I just have one question...do you see any problems with privatization of the means of communication (and other life-supporting systems)? Because privatization is the GOP wet dream. Remember that next time you vote.
Monday, July 31, 2023
Trump's campaign fund is a legal fees fund
If you can get a bunch of rubes to pay your legal bills, hey, why wouldn't you?Former president Donald Trump’s political group spent more than $40 million on legal costs in the first half of 2023 to defend Trump.
[...]
Save America, the former president’s PAC, is expected to disclose about $40.2 million in legal spending in a filing expected Monday.
[...]
That total is more than any other expense the PAC has incurred during Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and, according to federal filings from earlier this month, more than Trump’s campaign raised in the second quarter of 2023. It will bring the PAC’s post-presidential legal spending to about $56 million.
[...]
Trump advisers told The Washington Post that the PAC, which raises most of its money from small-dollar contributions by Trump supporters across the country, is footing the legal bills for almost anyone drawn into the investigations who requests help from the former president and his advisers.
WaPo
Innocent.Trump’s advisers say the costs of providing lawyers for dozens of people are necessary and will continue mushrooming as investigations continue, trials are scheduled and the possibility of more charges looms.
[...]
Paul Seamus Ryan, a campaign finance expert, said he didn’t necessarily see any “legal red flags” with the spending, noting that Trump had wide berth to spend money on legal fees — but that it was far more than any other 2024 presidential candidate would be spending at this point.
“It’s an extraordinary sum of money,” he said. “At the end of the day it’s up to the donors to decide if that’s the way they want their money spent. My sense is if you’re giving money to Trump in 2023, you’re fine with it.”
[...]
Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the former president, said Save America was paying legal fees for those who worked for Trump “to protect these innocent people from financial ruin and prevent their lives from being completely destroyed” by what he called “unlawful harassment” from investigators.
According to the most recent indictment in the documents case, a private message chat with Nauta about who could be trusted - "loyal" - involved a representative of the Save America PAC.It is not unusual for political campaigns, or companies for that matter, to pay for legal costs of their employees, if the legal issues involve their work. In Trump’s case, however, prosecutors have suggested there may be more to it than that.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.The PAC’s own fundraising and creation is under investigation [...] . Much of the money it is using to pay for legal bills was raised on false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
[...]
The backstory to the new charges underscores just how complicated things can get when serving as a lawyer for a Trump employee.
[Walt] Nauta, who investigators long considered a key witness in the classified documents investigation, has been represented for many months by lawyer Stan Woodward, with Save America footing the bills. Woodward also represents several other Trump-linked clients who have been subpoenaed as part of Smith’s investigations, including an IT worker named Yuscil Taveras.
For much of the classified documents probe, there did not appear to be a conflict between Nauta and Taveras.
[...]
After Trump and Nauta were indicted in June, however, Taveras decided he had more he wanted to tell the authorities.
[...]
Taveras offered information implicating all three defendants in an alleged conspiracy to cover up evidence, these people said.
Legal ethics rules bar attorneys from arguing adverse positions in a case.
[...]
Once Taveras’s position put him potentially at odds with Nauta’s defense, a judge reviewed the issue. [...] A second lawyer — not paid by the PAC — was brought in to provide legal advice to Taveras, who then spoke to investigators.
UPDATE 12:24 pm:
UPDATE 08/01/2023: The Daily Beast reports that Trump's legal expenses are about half of what was reported.
The early news reports—sourced from “people familiar with the filing”—and the disclosure itself don’t provide enough data to show where the error lay. However, the seemingly neat halfway split could suggest an accounting mistake—or, alternatively, possibly unreliable or intentionally misleading sourcing. Those fees do appear to extend to an array of law firms—indicating financial support for a long list of possible witnesses in several cases—as well as to Trump’s own stable of attorneys.
The Trump operation had spent so much on lawyers that they opened a separate legal fund on July 19 and reportedly asked a Trump-aligned super PAC to refund $60 million in shady transfers ahead of his candidate announcement last fall.
The filing also shows that Save America raised just $15.6 million in the first six months of the year while spending nearly double that amount—$30.2 million. But the accounting discrepancy could also reflect a systemic problem—Trump’s full operation also filed more than two dozen corrected reports across several committees on Monday, going back as far as January 2021.
Daily Beast
Russian war crimes continue unabated
That can just be a perennial headline.
But if you're an American or international construction materials company, you're only seeing dollar signs thinking of the rebuilding costs.
Remember the sales and marketing convention that was held when Bush announced an invasion of Iraq? Everybody down to wastebasket manufacturers were high on the idea and planning their moves to follow US troops into the country.
Sunday, July 30, 2023
Delaying the Georgia case
A judge scheduled a hearing on former President Donald Trump's motion to disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from the investigation into Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.
