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 |
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!
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
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 |
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.”
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.”
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!!
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
Posted: July 6, 2023 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Afternoon Reads, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Media, The Media SUCKS | Tags: disinformation, District Judge Terry Doughty, heat wave, Mar-a-Lago search, Mark Zuckerberg, stolen documents case, summer, Taylor Taranto, Threads by Instagram, Twitter |
Good Day!!
Boston Skyline, by Diane Bell
It has been unseasonably cool here in the Boston area for much of this spring and early summer, but now we’re going into a heat wave like most of the rest of the country.
Thank goodness my heat pump is working very well. It was 90 degrees yesterday, and my apartment stayed cool. Today it is already 90 degrees and it’s not 11AM yet. I feel so fortunate to be living here in my nice subsidized elderly apartment.
When I think back to the summers in my old unairconditioned house, I wonder how I managed. On 90 degree days, I basically just had to sit in front of my fans until the sun stopped beating down on the roof after about 4:30PM. I really feel for Dakinikat, who has been experiencing day after day like that.
It’s still sort of a slow news week, because of the holiday, but it’s beginning to get busier.
For those of us who have been long-time Twitter addicts, this has been an unsettling week. It really looks like Elon Musk has managed to kill Twitter this time, and many alternatives are popping up. Last night I signed up for Threads by Instagram. I’m hoping it will approach being what Twitter used to be, although I don’t really trust Mark Zuckerberg. But I trust Jack Dorsey even less. So far, he’s not letting me get into Bluesky, and I’ve decided I don’t want to use his new app, since he’ll probably end up selling it to another billionaire idiot.
The New York Times: Threads, Instagram’s ‘Twitter Killer,’ Has Arrived.
After months of speculation and secrecy, Mark Zuckerberg’s long-rumored competitor app to Twitter is here.
The new app, Threads, was unveiled on Wednesday as a companion to Instagram, the popular photo-sharing network that Mr. Zuckerberg’s company, Meta, bought more than a decade ago. If Instagram executives get their way, Threads will also replace rival Twitter, with some techies referring to it as a “Twitter killer.”
The rollout of Threads ramps up the rivalry between Mr. Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, who bought Twitter last year. Mr. Musk has changed the experience of Twitter by tinkering with its algorithm and other features, and most recently imposed temporary limits on how many tweets people could read when using the app, inciting outrage.
Many tech companies have tried capitalizing on Twitter’s turmoil in recent months. But Threads has a leg up, backed by Meta’s deep pockets and Instagram’s enormous user base of more than two billion monthly active users around the world.
In a post to his Threads account on Wednesday, Mr. Zuckerberg said: “I think there should be a public conversations app with 1 billion+ people on it. Twitter has had the opportunity to do this but hasn’t nailed it. Hopefully we will.” He later said that Threads achieved 10 million sign-ups within seven hours of its launch.
Mr. Musk weighed in, saying he was not impressed by Threads and claiming he had canceled his Instagram account. “It is infinitely preferable to be attacked by strangers on Twitter, than indulge in the false happiness of hide-the-pain Instagram,” he wrote on Twitter.
Read more details at the NYT link.
Summer in the Park, by Susan Sternau
NBC News: What you need to know about Threads, Instagram’s new Twitter competitor.
Instagram’s Threads app, a text-based social media platform poised to become Twitter’s latest competitor, is now available to users in more than 100 countries.
The app, which was released Wednesday evening, a day ahead of its scheduled debut, enables users to sign up straight from their Instagram accounts. That means that once it is launched worldwide, more than 2 billion monthly active users may import their accounts into Threads….
The app opens up to a scrollable feed of short-form text limited to 500 characters a post, with the ability to add individual or carousel photos and videos. Posts will include content from accounts users follow, as well as from creators suggested by the platform’s recommendation algorithm. Viewers can engage by liking, commenting, reposting — including quoting a post — and sharing to their Instagram story or feed.
While most features mimic those of Twitter, its user interface design resembles Instagram’s, with the same heart, comment and share buttons and similarly placed tabs.
Once logged in, new users who have Instagram accounts are told their account must retain the same usernames, but are able to a different bio and link to their profiles. Verified Instagram users will take their check marks to Threads, as well. Users can then choose to follow in bulk all accounts they already follow on Instagram, which includes pre-following anyone who has not yet joined Threads….
