Trump’s lawyer told the justices that the founders had “in a sense” written immunity into the Constitution because it’s a logical outgrowth of a broadly worded clause about presidential power. But that’s the sort of argument conservative justices have often scoffed at — most notably in the context of abortion rights.
Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: April 27, 2024 Filed under: cat art, caturday, Corrupt and Political SCOTUS, Donald Trump, SCOTUS | Tags: Amy Coney Barrett, Autocracy, cruelty to animals, David Pecker, Idaho anti-abortion law, Kristi Noem, MAGA jusstices, Trump "presidential immunity" claim 7 CommentsHappy Caturday!!
Rose Freymouth-Frazier, Divine Intervention
I couldn’t sleep last night. I just can’t get past what went on in the Supreme Court on Wednesday and Thursday. Suddenly, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness no longer applies to women, and it appears at least four of the justices are willing to help Trump become a dictator. Amy Coney Barrett seemed to have some reservations on both issues.
On Wednesday, we had to listen to the MAGA justices argue about how many organs would have to shut down in a pregnant women’s body before she could qualify for emergency medical care. Then on Thursday, they considered whether a president ordering the military to assassinate his opponent would be an official act. Trump’s attorney argued that it could be and therefore he would be immune from prosecution for murder.
JJ addressed the abortion arguments on Thursday, and Daknikat posted about the Trump immunity case yesterday. But I want to share a few more articles on these issues.
First, CNN’s John Fritze on Amy Coney Barrett’s role in the abortion argument: How Justice Amy Coney Barrett drove the Supreme Court’s debate on abortion and Trump immunity.
Chief Justice John Roberts may emerge as the pivotal vote in two politically charged cases on abortion and presidential immunity the Supreme Court heard this week, but it was Justice Amy Coney Barrett who owned the arguments.
In a pair of high-profile hearings, the 52-year-old former law professor dug into a lawyer defending Idaho’s strict abortion ban – at one point exclaiming she was “shocked” by his explanation of how the law worked in practice. A day later, she nudged an attorney for former President Donald Trump into a series of potentially critical concessions.
Barrett, Trump’s third nominee, has been a reliable vote for the conservative bloc since arriving days before the 2020 presidential election. But on a 6-3 court that often splits along ideological lines in the most significant disputes, Barrett managed to shape the final arguments of the current term this week while also keeping her options open.
“Why are you here?” she demanded of Idaho’s lawyer at one point, questioning whether there was actually a live issue the court needed to rule on….
Her exchange in the abortion arguments on Wednesday was shared widely on social media, including by the Center for Reproductive Rights – a legal advocacy group Barrett is unlikely to often agree with. Two years ago, Barrett was one of five votes needed to overturn Roe v. Wade.
“We’ve seen a number of signs during oral arguments this term, especially in the last few sessions, that Justice Barrett is increasingly comfortable not just in her own skin, but in staking out territory, even in high-profile cases, that puts her at least somewhere between the more conservative and more progressive blocs on the court,” said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law….
As the second-least senior justice, Barrett sits at the far end of the Supreme Court’s mahogany bench. But she was at the center of some of the most important turning points of the nearly three-hour oral argument Thursday about Trump’s claims of sweeping immunity in special counsel Jack Smith’s election subversion case.
Mewcifer, by Paul Koudounaris
Barrett was one of several justices to get Trump attorney John Sauer to agree that a president’s “private” actions – as opposed to his “official” actions – do not qualify for immunity. That was a notable break from earlier arguments Trump submitted that called for “absolute” immunity on a much wider scale of acts. In one key exchange, Barrett then walked Sauer through a series of hypothetical questions that closely mirrored the allegations in the special counsel’s indictment.
If those actions are considered private and not part of a president’s official duties, then Smith has argued he should be able to put them before a jury.
A party turns to a private attorney, Barrett hypothesized, “who was willing to spread knowingly false claims of election fraud” to spearhead his challenges to an election. That appeared to be a reference to former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, identified by CNN as “co-conspirator 1” in Smith’s indictment.
Maybe Barrett will turn out to be a swing vote. She could end up siding with the three liberal women on some cases, along with John Roberts.
There is still quite a bit of commentary on how the justices dealt with Trump’s “presidential immunity” claim.
Dennis Aftergut at Salon: SCOTUS majority abandons conservative principles to mount bizarre defense of Trump’s immunity claim.
Yesterday’s message from the rightwing justices of the Supreme Court, particularly the male justices, was shocking to any believer in true, conservative jurisprudence and the rule of law. Their questions at the oral argument in the Donald Trump immunity case signaled strongly that they really care more about enhancing presidential power than preserving democracy, and to that end, lean toward giving Trump the gift of even more delay.
Trump, the former president and Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting, is accused of trying to overturn an election in the weeks before January 6. He has said the “constitution should be terminated” and that he will be “a “dictator on Day One.”
In that context, Americans want to know before they vote if Trump is innocent or guilty of using unlawful means to interfere with the 2020 certification of President Biden’s election. We deserve that knowledge.
The Supreme Court, however, has no such care. In the stunning words of Trump appointee Justice Brett Kavanaugh, “I’m not concerned about the here and now, I’m more concerned about the future.” Justice Samuel Alito said he didn’t want to talk about the “particular facts” but rather to talk “in the abstract.” To the same effect was the statement of Trump appointee Justice Neil Gorsuch: “We’re writing a decision for the ages.”
Gorsuch, you may recall, is the occupant of the seat that Mitch McConnell stole from President Obama and his appointee, then-Judge Merrick Garland. Then, of course, there’s Justice Clarence Thomas, who declined to disqualify himself from hearing the case even though the emails of his wife, Ginni, show that she was an inside operative trying to help Trump get the election overturned four years ago.
On their ridiculous arguments:
Here’s why the statements from Kavanaugh and Gorsuch are offensive to those committed to honest, conservative jurisprudence. The Constitution limits federal courts to deciding the “Cases or Controversies” presented to them based on case-specific facts.
Princess Cheeto, by Hugo Martinez
Hence, federal jurists are duty-bound to focus their attention on what Kavanaugh said he didn’t care about: the facts of “the here and now.”
To be sure, the implications of any decision for future situations are always to be taken into account. But when the facts of a case are so exceptional, so confined, so clear, two things matter above everything else: First, that the case be disposed of purely on those facts; second, that courts are well practiced in how to limit their decisions’ future application.
Indeed, all the justices need to say, even repeat, is, “This case is unique in all of American history. The allegations of the indictment, which we must take as true for now, shock the conscience. We limit our holding today to its facts and only these facts.” As the Supreme Court’s own website states:
The Constitution limits the Court to dealing with “Cases” and “Controversies.” John Jay, the first Chief Justice, clarified this restraint early in the Court’s history by declining to advise President George Washington on the constitutional implications of a proposed foreign policy decision. The Court[’s] . . . function is limited only to deciding specific cases.
Indeed, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade, Chief Justice John Roberts chided the majority for going outside the boundaries of the case or controversy presented – a Mississippi statute permitting abortions up to 15 weeks after inception. But now we are faced with the prospect that the Court may send the case back to the lower courts to decide a controversy not presented, giving Trump the delay he wants by asking a lower court to analyze a bogus constitutional theory — that a president is criminally immune when he acts as president.
Read the rest at Salon.
Josh Gerstein at Politico:
The Supreme Court’s conservatives often accuse liberals of inventing provisions nowhere to be found in the Constitution. Now, the fingers are pointed in the other direction.
At the attention-grabbing arguments this week over Donald Trump’s claim of sweeping presidential immunity from criminal prosecution, the six-member conservative bloc seemed largely unconcerned by a key flaw in Trump’s theory: Nothing in the Constitution explicitly mentions the concept of presidential immunity.
