Finally Friday Reads: Crime and Punishment

The smell of fear begins to bubble up through all the other odors. John Buss @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

These are days when you have to hold on to every instance where Justice and the Rule of Law stand firm.  The small victories come when an insurrectionist gets jail time. Today, we learned that Steve Bannon is headed to Jail.  Peter Navarro started his sentence in March.”Ex-Trump aide Peter Navarro begins serving prison sentence after historic contempt prosecution.”  This event was reported by CNN.  (Note:  BB reminded me that one of the last things Donald did in office was to pardon Bannon for fundraising for a border wall that never happened.)

His conviction was a rare example of a member of Trump’s inner circle being held accountable by the criminal justice system for their resistance to scrutiny. Navarro’s stint in prison comes as Trump himself has yet to face criminal consequences for the various crimes he’s been accused of committing.

“It’s historic, and will be to future White House aides who get subpoenaed by Congress,” Stanley Brand, a former House general counsel who now represents Navarro as one of his defense lawyers, said on Monday.

Navarro’s punishment for evading a House probe will boost the leverage lawmakers will have – under administrations of both parties – to secure cooperation in their investigations.

CNBC reports on Bannon’s next stop.  “Trump White House aide Steve Bannon loses appeal of contempt of Congress conviction.”

A federal appeals court on Friday unanimously upheld the criminal contempt of Congress conviction of former Trump White House senior aide Steve Bannon for refusing to testify and provide documents to the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.The appeals court rejected Bannon’s argument that he was not guilty because his attorney had advised him not to comply with a subpoena from the House committee.

The ruling by a three-judge panel on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit makes it more likely that Bannon will soon have to begin serving a sentence of four months in jail for his conviction of two counts of contempt.

Bannon could ask the full judicial line-up of the D.C. Circuit to hear his appeal again, which might postpone his jail term. He also could ask the U.S. Supreme Court to take an appeal of Friday’s ruling.

But such requests typically face very long odds of success.

CNBC has requested comment from Bannon’s appellate lawyer on the ruling. The decision was written by Judge Bradley Garcia, who was appointed to the D.C. Circuit appeals court last year by President Joe Biden. The other two judges on the panel were Justin Walker, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump, and Cornelia Pillard, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama.

In March, Peter Navarro, another ex-adviser to Trump, began serving a four-month federal jail sentence after the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of his conviction for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the Jan. 6 House committee. Pillard also was a member of the three-judge panel on the D.C. Circuit that upheld Navarro’s conviction.

Bannon will also spend 4 months in jail. This is from the New York Times.  “Federal Appeals Court Upholds Bannon’s Contempt Conviction. Stephen Bannon, a longtime ally of Donald Trump, had been found guilty of defying a subpoena from the House Jan. 6 committee. He now faces a four-month prison sentence.

The decision by the court means that Mr. Bannon could soon become the second former Trump aide to be jailed for ignoring a subpoena from the committee. The House panel sought his testimony as part of its wide-ranging investigation into Mr. Trump’s efforts to remain in power after losing the 2020 election, and its explosive hearings two years ago previewed much of the evidence used against Mr. Trump in a federal indictment filed last summer accusing him of plotting to overturn his defeat.

In March, Peter Navarro, who once worked as a trade adviser to Mr. Trump, reported to federal prison in Miami to begin serving his own four-month prison stint after a jury found him guilty of contempt of Congress for ignoring one of the committee’s subpoenas.

The judge who oversaw Mr. Bannon’s trial had allowed him to remain at home during the appeal of his conviction and is now in a position to force him to surrender.

You may also remember that there were major indictments in the Georgia case, even though the case itself was stalled.  John Eastman surrendered at a Georgia jail 8 months ago. He was released pending trial.  Three Trump lawyers–Sidney Powel, Kenneth Cheesebro, and Jenna Ellis–pleaded guilty.  Rudy Guilliani and Mark Meadows are also considered co-conspirators.