Accounts that users have already blocked on Instagram will also be automatically blocked on Threads. Those who wish to limit interactions can choose whether to allow replies from everyone, accounts they follow or mentions — users whom they directly tagged in a thread — only. They can also choose to restrict mentions of themselves to just accounts they follow or to disallow them entirely.
More details at the link.
There’s new information about the Trump stolen documents case; the DOJ has unsealed previously unseen parts of the affidavit for the search of Mar-a-Lago.
CNN: Justice Department had video of boxes being moved at Mar-a-Lago before FBI search, unredacted document shows.
The Justice Department has made public more about the significant photographic and video evidence they collected last summer from Mar-a-Lago after the Trump presidency, in a newly released version of the investigative record that supported the FBI search of the resort.
While the details match much of what was included in last month’s indictment of Donald Trump and his co-defendant Walt Nauta, the less-redacted search warrant affidavit reveals the extent of what prosecutors knew before asking to search the Florida property for documents or other evidence last summer.
Summer in the City, by Olena Maksymova
The search affidavit, which still has several pages of redactions, describes with more public detail what prosecutors could see on spring 2022 surveillance footage from multiple angles outside a basement storage room where classified documents were kept in boxes at Mar-a-Lago.
The affidavit also includes at least one photo of boxes stacked in a room and captures how investigators believed boxes from Trump’s presidency were “relocated” or had been moved around.
“Video footage reflects that evidence has been moved recently,” prosecutors wrote in the court record. “It cannot be seen on the video footage where the boxes were moved when they were taken from the storage room area, and accordingly, the current location of the boxes that were removed from the storage room area but not returned to it is unknown.”
The affidavit said that the FBI’s review of security footage provided by the Trump Organization showed a person identified as “witness 5” moving boxes of documents around the estate throughout 2022, including on June 1, 2022, when he’s “observed carrying eleven brown cardboard boxes out the ANTEROOM entrance. One box did not have a lid on it and appeared to contain papers.”
Witness 5 is not named in the document. Nauta was accused in the indictment of obstruction and lying to investigators. Nauta is expected to plead not guilty in federal court in Miami on Thursday. Trump has pleaded not guilty.
“The day after that, on June 2, 2022, WITNESS 5 is observed moving twenty-five to thirty boxes, some of which were brown cardboard boxes and others of which were Bankers boxes consistent with the description of the FPOTUS BOXES, into the entrance of the ANTEROOM,” the filing said.
That seems pretty incriminating.
Remember how the press reacted when there were peaceful demonstrations outside the homes of SCOTUS justices? And when a troubled man showed up near Brett Kavanaugh’s house with a gun and then turned himself in to police without doing anything, the outrage was loud and long. I’ve been wondering why there hasn’t been more reporting on the crazy guy who showed up outside the Obamas’ home in DC with lots of guns and bombs. And even more creepy, he knew the address because it was posted on line by Donald Trump! Well finally, this event is getting a bit of attention.
Spencer S. Hsu at The Washington Post: U.S.: Man with guns near Obama home threatened McCarthy, Raskin.
A Navy veteran arrested with guns near former president Barack Obama’s house in Washington had recently recorded himself making threatening statements regarding House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.) and a federal facility housing a nuclear research reactor in suburban Maryland, prosecutors said Wednesday.
Summer in the City (NY), by Julian Barrow
U.S. prosecutors asked a judge to jail Taylor Taranto, 37, pending trial, saying that the QAnon conspiracy theorist showed up near Obama’s home shortly after Donald Trump posted on his social media platform what he claimed was Obama’s address. Taranto was armed, dangerous and in the grip of delusional thinking, prosecutors said, and had successfully eluded law enforcement for nearly a day before his arrest June 29 in a wooded area near Washington’s exclusive Kalorama neighborhood.
“Taranto is a direct and serious threat to the public. Taranto’s own words and actions demonstrate that he is a direct threat to multiple political figures as well as the public at large,” Assistant U.S. Attorneys Allison K. Ethen and Colin Cloherty wrote in a 26-page detention memo. “The risk that Taranto poses if released is high, and the severity of the consequences that could result are catastrophic.”
