Finally Friday Reads: Is it possible to be Overwhelmed and Underwhelmed at the same time?

Posted: February 16, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , , | 5 Comments

“Republicans, any minute now… ” John Buss @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

I’ve been blogging long enough to remember Fridays as a quiet news day.  We’re facing President’s Day on Monday. We can’t talk about Presidents these days without the overwhelming need for lawyers. This is crazy. I feel like I’m watching a TV Lawyer Drama.  My mother loved them, so I remember everyone from Perry Mason to the Law and Order series.  Real-life court drama is far whackier than I ever thought.  Just think, I was called for jury duty this month. I can think of a few states that are probably running out of jurors by now.

I’m watching the Fulton County District Attorney’s father testifying why Black Americans keep cash on hand.  He’s retelling a story about the time he had a Fellowship at Harvard, and a restaurant nearby would not take any of his credit cards. The store even displayed an AmEx sign, but they would not take his. This happened when Fanni was 3. This is another story from Black America that Wipipo must see.

I’m not sure you watched her yesterday, but she left her accusers looking pretty bad. This is from Talking Points Memo. “Fani Willis Endures Disrespect, Racist Tropes, And Public Humiliation.”  It’s written by David Kurtz.

The smoldering confrontation in an Atlanta courtroom between District Attorney Fani Willis and the coterie of Trump co-defendants had so many layers of gender, race, and power dynamics that it felt like a theatrical production in which the playwright got a little too exuberant and ended up with an over-the-top script.

Any playwright would die for Willis’ meme-a-minute dialogue, throwing off lines so memorable and original that it was hard to keep up:

“A man is not a plan.”

“I’m not going to emasculate a black man.” (Oh, but she did.)

“I’m not a hand holder.”

The hearing was ostensibly about whether her romantic relationship with the special prosecutor she hired to manage the RICO election interference case was disqualifying. But that was a thin veil over the roiling cauldron of disrespect, racist tropes, and public humiliation that the defendants were indulging in.

Willis came in red hot, literally running from her office to the courtroom when it was her time to testify. She took over the room. She raised and waived objections from the witness chair. She refused to be led down primrose paths by defense counsel. She talked over everyone: defense counsel, the judge, and her own team. I couldn’t help but think that Trump himself would secretly admire her command and bravura.

But it wasn’t the performative high dudgeon that Bill Clinton patented and every politican since has doubled down with. It was the seething, barely controlled anger of a Black woman put in a position none of her white male counterparts have had to endure, at the hands of a criminal defendant no less. White prosecutors have used the power of the law to torment Black people for centuries, but a Black woman becomes prosecutor and finds herself tormented by white criminal defendants.

The author concludes thusly.

Most of the news coverage elided the racial and gender power dynamics at play. But Black people recognize this modern day spectacle of demeaning and dehumanizing treatment: Willis’ personal life scrutinized, her sex life exposed to public ridicule, her ways of handling money and relationships treated not as a difference of culture or social class but as unethical and disqualifying. And racists recognize it, too! Fox News was beside itself with the spectacle. To take one example, actually just one word: “pedigree.”

I think that when young women see this, they will have their Anita Hill Moment.  We still have a long way to go before women, and black women, in particular, are not singled out for things that white men basically do all the time. It’s only a problem when anyone else does it.

All of this is part and parcel of the Legal Clowns around Trump and his criminal and insurrectionist cronies. We all have to watch people get sullied so that Donald Trump looks like he’s not alone with his inappropriate, criminal, and traitorous behaviors. As I said, yesterday was a display of  Law and Republican Disorder. Hunter Biden should consider a large number of civil suits over this one.  The headline and story are from the AP. “FBI informant charged with lying about Joe and Hunter Biden’s ties to Ukrainian energy company.  This guy was the center of attention for right-wing media for weeks and months. Sean Hannity considered his testimony to be the smoking that would lead to the impeachment of Joe.  Well, their guy’s a bigger liar than Trump, and he’s in trouble.

An FBI informant has been charged with fabricating a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme involving President Joe Biden, his son Hunter and a Ukrainian energy company, a claim that is central to the Republican impeachment inquiry in Congress.

Alexander Smirnov falsely reported to the FBI in June 2020 that executives associated with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid Hunter and Joe Biden $5 million each in 2015 or 2016, prosecutors said in an indictment. Smirnov told his handler that an executive claimed to have hired Hunter Biden to “protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems,” according to court documents.

