Bad day in Georgia legal concerns for Trump

Fake elector removals denied.

And the first defendant has flipped.  

I assume he gets the big prizes.

Bail bondsman Scott Hall on Friday became the first defendant in the Fulton County election interference case to take a plea agreement with prosecutors, signaling the probe has entered a dynamic new phase.

During an impromptu hearing before Fulton Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, Hall, with his attorney by his side, pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to commit intentional interference with the performance of election duties.

Hall agreed to testify truthfully when called, five years probation, a $5,000 fine, 200 hours of community service and a ban on polling and election administration-related activities. He also recorded a statement for prosecutors and pledged to pen a letter of apology to Georgia voters.

[...]

Under the terms of the plea deal, it appears that Hall will be able to keep his bail bond license.

  AJC

I think that is a very sweet deal. Others are going to be sorry they didn't get there first.

Early in January 2021, he called Justice Department lawyer Jeffrey Clark, who was also indicted in the Trump case, and they talked for 63 minutes about the presidential election “in furtherance of the conspiracy,” according to the 98-page Fulton indictment.

Prosecutors said Friday that Hall chartered the plane which flew Trump allies and a team of computer analysts to Coffee County, some 200 miles southeast of Atlanta. The group spent hours at the county election office and copied Georgia’s statewide voting system software, which is supposed to be kept secure by election officials.

[...]

Hall could be called to testify against Powell, whom prosecutors allege paid for the Coffee County trip as the Trump campaign sought evidence to support its claims of voter fraud.

[...]

During a separate meeting before McAfee on Friday, special prosecutor Nathan Wade disclosed that the DA’s office had yet to offer plea deals to Chesebro or Powell, but he said that will change in the near future.

I bet that's right. Looking forward to it.

UPDATE 06:09 pm:

They're baaaaaack (come Monday)

The Supreme Court of the United States will get back to work on October 2. As is now tradition, the 2023–24 term will give the Republican-appointed justices on the court plenty of opportunities to revoke rights, promote gun violence, and make the world safe for wealthy white men and nobody else. As is now also tradition, the elected branches of government—as well as the Democratic Party—will do nothing to stop those six conservative justices from imposing their far-right cultural agenda upon us all.

[...]

[T]his term will be about which flavor of conservatism gets shoved down our throats. Will it be the kind that delivers conservative policy victories while preserving the idea of normal constitutional order, as favored by Republican Party operative and Chief Justice John Roberts? Or will it be the search-and-destroy jurisprudence—favored by justices like Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito—that is more concerned with cultural domination than logical (or factual) legal rulings?

  Elie Mystal @ The Nation

Continue reading.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

FFS

Everything about this asshole is a lie.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

They're just really bad at this

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Come Monday

Can I get a witness

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

I guess he likes the idea of TV cameras at his trial

Or maybe he likes his odds with Judge McAfee.*

“President Trump now notifies the court that he will NOT be seeking to remove his case to federal court,” the notice states. “This decision is based on his well-founded confidence that this honorable court intends to fully and completely protect his constitutional right to a fair trial and guarantee him due process of law throughout the prosecution of his case in the Superior Court of Fulton County, Georgia."

[...]

The notice, filed in state court in Atlanta by Trump’s defense attorney, expressed confidence in how Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee will handle the trial, but may have also reflected the difficulties that other defendants have had in trying to move their cases to federal court.

  USNews

I doubt it's the latter, because filing to remove would eat up time, which is what he needs to do.

Related:

Remember Cheseboro and Sidney Powell are to be tried together, but separately from Trump and the rest of the defendants.  They can each blame Trump without anyone there to advocate for him.  Should be interesting to see if they do that.**

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

*UPDATE 10:37 am:

**

She's dead

It's what they all wish - to die holding onto their cushy Senate job.

What happens now?

As three high-profile California Democrats vie to replace retiring Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom said in an interview with NBC's "Meet the Press" that he would not appoint any of them to the seat, should it become vacant sooner than expected.

  NBC

And it did.

Newsom said in the interview with Chuck Todd for NBC News' "Meet the Press" that airs Sunday that he would instead make an “interim appointment” to replace Feinstein if necessary.

“Yes. Interim appointment. I don’t want to get involved in the primary,” Newsom said. “It would be completely unfair to the Democrats that have worked their tail off. That primary is just a matter of months away. I don’t want to tip the balance of that.”

