Sunday, March 31, 2024
Happy International Transgender Day of Visibility
As today is also Easter, this marks a happy coincidence.
If you need Jesus on your side, here you go.
Happy Easter
How much money? One commenter said 30 pieces of silver. Good one.
It's in large print. They know their audience. Old.
Also, surely there's a full page glossy photo of Trump on the first page?
UPDATE 04/01/2024:
Saturday, March 30, 2024
In a nutshell
That image was on the back of a MAGA pickup...
UPDATE 03:15 pm:
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.No one is saying Trump can’t campaign or that he can’t criticize Biden. What he can’t do is suggest he should be kidnapped, knocked out, and bound in the back of a pickup truck. I can’t believe that I have to write that out—there is no universe in which that’s acceptable.
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Trump supporters have claimed on social media that this was part of Trump’s drive to the wake for a slain police officer on Long Island today and that he probably didn’t even notice the photo of Joe Biden. They’re out on social media saying it’s not a threat.
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I know from experience as a prosecutor how seriously the Secret Service takes every single threat, or anything close to a threat, made against the President of the United States. They take it seriously even when it looks like the person making it lacks any capacity to carry it out. They always check. They always have the talk.
Donald Trump is different from the person who makes a bad joke or an evil suggestion they don’t have the power to follow through on. We know, and more importantly, he knows, how his followers react when he suggests violence. It’s unthinkable, unconscionable for a former president to even intimate that violence against the current president is acceptable.
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Trump is totally, and uniquely among our former presidents, out of bounds. It's time to stop letting him break the rules. We’re entitled to more, not less, accountability from our presidents than from average citizens.
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It’s time for the courts to stop bending over backward to protect Trump. He’s entitled to all the constitutional protections any other criminal defendant receives, but he’s not entitled to more.
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When he targeted Judge Engoron’s law clerk, a court security official reported she was subject to constant threats and harassment. Regular folks don’t have a Judge to step in or long-term protection. Trump knows what he’s doing. The Judges in his cases can step in and prevent Trump from doing more of it.
Joyce Vance
Thursday, March 28, 2024
Wednesday, March 27, 2024
Good
Perhaps too late for that, but this is the correct ruling.A California judge on Wednesday recommended the disbarment of John Eastman, calling to revoke the law license of one of former President Donald Trump’s top allies in his failed last-ditch gambit to subvert the 2020 election.
Judge Yvette Roland, who presided over months of testimony and argument about the basis of Eastman’s fringe legal theories, ruled that the veteran conservative attorney violated ethics rules — and even potentially criminal law — when he advanced Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results based on weak or discredited claims of fraud.
Though Eastman may appeal Roland’s decision, including to the state Supreme Court, the ruling forces his law license into “inactive” status while any review is pending, meaning he can no longer practice law in California.
“Given the serious and extensive nature of Eastman’s unethical actions, the most severe available professional sanction is warranted to protect the public and preserve the public confidence in the legal system,” Roland ruled.
Politico
The only thing he relied on about them was that he'd use them as an excuse, because he knew very well they were bogus.At every turn, Roland said, Eastman ignored evidence that was unfavorable to his case and accepted at face value claims of fraud or misconduct aimed at sowing doubt about the election results.
“He turned a blind eye to any information that would not support his position of election fraud,” Roland wrote.
In all, Roland found Eastman culpable for 10 of 11 charges that state bar investigators brought against him, including misleading courts, lack of candor and, most notably, plotting with Trump to derail the transfer of power.
[...]
Roland said her disbarment recommendation was in part based on Eastman’s refusal to express regret and his attacks on the proceedings against him as politically motivated.
Eastman testified for hours during his disbarment trial, claiming that he relied on a cadre of statisticians and data analysts to conclude that the 2020 election was rife with misconduct and that state legislatures in a handful of swing states should step in to replace Joe Biden’s electors with Trump’s. But Roland said those analysts’ claims were easily refuted by expert testimony, and Eastman should have known better than to rely on them.
Jeffrey Clark should be next, and Trump should be in jail.In addition, Roland concluded that Eastman stretched and contorted even his own outlier theories to pressure then-Vice President Mike Pence to single-handedly block Joe Biden’s victory, even when no state legislatures had signed onto the effort.
Eastman’s pending disbarment compounds the legal trouble he’s facing in other states. He’s been charged alongside Trump and other allies in Fulton County, Georgia, as a member of an alleged racketeering conspiracy aimed at corrupting the results of the 2020 election in the state. He was also identified, but not named, in Trump’s federal indictment in Washington, D.C., as one of six unindicted co-conspirators assisting Trump’s bid to seize a second term.
