My Thoughts and Prayers This September 11 2025

I'm going to accept that all of the US flags will be at half-mast this day in memory of the thousands of victims killed by the terror attacks on September 11, 2001, and NOT for that racist misogynist wingnut that died yesterday. 

Getting To The Week Where It Could Finally Happen

I haven't written much more about the Manhattan criminal trial facing donald trump since late April, as much of it had been the day-to-day witness testimony and presentation of evidence... alongside trump's efforts to skirt around the judge's contempt warnings about trump's social media attacks.

If you want some details, Josh Kovensky over at Talking Points Memo (TPM) provided decent coverage.

Thing is, last week both sides wrapped up their cases before the jury, so Judge Merchan set this coming Tuesday May 28th - he did not want to ruin Memorial Day weekend for the jurors - for closing arguments and to give instructions to the jury for deliberation. This - as they say - is it.

Whether trump wins acquittal or DA Bragg wins at least one "guilty" conviction remains with how Merchan instructs the jury, what limits he imposes, and what decisions - if any - that jury returns.

I don't want to get my hopes up (again). There could be straight acquittal across all 34 charges, or at least one juror holding out to where it ends up a mistrial. The jury could vote guilty on just a handful of counts and not others if they have reasonable doubts, or convict on every one.

This is, in my opinion, the closest we as a nation have ever gotten to holding trump accountable for all the unethical and brazen acts he's committed over the decades he's been in the spotlight. While trump has been held liable in civil court for his sexual assault and for his tax/financial frauds, this is criminal court now; and the potential to hold him in jail - where his gaslighting and denials will not save him - can happen.

Some of this depends on how quickly the jury goes through each indictment before them: There are 34 felony charges, and they could well deliberate on each one at a time. They could also finish this as quickly as the civil jury decided on Carroll's sexual assault charges, which took one afternoon.

A lot of this will boil down to which side presented the stronger case, and by most accounts trump's defense was shoddy and questionable at best. The highlights were the testimonies by the prosecutors' star witnesses Stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen, where trump's lawyers did their best to discredit both. Court observers don't think that happened, especially against Cohen (via Kovensky at TPM):

Michael Cohen, the arch-nemesis of Donald Trump, would finally face withering cross-examination on the stand. He would come face to face with attorneys for the former and potentially future President.

The entire case would hinge on this. Cohen alone, the thinking went, could confirm a central element of the business records falsification case: that Trump approved the fraudulent reimbursement scheme for Cohen making the hush money payment to Stormy Daniels. And Cohen did confirm it.

But on Tuesday, in the first hours of cross-examination, something else happened. What was anticipated to be fireworks instead turned to a fizzle in a stuffy Manhattan courtroom on a warm May afternoon.

Trump defense attorney Todd Blanche spent much of his initial day of cross-examination meandering in questioning with Cohen. He landed a few blows on Cohen, assailing his credibility in various ways...

Blanche then followed up with the obvious and effective hit: how could Cohen claim to remember phone calls with Trump from 2016 in detail when he said he did not recall interactions with prosecutors on the case in which he was testifying from 2023?

That line of questioning had additional impact: it portrayed Cohen as uncontrollable by prosecutors. It came after Cohen and the DA spent more than a day on direct examination establishing that all of his lies and bullying during his time with Trump occurred at Trump’s direction, his behest, to please him. Instead, if further pursued, Cohen ignoring requests from the DA’s office to stop speaking to the press could develop into an argument that he was going rogue from Trump when he paid the hush money to Stormy Daniels in 2016.

But on Tuesday, Blanche did not pursue that.

Instead, he wound up mired in often confusing details about the various Trump investigations in which Cohen had testified. At one point, Blanche asked Cohen about his first interview with prosecutors in the Mueller investigation — an instance in which he has admitted to have lied...

That arguably wasn't a good avenue to go down, because Cohen can counter that he lied back then on trump's behest (even on his orders).

The relative softballs came as a surprise in part because of Cohen’s performance under cross-examination during New York Attorney General Letitia James (D)’s civil trial of the former president. Then, he erupted with his own objections, telling defense attorneys in that case that some questions had been “asked and answered.”

That set a low bar for Cohen’s testimony in this case. But he managed to parry some of Blanche’s questions in part by embracing the negative implications that the Trump attorney seemed to be trying to elicit by trickery or force...