Authorities searched for Taranto before June 28, but he was living in his van, and his lack of a fixed address frustrated efforts to find him, prosecutors said. Law enforcement “escalated efforts to locate Taranto and increased resources to assist in the search” after his alleged threats that day, but were unsuccessful before he turned up near Obama’s residence.
Read more at the WaPo. It’s quite a long and detailed story.
Finally, the strange decision by a Trump-appointed judge in Louisiana is getting quite a bit of attention in the media.
The Hill: Court ruling prompts fears of ‘Wild West of disinformation.’
An order limiting the Biden administration’s communication with social media companies could make it harder to curb disinformation as the 2024 election nears.
A federal judge Tuesday curtailed communication between certain Biden administration agencies and social media companies after a GOP-led challenge to efforts to combat disinformation, arguing attempts to do so violated protected speech.
The ruling left experts concerned about a “chilling effect” on attempts to moderate false information online.
“If we end up with basically no meaningful content moderation, then it is going to be a Wild West of disinformation,” said Darrell West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Technology Innovation.
Summer in the City, Edward Hopper
Two Republican state attorneys general argued that the Biden administration “coordinated and colluded with social-media platforms to identify disfavored speakers, viewpoints, and content.” The result, they said, was a “campaign of censorship” executed by the administration.
U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump appointee, ruled in their favor, ordering that Biden administration officials cannot contact social media companies relating to “in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech posted on social-media platforms.”
Officials from the Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Justice, the State Department and the FBI were told to cut those communications with the companies.
The case had primarily taken aim at attempts to curtail disinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic, which Republicans decried as a violation of the First Amendment.
Raw Story: DOJ appeals ‘crazy’ Biden social media ruling ‘lightning fast’: legal expert.
Former federal prosecutor Harry Litman tweeted that a Trump-appointed federal judge’s injunction that blocks the Biden administration from communicating with social media companies was crazy “in substance and breadth,” noting the DOJ didn’t waste any time in filing its “lightning fast” appeal.
“Feds obviously know it’s nuts & dangerous,” Litman added.
Judge Terry A. Doughty issued the injunction in response to a lawsuit brought by Republican attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri, who argued that the government overreached in efforts to stop the spread of vaccine disinformation and baseless allegations of election fraud.
The ruling is widely viewed as a legal win for conservatives.
Summer in the City, by Aniko Hencz
The attorneys general behind the lawsuit that prompted the injunction contend that the Biden administration is behind a “sprawling federal ‘Censorship Enterprise’” that aims to pressure social media companies to censor posts expressing controversial political views and conservatives in particular, the report said.
The Biden administration argued that such communications were needed for public health and safety reasons, noting that the social media platforms have been used to propagate disinformation about COVID vaccines and the 2020 election.
The administration sought “necessary and responsible actions to protect public health, safety, and security” amid the pandemic and the conspiracy-fueled election dispute, Bloomberg News reports, noting that the DOJ plans to request that the judge’s order be put on hold during the appeal.
The Washington Post’s Cat Zakrzewski describes the injunction as an “extraordinary” ruling that “could upend years of efforts to enhance coordination between the government and social media companies.
Zoe Tillman and Emily Birnbaum at Bloomberg: Biden Appeal Opens a New Front in Battle Over Internet Speech.
The Biden administration’s battle with Republican-led states over free-speech limits escalated with its appeal of a judge’s sweeping order barring federal officials and agencies from communicating with social media companies over postings they deem objectionable. It’s the latest example of the judiciary flexing its muscles in cases testing the bounds of the First Amendment online.
The US Justice Department filed a notice of appeal in federal court in Louisiana on Wednesday, signaling its intent to take the fight to the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.
The DOJ also plans to ask the court to put the judge’s order on hold during the appeal, according to a person familiar with the case. The case could swiftly land before the US Supreme Court if the government’s request is rejected.
Courts have played a star role mediating fights in recent years over how tech giants moderate what goes on their platforms. With federal law largely shielding companiesagainst being sued over what’s posted online, challengers have increasingly shifted the legal fight to the constitutional arena, probing the relationship between the government and the private sector.
US District Judge Terry Doughty’s injunction on Tuesday represents a break with judges who have been wary of extending the First Amendment’s speech protections to content decisions made by companies, even in situations where government officials tried to exert influence, said Genevieve Lakier, a constitutional law expert at the University of Chicago Law School.