Tuesday, March 26, 2024
He has his own vocabulary
I think we should also circle "disinformates" and "misinformates" while we're at it.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
Cancelled!
I did not expect this. Good on NBC. There'll be some whining in the Republican circles. But maybe not too much, because Trump was the one that got her relieved of her job at the RNC, so MAGA won't be coming to defend her.*
UPDATE 05:38 pm: Ask, and ye shall receive. From the man himself:
Or maybe they will...
My goodness.
UPDATE 03/28/2024:
No surprise here:
A "policy dispute"
A policy dispute? A policy dispute? Brainstorming ways to commit felony overturning of the government amounts to policy disputes?Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official who worked closely with former President Donald Trump in a bid to subvert the 2020 election, should face professional consequences — including the potential loss of his license to practice law — for his effort to throw the nation into chaos, D.C. bar disciplinary authorities argued Tuesday.
But a lawyer for Clark said it would be unreasonable to punish him for his work during the tumultuous days ahead of Jan. 6, 2021, when he spearheaded a proposal to encourage state legislatures to consider overturning the results. That plan was never adopted and Trump ultimately turned it down. Punishing Clark for being on the losing side of a policy dispute would set a dangerous precedent, Clark’s team argued.
Politico
At least somebody is taking this shit seriously and attempting to hold someone to account for the attempted coup.Investigators charged Clark with violating professional rules of conduct in late 2020 by attempting to coerce his bosses to send a letter to Georgia lawmakers encouraging them to reconsider the outcome of the election there based on “significant concerns” about the integrity of the vote.
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Clark held unauthorized talks with Trump, violating DOJ policies against White House contacts, and then sought to outflank then-Acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen and his deputy Richard Donoghue, by telling them he planned to accept an offer from Trump to take over the department unless they agreed to send his proposed letter to Georgia.
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Clark has spent two years fighting legal battles intended to scrap the case altogether, contending that the D.C. Bar has no jurisdiction over the conduct of federal government lawyers. But a federal court rejected Clark’s position, and an appeals court declined to step in to block the case from moving ahead.
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Clark’s efforts were intended to remain confidential — and the letter he drafted, which was never sent to Georgia, was supposed to remain secret, protected by various forms of executive and law enforcement privilege, until a leak to the press exposed the fraught discussions.
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Trump ultimately backed down from his plans to elevate Clark amid a mass resignation threat by top DOJ and White House officials. Clark has been criminally charged by Georgia prosecutors for his role in Trump’s effort to reverse the outcome of the election, and he was identified as a co-conspirator in special counsel Jack Smith’s Washington, D.C. case against Trump.
[...]
John Eastman, one of the architects of Trump’s bid to subvert the 2020 election, is expected to face a disbarment ruling by Wednesday, when a California judge issues her proposed punishment for alleged violations of professional conduct.
I think that would be wise.Clark is unlikely to testify in the proceeding. His lawyers have indicated he is likely to assert his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination if called to the stand.
Does this not look like a half-baked shyster "straight out of central casting?"
I expect he wishes he'd heeded Philbin's advice.It was just a few days until Jan. 6, 2021, when Congress was slated to certify Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, and Trump had suddenly resuscitated a plan to replace the leadership of the Justice Department with Jeffrey Clark, a little known DOJ official who Trump expected to mount a sweeping nationwide effort to help him remain in power.
So [Trump’s deputy White House counsel, Pat] Philbin called Clark, a colleague from their days in private practice dating back to the 1990s and tried to talk him out of it.
“I tried to explain to him that it was a bad idea for multiple reasons,” Philbin recalled Tuesday at a long-delayed disbarment hearing for Clark. “He would be starting down a path of assured failure … If by some miracle somehow, it worked, there’d be riots in every major city in the country and it was not an outcome the country would accept.”
Politico
Well then Jeff shouldn't have been anywhere near the reins of power if he was deep into QAnon territory. Plenty of people are serving jail time right now for sincerely believing they were given an opportunity to do something about it on January 6.Philbin, who testified for about two hours on Tuesday, described Clark as wildly misinformed about claims of election fraud — countenancing a theory about “smart thermostats” being used to manipulate voting machines — and not sufficiently cognizant of the havoc it would wreak on the country if his plan succeeded. But he said Clark seemed “100 percent sincere” in his beliefs.
“I believe that he felt that he essentially had a duty,” Philbin said. “I think Jeff’s view was that there was a real crisis in the country and that he was being given an opportunity to do something about it.”
Exactly.“I don’t think I said anything on the phone. I just thought that that showed a lack of judgment,” he said. “Triggering riots in every major city in America, you’ve got to be really sure about what you’re doing and have no alternatives … In my estimation, that was not the sort of situation we were talking about.”