UPDATE 10/02/2023:

What the hell????

Ooops

Attorney Jonathan Turley.

And how the hell could Jonathan Turley be a star witness?  He has no personal or inside knowledge of anything either Biden has done.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 12:41 pm:

Nice waffle, Turley.

It's sunday

Hilarious.

His faith in the ignorance of his supporters is well founded.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Senate dress rules

The Senate voted Wednesday night to require that business attire be worn on the floor of the chamber, following backlash from both sides over Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) move to relax the dress code last week.

The resolution, from centrist Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), comes just over a week after Schumer announced he would loosen the Senate’s dress code, a move that was seen by some as a way to accommodate Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), who is often spotted on Capitol Hill wearing shorts and hoodies instead of suits.

Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike criticized Schumer’s decision, with some calling it disrespectful to the upper chamber.

  The Hill

Nice to see they're taking care of the really important things.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Another episode of "They are so bad at this"

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Missouri is not sending its best

I wouldn't call that melting down.  I'd call that giving up.

As expected

Chutkan wrote that Trump’s “hypersensitive” defense had exaggerated her previous statements and had wrongly claimed that they were informed by news reports or other sources. She maintained that her comments had responded to specific legal arguments of individual defendants who had tried to mitigate their culpability by pointing at Trump.

“A reasonable person — aware of the statutory requirement that the court address the defendant’s arguments and state its reasons for its sentence — would understand that in making the statements contested here, the court was not issuing vague declarations about third parties’ potential guilt in a hypothetical future case,” Chutkan wrote. “Instead, it was fulfilling its duty to expressly evaluate the defendants’ arguments that their sentences should be reduced because other individuals whom they believed were associated with the events of January 6 had not been prosecuted.”

[...]

Chutkan also noted that legal precedents generally discourage judges from making comments based on news reports or their own personal investigation, but in-court remarks based on evidence before the court are generally fair game, even if the evidence comes from a prior, related case.

[...]

“The statements at issue here were based on intrajudicial sources,” Chukan wrote. “They arose not, as the defense speculates, from watching the news, but from the sentencing proceedings…. The statements directly reflected facts proffered and arguments made by those defendants.”

[...]

“The court expressly declined to state who, if anyone, it thought should still face charges,” she wrote. “It is the defense, not the court, who has assumed that the defendant belongs in that undefined group.”

[...]

“The court did state that the former president was free at the time of Priola’s sentence — an undisputed fact upon which Priola had relied for her mitigation argument — but it went no further,” she wrote in her ruling Wednesday. “To extrapolate an announcement of defendant’s guilt from the court’s silence is to adopt ‘hypersensitive, cynical, and suspicious’ perspective rather than a reasonable one.”

[...]

Chutkan noted that the appeals court has declined to order a judge’s recusal in far more pointed circumstances than the ones alleged by Trump and his lawyers.

  Politico

Small but important steps in favor of the LGBTQ community

Conspicuously missing: Chuck Schumer

Trump Organization ordered to be dissolved

Former President Donald Trump, his top executives, and heirs were declared completely liable of “persistent and repeated fraud”—and the real estate empire was unceremoniously stripped of its business licenses in New York—after a judge’s powerful ruling Tuesday ahead of a massive trial that seeks to hit them with more than $250 million in penalties for bank fraud.

And in a stunning development, the judge has already ordered the complete dissolution of the fabled Trump Organization–the tycoon’s pride and joy, the empire that made him famous and elevated him into the White House. The Trump Organization and its sister companies will be sent into receivership to be under the control of a court-appointed officer.

Even before the trial officially starts, the ruling handed New York Attorney General Letitia James a near total victory, meaning that next week’s trial will mostly focus on damages that could pulverize whatever is left of Trump’s many business entities and bank accounts.

[...]

The judge seemed particularly annoyed at what he described as the Trumps’ inability to run their business ethically. He had previously assigned a former federal judge to oversee aspects of the Trump Organization to ensure that it did not slyly shift assets ahead of the trial—only to discover that executives wouldn't let the court-appointed monitor do her job.

[...]

Trump, several of his heirs, and top executives will now be fighting off accusations of bank and insurance fraud at a civil trial that’s scheduled to run from early October until late December.

[...]

Engoron also decided to impose sanctions on the Trumps’ lawyers over the AG’s accusations that they have acted unprofessionally by raising ridiculous arguments and delaying the case this long.

[...]