Read the rest at Bloomberg.
Two more good articles on this insane decision:
Harry Litman and Lawrence Tribe at Just Security: Restricting the Government from Speaking to Tech Companies Will Spread Disinformation and Harm Democracy.
Philip Bump at The Washington Post: A deeply ironic reinforcement of right-wing misinformation.
That’s all I have for you today. I hope everyone is managing to stay safe in the ongoing hot weather.
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
Posted: June 22, 2023 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Afternoon Reads, Donald Trump, just because, SCOTUS | Tags: Jack Smith, Lordy there are tapes, missing submersible, OceanGate, Paul Singer, Samuel Alito, sinking of migrant boat, stolen documents case, Supreme Court ethics |
Good Afternoon!!
It’s another big news day today. Here’s what’s happening.
Big media is focused on the missing submersible with billionaires on board and there’s breaking news at doesn’t sound good.
UPDATE: I just saw on CNN that the debris appears to be from the submersible.
From the Associated Press article:
The U.S. Coast Guard said Thursday that an underwater vessel has located a debris field near the Titanic in the search for a missing submersible with five people aboard, a potential breakthrough in an increasingly urgent around-the-clock effort.
The Coast Guard’s post on Twitter gave no details, such as whether officials believe the debris is connected to the Titan, which was on an expedition to view the wreckage of the Titanic. The search passed the critical 96-hour mark Thursday when breathable air could have run out.
The Titan was estimated to have about a four-day supply of breathable air when it launched Sunday morning in the North Atlantic — but experts have emphasized that was an imprecise approximation to begin with and could be extended if passengers have taken measures to conserve breathable air. And it’s not known if they survived since the sub’s disappearance.
Rescuers have rushed ships, planes and other equipment to the site of the disappearance. On Thursday, the U.S. Coast Guard said an undersea robot sent by a Canadian ship had reached the sea floor, while a French research institute said a deep-diving robot with cameras, lights and arms also joined the operation.
At the same time, another tragedy has been virtually ignored. Jill Fillipovic at CNN: Opinion: While we hope for the best for the lost Titanic-exploring submersible, let’s not forget these other victims.
It’s interesting to watch the national fascination with this story [the missing submersible], especially compared to, say, the attention paid to the sinking of another boat, this one full of desperate migrants in the Mediterranean last week; dozens were killed, and hundreds of men, women and children are still missing. Many migrants, mostly from Syria, Egypt and Pakistan, may be dead.
And the Greek Coast Guard, despite indications that the boat was in distress, did not intervene, blaming the smuggled migrants who they say didn’t want help. Widespread outrage and anguish for the hundreds of souls taking an extraordinary risk in search of a better life, and those who failed them along the way, seems much more justifiable than the frenzy over a small, lost group of hyper-niche tourists, tragic as both circumstances may turn out to be. And yet, while the migrant story is far from being ignored, it’s not receiving the same breathless moment-by-moment updates accorded the lost Titanic hunters.
But human interest, we know, does not at all run proportional to human suffering, and often has little to do with who or what is deserving of significant attention. And the story of a vessel occupied by wealthy curiosity-seekers, lost in the depths of the ocean in its search to find a vessel occupied by wealthy curiosity-seekers lost in the depths of the ocean, has all the component parts of an addictive story: irony, suspense, potential tragedy, potential glory, lifestyles of the rich, aspiration and hubris.
Read more at at the CNN link.
It’s now coming out that there were many safety issues with the submersible.
From NPR:
Experts from within and outside OceanGate raised concerns about the safety of its Titan submersible as far back as 2018, years before it went missing during a deep-sea dive to the Titanic shipwreck site.
Several of those complaints have resurfaced this week, as the frantic search for the vessel — and its five passengers — continues.
“It hasn’t surprised us,” said Will Kohnen, the chair of the Marine Technology Society’s Submarine Committee (formerly the Manned Underwater Vehicles Committee), about the Titan’s disappearance. “We’ve been aware of this project for some time and have had some concerns.”
In March 2018, after one of the international industry group’s annual conferences, Kohnen drafted a letter to OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush — the pilot of the missing vessel — expressing “unanimous concern” on behalf of its members about the development of the Titan and its planned Titanic expeditions.