Two years ago, conservatives relied on a strict interpretation of the Constitution’s text and original meaning to overturn the federal right to abortion. But on Thursday, as they debated whether Trump can be prosecuted for his bid to subvert the 2020 election, they seemed content to engage in a free-form balancing exercise where they weighed competing interests and practical consequences.
Some critics said the conservative justices — all of whom purport to adhere to an original understanding of the Constitution — appeared to be on the verge of fashioning a legal protection for former presidents based on the justices’ subjective assessment of what’s best for the country and not derived from the nation’s founding document.
Annie Montgomerie, Three Cats
And they seem to think that Donald Trump as a dictator would be “best for the country!”
“The legal approach they seemed to be gravitating toward has no basis in the Constitution, in precedent, or logic,” said Michael Waldman, president and CEO of New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice. “It sure ain’t originalism.”
The two-hour, 40-minute argument session featured a boatload of scary hypotheticals about coups and assassinations, along with predictions about serial, tit-for-tat prosecutions of future presidents, but there was little discussion of the Constitution’s text.
That could come as a surprise to some. Justice Elena Kagan, one of the three liberals now on the court, famously declared in 2015 that conservatives had essentially won the decadeslong battle between those who favored a close fealty to text and original meaning and those who emphasized pragmatism or saw the Constitution as an evolving document.
“I think we are all textualists now,” Kagan told an audience at Harvard Law School then, as she delivered a lecture named for her then-colleague Justice Anontin Scalia, arguably the lead crusader for the text-based approach.
Kagan was perhaps the most insistent Thursday in highlighting the absence of any explicit immunity for presidents in the Constitution.
“The framers did not put an immunity clause into the Constitution. They knew how to. There were immunity clauses in some state constitutions. They knew how to give legislative immunity. They didn’t provide immunity to the president,” said Kagan, an appointee of President Barack Obama. “And, you know, not so surprising. They were reacting against a monarch who claimed to be above the law.”
More at the Politico link.
Brynn Tannehill at The New Republic: The Court Just Sealed Everyone’s Fate, Including Its Own. The justices seem to think that the power they apparently just handed Donald Trump can’t be used against them someday. Right.
This week, the Supreme Court managed to fail to meet the already extremely low expectations most sane people already had for it. First, during the Idaho EMTALA case on whether hospitals receiving federal funding can refuse to provide abortions to women who are actively dying as a result of a pregnancy, we heard debate over which, and how many, organs a woman had to lose before an abortion becomes legally acceptable. By all appearances, it looks as though the court is going to gut the already laughably weak “life of the mother” protections by a 5-4 vote.
It followed up this abysmal performance with hearing the Trump immunity case the next day, and the comportment of the same five male, conservative justices was even worse. When Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked Donald Trump’s lawyer, “If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person, and he orders the military or orders someone to assassinate him, is that within his official acts for which he can get immunity?”, he replied, “It would depend on the hypothetical, but we can see that would well be an official act.”
Based on that one line of questioning, Trump’s argument should be going down in flames 9-0. A democracy cannot survive when its supreme leader can arbitrarily decide that it’s in the nation’s best interest to rub out his opponents, and then leave it to some future court to decide whether it was an official act, because he’ll get away with it as long as there aren’t 67 votes in the Senate to impeach. And given that it will have been established that the president can put out a contract on political foes, how many senators are going to vote to impeach?
contrary: At least five of the justices seemed to buy into the Trump team’s arguments that the power of the office of the president must be protected from malicious and politicized litigation. They were uninterested in the actual case at hand or its consequences. Elie Mystal, justice correspondent at The Nation, perhaps captured my response to the Supreme Court’s arguments best: “I am in shock that a lawyer stood in the U.S. Supreme Court and said that a president could assassinate his political opponent and it would be immune as ‘an official act.’ I am in despair that several Justices seemed to think this answer made perfect sense.”
At a minimum, it appears the court will send all of the federal cases back down to lower courts to reconsider whether Trump’s crimes were “official acts.” It’s also likely that their new definition of “official acts” is likely to be far broader than anyone should be comfortable with, or at least broad enough to give Trump a pass. This delay all but guarantees that Trump will not stand trial for anything besides the current hush-money case before the 2024 election.
Ice Cream Cat, by Jim McKenzie
This is catastrophic in so many ways. The first is that it increases the already high chances that the United States ends up with a dictator who will attempt to rapidly disassemble democracy in pursuit of becoming President for Life. It simultaneously increases the chances that yes, he will go ahead and violate the civil and human rights of political opponents and classes of people he calls Communists, Marxists, and fascists. People forget that the first German concentration camp (Dachau) was built in 1933 to hold members of the Communist and Social Democratic Parties, and Trump has made it clear that he’s building enough camps to process a minimum of 11 million people (migrants, at least for starters).
The conservatives on the Supreme Court have also exposed their hubris, willful ignorance, and foolishness to the entire world in stark terms, and it will cost them and the nation dearly in the long run. They somehow presume that if Trump is elected and goes full dictator, that the power of the court, and their reputation, will save them. The truth is, Trump’s relationships with everyone he meets are completely transactional. If the court ever stops being useful to him, he will terminate it with prejudice if he thinks he can get away with it, and this court is doing everything it can to make him think he can get away with it.
These justices’ foolishness lies in their lack of foresight as to what happens if Trump wins in 2024. In the justice’s efforts to ensure that they are the most powerful branch of government, they are about to make it the weakest. They are creating a win-win situation for Trump, and a lose-lose for themselves. When Trump is president again, he is likely to believe that he has the option of “removing” any member of the Supreme Court who defies him. As long as the court doesn’t rule against him, they’re fine. From the justices’ perspective, they either end up neutered lap dogs of a despot, who do whatever they’re told out of fear, or they defy him and end up somewhere … unpleasant (at best). Taking a dirt nap at worst. After all, if Trump can rub out a political opponent, can’t he do the same to an uncooperative jurist?
Tannehill is absolutely right.
There’s an interesting piece on the hush money trial by Ewan Palmer at Newsweek: Donald Trump Refusing To Go After David Pecker Raises Questions.
Speculation has risen as to why Donald Trump has not risked violating his gag order to attack former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker following his damning testimony in the hush money trial.
Pecker, the former head of America Media, which owns the tabloid, was the first witness to take the stand in New York in the former president’s falsifying business records trial, during which he discussed setting up an arrangement to help stop negative stories about Trump from coming out ahead of the 2016 election.
While under oath, Pecker said he had concerns about the legality of performing a so-called “catch and kill” by paying Playboy model Karen McDougal $180,000 to keep a story about an alleged affair between her and the former president from coming out ahead of the 2016 election.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in relation to money he arranged for Michael Cohen to pay adult film star Stormy Daniels to keep an alleged affair she had with Trump secret in the run-up to the 2016 election. Prosecutors argue that Trump, Pecker, and Cohen “orchestrated a cover-up to interfere” with the 2016 presidential election by concealing negative information about the Republican from becoming public.
Trump is currently under a gag order which aims to prevent him from making public comments about witnesses in the trial. However, prosecutors have suggested that the former president has violated this order several times, including publicly attacking Cohen in interviews and on social media.
Speaking on the LegalAF podcast, trial lawyer Michael Popok noted that Trump has so far refused to make any damning statements about Pecker, despite frequently willing to risk a fine or even jail to violate his gag order to attack Cohen.
“Donald Trump went after Cohen, he went Cohen in the opening, on social media, but he’s silent. It’s almost like he’s endorsing Pecker and that’s terrible for him,” Popok said.
“He hasn’t done a darn thing to tear down Pecker,” he added. “Pecker is dumping willingly on Donald Trump and supporting the entire case.”
Former prosecutor Karen Friedman Agnifilo also made a similar point about Trump not discussing Pecker on the same podcast.
Maybe Trump didn’t hear that much of Pecker’s testimony, since he has been napping every day during the trial.
Antonio Tantardini, The Wounded Friend (Sculpture)
This is another story I just can’t stop thinking about. You’ve probably heard that South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem has a book coming out that contains a horrific confession.
