by rejecting Mr. Trump’s motion to dismiss the case based on the same argument. That motion has been sitting on her desk for almost six weeks.
The prosecutors want Judge Cannon to take that course of action, because any decision she makes on the motion to dismiss can be challenged in an appeals court. But if the case is allowed to reach the jury, any ruling she might make acquitting Mr. Trump cannot be appealed.
Read the rest at the NYT.
Marcy Wheeler puts it in plain language: Jack Smith to Aileen Cannon: Treating Non-Lawyer Tom Fitton’s Theories as Law Will Lead to Mandamus.
Both Trump and Jack Smith have responded to Aileen Cannon’s whack order to write proposed jury instructions as if the Presidential Records Act says something it doesn’t. Neither are all that happy about it.
Trump used his response to claim that having the jury assess whether Trump really did make these documents personal records rather than simply steal them would put them in the role that, he’s arguing, only a (former) President can be in.
Smith — as many predicted — spent much of the filing arguing that Cannon cannot leave this issue until jury instructions because it must have an opportunity to seek mandamus for such a clear legal error; they cite the 11th Circuit slapdown of Cannon’s last attempt to entertain this fantasy in support.
Along the way, though, Smith also did something I had hoped he would do: explain where, and when, Trump’s own whack theory came from in the first place.
It came from Tom Fitton’s Xitter propaganda in response to the public report, in February 2022, that Trump had returned documents, including classified ones. But even after Fitton first intervened, Trump’s handlers continued to treat any remaining classified documents as presidential records for months.
Read about Fitton’s half-baked “theory” at the link. As I understand it, madamus means that Smith would ask the appeals court to remove Cannon from the case and replace her.
Earlier yesterday, the Judge Juan Merchan, who is in charge of the New York criminal case against Trump for interfering in the 2016 election by paying off women he was sexually involved with, added family members to his gag order. The Guardian: Trump faces an expanded gag order. It won’t stop the death threats.
When Judge Juan Merchan issued a gag order last week to bar former president Donald Trump from attacking potential witnesses and others involved in his pending hush-money trial in New York, he left open a loophole that Trump jumped to exploit.
The former president immediately went on the attack against Merchan’s own daughter, falsely accusing her of posting social media content that called for Trump to be jailed.
Merchan’s original gag order had covered potential trial witnesses, jurors, district attorney Alvin Bragg’s staff and Merchan’s staff while excluding the prosecutor and the judge – but hadn’t explicitly included Merchan’s and Bragg’s family members.
Merchan responded by expanding the gag order on Monday to cover their families, writing that Trump’s attacks on his daughter were part of a broader pattern of attacking family members of the judges and attorneys involved in his cases that “serves no legitimate purpose. It merely injects fear in those assigned or called to participate in the proceedings, that not only they, but their family members as well, are ‘fair game’ for Defendant’s vitriol.”
Judge Juan Merchan
That pattern has played out in case after case – and if the past is prologue, his supporters will take it one step further. When Trump attacks those involved in his cases, death threats soon follow.
Bragg, whom Trump has called an “animal” and “degenerate psychopath”, and Merchan, who he’s claimed “HATES ME”, have received death threats ever since the case began.
Read more at The Guardian.
Erica Orden and Meredith McGraw at Politico: ‘It’s clearly strategic’: Why Trump kept attacking judges’ families.
Every time prosecutors and judges tried to muzzle Donald Trump, he lashed out at their families.
In three different court cases over the past six months, judges imposed gag orders that restrained the former president from vilifying witnesses, court employees and others involved in the proceedings against him. In each case, Trump responded by verbally attacking not only the prosecutors and judges themselves, but also their family members.
“It’s clearly strategic,” said Ty Cobb, who served as a White House lawyer under Trump but has become a frequent critic of the former president.
“His attacks are designed around his traditional approach to delegitimizing the proceedings.” [….]