“Our apprehension is that the current experimental approach adopted by Oceangate could result in negative outcomes (from minor to catastrophic) that would have serious consequences for everyone in the industry,” he wrote, according to a copy obtained by the New York Times….
Kohnen told Morning Edition‘s A Martínez on Wednesday that the group’s main concern was a lack of oversight and adherence to industry-accepted safety guidelines.
“Most of the companies in this industry that are building submersibles and deep submersibles follow a fairly well-established framework of certification and verification and oversight, through classification societies,” he said. “And that was at the root of OceanGate’s project, is that they were going to go solo, going without that type of official oversight, and that brought a lot of concerns.”
You can also check out this piece at TechCrunch: A whistleblower raised safety concerns about OceanGate’s submersible in 2018. Then he was fired.
The director of marine operations at OceanGate, the company whose submersible went missing Sunday on an expedition to the Titanic in the North Atlantic, was fired after raising concerns about its first-of-a-kind carbon fiber hull and other systems before its maiden voyage, according to a filing in a 2018 lawsuit first reported by Insider and New Republic.
David Lochridge was terminated in January 2018 after presenting a scathing quality control report on the vessel to OceanGate’s senior management, including founder and CEO Stockton Rush, who is on board the missing vessel.
According to a court filing by Lochridge, the preamble to his report read: “Now is the time to properly address items that may pose a safety risk to personnel. Verbal communication of the key items I have addressed in my attached document have been dismissed on several occasions, so I feel now I must make this report so there is an official record in place.”
The report detailed “numerous issues that posed serious safety concerns,” according to the filing. These included Lochridge’s worry that “visible flaws” in the carbon fiber supplied to OceanGate raised the risk of small flaws expanding into larger tears during “pressure cycling.” These are the huge pressure changes that the submersible would experience as it made its way and from the deep ocean floor. He noted that a previously tested scale model of the hull had “prevalent flaws.”
More details at the link.
Samuel Alito has temporarily taken the pressure off Clarence Thomas.
A couple of days ago, ProPublica published a story about a luxury fishing trip to that Samuel Alito took with Leonard Leo. They were accompanied by billionaire Paul Singer, who flew both men on his private plane.
From ProPublica: Justice Samuel Alito Took Luxury Fishing Vacation With GOP Billionaire Who Later Had Cases Before the Court.
In early July 2008, Samuel Alito stood on a riverbank in a remote corner of Alaska. The Supreme Court justice was on vacation at a luxury fishing lodge that charged more than $1,000 a day, and after catching a king salmon nearly the size of his leg, Alito posed for a picture. To his left, a man stood beaming: Paul Singer, a hedge fund billionaire who has repeatedly asked the Supreme Court to rule in his favor in high-stakes business disputes.
Singer was more than a fellow angler. He flew Alito to Alaska on a private jet. If the justice chartered the plane himself, the cost could have exceeded $100,000 one way.
In the years that followed, Singer’s hedge fund came before the court at least 10 times in cases where his role was often covered by the legal press and mainstream media. In 2014, the court agreed to resolve a key issue in a decade-long battle between Singer’s hedge fund and the nation of Argentina. Alito did not recuse himself from the case and voted with the 7-1 majority in Singer’s favor. The hedge fund was ultimately paid $2.4 billion.
Alito did not report the 2008 fishing trip on his annual financial disclosures. By failing to disclose the private jet flight Singer provided, Alito appears to have violated a federal law that requires justices to disclose most gifts, according to ethics law experts.
Experts said they could not identify an instance of a justice ruling on a case after receiving an expensive gift paid for by one of the parties.
“If you were good friends, what were you doing ruling on his case?” said Charles Geyh, an Indiana University law professor and leading expert on recusals. “And if you weren’t good friends, what were you doing accepting this?” referring to the flight on the private jet.
ProPublica sent a series of questions to Alito before publishing the story. Instead of answering them, Alito got his pals at the Wall Street Journal to publish a whiny defense–before the ProPublica article came out.
NYT story by Adam Liptak: Justice Alito Defends Private Jet Travel to Luxury Fishing Trip.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. took the unusual step late Tuesday of responding to questions about his travel with a billionaire who frequently has cases before the Supreme Court hours before an article detailing their ties had even been published.