It didn't help trump's defense that they presented too few of their own witnesses to rebut the DA's case. Their big witness turned in a performance more detrimental than Cohen's hostile testimony (going this time to Charles R. Davis over at Salon):

One reason Donald Trump’s lawyers probably are telling him not to testify in his own defense is because they — and everyone else in a certain Manhattan courtroom on Monday — have now seen what happens when a defiant witness takes the stand and has a tantrum in front of the jury.

Robert Costello, an attorney who briefly advised Michael Cohen after the FBI raided his home in 2018, is the first person the defense team has called to provide substantive testimony. Firmly on Team MAGA, Costello was asked to counter the former president’s ex-fixer, who had told the court that Trump called him after the raid and told him to “stay tough.”

According to Costello, Cohen was distraught after the raid — but adamant, at the time, that he had no dirt on his boss that he could share with law enforcement in hopes of softer treatment. “He said, ‘I swear to God, Bob, I don’t have anything on Donald Trump,’” Costello said, purportedly quoting his former client.

But that was far from the highlight. What drew the most attention from Costello’s brief time on the stand was the way he acted toward Judge Juan Merchan, who had sustained multiple prosecutions objections to the apparent annoyance of the defense witness. “Jeez,” Costello muttered in response to one such ruling, whose sarcasm extended to his body language – and prompted the judge to clear out the jury to remind the witness how to behave in a courtroom.

“I want to discuss proper decorum in my courtroom,” Merchan said. “You don’t give me a side eye and you don’t roll your eyes,” he continued. “If you don’t like my ruling, you don’t say, ‘jeez.’”

Costello responded with what CNN described as a “long glare,” further setting off the judge.

“Are you staring me down?” a visibly upset Merchan asked Costello. The scene ended with the judge threatening to strike Costello’s testimony altogether if he didn’t learn how to control himself. “Your conduct is contemptuous right now,” he said. “If you stare me down one more time, I will remove you from the stand.”

As Davis noted, if you want an idea how trump would have behaved on the stand - and he didn't, because even his lawyers were terrified how trump wouldn't keep track of which gaslighting lie to stick with - Costello was the proxy. For a lawyer himself, Costello forgot one of the biggest rules taught in school: NEVER antagonize a judge. While the jury was dismissed for the part where Merchan read Costello the riot act, court attendees noted several jurors seemed stunned by Costello's behavior, arguably didn't impress them, and they had to know what was going on while they were out:

As attorney and Brookings Institution senior fellow Norm Eisen commented, Costello’s performance was what might call an “own goal”: he added nothing that jurors would not have already gathered from Cohen himself — the former president’s ex-fixer told jurors he repeatedly lied to protect his boss — while needlessly antagonizing the judge. Even if the jury had left the room for the talking down, jurors could likely figure out the reason they had to get up and go: “ill manners of a kind we have not seen from any witness yet across the 19 days of trial, even on the most contentious cross-examinations...”

From where I'm sitting, trump didn't put up a convincing defense. Every prosecuting witness didn't flinch on the stand, and corroborated both the paper trail and what it was all for.

This should be the week justice finally comes for donald trump.

We'll see how it goes from there for the rule of law and the fate of the nation.

The Scent of Desperation

I feel like getting married, or committing suicide, or subscribing to L'Illustration. Something desperate, you know.
-- Albert Camus, A Happy Death

Facing an imminent criminal trial in New York for his hush money payments, trump isn't just getting annoying he's getting DESPERATE.

he's getting his lawyers to file last-minute demands to move the trial venue out of Manhattan as yet another means of delaying the start, and he's trying to file a lawsuit directly against the judge to force a recusal. With regards to the venue, well this is how the upper court handled it (via ML Nestal at Raw Story): 

Judge Lizbeth Gonzalez denied the former president's request to move the venue out of New York City without explanation in a one-sentence order, according to multiple reports.

I bet the one-sentence order went along the lines of "sucks to be you, donald."

Trump's lawyers attempted to sway an intermediary appellate court pause the upcoming date suggesting it would be impossible to find an impartial jury.

"In terms of prejudicial pretrial publicity in this county, this case stands alone," wrote defense attorney Emil Bove, arguing there had not been a case with so much attention since the 1999 police killing of Amadou Diallo.

