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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.
Hot damn. If the FBI managed to screw up the investigation of what should be obvious misconduct, I’m going to be so disappointed. Let’s see what exactly they did…
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/03/mar-a-lago-trump-classified-documents-00156124
Looks like they added placeholders and cover sheets when they initially sorted the fifteen boxes. And then possibly failed to remove them? Assuming every cover sheet was left in the count, and there are really only half as many documents as stated in the warrant, that could mean Trump’s 15 boxes held fewer than 100! Witch hunt!
This is stupid. It’s also not the cause of the delay, which stems from the complaint that those searched boxes are now out of order. How much did they change? No idea. How did they notice the change? Because the contents were exhaustively documented after the seizure.
It’s not a great look for the prosecution. But it also has no bearing on the facts of the case. If Trump’s team could point to any version of the boxes as favorable, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I don’t mind a delay of the trial, but I’m not going to treat this as exculpatory.
it was discovered because Judge Cannon originally responding to supported accusations to require a special master to review the boxes for privileged information and that special master is the person who documented the state of the boxes which prove the government lied
not because the "contents" were exhaustively documented by the prosecution/fbi who were forced to admit they lied to the court about the documents and their handling post-seizure
also, does it give you any pause the linked politico article relies entirely on the statements of the Smith team which has already admitted to not being truthful with the court or defense counsel on multiple occasions? sure, they're liars, but their newest excuse which would takes tens of thousands of dollars and tons of effort to expose as lies are totally, definitely true now
whether the documents were ever disturbed from their original state after they were put into banker boxes by the national archives and picked up by Trump speaks directly to willful conduct element under the provisions of the espionage act Trump is charged with
a version of facts whereby the documents are still in chronological order when they were seized by the government does have an significant effect on at least this element
I agree that the reordering reflects badly on both the FBI and the prosecution. I agree that it should reduce their credibility, and that we should be skeptical of anything they say, checking it against actual evidence. Fortunately, we have actual evidence reviewed by a third party—the scans which revealed this inconsistency.
The change between those scans (taken in late ‘22) and today does not affect the substance of the case. A change before those scans could, but I haven’t seen anyone with actual skin in the game make that allegation.
Who have you seen propose this “chronological order” defense? Perhaps Trump’s counsel? Because I don’t think they’re disputing the authenticity of the special master scans.
government admission that evidence has been tampered with post seizure is a serious issue; you want to give the government the benefit of the doubt in all places we don't have "actual evidence" their conduct was below the standard we should expect, but that isn't a fair assessment given the history of these prosecutors not only in this case but others
we're talking about an extreme standard to prove criminal guilt; reasonable doubt inhabits these hidden areas of government conduct
at some point, 'oopsies, we made yet another misleading statement totally accidentally and also fought to avoid admitting it for months and also here are better, more innocent explanations for why evidence has been tampered with' should adjust your priors in meaningful ways as opposed to handwaving "reduced credibility" which doesn't actually affect the way you evaluate any of this
for these prosecutors, bridging the gap from this admission to concluding they're likely lying is justifiable
...You appear to be making the above argument about "oopsies" in this case. But of course, the agency in question has an absolutely horrifying history of previous "oopsies". @gattsuru covers a small selection of recent cases, and as he mentions, those aren't even top-ten contenders.
The FBI has been a deeply corrupt institution since the day of its founding. We actually know quite a few details about the sort of leader Hoover was, and the sort of organization he built. We know how that organization operated six decades ago, five, four, three. And then, somehow, the magical trustworthiness always appears for the current agency whose behavior we can only incompletely analyze, so they always get the benefit not only of the doubt, but of willful ignorance.
I should put together a list of OIG reports into FBI misconduct over the last couple decades. The reports will regularly find pretty serious misconduct and additionally list facts readers can easily connect as what is very likely some sort of extortion crime and then the report gets put in a cabinet somewhere mostly without any media attention, the agents involved will retire with full benefits, and then we turn the page and forget about it ready to be exasperated with the next FBI accusation against "the bad guys." For example, the OIG report looking into the FBI's handling of multiple victim accusations about USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar. Does anyone else find it odd that while this investigation was being slow-walked to the point it wasn't moving at all until a local paper The Indystar broke the story wide-open and lead to public allegations by former gymnasts, the head of the office and likely his underling were working on obtaining post retirement cushy jobs with the US Olympic committee? Odd the head of the office lied to OIG investigators to attempt to cover up their misrepresentations of evidence and witness interviews as well as their attempt to coincidentally seek a job with USA Gymnastics/US Olympic committee. Huh, weird, oh well I guess he gets to retire with full benefits.
This agency is rotten to the core. I legitimately do not understand how it continues to enjoy such high reputation for credibility given the long list of known abuses where no one was meaningfully held accountable. I legitimately do not understand why judge's eyes gloss over or even they get angry when it's suggested these people shouldn't be assumed to be the most credible people to ever exist. It's almost comical how much defense counsel has to tip-toe around it until they find essentially a smoking gun. We turn the page and forget about it, "oh here look, the FBI is going after ____ for ____. He must be a bad guy." Do I think the FBI is above planting and manipulating evidence, lying about it, and ruining lives trying to cover it up? Not only do I think they are willing to do that, there are dozens of cases of it being proven they did just that.
Funny enough, I remember that reddit comment because it made me RES tag gattsuru as just "great." edit: I typed out the above before I looked further down the thread where gattsuru mentioned it.
What's particularly funny is how even defense lawyers get into it. Cfe when themotte's own notice that an FBI agent perjured herself at length during a criminal trial; he was genuinely curious how the FBI agent would weasel out of it (spoiler: easily!), and even entertained the possibility "whether the prosecutors will bother" to bring perjury charges (spoiler: no).
If the spreadsheet has the data, and it was just hidden, then she didn’t perjure herself by saying she handed over all the data.
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