Tuesday Reads: A Tale of Two Judges

Posted: August 8, 2023 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Afternoon Reads, Crime, Donald Trump, just because | Tags: Garcia hearing, grand jury, January 6 case, Judge Aileen Cannon, Judge Tanya Chutkan, protective order, Stanley Woodward, stolen documents case, Walt Nauta | 16 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

As usual, I’m riveted to the coverage of Trump’s criminal cases. It’s not particularly surprising that he plans to follow his usual method of defense: delay, delay, delay. He hopes to delay the trials until after the 2024 election so that if he’s elected, he can dismiss the cases against him or pardon himself.

In Florida, Judge Aileen Cannon seems willing to help Trump slow down the stolen documents case as long as possible.

In DC, Judge Tanya Chutkan is less likely to accept his delay tactics in the January 6 case, but, at the moment, he has succeeded in slowing down the discovery process–probably for a couple of weeks.

Here’s the latest on the two cases.

On August 2, Special Counsel Jack Smith asked Judge Cannon for a Garcia hearing to evaluate a possible conflict of interest involving Walt Nauta’s defense attorney Stanley Woodward. Nauta is a co-defendant with Trump in the stolen documents case. NBC News: Special counsel cites potential conflicts for Mar-a-Lago defense attorney.

The special counsel prosecuting former President Trump for his alleged mishandling of government secrets has asked for a hearing to discuss whether the defense attorney for a co-defendant has a conflict of interest stemming from his multiple clients.

According to a court filing on Wednesday, attorney Stanley Woodward’s current and past clients include three people who could be called to testify against Walt Nauta, Trump’s aide who is charged with conspiring to obstruct the government’s efforts to reclaim classified documents.

Woodward’s clients include two aides who worked for Trump at the White House and into his post-presidency, and a Mar-a-Lago IT director identified as “Trump Employee 4” in the updated indictment. The Washington, D.C.-based lawyer also represents at least seven other people who have been questioned by prosecutors in the case. He declined to comment when reached by NBC News.

Trump’s Save America PAC has spent $20 million on legal fees in the first half of this year, according to FEC filings. Woodward’s firm was paid more than $200,000 in the first six months of the year.

In defending Nauta, Woodward may need to cross-examine a witness with whom he has had privileged discussions, which raises the risk of an “attorney’s improper use or disclosure of the client’s confidences during the cross-examination,” or “may cause the attorney to pull his punches during cross-examination, perhaps to protect the client’s confidences or ‘to advance the attorney’s own personal interest,’” the motion filed by special counsel Jack Smith’s office argues.

Woodward was previously defending Yuscil Taveras, who has now hired a new attorney and appears to be cooperating with the government.

“Employee 4, who is unnamed in the indictment but was identified by NBC News as Yuscil Taveras, secured a new lawyer in July, and did not waive the conflict, according to the motion. Roughly three weeks later, a grand jury charged Trump, Nauta, and Carlos De Oliveira, a Mar-a-Lago property manager, over their efforts to have Taveras delete Mar-a-Lago surveillance footage.

Prosecutors told Woodward earlier this year that they believed Taveras had information that would incriminate Nauta, and that representing both clients at the same time raised a potential conflict of interest. Woodward said he advised both clients of the government’s position, but that he was unaware of anything the employee could say to incriminate Nauta and did not see a conflict, according to the filing.

Judge Cannon was unconvinced, and instead has revealed the existence of secret grand jury still investigating this case in DC., thus delaying the case for who knows how long.

Perry Stein at The Washington Post: Judge asks prosecutors to justify use of 2 grand juries in Trump documents case.

Judge Aileen M. Cannon on Monday asked federal prosecutors to explain the use of grand juries in Florida and Washington in the classified documents case against Donald Trump even though charges were filed in South Florida.

Cannon, the federal judge in South Florida assigned to the case, posed the question in a court filing Monday and told federal prosecutors to respond by Aug. 22.

“The response shall address the legal propriety of using an out-of-district grand jury proceeding to continue to investigate and/or to seek post-indictment hearings on matters pertinent to the instant indicted matter in this district,” Cannon wrote.

Trump and two aides — Waltine “Walt” Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira — were charged this summer in a 42-count indictment that accuses the former president of improperly retaining 32 classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida residence and private club, and seeking to thwart government attempts to retrieve them….

For many months, Justice Department prosecutors had questioned witnesses in the Florida case before a federal grand jury in Washington. The secret proceedings yielded much of the evidence at the crux of the case. But in May, the grand jury activity appeared to continue at a federal courthouse in Miami. Ultimately, prosecutors filed charges in a West Palm Beach courthouse — a courthouse in the same district as Miami and the area where Mar-a-Lago is located.

Prosecutors said in a court filing last week that they continued to use the grand jury in Washington after they initially charged Trump in June to investigate alleged instances of obstructing the investigation. The focus of the July superseding indictment was on obstruction, alleging that all defendants tried to delete security footage that the government wanted as evidence in the case.

“The grand jury in this district and a grand jury in the District of Columbia continued to investigate further obstructive activity, and a superseding indictment was returned on July 27, 2023,” prosecutors wrote in the filing.

Judge Cannon apparently disapproves, and decided to reveal the information the Special Counsel had given her under seal.

Prosecutors included that revelation in a motion asking the judge to consider holding a hearing to determine whether Nauta’s attorney has too many conflicts of interest to provide his client with adequate legal advice.

The government lawyers said Stanley Woodward — the Nauta attorney — has represented at least seven other clients whom prosecutors have interviewed about Trump’s alleged efforts to keep classified documents in defiance of the government’s demand they be returned. Two of Woodward’s clients could be called as government witnesses in the trial, the filing by the government said.

If that happens, Woodward may need to cross-examine his other clients as part of defending Nauta, said the prosecutors leading the Justice Department investigation.

The requested hearing — known as a Garcia hearing — is fairly common in legal proceedings. At the hearing, prosecutors said Cannon should inform Nauta and the two witnesses, whose names have not been made public, of their legal rights and the potential conflicts their attorney poses. Lawyers are generally required to flag to a judge any potential conflicts of interest they encounter.

Cannon said Nauta’s lawyers are expected to respond to the judge’s question about the two grand jury locations and the prosecutors’ request for the Garcia hearing.

So it’s a normal request, but Cannon is going to drag the process out as long as she can, and, instead of keeping the existence of the secret grand jury under seal, she decided to announce it to the world.

Here’s a longer discussion of Cannon’s behavior by Adam Unikowsky’s Substack legal newsletter: It begins. Today’s order in United States v. Trump does not bode well.

Today [August 7] in the Southern District of Florida’s version of United States v. Trump, Judge Aileen Cannon issued an order denying the Justice Department’s motion to seal and requesting supplemental briefing. While seemingly insignificant, today’s order raises troubling concerns regarding her administration of the case….

Judge Cannon became nationally known in August and September 2022, when, in a civil case brought by Donald Trump, she issued a series of unusual orders blocking the Justice Department from reviewing documents seized at Mar-a-Lago and appointing a special master to oversee the Justice Department’s work. The Eleventh Circuit reversed Judge Cannon’s ruling, holding that the court lacked jurisdiction to interfere with the Justice Department’s review of lawfully-seized documents.

Unikowsky argues that it is important in dealing with Trump’s cases to be scrupulous in following norms. He doesn’t yet see any basis for asking for Judge Cannon to be removed from the case. It isn’t unusual for Judges to have rulings reversed and still continue to preside in the cases. I hope you’ll read the whole post if you’re interested in Unikowsky’s views on the case, but for this post, I’ll just cut to the chase.

The Justice Department’s motion notes: “The Government has advised Mr. Woodward of its intent to file this motion requesting a Garcia hearing and its reasons for doing so. Mr. Woodward has indicated that as a general matter he does not oppose the Court informing his client of the client’s rights or inquiring into potential waivers, but that he will not consent to this motion without seeing it in advance, and he requests the opportunity to respond.” This is a reasonable position for Woodward to take—he can’t possibly object to a hearing intended to safeguard his own client’s constitutional rights, but he wants to see the motion before taking a position.