Martin Pengelly at The Guardian: Trump VP contender Kristi Noem writes of killing dog – and goat – in new book.
In 2012, as the Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney was pilloried for tying a dog, Seamus, to the roof of the family car for a cross-country trip.
But in 2024 Kristi Noem, a strong contender to be named running mate to Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has managed to go one further – by admitting killing a dog of her own.
“Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about 14 months old,” the South Dakota governor writes in a new book, adding that the dog, a female, had an “aggressive personality” and needed to be trained to be used for hunting pheasant….
Noem’s book – No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward – will be published in the US next month. The Guardian obtained a copy.
Like other aspirants to be Trump’s second vice-president who have ventured into print, Noem offers readers a mixture of autobiography, policy prescriptions and political invective aimed at Democrats and other enemies, all of it raw material for speeches on the campaign stump.
She includes her story about the ill-fated Cricket, she says, to illustrate her willingness, in politics as well as in South Dakota life, to do anything “difficult, messy and ugly” if it simply needs to be done.
By taking Cricket on a pheasant hunt with older dogs, Noem says, she hoped to calm the young dog down and begin to teach her how to behave. Unfortunately, Cricket ruined the hunt, going “out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life”.
I’m not going to post the description of Noem killing an innocent puppy and a goat that was getting on her nerves. Read it at the link, if you think you can handle it. After the two murders, Noem realizes that a construction crew as been watching as she shot the two animals and tossed their bodies in a “gravel pit.”
The startled workers swiftly got back to work, she writes, only for a school bus to arrive and drop off Noem’s children.
“Kennedy looked around confused,” Noem writes of her daughter, who asked: “Hey, where’s Cricket?”
Noam is a psychopath, along with Trump. She should have been prosecuted for animal cruelty–not to mention the effect on her child.
Noam was heavily criticized on social media all day yesterday. She tried to defend herself–unsuccessfully I would think.
Anjali Huynh at The New York Times:
Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota on Friday defended a story included in her forthcoming biography in which she describes killing a family dog on their farm, to her daughter’s distress — a grisly anecdote that instantly drew criticism from a number of political opponents.
Ms. Noem, a Republican who is widely seen as a contender to be former President Donald J. Trump’s running mate, shared details about shooting the 14-month-old dog, a female wirehaired pointer named Cricket, and an unnamed goat, according to excerpts first reported by The Guardian….
The story drew condemnation on Friday from a swath of the political world, mainly to Ms. Noem’s left, including some anti-Trump Republicans and a number of Democrats. President Biden’s re-election campaign wrote on X that “Trump VP contender Kristi Noem brags about shooting her 14-month-old puppy to death.” And the Democratic National Committee issued a statement describing the passages as “disturbing and horrifying.”
Ms. Noem seized on The Guardian’s article to underscore her rural-America bona fides, promote her book and mock the news media. “We love animals, but tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm,” she wrote Friday on X, adding that her family recently had to “put down” three horses.
Are they in the gravel pit too?
She added that her book would contain “more real, honest, and politically INcorrect stories that’ll have the media gasping.”
Noam is a monster. No wonder she was banned from tribal lands in her own state.
That’s all I have for you today. I hope you all are having a great weekend!
Wednesday Reads
Posted: April 24, 2024 Filed under: "presidential immunity", 2024 presidential Campaign, abortion rights, Corrupt and Political SCOTUS, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, SCOTUS | Tags: Alvin Bragg, David Pecker, gag order, House Speaker Mike Johnson, Judge Juan Merchan, Manhattan hush money trial, National Enquirer, Ted Cruz, Ukraine aid 3 Comments
By Gabriele Münter
Good Morning!!
Yesterday was the second day of Trump’s Manhattan trial for a plot to interfere with the 2016 election by covering up payoffs to extramarital sexual partners and planting fake stories in the National Enquirer.
It was also the second day of testimony by David Pecker, former CEO of American Media, which owned the Enquirer and many other publications. Pecker, Trump, and his lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen orchestrated the fake news operation.
Before the trial resumed, Judge Juan Merchan held a hearing about whether Trump had already violated the terms of his gag order.
A wrap-up of yesterday’s court business at The Washington Post: A secret pact at Trump Tower helped kill bad stories in 2016.
Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign was repeatedly aided by the National Enquirer, which squelched potentially damaging stories about him and pumped out articles pummeling his rivals, the former boss of the supermarket tabloid testified Tuesday during the ex-president’s trial on charges of falsifying business records.
Yesterday, Trump claimed that thousands of his supporters who wanted to protest his trial outside the courthouse were turned away by police. That just didn’t happen, and he’s frustrated about it.
Amanda Marcotte at Salon: Trump keeps begging for a “rally behind MAGA” — but his supporters aren’t showing up to court.
Donald Trump can’t decide how he wants his supporters to feel about the scene outside of the Manhattan courtroom where he’s being tried on 34 felony indictments for election interference and business fraud. He repeatedly argues that the city he travels through in a daily motorcade to his trial is a war zone. “Violent criminals that are murdering people, killing people” are free to “do whatever they want,” he’s falsely claimed, blasting District Attorney Alvin Bragg as “lazy on violent crime” because he’s supposedly too focused on prosecuting Trump.
By Gary Kim
It’s all a lie — crime is way down from the pandemic-related spikes — but it’s one Trump repeats ad nauseam. And it’s constantly reinforced by Fox News, which pushes out a series of misleading stories and images meant to scare their elderly suburbanite audiences into believing that going into the nation’s largest city results in instant murder. Nonetheless, Trump keeps pleading with his followers to run through what they’ve been told is a “bloodbath” in order to, you know, persuade Bragg and presiding Judge Juan Merchan to just give up on this whole trial nonsense.
On Monday, Trump begged his followers on Truth Social to “RALLY BEHIND MAGA” at courthouses, unsubtly suggesting that they model themselves after the mostly imaginary leftist rioters who “scream, shout, sit, block traffic, enter buildings, not get permits, and basically do whatever they want.” When the MAGA hats failed to show, Trump tried to inspire them with a post complaining that it’s “SO UNFAIR!!!” that he doesn’t get throngs of people like the kind seen at the antiwar protest a few miles north at Columbia University. Other than a few scattered people with pro-Trump signs, the mob he longed for never showed. So he took his pleas to the cameras outside the courthouse Tuesday morning:
WordPress won’t let me post the video, but you can see it at the Salon link.
What’s especially funny about all this is that Trump can’t quite admit that his people just aren’t showing up, and keeps on blaming the barricades and the cops. His lies got to the level of childish make-believe on Tuesday afternoon, as he falsely claimed on Truth Social that “Thousands of people were turned away from the Courthouse” while denying that he was “disappointed by the crowds.” Of course, by fantasizing about a massive caravan rallied to his defense, he proved he is not satisfied with reality.
As the New York Times reported, “A day after Trump issued a call for more supporters to gather outside the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse, the number reached its nadir. The number of identifiable Trump fans across the street in Collect Pond Park on Tuesday sank to the mid-single digits, after hovering at about a dozen for a week”
How can this childish man actually have a chance to be POTUS again?
One more article on the Manhattan trial–an opinion piece by Jed Handelsman Shugerman at The New York Times: I Thought the Bragg Case Against Trump Was a Legal Embarrassment. Now I Think It’s a Historic Mistake.
About a year ago, when Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, indicted former President Donald Trump, I was critical of the case and called it an embarrassment. I thought an array of legal problems would and should lead to long delays in federal courts.
After listening to Monday’s opening statement by prosecutors, I still think the Manhattan D.A. has made a historic mistake. Their vague allegation about “a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election” has me more concerned than ever about their unprecedented use of state law and their persistent avoidance of specifying an election crime or a valid theory of fraud.