The motion also seeks to quash the special purpose grand jury report that gathered much of the evidence in the case.
The hearing is set for Thursday, Aug. 10, at 10 a.m., and all briefs on the issue are due two days prior, on Aug. 8. The hearing comes as charges in the case could be imminent -- Willis previously said in a letter that she would be announcing her charging decisions by Sept. 1.
ABCNews
The biggest loser loses again
For the love of Pete, inciting "readers and viewers to hate, contempt, distrust, ridicule, and even fear" someone is Trump's signature m.o. - often multiple times in one day.A federal judge late Friday dismissed Donald Trump’s $475 million defamation lawsuit against CNN, in which the former president argued that the cable network’s statements about his false 2020 election fraud claims likened him to Adolf Hitler.
In the lawsuit, Trump’s team argued that CNN writers and television anchors’ use of the phrase the “Big Lie,” in five specific incidents, incited “readers and viewers to hate, contempt, distrust, ridicule, and even fear” him.
Politico
Look out Judge. You'll be the next person Trump incites his readers and viewers to hate.The phrase “big lie” historically has referred to a propaganda technique so powerful that people who believe in its message could not believe that someone could have distorted it. It has popular origins in German from Adolf Hitler in his memoir, Mein Kampf.
[...]
U.S. District Judge Raag Singhal, who Trump appointed in 2019, reasoned that because all of CNN’s statements were opinion, Trump could not legally sue the network for defamation.
“Being ‘Hitler-like’ is not a verifiable statement of fact that would support a defamation claim,” Singhal wrote in his dismissal. “CNN’s statements while repugnant, were not, as a matter of law, defamatory.”
[...]
“The Court finds Nazi references in the political discourse (made by whichever ‘side’) to be odious and repugnant. But bad rhetoric is not defamation when it does not include false statements of fact.” Singhal wrote. “CNN’s use of the phrase ‘the Big Lie’ in connection with Trump’s election challenges does not give rise to a plausible inference that Trump advocates the persecution and genocide of Jews or any other group of people. No reasonable viewer could (or should) plausibly make that reference.”
PS, when did "contempt" become a verb?
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
Impeach Samuel Alito
Not only is he corrupt, he doesn't even know the Constitution that he's "interpreting".
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.“I know this is a controversial view, but I’m willing to say it,” Alito said Friday, referencing Congressional Democrats’ recent efforts to to mandate stronger ethics rules. “No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court—period.”
“I don’t know that any of my colleagues have spoken about it publicly … But I think it is something we have all thought about,” he told the Journal.
His remarks sparked pushback from a slew of House Democrats.
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) argued Congress would always have regulation power over the high court.
“Dear Justice Alito: You’re on the Supreme Court in part because Congress expanded the Court to 9 Justices,” Lieu posted Friday on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “Congress can impeach Justices and can in many cases strip the Court of jurisdiction.”
“Congress has always regulated you and will continue to do so,” he added. “You are not above the law.”
[...]
“Alito’s next opinion piece in the WSJ is about to be ‘I am a little king, actually. The Constitution doesn’t explicitly say I’m not,’” [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) posted.]
[...]
Both California Democratic Reps. Katie Porter and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) also responded to the justice’s remarks, calling his view “controversial.”
“This view is more than controversial; it’s incorrect,” Porter said on X. “This is coming from a justice who tried to hide the fact that he accepted luxury vacations on private jets. As a government official, I welcome the American people holding me accountable—why doesn’t Justice Alito?”
Schiff, referring to the ProPublica report that revealed an undisclosed Alaskan fishing trip the justice accepted in 2008 that was paid for by a conservative donor, said Alito’s view shows why an “enforceable code of ethics” is needed. The investigation — paired with another that revealed Justice Clarence Thomas received financial gifts without disclosing them — ultimately led to lawmakers’ push for the ethics review.
[...]
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), the sponsor of a bill to reform Supreme Court ethics standards and member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, also shared on social media that the Journal author of the interview with Alito is the lawyer for Leonard Leo, a prominent conservative legal activist who reportedly organized a fishing trip to Alaska that Alito attended alongside Paul Singer, a hedge fund manager whose plane they took.
“The lawyer who ‘wrote’ this is also the lawyer blocking our investigation into Leonard Leo’s Supreme Court freebies,” Whitehouse tweeted.
[...]
“[T]his is a fancy way of telling everyone to pound sand because he’s untouchable," [said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii).]
The Hill
UPDATE 10:47 am:
Not that he wouldn't have been eager to overturn Roe without their funding.
UPDATE 03:24 pm:
Saturday, July 29, 2023
In his own words
Trump had thoughts about and words for anyone handling classified national security documents before he violated the laws regarding the same.