In an extraordinary salvo in a favored forum, Justice Alito defended himself in a pre-emptive article in the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal before the news organization ProPublica posted its account of a luxury fishing trip in 2008….
Justice Alito said he had spoken to Mr. [Paul] Singer [who flew Alito to Alaska on his private plane] only a handful of times, including on two occasions when Mr. Singer introduced the justice before speeches. “It was and is my judgment that these facts would not cause a reasonable and unbiased person to doubt my ability to decide the matters in question impartially,” Justice Alito wrote.
He added that he did not know of Mr. Singer’s connection to the cases before the court, including one in which the court issued a 7-to-1 decision in favor of one of Mr. Singer’s businesses, with Justice Alito in the majority.
But Mr. Singer’s connection to the case, Republic of Argentina v. NML Capital, was widely reported. A Forbes article covering the decision bore the headline “Supreme Court Hands Billionaire Paul Singer a Victory Over Argentina.” An article in The New York Times noted that the parties to the case included “NML Capital, an affiliate of Elliott Management, the hedge fund founded by Paul Singer.”
Alito’s justification for taking the free private plane flight was ludicrous and got him mocked all day long on Twitter.
Justice Alito said he was not required to disclose the trip on Mr. Singer’s private jet in “a seat that, as far as I am aware, would have otherwise been vacant.”
A federal law requires disclosures of gifts over a certain value but makes exceptions for “personal hospitality of any individual” at “the personal residence of that individual or his family or on property or facilities owned by that individual or his family.” Justice Alito wrote that a jet is such a facility, quoting from dictionary definitions.
In March, the Judicial Conference of the United States, the policymaking body for the federal courts, issued new guidelines requiring disclosure of travel by private jet and stays in commercial properties like resorts.
This morning, CNN published another embarrassing story for Alito.
CNN: Alito in the hot seat over trips to Alaska and Rome he accepted from groups and individuals who lobby the Supreme Court.
Last July, Alito was feted in Rome by Notre Dame’s Religious Liberty Initiative, which has in recent years joined the growing ranks of conservative legal activists who are finding new favor at the Supreme Court – and forging ties with the justices. The group’s legal clinic has filed a series of “friend-of-the-court” briefs in religious liberty cases before the Supreme Court since its founding in 2020.
After the high court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, the group paid for Alito’s trip to Rome to deliver a keynote address at a gala hosted at a palace in the heart of the city. It was his first known public appearance after the decision.
At the start of his speech, he thanked the group for the “warm hospitality” it provided to him and his wife, which, he later said, included a stay at a hotel that “looks out over the Roman Forum.”
During various parts of the address, he gleefully mocked critics of his ruling overturning the constitutional right to abortion. What really “wounded” him, the conservative justice said, was when Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, “addressed the United Nations and seemed to compare ‘the decision whose name may not be spoken’ with the Russian attack on the Ukraine.”
Justices are often known for usually maintaining a low profile, and the court’s public information office in recent years has been less forthcoming about their public appearances. But the court’s ruling last year in the abortion case propelled the nine jurists and their rulings to new heights and fueled new questions about the justices’ behavior both on and off the bench.
Alito joined the majority in ruling in favor of the Religious Liberty Initiative’s position in several of the cases for which it submitted briefs, including the one that reversed Roe, which he authored, and a 2022 decision that said a high school football coach had the right to pray on the 50-yard line after games.
I wonder which right wing justice will be next? I hope some investigative journalist is looking into which billionaire(s) have given gifts to Brett Kavanaugh. It’s also notable that the introductions to the billionaire sugar daddies came from former Federalist Society head Leonard Leo. Check out this piece from Josh Marshall at TPM: Leonard Leo’s SCOTUS-FedSoc Sponsor Family Program.
There’s big news today on the Trump stolen documents case.
Last night, Jack Smith sent the first installment of discovery to Trump’s lawyers.
CNN: Trump receives first batch of evidence against him in classified documents case, including audio tapes.
Special counsel Jack Smith has begun producing evidence in the Mar-a-Lago documents case to Donald Trump, according to a Wednesday court filing that hints that investigators collected for the case multiple recordings of the former president – not just audio of an interview Trump gave at Bedminster for a forthcoming Mark Meadows memoir.