So, this motion is a hanging curveball for Judge Cannon. It’s obvious how Judge Cannon should respond to this motion. She should wait to hear Woodward’s position on it!

If Woodward agrees a Garcia hearing is warranted, Judge Cannon should hold the hearing to ensure that Nauta’s rights are protected. Maybe there’s some discretionary reason to deny the hearing even if everyone agrees it’s warranted? I can’t think of one, but maybe. But clearly, Judge Cannon should wait until she hears from Woodward before deciding what to do….

Instead, Judge Cannon does something intensely weird. Two things, actually.

First, she denies the Justice Department’s motion to seal.

Second, she requests that Nauta file a response brief to the Justice Department’s motion addressing, among other things, “the legal propriety of using an out-of-district grand jury proceeding to continue to investigate and/or to seek post-indictment hearings on matters pertinent to the instant indicted matter in this district.” She also says Trump and De Oliveira “may, but are not required to” file a brief addressing this issue.

First, the court denies the Justice Department’s motion to seal, and strikes the motion for leave to file under seal, as well as the secret information itself, from the docket.

Here’s the court’s rationale: “The Special Counsel states in conclusory terms that the supplement should be sealed from public view ‘to comport with grand jury secrecy,’ but the motion for leave and the supplement plainly fail to satisfy the burden of establishing a sufficient legal or factual basis to warrant sealing the motion and supplement.”

Seriously?

Grand jury proceedings are supposed to be secret, and the Justice Department is disclosing the identity of grand jury witnesses and the substance of their testimony, so it wants to keep that information secret. That’s not a “legal or factual basis to warrant sealing the motion and supplement”?

There’s a lot more, and it’s pretty useful if you are interested in this case.

The January 6 Case – Judge Tanya Chutkan

I’m sure you’re familiar with what has happened so far. Trump has been threatening Jack Smith, President Biden, the DOJ, and Judge Chutkan on social media and in speeches, even after he was warned not to commit crimes or tamper with witnesses or the jury pool. Smith requested a protective order before turning over discovery to the Trump team. He is concerned–with good reason–that Trump will release secret grand jury material and other evidence to the public so he can try the case in the media.

Here’s the latest.

Kyle Cheney at Politico: Trump objects to strict limits on sharing evidence in election interference case.

Former President Donald Trump argued Monday that he should be allowed to share evidence in his latest criminal case with “volunteer attorneys” and other unpaid advisers as he prepares to defend himself against charges related to his effort to subvert the 2020 election.

“The government cannot preclude the assistance of those individuals, nor should President Trump be required to seek permission from the Court before any such individual assists the defense,” Trump’s attorney John Lauro wrote in a filing that seeks to govern the handling of the mountains of evidence prosecutors have gathered and are preparing to share with Trump’s team.

“Such a limitation or requirement would unduly burden President Trump and impede the efficient preparation of his defense,” Lauro continued.

In a Sunday email between Trump’s lawyers and prosecutors, appended to Trump’s filing, assistant special counsel Thomas Windom raised concerns about Trump’s plan to broaden the group of legal advisers who might be permitted to review evidence in the case, worrying that the language Lauro proposed was “boundless.”

The dispute is one of several between Trump’s legal team and the special counsel over the handling of evidence in the case and how significantly to restrict Trump’s ability to publicly disclose any of the evidence he receives. Prosecutors have proposed a so-called “protective order” that would prohibit Trump or his legal team from publicly sharing any evidence produced by prosecutors. They say that they can’t begin sharing evidence with Trump and his team until a protective order is in place.

The matter now falls to U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, who ordered Lauro to respond to prosecutors’ proposed protective order by Monday at 5 p.m. She may either rule on the matter or seek additional argument at a hearing in the case. Prosecutors are due to propose a trial date by Thursday.

Lauro said the blanket restriction on disclosing any evidence prosecutors provide is draconian and should be narrowed to limit the treatment only of materials deemed “sensitive” — such as those containing personally identifying information, grand jury subpoena returns, sealed search warrant returns and recordings or transcripts of witness interviews.

The government asked the judge to simply grant the protective order, which is usually a routine decision. But instead, she ordered the parties to hash it out in a hearing this week–probably on Friday. Again the upshot is more delay, which is just what Trump wants.

ABC News: Judge orders hearing after Trump’s lawyers say proposed protective order would infringe on Trump’s free speech.

Former President Donald Trump’s legal team says that a protective order proposed by special counsel Jack Smith would infringe on Trump’s right to free speech.

Trump’s attorneys made the argument in their response Monday to the special counsel’s motion for a protective order over the discovery evidence in the case against Trump for allegedly seeking to overturn the 2020 election.

Trump has pleaded not guilty to charges of undertaking a “criminal scheme” to overturn the results of the 2020 election by enlisting a slate of so-called “fake electors” targeting several states; using the Justice Department to conduct “sham election crime investigations”; and trying to enlist the vice president to “alter the election results” — all in an effort to subvert democracy and remain in power.

The former president has denied all wrongdoing and has dismissed the probe as politically motivated.

Monday’s filing argues for narrower limits on the protective order, which Trump’s attorneys say would protect sensitive materials while ensuring Trump’s right to free speech.

“In a trial about First Amendment rights, the government seeks to restrict First Amendment rights,” Trump’s attorneys wrote in their filing. “Worse, it does so against its administration’s primary political opponent, during an election season in which the administration, prominent party members, and media allies have campaigned on the indictment and proliferated its false allegations.”

Of course, the trial is not about First Amendment rights. Trump is charged with three criminal conspiracy counts.

Smith asked the judge for the protective order on Friday, referencing a social media post Trump made Friday afternoon in which he said, “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!”

The proposed protective order submitted by Smith does not seek to bar Trump from commenting on the case in its entirety, but would restrict Trump and his attorneys from disclosing evidence such as materials returned from grand jury subpoenas and testimony from witnesses and other exhibits shown to the grand jury. It does not limit Trump from discussing materials that were already available to the public separate from the government’s investigation.

Smith’s attorneys have said the proposed order is largely modeled after similar protective orders issued in other cases.

But in their filing on Monday, Trump’s attorneys accuse Smith’s team of asking Judge Tanya Chutkan to “assume the role of censor and impose content-based regulations on President Trump’s political speech that would forbid him from publicly discussing or disclosing all non-public documents produced by the government, including both purportedly sensitive materials, and non-sensitive, potentially exculpatory documents.”

This is the crap we are going to have to deal with, folks. None of these trials is going to be quick or easy.

Meanwhile, because of Trump’s threats, Judge Chutkan needs more protection. CNN: Security increases for the judge assigned to Donald Trump’s January 6 criminal case.

Security for the federal judge assigned to oversee the criminal case against former President Donald Trump over his attempts to overturn the 2020 election has been increased in the federal courthouse in Washington, DC.

CNN has observed more security detailed to Judge Tanya Chutkan, and deputy US Marshals discussed security plans for the judge on Monday. The US Marshals Service handles security at the DC District Court and a spokesman for the service said it “take(s) that responsibility very seriously.”

“Ensuring that judges can rule independently and free from harm or intimidation is paramount to the rule of law, and a fundamental mission of the USMS,” spokesperson Drew J. Wade told CNN. “While we do not discuss our specific security measures, we continuously review the measures in place and take appropriate steps to ensure the integrity of the federal judicial process.”

The uptick in security inside the courthouse comes after security measures, including fencing and yellow tape, were taken down following Trump’s arraignment last week. That hearing, where Trump pleaded not guilty, was presided over by a magistrate judge. Chutkan takes the case from there.

Trump has already said he will be asking for Chutkan to recuse herself from the case, writing on social media in all caps: “There is no way I can get a fair trial with the judge ‘assigned’ to the ridiculous freedom of speech/fair elections case.”