Some are recorded in the Mar-a-Lago documents case indictment:
You can read the indictment here.
Or you can let it be read to you here.
(p.9)TRUMP's Public Statements on Classified Information23. As a candidate for President of the United States, TRUMP made the following public statements, among others, about classified information:a. On August 18, 2016, TRUMP stated, “In my administration I'm going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information. No one will be above the law."24. As President of the United States, on July 26, 2018, TRUMP issued the following statement about classified information:
b. On September 6, 2016. TRUMP stated, “We also need to fight this battle by collecting intelligence and then protecting, protecting our classified secrets... We can't have someone in the Oval Office who doesn't understand the meaning of the word confidential or classified.”
c. On September 7, 2016. TRUMP stated. “[O]ne of the first things we must do is to enforce all classification rules and to enforce all laws relating to the handling of classified information.”
d. On September 19, 2016, TRUMP stated, “We also need the best protection of classified information.”
e. On November 3, 2016, TRUMP stated, “Service members here in North Carolina have risked their lives to acquire classified intelligence to protect our country.”As the head of the executive branch and Commander in Chief, I have a unique Constitutional responsibility to protect the Nation's classified information, including by controlling access to it. More broadly, the issue of [a former executive branch official's] security clearance raises larger questions about the practice of former officials maintaining access to our Nation's most sensitive secrets long after their time in Government has ended. Such access is particularly inappropriate when former officials have transitioned into highly partisan positions and seek to use real or perceived access to sensitive information to validate their political attacks. Any access granted to our Nation's secrets should be in furtherance of national, not personal, interests.[...]
(p.17)36. In August or September 2021, when he was no longer president, TRUMP met in his office at The Bedminster Club with a representative of his political action committee (the“PAC Representative”). During the meeting, TRUMP commented that an ongoing military operation in Country B was not going well. TRUMP showed the PAC Representative a classified map of County B and told the PAC Representative that he should not be showing the map to the PAC Representative and to not get too close. The PAC Representative did not have a security clearance or any need-to-know classified information about the military operation.
37. On February 16, 2017, four years before TRUMP's disclosures of classified information set forth above, TRUMP said at a press conference:
“The first thing I thought of when I heard about it is, how does the press get this information that's classified? How do they do it? You know why? Because it's an illegal process, and the press should be ashamed of themselves. But more importantly, the people that gave out the information to the press should be ashamed of themselves. Really ashamed.
--------
Or you can let it be read to you here.
The whole thing is an amazing account of bald-faced arrogance and incredible ignorance on the part of a former president of the US, who should obviously never have been near the office, and proof of his illegal activity surrounding classified documents and attempt to cover it up, including directing his minions to destroy security camera video and hiding evidence from his own attorneys.
And Republicans want to put him back in office.
Friday, July 28, 2023
A big deal for the military
Why is that?President Joe Biden on Friday will sign an executive order giving decisions on the prosecution of serious military crimes, including sexual assault, to independent military attorneys, taking that power away from victims’ commanders.
The order formally implements legislation passed by Congress in 2022 aimed at strengthening protections for service members, who were often at the mercy of their commanders to decide whether to take their assault claims seriously.
Members of Congress, frustrated with the growing number of sexual assaults in the military, fought with defense leaders for several years over the issue. [...] Military leaders balked, saying it could erode commanders’ authority.
[...]
The Pentagon had already been moving forward with the change. A year ago, the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force set up the new special trial counsel offices, which will assume authority over prosecution decisions by the end of this year. Beginning Jan. 1, 2025, that prosecution authority will expand to include sexual harassment cases.
[...]
While the services have made inroads in making it easier and safer for troops to come forward, they have had far less success reducing the number of assaults, which have increased nearly every year since 2006.
AP
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
Thursday, July 27, 2023
Better and better
While we wait for the announcement of an indictment for the insurrection...
.....but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
UPDATE 07/28/2023:
The Justice Department, in a new superseding indictment unveiled Thursday, is charging former President Trump with seeking to delete Mar-a-Lago surveillance video footage last year in connection with the federal classified records case.
Trump is charged in the new indictment along with Carlos de Oliveira, the property manager of the resort and a new defendant in the case, and his valet Walt Nauta, who had faced previous charges.
The Hill
Special Counsel Smith's team said in a separate filing that they would work to ensure the new charges would not delay the trial.
[...]
De Oliveira is due to appear in court in Miami on Monday.
[...]
Prosecutors also said they recovered the document involved in an incident in which Trump, bragged about a "plan of attack" against another country in an interview at his New Jersey golf resort.
Post News
Assuming Employee 4 is the source of the information, I hope Employee 4 has protection.A superseding indictment unsealed by the Justice Department lists multiple new counts against Trump, including: altering, destroying, mutilating, or concealing an object; and corruptly altering, destroying, mutilating or concealing a document, record or other object; and an additional charge of willful retention of national defense information.