After Trump spent several days denigrating the adult daughter of Justice Juan Merchan, the judge overseeing Trump’s Manhattan criminal case, Merchan issued an expanded gag order barring Trump from attacking the judge’s own family. Merchan also expanded the gag to cover the family of the lead prosecutor, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
“The average observer, must now, after hearing Defendant’s recent attacks, draw the conclusion that if they become involved in these proceedings, even tangentially, they should worry not only for themselves, but for their loved ones as well,” Merchan wrote. “Such concerns will undoubtedly interfere with the fair administration of justice and constitutes a direct attack on the Rule of Law itself.”
It’s not just the rule of law that’s under threat. Outside the courtroom, Trump’s judges have faced persistent threats to their personal safety, including “swatting” calls directed at their homes and a racist voicemail threatening murder.
In his latest fusillade on social media, unleashed within days of Merchan’s original gag order, Trump called Merchan’s daughter a “Rabid Trump Hater” due to her work at a digital marketing agency that has Democratic clients. And he claimed that she had used an image of Trump behind bars as a profile picture for a social media account, although a court official said she had abandoned and deleted that account, and that it had been taken over by someone else.
How can this horrible person actually have been president? And how can he be permitted to run again? And if he is elected in November the plan is for him to run again in 2028 (if we still have election then).
Lisa Needham at Public Notice: Project 2025 reveals its goal: Trump as president for life.
Project 2025, the Republican plan to functionally annihilate not just the federal government but democracy as well if Trump wins in November, is an unceasing parade of horrors.
Kristen Eichamer holds a Project 2025 fan in the group’s tent at the Iowa State Fair, Aug. 14, 2023, in Des Moines, Iowa….AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
Banning the abortion pill nationwide? Check. Rolling back protections for LGBTQ people? Check. Deporting literally millions of undocumented immigrants? Check. But amid each objectively horrible aim is an even more more insidious one: abolishing the 22nd Amendment, which limits presidents to two terms. It’s an unvarnished, right-out-in-the-open plan to keep Trump in office well past 2028.
It’s not as if this is genuinely unexpected. By July 2019, Trump had “joked” at least six times about being president for life. Floating that as a possibility, as Peter Tonguette did last week over at The American Conservative, is a great opportunity to show fealty to a candidate who values loyalty over all else.
The American Conservative is a “partner” of Project 2025, along with such luminaries as Stephen Miller’s America First Legal law firm (currently suing everyone over the mildest of diversity efforts) and the Claremont Institute, which gave us Christopher Rufo and Moms for Liberty.
As Media Matters notes, the reasoning in Tonguette’s piece is dubious at best, but that doesn’t really matter. Project 2025 doesn’t rest on solid law, respect for democracy, or an understanding of history. It rests only on the notion that Trump should be allowed to exhibit raw, vicious, and unchecked power.
Read the rest at the link.
At least one family pushed back on Trump’s lies yesterday. In a speech in Michigan yesterday, Trump talked about Ruby Garcia, a woman who was murdered allegedly by an undocumented immigrant.
The Washington Post: Trump said he spoke to murder victim’s family. The victim’s sister said it never happened.
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Donald Trump used his campaign event in Michigan on Tuesday to denounce what he called “Biden’s border bloodbath,” zeroing in on the case of a young woman killed by someone immigration officials say had entered the country illegally.
“She lit up that room, and I’ve heard that from so many people,” Trump said at a news conference in the hometown of the 25-year-old victim, Ruby Garcia. “I spoke to some of her family.”
But Garcia’s sister, acting as a family spokeswoman, said Tuesday that Trump and his campaign have not contacted her or other immediate relatives — and rebuked the GOP presidential nominee’s effort to make the case part of his calls for a border crackdown.
“It’s always been about illegal immigrants,” the victim’s sister, Mavi Garcia, told local news station Target 8. “Nobody really speaks about when Americans do heinous crimes, and it’s kind of shocking why he would just bring up illegals. What about Americans who do heinous crimes like that?”
The Trump campaign did not comment Tuesday, andTrump did not mention speaking with Garcia’s family at a Wisconsin rally later Tuesday. Mavi Garcia confirmed to The Washington Post that Trump and his campaign never spoke with the family.
That’s all the news I have for you today. What do you think? What other stories have captured your interest?