Prosecutors in the filing used the plural “interviews” to describe recordings of Trump – made with his consent – obtained by the special counsel that have now been turned over to his defense team. It is unclear what the additional recordings may be of or how relevant they will be to the Justice Department’s case against the former president, though the recordings include the Bedminster tape where Trump speaks about a secret military document to a writer and others, the prosecutors said in the filing.
he prosecutors’ update to the court on Wednesday night marks another swift move toward trial, which the Justice Department has said should happen quickly, and captures at least some of the extent of the evidence investigators secured to build their historic case against Trump.
The first batch of discovery production – made up of unclassified materials – includes transcripts of witness testimony in front of the grand juries in Washington, DC, and Florida that were probing the mishandling of government documents from Trump’s White House. It also includes materials collected via subpoenas and search warrants; memos detailing other witness interviews given through mid-May in the investigation; and copies of the surveillance footage investigators obtained in the probe.
The first batch of evidence, provided on Wednesday, “includes the grand jury testimony of witnesses who will testify for the government at the trial of this case,” the special counsel’s office wrote.
More from Hugo Lowell at The Guardian:
From The Guardian:
Federal prosecutors investigating Donald Trump’s retention of national security material were examining evidence within weeks of the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago last year that he might have handled classified documents at his Bedminster club in New Jersey, according to two people close to the matter.
The indications of classified documents at Bedminster so alarmed prosecutors that they focused part of the investigation on whether Trump might have transported the materials or disclosed their contents there in addition to refusing to return them to the government, the people said….
The suspicion that Trump travelled with classified documents between Mar-a-Lago, his winter residence, and Bedminster, his summer residence, started early in the criminal investigation that intensified after the FBI search and culminated in Trump being accused of violating the Espionage Act….
Within weeks of the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, the justice department sought to act on the indications of classified documents at Bedminster when it told the Trump legal team that prosecutors believed the former president still possessed classified materials, the people said.
The message in the letter, which became a formal court motion filed under seal weeks later, was clear: arrange for new searches of all of the Trump properties because, as of that time, the only place that had been combed for classified documents was the Mar-a-Lago resort.
Whether to acquiesce with the request split the Trump legal team. Trump in-house counsel Boris Epshteyn and Trump lawyer Chris Kise were uneasy about being ordered around by the government, while the other Trump lawyers Tim Parlatore and Jim Trusty suggested a cooperative approach.
The legal team ultimately decided on working with the justice department and, in one exchange, asked prosecutors which Trump properties and where at the Trump properties they wanted them to search.
A few more details at the link.
Trump now knows who has testified in the grand jury and what secrets they have revealed. He must be throwing ketchup around at Bedminster. He has posted several insane messages on Truth Social. Here’s a sample:
I wonder how long it will take him to reveal information he gets from the discovery. If he starts attacking Mark Meadows, we’ll have a clue.
Have a great Thursday, Sky Dancers!!
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
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 |
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.
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.
Read more details at Politico.
If you are a Twitter denizen, you may have seen some clips from Trump’s weird interview with Fox News’s Brett Baier. I can just imagine how his defense attorneys reacted. But they already know he can’t be controlled–even when it’s for his own good. Here are some media and expert reactions.
https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/1670958219932442624?s=20
The New York Times: Trump Says ‘Secret’ Document He Described on Tape Referred to News Clippings.
Former President Donald J. Trump claimed to a Fox News anchor in an interview on Monday that he did not have a classified document with him in a meeting with a book publisher even though he referred during that meeting to “secret” information in his possession.
The July 2021 meeting — at Mr. Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J. — was recorded by at least two people in attendance, and a transcript describes the former president pointing to a pile of papers and then saying of Gen. Mark A. Milley, whom he had been criticizing: “Look. This was him. They presented me this — this is off the record, but — they presented me this. This was him. This was the Defense Department and him.”
On the recording, according to two people familiar with its contents, Mr. Trump can be heard flipping through papers as he talks to a publisher and writer working on a book by his final White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows. Mr. Trump and the people in the meeting do not explicitly say what document the former president is holding.
According to the transcript, Mr. Trump describes the document, which he claims shows General Milley’s desire to attack Iran, as “secret” and “like, highly confidential.” He also declares that “as president, I could have declassified it,” adding, “Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”
But in the interview on Monday, with the Fox News anchor Bret Baier, Mr. Trump denied that he had been referring to an actual document and claimed to have simply been referring to news clippings and magazine pieces.