Prosecutors say Smirnov in fact had only routine business dealings with the company in 2017 and made the bribery allegations after he “expressed bias” against Joe Biden while he was a presidential candidate.

Smirnov, 43, appeared in court in Las Vegas briefly Thursday after being charged with making a false statement and creating a false and fictitious record. He did not enter a plea. The judge ordered the courtroom cleared after federal public defender Margaret Wightman Lambrose requested a closed hearing for arguments about sealing court documents. She declined to comment on the case.

This headline from NBC explains the Trump Legal Team’s decision to not take his residential immunity charges to the Supreme Court last night.  I guess he can delay things more, but here’s the analysis by Lawrence Hurley. “Trump opts against Supreme Court appeal on civil immunity claim over Jan. 6 lawsuits.  The decision not to seek high court review means cases brought against Trump over Jan. 6 can move forward in district court, although he can still mount an immunity defense.”  In other words, we still get to hear his whiny, irritating voice say they took A-WAY my prezidental immunity.

Lawsuits seeking to hold Donald Trump personally accountable for his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol can move forward after the former president chose not to take his broad immunity claim to the Supreme Court.

Trump had a Thursday deadline to file a petition at the Supreme Court contesting an appeals court decision from December that rejected his immunity arguments, but he did not do so.

The appeals court made it clear that Trump could still claim immunity later in the proceedings in three cases brought by Capitol Police officers and members of Congress.

“President Trump will continue to fight for presidential immunity all across the spectrum,” said Steven Cheung, a Trump spokesman.

The civil lawsuits against Trump are separate from the criminal case against him that also arose from Jan. 6. On Monday, Trump asked the justices to put that case on hold on immunity grounds.

Trump’s lawyers argued that any actions he took on Jan. 6 fall under the scope of his responsibilities as president, thereby granting him immunity from civil liability. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia rejected that argument, ruling that Trump was acting in his role as a political candidate running for office, not as president.

We’re expecting today’s ruling on the civil Fraud case in New York State’s District Court.  This is from The Guardian. “Ruling expected in Donald Trump’s $370m New York fraud trial. Judge delayed ruling to set fine in trial over Trump’s New York business dealings after late-breaking information came to light.”  Live updates to the site are ongoing.

A judge is expected to rule on whether Donald Trump should pay a $370m fine in his New York fraud trial and face a lifetime ban from the New York real estate industry.

The New York attorney general’s office sued Trump for inflating the value of his assets on government financial statements. Trump’s adult sons, Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump, and two former Trump Organization executives, Allen Weisselberg and Jeff McConney, are also defendants in the case.

The New York AG’s office initially asked for $250m in disgorgement, or the amount of money that was wrongfully profited after Trump fudged his net worth. In their written closing arguments in January, prosecutors ended up bumping up their disgorgement figure to $370m.

Prosecutors are also asking the judge, Arthur Engoron, to ban Trump from the New York real estate industry. It’s a similar punishment to that which a New York federal court meted out to “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli after he was found guilty of price-gouging a life-saving drug. Prosecutors in the Trump case cited the Shkreli ruling as an example of what they see as a fitting punishment for Trump.

The fine and a ban would be on top of the punishment Engoron instructed in his September pre-trial ruling, when he ordered the cancellation of Trump’s business licenses. Trump, who has denied any wrongdoing, has appealed that ruling and will undoubtedly appeal a second guilty verdict.

Lara Trump won’t back down as she debuts her latest hit! John Buss @repeat1968

Tick Tock, Mother Fucker!  There are some other related Trump drama/trauma. Headlines include Lara Trump as RNC chair.

I think we all can agree that we’ve just had enough of him and want him to go away no matter what it takes!

Just one last sad note today.  This is from Jim Heintz, writing at the  Associated Press. “Alexei Navalny, the fiercest foe of Russia’s Putin, has died, Russian authorities say.”

Alexei Navalny, who crusaded against official corruption and staged massive anti-Kremlin protests as President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest foe, died Friday in the Arctic penal colony where he was serving a 19-year sentence, Russia’s prison agency said. He was 47.

The stunning news — less than a month before an election that will give Putin another six years in power — brought renewed criticism and outrage directed at the Kremlin leader who has cracked down on all opposition at home.

Putin may have killed him, but Navalny’s memory will live on in the hearts and minds of many.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?