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Posted: March 20, 2024 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Corrupt and Political SCOTUS, Donald Trump, immigration, just because, SCOTUS | Tags: 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, Chubb Group, E. Jean Carroll case, Isabella Stewart Gardner art heist, Jack Smith, Judge Aileen Cannon, Mexico, New York fraud case, stolen documents case, Texas immigration law |
Good Morning!!
At the Gardner Museum, an empty frame hangs where a painting was stolen.
Before I get started on today’s political news, I wanted to note the anniversary of the Isabella Stewart Gardner heist on Monday. It’s a Boston story I’ve always found fascinating. I’m illustrating this post with some of the 13 missing works of art.
CBS News: Isabella Stewart Gardner art heist happened 34 years ago, FBI still receiving tips.
BOSTON — Thirty-four years ago two thieves robbed the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, making off with hundreds of millions of dollars in stolen artwork. The heist has been the subject of mystery and documentaries ever since.
“I have been here for a long time looking for these, and I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t affect me. I walk by the empty frames every day,” said Anthony Amore, Director of Security at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
In 1990, two men snuck into the museum disguised as police officers answering a distress call. The duo tied up to two guards and were in the museum for 81 minutes. They made off with numerous pieces of art including 13 works from famous painters like Rembrandt. The art is worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
“I believe that information is going to come in, or I am going to get the stuff first, but one way or another we will get the art back,” said Amore.
Over the past year, the museum and the FBI have received hundreds of tips and emails. Amore says most are theories or conjecture, but a few are an occasional tip. He says 20 of those calls came from people who thought they spotted the works of art on the wall during house showings or on pictures from Zillow. They were just reproductions used to stage the homes for sale.
“There is a lot of these things out there, and when we do see things from Zillow, or any other real estate website, we don’t look at it and say, ‘That is our painting.’ Nevertheless, we follow it,” said Amore. “I am amazed that people notice because Zillow has millions of listings, and people go through and go, ‘That’s that missing Gardner painting.”
There is a $10 million reward for information leading to finding the paintings.
The New York Times: Empty Frames and Other Oddities From the Unsolved Gardner Museum Heist.
In the pre-dawn hours of March 18, 1990, following a festive St. Patrick’s Day in Boston, two men dressed as police officers walked into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and walked off with an estimated $500 million in art treasures. Despite efforts by the local police, federal agents, amateur sleuths and not a few journalists, no one has found any of the 13 works lost in the largest art theft in history, including a rare Vermeer and three precious Rembrandts.
The Concert, by Johannes Vermeer
The legacy of the heist is always apparent to museum visitors who, decades later, still confront vacant frames on the gallery walls where paintings once hung. They are kept there as a reminder of loss, museum officials say, and in the hope that the works may eventually return. Last month, Richard Abath, the night watchman who mistakenly allowed in the thieves, died at 57. He was a vital figure in an investigation that remains active, but where the trails have grown cold.
Here are five oddities that make this one of the most compelling of American crimes.
The thieves took a really strange array of stuff.
Important paintings were taken from their frames during the heist. But other items that were stolen were not nearly of the same caliber: a nondescript Chinese metal vase; a fairly ordinary bronze eagle from atop a flagpole; and five minor sketches by Degas. The thieves walked past paintings and jade figurines worth millions, including a drawing by Michelangelo, yet they spent some of their 81 minutes inside fussing to free the vase from a tricky locking mechanism.
The handcuffed guard was later scrutinized.
Abath, one of two guards on duty, was handcuffed and gagged with duct tape. He was never named a suspect. But over the years investigators continued to review his behavior because he had, against protocol, opened the museum door to the thieves. (The second guard, who is still living, was never a focus of investigative interest.) The F.B.I. monitored Abath’s assets for decades but never saw any suspicious income. He consistently said he told investigators everything he knew, and an F.B.I. polygraph he voluntarily took was deemed “inconclusive.”
The empty frames have stayed on the walls.
