;)
The Conversation -- August 5, 2023
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...." ~~~
~~~ 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.
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 longish article goes into detail about the purchase and payment, and unearths another foreign jaunt Thomas apparently took at Welters' expense but did not report. ~~~
~~~ 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."
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Marie: If you read the magistrate judge's bail conditions for Donald Trump, which I painstakingly copied off the YouTubes and posted here yesterday, you knew this was going to happen sooner or later. Trump, as is his wont, made it sooner: ~~~
IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I'M COMING AFTER YOU! -- Donald Trump, Liars' Social post, Friday afternoon ~~~
~~~ Kyle Cheney & Josh Gerstein of Politico: "Prosecutors on Friday night called a judge's attention to a social media post from Donald Trump -- issued hours earlier -- in which they say the former president appeared to declare that he's 'coming after' those he sees as responsible for the series of formidable legal challenges he is facing. Attorneys from special counsel Jack Smith's team said the post from Trump 'specifically or by implication' referenced those involved in his criminal case for seeking to subvert the 2020 election.... The prosecutors said Trump's post raised concerns that he might improperly share evidence in the case on his social media account and they urged that he be ordered to keep any evidence prosecutors turn over to his defense team from public view. All the proposed order seeks to prevent is the improper dissemination or use of discovery materials, including to the public,' [Molly] Gaston and [Thomas] Windom wrote [to Judge Tanya Chutkan]. 'Such a restriction is particularly important in this case because the defendant has previously issued public statements on social media regarding witnesses, judges, attorneys, and others associated with legal matters pending against him.... And in recent days, regarding this case, the defendant has issued multiple posts, including [the post referenced here].... Trump's Truth Social post came just one day after he swore in federal court that he would not make any effort to influence or retaliate against witnesses or make any other actions that might obstruct the administration of justice in his case." ~~~
~~~ Marie: I suspect the target of the threat was the Magistrate Judge Moxila Upadhyaya, who issued the conditions of bail. Trump was reportedly vewwy, vewwy grumpy Thursday, and he likely wanted to provoke the court. I wish Chutkan would send the marshals around to pick up Trump and throw him in the nearest calaboose, but I suspect she'll cut him some slack.
Fortunately, right-wing pundits & other commentators are reacting to this third indictment with their customary reason and fair-minded dispassion: ~~~
Jared Gans of the Hill: "Former President Trump is calling on the Supreme Court to intercede in the legal battles he is facing.... Trump, in a post on Truth Social early Friday, repeated accusations that President Biden is pushing for the cases against him for political purposes.... 'I am leading in all Polls, including against Crooked Joe, but this is not a level playing field. It is Election Interference, & the Supreme Court must intercede. MAGA!' Trump said." MB: Apparently, Trump is so clueless that he's unaware the Supreme Court doesn't just spontaneously rule on whatever irritates them: they choose among appeals to lower-court decisions. But hey, why not just do what Trump demands? So, Clarence & Sam and all you mini-Supremes he appointed, take a break from your fabulous all-expenses-paid vacations to write up something ordering the DOJ to back off Trump.
Marie: On December 14, 2020, Ronald Hansen of the Arizona Republic wrote that "an Arizona group sent the National Archives in Washington, D.C., notarized documents last week intended to deliver, wrongly, the state's 11 electoral votes for him [Donald Trump].... Mesa resident Lori Osiecki, 62, helped created a facsimile of the 'certificate of ascertainment' that is submitted to formally cast each state's electoral votes as part of an effort to prevent what she views as the fraudulent theft of the election."