So that’s what’s happening in the two federal cases against Trump. It’s going to be a long road, and there will be a lot of stupidity to deal with, but we can get through it together!

Lazy Caturday Reads

Posted: July 22, 2023 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: 2024 presidential Campaign, cat art, caturday, Crime, Donald Trump, Economy, education, Florida, Joe Biden, just because | Tags: Agnes Miller Parker, Arizona, Bidenomics, Brian Kemp, Doug Ducey, Fani Willis, Georgia, Judge Aileen Cannon, Kamala Harris, Mark Meadows, Ron De Santis, slavery, Special Counsel Jack Smith, Trump trial dates, women's liberation, Women's Rights | 12 Comments

Happy Caturday!!

The Uncivilized Cat, 1930, by Agnes Miller Parker

Today I’m highlighting the work of Scottish artist Agnes Miller Parker. She is best known for her wood engravings of animals, often used as book illustrations. She was also a woman’s right activist. “The Uncivilized Cat” was an illustration for the book “Love’s Creation,” by Marie Stopes, published in 1928, the year women won the right to vote in the UK. The the image is filled with symbols of women’s liberation. Read about them at this link.

We are still waiting for the expected indictment of Donald Trump in the January 6 case. Special Counsel Jack Smith is till conducting grand jury interviews in the investigation, so maybe it won’t happen right away–or maybe it will come next week. Meanwhile, there is some Trump legal news.

The Latest on the Trump Investigations

Alan Feuer at The New York Times: Trial in Trump Documents Case Set for May 2024.

The federal judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trump’s prosecution on charges of illegally retaining dozens of classified documents set a trial date on Friday for May 2024, taking a middle position between the government’s request to go to trial in December and Mr. Trump’s desire to push the proceeding until after the 2024 election.

In her order, Judge Aileen M. Cannon said the trial was to be held in her home courthouse in Fort Pierce, Fla., a coastal city two and a half hours north of Miami that will draw its jury pool from several counties that Mr. Trump won handily in his two previous presidential campaigns.

Judge Cannon also laid out a calendar of hearings, throughout the remainder of this year and into next year, including those concerning the handling of the classified material at the heart of the case.

The scheduling order came after a contentious hearing on Tuesday at the federal courthouse in Fort Pierce where prosecutors working for the special counsel, Jack Smith, and lawyers for Mr. Trump sparred over when to hold the trial.

The timing of the proceeding is more important in this case than in most criminal matters because Mr. Trump is now the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination and his legal obligations to be in court will intersect with his campaign schedule.

The date Judge Cannon chose to start the trial — May 20, 2024 — falls after the bulk of the primary contests. But it is less than two months before the start of the Republican National Convention in July and the formal start of the general election season.

Mr. Trump’s advisers have been blunt that winning the presidency is how he hopes to beat the legal charges he is facing, and he has adopted a strategy of delaying the trial, which is expected to take several weeks, for as long as possible.

The Challenge, Agnes Miller Parker, 1934

Analysis by Aaron Blake at The Washington Post: Trump’s trial date conjures GOP’s nightmare scenario.

When the trial date for Donald Trump’s Manhattan hush money case was set for March — during the GOP presidential primary schedule — the former president and leading 2024 Republican candidate shook his head.

The Republican Party as a whole might have that reaction to Trump’s latest trial date.

U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon on Friday set Trump’s Florida classified documents case to begin on May 20, 2024. Cannon wound up more or less splitting the difference between the government’s request to begin in December and Trump’s lawyers’ preference to begin after the 2024 election.

The date could still be pushed back, especially given that Cannon has labeled the case “complex.” But it means we’re currently looking at this for a schedule of Trump’s upcoming trials:

Oct. 2: New York civil fraud trial

Jan. 15: Second E. Jean Carroll civil defamation trial

March 25: Manhattan hush-money trial

May 20: Federal classified documents trial in Florida

That’s a lot of legal issues to face in the heart of a campaign, keeping Trump or at least his lawyers in court for a huge chunk of time he’s supposed to be on the trail. But Trump’s most serious bit of legal jeopardy — at least for now, with potential Jan. 6-related indictments looming federally and in Georgia — won’t fully play out until the end of the primary season.

Nomination contests are often effectively wrapped up by March or April at the latest, with the final contests held in June but generally not consequential to the outcome. Republican National Committee rules effectively require every state to hold its contest by May 31, meaning a two-week classified documents trial would place the meat of the proceedings beyond the window for any GOP voters making their decisions.

More commentary from Bess Levin at Vanity Fair: That Sound You Hear Is Donald Trump Screaming, Crying, and Throwing Up in a Mar-a-Lago Bathroom.

Donald Trump received some no good, extremely bad legal news on Friday, when The Guardian reported that Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney criminally investigating his attempt to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia has “developed evidence to charge a sprawling racketeering indictment next month,” according to people familiar with the matter. Obviously, being charged with racketeering would be exactly as bad as it sounds—and yet somehow, that wasn’t even the worst news the ex-president received today.

Instead, it was likely the decision by Aileen Cannon—a federal judge Trump himself appointed—to set a trial date of May 20, 2024, for Trump to face off with the federal government in the classified-documents case, that had staffers and aides hiding in hallways and coat closets to avoid Trump’s ire (and whatever ketchup bottles he could get his hands on). While the spring date is several months later than prosecutors had requested, it is very much well before the postelection one Team Trump had been angling for in the hopes of putting it off until the ex-president could have won a second term and made all of his legal problems—on the federal level, that is—go away.

Of course, just because Cannon issued a ruling that Trump will undoubtedly be very unhappy about today does not mean she won’t, as many fear, blow up the case in his favor when the trial finally kicks off. (As The Washington Post notes, “In her role, Cannon can have a significant impact on the case, including by ruling on what evidence can be included and deciding on any potential motions challenging the charges.”) On the other hand, the government’s indictment against Trump is said to be extremely strong: After the charges were unveiled last month, former attorney general Bill Barr opined: “I was shocked by the degree of sensitivity of these documents and how many there were, frankly. If even half of it is true, he’s toast.” As one Fox News legal analyst noted, “All the government has to do is stick the landing on one count, and he could have a terminal sentence. We’re talking about crimes that have a 10- or 20-year period as a maximum.” (Trump, along with his alleged co-conspirator, has pleaded not guilty.)

Siamese Cat, 1950, by Agnes Miller Parker

The news about Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis came from Hugo Lowell at The Guardian: Fulton county prosecutors prepare racketeering charges in Trump inquiry.

The Fulton county district attorney investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the state of Georgia has developed evidence to charge a sprawling racketeering indictment next month, according to two people briefed on the matter.

The racketeering statute in Georgia requires prosecutors to show the existence of an “enterprise” – and a pattern of racketeering activity that is predicated on at least two “qualifying” crimes.

In the Trump investigation, the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, has evidence to pursue a racketeering indictment predicated on statutes related to influencing witnesses and computer trespass, the people said.

Willis had previously said she was weighing racketeering charges in her criminal investigation, but the new details about the direction and scope of the case come as prosecutors are expected to seek indictments starting in the first two weeks of August.

The racketeering statute in Georgia is more expansive than its federal counterpart, notably because any attempts to solicit or coerce the qualifying crimes can be included as predicate acts of racketeering activity, even when those crimes cannot be indicted separately.

The specific evidence was not clear, though the charge regarding influencing witnesses could include Trump’s conversations with Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, in which he asked Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 votes, the people said – and thereby implicate Trump.

For the computer trespass charge, where prosecutors would have to show that defendants used a computer or network without authority to interfere with a program or data, that would include the breach of voting machines in Coffee county, the two people said.

The breach of voting machines involved a group of Trump operatives – paid by the then Trump lawyer Sidney Powell – accessing the voting machines at the county’s election office and copying sensitive voting system data.