The museum was once Gardner’s home and she wanted to ensure that her expansive art collection was displayed in the same manner she had arranged it. She stipulated in her will that not a thing was to be removed or rearranged, or the collection should be shipped to Paris for auction, with the money going to Harvard University. Though it’s long been reported that the empty frames are left hanging to accord with that will, the museum says that is actually a long uncorrected mistake. “We have chosen to display them,” it said in a statement “because 1.) we remain confident that the works will someday return to their rightful place in the galleries; and 2.) they are a poignant reminder of the loss to the public of these unique works.”
Read the rest at the NYT.
I wish I could spend the day reading about famous art thefts and missing or recovered paintings, but I suppose I’d better take a look at the politics news . . .
On Monday Judge Aileen “Loose” Cannon shocked legal observers with a strange order.
USA Today: Judge in Trump classified documents case proposes ‘insane’ jury instructions, experts say.
The judge presiding over charges against former President Donald Trump for allegedly hoarding classified documents after leaving the White House proposed on Monday jury instructions for the eventual trial that favor his claim that he declassified the records.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s proposal tips the scales so far in Trump’s direction that legal experts say the prosecutor, Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith, might ask an appeals court to remove her from the case.
Joyce White Vance, a former U.S. attorney, said the Presidential Records Act isn’t a way around rules for handling classified documents because the records are still government property, not Trump’s personal possessions.
Rembrandt von Rijn Self-Portrait
“Expect their response to be hard-hitting,” Vance said of prosecutors in a post on Substack. “The bottom line is that the Presidential Records Act doesn’t forgive Trump for violating criminal laws regarding handling of national secrets.” [….]
Cannon gave lawyers for Trump and Smith until April 2 to submit proposed jury instructions for the eventual trial. The order on Monday came after a hearing in which she didn’t resolve the dispute over whether the documents fell under the Presidential Records Act.
But her order called for lawyers on both sides to “engage” with two possible instructions she proposed.
In one, Cannon said jurors should “make a factual finding as to whether the government had proven beyond a reasonable doubt” the records are personal or presidential.
In the other, Cannon proposed telling jurors “a president has sole authority under the PRA to categorize records as personal or presidential during his/her presidency. Neither a court nor a jury is permitted to make or review such as categorization decision.”
Neither of those instructions reflects what the Presidential Records Act says.
Legal experts blasted the order as “insane” and “nuts.”
“This second scenario is legally insane,” and under it Cannon could simply dismiss the charges, said Bradley Moss, a national-security lawyer.
George Conway, another lawyer and frequent critic of Trump, argued Cannon shouldn’t be hearing the case and shouldn’t even be a federal judge. Cannon was appointed by Trump and has been widely criticized for decisions that have delayed the trial, including two overturned by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
“This is utterly nuts,” Conway said.
Vance said both proposals from Cannon “virtually direct the jury to find Trump not guilty.”
“It turns out it’s two pages of crazy stemming from the Judge’s apparent inability to tell Trump no when it comes to his argument that he turned the nation’s secrets into his personal records by designating them as such under the Presidential Records Act,” Vance said.
Read more about the Presidential Records Act at USA Today.
Jose Pagliery at The Daily Beast: Mar-a-Lago Judge’s Stark Ruling: Jury Sees Secret Files or Trump Wins.
The MAGA-friendly federal judge who keeps siding with Donald Trump in his Mar-a-Lago classified records case has forced prosecutors to make a stark choice: allow jurors to see a huge trove of national secrets or let him go.
U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon’s ultimatum Monday night came as a surprise twist in what could have been a simple order; one merely asking federal prosecutors and Trump’s lawyers for proposed jury instructions at the upcoming trial.
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Posted: June 9, 2023 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Donald Trump | Tags: 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, Espionage Act, Judge Aileen Cannon, stolen documents case, Walt Nauta |
Good Afternoon!!
It’s finally happening. Last night Trump announced that he has been indicted in the stolen documents case. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the case has been assigned to Judge Aileen Cannon, remember her? She’s the MAGA judge who stalled the case for months by appointing a special master before she was finally humiliated by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. Just breaking right now: Walt Nauta, the aide who moved boxes around at Mar-a-Lago has also been indicted in the documents case. Here’s what’s happening this morning.