All things considered, it's trump's own fault he draws this much attention to himself. There are remote tribes in the Gobi Desert who've heard of him. There's no place to move a venue, so he might as well face a jury of fellow New Yawkers where he stands.

With regards to trump's attempt to sue Judge Merchan, there's more detail with Charles R Davis at Salon:

Trump, who is accused of falsifying business records to cover up a 2016 “hush” payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels, has spent weeks now railing against Judge Juan M. Merchan. One ex-prosecutor likened his attacks on Merchan — and Merchan’s daughter — to the behavior of a “mob boss.”

That behavior led Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to seek a revised gag order barring such attacks on the judge’s family. Now, with the trial set to begin April 15, Trump is again trying to stall the case against him, this time with a legal filing that directly targets Judge Merchan.

According to the Times, the filing constitutes an “Article 78”  action, a proceeding that can be used to challenge decisions by state officials and judges in New York. While it remains under seal, the former president has claimed that the gag order against him violates his right to free speech...

There's been long debates about gag orders violating free speech rights, but if the Supreme Court precedence is viewed properly they're meant primarily to ensure the fair rights and safety of the defendants: There's nothing there about the defendant using speech to threaten the rights and safety of the judges, prosecutors, and juries. If defendants had the power to issue threats and insults towards judges in every other trial, we'd never see justice done.

trump, for all we know, intentionally went on the attack against Merchan - and the judge's daughter - precisely to trigger a gag order that trump could then use was denying his free speech. It's behavior that shouldn't be tolerated or allowed.

One way or another, trump is desperate to delay this criminal trial like he's delayed all the others.

Because he knows - despite all his claims of innocence, and despite all his bravado that he's happily being martyred (seriously, comparing himself to Mandela???) - the second a trial gets a jury empaneled, the second the witnesses start testifying under oath, the second every nasty little detail comes out that trump can't debunk where it matters (because he dare not go on the stand under oath) he becomes even more a political liability to GOP party leaders than he already is.

trump knows the second a jury comes back with even one Guilty verdict, his presidential campaign is doomed. While the legal experts are saying DA Bragg's case here is the weakest trump faces - due to Bragg using unconventional interpretations of records laws - there's still solid evidence against him, and the jury will be hearing from witnesses like Michael Cohen, who will point out he'd plead out to similar charges on the same hush money matter, implying trump should face his justice as well.

trump may claim that his followers will accept him even if he's found guilty - and there are a lot of them who will vote for a convicted trump - he has to know there's a solid faction of Republican (and No Party Affiliate) voters who will never vote for a convicted felon. There's already signs at least 20 percent of the existing GOP voting base won't accept trump under any circumstance, and he can't afford - even with all the plotting he's doing to disqualify the Electoral Count this 2024 - to lose that many across most of the states.

This is why trump is desperate to delay every criminal trial he's facing well past November.

This is why the courts shouldn't indulge him.

Let Justice be done. Bring trump to trial.

Time to Break the NRA, Now That It's Financially Broke

I hadn't talked about it much, but the National Rifle Body County Association had been facing civil lawsuits in the state of New York - where their organization had been incorporated - and the State AG Letitia James delivered for justice and sanity (again) when the jury came back this afternoon holding the NRA leaders liable for decades of embezzlement, mismanagement, and corruption (via Emma Bowman and Brian Mann at NPR):

A Manhattan jury found three top executives of the National Rifle Association liable Friday in a lengthy civil trial that focused on alleged corruption and the misspending of millions of dollars.

Longtime NRA leader Wayne LaPierre, a key architect in the nonprofit's hardline gun rights agenda who stepped down as CEO last month, was central to New York state's case.

Jurors found that LaPierre "violated his statutory obligation to discharge the duties of his position in good faith."

They concluded that he had caused roughly $5.4 million worth of harm to the nonprofit group's finances — though they also found that LaPierre had already repaid roughly $2 million.

LaPierre is the same sonofabitch who made the decision after the horrifying Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre to double down on the madness of gun proliferation that has led to more guns and more gun violence. He went out there and claimed "there was no way to end the violence" and that the best way to solve it was "good guys with guns." (Guess what, good guys with guns doesn't work) All the while raking in the profits that the NRA succored out of the gun manufacturers - who all had a part of the NRA's leadership - that he then indulged himself.

