The Biggest Loser

JohnInCarolina

http://twitter.com/JonLemire/status/1719307389944340984?s=20

lousubcap

From The Atlantic-to appreciate the landscape-and it is barren of thought in the end-game. 

Back when X was called Twitter (back when it was fun), certain tweets had a way of explaining the Trump era better than any news article ever could. This one, from Jesse Farrar, comes to mind:

Well, I’d like to see ol Donny Trump wriggle his way out of THIS jam!

*Trump wriggles his way out of the jam easily*

Ah! Well. Nevertheless,

That tweet was sent six days before Trump’s Access Hollywood tape scandal. (He wriggled his way out.) Trump later went on to survive not one but two impeachments. Though he’s currently a defendant in numerous state and federal cases—my colleague David Graham has written an excellent summary of it all—Trump remains the GOP front-runner by more than 40 points. He sometimes seems like a perpetual motion machine, if that machine were designed explicitly for wriggling.

Many people have argued that the only way to defeat Trump is at the ballot box. This week in Colorado, one group is trying to use the power of the court to keep Trump’s name off the state’s 2024 ballot altogether. This is a bench trial, meaning that no jury is present, and everything will come down to one judge’s interpretation of one section of the Fourteenth Amendment.

In August, a pair of legal scholars published a widely discussed paperarguing that, under the Fourteenth Amendment, the former president’s role in the January 6 insurrection made him ineligible to hold public office again. One month later, six voters in Colorado—in conjunction with CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington)—filed a lawsuit against Trump and Jena Griswold, the Colorado secretary of state, seeking to block Trump’s name from the state’s 2024 ballot. This is where it gets complicated: CREW is a left-leaning organization working with a mix of Republican and unaffiliated voters to achieve its goal, Griswold is a Democrat but also a co-defendant with the de facto leader of the Republican Party, and Trump’s lead lawyer in this case, Scott Gessler, used to have Griswold’s job. Confused? It gets trickier.

The plaintiffs hope to prove that Trump engaged in insurrection against the United States and is therefore ineligible to pursue the presidency. Although many people accept that the former president incited the mob that stormed the Capitol, Trump himself was not among those who donned face paint and Viking horns and entered the building. Nevertheless, he clearly did not aid in the peaceful transfer of power. Does incitement count as engagement? For his role in January 6, Trump was impeached in the House but acquitted in the Senate. Can a presidential candidate be disqualified without a conviction? Also, how does disqualification occur at the state level—does the secretary of state have that power? None of these questions have clear answers.

Opening arguments and witness testimony began yesterday morning. Representative Eric Swalwell of California described the horrible scenes he experienced inside the Capitol on January 6. Eric Hodges, a D.C. police officer, also told a grisly story on behalf of the prosecution. Trump’s defense claims that the case is based almost entirely on the House January 6 committee’s report, calling it “poison” and “a one-sided political document of cherry-picked information.” Gessler derided the lawsuit as “anti-democratic” and, in a twist of irony, “election interference.”

Last night, I spoke with Griswold, the Colorado secretary of state, about the case. She searched for the right word to describe her situation of being sued alongside the most famous person alive, and eventually settled on unanticipated. “At the end of the day, we’re listed as defendants, but I am not defending Donald Trump,” she said. “I believe he incited the insurrection. I also believe there are big questions around how Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment works, and that a judge should weigh in.”

The most important job of any secretary of state is to oversee elections. Last cycle, Trump unsuccessfully tried to pressure the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, into overturning his state’s results. Raffensperger refused, and he faced death threats. Within three weeks of the Colorado lawsuit’s filing, Griswold told me that she herself had received 64 death threats, in addition to more than 900 nonlethal threats. Trump’s “words are powerful to a big portion of the public. And he uses his words to try to intimidate and to get out of accountability. I won’t be intimidated,” she said.

Griswold had no problem speaking plainly about the actions of her co-defendant: “One of the things that makes Donald Trump a danger to American democracy is that he thinks he’s above the law. He’s tried to stop cases through alleging presidential immunity. He stormed out of a case in New York. And in Colorado, he’s not even showing up to testify or give a deposition. You’d think with such a big case that is so foundational as to whether or not he can be president or appear on the ballot, he would want to show up and testify. But ultimately, with these cases, he grandstands.”