More details at The Guardian.

Special Counsel Jack Smith is also interested in 2020 election interference in Georgia as well as Arizona. The Hill reports that: DOJ special counsel contacts Kemp, former Arizona governor in Jan. 6 probe: reports.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) has been contacted by the federal special counsel investigating former President Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, Kemp’s office confirmed Friday.

Former Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) was also contacted for the investigation, according to CNN reports.

Special Counsel Jack Smith is investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the election and his actions related to the Jan. 6 insurrection. He served Trump a target letter on Sunday, informing the former president that he is the target of the probe.

By Agnes Miller Parker

The move shows overlap between Smith’s federal investigation and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s investigation into the same conduct in Georgia.

A spokesperson for Kemp’s office confirmed that he had been contacted by Smith, but did not give further details, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

Smith’s probe in Arizona is questioning lawsuits brought by the Trump campaign against the state which alleged that the election was fraudulent. Smith subpoenaed the Arizona Secretary of State’s office earlier this month and subpoenaed state lawmakers in February.

Trump called Ducey multiple times to pressure him to overturn Arizona’s election results. President Biden won Arizona, the first time the state voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1996.

At The Washington Post, some tidbits about Mark Meadows: Before Jan. 6, Mark Meadows joked about Trump’s election claims.

Mark Meadows joked about the baseless claim that large numbers of votes were fraudulently cast in the names of dead people in the days before the then-White House chief of staff participated in a phone call in which then-President Trump alleged there were close to 5,000dead voters in Georgia and urged Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to overturn the 2020 election there.

In a text message that has been scrutinized by federal prosecutors, Meadows wrote to a White House lawyer that his son, Atlanta-area attorney Blake Meadows, had been probing possible fraud and had found only a handful of possible votes cast in dead voters’ names, far short of what Trump was alleging. The lawyer teasingly responded that perhaps Meadows’s son could locate the thousands of votes Trump would need to win the election. The text was described by multiple people familiar with the exchange.

The jocular text message, which has not been previously reported, is one of many exchanges from the time in which Trump aides and other Republican officials expressed deep skepticism or even openly mocked the election claims being made publicly by Trump, according to people familiar with the investigation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the criminal investigation.

Special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading a Justice Department investigation of Trump’s activities in the weeks leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, has focused on exploring whether Trump and his closest advisers understood that claims of fraud in the election were baseless, even as they pressed state officials and others to overturn Biden’s victory and convinced Trump’s millions of supporters that the election had been stolen, people familiar with the probe have said.

The text message is a small part of a broader portrait of Meadows that Smith appears to be assembling as he weighs the actions of not just Trump but a number of his closest advisers, including Meadows.

Ron DeSantis’s Struggles

The New York Times: DeSantis Faces Swell of Criticism Over Florida’s New Standards for Black History.

After an overhaul to Florida’s African American history standards, Gov. Ron DeSantis, the state’s firebrand governor campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination, is facing a barrage of criticism this week from politicians, educators and historians, who called the state’s guidelines a sanitized version of history.

Siamese cats, Agnes Miller Parker

For instance, the standards say that middle schoolers should be instructed that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit” — a portrayal that drew wide rebuke.

In a sign of the divisive battle around education that could infect the 2024 presidential race, Vice President Kamala Harris directed her staffers to immediately plan a trip to Florida to respond, according to one White House official.

“How is it that anyone could suggest that in the midst of these atrocities that there was any benefit to being subjected to this level of dehumanization?” Ms. Harris, the first African American and first Asian American to serve as vice president, said in a speech in Jacksonville on Friday afternoon.

Ahead of her speech, Mr. DeSantis released a statement accusing the Biden administration of mischaracterizing the new standards and being “obsessed with Florida.”

Florida’s new standards land in the middle of a national tug of war on how race and gender should be taught in schools. There have been local skirmishes over banning books, what can be said about race in classrooms and debates over renaming schools that have honored Confederate generals.

Cleve R. Wootson, Jr. at The Washington Post: Harris, on DeSantis’s turf, blasts Florida curriculum on Black history.

Vice President Harris, taking aim at Gov. Ron DeSantis’s “war on woke” on Friday in his home state, blasted Florida politicians for making changes to the public school curriculum that she said amounted to little more than a “purposeful and intentional policy to mislead our children,” especially when it comes to slavery.

Harris never mentioned DeSantis (R) by name, referring only to “extremists” and people who “want to be talked about as American leaders.” But her fiery speech in Jacksonville focused squarely on the policies of the Florida governor and presidential candidate, as well as on the state’s Board of Education and its Republican-controlled legislature.

Florida’s new standards on Black history lay out numerous benchmarks, but one has especially caught critics’ attention — a statement that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” Since the guidelines were approved on Wednesday, many civil rights leaders have denounced the notion that slavery benefited its victims in some ways.

“Come on — adults know what slavery really involved,” Harris said. “It involved rape. It involved torture. It involved taking a baby from their mother. It involved some of the worst examples of depriving people of humanity in our world.”

By Agnes Miller Parker

She added, “How is it that anyone could suggest that in the midst of these atrocities, that there was any benefit to being subjected to this level of dehumanization?”

Since DeSantis announced his bid for the presidency in May, polls have cast him as former president Donald Trump’s top competition for the Republican nomination, at least for now. As DeSantis makes his pitch in early-voting primary states, he has blasted what he calls “woke indoctrination” in schools and said recent legislative changes in Florida could be a model for the rest of the nation.

Harris’s trip to the governor’s home state to rip into his policies could be a pivotal moment both for the Biden campaign, which has generally resisted going after the GOP presidential hopefuls, and for the vice president, who has sometimes seemed to cast about for a resonant issue.

Bidenomics News

It’s difficult to understand why President Biden isn’t more popular. He has really delivered on his promises. What more do voters want? Are people really stupid enough to fall for GOP propaganda about the economy?

Christina Wilke at CNBC: Morgan Stanley credits Bidenomics for ‘much stronger’ than expected GDP growth.

Morgan Stanley is crediting President Joe Biden’s economic policies with driving an unexpected surge in the U.S. economy that is so significant that the bank was forced to make a “sizable upward revision” to its estimates for U.S. gross domestic product.

Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is “driving a boom in large-scale infrastructure,” wrote Ellen Zentner, chief U.S. economist for Morgan Stanley, in a research note released Thursday. In addition to infrastructure, “manufacturing construction has shown broad strength,” she wrote.

As a result of these unexpected swells, Morgan Stanley now projects 1.9% GDP growth for the first half of this year. That’s nearly four times higher than the bank’s previous forecast of 0.5%.

“The economy in the first half of the year is growing much stronger than we had anticipated, putting a more comfortable cushion under our long-held soft landing view,” Zentner wrote.

The analysts also doubled their original estimate for GDP growth in the fourth quarter, to 1.3% from 0.6%. Looking into next year, they raised their forecast for real GDP in 2024 by a tenth of a percent, to 1.4%.

“The narrative behind the numbers tells the story of industrial strength in the U.S,” Zentner wrote.

Morgan Stanley’s revision came at a pivotal time for the Biden White House. The president has spent the summer crisscrossing the country, touting his economic achievements. “Together we are transforming the country, not just through jobs, not just through manufacturing, but also by rebuilding our infrastructure,” Biden said Thursday during a visit to a Philadelphia shipyard.

Wednesday Reads

Posted: July 19, 2023 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: 2024 presidential Campaign, Crime, Donald Trump, just because, morning reads | Tags: Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, Bernie Kerik, Climate change, E. Jean Carroll, Georgia 2020 election video, Israeli antiquities, James Hanson, January 6 case, Judge Aileen Cannon, Mar-a-Lago, Michigan fake electors, Special Counsel Jack Smith, stolen documents case, Trump crimes, Trump target letter | 17 Comments

Good Morning!!