The executives were accused of misappropriating and mismanaging funds donated to the gun rights group's members. According to New York state Attorney General Letitia James, who brought the lawsuit, their actions led to "the loss of more than $64 million in just three years."

During the six-week trial, state lawyers alleged that LaPierre had spent over $11 million for private flights and approved $135 million in NRA contracts in exchange for yacht access and free trips to the Bahamas, Greece and other vacation hotspots, The Associated Press reported.

All those vacations to overseas nations that have gun control laws in place. Probably made it safe for LaPierre to walk around at night spending more blood money.

LaPierre spent three decades growing the NRA's political and lobbying influence. Even as mass shootings became commonplace, LaPierre rejected attempts to change gun policy, branding gun control proponents as enemies of freedom and using the threat of firearms regulation to fundraise.

His resignation was announced just days before the trial began, with the NRA instead citing health as the reason for his departure.

The NRA's grip on politics has weakened in recent years as it's faced declining membership and revenue, and concerns within the group over leadership's direction and misuse of funds...

There was a moment, years ago, when ties to Russian intelligence exposed the dire financial straits that the organization found itself (It doesn't look like that investigation went far). There had also been power struggles both behind the doors and on the public stage that exposed how corrupt LaPierre had made himself and the NRA. There'd been complaints the organization had been rigging their internal elections for decades.

With any luck, this court ruling breaks all of that. This jury decision will block some of the more corrupt NRA leaders from holding office, hopefully leaving room for reformers to gain meaningful footholds. AG James is looking to install an independent court monitor to oversee the financials, which would go a long way towards clearing out any of the other org leaders unable to bribe or bully their way back into power.

While I am hopeful of all that, whether this will lead to any sanity on the political stage remains unknown. Far too many politicians - cough Far Right Republicans cough - have built their "brands" on being "gun-toting, 2nd Amendment Loving" psychopaths, and they're not going to change their public image any time soon.

It's up to the voters - now without the NRA funneling their blood money into the electoral process - to hear the calls for gun reforms more clearly, and to vote appropriately for the federal and state officials who will do something - banning the assault rifles that make up most of our mass shootings; reinstating gun safety regulations like waiting periods, registration and training; and stopping the intentional market glut of cheap guns; things like that - to stop our streets - and our schools, and our stores, and our churches, and our movie theaters, and our concerts - filling with innocent blood.

Hope you go to Hell broke, Wayne. You earned that.

Judgment Cometh and That Right Soon: trump is Toast (and Now Broke) (w/ Update)

Update 5/8/24: I think I wrote this thing too fucking soon. When I insisted towards the end that trump was facing four criminal trials in short order, I jinxed it or something. Three of those trials are now suffering delays due to trump-appointed judges or his spamming of the appeals system, and the likelihood is trump won't see those three trials until 2025 after the November election. If that Shitgibbon pulls off a goddamn steal of the election - either through a broken Electoral College or getting a Republican-controlled Congress to gift it to him - he will shut those trials down and never answer for his sins. He's currently facing trial in Manhattan for his hush money schemes to silence stories about his sex scandals during the 2016 election, but he HAS to answer for the serious acts of insurrection and document theft he caused. 

For the LOVE OF GOD, America, do NOT vote for trump or the Republicans this November...

We were waiting for this. trump's civil case over tax evasion and acts of fraud came due today (via Ximena Bustillo at NPR): 

The Friday decision from Judge Arthur Engoron orders Trump and his flagship organization to pay the bulk of that amount: nearly $355 million. Trump's two sons and co-defendants, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., are each liable for $4 million. Allen Weisselberg, a former Trump Organization executive, is liable for $1 million. The total is even higher with interest — more than $450 million overall, according to the attorney general's office.

"Their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological. They are accused only of inflating asset values to make more money. The documents prove this over and over again. This is a venial sin, not a mortal sin," Engoron wrote in the court filing. "Yet, defendants are incapable of admitting the error of their ways..."

trump is of course not admitting to his errors and is screaming on his social media bubble about how unfair this is, A TOTAL WITCH HUNT, it's a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham. etc.

If you want to view the full travesty of a mockery of a sham, the court filing should be here.

