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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.
One way in which I see a second Trump term being significantly different from the first one is that he's not going to be shy around things like this.
This assumes there's actually things he can do "around things like this." I've made my case before as to why a second Trump term won't be significantly different from the first, because whatever his powers on musty old parchments nobody cares about, the President is a figurehead who only has as much authority as the Permanent Bureaucracy allows him.
This has been my position on Trump 2, and why I'd have preferred Desantis.
Trump could come in on day 1 and intentionally fire every single person in Fedgov that he has authority to fire, and those layoffs would be slow-walked so they'd take weeks to actually take effect, lawsuits would fly, deadlines would be pushed constantly further and further back, in some cases they'd just ignore the order entirely, and feet would be dragging this whole time to wait out his 4 year term. Inevitably, some of those workers would be "unfired" when it turns out there's nobody else immediately available to do their particular job.
If Trump can't bring in competent staffers to implement his plans, and he doesn't have a well of 'replacement' workers to step up and actually give the old ones the boot, 4 years is almost certainly not enough to significantly cut down the Federal Bureaucracy.
All that said, Javier Milei seems to have successfully made huge swaths of the Argentenian bureaucracy go AFUERA (correct me if I'm missing something) so there is a model for pulling it off.
Remember when Trump ordered the relocation of the Department of Agriculture Headquarters? It apparently worked almost as well as he intended! Shocker!
Trump is planning to raid the Abbott, Desantis, and Youngkin administrations for personnel. In particular the next governor of Virginia is overwhelmingly likely to be a democrat who fires them all anyways and both Texas and Florida have functioning conservative talent pipelines. It’s not like trump can’t get competent people.
Eh, I’ve heard it before. He hires the best people, right?
What’s the deal with Virginia? Last I heard, the fights over schooling worked out okay for Republicans. Same for trans issues in general. What else is salient in the state, such that the polling leans so blue? @WhiningCoil
Virginia is dominated by Northern Virginia, which is a Washington DC suburb. For all intents and purposes, Virginia has been colonized by the federal government and votes with it's interest 99% of the time. Democrats have to be incredibly fucking retarded to squander their natural advantages, and they managed it back when Northam was elected. But for the most part, it doesn't matter.
Schools were probably the most salient issue that peeled off enough normies. And it was an uphill battle the entire time. The news lied, the schools lied, the politicians lied. And every time the truth eventually came out they just lied more. When they effectively lost the public relations battles, and the legal battles, they just dug their heels in and went "nuh uh". Nearly every school district is defying our Governors order with respect to trans students, knowing full well the school administrators will keep their jobs longer than our governor. It's tied up in courts, and even if the schools somehow lose, it's not their money they pay out. It's ours. But they are betting, probably correctly, that they can run out the clock until a Democrat takes over and drops the cases.
One county near me hit derangement levels I didn't think were possible, and voted in an even more pro-"pornography in schools" slate of board candidates. One took his oath of office on a literally stack of pornographic "childrens" books. Everyone clapped.
I've totally given up. Starting next year we are homeschooling our children. We were on the fence, taking our chances with private school. But after the most recent federal reinterpretation of Title IX, it's obvious no institution in any state is safe. Every single day we meet parents at parks doing the same thing. A not insignificant proportion of those parents are (or should I say were?) teachers themselves, and are choosing to protect their children from what they've seen the education system in our state become.
Do you think Virginia's non-consecutive-governor rule has an effect on their ability to make lasting change?
It certainly seems to. All we've gotten is a deep blue bureaucracy that holds the line, lies, sues, and is generally unproductive and passive aggressive when the executive is a Republican, and then double times it to push an agenda as soon as a Democrat gets back in. And frankly, it seems like the GOP has abandoned our state, there is almost no talent pipeline, and the old Clinton political machine has it's fingers in everything.
Fuck, I'm already getting mailers about local candidates. I live in a deep, deep red county, and all the mailers have been for Democrat candidates, and they all tout their experience in three letter agencies "fighting extremist" as credentials to keep "MAGA extremist" out of government. Of course all it takes to be a "MAGA extremist" to these people is think pornography shouldn't be in middle schools, or that schools shouldn't secretly transition children without their parents consent or knowledge.
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https://youtube.com/watch?v=sqSA-SY5Hro
Title IX doesn't apply to private institutions that don't receive federal funding.
Very few private educational institutions don't receive federal funding. Private means private-run, not exclusively-privately-funded, because we built a gigantic money pipeline for "our" "education system" back when people were still foolish enough to believe that resources could be shared.
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