Sea, Dark Sky (2021), by Alice Brasser (Netherlands)

Before I get to all the Trump crime news, I want to highlight this piece at The Guardian about climate change: ‘We are damned fools’: scientist who sounded climate alarm in 80s warns of worse to come, by Oliver Milman.

The world is shifting towards a superheated climate not seen in the past 1m years, prior to human existence, because “we are damned fools” for not acting upon warnings over the climate crisis, according to James Hansen, the US scientist who alerted the world to the greenhouse effect in the 1980s.

Hansen, whose testimony to the US Senate in 1988 is cited as the first high-profile revelation of global heating, warned in a statement with two other scientists that the world was moving towards a “new climate frontier” with temperatures higher than at any point over the past million years, bringing impacts such as stronger storms, heatwaves and droughts.

The world has already warmed by about 1.2C since mass industrialization, causing a 20% chance of having the sort of extreme summer temperatures currently seen in many parts of the northern hemisphere, up from a 1% chance 50 years ago, Hansen said.

“There’s a lot more in the pipeline, unless we reduce the greenhouse gas amounts,” Hansen, who is 82, told the Guardian. “These superstorms are a taste of the storms of my grandchildren. We are headed wittingly into the new reality – we knew it was coming.”

Hansen was a Nasa climate scientist when he warned lawmakers of growing global heating and has since taken part in protests alongside activists to decry the lack of action to reduce planet-heating emissions in the decades since.

He said the record heatwaves that have roiled the US, Europe, China and elsewhere in recent weeks have heightened “a sense of disappointment that we scientists did not communicate more clearly and that we did not elect leaders capable of a more intelligent response”.

“It means we are damned fools,” Hansen said of humanity’s ponderous response to the climate crisis. “We have to taste it to believe it.”

This year looks likely to be the hottest ever recorded globally, with the summer already seeing the hottest June and, possibly, hottest week ever reliably measured. Conversely, 2023 may in time be considered an average or even mild year, as temperatures continue to climb. “Things will get worse before they get better,” Hansen said.

“This does not mean that the extreme heat at a particular place this year will recur and grow each year. Weather fluctuations move things around. But the global average temperature will go up and the climate dice will be more and more loaded, including more extreme events.”

Read the rest at The Guardian.

Now on to the Trump Crimes:

The news that Trump received a target letter from Jack Smith warning him he is about to be indicted in the January 6 case has pushed the stolen documents case in Florida into the background. Judge Cannon can dither about setting a date for the stolen documents trial all she wants; the January 6 case will be tried in Washington DC, will likely be on a fast track, and will be higher profile. Trump could be indicted for the third time as early as Friday.

Tao Fung Shan (2019), by Stephen Wong Chun Hei (Hong Kong b. 1986),

ABC News: Special counsel informs Trump he is target in probe of efforts to overturn 2020 election.

Special counsel Jack Smith has informed former President Donald Trump by letter that he is a target in his investigationSp into efforts to overturn the 2020 election, sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News.

Trump also confirmed the development in a post on his Truth Social platform….

The target letter mentions three federal statutes: conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud the United States, deprivation of rights under color of law, and tampering with a witness, victim or an informant, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.

There are no additional details in the letter and it does not say how the special counsel’s office claims Trump may have violated the statutes listed, sources said.

Trump, appearing Tuesday night at a town hall in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that he received the letter on Sunday.

“It bothers me,” said the former president. “I got the letter on Sunday night. Think of it, I don’t think they’ve ever sent a letter on Sunday night. And they’re in a rush because they want to interfere, it’s election interference, never been done like this in the history of our country and it’s a disgrace what’s happening to our country.”

Target letters are typically given to subjects in a criminal investigation to put them on notice that they are facing the prospect of indictment.

According to Rolling Stone,

The letter mentions three federal statutes: Conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud the United States; deprivation of rights under color of law; and tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant. It does not offer further details, nor does it detail how the special counsel believes Trump may have violated the statutes, the source tells Rolling Stone.

The letter does not mention statutes on sedition or insurrection, according to the source….

The source said the statutes listed likely refer to the prosecutor’s interest in charging Trump with obstructing the election certification process, including Trump efforts to pressure Mike Pence to stop the certification of President Biden’s 2020 victory.

More bad legal news for Trump at HuffPost: Donald Trump Loses Bid For New Trial In E. Jean Carroll Case.

A federal judge on Wednesday rejected Donald Trump’s request for a new trial in a civil case brought by E. Jean Carroll, where a jury found the former U.S. president liable for sexually abusing and defaming the writer and awarded her $5 million in damages.

In a 59-page decision, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan said the jury did not reach a “seriously erroneous result,” and the May 9 verdict was not a “miscarriage of justice.”

Carroll had accused Trump of raping her in a Manhattan department store dressing room in the mid-1990s, and then branding the incident a hoax in an October 2022 post on his Truth Social platform.

Trump had argued that awarding Carroll $2 million in compensatory damages for sexual assault was “excessive” because the jury found he had not raped her, while the award for defamation was based on “pure speculation.”

The judge also found that Trump did rape Carroll, despite his claims of being exhonerated of that charge, according to the “common definition.”

JUST IN: Judge Kaplan rejects Trump's bid to throw out the verdict in the Carroll sexual assault lawsuit — and he says the Carroll jury did, in fact, find Trump raped her, based on the common definition of the word. https://t.co/3i62YnLA6M pic.twitter.com/UqPd2VTFQE

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) July 19, 2023

As I’m sure you know, more big legal news hit yesterday from Michigan. The Detroit News: 16 false Trump electors face felony charges in Michigan.

Attorney General Dana Nessel is leveling felony charges against 16 Republicans who signed a certificate falsely stating that Donald Trump won Michigan’s 2020 presidential election, launching criminal cases against top political figures inside the state GOP.

Each of the 16 electors, including former Michigan Republican Party Co-Chairwoman Meshawn Maddock and Shelby Township Clerk Stan Grot, have been charged with eight felony counts, including forgery and conspiracy to commit election law forgery, according to Nessel’s office.

Moonlight Dance, by Paul Batch,, 1979

The revelation capped six months of investigation and produced the most serious allegations yet in Michigan over the campaign to overturn Trump’s loss to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020. Biden won the state by 154,000 votes or 3 percentage points, but Trump and his supporters maintained false and unproven claims that fraud swung the result.

As part of the push to undermine Biden’s victory, Trump supporters gathered inside the then-Michigan Republican Party headquarters on Dec. 14, 2020, and signed a certificate, claiming to cast the state’s 16 electoral votes for Trump.

Eventually, the false certificate was sent to the National Archives and Congress. The document inaccurately claimed the Trump electors had met inside the Michigan Capitol. However, they hadn’t. Biden’s electors convened inside the Capitol, and the building was closed to others on Dec. 14, 2020.

“The false electors’ actions undermined the public’s faith in the integrity of our elections and, we believe, also plainly violated the laws by which we administer our elections in Michigan,” said Nessel, a Democrat, in a statement.

“My department has prosecuted numerous cases of election law violations throughout my tenure, and it would be malfeasance of the greatest magnitude if my department failed to act here in the face of overwhelming evidence of an organized effort to circumvent the lawfully cast ballots of millions of Michigan voters in a presidential election.”

The 16 defendants are:

Kathy Berden, 70, of Snover

William (Hank) Choate, 72, of Cement City

Amy Facchinello, 55, of Grand Blanc

Clifford Frost, 75, of Warren

Stanley Grot, 71, of Shelby Township

John Haggard, 82, of Charlevoix

Mari-Ann Henry, 65, of Brighton

Timothy King, 56, of Ypsilanti

Michele Lundgren, 73, of Detroit

Meshawn Maddock, 55, of Milford

James Renner, 76, of Lansing

Mayra Rodriguez, 64, of Grosse Pointe Farms

Rose Rook, 81, of Paw Paw

Marian Sheridan, 69, of West Bloomfield

Ken Thompson, 68, of Orleans

Kent Vanderwood, 69, of Wyoming

The Special Counsel is also examining 2020 election crimes in Arizona and Georgia.CNN: Former Arizona governor contacted by special counsel in Jan. 6 probe.