The trial is expected to last one week. Judge Sarah Wallace is determined to have the matter settled by Thanksgiving. Colorado is a “Super Tuesday” state, so its presidential primary will occur on March 5. Military and overseas ballots must be sent out 45 days before then, meaning that the ballots themselves will be printed in December or very early January. Griswold could not offer an exact ballot-printing deadline, noting that the sheets are prepared at various plants throughout Colorado.

Whatever happens, this case may soon wind up before the conservative-majority Supreme Court. Though a third of the bench was appointed by Trump himself, the Court is not guaranteed to take his side if he loses and appeals. And if Colorado blocks Trump from the ballot, other states, such as Michigan and Minnesota, could follow.

But all of this is a legal solution to a much larger political problem, which is that Trumpism seems destined to endure. Any successful effort to keep Trump’s name off the ballot will only enliven his cult of supporters. The wriggling continues. Ah! Well. Nevertheless: What was once a brilliant joke now seems like the beginning of a dark era."

A sad state of affairs for this country.

JohnInCarolina

http://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1719533734972817661?s=20

lousubcap

Former President Donald Trump’s New York civil fraud trial continues, as Donald Trump Jr,a codefendant alongside his brother Eric Trump,testified in court yesterday. Questions from the prosecution focussed on Trump Jr’s role in the Trump Organization business. Trump and his sons deny allegations of falsifying business records and committing insurance fraud, amongst other charges. The trial continues this week as Trump’s daughter Ivanka is expected to give evidence later this week. BBC News reports. 

Former President Donald Trump’s request for his case challenging eligibility to future office to be thrown out was dismissed yesterday by a Colorado judge. The decision means the trial will continue through Friday before a final ruling. Trump’s team argued that his words and actions leading up to the Capitol Jan.6 attacks were protected by the First Amendment. Judge Wallace emphasized the decision to reject the request does not indicate which side is right and that the constitutional questions at play were difficult. Maggie Astor reports for the New York Times. 

lousubcap

" A TALE OF TWO GAG ORDERS: Judge ARTHUR ENGORON,who’s overseeing the Trump civil business fraud trial in New York, broadened his gag order yesterday to encompass Trump’s attorneys, citing concerns about threats to his staff, per CNN. But Judge TANYA CHUTKAN’s gag order on Trump in his federal criminal election subversion case was temporarily paused yesterday by an appeals court, which scheduled expedited oral arguments for Trump’s appeal for Nov. 20, per the WSJ. The appellate judges didn’t weigh in on the merits of the gag order/appeal.

More Trump legal news: The jury in E. JEAN CARROLL’s second trial against Trump will remain anonymous due to safety concerns, per Reuters. … Special counsel JACK SMITH submitted a filing to oppose televising the election subversion trial, per CNN.

THE BIG LIE NEVER DIES: “A novel defense in Trump’s Georgia case: The 2020 election really was stolen,” by WaPo’s Amy Gardner and Holly Bailey: “Lawyers for one of those defendants, HARRISON FLOYD, appeared in court Friday morning to argue that their client is entitled to thousands of pages of election records from Fulton County and the Georgia secretary of state. … The argument serves as a major test of the breadth of the Fulton indictment. Because prosecutors have alleged that Floyd and the other defendants ‘knowingly’ lied, his lawyers say they have the right to try to prove it wasn’t a lie at all.”"

JohnInCarolina

http://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1720939635956695340?s=20

lousubcap

CHEETO defies any reason for his followers other than they cannot admit CHEETO has played them to the hilt.  And so it goes, sad as it is.  

lousubcap

Former President Donald Trump is set to take the stand today to testify in his civil fraud trial. Trump’s testimony is the first opportunity to see his responses and reactions to being cross-examined. Trump’s sons, who are co defendants, testified last week. Judge Arthur Engoron already ruled before the trial that Trump and his sons were liable for “persistent and repeated” fraud, but the attorney general’s office is looking to prove six other claims relating to falsifying business records, insurance fraud and issuing false financial statements, amongst other charges. Jeremy Herb reports for CNN.