[...]
De Oliveira [...] faces one count of altering, destroying, mutilating, or concealing an object; one count of corruptly altering, destroying, mutilating or concealing a document, record or other object; and one count of making false statements and representations during a voluntary interview with federal investigators.
He has been ordered to appear in federal court in Miami on Monday morning.
[...]
The superseding indictment names De Oliveira as one of the aides who helped move boxes for Trump, and federal prosecutors allege that he, along with Trump and Nauta, instructed an unnamed employee to delete Mar-a-Lago security camera footage to prevent it from being turned over to a federal grand jury.
[...]
The 32nd count of willful retention of national defense information in the superseding indictment stems from a document Trump showed to four people during a July, 21, 2021, meeting at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, according to the new filing. The indictment alleges that the document, which Trump had until mid-Jan. 2022, was marked TOP SECRET/NOFORN, and is described in the indictment as a "presentation concerning military activity in a foreign country."
The superseding indictment notes that Trump was participating in a recorded interview with a writer and a publisher, and two of his aides were also present. The former president told the group he had a "plan of attack" from a senior military official. Trump characterized the document as "highly confidential" and "secret information" and noted that "as president I could have declassified it. … Now I can't, you know, but this is still a secret." The indictment also points out that neither the aides nor the writer or publisher had a security clearance.
The document, which CBS News reported was a Defense Department memo on Iran, was not part of the original 31 counts of retention of national defense information charged in Smith's initial indictment.
[...]
According to the filing, the Justice Department emailed the attorney for Trump's business with the final grand jury subpoena, requiring the production of surveillance records, videos and images, on June 24, 2022.
[...]
On June 27, 2022, the indictment says, De Oliveira took another Trump employee to a small room known as an "audio closet," and asked the employee how many days the server retained security footage. The employee said he believed it was about 45 days. "De Oliveira told Trump Employee 4 that 'the boss' wanted the server deleted," the indictment states. "Trump Employee 4 responded that he would not know how to do that, and that he did not believe that he would have the rights to do that. ... De Oliveira then insisted to Trump Employee 4 that 'the boss' wanted the server deleted and asked, 'What are we going to do?'"
CBS
.....but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
UPDATE 07/28/2023:
Keep in mind, DeOliveira is the guy who helped Nauta move boxes. He's represented by an attorney paid for by the Trump Save America PAC. He's the guy who called the Mar a Lago IT guy and asked questions about how long security footage was kept. And he's the guy that reportedly drained the pool into the server room where the surveillance footage was stored.
[...]
[T]he day after DoJ subpoenaed the Trump Org for the security camera footage, Trump called DeOliveira and they spoke for 24 minutes.
[...]
Trump asked Nauta to return to Mar a Lago, and when he got there, Nauta told DeOliveira that trump wanted him to talk to the IT guy.
Two days after that, DeOliveira went to see the IT guy and told him trump wanted him to DELETE the security footage.
Now, the indictment does NOT address any attempts to delete or destroy the footage, just the attempt (which is a crime). So all three have been charged with obstruction of justice for that attempt. DeOliveira has also been charged with lying to the FBI about moving boxes with Carlos.
It's also mentioned in the indictment that DeOliveira was told if he were loyal, trump would pay for his lawyer.
Mueller, She Wrote
My belief is that's 99.99% likely. DeOliveira is the guy who drained the pool.
Presumably, since dissemination of classified materials was not charged in this case (because it wasn't done at Mar-a-Lago), Smith could still charge that crime in New Jersey.*Subject to the Court’s approval, the Special Counsel’s Office will not oppose defendants Trump and Nauta waiving appearance at an arraignment on the superseding indictment pursuant to the conditions set forth in Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 10(b).
NBC
UPDATE 07/28/2023 08:53 am:
The information technology worker who appeared in recent weeks before a federal grand jury hearing evidence as to how 15 boxes of government documents wound up at former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate was identified by The New York Times on Wednesday night. Two sources familiar with the matter told the Times that the man, Yuscil Taveras, had answered questions about his relationship to two other Trump aides at Mar-a-Lago. One, a former valet named Walt Nauta, was identified late last year; the other, Carlos Deoliveira, was identified and described as Mar-a-Lago’s head of maintenance by the Times [...] Taveras was asked about a call Deoliveira placed to him last summer.
Daily Beast
The question answers itself. His attorney - paid for by Trump - has as his foremost concern Trump's best interests.
And gives him another possible flipper.
*UPDATE 07/30/2023: This is not clear to me. The particular section of the law dealt with may allow for retention and/or dissemination. We'll have to wait and see. At least I will.
