SlowBoy
1yr ago
Strategically the GOP best move is to keep Trump as the poll lead until like March/April. Let them develop their lawfare election strategy. Then slide the nomination to probably Vivek maybe Desantis. The issue with this and one of my biggest problems with Trump is he doesn’t care as much about advancing an agenda as he cares about Trump winning. But for winning an agenda my thoughts today is this would be a very good strategy for winning.
If the GOP steals the primary from Trump they are toast. The base wants Trump. That the GOP is still scheming to dispossess the base shows that they don't get it. It doesn't matter how "skillfully" they do it. The GOP will fight Republican voters more than they will ever fight the left, and then ask Republican voters to turn around and unite for the election.
Any candidate who signs onto that plan is fundamentally unserious. How would Vivek or DeSantis pitch themselves as anti-establishment while accepting the establishment primary rig of death?
SlowBoy
1yr ago
Ray Epps, pro-Trump rioter smeared by conspiracy theories, gets probation for role in Capitol riot
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/09/ray-epps-probation-capitol-riot-00134551
The sentence of Ray Epps is more lenient than the six months of prison time that prosecutors requested. And it marks the conclusion of one of the strangest Jan. 6 subplots: the saga of Epps, a former Oath Keeper from Arizona who was among the first pro-Trump rioters to breach police barricades and then became the target of far-right conspiracy theories.
James “Ray” Epps, a former Marine who ran a wedding venue in Arizona, traveled to Washington for the Jan. 6, 2021, certification of the Electoral College results. On Jan. 5, he told rowdy Trump supporters that they needed to “go to the Capitol” the next day. An attendee videotaped his comments and captured people in the crowd chanting “Fed! Fed! Fed!” at him.
There's been an ongoing debate about Ray Epps on this site: Could he really be a Fed if the government is still trying to prosecute him? And the results are in: After heckling demonstrators to invade the Capitol, Epps was charged with a misdemeanor, uniquely leniency for J6 protesters, and will received one year probation. He will not see the inside of a jail cell. His suit against Fox News for defamation will be allowed to proceed, with the promise of a seven or eight-figure payout.
Almost simultaneously, the DOJ has announced that they will begin prosecuting J6 protesters who did not enter the Capitol building but were present in the demonstration outside. These protesters are expected to be charged with something more than misdemeanors.
A quick review of other J6 protesters
-
Enrique Tarrio was convicted as a terrorist for his role in organizing the Proud Boys even though he was not present at the Capitol or protest on J6
-
Owen Shroyer was jailed for speaking at the demonstration outside the Capitol, which prosecutors argued violated the terms of his parole (which stemmed from an occasion where he disrupted one of the House's impeachment procedings against Trump)
-
Joe Biggs, who was present at J6, was given more than a decade in jail after his efforts in taking down a fence around the Capitol were deemed to constitute terrorism, which resulted in his sentence being enhanced.
-
Steve Baker, an journalist who was present at J6 in his capacity as journalist for the Blaze, has been arrested by federal prosecutors, who sre seeking a 4-year jail sentence.
Ray Epps, who was present at J6, and encouraged people to enter the Capitol Building, will receive no jail time, will still be able to vote and carry a gun, and will possibly win a defamation payout of several million dollars. The government and the media agree that Ray Epps is not a federal agent, and that the accusation that he was caused him significant harm which is far worse than anything he deserves.
I used to think the J6 "fedsurrection" narrative was cope by right-wingers who weren't ready spiritually to defend the J6 protesters. I considered that, if you really believed the election was stolen, then a protest follows logically, except that that would make many conservatives uncomfortable. But, at this point, for me, it's pretty hard to deny that the government was up to something too. I could imagine that the government just had agents embedded to watch and follow along, but Ray Epps clearly did more than that.
I remember arguments on this site that, while it looked like Epps could be a Fed, the fact that he was still being prosecuted implied that maybe it wasn't so. Given his uniquely generous outcome, which almost amounts to an award, I'd like to reopen the discussion.
SlowBoy
1yr ago
I didn't reply to you at the time because I thought the conversation up to before you posted had covered everything important. I didn't downvote you.
I think you posted true-but-misleading information. Sure, Ray Epps was not the only J6 protester to only receive probation. In that respect, his situation is not unique. However consider the other elements that make his case totally unique:
-
He is on video having encouraged protesters to go into the Capitol Building, and on record before J6 wanting to invade the Capitol. He did not go into the building even as he encouraged others to do so.
