The Conversation -- August 6, 2023
Rema Rahman of the Hill: "Former President Trump on Sunday said his legal team will ask for a recusal of the judge overseeing his case on federal charges related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election as well as a venue change, reiterating that he cannot get a fair trial in Washington, D.C. 'There is no way I can get a fair trial with the judge "assigned" to the ridiculous freedom of speech/fair elections case. Everybody knows this, and so does she!' Trump wrote on Truth Social.... Trump once again also went after special counsel Jack Smith.... 'Deranged Jack Smith ... could have brought this [Biden] "opponent" case years ago, but chose to wait and bring it right in the middle of my election campaign. No way!!! I hope you are watching America,' Trump wrote."
What else has Trump been doing while out on bail? Well, there was the general threat to every anti-Trumper in the world plus many people just doing their jobs: "IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I'M COMING AFTER YOU!" And there are these remarks, made about a likely witness against him: ~~~
~~~ Craig Howie of Politico: "Donald Trump hit back at Mike Pence on Saturday.... 'WOW, it's finally happened!' Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Saturday. 'Liddle' Mike Pence, a man who was about to be ousted as Governor Indiana until I came along and made him V.P., has gone to the Dark Side.... I never told a newly embolded -- Pence to put me above the Constitution, or that Mike was "too honest." He's delusional, and now he wants to show he's a tough guy,' Trump added.'... Pence defended certifying the 2020 election for Joe Biden in response to jeers and insults from a crowd of Trump supporters outside a campaign event in New Hampshire on Friday." ~~~
~~~ Tim Reid & Kanishka Singh of Reuters: "Asked on Sunday on CBS's 'Face the Nation' if he would be a witness against [Donald] Trump if the [insurrection] case goes to trial, [Mike] Pence said he had 'no plans' to testify but did not rule it out."
You Could Get Tossed in Jail for Looking Like a Criminal -- Especially if You're Black. Kashmir Hill of the New York Times: Porcha Woodruff of Detroit, who was eight months pregnant at the time of her arrest [for robbery & carjacking], "is the sixth person to report being falsely accused of a crime as a result of facial recognition technology used by police to match an unknown offender's face to a photo in a database. All six people have been Black; Ms. Woodruff is the first woman to report it happening to her. It is the third case involving the Detroit Police Department, which runs, on average, 125 facial recognition searches a year, almost entirely on Black men.... Gary Wells, a psychology professor who has studied the reliability of eyewitness identifications, said pairing facial recognition technology with an eyewitness identification should not be the basis for charging someone with a crime.... [Surveillance video showed that] the woman involved in the carjacking had not been visibly pregnant...." Ms. Woodruff required medical treatment for dehydration following her release from jail.
California. Eduardo Medina of the New York Times: "A Southern California judge was arrested on Thursday in connection with the killing of his wife, whom police officers found dead from a gunshot wound inside the couple's Anaheim home, the authorities said on Friday. The judge, Jeffrey Ferguson, 72, of the Orange County Superior Court, was booked into the Anaheim Police Department's detention facility on Thursday and held on $1 million bail, the police said. He posted bail on Friday and has been released, according to Orange County Sheriff's Department records." MB: Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think if you or I were arrested for shooting dead a spouse or partner, we would be released on bail.
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Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President. -- Judge Tanya Chutkan, November 2021, denying Donald Trump's claim of executive privilege to block the House January 6 committee from accessing records from his White House ~~~
~~~ Nick Robertson of the Hill: "The federal judge presiding over former President Trump's election fraud case has ordered his attorneys to respond to prosecutors' request for a protective order by Monday, according to a court filing Saturday. Judge Tanya Chutkan gave Trump's attorneys a single business day to respond to special counsel Jack Smith's request for a strict protective order which would prevent Trump from discussing case evidence in public. Smith made the request last Friday after Trump made a social media post appearing to threaten witnesses in the case. 'IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I'M COMING AFTER YOU!' Trump wrote on Truth Social Friday...." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Update: "Trump's attorneys requested a three-day extension -- until Thursday -- to that deadline Saturday afternoon, claiming federal prosecutors want to move the case along too quickly and that a delay gives them enough time to properly respond.... However, Chutkan denied the Trump team's request for an extension Saturday evening...."