Special counsel Jack Smith’s team has contacted former Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, who Donald Trump pressured to overturn the 2020 election, a source familiar with the outreach confirmed first to CNN.

A spokesman for Ducey confirmed the outreach from Smith’s team, which has not been previously reported.

Phil Greenwood (UK ,Wales. b.1943), Moon Lights, etching and aquating

“Yes, he’s been contacted. He’s been responsive, and just as he’s done since the election, he will do the right thing,” Ducey spokesman Daniel Scarpinato told CNN.

Trump narrowly lost Arizona to Joe Biden by less than 11,000 votes. Trump publicly attacked Ducey, a former ally, over the state’s certification of the results. As Ducey was certifying the election results in November 2020, Trump appeared to call the governor – with a “Hail to the Chief” ringtone heard playing on Ducey’s phone. Ducey did not take that call but later said he spoke with Trump, though he did not describe the specifics of the conversation.

Ducey, behind closed doors, said that the former president was pressuring him to find fraud in the presidential election in Arizona that would help him overturn the election, a source with knowledge told CNN earlier this month after The Washington Post first reported the news. There was no recording made of that call, a source familiar with the matter said.

Then-Vice President Mike Pence also spoke with Ducey in the wake of the 2020 election.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: EXCLUSIVE: Feds sought surveillance video from State Farm Arena in Trump probe.

Federal prosecutors examining former President Donald Trump’s attempt to hold onto power following the 2020 election requested surveillance and other security footage recorded at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena, according to a subpoena obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

In a grand jury subpoena dated May 31, the Georgia Secretary of State’s office was directed to hand over “any and all security video or security footage, or any other video of any kind, depicting or taken at or near” State Farm and “any associated data.”

The subpoena, which was obtained by The AJC through an open records request and had not been previously reported, shows the widening interest in Georgia from Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith, who sent a so-called “target” letter to Trump on Sunday.

It also demonstrated the growing areas of overlap between the DOJ probe and the Fulton County investigation of interference in Georgia’s 2020 elections, which is expected to result in indictments against Trump and others next month.

Previous subpoenas and grand jury appearances show that Fulton and federal prosecutors are both interested in the appointment of a slate of “alternate” Trump electors in swing states like Georgia, as well as the pressure the former president placed on Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

Now back to Judge Cannon’s hearing yesterday on the documents case. Alan Feuer at The New York Times: Prosecutors and Trump Lawyers Clash Over Timing in Classified Documents Case.

The federal judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents case expressed skepticism on Tuesday about the government’s request to go to trial as early as December, but she also seemed disinclined to accede immediately to Mr. Trump’s desire to have the trial put off until after the 2024 election.

Appearing for the first time at a hearing in the case, the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, came to no decision about when to schedule the trial, saying she would issue a written order “promptly.”

George Wesley Bellows (USA 1882-1925), A Fresh Breeze, 1913

The question of the trial’s timing could be hugely consequential, given that the legal proceeding is intertwined with the calendar of a presidential campaign in which Mr. Trump is now the front-runner for the Republican nomination.

For nearly two hours in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla., Judge Cannon, a Trump appointee, peppered prosecutors and the former president’s lawyers with questions that suggested she was in command of her courtroom and well-versed in the facts of the case.

Her decision about when to schedule the trial will be an early test for the judge, who came under widespread criticism last year after she rendered some decisions in a related case that were favorable to Mr. Trump at an early stage of the investigation.

At one point, Judge Cannon directly asked one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Christopher Kise, if he wanted to put off the trial until after the election. When Mr. Kise said he did, Judge Cannon told him that she wanted to focus on near-term issues like the amount of discovery evidence the defense had to review and the types of motions the lawyers planned to file.

As the hearing came to end, Todd Blanche, another one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, asked Judge Cannon if the defense could return to court in November and reassess the trial schedule then. Appearing to pick up on the judge’s desire to create what she called “a road map” for the case, Mr. Blanche said that if a trial date absolutely had to be chosen, he would ask for one in mid-November 2024, after the election.

Timing is particularly important in this case because if the trial is delayed until after votes are cast and Mr. Trump wins the race, he could try to pardon himself or have his attorney general dismiss the matter entirely.

I imagine the Special Counsel would appeal to the 11th Circuit if Cannon has the nerve to schedule the trial after the election, as Trump wants.

One more tidbit from The Daily Beast: Ex-NYPD Commissioner Bernie Kerik ‘in Talks’ With Jack Smith’s Team, Lawyer Says.

Former New York City police commissioner Bernie Kerik is in talks to be interviewed by special counsel Jack Smith’s team investigating efforts to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election, Kerik’s attorney said Tuesday. Kerik worked with Rudy Giuliani after the election to find evidence of voter fraud and later provided documents about a plan to keep Donald Trump in power to the House Jan. 6 committee. Tim Parlatore, a lawyer who quit Trump’s legal team in May and who now represents Kerik, was asked by Kaitlan Collins on CNN if he expected the former commissioner to receive a letter like the one Trump received informing him that he was a target of Smith’s investigation. Parlatore said Kerik hasn’t received a target letter and does not expect him to at any point. But when asked if Parlatore is “in talks” about Kerik having an interview with the special counsel, the attorney said: “Yeah sure, absolutely. Mr. Kerik has nothing to hide. He’s happy to sit down and explain everything to them.”

Cherry Blossoms in Dining Room, by Dmitri Cavander (USA b. 1969) Finally, news broke of another astonishing Trump crime yesterday–theft of valuable Israeli antiquities.

The New Republic: It Never Ends: Trump Took Precious Israeli Antiquities to Mar-a-Lago.

Trump’s Mar-a-Lago bathrooms and ballrooms were not just filled with top secret government documents. He apparently has also been hoarding temporarily loaned Israeli antiquities there for four years.

Haaretzreports that Israel lent the Trump White House antiquities, including ancient ceramic lamps from its national treasures collection, for a Hanukkah candle-lighting event in 2019. Israel Hasson, the then-director of the Israeli Antiquities Authority, approved the loan of the antiquities so long as they were returned within weeks.

Hasson told Haaretz that “we wanted our man to go and bring it back, but then Covid broke out, and everything got stuck.” So Hasson’s agency had asked Saul Fox, a major Jewish-American donor to the Antiquities Authority, to keep the items in tow until they could be brought back to Israel. But, Haaretz reports, Israeli authorities discovered several months ago that the antiquites instead ended up at Mar-a-Lago, “where they still remain.”

Eli Eskozido, the new Antiquities Authority head, has asked the Israeli government and Trump’s former U.S. ambassador to Israel to coordinate a return of the antiquities, but to no avail. One source told Haaretz that he wouldn’t be surprised if “the items Israel seeks are also eventually found in some bathroom.”

Republicans have bent over backward to show their inextinguishable support for Israel, but it’s unclear whether they will question why Trump has been harboring Israeli antiquities. After all, they had barely any criticism for his stealing of U.S. national security documents.

The extent of Trump criming is breathtaking, but his comeuppance is coming. As we say in the Midwest, he is up shit creek.

Have a wonderful Wednesday, Sky Dancers!!

Tuesday Reads: Republicans Fight the Law; Will the Law Win?

Posted: July 11, 2023 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Afternoon Reads, Crime, Criminal Justice System, Donald Trump, just because | Tags: China, Fani Willis, Fort Pierce division FLA, Fulton County grand juries, Gal Luft, Georgia election interference, House Oversight Committee, House Republicans, iran, James Comer, Judge Aileen Cannon, Ruby Freeman, Rudy Giuliani, Wadrea "Shaye" Moss, Walt Nauta | 11 Comments

Hans Thoma (1839–1924) Goldene Zeit, 1876.