“Unfortunately, sanctions are the only way to impress upon defendants’ attorneys the consequences of engaging in repetitive, frivolous motion practice after this court, affirmed by the appellate division, expressly warned them against doing so,” he wrote. He ordered the entire Trump legal team—Michael Madaio, Clifford S. Robert, Michael Farina, Christopher Kise, and Armen Morian—to each pay $7,500, a punishment that will also serve as a blemish on their professional records.

[...]

The timing of this decision also throws a wrench into the Trumps’ Hail Mary play, in which they sued the judge directly and prematurely asked a state appellate court to intervene because he hadn’t yet made his decision on the statute of limitations—an oddly aggressive move that reeked of delay tactics. That higher court, the appellate division’s First Judicial Department, has yet to weigh in. Doing so now might be a moot point. As such, the trial appears to be set to start next Monday, as planned.

  Yahoo

I'm sure they'll appeal, but as it stands, Trump Org (all Trump LLCs) is essentially kaput.

If the judge’s scathing decision withstands an appeal from Trump’s lawyers, it will be the first time a government investigation into the former president has resulted in punishment. It will also deal the biggest blow yet to his persona as a successful tycoon.

  Guardian

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE :

Also...will Trump fire Alina Habba? Sue her?

Disgraced former president Donald Trump will face judgment handed down from the bench, rather than a jury box in his Manhattan trial.

The question, however, is: did Donald Trump’s attorneys screw up, or is he intentionally muddying the waters?

It’s not clear why the former president would choose not to have a jury trial, which is clearly his right as a defendant when he’s claimed the judge is biased against him. This raises questions about whether he’s aware of what his attorneys are doing (and whether those lawyers are actually competent).

[...]

But then, perhaps Trump himself doesn’t know. He posted on September 1st (edited because all-caps is uncomfortable to read):

“In the NYS A.G. Letitia James case, I was targeted, given no jury, no extensions, no commercial division, no constitutional rights, no anything! The Democrat judge hates Trump with a passion!”

He was, indeed, denied an extension.

[...]

He was also denied a move to the commercial division.

[...]

The jury, though, is a clear and straightforward matter — if Trump’s attorney had requested one, he would have been granted a jury. [...]

“Donald Trump’s lawyer Alina Habba forgot to post the fees and give the notice to request a jury. In New York, within 15 days of a lawsuit you have to make a jury demand…so Donald Trump accidentally — which in my opinion could be legal malpractice — waived the jury trial and that’s why it’s going to go in front of Judge Arthur Engoron.”

Whether it was merely a mistake from an attorney whose job description may rely more heavily on Fox News appearances than court appearances, or a desperate hope to find an excuse for an appeal, the failure to request a jury trial may be a serious miscalculation on Trump’s part.

  Occupy Democrats

Or Trump's attorney's part. Pretty sure he WOULDN'T choose a bench trial. But maybe? He probably doesn't trust a New York jury. But he'd at least have a chance that there would be one hold-out on it. Maybe they were gambling on getting a more favorable judge. Whatever. He can appeal either way.  If Habba can't (or won't) prove Trump asked to waive a jury, he'll have plenty standing to appeal.

UPDATE 05:59 pm:

UPDATE 06:25 pm:

Yep.  Gonna be a yuge mess.

Your dog would be put down

Joe Biden’s dog Commander has bitten another US Secret Service employee, the agency said.

A uniformed division officer was bitten by the president’s German shepherd at about 8pm on Monday at the White House, and was treated on-site by medical personnel, said the Secret Service’s chief of communications, Anthony Guglielmi.

Elizabeth Alexander, the communications director for the first lady, Jill Biden, said: “The White House can be a stressful environment for family pets, and the first family continues to work on ways to help Commander handle the often unpredictable nature of the White House grounds.”

[...]

Commander has bitten or otherwise attacked Secret Service personnel at least 10 times between October 2022 and January, including one incident that required a hospital visit by the injured law enforcement officer, according to records from the Department of Homeland Security.

  Guardian

I'm not saying to put the dog down. I'm saying your dog would have been put down after three incidents. By court order. If this is a situation the dog finds stressful, leave the dog in Connecticut with family or a dog-sitter. This isn't rocket science.

Commander is the second of the president’s dogs to behave aggressively, including biting Secret Service personnel and White House staff. The first dog, a German shepherd named Major, was sent to live with friends in Delaware after those incidents.