If you want popcorn, that should be in Aisle 9 at your local Publix. If you don't have a local Publix I assure you there will soon be one. (evil laughter from Publix HQ in Lakeland FL)

The judge also decided to limit Trump and his co-defendants' ability to do business in the Empire State. Trump and his companies are prohibited from serving as an officer or director of any New York business or applying for loans for three years. His sons are limited from similar leadership roles for two years.

Jeffrey McConney, ex-controller of the Trump Organization and also a defendant, was not ordered to pay any amount, but he and Weisselberg are permanently barred from serving in the financial control function of any New York corporation or similar business entity registered or licensed in New York state.

One of the thing trump - and his sons - can't do is get any loans from banks that do business in New York, which was one of the ways he'd been inflating his personal wealth and perpetuating his ongoing grifts over the decades. Considering New York City is the financial capital of the world - well, it's one of the major centers along with London, Tokyo, Hong Kong and (checks notes) that one nation-state that allows shell companies to money-launder off-shore accounts - this is tossing a wooden shoe into trump's gears real quick. If trump is trying scheme up anything else to make money down the road... he might not be able to. At least not for the next three years.

This is also going to put a crimp on trump's ability to pay not only the penalties in this case but also the fines and penalties in the Carroll defamation and sexual assault decisions (add in another $88 million to trump's bill).

I mentioned earlier that trump - like most rich folk - doesn't have a lot of real cash on hand to be able to pay these kinds of fines. Most of the wealth is on paper, on the estimated values on properties and businesses owned, and on the amounts floating around in investment portfolios and the stock markets. Either trump is going to be forced to sell a number of properties - at fair market value, NOT the inflated prices trump claimed - or use other people's money. There's a reason why a lot of people - myself included - viewed trump's effort to claim control of the RNC this week was to claim the revenues flowing in to the party organization's campaign coffers.

It's going to be a question of how trump can get to any of that RNC money, if the court-appointed oversight by judge Barbara Jones is expanding over the next 14 months to ensure this order gets enforced (even during the appeal process, by the looks of it).

And he doesn't have that time afforded to him. trump is facing more court trials, specifically the criminal cases. A quick update on those:

The ruling comes at a crucial time for Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination. Engoron's decision comes a day after another judge set the date for what could be Trump's first criminal trial, related to hush money payments issued during the 2016 election.

He is facing a combined 91 state and federal charges, including several related to his role to stay in office after he lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden...

Just this week, the judge overseeing that Hush Money trial - the DA is trying to claim it's an "election interference" trial because trump evaded campaign finance rules and lied to voters about the matter, but seriously it's the Hush Money To Stormy Daniels case - ruled against trump's bid to have the case dismissed and set the jury selection to start March 25, 2024 (it's also Bustillo but it's a different NPR article, well that IS her beat):

New York Judge Juan Merchan has rejected an attempt to dismiss the charges in the hush money case against former President Donald Trump, and a jury trial will begin as originally scheduled on March 25.

The case was brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who charged Trump with 34 felony counts last year, alleging he falsified New York business records in order to conceal damaging information before the 2016 presidential election. That included hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels, who was threatening to go public with charges that she had had an affair with Trump not long after he married Melania Trump. Trump, who was present for Thursday's court hearing before Merchan, has denied the affair.

You should remember, this is the matter that brought "bagman" lawyer Michael Cohen to the national stage ("I have a hard drive just labeled 'YIKES'!"), and there was enough proof back then - with trump as un-indicted co-conspirator Individual-One - to get Cohen to plead out. It took awhile - and Bragg overcoming his initial reluctance when he took office - for these charges to come out, but it's here now, it's starting in March and should be finished in four weeks, meaning in late April we'll see if trump gets convicted on even one count or survives his first criminal trial.

The next trial was technically the matter in DC federal court regarding trump's involvement in the January 6th insurrection, with four felony counts there. However, Judge Chutkan postponed that trial awaiting the ruling on trump's claim of Absolute Immunity, which an appellate court rebuked and which the Supreme Court received this week to determine if they need to hear the matter.

A number of legal experts are arguing SCOTUS doesn't even need to hear the appeal, and that is a choice the justices can make. They could still take it, and deliberate the matter in order to give trump what he REALLY wants - more delay - but they'd still have to make a ruling on it this term year (by late summer if they pad it out). If they dismiss trump's appeal, this trial could start as early as mid-May (depending on another trial): If SCOTUS takes it, they still have to rule on it by August (and like the 11th District of Appeals, they dare not approve in favor of absolute presidential immunity, it would literally kill the Constitution) and the trial could start by September (cutting it close to Election Day).