Good Afternoon!!

Remember that so-called “whistleblower” that House Republicans were so excited about? They claimed to have a witness who would blow their “Biden family corruption” case wide open. Then the witness supposedly disappeared and they had no idea where he was. Well, yesterday the DOJ indicted the guy. It turns out he’s an agent for China.

The Daily Beast: GOP’s ‘Missing’ Biden Probe Witness Faces Laundry List of Federal Charges.

The “missing” witness long-touted by Republicans in Congress as the missing link to their probe into alleged Biden family corruption was accused Monday of being an unregistered foreign agent for China and an international arms trafficker while violating U.S. sanctions on Iran and lying to investigators, among a laundry list of other federal charges.

Dual U.S.-Israeli citizen Gal Luft had already skipped out on his bail while in Cyprus awaiting extradition to the U.S. for a separate case in March—though he alleges that the sprawling case against him represents political persecution and retaliation by the Biden administration against a potential witness.

The House Oversight Committee has for months touted a secret “informant” who could provide evidence of an alleged “quid pro quo” deal for foreign aid between an Obama-era Biden and an unnamed country—though details of the arrangement remain murky and unverified at best.

Those claims partially unraveled when Rep. James Comer (R-KY) in May held a much-hyped press conference in which he promised to expose the preliminary findings of four months’ worth of scrutiny into the Biden family’s business dealings—while failing to air any real evidence of corruption. He then offered a partial excuse for the failure: their star witness had up and disappeared….

Luft then came forward days later in an interview with New York Post opinion columnist Miranda Devine, alleging that he was hiding out in an undisclosed location after being arrested on five charges, including arms dealing across the Third World, as well as a violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, among other charges.

“The chances of me getting a fair trial in Washington are virtually zero,” he told Devine as the reason he skipped out on his bail. “I had to do what I had to do.”

Comer and other Republican House members continued to tout Luft as a credible witness right up until Friday, the day before charges were announced by the SDNY.

Rolf Nesch (Germany 1893-1975 Norway), Swans, from Esslingen

More information on Luft from The Independent: ‘Whistleblower’ who accused Bidens of corruption is charged with arms trafficking and violating Iran sanctions.

A “whistleblower” who has repeatedly accused the Bidens of corruption has been charged by the Justice Department with arms trafficking, acting as a foreign agent for China and violating Iran sanctions.

Gal Luft, who is a citizen of both the United States and Israel, is accused of paying a former adviser to Donald Trump on behalf of principals in China in 2016 without registering as a foreign agent.

Prosecutors say that Mr Luft pushed the former government employee, who is not named, to push policies that were favourable to China.

They also allege that he set up meetings between officials of Iran and a Chinese energy company to discuss oil deals, which would violate US sanctions.

They also alleged that Mr Luft “conspired with others and attempted to broker illicit arms transactions with, among others, certain Chinese individuals and entities” by working as a middleman to find both buyers and sellers for “certain weapons and other materials” in violation of the US Arms Control Act.

Specifically, prosecutors say he attempted to broker a sale of anti-tank weapons, grenade launchers and mortar rounds to Libya by Chinese companies, and also pushed to arrange for the United Arab Emirates to purchase bombs and rockets, and for Kenya to acquire unmanned aerial vehicles capable of striking targets on the ground.

He sounds like a great witness for the Republican “investigations.”

Mr Luft, 57, was arrested in Cyprus in February on US charges but fled after being released on bail while awaiting extradition and is not currently in US custody.

US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams said in a statement that Mr Luft “engaged in multiple, serious criminal schemes”.

“He subverted foreign agent registration laws in the United States to seek to promote Chinese policies by acting through a former high-ranking U.S. Government official; he acted as a broker in deals for dangerous weapons and Iranian oil; and he told multiple lies about his crimes to law enforcement,” Mr Williams said.

“As the charges unsealed today reflect, our Office will continue to work vigorously with our law enforcement partners to detect and hold accountable those who surreptitiously attempt to perpetrate malign foreign influence campaigns here in the United States”.

Comer was still defending this guy as a credible witness last night on NewsMax.

Frits Thaulow, Norwegian, Summer Day in the Garden, 1880

Yesterday Judge Cannon granted a short delay in for Walt Nauta to appear in the Mar-a-Lago stolen documents case.

Raw Story: Judge Aileen Cannon grants ‘unnecessary’ delay in Trump documents case.

Controversial U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon granted a delay for Donald Trump’s aide and co-defendant Walt Nauta in a classified documents case. Prosecutors have called the delay “unnecessary.”

In a filing on Monday, Nauta’s team asked to delay Friday’s hearing, which was set to determine how some materials would be handled in the trial. The attorneys did not propose a date for the new hearing.

“An indefinite continuance is unnecessary, will inject additional delay in this case, and is contrary to the public interest,” special counsel Jack Smith said in a subsequent filing on Monday.

On Tuesday, Cannon granted a 4-day delay, setting the new hearing for July 18 at 2:00 P.M. A court filing said Trump and Smith had agreed to the new date.

This is obviously part of Trump’s usual strategy of delaying court cases as long as possible. Now the Trump lawyers are trying to get Cannon to delay the case until after the 2024 election!

The New York Times: Trump Lawyers Seek Indefinite Postponement of Documents Trial.

Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump asked a federal judge on Monday night to indefinitely postpone his trial on charges of illegally retaining classified documents after he left office, saying that the proceeding should not begin until all “substantive motions” in the case had been presented and decided.

The written filing — submitted 30 minutes before its deadline of midnight on Tuesday — presents a significant early test for Judge Aileen M. Cannon, the Trump-appointed jurist who is overseeing the case. If granted, it could have the effect of pushing Mr. Trump’s trial into the final stages of the presidential campaign in which he is now the Republican front-runner or even past the 2024 election.

While timing is important in any criminal matter, it could be hugely consequential in Mr. Trump’s case, in which he stands accused of illegally holding on to 31 classified documents after leaving the White House and obstructing the government’s repeated efforts to reclaim them.

There could be complications of a sort never before presented to a court if Mr. Trump is a candidate in the last legs of a presidential campaign and a federal criminal defendant on trial at the same time. If the trial is pushed back until after the election and Mr. Trump wins, he could try to pardon himself after taking office or have his attorney general dismiss the matter entirely….

Judges have wide latitude to set schedules for trials, and scheduling orders are typically not subject to appeal to higher courts. That said, given the extraordinary nature of Mr. Trump’s case and the potential implications of a delay, prosecutors under Mr. Smith could in theory try to come up with a rationale to challenge a scheduling decision made by Judge Cannon to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.

This really is a test for Cannon. If she grants such a delay, she should be replaced.

Albert Marquet (1875-1947), Baigneurs à Carqueiranne (1938)

Here are some details on the Trump filing, from the TPM Morning Memo, by David Kurtz.

Some of the filing is the usual defense counsel performative moaning and groaning and sighing heavily about all the work involved and the inherent advantages prosecutors have over them because they’ve long had access to the evidence, blah blah blah. To that end, Trump wants U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to:

withdraw her order for an August 2023 trial;

reject DOJ’s proposal for a December 2023 trial; and

postpone indefinitely even setting a trial date.

But there’s more than the usual slow-rolling going on here. And it matters to the big question of whether Cannon can and will keep the Mar-a-Lago case on track for a trial before the 2024 presidential election.

Trump’s claims in this regard are remarkable:

He’s too busy running for president to be put on trial.

He’s too busy with other criminal and civil trials to add this one to the calendar.

He’s still trying to make the case about the Presidential Records Act (it’s not).

“There is no ongoing threat to national security interests nor any concern regarding continued criminal activity.”

You can’t find an impartial jury in the midst of a presidential election.

The overall thrust of the filing by Trump is that a trial before the election is not advisable, though it stops short of saying so explicitly.