Okay, so why is Commander still in the House?

“My leg and arm still hurts. He bit me twice and ran at me twice,” the victim [of the November 2022 attack] replied, to which the first officer said: “What a joke. If it wasn’t [the Bidens’] dog he would already have been put down. Freaking clown needs a muzzle.”

Or that.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Sad

Also sad...

Funny finances case ramps up

And in one of the most brazen examples, investigators pointed out that when the Trumps were supposed to list deals with outside companies, they actually included management contracts between Trump Organization business entities.

“Money that was just flowing from one pocket to the other,” Amer said.

[...]

One particular exchange perfectly captured how Trump’s distorted sense of reality conflicts with reasonable math. At one point shortly before a lunch break, the judge’s law clerk, Allison Greenfield, probed one curious detail that came up in the real estate mogul’s testimony at a deposition earlier this year. In it, Trump tried to justify his vastly inflated real estate values by reasoning that the prices eventually went up—thereby, somehow making his past assessments accurate.

[...]

By mid-afternoon, the judge finally lost his patience with Kise's dismissive relativism, particularly after the lawyer said that "these vast disparities are normal in this process… that's the nature of this business. This is how money is made and lost, and this is why people like Donald Trump have been successful.”

The judge gently banged on his desk as he said, exasperated: "You cannot make false statements and use them in business. That's what this statute prohibits, and that's the allegation!"

This is the last big fight expected before a trial that’s set to start on Oct. 2.

[...]

Both sides are simultaneously engaging in a fight in the state’s appellate courts over the scheduled start of the trial. Last week, Trump’s team took the unusual step of suing the judge directly, an attempt to force him to make key decisions about the statute of limitations—a bid that could delay the trial if the First Department appeals court takes longer than a few days.

But the move was widely seen as premature—and stupid.

  Daily Beast

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE :

Alabama all out of tries to rig the district map

The Supreme Court refused to reinstate Alabama’s Republican-drawn congressional map, enabling a court-appointed official to draw the lines for the 2024 election instead.

The justices in June struck down Alabama’s previous map for likely diluting the power of Black voters, and the current dispute concerned a new version that still did not add a second majority-Black district.

[...]

Rather than using the Republican-drawn lines for the 2024 election cycle, the order paves the way for an independent expert appointed by a panel of federal judges to design the boundaries instead.

That court-appointed expert is set to submit the final map in the coming days.

  The Hill

Let us hear no more of this bullshit. The court already allowed a rigged map for the 2022 elections.

When Alabama brought its redistricting fight to the high court the first time, the justices ruled 5-4 in February 2022 to temporarily revive the state’s map, allowing it to be used for that year’s midterms.

Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who voted to revive the map, at the time cited a legal doctrine that federal courts should not intervene to alter state election rules in the lead-up to an election.

But in the final decision months later, Kavanaugh went the other way, giving Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s three liberals a majority to toss Alabama’s map for likely violating the Voting Rights Act.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 10:41 am:

APR has now identified connections between Alabama officials who led the 2023 redistricting process — which disregarded the U.S. Supreme Court’s order — with far-right power broker Leonard Leo’s dark money network, described this past week by Politico as “a billion-dollar force that has helped remake the judiciary and overturn longstanding legal precedents on abortion, affirmative action and many other issues.”

APR’s reporting shows the extent to which Alabama’s calculation to defy the Supreme Court was made not simply by state legislators in Alabama but has been driven by nationally connected political operatives at the center of the well-documented right-wing effort to reshape the composition and jurisprudence of the Supreme Court and to overturn the remaining key protections established by the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

[...]

[F]ormer President Donald Trump famously stated that Leo’s Federalist Society had “picked” his judges, and all six Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices “were seated with major help from Leonard Leo,” who has come to be known as the “hidden architect of the Supreme Court.” With few exceptions, the justices Leo has ushered to the bench have reliably voted to permit the partisan gerrymanders and strict restrictions on voting access that have proliferated in recent years from red-state legislatures, which themselves work in tandem with — and sometimes under the direction of — Leo’s dark money groups.

  Alabama Political Reporter

Exceptions to the rules in Georgia courts

MAGA will be hollering about this one.

The jurors will all be safer and freer to deliberate.

It was the right thing to do in this high-profile case where the defendant eggs on his supporters to terrorize judges, prosecutors, witnesses, and juries alike.

Perhaps, but I don't think the judge could do anything about that.