To recap: Mr. Trump is accused in the case of falsifying business records. Those are misdemeanor charges. To elevate it to a criminal case, Mr. Bragg and his team have pointed to potential violations of federal election law and state tax fraud. They also cite state election law, but state statutory definitions of “public office” seem to limit those statutes to state and local races.
Both the misdemeanor and felony charges require that the defendant made the false record with “intent to defraud.” A year ago, I wondered how entirely internal business records (the daily ledger, pay stubs and invoices) could be the basis of any fraud if they are not shared with anyone outside the business. I suggested that the real fraud was Mr. Trump’s filing an (allegedly) false report to the Federal Election Commission, and only federal prosecutors had jurisdiction over that filing.
A recent conversation with Jeffrey Cohen, a friend, Boston College law professor and former prosecutor, made me think that the case could turn out to be more legitimate than I had originally thought. The reason has to do with those allegedly falsified business records: Most of them were entered in early 2017, generally before Mr. Trump filed his Federal Election Commission report that summer. Mr. Trump may have foreseen an investigation into his campaign, leading to its financial records. Mr. Trump may have falsely recorded these internal records before the F.E.C. filing as consciously part of the same fraud: to create a consistent paper trail and to hide intent to violate federal election laws, or defraud the F.E.C.
In short: It’s not the crime; it’s the cover-up.
Looking at the case in this way might address concerns about state jurisdiction. In this scenario, Mr. Trump arguably intended to deceive state investigators, too. State investigators could find these inconsistencies and alert federal agencies. Prosecutors could argue that New York State agencies have an interest in detecting conspiracies to defraud federal entities; they might also have a plausible answer to significant questions about whether New York State has jurisdiction or whether this stretch of a state business filing law is pre-empted by federal law.
Shugerman didn’t address the fake news operation with the Enquirer.
Henry Woods, El velo de la primera comunión (1893)
In other news, the Senate passed the bill with aid to Ukraine, and Biden will sign it today.
The New York Times: Biden to Sign Aid Package for Ukraine and Israel.
President Biden was set to sign a $95.3 billion package of aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan on Wednesday, reaffirming U.S. support for Kyiv in the fight against Russia’s military assault after months of congressional gridlock put the centerpiece of the White House’s foreign policy in jeopardy.
The Senate voted overwhelmingly to approve the package on Tuesday night, a sign of bipartisan support after increasingly divisive politics raised questions on Capitol Hill and among U.S. allies over whether the United States would continue to back Kyiv. The 79-to-18 vote provided Mr. Biden another legislative accomplishment to point to, even in the face of an obstructionist House.
“Congress has passed my legislation to strengthen our national security and send a message to the world about the power of American leadership: We stand resolutely for democracy and freedom, and against tyranny and oppression,” Mr. Biden said on Tuesday evening, just minutes after the Senate vote.
He said he would sign the bill into law and address the American people on Wednesday “so we can begin sending weapons and equipment to Ukraine this week.”
The White House first sent a request for the security package in October, and officials have bluntly acknowledged that the six-month delay put Ukraine at a disadvantage in its fight against Russia.
“The Russians have slowly but successfully taken more ground from the Ukrainians and pushed them back against their first, second and, in some places, their third line of defense,” John F. Kirby, a spokesman for Mr. Biden’s National Security Council, said on Tuesday on Air Force One. “The short answer is: Yes, there absolutely has been damage in the last several months.”
Arlette Saenz at CNN: How the White House convinced Mike Johnson to back Ukraine aid.
The Senate’s vote on Tuesday to approve new aid for Ukraine capped off six months of public pressure and private overtures by the White House to build support, including the not-insignificant task of winning over House Speaker Mike Johnson.
For months, President Joe Biden and his team pressed the case for additional aid both publicly and privately, leaning into courting Johnson – whose young speakership was under pressure from his right flank – behind the scenes through White House meetings, phone calls and detailed briefings on the battlefield impacts, administration officials said.
Grappling with the leadership dynamics in a House GOP conference increasingly resistant to more aid, Biden directed his team to use every opportunity possible to lay out the consequences of inaction directly to Johnson. That included warnings of what it would mean not just for Ukraine, but also Europe and the US, if Russian President Vladimir Putin were to succeed, administration officials said.
The president specifically urged his team to lean into providing a full intelligence picture of Ukraine’s battlefield situation in their conversations with the speaker and his staff as well as discussing the national security implications for the US, officials said. That push played out over the next six months – starting with a Situation Room briefing one day after Johnson became speaker.
National security adviser Jake Sullivan and Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young briefed the speaker and other key lawmakers on how aid for Ukraine was running out, putting the country’s efforts to fight off Russia in jeopardy. Biden stopped by the meeting and met with Johnson on the side to convey a similar message. Sullivan followed up four days later with a call to Johnson to highlight the measures in place to track aid in Ukraine.
But Johnson quickly made clear aid for Ukraine and Israel would need to be separated – an approach the White House opposed and one that would be tested time and time again in the coming months.
The ordeal ended on Tuesday when the Senate passed the $95 billion foreign aid package, with nearly $61 billion for Ukraine, marking a long-sought foreign policy win for Biden, who has spent the past two years rallying Western support for the war-torn country in its fight against Russia. At the same time, the president has been grappling with his own battle back home to get more aid approved amid resistance from some Republicans. The White House has said he will sign that legislation – which also provides over $26 billion for Israel and humanitarian assistance and more than $8 billion for the Indo-Pacific, including Taiwan – as soon as possible.
Read more details at CNN.
While Trump has been dozing off in court in New York, President Biden has been campaigning, most recently in Florida.
HuffPost: Biden To Florida Voters: Six-Week Abortion Ban Is Trump’s Fault.
President Joe Biden swooped into Florida Tuesday, hoping to parlay the state’s new restrictive abortion law — as well as a ballot initiative that could undo it — into a campaign issue that could give him the state’s trove of electoral votes come November, effectively locking up his reelection.
“There’s one person responsible for this nightmare, and he acknowledges it and he brags about it: Donald Trump,” Biden told a boisterous crowd in a gym at Hillsborough Community College in Tampa.
He attacked Florida’s six-week abortion ban — approved in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade and ending a national right to abortion — and reminded voters that it was the coup-attempting former president’s three appointees to the high court that paved the way.
“It was Donald Trump who ripped away the rights and freedom of women in America,” he said. “We’ll teach Donald Trump and extreme MAGA Republicans a valuable lesson: Don’t mess with the women of America.”
Political consultants from both parties, while skeptical that Biden will actually win Florida, agree that forcing Trump on the defensive in a state he cannot afford to lose and which he only won by three percentage points in 2020 is a smart move.
“I don’t think he’d be in Tampa today if they didn’t see it as good place to make a contrast,” said Steve Schale, who ran former President Barack Obama’s successful Florida campaign operation in both 2008 and 2012. “There’s nothing more valuable, particularly for an incumbent, than a candidate’s time.”
David Hockney, NIchols Canyon, Hollywood HIlls
Just one more story–an op-ed by Melissa Murray and Andrew Weissmann in The New York Times on the Supreme Court’s upcoming hearing on Trump’s claim of “presidential immunity.”
The Supreme Court Has Already Botched the Trump Immunity Case.
The Supreme Court’s decision to hear oral arguments in Donald Trump’s immunity-appeal case on Thursday may appear to advance the rule of law. After all, few, if anyone, thinks that a majority of the court will conclude that a former president is completely immune from federal criminal liability.
But the court’s decision to review the immunity case actually undermines core democratic values.
The Supreme Court often has an institutional interest in cases of presidential power. But the court’s insistence on putting its own stamp on this case — despite the widespread assumption that it will not change the application of immunity to this case and the sluggish pace chosen to hear it — means that it will have needlessly delayed legal accountability for no justifiable reason. Even if the Supreme Court eventually does affirm that no person, not even a president, is above the law and immune from criminal liability, its actions will not amount to a victory for the rule of law and may be corrosive to the democratic values for which the United States should be known.