Not only did I think this sounded like a grassroots, crackpot gimmick, I didn't even connect it with the following story, though I linked both on December 15:
Jonathan Swan, then reporting for Axios, gave us a hint of the scope of the fake electors scheme, though Swan didn't suggest it was part of an elaborate plot still playing out: "Right up to Monday's Electoral College vote, President Trump held the false hope that Republican-controlled state legislatures would replace electors with allies who'd overturn Joe Biden's win, two people who discussed the matter with him told Axios.... Through the past week, the sources said, the president browbeat GOP legislators in multiple states, launched tirades against Republican Govs. Doug Ducey of Arizona and Brian Kemp of Georgia, vowed to make Fox News 'pay' for accurately calling the race, and tested ways to say he didn't win without acknowledging he had lost."
I was surprised and wondered if Rachel Maddow had crawled out on a limb when weeks later -- and a few days after the January 6 insurrection -- she led with a segment in which she asserted, "... Republicans in multiple states -- had sent in false assertions, forged documents claiming to be the electors for their states," Maddow wondered how "that Trump guy at the Justice Department [-- Jeffrey Clark --] [knew] that two weeks earlier, Republicans in at least five states had ... created these forged elector documents?... But somebody helped them do it, because they all filed the exact same document in the same font, in the same spacing, with the exact same language."
As I recalled, Maddow followed up on the fake electors story a few times before New York Times reporters Alan Feuer, Maggie Haberman and Luke Broadwater reported on February 2, 2021 -- that is, after Joe Biden had become president -- about "an audacious strategy: to put in place alternate slates of electors in states where ... Donald J. Trump was trying to overturn his loss."
That "audacious strategy" -- a strategy I dismissed in mid-December as a harebrained scheme concocted by Arizona rubes whose MAGA hats & tinfoil caps had not protected them from the noonday sun -- became a centerpiece of a House January 6 committee hearing. And now it has turned into a criminal indictment against Donald Trump. The big story often starts with a single piece or perhaps with a few seemingly unrelated or loosely-related pieces.
** Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times puts the big story in an even greater context: "If we truly hope to avoid another Jan. 6, or something worse, we have to deal with our undemocratic system as much as we do with the perpetrators of that particular incident. Whatever benefits our unusual rules and procedures are supposed to have are more than outweighed, at this point in our history, by the danger they pose to the entire American experiment. The threat to the integrity of the Republic is coming, as it often has, from inside the house." MB: This is Bouie's conclusion; read his entire column to understand how he got there. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Those Republican party "leaders" who aren't delusional are secretly or sometimes openly distraught that the leader of their party and their likely presidential* nominee is a whiney old narcissistic sociopath whom they wish would just go away. As conservative writer Ramesh Ponnuru points out, there was a very, very easy way for those Republicans to legally keep Trump from every again running for the presidency*: ~~~
~~~ Isaac Schorr of Mediaite: "The editor of National Review's print magazine and Washington Post columnist Ramesh Ponnuru called out Senate Republicans for failing to convict former president Donald Trump during the impeachment trial held for his role in inspiring the January 6 Capitol riot.... 'Republican officeholders ... thought they had no need to act against Trump because, having been defeated on Election Day and then disgraced on Jan. 6, he would "fade away" as a political force.... How's that working out?'" Nice work, Mitch.
Finally, in response to a number of comments in yesterday's thread about the latest from the "Wordsmith of Wasilla," Jack M. added more historical context:
Way back when, I remember saying that Sarah Palin was a gateway drug. Once the ignorati beheld the Incredible Lightness of Her Intellect, they felt empowered, even compelled, to make equally weighty pronouncements without the crutches of fact or context.
When you step back, it's evident that what the Confederates are doing is consistent with what would be business as usual in the United States in 1850: The country was run by and for the benefit of what we know now were not very admirable white people whose word was law. What's happened since has convinced many in the Con camp that a step forward for anyone unwelcome in the trailer park is a step back for the proud white folks washed exclusively in the blood of the lamb everywhere. They're rebelling against events that happened over 150 years ago, which is why those who try to make sense of their actions in a modern framework can be so confused.