Paul Manaford got his pardon ticket punched. He’s looking to be a repeat offender.  This is from the Washington Post. “Paul Manafort, poised to rejoin Trump world, aided Chinese media deal.  The former Trump campaign chairman, likely to help manage this summer’s GOP convention, resumed consulting after being pardoned in 2020.”

After pleading guilty to money laundering and obstruction of justice, Paul Manafort, the globe-trotting political consultant and former campaign chairman for Donald Trump, asked for leniency in his sentencing, telling a federal judge five years ago that he was nearly 70 years old, struggling with health concerns and remorseful for his actions.

The judge rejected his entreaties in the spring of 2019, ordering Manafort to remain behind bars for more than seven years.Less than two years later, however, Manafort’s criminal record was wiped clean when Trump pardoned him. He was among the dozensof allies, extended family members and former campaign staffers allowed to walk free.

With his freedom, Manafort hardly retired to a quiet home life. Instead, the longtime power broker — briefly brought low by the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election — reengaged in international consulting, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post and people familiar with his activities who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.

Manafort has been assisting an effort to launch a Netflix-like mobile streaming and entertainment platform in China that, according to corporate documents, has the endorsement of the Chinese government. In an email to The Post, Manafort said he was “not involved with China” and has “had nothing to do with China, including Chinese businesses, government, individuals, or anything else,” but acknowledged that he “was asked to make introductions to U.S. studios and potential U.S. partners in the venture.”

Manafort, now 75, also sought to advise political figures in Japan and South Korea, according to a person who was approached by party officials in those countries checking on the consultant’s reputation. Manafort has roamed widely, traveling to Guatemala last year on the invitation of a migrant advocacy group called Proyecto Guatemala Migrante. The group’s leader, Verónica Pimentel, said she and a colleague discussed Latin American politics and the Latino vote with Manafort and introduced him to a Guatemalan presidential candidate, Ricardo Sagastume, who confirmed the meeting.

Emails, documents and interviews fill in details of Manafort’s life and work between 2020, when he swapped prison for home confinement owing to the coronavirus pandemic and then landed a pardon from Trump, and this election cycle, as he prepares to reenter Trump’s orbit. Advisers say Trump is determined to hire Manafort, likely handing him a substantial role at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, because he appreciates that his onetime campaign chairman has remained loyal to him even while serving in prison.

The fake elector arrests in Arizona might just interfere with all the Trump repeat offenders, including the Donald up there at the top of the offensive list.  Christina Bob and Rudy Guiliani are defendants also. With its dalliance on Presidential Immunity, it looks like the Supreme Court could stall any or all of these.  Hillary Clinton was on Morning Joe on Thursday.  She made stern mention of the Court and its actions. This is from The Hill.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton knocked the Supreme Court on Thursday for delaying its ruling on former President Trump’s presidential immunity claim in his federal election interference case.

“The other point I would quickly make is that the Supreme Court is doing our country a grave disservice in not deciding the case about immunity,” Clinton, the 2016 Democratic nominee for president, said in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

Clinton said some Supreme Court justices were seemingly trying to find loopholes for the former president during arguments before the court late last month.

“I read the excellent decision by the court of appeals, and the judges there, I think, covered every possible argument,” Clinton said, “and what we heard when this case was tried before the Supreme Court — to my ear at least — were efforts to try to find loopholes, to try to create an opportunity for Trump to have attempted to overturn an election, to have carried out hundreds and hundreds of pages of very highly classified material for his own amusement, interest, trading — we don’t know what.”

“These are very serious charges against any American, but someone who’s both been a president and wants to be a president again — that should cause any voter to think not twice, but many, many times over, about whether we should entrust our country to him,” Clinton added.

Late last month, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Trump’s presidential immunity claim and seemed poised to grant him at least some protections from criminal prosecution after hearing two hours of arguments.

The court still has not made a decision on the question of immunity, but the justices’ lengthy discussion of how to create guardrails between official versus personal conduct suggested they may ask the lower court to revisit its decision. Doing so would almost certainly delay Trump’s numerous legal proceedings.