Maureen Dowd of the New York Times: "The man who tried to overthrow the government he was running was held Thursday by the government he tried to overthrow, a few blocks from where the attempted overthrow took place and a stone's throw from the White House he yearns to return to, to protect himself from the government he tried to overthrow.... While Trump goes for the long con, or the long coup -- rap sheet be damned, it's said that he worries this will hurt his legacy. He shouldn't. His legacy is safe, as the most democracy-destroying, soul-crushing, self-obsessed amadán ever to occupy the Oval. Amadán, that's Gaelic for a man who grows more foolish every day." Thanks to P.D. Pepe for the lead. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Dewey, Cheatham and Howe, LLP. Alan Feuer, et al., of the New York Times: "The legal team that Mr. Trump has assembled to represent him in the twin prosecutions by the special counsel, Jack Smith, is marked by a tangled web of potential conflicts and overlapping interests -- so much so that Mr. Smith's office has started asking questions.... Some of the lawyers involved in the cases are representing both charged defendants and uncharged witnesses. At least one could eventually become a defendant, and another could end up as a witness in one case and Mr. Trump's defender in a different one.... Many of the lawyers are being paid by Save America PAC, Mr. Trump's political action committee, which has itself been under government scrutiny for months. Some of the witnesses those lawyers represent work for the Trump Organization, Mr. Trump's company, but their legal defense has ... been arranged ... by Mr. Trump's own legal team.... Just this week, prosecutors ... asked Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who is overseeing the documents case, to conduct a hearing 'regarding potential conflicts arising from the complex client list of one lawyer, Stanley Woodward Jr.... Prosecutors appear to have similar qualms about another lawyer in the documents case, John Irving, who represents Carlos De Oliveira, Mr. Trump's other co-defendant...." Read on for the details of the stunt Trump lawyer/witness for the prosecution Evan Corcoran may be planning to avoid having to testify against Trump on a crucial issue in the documents case.
** Confessions of a Co-conspirator. Josh Marshall of TPM: In an interview with "Tom Klingenstein, the Chairman of the Trumpite Claremont Institute," Trump Co-conspirator 2 John Eastman "invokes the Declaration of Independence and says quite clearly that yes, we were trying to overthrow the government and argues that they were justified because of the sheer existential threat America was under because of the election of Joe Biden.... Eastman ... makes clear [the insurrectionists] were ... justified in doing so; and the warrant for their actions is none other than the Declaration of Independence itself.... 'There's actually a provision in the Declaration of Independence that a people will suffer abuses while they remain sufferable, tolerable while they remain tolerable[,' Eastman argues]. 'At some point abuses become so intolerable that it becomes not only their right but their duty to alter or abolish the existing government.... So that's the question.... Have the abuses or the threat of abuses become so intolerable that we have to be willing to push back?' The answer for Eastman is clearly yes and that's his justification for his and his associates extraordinary actions....
"Abraham Lincoln ... said ... on the eve of the Civil War in his first inaugural address (emphasis added): 'This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.' In other words, yes, you have a revolutionary right to overthrow the government.... But the government has an equal right to stop you, to defend itself or, as we see today, put you on trial if you fail. The American revolutionaries of 1776 knew full well that they were committing treason against the British monarchy. If they lost they would all hang.... [Eastman and his cohort] knew it was a coup and they justified it to themselves in those terms."
Isn't it terrible that so many reporters from so many media outlets are challenging one another in the game of "Gotcha, Supremes!"?? The New York Times just advanced the paper's position: ~~~
~~~ Jo Becker & Julie Tate of the New York Times: "... in a documentary financed by conservative admirers, Justice [Clarence] Thomas ... waxes rhapsodic about the familiarity of spending time with the regular folks he meets along the way in R.V. parks and Walmart parking lots.... [BUT] His Prevost Marathon [R.V.] cost $267,230 [in 1999].... And Justice Thomas, who in the ensuing years would tell friends how he had scrimped and saved to afford the motor coach, did not buy it on his own. In fact, the purchase was underwritten, at least in part, by Anthony Welters, a close friend who made his fortune in the health care industry.... [The true source of funding for the purchase] leaves unanswered a host of questions about whether the justice received, and failed to disclose, a lavish gift from a wealthy friend ... [and whether Thomas failed to comply with] an obligation to report the arrangement under a federal ethics law." The article goes into detail about the purchase and payment, and unearths another foreign jaunt Thomas apparently took at Welters' expense but did not report. (Also linked yesterday.)~~~
~~~ Marie: When you think about it, "Gotcha, Supremes!" has all the makings of a board game, a la "Monopoly." You advance when your marker lands on "Clarence & Ginny cruise on Harlan's yacht" or "Insufferable Sam takes luxury fishing vacay in billionaire Paul's Alaska resort," but it's a bummer when your marker stops on "Chief John refuses to testify before Senate" or "Insufferable Sam writes a WSJ op-ed."
Presidential Race 2028
Not Exactly Yer Lincoln-Douglas Debates. Julia Shapero of the Hill: "California Gov. Gavin Newsom's (D team slammed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' (R) counterproposal for a debate as a 'joke' on Saturday, claiming that the Republican presidential candidate's suggested rules are meant to 'hide his insecurity and ineptitude.' 'What a joke,' Newsom spokesperson Nathan Click said in a statement, according to Politico. 'Desantis' counterproposal is littered with crutches to hide his insecurity and ineptitude -- swapping opening statements with a hype video, cutting down the time he needs to be on stage, adding cheat notes and a cheering section.... Ron should be able to stand on his own two feet. It's no wonder Trump is kicking his ass.'"