That is because the court’s delay may have stripped citizens of the criminal justice system’s most effective mechanism for determining disputed facts: a trial before a judge and a jury, where the law and the facts can be weighed and resolved.
It is this forum — and the resolution it provides — that Mr. Trump seeks, at all costs, to avoid. It is not surprising that he loudly proclaims his innocence in the court of public opinion. What is surprising is that the nation’s highest court has interjected itself in a way that facilitates his efforts to avoid a legal reckoning.
Looking at the experience of other countries is instructive. In Brazil, the former president Jair Bolsonaro, after baselessly claiming fraud before an election, was successfully prosecuted in a court and barred from running for office for years. In France, the former president Jacques Chirac was successfully prosecuted for illegal diversion of public funds during his time as mayor of Paris. Likewise, Argentina, Italy, Japan and South Korea have relied on the courts to hold corrupt leaders to account for their misconduct….
Consider India, Bolivia, Hungary and Venezuela, where the erosion of judicial independence of the courts has been accompanied by a rise in all-consuming power for an individual leader.
Within our constitutional system, the U.S. Supreme Court can still act effectively and quickly to preserve the judiciary’s role in a constitutional democracy. If the court is truly concerned about the rule of law and ensuring that these disputed facts are resolved in a trial, it could issue a ruling quickly after the oral argument.
It would then fall to the special counsel Jack Smith and Judge Chutkan to ensure that this case gets to a jury. Obviously, fidelity to due process and careful attention to the rights of the accused are critical. To get to a trial and avoid any further potential delay, Mr. Smith may decide to limit the government’s case to its bare essentials — what is often called the “slim to win” strategy. And Judge Chutkan has already warned Mr. Trump that his pretrial unruly statements with respect to witnesses and others may result in her moving up the start of the trial to protect the judicial process.
Read the rest at the NYT.
That’s it for me today. What do you think? Are there other stories that interest you?
Mostly Monday Reads: Just Another Manic Monday
Posted: April 22, 2024 Filed under: Trump Trials and Tribulations, Ukraine | Tags: @repeat1968, David Pecker, John Buss, Manic Monday, Opening Statements Hush Money Trial, The People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump., Trump Hush Money Case, Trump Reality Show Trials, Trump Trial Public Opinion, Ukraine aid 8 Comments
The Trump Legal Team is prepared to start the Manhattan Election Interference Trial and provide a robust defense against Donald’s continuing offenses. John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Donald’s getting all the attention in the world right now, but is it the kind he really wants? My Saturday Night Last Walk with Temple, the Poland Avenue Greeter, usually means dog biscuits, scratchies, and attention from the locals sitting on the sidewalk outside the local bars. It’s fest season, so we’re filled with tourists. We met the most pleasant young women from Australia, England, and France! The conversation eventually turned to all the ado about Trump, as it ultimately does. We’re worried about you,” they said. “Nous sommes tellement inquiets pour toi.” Happy Earth Day!
These folks come from countries where most of us have family members who fought beside their family members. My Father, John, fought in the skies of England and France; he was named after his Uncle John, who fought in the trenches of France and Belgium. I can say that I’m worried about us, too, as our electoral and judicial systems churn through all the detritus that Donald has put us through.
Timothy O’Brien knows Trump just about as well as anyone. He has written books about him and endured the ordeal of Donald dragging him through the court system. He won. This is his analysis for Bloomberg. Trump’s Trial Is the Reality Show He Never Wanted. he former president faces weeks of challenging witnesses and tawdry stories.”
Prosecutors and defense attorneys will make opening statements today in a criminal fraud trial in New York that Donald Trump has tried mightily, and unsuccessfully, to delay.
He continuously savaged Juan Merchan, the judge presiding over the trial, and belittled the charges he faces. He mocked the jury selection process that consumed the case’s first week, and, when awake, appeared so determined to rattle prospective jurors that Merchan was forced to remind Trump that he wouldn’t “have any jurors intimidated in this courtroom.”
Trump’s allies at Fox News and on right-wing social media platforms put the court and jurors in their crosshairs as well. “This isn’t the pursuit of justice, it’s a political persecution that is tearing our country apart,” noted Vivek Ramaswamy, floating atop the flotsam of his failed presidential bid. Elon Musk, fashioning himself as a legal scholar, concurred. He told the 181.5 million people who follow him on X, the social media platform he owns, that “this case is obviously a corruption of the law.”
Jurors felt the heat. Some dropped out, saying they feared for their well-being. That’s a phenomenon usually confined in the US to mob or terrorism prosecutions, but in an era when a former president glowingly compares himself to “the great gangster” Al Capone, here we are. Still, scores of jurors were reviewed and by Friday 12 of them, along with six potential alternates, had been empaneled.
Even then, Trump’s lawyers took a final long shot. They asked a New York appellate court to delay the trial and change the venue because they felt that jury selection seemed rushed. The appellate court swatted down that effort in less than an hour. And now, with a jury seated, the fireworks start. Witnesses will testify, many of them well-known figures from Trumplandia. Trump himself may or may not take the stand.
Trump is veering from rage to petulance, and from slumber to intimidation, in the courtroom because he’s the star of a lurid Manhattan reality show he isn’t producing or directing. He doesn’t control the narrative and others are writing the scripts. And some of the scripts say nasty things about him, his sex life, his bookkeeping and his attempts to bury stories that might have derailed his 2016 presidential campaign.
A televised trial would show us much more about Trump than the sketch artists and people in the room where it happens can explain. Also, we know that televising that trial would put a lot of folks in danger, too. I’ve already seen potential jurors cower at the thought of Trump’s crazed cult and its obsession with guns and violence. I hope their stories are having an impact. A lot of our closest friends around the world are worried about us. We are concerned about us.
And he’s already asleep again.
Today, we will get transcripts of opening statements. We also saw Judge Marchan’s decisions on what the prosecution may present that could damage the defense case. Yesterday, we learned the first witness will be David Pecker of the National Inquirer. Doesn’t this feel like an ad for a reality show from Bizzaro World?
This is from the Washington Post’s live coverage. It is being continually updated. “Prosecution calls first witness in Trump hush money trial.”
Prosecutors on Monday called their first witness, former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, in Donald Trump’s criminal trial for allegedly falsifying business records to hide a hush money payment during the 2016 presidential election campaign. Pecker allegedly helped broker the payment as part of a “catch and kill” scheme to bury negative stories about Trump while he was running for president. Earlier in the day, the prosecution and defense lawyers delivered opening statements.
Dahlia Lithwick and Anat Shenker-OSorio have an interesting piece up at Slate. “The Trump Trial Is Already Influencing Public Opinion. Pundits are reading these shifts completely wrong—this is exactly the kind of movement that could determine the election.”
Four days in, and with the jury just selected, those in the commentariat class are already ready to offer their closing arguments in Donald Trump’s New York criminal trial. Most of the naysayers are lawyers. Some of them doubt that Trump will be found guilty of even a misdemeanor, much less a felony, for his alleged crime of illegally offering hush money payments to hide an affair he had before the 2016 presidential election. They question the soundness of what they deem a rather novel legal theory—elevating the minor crime of falsifying records into the more serious charge of doing so in furtherance of another crime. Others are just exhausted. Our Slate colleague Richard Hasen, in the L.A. Times, declared, “I have a hard time even mustering a ‘meh.’ ” It’s understandable to feel jaded by what has been a yearslong process, with Trump seeming to evade accountability every time—but dismissing this case is precisely the category error that holds that what lawyers believe about legal verdicts is somehow predictive of political and electoral outcomes.