Marie: I linked the story below late yesterday morning, so some of you may have missed it:
** "Clueless" Star Presides in Trump Florida Trial. Sarah Lynch & Jacqueline Thomsen of Reuters: "The judge in ... Donald Trump's upcoming trial over his handling of classified documents made two key errors in a June trial, one of which violated a fundamental constitutional right of the defendant and could have invalidated the proceedings, according to legal experts and a court transcript. Florida-based U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon closed jury selection for the trial of an Alabama man - accused by federal prosecutors of running a website with images of child sex abuse - to the defendant's family and the general public, a trial transcript obtained by Reuters showed. A defendant's right to a public trial is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution's Sixth Amendment.... Legal experts said closing a courtroom to the public has been recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court as a 'structural error' - a mistake so significant that it can invalidate a criminal trial because it strikes at the heart of the entire process....
Cannon ... declined to open the courtroom to the public despite repeated requests from both prosecutors and defense attorneys, the transcript showed.... [Scott] Berry, the federal defender, argued in the courtroom that Cannon's refusal to let his client's mother and sister be present during jury selection was a Sixth Amendment violation. 'All right, thank you. Your objection is overruled,' Cannon replied.... Cannon ... also neglected to swear in the prospective jury pool - an obligatory procedure in which people who may serve on the panel pledge to tell the truth during the selection process. This error forced Cannon to re-start jury selection before the trial ended abruptly with defendant William Spearman pleading guilty...." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Mind you, Cannon didn't make these fundamental mistakes back in days of yore. She made them less than two months ago. If, by any chance, Trump's trial ever takes place and if he is found guilty, he is almost guaranteed to win an acquittal on appeal because Cannon will likely have made more than one "structural error." This woman is so stubborn in her ignorance that not only does she not know what we learned in 9th-grade civics class about the Sixth Amendment, she won't even accept coaching on the subject from both prosecution and defense attorneys.
John Wagner of the Washington Post: "About three dozen House Democrats, led by Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), are calling for televising the federal trials of ... Donald Trump on charges related to the 2020 election and the retention of classified documents. In a letter to Judge Roslynn Mauskopf, who oversees the administration of federal courts, the lawmakers argued that the move would bolster public acceptance of the outcome.... A lawyer for Trump has also suggested that they would like the expected trial on 2020 election-related charges to be televised. Last month, after Trump revealed that he had received a target letter from special counsel Jack Smith, Trump attorney John Lauro said he would welcome additional transparency."
The U.S. of Trump. Dan Nexon in LG&$: "As Asawin Suebsaeng and Adam Rawnsley report in Rolling Stone: 'DONALD TRUMP ... always has revenge on his mind, and his allies are preparing to use a future administration to not only undo all of Special Counsel Jack Smith's work -- but to take vengeance on Smith, and on virtually everyone else, who dared investigate Trump during his time out of power. Rosters full of MAGAfied lawyers are being assembled. Plans are being laid for an entire new office of the Justice Department dedicated to 'election integrity.' An assembly line is being prepared of revenge-focused 'special counsels' and 'special prosecutors.'... And a fresh wave of pardons is under consideration for Trump associates, election deniers, and -- the former president boasts -- for Jan. 6 rioters.'... In sum, anyone involved with a putatively 'left' or 'centrist' third-party campaign in this cycle is ipso facto a moral degenerate." Read on. ~~~
~~~ Marie: In case you think Rolling Stone is a far-out, radical left publication whose reporters are making up scary stories about Trump's intentions, the sobersided Associated Press backs up Suebsaeng & Rawnsley's reporting.
Eduardo Medina of the New York Times: "A man who called for a 'mass shooting of poll workers' and threatened two Arizona county officials and their families over the 2022 election was sentenced on Thursday to three and a half years in federal prison, prosecutors said. The man, Frederick Francis Goltz, 52, pleaded guilty in April to two counts of interstate threatening communications in connection with his threats to two Republican Maricopa County officials in Arizona, the authorities said: Stephen Richer, the county recorder, and Tom Liddy, the county attorney's civil division chief. Mr. Goltz, who is a Canadian citizen and lived in Lubbock, Texas, believed in 2022 that rampant voter fraud was occurring in Arizona, prosecutors said, so he resorted to online threats, saying in a post on a right-wing forum site that referred to Maricopa County officials: 'Someone needs to get these people AND their children. The children are the most important message to send.'" An NBC News story is here.