-
He was on the FBI's most-wanted J6 protesters list up until the moment news organizations (Revolver News) started covering him. He was only charged after Merrick Garland was asked about him in a hearing. (I do not have the video in front of me, as I recall it Garland was asked about Eps not by name but in terms that could not have referred to anybody else.)
-
Eps was undercharged relative to other manor J6 figures, especially in the context of other figures being overcharged. (What's the "baseline charge" protesters deserve? That's a subjective unanswerable question. However I think it's hard to contest that the whole J6 prosecution is unprecedented in American history, and even if you think DOJ is justified, it's hard to argue why Eps wasn't charged more seriously.)
-
Leftwing news outlets and even the judge at trial all bewailed how poor Eps was made to suffer as the victim of conspiracy theories. This is uniquely generous! Maybe there are some other outliers (I know there's some grandma who went viral by apologizing for her participation and calling MAGA a cult). But, by and large, the same people calling J6 an attack on democracy are saying Ray Eps is a victim. Why? -- he wanted to attack democracy! I am not aware of the judges treating anyone else so leniently.
-
Epps' suit against Fox News will be allowed to continue, suggesting the possibility that he could win millions of dollars. It's shameless. I don't suppose some secret tribunal met and decided that Ray Epps gets his payout. But nobody in DOJ is working to stop him from making millions. If the DOJ didn't like this, they could try to find something else to charge him with. (Double Jeopardy is no guarantee -- the DOJ made big headlines about potentially investigating Darren Wilson over shooting Mike Brown. If Merrick Garland wanted to, he would get on TV and say Epps deserves to be looked at again.)
Conclusion: Ray Epps was handled uniquely leniently, in a way most people would understand those terms. Epps' treatment only looks normal within the context of an excel sheet of convictions, which doesn't tell nearly the full story.
SlowBoy
1yr ago
It's definitely an open question. But I don't think it amounts to much. Trump can pardon himself, he can fire everyone involved he can get his hands on, he can declassify any and all documents involved, he could order the entire classification system revoked. If Congress is on his side, they can open investigations into the investigators, they can defund the offices involved. And even if Congress isn't on his side, they couldn't impeach him before and won't impeach him over this.
Anything could happen, but I find it very unlikely that Trump's enemies will really push (escalate) a Constitutional crisis over classified documents the public isn't even allowed to know the details of, especially given all the other issues with this case.
SlowBoy
1yr ago
Or Democrats could, "simply," not invent novel legal theories to prosecute their political enemies. What's Game Theory predict if one side defects while the one side does not?
SlowBoy
1yr ago
I know you described the situation correctly, but I want to emphasize this point because it was not obvious to me when I first heard about this story: Texas is not directly defying the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court did not order Texas to do anything. The Supreme Court refused to uphold an injunction against the Federal Government, i.e., they said that Texas can't order the Federal Government to stop cutting wires. It's a distinction without a difference, but a big difference.
Still, if you had presented me this story a month ago, I would have guessed Texas would have backed down already. So I'm moderately surprised this is being fought. I'm still pretty cynical about a lot of Republican politicians, but maybe there's something a little deeper going on here.
SlowBoy
5mo ago
For years I have heard on this forum and other places that Trump is an idiot who can't govern, doesn't know what to do to effect change, is to vain to do the right things, or won't simply because he doesn't really care. It's futile to vote for Trump. He doesnt know what he's doing. And I have been called unserious for believing in Donald Trump's excellence. Today I would like to start taking my victory lap:
https://x.com/awprokop/status/1881900975851708751?t=8OquEiW6cV89zAtXmm9kng&s=19
Trump is abolishing Affirmative Action in federal contracting. He is going to order the government to pressure private companies to end Affirmative Action. This directly benefits my career. This ends bad policy that is massively unpopular and is the kind of thing many people predicted Trump would never do. I voted this. I am thrilled!
I am doubling down on my prediction that Trump Era will be remembered as a Golden Age, will fundamentally reshape American history for the better, and will in fact be enjoyed even by thosr who have been most skeptical!
SlowBoy
1yr ago
The one actor responsible for this war is Putin, and all the kvetching about NATO expansion and Euromaidan elides the fact that Putin singlehandedly launched an expansionary war of aggression to conquer territory, massage his ego and restore the glory of the Russian empire. Putin was under no personal threat from the west, nor was Russia.