That other trial that could skew the DC trial schedule is the one in South Florida regarding trump's mishandling of federal classified documents at Mar-A-Lago. Ostensibly it's set for late May, but Judge Cannon overseeing that matter has been causing havoc with the pre-trial elements - such as wanting to expose the Justice Department's witness list to trump's lawyers earlier than usual, and against Special Counsel Jack Smith's wishes - that a potential delay could be happening in that trial as the appeals courts straighten the mess. Outside legal experts -some of them former federal prosecutors - argue Cannon should be removed from this case considering how she's risking witness safety, but that could delay the start of trial as well.

If by some miracle the Mar-A-Lago trial does start by May, it's still expected to take two or three months to complete considering the sheer amount of classified documents - and their mishandling - to go through. It would affect whenever the DC trial starts, which I would argue deserves to go first because of its immediacy and its importance in confirming trump's culpability over the nightmare of January 6th. Hopefully this will get straightened out soon.

Thrown into this mix is the fourth criminal matter trump faces in Fulton County, Georgia... which hit a huge delay when one of the co-defendants filed a complaint against DA Fani Willis over possible misconduct with an affair with one of the special investigators hired by the DA's office. The judge overseeing that trial held a hearing the last two days, during which the worst part of trumpian (damn you Roy Cohn) legal tactics - public smearing of opponents - was on full display.

Igor Derysh at Salon has more details:

Thursday’s evidentiary hearing on the misconduct claim against Fulton County, Ga., District Attorney Fani Willis yielded a lot of drama but little evidence of wrongdoing, legal experts say.

Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee held a hearing after Ashleigh Merchant, an attorney for Trump co-defendant Mike Roman, alleged an improper relationship between Willis and top prosecutor Nathan Wade and claimed that Wade used his earnings from the case to fund trips for the pair...

“I simply don’t see any new evidence that requires disqualification. It’s a credibility pissing match so far. Ugly. Dramatic. But the needle hasn’t moved,” tweeted Georgia State University Law Prof. Anthony Michael Kreis.

“As an excavation of a now-defunct relationship, it was Bravo-worthy (and frankly, sad). But as an evidentiary hearing, it wasn’t the win the defense promised, especially under the governing legal standard,” agreed MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin...

Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance told MSNBC that the hearing featured “a lot of spectacle but not very much substance.”

"Ultimately, at the end of the day yesterday, it was just a big nothingburger," she said. "There was nothing to show that Fani Willis and Nathan Wade had the financial conflict of interest that Georgia law recognizes, something akin to a prosecutor who only gets paid if they win a case. That's the classic case in Georgia law where there is a conflict that results in disqualification. That wasn't there yesterday in the courtroom..."

If trump and his co-defendants were hoping to throw the whole prosecution out, that wasn't going to happen. At the least, the judge could have removed Willis from overseeing the matter and handing it off to another prosecutor in the DA's office. Whether it delays this trial any further - which legal experts considered an open-shut case because of so much direct evidence against trump including that audio tape - is unlikely, because it's all the other trials' schedules that's interfering when this one starts.

Again, to all the Republican voters out there, to all the Republican Party leaders out there: You could have avoided all this. trump was dirty and corrupt and vulgar in the years before 2016. You had all the warning signs when he first campaigned - the failed casinos, the civil trial involving trump's university scam, the reports of sexual assault, the open racism and sexism - that trump was going to be a disaster of a human being. AND YOU STILL VOTED FOR THAT.

We've had other corrupt men in high office before, just that none of them reached the criminal lows that trump has. trump's not facing criminal trials because he's a "great conservative American," he's facing criminal trials now because 40 years of bills over his bullshit are finally coming due.

The civil trials are mostly done, and trump has to pay those dues soon. The criminal trials start March, and the countdown to just even ONE felony conviction begins.

Tick fucking tock, trump.

Update: This got to be a very popular tweet.

at this rate, trump should raise the $355 million in 30,527 days.
That's almost 83 years.
It could work.