JohnInCarolina

JohnInCarolina

Botch

Today, for the first time in recorded history, somebody told donald trump to speak up.  

lousubcap

 Former President Donald Trump repeatedly clashed with a judge during his testimony in his New York civil fraud trial yesterday, with Justice Engoron telling Trump’s attorney “this is not a political rally, this is a courtroom…I beseech you to control him.” In testimony lasting nearly four hours, Trump’s lengthy and indirect responses led to multiple heated exchanges. When questioned on his property valuations, which prosecutors say were intentionally overvalued in order to secure better insurance policies and loans, Trump said he is “worth billions of dollars more than the financial statements,” adding that the property valuations are “very conservative.” Trump later attacked Engoron, saying “I’m sure the judge will rule against me because he always rules against me.” Judge Engoron responded “you can attack me in whichever way you want, but please answer the questions,” before later describing Trump as a “broken record.” Madeline Halpert, Chloe Kim and Bernd Debusmann report for BBC News. 

Trump conceded on the witness stand yesterday that he helped assemble annual financial statements, saying he “would look at them…see them…and would maybe on occasion have some suggestions.” The admission seemingly strengthened the attorney general’s case, although Trump claimed that banks paid little attention to the financial statements, before unexpectedly promising that some of his bankers would testify in his defense. Trump also said he directed his employees to reduce the value of his Westchester County Seven Springs estate because he “thought it was too high,” marking another admission of his involvement in the financial statements. Jonah E. Bromwich and Ben Protess report for the New York Times.

Botch

I wonder how it would play out if Justice Engoron would simply hand over the cheeto organization's "financial worth statements" to the IRS, while handing over his IRS filings of the last, hell, his whole life, to every lending institution doing business in the US...

lousubcap

More on CHEETO from Jonathan Karl's soon to be released book: (From Politico).

" TWO BUZZY BITS FROM KARL’S NEW BOOK — ABC News chief Washington correspondent JONATHAN KARL’s new book on the Trump, “Tired of Winning: Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party” ($32), publishes Tuesday. This morning, we’re bringing Playbook readers a first look at two buzzy scoops straight from the book.

1. TRUMP, HITLER & CROWD SIZES: Karl reports that Trump boasted that former German Chancellor ANGELA MERKEL had complimented his ability to draw crowds — repeating a comment that implicitly compared him to ADOLF HITLER, the murderous antisemitic leader of Nazi Germany.

At least twice, Karl writes, Trump gloated to a prominent member of Congress that Merkel — who detested the 45th president privately and had trouble hiding her scorn publicly — told him she was “amazed” by the number of people who came to see him speak, and Trump said “she told me that there was only one other political leader who ever got crowds as big as mine.” The Trump-allied congressman knew who Merkel was comparing Trump to, but couldn’t tell if Trump, who took Merkel’s words as a compliment, himself understood.

Asks Karl, “Which would be more unsettling: that he didn’t or that he did?”

In a statement to Playbook, a Trump campaign aide denied the account and called Karl “disgraceful and talentless.” “This filth either belongs in the discount bargain bin in the fiction section of the bookstore or should be repurposed as toilet paper,” the spokesman said.

2. DID MNUCHIN MISLEAD THE JAN. 6 COMMITTEE? Karl reports former Treasury Secretary STEVEN MNUCHIN wasn’t straight with the House Jan. 6 committee about his involvement in discussions to invoke the 25th Amendment and forcefully remove Trump from office in the days after the riot at the U.S. Capitol.

During testimony before the Democrat-led panel, the former Trump Cabinet official was asked about reporting in Karl’s previous Trump book, “Betrayal,” which revealed that Mnuchin and other Cabinet officials (including Secretary of State MIKE POMPEO) discussed invoking the amendment after the Capitol riot. While Pompeo told investigators that he didn’t recall those conversations, Mnuchin told the panel the reporting was “completely inaccurate.”

“What I told [Karl] — he asked me about the 25th Amendment,”Mnuchin testified, “I said that I was not going to make any comments on the 25th Amendment, that I didn’t think it was appropriate in that format, and that he shouldn’t take that as meaning that there were conversations or there weren’t conversations.”

Now Karl brings receipts — and says he has audio to prove what Mnuchin initially told him. “I was aware of all these discussions,” Mnuchin told Karl of the 25th Amendment. “It would not be an unreasonable assumption to think that people were calling me, okay, and talking about it, whether they were pushing it or not pushing it.”

Mnuchin did not respond to a request for comment."