This is a really bad cliche by now. Putin represents a moderate faction within Russia compared to the hardliners who wanted to invade 10 years ago after Maidan. Putin did not single-handedly launch the war (if one single man is reaponsible, it would probably be Strelkov). And Putin is not irrational for feeling threatened by NATO and the US.
SlowBoy
1yr ago
Furthermore, Mottizens tend to actually listen to the words that are said.
This line going around today feels like a motte-rat ingroup circle-jerk. Other people are superficial, but we focus on the real substance! It's a presidential debate, there is little substance, the words have always been made-up and meaningless. Does Biden debate Trump to a draw because, although he looked horrible, and although nobody is persuaded by anything he said, he did manage to say things? I feel as though people have always been a little disingenuous about debates. Everyone pretends that there is a reified debate format, where people say things like, "Well, Biden's answer doesn't convince me, but it's an objectively-strong argument and might move somebody else." But there is no imaginary modal voter. There are not actually rules for deciding who won. It becomes an exercise in imaginary terms that nobody is actually thinking in, but everyone assumes everyone else is thinking in. This is all a little too self-congratulatory for me.
Nobody is impressed with the substance of Biden's answers. Nobody even really cares what they were. Obviously, we all already know what Biden's policies are and what his candidacy means. For that matter, nobody cares what the substance of Trump's answers was either. It's an intellectual exercise. I don't care what Trump did on January 6th, you do care what Trump did on January 6th, so does anybody care that Trump gave this answer instead of that answer? Is there some hypothetical voter who does?
The style is much more important. Bring back the smashing and yelling and interrupting and crass. I actually want to see Trump walk all over the other guy kicking and fighting. Show me that Jeb actually can't stand up for himself when called out and attacked. Give me the Hillary who glowers but doesn't back down. What did Andrew Yang say in the first 2020 debate that showed how impressive his policy credentials were? Who even knows. I do remember Chris Christie decimating Marco Rubio over repeating the same canned stock phrase on three separate occasions. I don't remember a damned policy argument Amy Klobuchar ever made, just that she was boring, and uninspiring, and lacking the actual qualities of a leader.
Imagine how boring politics would be if we all went back to this frame: Biden tied Trump because, when you strip away how he spoke, how he looked, how he stood, how he argued, and how he lead, his stock canned prepared statements were just as technically sensible as Trump's, or maybe better. No, Biden lost, because he looked like an old man who didn't even know what room he was in. He froze up. He couldn't get the words out. He made uncomfortable faces when he wasn't speaking. He sometimes didn't know what he was saying. He looked old. Trump lightly bullied him and except for a few moments he couldn't fight back. This is how politics works, this is literally what matters. The motte-rat insistence on some sort of Nixon-Kennedy radio interpretation of disembodied words floating in space actually feels deeply anti-rational, because it is obviously not how things work. Nobody cares. The exercise in imagining that we can care about "the words that are said" but also imagine the mindset of "the average voter" is vanity. No!, actually. Those things literally do not exist. They are endless rationalizations. If you live in this plane of unreality, you could completely swap Trump and Biden's policies and ideas and visions, and it wouldn't matter.
Thinking about these policy wonk ideas isn't a more elevated form of politics stripped from emotion and chance. It's actually a degeneration. Because this is what people care about. A robot could make the words, it's the emotions that count.
SlowBoy
1yr ago
Why else are there 85 different sects which have had (and still do have) their own violent confrontations?
Why do you assume violence is immoral?
SlowBoy
1yr ago
making an unlawful corporate contribution to the Trump campaign by paying Stormy Daniels
Why is paying Stormy Daniels a campaign contribution? Why doed Cohen pleading guilty prove Trump committed a crime too?
Trump reimbursed Cohen for that payment to Stormy Daniels (in furtherance of Cohen's crime) from one of his businesses.
So we have (1) business records that were (2) falsified for the purpose of (3) concealing another crime.
Please note that campaign finance violations are the FEC's wheelhouse and they neglected to pursue charges because no crime occurred. Besides, this is circular reasoning: Trump committed a crime because Cohen committed a crime because Trump committed a crime. Under this logic, any politician who has ever paid to bury a story has committed a crime.