And it’s not just the lawyers. The pundits are also certain they know how the public will think about a trial that’s barely begun. They’re sure they understand how it will affect a vote that remains 200 days away, and they are bringing in survey data to back up their claims. ABC News thus declared, “The polls suggest that a guilty verdict would be unlikely to have a big influence come November,” citing as evidence the fact that “just 35 percent of independents and 14 percent of Republicans” believe that Trump is guilty in the New York criminal case. As further proof that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s efforts are going to be electorally inconsequential, they go on to reference a Quinnipiac poll showing that only 29 percent of voters would be less likely to support Trump upon a conviction in this criminal trial.
And, sure, all of these are in fact numbers, and they are indeed less than 50 percent, and, yes, we’ve been told many, many times that it takes that plus one to win an election. But this is where so many political analysts have either memory-holed how presidential elections actually work in the U.S. or are demonstrating that motivated cognition is one hell of a drug. Because for Trump to lose this election, it does not require over 50 percent of people to say that this trial would flip their vote. Many people are already absolutely determined not to vote for the criminal defendant. As in 2016 and 2020, the 2024 election will come down to margins of 1 or 2 percentage points in just six states. In this game of winner takes all, even by a hair, dropping “only” 9 percent of your base upon a Bragg conviction—as the most Trump-favorable poll testing the stakes of this case reports—means you would lose the election.
Thus, while it is absolutely the case that 36 percent of independents saying that a guilty verdict would move them away from Trump is less than the 44 percent saying it wouldn’t, when your vote total is presently neck and neck and electoral precedent says it will come down to the wire, you cannot afford to lose anyone, let alone over a third of the gettable voters. That 36 percent matters greatly.
And so, those who are dismissing the electoral consequences of this criminal trial by declaring that events in Manhattan over the next few weeks will merely animate Trump’s base—a base that will see this trial as yet more proof of the Deep State’s (™) persecution of their Lord—are also demonstrating a fundamental misunderstanding of electoral math. You cannot mobilize the voters who are already absolutely voting for Trump to any greater heights. No matter how rabid their fury, and how bottomless their sense of shared grievance, they still get only one vote each—at least until they figure out how to commit the voter fraud they love to decry on a broader scale. The rank and file in the tank for MAGA cannot become more impactful.
Tom Toles Editorial Cartoon
Politico’s Erico Orden reports on the opening statements by the Defense. “Trump’s lawyer kicks off his opening statement to the jury with four words: ‘President Trump is innocent.’ And he said he’ll be referring to his client as “President Trump” because “he earned it.” Does this reek of white male entitlement, or is it just me?
Trump lawyer Todd Blanche began his opening statement with these words: “President Trump is innocent. President Trump did not commit any crimes,” he said, speaking slowly. “The Manhattan district attorney’s office should never have brought this case.”
Blanche told jurors that he and others would refer to Trump as “President Trump” because he “earned it.”
“We will call him President Trump out of respect for the office that he held,” Blanche said.
Blanche continued: “He’s not just our former president. He’s not just Donald Trump that you’ve seen on TV…he’s also a man, he’s a husband, he’s a father. He’s a person, just like you and just like me.”
As he spoke, Trump turned his body slightly in the direction of the jury box, the first time he has done so since the jurors entered the courtroom.
The People call Pecker. John Buss, @repeat1968
The New York Times reports this in its Live Updates. ” prosecutors Allege’ Criminal Conspiracy’ as Trump’s Trial Opens. David Pecker, the longtime publisher of The National Enquirer, will continue testifying Tuesday about what prosecutors say was a plot to cover up a sex scandal involving Donald J. Trump. The former president is charged with falsifying business records.”
I will try to keep an eye out to post the transcripts when they become available later today.
I would like to mention the vote in the House to provide continued support to Ukraine. This is from Reuters. “US House advances $95 billion Ukraine-Israel package toward Saturday vote’.”
The U.S. House of Representatives advanced a $95 billion legislative package on Friday providing aid to Ukraine, Israel and the Indo-Pacific in a broad bipartisan vote, overcoming hardline Republican opposition that had held it up for months.
Friday’s procedural vote, which passed 316-94 with more support from Democrats than the Republicans who hold a narrow majority, advanced a package similar to a measure that passed the Democratic-majority Senate in February.
Democratic President Joe Biden, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell and top House Democrat Hakeem Jeffries had been pushing for a House vote since then. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson had held off in the face of opposition from a small but vocal segment of his party.
In addition to the aid for allies, the package includes a provision to transfer frozen Russian assets to Ukraine, and sanctions targeting Hamas and Iran and to force China’s ByteDance to sell social media platform TikTok or face a ban in the U.S.
The legislation provides more than $95 billion in security assistance, including $9.1 billion for humanitarian aid, which Democrats had demanded.
If the House passes the measure, as expected, the Senate will need to follow suit to send it to Biden to sign into law.
Schumer on Friday told senators to be prepared to come back over the weekend if needed.
Wow. What a Newsday! I promise to try to keep up with some updates!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Lazy Caturday Reads: Crazy is Our Daily Reality Now
Posted: February 9, 2019 Filed under: Afternoon Reads, Foreign Affairs, U.S. Politics | Tags: AMI, but her emails, cats, David Pecker, Donald Trump, Jamal Kashoggi, Jeff Bezos, John Dingell, Matt Whitaker, Saudi Arabia, The National Enquirer, women running for president 25 CommentsGood Afternoon!!
Paul Newman and his Burmese caat
There are four Democratic women running for president and the media is working overtime to take them all down. Meanwhile, elderly white males Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders get kid glove treatment.
Let me see if I can get this straight: Elizabeth Warren believed her family when they told her she had a Native American ancestor. Kamala Harris was a prosecutor (horrors!), she dated an older black man but married a white man. Amy Klobuchar is mean to her staff. Kirsten Gillibrand is “too transparently opportunistic.”
Each one of these women has now been assigned a “her emails” story that will dominate her campaign if reporters are successful. But two elderly white men with problematic political records and a younger man with few qualifications (Beto O’Rourke) are treated as viable candidates.
Sigh . . . Will I live to see a woman president? I’m still hoping.
In other news, Trump had his physical and surprise! He’s in perfect health!
The Washington Post: Trump’s doctor says he is in ‘very good health’ after exam by 11 specialists.
President Trump is “in very good health” and is expected to remain healthy for “the duration of his Presidency, and beyond,” the president’s doctor reported Friday after a physical exam that lasted nearly four hours and included 11 specialists.
Carole Lombard with black cat
The White House did not release details of the exam at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and did not say whether more details would be released.
Trump was seen by a “panel of 11 different board certified specialists,” Sean P. Conley wrote in a brief memorandum released by the White House.
The memo did not include the disciplines of any of the specialists. Typically, a physical exam includes checks of height, weight, blood pressure and other standard measures. Trump said last year that he takes a statin drug to manage his cholesterol.
Trump did not undergo any procedures requiring sedation or anesthesia, Conley reported.
I wonder if he is still 6’3 and 239 pounds? The doctor doesn’t say. Maybe his height increased again–so rare for a 72 year old man, but possible for a wannabe dictator.
Let’s see, what else is happening?
The New York Times: Trump Defies Congressional Deadline on Khashoggi Report.
President Trump refused to provide Congress a report on Friday determining who killed the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, defying a demand by lawmakers intent on establishing whether the crown prince of Saudi Arabia was behind the grisly assassination.
Steve McQueen and friend
Mr. Trump effectively bypassed a deadline set by law as his administration argued that Congress could not impose its will on the president. Critics charged that he was seeking to cover up Saudi complicity in the death of Mr. Khashoggi, an American resident and a columnist for The Washington Post.
“Consistent with the previous administration’s position and the constitutional separation of powers, the president maintains his discretion to decline to act on congressional committee requests when appropriate,” the Trump administration said in a statement. The statement said the administration had taken action against the killers and would consult with Congress.
But Democrats said Mr. Trump was violating a law known as the Magnitsky Act. It required him to respond 120 days after a request submitted in the fall by committee leaders — including Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee and then the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — a period that expired Friday.