The Dangerous Lunatics Among Us. Campbell Robertson of the New York Times: "... in a trial that ended on Thursday with the imposition of a death sentence, scores of witnesses took turns dissecting the life and motivations of one middle-aged man who lived alone in a small apartment before carrying out the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history: the killing of 11 worshipers in a Pittsburgh synagogue on Oct. 27, 2018.... In the online far-right fever swamps that have grown immensely since the synagogue massacre, the views Mr. Bowers expressed on social media five years ago would be 'simply unremarkable,' said Oren Segal ... of the Anti-Defamation League.... 'There are thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people saying that stuff and even worse,' Mr. Segal said."
Presidential Race 2024
The Lord High Executioner. Why did Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis miss seeing most of the coverage of Donald Trump's indictment? Because, DeSantis cheerfully explained, "So we had an execution yesterday, so I was tied up with that for most of the day." Lah-de-dah, lah-de-dokes, I was busy killing folks. What with his campaign promise last Sunday to "start slitting throats on day one' of "deep state" bureaucrats, DeSantis' campaign is morphing from whining about minorities to an imitation of a splatter movie. Still, "I was overseeing an execution" is more original than the usual dog-ate-my-homework excuses.
Perhaps following Mike Pence's lead, the knife-wielding Florida governor dips a Nancy Sinatra white boot into the shallow end of the Trump-critical pool: ~~~
~~~ Nicholas Nehamas & Lisa Lerer of the New York Times: "Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said that claims about the 2020 election being stolen were false, directly contradicting a central argument of ... Donald J. Trump and his supporters. The comments went further than Mr. DeSantis typically goes when asked about Mr. Trump's defeat. The governor has often tried to hedge, refusing to acknowledge that the election was fairly conducted. In his response on Friday, Mr. DeSantis did not mention Mr. Trump by name -- saying merely that such theories were 'unsubstantiated.'... 'All those theories that were put out did not prove to be true,' Mr. DeSantis said in response to a reporter's question...." CNN's report is here.
Mississippi. Michael Wines of the New York Times: "Mississippi's lifetime ban on voting for people convicted of a range of felonies is cruel and unusual punishment that violates the Eighth Amendment and 'is at odds with society's evolving standards of decency, a federal appeals court ruled on Friday. In an emphatic 2-to-1 opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upbraided Mississippi officials for what it called a pointless 'denial of the democratic core of American citizenship.'...They added: 'It is an especially cruel penalty as applied to those whom the justice system has already deemed to have completed all terms of their sentences. These individuals, despite having satisfied their debt to society, are precluded from ever fully participating in civic life. Indeed, they are excluded from the most essential feature and expression of citizenship in a democracy -- voting.'" The AP's story is here.
Texas. Niha Masih of the Washington Post: "A judge in Texas on Friday temporarily allowed abortions for people with dangerous or complicated pregnancies, following emotional testimonies from women during a hearing last month about the impact of the state's restrictive abortion laws on their bodies. Judge Jessica Mangrum ruled in favor of a group of women and doctors who had filed a lawsuit in March seeking clarity on the scope of the medical emergencies exception clause in the state's abortion ban. In the ruling, Mangrum said that uncertainty on the exceptions and 'related threat of enforcement of Texas's abortion bans' created a risk that doctors 'will have no choice but to bar or delay the provision of abortion care to pregnant people in Texas for whom an abortion would prevent or alleviate a risk of death or risk to their health.' The judge set a trial date for March next year." The AP's story is here.