JohnInCarolina

seems totally sane, not deranged at all…

JohnInCarolina

http://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1723526458231095450?s=20

lousubcap

Thank god or whomever is out there that enabled me to be well clear of such a clown to become the CIC.  Surely this clown show cannot be allowed to happen again?? What a self-centered , immature, petulant, low self esteemed and small handed person CHEETO is.  It's all about CHEETO and the grifter in charge.  What a F' tard.  His gaffs are well above those of Biden but neither should run in 2024.  The clock waits for no one.

CHEETO makes Nixon look like a saint. 

Buckwoody Egger

JohnInCarolina said:

seems totally sane, not deranged at all…

Textbook propaganda from the bone spurs coward. 

Botch

 

lousubcap

Regrettably, we all have lived and are still living that playbook.  Sad that it is. 

JohnInCarolina

Botch

On Judge/Clerk and McCarthy/trump relationships  (today's article from Robert Reich)

On Friday, Trump Republicans in the House turned their ire on the judge presiding over Trump’s civil fraud trial and his law clerk.

Representative Elise Stefanik, the third-ranking member of the House Republican leadership, filed an ethics complaint against Judge Arthur F. Engoron — claiming that the judge and his law clerk are biased against Trump and calling on Engoron to resign.

This is the latest chapter in the Trump Republican playbook of character assassination and intimidation.

I once had the great opportunity to be a law clerk to a judge of immense intelligence and generosity: Frank M. Coffin, then chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. I learned then that the relationship between a law clerk and a judge is built on mutual trust. A law clerk becomes the intellectual partner (a junior partner, to be sure) of a judge. A judge depends on his law clerk and protects that relationship and clerk.

Early on in his civil trial for fraud, Trump understood that a way to harass Judge Engoron and attack his integrity was to go after his law clerk, Allison Greenfield, whom Trump described as “Trump-hating.” Trump even made up a story that Greenfield was dating Sen. Chuck Schumer (who is married), and shared Greenfield’s Instagram details on Truth Social, effectively ushering a scourge of far-right boors onto her social media accounts.

When Trump’s attorneys continued to attack Ms. Greenfield, Judge Engoron said, “it's a shame you've descended to this level,” and issued a limited gag order barring Trump or his attorneys from speaking about the judge’s law clerk. The judge cited “repeated, inappropriate remarks” about court staff and the “hundreds” of threats that the court has received since the trial began, “falsely accusing his principal law clerk of bias against them and of improperly influencing the ongoing bench trial.” He added:

“The threat of, and actual, violence resulting from heated political rhetoric is well-documented. Since the commencement of this bench trial, my chambers have been inundated with hundreds of harassing and threating [sic] phone calls, voicemails, emails, letters, and packages.”

Engoron’s narrow gag order doesn’t bar Stefanik or any other Trump ally in Congress from making false and incendiary charges. Stefanik’s Friday complaint came from a Breitbart story alleging that Judge Engoron’s law clerk made contributions to individual candidates, local Democratic clubs, PACs, and the New York County Democrats. Stefanik’s letter discusses the clerk at length, detailing her purported political donations to Democratic donors and causes and criticizing the gag order.

This whole shameful strategy of attempted character assassination and intimidation reminds me of something that occurred almost 70 years ago, when Senator Joe McCarthy went after Joseph Welch’s young staff attorney during the Army-McCarthy hearings in June 1954.

Joseph Welch, a private attorney, was representing the Army. McCarthy claimed Welch’s staff attorney was a communist — a charge that was likely to end the young man’s career. I imagine Welch felt as protective toward his staff attorney as Judge Engoron feels toward his law clerk.

During the televised hearings, as McCarthy continued his attack on Welch’s staff attorney, Welch broke in. “Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.”

When McCarthy didn’t let up on his attack, Welch raised his voice and demanded that McCarthy listen to him. “Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator,” Welch said. “You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?”

That did it. Almost overnight, McCarthy imploded. His national popularity evaporated. Three years later, censured by his Senate colleagues, ostracized by his party, and ignored by the press, McCarthy drank himself to death, a broken man at the age of 48.

Trump, his attorneys, and Elise Stefanik have no sense of decency. They don’t care about the emotional (and potentially real) injuries they’re inflicting on Judge Engoron’s law clerk, for no reason other than to harass the judge, intimidate his staff, and raise questions in the public’s mind about the judge’s impartiality.