The illegitimate “president” of the U.S. is protecting a foreign despot who ordered the brutal murder of a Washington Post journalist. And there are suggestions that the “president” used Saudi Arabia and his pals at The National Enquirer to get revenge on Jeff Bezos, who owns the Post.
CNN: Bezos flags ‘Saudi angle’ in alleged AMI extortion attempt.
Jeff Bezos’ stunning accusation that the National Enquirer tried to blackmail him mentioned the close ties between the paper’s publisher, David Pecker, and President Donald Trump — and a second, less well-known connection.
Lucille Ball with cat
Bezos flagged the link between the New York tabloid’s parent company, American Media, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, returning to it several times.
While Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir denied any connection between his country and AMI to CNN, Bezos said in his Thursday statement that the link between the Kingdom and the media company is not yet fully understood. He carefully laid out a web of connections.
The trigger for Bezos’ post was his decision to hire a respected investigator to find out how texts to his girlfriend were obtained and published by the National Enquirer — and to determine why the paper and Pecker, the AMI chairman, had made him a target.
“Several days ago, an AMI leader advised us that Mr. Pecker is ‘apoplectic’ about our investigation,” Bezos wrote. “For reasons still to be better understood, the Saudi angle seems to hit a particularly sensitive nerve,” he continued.
A couple of articles on the National Enquier story to check out:
The Washington Post: Federal prosecutors reviewing Bezos’s extortion claim against National Enquirer, sources say.
The Daily Beast: Private Eyes Detail Inner Workings of National Enquirer ‘Blackmail’ Machine.
Marlon Brando and his cat
The illegitimate “president’s” fake attorney general made an ass of himself in front of the Congressional committee and the world yesterday and the “president” is very pleased. Natasha Bertrand at The Atlantic: Matthew Whitaker Plays to an Audience of One.
It took about five minutes of questioning for the acting attorney general to provoke gasps and jeers in the congressional hearing room. “Your five minutes are up,” Matthew Whitaker, an ex-U.S. Attorney-turned toilet salesman, told the House Judiciary Committee’s Democratic chairman Jerry Nadler. Nadler cracked a smile, but from that point on the rules of engagement seemed clear: Whitaker, just days remaining in his legally dubious role as the interim head of the Justice Department, appeared to be playing to an audience of one…..
Despite the lingering questions about his resume and suspicions about why he was appointed over Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who would have been Sessions’s natural replacement, Whitaker presented himself to Nadler, a 13-term congressman, with the same aloofness and disdain for tradition that often seems typical of the Trump White House. And that may have been on purpose. Whitaker, whose tenure ends when Bill Barr is confirmed as attorney general next week, will need a new job. He has reportedly been considered for the role of Trump’s chief of staff. And though he testified under oath that he had “not interfered in any way with the special counsel’s investigation,” he repeatedly declined to contradict Trump’s claims that Mueller is on a “witch hunt.”
Marilyn Monroe
Chuck Rosenberg, a former senior Justice Department official who resigned in 2017, said it would have been “easy” for Whitaker to say that Mueller’s investigation is legitimate, as Barr did during his recent confirmation hearings. “I don’t know how somebody could be that cowardly,” he added. But doing so would have undermined what is arguably his boss’s most important talking point—and that would not have been a good move for Whitaker if he was, in fact, auditioning for his next position.
Instead, Whitaker had a boilerplate response prepared for the myriad of questions posed by Democrats about the Mueller probe: “It would be inappropriate for me to talk about an ongoing investigation,” he said. Democrats, though, found that disingenuous—Whitaker had discussed the probe publicly earlier this month, going as far as to speculate that it would be wrapping up soon.
Read the rest at The Atlantic.
Here’s a Trump/Whitaker/Russia scandal that is new to me. Raw Story:
Taking to Twitter on Friday night, Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D) hinted that there will be an investigation into a donor who gifted the Judicial Network with $18 million to steal the Supreme Court seat belonging to Merrick Garland.
As part of his observations on the Matt Whitaker hearing where he was confronted about a mysterious $1.2 million donation that funded his salary, Whitehouse said Democrats shouldn’t stop there.
Meryl Streep
‘Whitaker did political hit work for a front group called FACT that does not reveal its donors. Today he admitted that its donor was Donors Trust, an entity that hides the identity of right-wing donors. That means the unknown real donor hid behind two entities,” Whitehouse tweeted….
Whitehouse then put conservatives on notice that he expects an investigation into the dark money that was used to fund a campaign to keep Judge Merrick Garland from even getting a hearing — only to see his seat go to conservative Neil Gorsuch after Donald Trump was elected.
I found this on Twitter.
Could this be true? I don’t know, but I hope Whitehouse finds out. At this point, nothing about Trump, Republicans, and Russia would surprise me.
I’ll end with something more hopeful from The New York Times: John Dingell: My last words for America.
John D. Dingell, a Michigan Democrat who served in the U.S. House from 1955 to 2015, was the longest-serving member of Congress in American history. He dictated these reflections to his wife, Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), at their home in Dearborn, on Feb. 7, the day he died.
Mary Tyler Moore
One of the advantages to knowing that your demise is imminent, and that reports of it will not be greatly exaggerated, is that you have a few moments to compose some parting thoughts.
In our modern political age, the presidential bully pulpit seems dedicated to sowing division and denigrating, often in the most irrelevant and infantile personal terms, the political opposition.
And much as I have found Twitter to be a useful means of expression, some occasions merit more than 280 characters.
My personal and political character was formed in a different era that was kinder, if not necessarily gentler. We observed modicums of respect even as we fought, often bitterly and savagely, over issues that were literally life and death to a degree that — fortunately – we see much less of today.
Click on the link to read Dingell’s final thoughts. How amazing that he chose to speak out publicly from his deathbed. He was a true public servant.
That’s all I have for today. I hope you all enjoy the weekend in spite of the insanity that surrounds us.
Lazy Saturday Reads: What Does the Allen Weisselberg Immunity Deal Mean?
Posted: August 25, 2018 Filed under: Afternoon Reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Allen Weisselberg, David Pecker, Donald Trump, Fox News, Karen McDougal, Michael Cohen, Rudy Giuliani, use immunity 14 Comments
Summer Afternoon (Tea in the Garden), Théo van Rysselberghe
Good Afternoon!!
This has been a disastrous week for Trump. The Guardian summarizes: Trump’s terrible week: stunning news and whispers of impeachment.
…even by the standards of the Trump universe, this week has been a blur. And at its heart was a single, devastating hour on Tuesday 21 August that effectively turned the president of the United States into an unindicted co-conspirator in a federal crime….
…first, there was Rudy Giuliani. Trump’s lawyer, the former New York mayor, set the tone last Sunday with an Orwellian comment on the NBC network’s Meet the Press. Asked whether the president would give his version of events in testimony to Robert Mueller, the special counsel who is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, Giuliani warned of a perjury trap and said: “Truth isn’t truth.”
Monday passed with just an embarrassing White House event to celebrate ICE during which Trump
…said that a border patrol agent, who is Latino, “speaks perfect English” as he beckoned him to the stage. He also misstated the acronym for US Customs and Border Protection at least eight times, referring to it as “CBC”, as in Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
On Tuesday, the shit really hit the fan.
But then came, to use primary election parlance, Super Tuesday. At around 4.30pm, in courtrooms 200 miles apart, a pair of Trump associates delivered a one-two punch that stunned the White House and revived whispers of impeachment.
In New York, Trump’s longtime lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen implicated the president in a crime to influence the 2016 presidential election. Pleading guilty to dodging taxes and campaign finance violations, he alleged that Trump directed him to pay hush money to prevent two women – a Playboy model and pornographic actor – speaking out about extramarital affairs.
In Alexandria, Virginia, Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, was found guilty of eight tax and bank fraud charges and could now spend the rest of his life behind bars – unless Trump chooses to pardon him.