Hugo Lowell at The Guardian: Donald Trump charged with illegal retention of classified documents.
Federal prosecutors have charged Donald Trump over his retention of national security documents and obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve them, according to multiple people familiar with the matter, a historic development that poses the most significant legal peril yet for the former president.
The exact nature of the indictment, filed in federal district court in Miami, is unclear because it remains under seal and the justice department had no immediate comment.
Trump confirmed the indictment on his Truth Social social media platform on Thursday afternoon, shortly after his lawyers received an email from prosecutors in the office of special counsel Jack Smith that outlined the charges and summoned the former president to surrender himself to authorities in Miami next Tuesday.
The charges listed in the summons included: wilful retention of national defense information, conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding a document, corruptly concealing a document, concealing a document in a federal investigation, engaging in a scheme to conceal and false statements, people familiar with the matter said.
Trump’s lawyer Jim Trusty confirmed in an appearance on CNN that prosecutors had listed seven charges on the summons paper. Trusty said he had not seen a copy of the indictment but added he was hopeful that it might be unsealed before Trump makes his initial appearance in court.
Trump will be arraigned in Miami on Tuesday afternoon.
ABC News: Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, initially assigned to oversee his case: Sources.
The summons sent to former President Donald Trump and his legal team late Thursday indicates that U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon will be assigned to oversee his case, at least initially, according to sources briefed on the matter.
Cannon’s apparent assignment would add yet another unprecedented wrinkle to a case involving the first federal charges against a former president: Trump appointed Cannon to the federal bench in 2020, meaning that, if Trump is ultimately convicted, she would be responsible for determining the sentence – which may include prison time – for the man who elevated her to the role….
Cannon is no stranger to the case. The 42-year-old judge appointed a “special master” last year to review those materials seized from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. Legal experts accused Cannon of handing Trump a series of head-scratching victories over the course of those proceedings….
In one instance, Cannon restricted the FBI from using the seized classified documents as part of their ongoing probe until she completed her review. Cannon’s order was ultimately thrown out in its entirety by an 11th Circuit Court of appeals panel, which found she overstepped in exercising her jurisdiction in the probe.
In addition to Cannon, Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart’s name also appeared on the summons sent to Trump on Thursday, the sources said.
Reinhart, who was sworn in as a magistrate judge in 2018, is also familiar with the proceedings against Trump: he signed off on the initial search warrant of Mar-a-Lago last year and later ruled to unseal the search affidavit – decisions that made him the target of antisemitic jabs on the internet.
I assume that if Cannon doesn’t recuse herself, the DOJ will appeal to the 11th Circuit. Joyce Vance posted a thread about this on Twitter.
Read the rest on Twitter.
CNN: Trump aide Walt Nauta indicted in classified documents case.
An aide to former President Donald Trump has been indicted in special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the mishandling of classified documents from the Trump White House, two sources familiar with the indictment tell CNN.
Walt Nauta’s indictment is the second in the special counsel’s investigation after Trump was indicted on seven counts on Thursday.
An attorney for Nauta declined to comment. Nauta was with Trump at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club this week….
Trump responded to Nauta’s indictment on his social media Friday, writing, “They are trying to destroy his life, like the lives of so many others, hoping that he will say bad things about ‘Trump.’ He is strong, brave, and a Great Patriot. The FBI and DOJ are CORRUPT!”
Nauta’s involvement in the movement of boxes of classified material at Trump’s Florida resort had been a subject of scrutiny of investigators. Nauta, with the help of a maintenance worker at Mar-a-Lago, moved the boxes before the FBI executed a search warrant on the Palm Beach property last August.
Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan have the inside gossip on what happened when Trump got the news last night.
The New York Times: Inside Trump’s Club When the Call Came: You’re Indicted.
Former President Donald J. Trump was gathered with his core political advisers in the office near his poolside cottage at his club in Bedminster, N.J., when his phone rang around 7 p.m. on Thursday. On the line, according to two people with knowledge of the call, was one of his lawyers, informing him he had been indicted for the second time in less than three months….