According to Cohen's testimony
That's another thing, Cohen is a perjurer and also admitted to stealing money from Trump on these checks -- apparently, according to Cohen's story, Trump knew intimately the details of the money given to Stormy Daniels, but not that intimately!
Instead Cohen commits several crimes to pay Daniels and then Trump commits several crimes to reimburse Cohen. There was a less criminal way to do this!
Right, that's the thing: this is a totally normal thing that happens to powerful people all the time, only New York blew it up to try to make it a get Trump case. There is no case here.
SlowBoy
1yr ago
Dark day. There will be nothing more destabilizing for democracy and American government than making every president a Caesar who either crosses the Rubicon or dies in jail.
Trump will win on appeal and this case is such nonsense it will boost his election prospects. But the precedent is set and we will reap it someday.
SlowBoy
1yr ago
Farce of a case, the prosecution on the record as targeting Trump for political purposes, the judge a partisan hack, the alleged wrongs being that Trump exaggerated his business assets even though none of his partners were ever apparently harmed. Some of the banks Trump supposedly defrauded testified in his defense. Basic confusion of assessed value and appraised value. And Mar-a-Lago is just worth $18M. Show trial.
This is the kind of stuff that will massively, radially destabilize the country. You don't have a country anymore if hostile partisan judges in one-party states will just sue their political opponents into oblivion. At best, you have slow-boiling political turmoil and lawfare. But it's not really a country or a democracy in any meaningful sense. Critics of Trump who may feel tempted to defend whatever rationalization Engoron and Letitia have established should beware. This puts US down a troubling path.
SlowBoy
1yr ago
Amazing. It's as if four years of arguing about the 2020 election have left no impression on you, and you've made yourself totally impervious to what the other side actually believes. Vote counting stopped in several swing states simultaneously in the dead of night? Mail-in irregularities? Pandemic rules? Ballot "curing"? You must not have heard. I suppose, then, the only rational hypothesis is that everything other people believe is silly.
SlowBoy
2yr ago
Republican voters love the stupidity, obnoxiousness, vulgarity, and simian chest-beating.
Instead of seeing Republican primary voters as concerned citizens seeking a voice, try to imagine them as chimps laying around under a canopy. They’ve chosen the alpha male.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a lot of words, but Hanania may as well have written, "ooga booga you dumb" for all he's said. Wojak is at the Republican primary, standing in the corner, his feet hurt, I bet they don't even know how I've transcended simian instincts. This is just dumb, Hanania is arguing against a cartoon Republican he just made up in his head.
In 2020, we saw doctored videos of Pelosi slurring her words go viral on social media, and this shows not only how susceptible the Republican base is to fake news
Good morning, it's Sunday Morning.
These people started shooting beer cans with assault rifles because a company sent a six pack to a guy who acts like a sissy.
This is exceptionally dumb. In one paragraph Hanania is kvetching about media hyperreality, and in the very nexy sentence Hanania is using some video of some person shooting a beer can to characterize the whole Republican base. This is not an argument, it's gesticulsting, and it's not even well-informed gesticulating. (The word "imagined" is doing a lot of work in his argument: I can trivially find examples of Biden, Hillary, and Pelosi all having senior moments.)
If this is Hanania's usual stuff, then he's a pseud and deserves to be ignored.
SlowBoy
11mo ago
Trump flops on all the hard questions in a way that asks whether or not there is anything deeper in there than making the liberals cry.
Trump gets at the issues in a much deeper way than all the policy wonks cynically consumed by statistics and specifics. What do you do about the Ukraine War? It's not hard, you get on the phone with Putin, you stop the war with a phone call, this is literally how that works. You don't need answers to "hard questions," you need the vision to lead and inspire.
SlowBoy
8mo ago
I remember other discussions on this forum. Inflation and unemployment data. Long arguments about not trusting the economic data. This is why. These figures are totally arbitrary. There is no neutral competent adults-in-the-room authority anymore. Everything is this bad.
I have a friend who used to work at the Fed. He says to the extent that the figures weren't made up, they hsve basically no basis to reality. The numbers they report just reflect the process of the people creating them, which is bureaucratic and dull.
SlowBoy
10mo ago
RFK built the largest independent political campaign since Ross Perot. He has a big political organization made up of volunteers from the broad political middle of the country. He is, besides, like Trump, much smarter than consevatives.