But deOliveira can always say by "the boss" he meant Nauta. Right?
UPDATE 07/31/2023:
Two thoughts:
1) If you're going to have any conflict with another defendant, you need separate lawyers;
2) This gives the impression that Taveras wasn't being allowed to tell the truth as long as he had the Trump-funded lawyer; which in turn suggests that other defendants with that lawyer are not telling the truth.
UPDATE 07/31/2023 04:29 pm:
Some day we'll see a TV miniseries akin to "White House Plumbers" about this bumbling crime.The tale of the two gormless henchmen creeping around the basement pointing flashlights at security cameras and the servers they'd been dispatched by Trump to wipe — all the while being captured by those very same cameras! — is almost too ludicrous to bear. Who knew there could be something more preposterous than that photo of the tacky bathroom with the boxes stacked in the shower?
[...]
Were they dressed like Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern in the Home Alone movies? Did they take flashlights because they hoped somehow to defeat the motion-activated camera sensors referred to in the evidentiary pleadings?
[...]
After being rebuffed by Taveras, De Oliveira and Nauta regrouped. At 1:31, De Oliveira dove through the bushes to meet Nauta on an adjacent property — presumably one without cameras — snuck back through the brambles for another visit to the IT office, and then, like a Homer Simpson gif come to life, crossed back through the bushes to report to Nauta.
[...]
[T]he whole thing is a Keystone Cops comedy where the protagonist is a cartoon villain who swipes oversized love notes from murderous despots and stashes military secrets in his pool locker.
Normal people don’t pratfall into violating the Espionage Act because they think that national defense documents are cool keepsakes to have around. But normal people also don’t spend 70 years cultivating a reputation as serial philanderers, only to hold themselves out as avatars of Christian values. So perhaps it was inevitable that we’d wind up here, with the former president facing a decade in jail for crimes so mind-numbingly stupid, and yet so extensively documented.
From the boxes in the bathroom, to the flashlights in the tunnel. From the lawyer fresh off a stint at OAN, to the lawyer dictating a long memo explaining that his client instructed him to defy a grand jury subpoena. From Trump recording himself disseminating national defense information, to his goons getting caught on camera trying to destroy the security footage.
It’s all so offensively dumb!
[...]
Next we'll find out that the security camera footage was destroyed in a conveniently timed flood.
OH, WAIT.
Public Notice
It's coming
That's rich. How about all the lawyers (and judges) who told him he lost and needed to shut up and sit down?
FURTHER UPDATE :
Looks like maybe a one-two punch...
And, there it is...
UPDATE 03:23 pm:
Speaking of Georgia...
Go, Ron
“Most of America’s big pro sports leagues gave up their tax exemptions voluntarily when their revenues climbed into the stratosphere, and they hadn’t even shamed themselves with Saudi blood money. An organization that betrays its own word and agrees to become a profit generator for Saudi Arabia’s brutal regime has disqualified itself for a tax exemption,” Wyden said. “Many of the biggest sovereign wealth funds out there belong to countries that do not have our interests at heart, and there’s no good reason for hardworking American taxpayers to have to subsidize their huge profits.”
[...]
Sovereign wealth funds are able to structure income and transactions such as the PGA deal to maximize tax-free profits. The Ending Tax Breaks for Massive Sovereign Wealth Funds Act would deny that benefit to funds belonging to countries that have more than $100 billion invested globally. An exception would apply to countries that have a free trade agreement or a tax treaty with the U.S. and are not deemed by the State Department a “foreign country of concern.” Based on public sources, the countries that are expected to be made ineligible for the tax break are Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait.
[...]
Senator Wyden opened an investigation in June into the PGA-PIF deal’s financial structure and implications for censorship and national security, given the PGA’s extensive real estate holdings near U.S. military sites. That investigation is ongoing. He and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) also called on the Justice Department to scrutinize the deal for potential antitrust violations.
Senate Finance Committee
Wednesday, July 26, 2023
Indictments imminent
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
UPDATE 07/27/2023: And, there it is...
Oh my
Not quickly.
And take Dianne Feinstein with you.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
UPDATE 07/27/2023: Aides reported this as a "bout of light headedness." That is not what it was. It was a glitch in his brain. Glitch McConnell. Sorry. But it was right there.
That also wasn't "disoriented". He froze up, like a droid that had its plug pulled.Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) fell while leaving a plane earlier this month, NBC News reported Wednesday after the 81-year-old lawmaker froze up in mid-speech during a news conference.
The accident at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport had not been revealed publicly, according to the network. McConnell did not appear seriously hurt and returned to the Capitol that day, but the details were concerning.
[...]
McConnell [...] broke his rib and sustained a concussion in a fall in March. He fractured a shoulder in an accident in 2019.
[...]