Mr. Trump, always compartmentalizing, immediately moved to a political reaction.
At 7:21 p.m., he did what he used to do so often when he was president: He personally programmed the chyrons on every news channel in the country. He broke the news of his own indictment — drafting and then sending a three-part statement on his social media network, Truth Social, that soon interrupted the nighttime shows on Fox News, MSNBC and CNN.
The former president posted a screed against the Biden administration, but buried within his attacks on Democrats were pertinent details: not only that he had been indicted, but also that he had been summoned to appear at a Miami courthouse on Tuesday afternoon.
A studio van was brought to Bedminster so one of his lawyers could go on television. Another Trump lawyer, James Trusty, soon went on CNN to describe a few of the charges, and recounted his client’s reaction.
A bit more:
“He thought about it,” Mr. Trusty said. “He said: ‘This is just a sad day. I can’t believe I have been indicted.’” Mr. Trusty went on: “Those are kind of my — my summary words of what he had to say. But, at the same time, he immediately recognizes the historic nature of this. This is crossing the Rubicon.”
For days, Mr. Trump’s team had been casting about for information about his indictment, after three of his lawyers met with Justice Department officials on Monday. They entered that meeting having been told charges were likely, and nothing that was said changed that perspective, according to people close to Mr. Trump. But while they suspected an indictment was imminent, they were operating more off rumor, gossip and news reports than from verified facts.
As speculation intensified ahead of the Justice Department’s notification of the indictment, Mr. Trump’s team pretaped a video of the former president reacting to the expected charges in a speech direct to the camera — and standing in front of what appeared to be a version of a painting of President Theodore Roosevelt and Kaiser Wilhelm II, Germany’s leader during World War I.
Half an hour after he announced his indictment, he posted the video on his social media website. In it, he bashes Democrats, portrays the indictment as evidence of “a nation in decline” and calls himself “an innocent man.”
Whatever. Just more Trump lies.
CNN has obtained more tapes of Trump talking about the stolen documents.
CNN reports:
Former President Donald Trump acknowledged on tape in a 2021 meeting that he had retained “secret” military information that he had not declassified, according to a transcript of the audio recording obtained by CNN.
“As president, I could have declassified, but now I can’t,” Trump says, according to the transcript.
CNN obtained the transcript of a portion of the meeting where Trump is discussing a classified Pentagon document about attacking Iran. In the audio recording, which CNN previously reported was obtained by prosecutors, Trump says that he did not declassify the document he’s referencing, according to the transcript.
Trump was indicted Thursday on seven counts in special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the mishandling of classified documents. Details from the indictment have not been made public, so it unknown whether any of the seven counts refer to the recorded 2021 meeting. Still, the tape is significant because it shows that Trump had an understanding the records he had with him at Mar-a-Lago after he left the White House remained classified.
Publicly, Trump has claimed that all the documents he brought with him to his Florida residence are declassified, while he’s railed against the special counsel’s investigation as a political witch hunt attempting to interfere with his 2024 presidential campaign.
This seems to be more details from the recording CNN revealed last week.
Trump was complaining in the meeting about Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley. The meeting occurred shortly after The New Yorker published a story by Susan Glasser detailing how, in the final days of Trump’s presidency, Milley instructed the Joint Chiefs to ensure Trump issued no illegal orders and that he be informed if there was any concern.
“Well, with Milley – uh, let me see that, I’ll show you an example. He said that I wanted to attack Iran. Isn’t that amazing? I have a big pile of papers, this thing just came up. Look. This was him,” Trump says, according to the transcript. “They presented me this – this is off the record, but – they presented me this. This was him. This was the Defense Department and him. We looked at some. This was him. This wasn’t done by me, this was him.”
Trump continues: “All sorts of stuff – pages long, look. Wait a minute, let’s see here. I just found, isn’t that amazing? This totally wins my case, you know. Except it is like, highly confidential. Secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this.”
Apparently he was going through some of those boxes he brought with him from Mar-a-Lago.
I expect there will be more news breaking today and over the weekend. Take care everyone and enjoy the schadenfreude!
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