One more on the documents case from Jose Pagliery at The Daily Beast: Mar-a-Lago Jury Selection Will Be a MAGA Country Minefield.

The federal judge overseeing Donald Trump’s classified documents trial is taking steps that could stock the jury box with the former president’s supporters.

U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon has set the upcoming trial to open on Aug. 14 at her tiny satellite courthouse in the northern reaches of her district, which stretches from the tropical Florida Keys to the citrus groves halfway up the state.

That decision means Trump’s jurors are set to be drawn from the most brightly red corner of a vast court district, plucked from a community that leans heavily Republican—instead of the highly populous and more Democratic urban areas further south….

Park View, Aksel Jørgensen, Danish, 1909

Several Miami lawyers, some of whom asked to remain anonymous because they have active cases before Cannon, noted that Trump’s chances to win what otherwise appears to be an insurmountable criminal case increase the further north he goes.

“You drive around, and you’ll see ‘Trump’ flags and ‘Make America Great Again’ flying in front of houses,” said Paul Bernard, a criminal defense lawyer in Fort Pierce. “With Trump’s trial down this way, he’s going to have a bunch of supporters—and they’re going to make their way onto the jury panel.”

According to local court rules, federal trials in the Fort Pierce division draw jurors from five counties: Highlands, Indian River, Martin, Okeechobee, and St. Lucie.

It’s solidly MAGA country: all five counties voted heavily in favor of Trump in the 2020 election he ultimately lost, with Okeechobee topping out at 72 percent. Across the board, the former president nabbed 62 percent of the vote on average.

Read the whole thing at The Daily Beast link.

There is also news in the Georgia election interference case.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Grand jurors who will consider Trump charges to be selected Tuesday.

The selection of two Fulton County grand juries will be made Tuesday, with one of the panels expected to decide whether to hand up an indictment for alleged criminal interference in the 2020 presidential election.

One set of jurors is likely to be asked to bring formal charges against former President Donald Trump and other well-known political and legal figures. In a letter to county officials almost two months ago, District Attorney Fani Willis indicated the indictment could be obtained at some point between July 31 and Aug. 18.

Willis began her investigation shortly after hearing the leaked Jan. 2, 2021, phone call in which Trump asked Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” the 11,780 votes he needed to defeat Joe Biden in Georgia. She later convened a special purpose grand jury which examined evidence and heard testimony over an almost eight-month period. Its final report, only part of which has been made public, recommended multiple people be indicted for alleged crimes.

Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who oversaw the special purpose grand jury, will preside over Tuesday’s selection of the two grand juries for this term of court.

Each panel will have 23 grand jurors, plus three alternates. One panel will meet Mondays and Tuesdays, the other Thursdays and Fridays. Both will work in secret and are expected to decide whether to hand up indictments in hundreds of cases. It is unclear which one will consider the much-anticipated election-meddling case.

When a grand jury meets, at least 16 members must be present to conduct business. At least 12 grand jurors must vote to bring an indictment. The burden of proof is much lower for a grand jury to indict someone than it is for a jury to convict or acquit someone and grand jurors typically hear only from the prosecution.

It sounds like indictments could be coming soon.

One more story out of Georgia, from Kaitlyn Polantz at CNN: Rudy Giuliani is negotiating possible resolution to lawsuit brought by 2 Georgia election workers.

Rudy Giuliani is negotiating a possible resolution in his ongoing court dispute with former Georgia election workers Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and Ruby Freeman, after they accused him of defaming them following the 2020 election and already won nearly $90,000 from him for attorneys’ fees.

The lawsuit from Moss and her mother, Freeman, presents a significant risk to Giuliani financially. It also comes at a time when the former New York mayor and Manhattan prosecutor is attempting to fend off two disbarment proceedings, as well as interest from special counsel Jack Smith’s office, which is criminally investigating Donald Trump’s response to the 2020 vote, of which Giuliani was a central player.

In a court filing late Friday, Moss and Freeman’s legal team disclosed that Giuliani’s lawyer approached them on Thursday “to discuss a potential negotiated resolution of issues that would resolve large portions of this litigation and otherwise give rise to Plaintiffs’ anticipated request for sanctions.”

“Counsel for both parties have worked diligently to negotiate a resolution and believe they are close,” Moss and Freeman’s lawyer wrote.

The negotiation is over “certain factual issues regarding Defendant Giuliani’s liability,” the court filing also said.

Another update on the negotiations is expected in court on Tuesday….

Moss and Freeman accuse Giuliani of scapegoating them in a fabricated effort to undermine how votes were counted in Georgia in 2020.

That’s all I have for you today–lots of legal news involving corrupt Republicans. What else is new?

Tuesday Reads

Posted: June 20, 2023 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Afternoon Reads, Donald Trump, just because | Tags: Brett Baier, Fox News, Hunter Biden, Judge Aileen Cannon, stolen documents case | 9 Comments

Good Day Sky Dancers!!

Now that the long weekend is over, there is quite a bit of news breaking. These are the three biggest stories of the day so far: a tentative date has been set for Trump’s trial in the stolen documents case; yesterday, Trump gave an interview to Brett Baier of Fox News in which he confessed to multiple crimes; and today, Hunter Biden reached an agreement with the Feds.

Kyle Cheney at Politico: Judge sets tentative trial date for Trump documents case.

I reviewed Cannon’s entire criminal case history, she has always set a super fast trial date, as a matter of practice, and then repeatedly continued it as trial matters arose. In every single case, big and small, save for a few quick plea deals. https://t.co/cDh4eLrl00

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) June 20, 2023

Donald Trump’s criminal trial for hoarding military secrets at Mar-a-Lago has a starting date — Aug. 14 — but don’t expect it to hold.

U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon bookmarked the last two weeks in August for the historic trial, part of an omnibus order setting some early ground rules and deadlines for the case. That would represent a startlingly rapid pace for a case that is expected to be complicated and require lengthy pretrial wrangling over extraordinarily sensitive classified secrets.

But a review of Cannon’s criminal cases since she took the bench in late 2020 suggests this is standard practice for the Florida-based judge. She typically sets trial dates six to eight weeks from the start of a case, only to allow weeks- or months-long delays as issues arise and the parties demand more time to prepare. While her order on Tuesday starts the clock on a slew of important pretrial matters in the Trump case, it’s not likely to resemble anything close to the timeframe that will ultimately govern the case.

Also from Kyle Cheney at Politico: Trump judge’s thin criminal trial resume comes with a twist.

Aileen Cannon, the federal judge overseeing Donald Trump’s latest criminal case, has run just four, relatively routine criminal trials in her short tenure on the bench — a stark contrast to the historic and complex proceedings she’s about to undertake related to the former president.

A review of the Southern District of Florida dockets show Cannon’s criminal work has consisted almost entirely of a few categories of cases: distribution of a controlled substance, illegal reentry of people who had previously been deported, felons in possession of firearms and child pornography or trafficking. Nearly all have resulted in plea agreements, and the four that did not were handled in brief trials that lasted no more than three days apiece in court.

Those cases have featured few significant opinions or rulings of note on complex issues of law. And Cannon, 42, has almost always sided with prosecutors on routine challenges to evidence, motions to suppress evidence by defendants and efforts to dismiss various cases.

Cannon’s thin resume, combined with her surprisingly deferential rulings to Trump — who appointed her in November 2020 — in a civil lawsuit challenging the FBI raid of his Mar-a-Lago estate last year, have raised questions about her readiness for the complexities of the first-ever federal prosecution of a former president. Prosecutors say he hoarded national military secrets at his Mar-a-Lago estate after leaving office and concealed them from government officials seeking to recover them.

There’s one exception, however, to Cannon’s judicial history that has largely escaped scrutiny. For nearly one-and-a-half years, she’s shepherded a complex, 10-defendant health care fraud case to the verge of trial, and in the course has litigated tangled and fraught issues of attorney-client privilege and motions to suppress — some of which could be precursors to battles in the upcoming Trump case.

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