SlowBoy
8mo ago
I do not have TDS, I do not think he is Literally Hitler, but I do think he's a con, a huckster, an embarrassing buffoon who I believe actually loves America as much as I believe he goes to church on Sunday and has ever read the Bible in his life. I think he totally would become an absolute dictator if he could manage it, but it would require too much effort and political acumen and cunning, which he does not have.
That's just TDS with extra steps. You think Donald Trump doesn't love America? You think he wants to become a dictator? The man is pretty open and forthcoming in recent podcasts and interviews, he talks about not wanting to charge Hillary for precedent it would set, not wanting to replace the Secret Service with his own bodyguard, how the assassination attempt has made him reconsider his relationship to God, etc.
He has a huge personality and charisma, and some people think that translates into him being a skilled politician. He's not. He's got performer's instincts and a gift for graft.
I cannot possibly imagine what your definition of "skilled politician" would be that completely excludes Donald Trump. Ten years ago the man was a political laughingstock and he now leads one of the most significant political movements in American history.
This doesn't really make him unique among American presidents, but it makes him uniquely bad in this time and place.
Before Trump, we were wailing about wokes and the death of civilization and riding the decline. Now a significant part of the country not only believes in Making America Great Again, but Greater Than Ever Before. Trump managed to add to this coalition a literal Kennedy, working class blue collar union workers, tech CEOs, evangelicals, and the long-forgotten spirit of American endeavors.
I can't convince you to believe the things I believe, I guess, but I think it's your attitude that's wrong with America today, not Trump's. Win or lose Trump is doing glorious things and awakening a spirit that wants to build America and make it great again. You will never do anything glorious.
SlowBoy
1yr ago
Various anti-Trump coalitions deliberately used the pandemic to push through new election procedures they believed would particularly disadvantage Trump. This is well-documented!
SlowBoy
1yr ago
By almost every metric, the US economy is doing quite well at the moment.
The metrics are gamed and don't really exist.
Inflation is "good" because it's not increasing as fast as it was -- it's still increasing after all. And the previous increases didn't go away. Not to mention that "core inflation" excludes housing and gas and food, as if home prices reaching unaffordable highs is some sort of triviality when The Economy Is Doing Great.
Unemployment is good because the numbers are gamed in a million ways. A typical pattern these last few years has been for employment figures to be "better than expected" when first announced, then quietly revised to much lower numbers a few months later. But it's always been a gamed figure, when people who stop looking for work are no longer counted as employed.
The economy is growing? Remember when they changed the definition of a recession because they didn't want to admit we were in one?
This latest media narrative is one if the most shameless I think I've ever seen. The economy must be doing well, because we've proclaimed it. And since no one believes us, we have to understand what's causing all this irrationality. Is this the dark undercurrent of the post-truth society Freud exposed by tapping into our deep inner pathologies? Are Republicans just that impervious to the truth? Sure, whatever you say I guess, your twelve inches are amazing President Biden, I must not be feeling it because I've been such a naughty boy.
SlowBoy
1yr ago
Fabricating a history and self is a rich presidential tradition: see Washington, FDR, JFK, LBJ, Lincoln, Clinton, Bush. It helps to have a fawning liberal press that covers up all your impoprieties (attending a church preaching "God Damn America," whipping your dick out for reporters, being crippled from polio). But it's not essential (when was the last time Bush did any ranching on his ranch?).
Obama, specifically, I think, represents a modern class fantasy of the college-educated intellectual. (It's not like being a constitutional scholar made his presidency notably more constitution-respecting.) This comes with a lot of baggage about the life of the tortured intellectual. He dabbled in drugs and homosexuality. He existed in a kind of tension with a minority subculture to which he didn't quite belong, but also provided him with a network and resources he used. He hobnobbed with the Ivy set that allows one to seamlessly move from a poor background to representing the upper class, with all the neuroses typical of that set. And he has an intellectual's weakness for speachifying. (Sorry all, I don't think hes an impressive speechmaker. For me, his speeches are like watching a magician when you can actually see how his hands are moving.)