And yet, Clark still believed? I doubt it. He saw fame and glory and a top appointment in his future.“We talked about some of the theories of fraud that were around. They’d been debunked and there wasn’t really any there-there,” Philbin said.
Shame on SCOTUS
Trump has no legal ground whatsoever to delay a ruling in his plea for presidential immunity. The reason Trump has nevertheless sought to slow down the immunity appeals process is obvious: to postpone the trial date, hopefully pushing it into a time when, as president, he would control the Department of Justice and thus could squash the prosecution altogether. The Supreme Court has shamed itself by being a party to this, when the sole issue before the Court is presidential immunity. By contrast, Special Counsel Jack Smith has both law and policy on his side in seeking a prompt determination on immunity and a speedy trial soon thereafter. Yet the Court has ignored all that.
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The Supreme Court’s lollygagging is reflected in its scheduling the immunity case for a leisurely April 25 hearing. It’s too late to do anything about that now, but the Court has an opportunity to correct course following oral argument. The justices should press Trump’s counsel on what possible legitimate reason he has to oppose a speedy resolution of the appeal. And then they should rule with dispatch because there is still time, albeit barely, to vindicate the public’s right to a speedy trial.
Let’s recap how we arrived at the present moment. After Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled against Trump’s claim of presidential immunity on December 1 and Trump appealed that ruling to the D.C. Circuit, Smith asked the Supreme Court to hear the appeal immediately, leapfrogging the delay of the circuit-level argument and decision. Trump opposed that, and the Supreme Court declined Smith’s invitation. The circuit court expedited its appeal and on February 6 issued its decision, again rejecting Trump’s immunity argument in toto. Trump then sought a stay in the Supreme Court, and advocated various measures to slow the Court’s hearing of the case. The Supreme Court then deliberated for a couple of weeks before accepting the case for review, and not scheduling the argument until two months later—on the very last day of oral arguments for this session.
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For the Court to set such a prolonged schedule—antithetical to the appropriate time frame for the only issue actually before the justices—speaks volumes about the role the Court has chosen to play in advancing the interests of the former president over the rule of law.
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Judge Chutkan already weighed the parties’ competing claims. Her decision on a trial date fell well within the mark for similar cases, and that ruling is not on appeal (despite the Supreme Court’s behaving as if it were).
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What’s more, when a defendant seeks to postpone a trial until a point at which he can no longer be prosecuted, the Justice Department may request the trial be held before that deadline. The DOJ’s interest in deterrence and accountability warrants this action. If Trump should win the election, he will become immune as president from criminal trial for at least four years (and perhaps forever by seeking dismissal of the federal case with prejudice or testing the efficacy of granting himself a pardon).
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Given the grand jury’s determination that Trump committed felonies to try to interfere with the 2020 election, there are strong law-enforcement reasons to obtain a conviction to specifically deter Trump.
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Trump’s public denigration of the legal system—the incessant claims that the criminal case is a witch hunt—also gives a nation committed to the rule of law a vital interest in holding a public trial where a jury can assess Trump’s actions. Trials can thus serve to restore faith in the justice system.
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The appeals have delayed matters long enough at the expense of the right of the American people to a fair and speedy trial. Let them not stand in the way of ever having a trial at all.
The Atlantic
A worried mind
Looks like he's worried Weisselberg is going to flip on him.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
Monday, March 25, 2024
Shame on NBC
I don't expect NBC to reverse its decision. It would subject them to complaints of bowing to political pressure and gain them even more accusations of being in Democrats' pockets and slanting the news with a liberal bias.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
UPDATE 03/26/2024:
I did not expect this. Good on NBC. There'll be some whining in the Republican circles. But maybe not too much, because Trump was the one that got her relieved of her job at the RNC, so MAGA won't be coming to defend her.
How many Scaramuccis is that?
Of course she'll be well compensated anyway.
Abstained
Abstained. Chickenshit.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.The resolution calls for an immediate cease-fire during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and for the immediate release of all hostages.
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Washington has vetoed three other resolutions calling for a cease-fire.
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The vote comes just two days after Russia and China vetoed a resolution from the U.S. that tied a cease-fire to the release of hostages.
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U.N. Security Council resolutions are legally binding, unlike those from the General Assembly. Still, they can technically be ignored.
The Hill
A win for Don Poorleone
And there he was earlier whining that he wasn't even allowed to appeal the case without putting up the entire half a billion dollar bond he was assessed.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
UPDATE 12:58 pm:
On again
I think news sources should start referring to this case brought by Alvin Bragg as an election interference case using hush money, because the more important aspect is that he was trying to influence an election.
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