On Wednesday as he addressed reporters, McConnell stopped speaking and appeared disoriented.
The Hill
No, Mitch, you're not fine.He returned later and said only: “I’m fine.”
And we never did learn what was with that weird blue/black skin condition on his face and hands.
Yes, he's still an asshole.
UPDATE 07/27/2023:
Toast
He says it doesn't matter, because he has a constitutional right to lie.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
It’s not entirely clear what caused this about-face, although recent developments in the case suggest that this may be an attempt to avoid further discovery obligations.
[...]
There’s yet another pending motion for sanctions alleging that Giuliani failed to preserve or spoliated evidence. Earlier this week, Giuliani’s buddy Bernie Kerik capitulated to the plaintiffs’ discovery demands after being threatened with monetary sanctions of his own. Kerik, a former law enforcement official with his own checkered past, accompanied Giuliani on his efforts to overturn Biden’s electoral college win. It’s probably not a coincidence that Giuliani had a change of heart just a day after Kerik agreed to turn all of his comms over.
Indeed, Giuliani’s own filings imply that he intends this stipulation to end discovery and obviate the need to pay any future sanctions.
[...]
Rudy appears to believe that his stipulation obviates the need for further discovery, presumably to include the scheduled deposition of Kerik and his agreed-upon document disclosures.
[...]
And perhaps he would be able to “get to the legal issues of the case” if he were not still claiming defenses which bring his state of mind into question. But if he is going to assert his right to, say, comment on issues of public concern, then the plaintiffs are unlikely to agree to waive further disclosures, much less forego the fee award for time already expended to get to this point.
Above teh Law
Monday, July 24, 2023
The proper statute
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.Rolling Stone, ABC, NBC and CNN were wrong. The Times and The Guardian got it right. It's 18 U.S.C. § 241 and not 18 U.S.C. § 242. That means no only did they get the statute wrong, but the entire phrase "under color of law" is one of the main differences between 242 and 241.
As I stated in my last post, 242 is usually used in police brutality cases like the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd.
[...]
Again, keep in mind that the list of three statutes in the target letter is not an exhaustive list, and there may be more charges.
Mueller, She Wrote
Saturday, July 22, 2023
She needs to be kicked out of Congress
Isn't there some privacy law violation he could charge?In a letter to the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), Biden attorney Abbe David Lowell slammed Greene’s actions as “abhorrent behavior that blatantly violates House Ethics rules and standards of official conduct.”
[...]
"If the OCE takes its responsibilities seriously, it will promptly and decisively condemn and discipline Ms. Greene for her latest actions,” Lowell wrote.
The Hill
Lowell noted that Greene “proceeded to send out a fundraising email to her constituents” that included a link to a video that had the nude images of Biden in it. In doing that, he said the congresswoman may have violated a federal law that pertains to transferring obscene material to minors “even if one minor was included among the email distribution or was exposed to her outrage.”
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
Friday, July 21, 2023
Aileen picks a date
His court date calendar is quickly filling.Judge Aileen Cannon scheduled [Trump's classified documents] trial for May 20.
[...]
"[E]ven accepting the Government's contested submission that nothing in this case presents a 'novel question of fact or law,' the fact remains that the Court will be faced with extensive pre-trial motion practice on a diverse number of legal and factual issues, all in connection with a 38-count indictment," the judge added.
The trial will take place at the federal court in Ft. Pierce, Florida. [...] The next hearing in the case is tentatively scheduled for August 25.
[...]
If the May court date holds, it means Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's hush money case against Trump, currently scheduled for March 24, will go to trial first.
[...]
He is first scheduled to stand trial in October in a $250 million civil lawsuit brought by the New York Attorney General, who has accused the Trump family of "grossly" inflating the former president's net worth by billions of dollars and cheating lenders and others with false and misleading financial statements.
In January, Trump is scheduled to stand trial in E. Jean Carroll's remaining defamation lawsuit, the date for which coincides with the Iowa caucuses.
ABC
DOJ asked for a documents trial date in December, and several legal analysts were saying that meant they were expecting an actual date in June after all the arguing and delays.
Thursday, July 20, 2023
Trying to reform the Supreme Court
Because of course they did. The GOP is against ethics.The Senate Judiciary Committee voted along party lines after a more-than-three-hour markup Thursday to advance a Supreme Court ethics reform bill in the wake of media reports that conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito accepted tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of gifts and perks from wealthy Republican donors.
The committee voted 11 to 10 to approve the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal and Transparency Act, which would require justices to adopt a code of conduct and create a transparent process for members of the public to submit ethics complaints against members of the court.
[...]
The bill would also require the Supreme Court to adopt disclosure rules for gifts, travel and income received by justices and law clerks that are as rigorous as Senate and House disclosure rules.
[...]