“There was no document,” Mr. Trump insisted. “That was a massive amount of papers and everything else talking about Iran and other things. And it may have been held up or may not, but that was not a document. I didn’t have a document per se. There was nothing to declassify. These were newspaper stories, magazine stories and articles.”
Rolling Stone: Trump All But Confesses to Mishandling Classified Docs on Fox News.
A WEEK AFTER his second post-presidential arrest, this one for his alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving the White House, Donald Trump turned to Fox News host Bret Baier on Monday to make the case for why he should lead the country again. But he ended up essentially confessing to the crime of which he’s accused: stealing and sharing top-secret government information.
Before that, however, Baier pressed Trump to explain why he kept the boxes of classified materials at Mar-a-Lago and refused to comply with government requests to return them, as described in his new felony indictment. In between dismissing the case as “the document hoax” or accusing other presidents of illegally hoarding their own sensitive documents, Trump offered the bizarre explanation that he couldn’t give up the boxes to authorities because they also contained… his clothes.
“Like every other president I take things out,” Trump said. “In my case, I took it out pretty much in a hurry. People packed it up and left. I had clothing in there, I had all sorts of personal items in there. Much, much stuff.” After a brief digression to call his former attorney general Bill Barr a “coward,” Trump reiterated, “I have got a lot of things in there. I will go through those boxes. I have to go through those boxes. I take out personal things.” Finally, he clarified what those items were: “These boxes were interspersed with all sorts of things: golf shirts, clothing, pants, shoes, there were many things,” he said.
That really isn’t a good excuse, since government documents are not supposed to be mixed with other papers, much less clothing. More from the RS piece:
Later on in the interview, Trump and Baier got into a debate on the results of the 2020 election, with the Fox anchor trying in vain to remind the former president that he lost while Trump rambled on about fake ballots. The rest of the conversation involved Trump bashing Biden’s international diplomacy, from Ukraine to the Middle East to China, and musing about how much better things were with him in office.
Afterward, Fox News chief political analyst Brit Hume said that Trump’s answers regarding matters of the law were “on the verge on incoherent,” and specifically mentioned the bizarre detail of not returning the boxes of classified documents because they hadn’t been “separated from his golf shirts or whatever he was saying.” Overall, Hume said, it sounded as if Trump was making the argument that the papers were his to do with as he liked, “which I don’t think is going to hold up in court.”
Trump also claimed he was “too busy” to go through the documents and take out his personal stuff. He claimed that justifies his having one of his lawyers certify to the Feds that there were no more documents at Mar-a-Lago, ordering Walt Nauta to move the documents around to hide them from his lawyers, and refusing to obey a subpoena.
Here is one of the best parts of the Baier interview. It doesn’t have much of Trump in it, so it’s safe to watch.
https://twitter.com/KevinTober94/status/1670923018351067137?s=20
Finally, Hunter Biden has reached a deal with the Trump-appointed prosecutor investigating his case.
The Washington Post: Hunter Biden reaches deal to plead guilty in tax, gun case.
President Biden’s son Hunter has reached a tentative agreement with federal prosecutors to plead guilty to two minor tax crimes and admit to the facts of a gun charge under terms that would likely keep him out of jail, according to court papers filed Tuesday.
Any proposed plea deal would have to be approved by a federal judge. Both the prosecutors and the defense counsel have requested a court hearing at which Hunter Biden, 53, can enter his plea.
The agreement caps an investigation that was opened in 2018 during the Trump administration, and has generated intense interest and criticism since 2020 from Republican politicians who accused the Biden administration of reluctance to pursue the case.The terms of the proposed deal — negotiated with Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss, a holdover from President Donald Trump’s administration — are likely to face similar scrutiny.
The court papers indicate the younger Biden has tentatively agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges of failure to pay in 2017 and 2018. The combined tax liability is roughly $1.2 million over those years, according to people familiar with the plea deal, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe details of the agreement that are not yet public. Prosecutors plan to recommend a sentence of probation for those counts, these people said. Biden’s representatives have said he previously paid back the IRS what he owed.
It’s a busy news day. I’ll add a few more stories in the comment thread. Have a tremendous Tuesday everyone!
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Recent Comments