Yet America is at a different place than it was in 1954. Trump’s cynical hatefulness is larger than Joe McCarthy’s, the willingness of the Republican Party to amplify hate is also larger, the emotional and physical dangers to the targets of such hatefulness are larger, and the public’s tolerance for such smear tactics also seems larger.

By the way, during the Army-McCarthy hearings, McCarthy’s chief counsel was Roy Cohn.

After McCarthy’s downfall, many assumed that Cohn’s career was also over. Yet Cohn reinvented himself as a power broker in New York who proved useful to a young real estate developer named Donald Trump, then undertaking several large construction projects in Manhattan, who needed a fixer.

In 1973, the Justice Department accused Trump Management Inc., its 27-year-old president, Donald, and its chairman, Donald’s father, Fred, of violating the Fair Housing Act of 1968 in 39 of his properties — alleging that the company quoted different rental terms and conditions to prospective tenants based on their race and made false “no vacancy” statements to Black people seeking to rent.

Trump employees had secretly marked the applications of Black people with codes, such as “C” for “colored,” according to accounts filed in federal court. The employees allegedly directed Black people away from buildings with mostly white tenants, steering them toward properties that had many Black tenants.

Representing the Trumps, Cohn filed a countersuit against the government for $100 million, asserting that the charges were “irresponsible and baseless.” Although the countersuit was unsuccessful, Trump settled the charges out of court in 1975, asserting he was satisfied that the agreement did not “compel the Trump organization to accept persons on welfare as tenants unless as qualified as any other tenant.”

Three years later, when the Trump Organization was again in court for violating terms of the 1975 settlement, Cohn called the charges “nothing more than a rehash of complaints by a couple of planted malcontents.” Donald Trump denied the charges.

In 1986, Cohn was disbarred by the New York State Bar for unethical conduct after attempting to defraud a dying client by forcing the client to sign a will amendment leaving Cohn his fortune. (Cohn died five weeks later from AIDS-related complications.)

In his first and best-known book, The Art of the Deal, Trump drew a distinction between integrity and loyalty. He said he preferred the latter.

Trump compared Roy Cohn to “all the hundreds of ‘respectable’ guys who make careers out of boasting about their uncompromising integrity but have absolutely no loyalty ... What I liked most about Roy Cohn was that he would do just the opposite.”

JohnInCarolina

http://twitter.com/HeathMayo/status/1724317684651700424?s=20

lousubcap

Prefaced with-this is from an author who is promoting a book-but the excerpt rings so true as to be worthy of concern:

Off my TV screen- (DVR from a Monday broadcast).  Karl works for ABC-this shot is obviously from NBC.

Be wary-very wary of what you would get with CHEETO.2.  Never mind the MSM articles about his intent to seek revenge.  CHEETO is unhinged. 

Botch

He is almost as old, and many times more incoherent, obese, and dietarily challenged as Pres Biden.  He also doesn't handle stress well, and is under a LOT of stress.  
Every morning when I ask Alexa for my "Flash Briefing", I hope to hear he died overnight; it is probably the best hope this nation has, at least for awhile.  Dammit.  

JohnInCarolina

http://twitter.com/JackMurphee/status/1725285752966152251?s=20

lousubcap

CHEETO and world concerns for 2024:

New: The Economist this week described Donald Trump as the biggest global danger of 2024. That blunt warning comes from the magazine’s annual guide to the coming year, “The World Ahead.” And editor Tom Standage warns in the intro that “in the 38 years that we have published this guide, no single person has ever eclipsed our analysis as much as Donald Trump eclipses 2024.”

“Next year’s election will probably be decided by a few tens of thousands of voters in a handful of American states,” Standage writes. “But their choice will have global implications.”

JohnInCarolina

lousubcap said:

“Next year’s election will probably be decided by a few tens of thousands of voters in a handful of American states,” Standage writes. “But their choice will have global implications.”

This is 1) certainly true, and 2) absolutely insane when you stop to think about it.

Botch

I knew this had happened, but first time I've seen the footage of it.  
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QExM4GdtXDI
 

JohnInCarolina

Botch said:

I knew this had happened, but first time I've seen the footage of it.  
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QExM4GdtXDI
 

so folks don't have to click through:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QExM4GdtXDI