Every Democratic member of the committee voted for the reforms while every Republican voted no.
The Hill
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
Target Trump
Certainly Trump tried to run the country like he runs everything - like a mob boss.Let's talk about Rolling Stone, and now ABC, CNN and NBC's confirmation that the three statutes mentioned in donald trump's target letter from Special Counsel for 1/6 include:
Witness Tampering
Conspiracy to Defraud the US
and Deprivation of Rights Under Color of Law
First, the Conspiracy to Defraud is straightforward and is charged under Title 18 USC § 371. We've been expecting that charge. It was referred by the 1/6 committee to DoJ.
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Next, because they're using the words and not the numbers, Rolling Stone says "witness tampering". [...] Witness tampering is 1512, but the charges in the documents case were 1512(k), 1512(b)(2)(a), and 1512(c)(1).
I think we can safely assume for the target letter, Rolling Stone meant 1512(c)(2), Obstructing an Official Proceeding - the other statute Judge Carter used to pierce attorney client privilege, and the statute the 1/6 committee referred to DOJ. [...] Liz Cheney started using language from the statue back in 2021, and it's what many 1/6 rioters have been charged with. It carries a 20 year max sentence and it's a very serious crime.
But what's the deal with 242? That's a statute used a lot in police use of force cases like the Breonna Taylor case.
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Section 242 of Title 18 makes it a crime for a person acting under color of any law to willfully deprive a person of a right or privilege protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.
Further, the phrase "color of law" refers to the appearance of legal authority or an apparently legal right that may not exist. The term is often used to describe the abuse of power under the guise of state authority, and is therefore illegal.
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[P]erhaps a 242 charge here could be about donald depriving a person of a constitutional right or privilege (depriving the people of the peaceful transfer of power - or maybe depriving Pence of his duties under the 12th amendment - or perhaps depriving people of their votes) by attempting to authorize the attack on the Capitol using a legal right that didn't exist.
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It's a long way around, but to use an authority he didn't have to delay or impede the peaceful transfer of power "under the color of law" would violate this statute.
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[T]here have been no other target letters reported in this matter. I have consulted experts and it seems that this is relatively common in mafia type cases when you want all the lieutenants to think the other lieutenants might be cooperating.
Mueller, She Wrote
Federal prosecutors have introduced a new twist in the Jan. 6 investigation by suggesting in a target letter that they could charge former President Donald J. Trump with violating a civil rights statute that dates back to the post-Civil War Reconstruction era.
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[T]he third criminal law cited in the letter was a surprise: Section 241 of Title 18 of the United States Code, which makes it a crime for people to “conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person” in the “free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States.”
Congress enacted that statute after the Civil War to provide a tool for federal agents to go after Southern whites, including Ku Klux Klan members, who engaged in terrorism to prevent formerly enslaved African Americans from voting. But in the modern era, it has been used more broadly, including in cases of voting fraud conspiracies.
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A series of 20th-century cases upheld application of the law in cases involving alleged tampering with ballot boxes by casting false votes or falsely tabulating votes after the election was over, even if no specific voter could be considered the victim.
In a 1950 opinion by the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, for example, Judge Charles C. Simons wrote of applying Section 241 in a ballot box-stuffing case that the right to an honest count “is a right possessed by each voting elector, and to the extent that the importance of his vote is nullified, wholly or in part, he has been injured in the free exercise of a right or privilege secured to him by the laws and Constitution of the United States.”
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Mr. Smith and his team could be weighing using that law to cover efforts by Mr. Trump and his associates to flip the outcome of states he lost.
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“It seems like under 241 there’s at least a right to an honest counting of the votes,” said Norman Eisen, who worked for the House Judiciary Committee during Mr. Trump’s first impeachment. “Submitting an alternate electoral certificate to Congress (as opposed to casting false votes or counting wrong) is a novel scenario, but it seems like it would violate this right.”
NYT
Also in Trump trials...
UPDATE 07/24/2023: Correction: The actual statute charged is not 242, it's 241.
Tuesday, July 18, 2023
Bringing it
I wonder if they'll get hit by the Feds, too. They should.Michigan’s attorney general on Tuesday criminally charged 16 so-called “fake electors” for former President Donald Trump, accusing them of a fraudulent effort to reverse President Joe Biden’s victory in the state’s 2020 election.
The 16 people each face eight charges, including conspiracy, election law forgery, and uttering and publishing, state Attorney General Dana Nessel said in a video announcement.
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On Dec. 14, 2020, weeks after Biden defeated Trump by more than 154,000 votes in Michigan, the defendants met covertly in the basement of the state GOP headquarters and signed documents claiming to be the legally qualified electors for the state in the Electoral College, according to Nessel.
“That was a lie,” Nessel said. “They weren’t the duly elected and qualified electors, and each of the defendants knew it.”