On Wednesday morning, Fox aired Trump’s interview in which he claimed that the campaign finance violations Cohen had pleaded guilty to were not crimes and that it should be illegal for people accused of crimes to turn states evidence in order to reduce their sentences. Then on Wednesday night he watched Tucker Carlson’s show.
There he saw a spurious Tucker Carlson report pushing a white nationalist conspiracy theory that white farmers in South Africa are being persecuted and murdered in Zimbabwe-style land grabs. Trump tweeted his outrage and promised to consult the state department, whose own human rights report on South Africa had made no mention of the issue.
It was one more white grievance dog whistle to add to all the rest. The South African government issued a swift rebuke and summoned US officials. Patrick Gaspard, the former US ambassador to South Africa, described the intervention as “astounding and deeply disturbing”. He said: “I can draw a line from the irresponsible statements he made in the wake of the violence in Charlottesville and him lifting up tropes from white nationalists in South Africa.”
On Thursday,
It emerged that David Pecker, chairman of American Media Inc, which owns the pro-Trump National Enquirer, had been granted immunity to provide information about Cohen and Trump’s involvement with payments to the two women who allege sexual affairs. The Associated Press added fuel to the fire by reporting thatthe Enquirer kept such secrets locked in a safe, lending it extraordinary power.
That night, the New York Times reported that the Manhattan district attorney’s office was considering pursuing criminal charges against the Trump Organization and two senior company officials in connection with one of the hush money payments.
The coup de grâce came with the news that Allen Weisselberg, the CFO of the Trump Organization had been given immunity to testify against Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen.
Clearly the news about Weisselberg is the most damaging to Trump, but it’s not clear exactly kind of immunity the long-time “financial gatekeeper” has. According the The New York Times, it’s limited to the case against Cohen .
The person briefed on the deal said that it was narrow in scope, protecting Mr. Weisselberg from self-incrimination in sharing information with prosecutors about Mr. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer, who pleaded guilty on Tuesday to tax and campaign finance charges. The latter charges stemmed from payments during the campaign to two women who said they had affairs with Mr. Trump. It was not, the person said, a blanket immunity extending beyond the information he shared, and Mr. Weisselberg remains in his job at the Trump Organization.
Allen Weisselberg
Mr. Weisselberg figured into the charges filed against Mr. Cohen this week, having facilitated the processing of what prosecutors described as “sham invoices” at the Trump Organization, through which Mr. Cohen was reimbursed for the money he had paid to quiet one of the women alleging an affair with Mr. Trump, the pornographic film actress Stephanie Clifford.
It sounds like it’s use immunity, which protects Weisselberg from being prosecuted based on the specific information he provided about the hush money deals. It’s likely that Weisselberg indicated he would take the fifth and prosecutors used immunity to force him to talk. Weisselberg could still be charged with a crime if investigators find independent evidence that he was involved in criminal activities. If he’s eventually charged with a crime, Weisselberg might agree to cooperate fully with prosecutors, but so far that doesn’t seem to be happening.
Nevertheless, the fact that prosecutors have gotten testimony from the man who supposedly “knows where the bodies are buried” in the Trump Organization is huge. And some knowledgeable writers are claiming Weisselberg has agreed to cooperate fully and are speculating about what he could reveal about Trump.
On Twitter, Renato Mariotti says he would be surprised if Weisselberg only got use immunity.
Obviously he knows a hell of a lot more than I do.
Luppe B. Luppen (AKA @NYCsouthpaw) and Hunter Walker at Yahoo News: For Trump, Allen Weisselberg may be the man who knew too much.
Prosecutors investigating Trump’s inner circle reportedly now reportedly have a limited deal with Weisselberg, who has provided testimony against former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. If his cooperation expanded, it could play a crucial role in multiple ongoing investigations.
According to the Wall Street Journal, federal prosecutors granted immunity to Weisselberg in exchange for information about payments to Cohen, which were made to two women during the 2016 presidential campaign in order to suppress their stories of alleged affairs with Trump….
The Associated Press subsequently reported that the immunity deal was “restricted to Weisselberg’s grand jury testimony last month in the Cohen case.”
What could Weisselberg reveal if he were forced to cooperate fully?
If Weisselberg decided to fully open his kimono and reveal all he knows, the federal investigation in the Southern District of New York would be the most obvious potential beneficiary. However, in some ways, the nature of that office’s interest in Trump is the most mysterious. As of Friday afternoon, it is not known what other subjects that federal investigation is pursuing. If Trump Organization executives, or even the president, are in its cross hairs, then Weisselberg could offer key insights.
Special counsel Mueller’s investigation, headquartered in Washington, D.C., is another potential beneficiary. For Mueller’s investigators, Weisselberg could detail the nature and extent of the financing the Trump Organization has received from sources connected to Russia. He could also offer them insight into any investments or potential investments Trump has made either in Russia or with Russian partners. A spokesperson for the special counsel’s office declined to comment for this story.
Weisselberg could also potentially be a valuable material witness in the New York attorney general’s state-level investigation into President Trump’s charitable foundation. In June, New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood filed a lawsuit against the Trump Foundation alleging a “pattern of illegal conduct,” including “willful self-dealing.” Weisselberg has long been the treasurer of the Trump Foundation. In preparation for its lawsuit, the attorney general’s office conducted a lengthy interview with Weisselberg and obtained his emails. The investigators allege that Weisselberg collaborated with Trump and campaign officials in advance of the 2016 Iowa primary to use the charity’s funds to benefit the campaign.
At The New Yorker, the very knowledgeable Adam Davidson has more:
As the C.F.O., Weisselberg tracked the money that came into the Trump Organization and the money that went out of it, former employees told me. I often found myself wondering what the Weisselberg part of the operation looked like. (I called and e-mailed him a few times, but, not surprisingly, never heard back.) Some told me he had a couple of bookkeepers, but that he personally handled most of the paperwork. Weisselberg knew who was paying or lending money to Trump, and he knew to whom Trump was giving money. When Trump became President, he placed his business interests in a revocable trust overseen by his son Donald Trump, Jr., and Weisselberg….
Trump with his wife, daughter, Karen Mcdougal (far right) and other playboy models.
This summer…Weisselberg’s role in the organization came into sharper focus. In a recording that Michael Cohen made of a conversation he had with Donald Trump about a payment to keep secret an affair, Cohen described setting up a shell company to pay hush money during the 2016 campaign to Karen McDougal, a woman who claimed to have had an affair with Trump. This week, Cohen pleaded guilty to violating campaign-finance laws, in part by setting up this secretive payment. He said that he knew at the time that it was illegal to secretly make a payment for campaign-related activity, but he did so anyway at Trump’s direction. Strikingly, Cohen makes it clear on the tape that Weisselberg also knew about the shell company and payment. “I’ve spoken to Allen Weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up,” Cohen explains to Trump.
It is difficult to hear the tape and not wonder how Weisselberg developed this particular expertise and whether he had deployed it before.
Here’s what Davidson has to say about Weisselberg’s immunity deal:
The Journal story and other news coverage suggest that Weisselberg has narrow immunity, related, solely, to the payments that Michael Cohen made to silence two women with whom Trump had affairs. With evidence of that crime in hand, prosecutors can subpoena other records from the company. If they have a reasonable basis to believe another crime has been committed, they can ask Weisselberg about it. Weisselberg, fearing jail time himself, could broaden his coöperation. The fact that Weisselberg has “flipped”— and may flip further—could shift the calculus of other figures in the Trump orbit as well. Weisselberg is a big fish—perhaps the biggest fish of all. Fearing that Weisselberg might implicate them in a crime, any cronies, dealmakers, attorneys, and others who might want to exchange information for leniency from prosecutors, will now do so.
If you’re interested in what kinds of crimes Weisselberg might know about, I’d suggest reading the entire article as well as Davidson’s other New Yorker pieces about Trump’s business dealings.
What else is happening? What stories have you been following?
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