There's a lot to be said here about how the press has always given Obama an easy time, and has let him coast on his easy image. (To this day a large part of the country still can't name any Obama scandals beyond "tan suit".) And I think that actually made Obama quite lazy -- he had a bad record of meeting with Senators and Congressmen to actually get anything done, and his signature accomplishment, Obamacare, rightfully has much more to do with Nancy Pelosi. After a certain point his presidency was dominated much more by his appointees in the cabinet. (Valerie Jarrett, Loretta Lynch, Ben Rhodes who famously bragged that reporters were too stupid to understand the Iran deal and how he'd created it.) And after leaving office Obama has been content to lazily curate his spotify playlist and put his name on a few Netflix adaptations. (He's not involved in anything especially charitable like Carter. Bush has probably done more to push back against Trump than Obama has.)
I think the right appraisal of Obama is still waiting on the death of a few distinct cults of worship.
The first is a liberal intelligentsia class that admires the Obama years as everything they like about politics. (Generally they are totally captivated by media hagiography and will actually ignore any of his shortcomings as a partisan Republican trick.)
The second is a sort of black folk worship that treats Obama as a hero for representing the race. You can go to nice middle class older black homes, the kind of person who has a curio cabinet well-dusted with lace, and they'll usually have a portrait of Obama somewhere. To these people Obama is almost a symbolic figure; any shortcomings he has are almost beside the point. (I rather respect this group because it is a totally consistent position.)
The third is really a cult of hatred -- the Republicans who elevated Obama into a sort of devil single-handedly ruining the country. (Look at how much more they resisted him than Biden.) Everything bad about the Obama years is ascribed to Obama himself. Now, I'm sure his IRS prosecuted conservatives and left-wing groups, Eric Holder enshrined equity in the ethos of DOJ investigations, spying on Fox News reporters, investigating the Trump campaign -- but very few of these actions ever actually have much to do with Obama himself. (Many of the worst excesses came from Hillary or Biden, or other factions who Obama united and represented after the 2007 primary, without ever really incorporating himself.)
There's an aloofness in there too -- Obama famously ran his campaign structure and fundraising outside the DNC, which left them in a historic deficit and gap in electing down-ballot candidates below the national level. Combined with his intellectual pretensions it is something like narcissism -- which, to be fair, you get from most presidents. (But if you call Obama a narcissist this codes as calling Obama a devil, and works up the people who consider Obama a hero, and then the race card enters the conversation, which, perhaps wisely, Obama rarely used himself. On that subject, he probably did benefit from some affirmative action, and a lot of the criticism he endured was of a sort his critics supposed wasn't racist but his defenders did, and maybe both sides were right. Probably Obama's own relationship to his race has something to do with what has been called "The Ordeal of Civility.")
To me Obama really isn't that interesting. He's something of a cipher and an empty shell. Richer presidential personalities are: Nixon, Johnson, and Trump. Hillary is much more interesting than Obama, which comes out in her pores. In that sense Obama ironically is like Lincoln.
SlowBoy
2yr ago
It was WILLFUL retention of government secrets.
The President is the Constitutional, ultimate classifying authority. If Trump wanted to maintain those documents, as president, that suffices.
Anyways your post just reads like an elaborate rationalization. Hillary's crimes aren't so bad because reason-reason-reason, Hunter Biden's crimes aren't so bad because reason-reason-reason, but Trump's crimes are bad because... How do you know that Hillary Clinton didn't "intend" to expose materials? How do you know that the documents manifestly aren't Trump's, when we don't know what the documents even are? You can fill in the blanks however you want, I guess, but it won't make a very rigorous argument.
Investigate Trump over Russia, investigate Trump's business records, investigate Trump's campaign, investigate Trump's sexual relations, investigate Trump's administration... wow, after eight years of manufacturing pretexts to spy on him, he finally committed a crime after we picked a fight. He waved classified documents in front of a reporter's face and everything. Guess we have to charge him now, everyone is equal before the law, justice and democracy and liberty and freedom prevail. What, charge other politicians? Hahahaha
It's been a long time since we've discussed Trump, and there have been a number of developments in the court cases against him, and so I'm here to say that our long mottizan nightmare of peace and tranquility is finally over.