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“Every serious challenge to the election had been denied, dismissed, or otherwise rejected by the time the false electors convened,” Nessel said. “There was no legitimate legal avenue or plausible use of such a document or an alternative slate of electors.”
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After that meeting, “some of the false electors attempted to enter the state Capitol and deliver their fabricated electoral votes to the Senate floor, but were turned away,” she said.
The bogus electoral documents were then sent to the U.S. Senate and the National Archives “with the intent that Vice President Mike Pence would overturn the results of the election using the false electoral slate,” Nessel said.
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The charges announced Tuesday have maximum possible prison sentences of up to 14 years. The defendants have been given a week to surrender on the charges, said Nessel, whose office said the investigation is continuing.
CNBC
Oh, reeeeeeeally?Maddock, the co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party was heard on an audio recording at a public event as saying, “We fought to seat the electors. The Trump campaign asked us to do that.”
I'll be waiting for similar charges.In addition to Michigan, the so-called alternate electors’ slates came from Arizona, Georgia, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Arizona's AG is conducting a criminal investigation of that state's fake electors. And a judge in Wisconsin recently said a lawsuit against that state's fake electors filed by a couple of Democratic electors and a citizen voter could proceed.Last summer, an Atlanta prosecutor told all 16 people who acted as fake electors in Georgia were targets of her criminal probe of Trump and his allies for their attempt to undo Biden’s victory in that state.
At least half of those Georgia fake electors since have reached immunity deals with the prosecutor, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, according to a court filing in May.
UPDATE 07/20/2023:
Shelby Township Clerk Stan Grot must refrain from administering “any and all official duties” while eight felony charges are pending against him for his involvement in a scheme to replace Michigan’s electoral college representatives in 2020.
The Department of State’s Bureau of Elections announced Grot’s removal of duties Thursday via letter.
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He was one of 16 individuals charged earlier this week with a handful of felonies stemming from their attempts to submit an alternate slate of pro-Donald Trump electors in the aftermath of the 2020 election.
MLive
Thief in Chief
It's not just US national secrets documents he's captured...
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
That being they were being shipped to Mar-a-Lago?The artifacts include ancient ceramic candles, which were sent from Israel to the US for a Hanukkah event at the White House attended by Trump, who was then president, Haaretz said.
The candles were meant to be displayed briefly in Washington, DC, but failed to be exhibited due to an unspecified bureaucratic issue, the newspaper reported.
MSN
"Somehow."Israel Hasson, who was the director of the Israeli Antiquities Authority, said they wanted one of their employees to go and pick up the items because they were too delicate to be sent by a regular courier.
"Then COVID broke out, and everything got stuck," he said, per Haaretz.
Officials then asked Saul Fox, a major Jewish-American donor to the Israeli Antiquities Authority, to keep hold of them for a short period until they could be returned to Israel, the newspaper said.
But somehow the antiquities ended up at Mar-a-Lago, where they remain to this day, according to Haaretz.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
UPDATE 07/26/2023:
Any bets on whether they actually get returned?[The artifacts] have been at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s home and private club in Palm Beach, Fla., since December 2021. That’s when Saul Fox, a wealthy donor to both Israel and the Republican Party, gave the items to him during a Hanukkah celebration, calling them an expression of Israel’s gratitude to Mr. Trump.
Mr. Fox, who runs a private equity firm, did not return repeated requests for comment. He told The Wall Street Journal that he had hoped to present the items to Mr. Trump at a White House Hanukkah party in 2019, and was given the approval to do so by Israel Hasson, the head of the Israeli Antiquities Authority at the time, but the State Department insisted on inspecting them first. Th
e delay forced Mr. Fox to send a courier to retrieve the ancient items, and then the pandemic set back his hopes of giving them to Mr. Trump, he told The Journal. So he kept them at his California home.
He finally got the lamps and coins to Mr. Trump at the Hanukkah party at Mar-a-Lago in 2021. Ahead of that visit, Mr. Fox wrote in an email reviewed by The Times that Mr. Hasson said that the new director of the antiquities authority, Eli Eskosido, had “whole-heartedly approved” giving the lamps to Mr. Trump for “permanent exhibition.”
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In a statement, Steven Cheung, a Trump spokesman, said the artifacts had been “on loan for permanent exhibition” at the behest of the Israel Antiquities Authority “to honor and celebrate American-Jewish heritage” and Mr. Trump’s close friendship with Israel.
“As the items were displayed as originally intended, the office will be expediting their return to the organization’s representative,” Mr. Cheung said.
The antiquities authority, for its part, said in a statement that it had “no claims against Mr. Donald Trump” and that Israeli and American officials were “working together to return the objects to their proper home.”
NYT
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