The court delayed Trump’s election interference case just by taking up the immunity claims rather than letting the appeal court decision stand. Any further decision at the lower court might be appealed, a process that could again send the case to the high court.

Clinton said Wednesday that the American people ought to have an answer about whether Trump is guilty in the federal election interference case and in the other cases before they head to the polls in November to decide whether to send him back to the White House.

“Justice delayed is justice denied,” Clinton said. “And the people in our country, it looks as though will most likely go to vote without knowing the outcome of these other very serious trials.”

The Supreme Court is at the end of the term and still has some pretty significant cases to decide. This is reported by CBS News‘ Melissa Quinn.  “The Supreme Court is nearing the end of its term. Here are the major cases it still has to decide.

 The Supreme Court has wrapped up arguments for its current term and until around the end of June, it will be handing down opinions for the remaining cases, among them, over a dozen involving hot-button issues including abortion, guns, homelessness, Purdue Pharma’s bankruptcy plan and the prosecution of former President Donald Trump.

This term, which began in October 2023, follows two in which the Supreme Court handed down consequential decisions unwinding the constitutional right to abortion and bringing to an end affirmative action in higher education. The justices kicked off this latest slate of cases with several involving administrative law and online speech. But it was a pair of disputes involving Trump that captured widespread attention and thrust the justices into the center of legal battles with high stakes for the former president as he mounts a bid to return to the White House.

The court has already decided one of the cases involving the presumptive Republican presidential nominee: whether Colorado could keep him off the 2024 ballot using a Civil War-era provision of the 14th Amendment. The high court ruled in March that states cannot disqualify Trump from holding the presidency under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment and allowed him to stay on the ballot.

“It’s the most consequential term of my lifetime,” said Victoria Nourse, law professor at Georgetown University, “because they’re covering a gambit of things from guns to abortion to presidential power.”

So, we’ve seen what happens when courts do their job and when they try to do something entirely different.  This is an Op-Ed from MSNBC’s Hayes Brown. “Judge Aileen Cannon set herself up for failure. Donald Trump’s classified documents case could prove difficult for even the most experienced judge. Judge Cannon is not exactly handling herself well.”

It’s entirely possible that a more experienced judge would be facing similar problems. But that Cannon is even in a position to make these decisions is due to an almost literary twist of fate. There are more than two dozen federal district judges in the southern district of Florida. Cases are assigned at random among them. It is only through the luck of the draw that Trump would see his classified documents case fall before Cannon. With the shadow of the special master case looming over her, she’s opted to take her time to get things right. Yet that has opened her up to an entirely different set of criticisms. That includes her frankly bizarre decision to have the prosecution and defense spend time on crafting potential jury instructions and arguments regarding the Presidential Records Act rather than deal with the more pressing issues on her plate.

Unfortunately for everyone who isn’t a co-defendant in this case, Cannon’s careful treading fits perfectly with Trump’s preferred strategy of delaying his court appearances for as long as possible. The trial had originally been scheduled to begin on May 20 — though given that Trump is in the middle of a separate criminal trial in New York, that was clearly not going to happen. Both Smith, who brought the charges against Trump last year, and the former president’s lawyers agreed that a delay would be necessary. Smith’s team argued that a summer trial was still possible, while Trump naturally pushed for a trial date after Election Day. Since a hearing on the matter in March, Cannon had only given hints at when a rescheduled trial would take place, the last of which was Monday when she bumped back a key CIPA-related filing deadline.

Again, the evidentiary role of classified material would likely slow down any criminal trial, let alone one involving a former president. But given the clear evidence that Trump was in possession of the documents seized despite a subpoena to return them and attempted to foil the government’s efforts to recover them, this should be an open and shut case once it gets before a jury. Instead, Cannon has only painted herself into a corner, overcorrecting from her past mistakes in a way that has only exacerbated her subsequent follies.

Well, enough of that!  At least I have an excuse to use one of my favorite Warren Zevon songs today!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?