Florida
CNN: Federal judge indefinitely postpones Trump classified documents trial
Trump's trial in Florida over classified documents has been indefinitely postponed. (Jack Smith had requested it start the day after Trump's New York trial ended.) It turns out that new revelations made in documents Trump's lawyers requested have upended the case. CNN doesn't elaborate on what happened, for which I'll turn to this story:
Prosecutors admit key evidence in document case has been tampered with
It turns out that when the government alleged that Trump had classified documents he was not supposed to have, the government itself did not accurately know which documents Trump had, or which documents Trump was even supposed to have. Actually, worse than that, it turns out they fabricated some or all of the accusations. For instance, that famous picture of classified documents with cover sheets raided from Mar-a-Lago? It turns out those documents didn't have cover sheets, the FBI staged them before photographing, and they didn't even correctly label all of the documents they supposedly took:
The DOJ's Doctored Crime Scene Photo of Mar-a-Lago Raid
In order to prove Donald Trump had documents he wasn't supposed to have, the goverment took documents Trump had (that the NARA gave him in mislabeled boxes) and added cover sheets for photographs to them.
Whoops!
Judge Cannon has indefinitely postponed trial while Jack Smith's prosecutors work out answers to the questions posed by all these new revelations.
Georgia
CBS: Georgia appeals court will review decision that allowed Fani Willis to stay on Trump's Fulton County case
News-watchers will remember that, several months ago, it turned out that Fulton Prosecutor Fani Willis was hiring her secret lover to work on the Trump election fraud case. He was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars while they dated and went on vacations together, for which she insisted (without evidence) that she always paid him back. This posed a serious concern of misconduct and the risk that Fani Willis would be forced off the case entirely. After weeks of wrangling, Judge McAfee ruled that Willis could stay on the case, as long as Nathan Wade did not. Trump's team appealed the ruling, and now, the Georgia Appeals Court will hear the decision:
Re-hearing the Fani Willis conflict of interest decision might lead to a repeat of the earlier hearing, where Fani repeatedly shouted over the courtroom and judge:
Fiery DA Fani Willis loses it on lawyer during misconduct hearing: ‘Don’t be cute with me!’
[...[
So the question of prosecuting Trump over the 2020 election in Georgia will have to wait until it's determined how much of a liar the prosecuting DA might or might not have been.
New York
This trial is the juiciest of all, as it is currently in session in New York, with the judge threatening to have Trump locked up:
CBS: Trump held in contempt again for violating gag order as judge threatens jail time
Trump has promised, in interview and social media post, that he's willing to go to jail for exercising his First Amendment rights to criticize Judge Merchan, having said in April that it would be his "great honor" to go to jail for violating Merchan's gag order.
The issue really stems from Trump's accusations of political bias in the New York courtroom. The gag order was imposed after Trump attacked Merchan's daughter for working for Democratic fundraisers:
Dem clients of daughter of NY judge in Trump hush-money trial raised $93M off the case
Another such example is that one of Bragg's prosecutors working the case is Matthew Colangelo, who left the #3 position at DOJ under Merrick Garland to work the Trump case:
Daily Mail: REVEALED: New PROOF the anti-Trump prosecutor in hush money trial is a 'true believer' in Leftist 'lawfare'... as Matthew Colangelo is exposed for taking thousands of dollars from Democratic party
Judge Merchan himself, it turned out, donated (a small amount) to the Biden campaign:
Judge Juan Merchan, who is overseeing Trump case, donated to Biden campaign in 2020
The state is arguing, in effect, that Trump, by paying Stormy Daniels in 2017, falsified business records that should have rightfully been marked as a campaign contribution, and thus constituted a conspiracy to undermine the 2016 election. The count of falsifying business records is a misdemeanor under New York State Law, but can be elevated into a felony charge if the business records were falsified with the intent to commit another crime. Curiously, Alvin Bragg has alleged that Trump falsified business records to commit another crime, but has not charged him with committing any other crimes:
The New York Case Against Trump Relies on a 'Twisty' Legal Theory That Reeks of Desperation
Section 17-152 has never actually been prosecuted to this effect, so the case is entirely novel. New York is arguing, in effect, that Donald Trump engaged in a conspiracy to undermine the 2016 election by falsifying business records in 2017.
This case is a hot one as it is currently in trial, and will likely be resolved with a few weeks. The question of whether the jury can be unbiased in such conditions is ongoing.
I will omit Trump's last criminal court case, the January 6th case run out of DC, as it is currently pending on a Supreme Court decision as to whether Presidents can even be tried for official acts in the first place, which would throw the whole case back down to the lower courts to disentangle which of Trump's actions on January 6th constituted private action. It goes almost without saying that, if Trump were elected in 2024, he could have the authority to fire Jack Smith and derail both this case and the documents case in Florida.
More options
Context Copy link