News Lede
New York Times: “Charles J. Ogletree Jr., a Harvard law professor who helped reframe debates around criminal justice, school desegregation and reparations during the 1990s and 2000s, all the while mentoring a new generation of Black lawyers that included President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama, died on Friday at his home in Odenton, Md. He was 70.”
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Reader Comments (6)
A few zingers from Dowd today:
"It’s strange to see Pence showing some nerve and coming to Smith’s aid, after 9all his brown-nosing and equivocating. He and Mother, who suppressed her distaste for Trump for years, were the most loyal soldiers; in return, according to an aide, Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows said Trump felt Pence “deserved” to be hanged by the rioters."
This last quote I was not aware of––-it's shocking even for Trump–––but then not surprising since it comes from such a sick SOB.
"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."
Embarrassingly, I'm still thinking about the Pretender, a man of no substance but money and still wondering why anyone would take him seriously. While the consequences of his behavior are serious, he is of no account whatsoever.
I've concluded he's only a media creation like the movie Barbie or Ted Lasso, but unlike them, he possesses no redeeming features. He's not cute, not adventurous, not given to introspection and occasional moral qualms and and he's certainly not funny.
Perhaps his appeal is that of of an object of their wish fulfillment. His admirers like his money, the power he's accumulated, his tough talk, and his obvious dislike of The Other, who is everyone and everything they resent.
His admirers wish they were he.
I'm glad they are not. One Pretender is more than enough.
@P.D.Pepe: It depends on what the meaning of "it" is. Like you, I didn't remember Trump's saying pence deserved to be hanged. So I checked on MoDo's reference, and I think she may be over-interpreting it (literally, "it"). According to the Times story MoDo links, Cassidy Hutchinson testified,
“'I remember Pat [Cipollone] saying something to the effect of, Mark, we need to do something more,' she said, noting that the crowd was chanting for Mr. Pence to be hanged. Mr. Meadows, she said, responded to the effect of, 'You heard him, Pat. He thinks Mike deserves it,' referring to Mr. Trump’s feelings about Mr. Pence. 'He doesn’t think they’re doing anything wrong.'”
So I'm not clear what "it" is that Meadows says pence deserves. It could be he means pence deserves to be hanged, as MoDo writes, but "it" also could mean pence deserves to have the crowds chanting threats to hang him. I guess we'll have to wait till Meadows or Cipollone testifies to find out. Or, more likely, we'll never know.
Whatever “it” was it still had to do with stealing the election and trying to force pence to commit a crime against democracy and the United States.
Trump, in his desperation to not look like the loser he is, was willing to destroy dozens of careers, not to mention setting in motion the riot that killed and injured others he didn’t know or care about. Granted, the careers of some—no, all—of the co-conspirators referenced in Smith’s indictment, as well as many, many other democracy hating Fatty-helping assholes around the country, deserve to be, need to be destroyed. Those scheming MAGAts deserve perdition every bit as horrible as the Orange Monster spider in the center of that fetid web.
If the “it” was to see pence hanged, I’m not the tiniest bit surprised. As Jamelle Bouie points out in his piece (linked above), Trump, had he succeeded with his coup, was ready to send out troops to “crack some skulls”, skulls belonging to any who dared protest his illegal power grab.
He’s not just the worst president*, he is a horrible human being, a debased obscenity. As PD suggests, his legacy is already set. An instant personality change into some kind of orangey Mother Theresa character could not rescue his reputation from the stinking, fiery dumpster in which it will forever reside.
Something else that would never happen in a sane country....
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/08/05/government-spending-bills-stalemate-trump/
Not unrelated to giving children guns for Christmas or arming certifiable nutcases.
Interesting story about Clarence's motor coach. The one he travels in when he mingles with use common folk. You know, the one that cost over a quarter million bucks. I wonder if got a good finance rate from his buddy. I would also like to know how much his monthly payments are. More importantly, how many miles have you put on it, Clarence? Will one of your other buddies help you out if you get behind on the payments?