— Witty Librarian 2024 (@PaulWartenberg) February 17, 2024

And trump Keeps Losing Like the Drunken Gambler He Is

The news broke earlier tonight, and I've been feasting on the schadenfreude ever since. The judge overseeing the New York case vs. donald trump and his Trump Org issued a summary judgment that apparently nukes his corporate empire from orbit (via Michael R Sisak at AP News): 

Judge Arthur Engoron, ruling in a civil lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, found that Trump and his company deceived banks, insurers and others by massively overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork used in making deals and securing loans.

Engoron ordered that some of Trump’s business licenses be rescinded as punishment, making it difficult or impossible for them to do business in New York, and said he would continue to have an independent monitor oversee Trump Organization operations...

Engoron’s ruling, days before the start of a non-jury trial in James’ lawsuit, is the strongest repudiation yet of Trump’s carefully coiffed image as a wealthy and shrewd real estate mogul turned political powerhouse.

Beyond mere bragging about his riches, Trump, his company and key executives repeatedly lied about them on his annual financial statements, reaping rewards such as favorable loan terms and lower insurance costs, Engoron found.

Those tactics crossed a line and violated the law, the judge said, rejecting Trump’s contention that a disclaimer on the financial statements absolved him of any wrongdoing.

“In defendants’ world: rent regulated apartments are worth the same as unregulated apartments; restricted land is worth the same as unrestricted land; restrictions can evaporate into thin air; a disclaimer by one party casting responsibility on another party exonerates the other party’s lies,” Engoron wrote in his 35-page ruling. “That is a fantasy world, not the real world.”

trump is, obviously, railing on social media that the ruling is "unfair" and "un-American," but the judge isn't going by trump's words he's going by trump's actions, and trump kept acting fraudulent enough to earn this summary judgment (link to court papers).

There's still a trial: This ruling covered a portion of AG James' case against trump. The imposition of more penalties - to the tune of $250 million - is up to a jury to decide, and it's looking like that part of the case starts this October 2nd.

(breaks out the celebratory whiskey) Wait, I don't drink. Anybody else like whiskey...?

From what I gather, this ruling - and whatever comes of the penalty phase - means trump and his sons - Ivanka somehow avoided getting meshed into this civil case - will be blocked from any and all business dealings in the state of New York. An inability to maintain a financial corporate empire would/should/could undercut any attempt by trump and his lackeys to perpetuate any grifts and con games. I'm not fully versed on the law, so obviously I will follow up with someone - likely Emptywheel - who is.

In the meantime, trump once again lost a major judicial matter. He's not made of Teflon when it comes to the law, and his failings will continue to pile up as his sins are an affront to all of Heaven and Humanity.

More whiskey?

Running Out of Ways To Finance the Ongoing Con of trump's Empire

Overlooked by all the recent criminal indictments imposed on donald trump are the civil trials he's already scheduled to face later this year.

A big one is the New York state's civil case involving tax fraud from trump's alleged (and repeated) fraud when it came to trump's property values. This past week the state Attorney General Letitia James petitioned the courts for a summary ruling on parts of the civil proceedings, which would be a huge bomb to drop ahead of the scheduled October 2023 trial, via Nia Prater at the New York Intelligencer (paywalled):

State attorney general Letitia James has alleged in a new court filing that Donald Trump lied about the value of his assets for financial gain, inflating his net worth by as much as $2.2 billion in one year.

The New York Times reports that court papers filed Wednesday accuse Trump of misrepresenting the value of his assets in order to obtain more favorable financial loans. His supposed net worth ballooned as a result, at a rate of $812 million to $2.2 billion every year over a ten-year period ending in 2021, per CNN.

James’s office is also seeking a summary judgment in the ongoing financial-fraud case against the former president, his eldest sons, and his company, the Trump Organization, arguing that a trial is not necessary to determine that fraud had been perpetrated...

I'm not a lawyer so I'm not sure what the chess move here is aiming for. Given the scope and severity - and serious political ramifications - of the case, I wouldn't think a judge would decide against taking this matter to a jury. Granted, the evidence IMHO does show a ton of fraud especially when you consider the AG's office uncovered 200 separate instances of trump's financial deceit, but you kind of want the seal of approval from a jury of trump's peers (or at least a jury of people who couldn't beg their way out of jury duty). Back to Prater:

In past filings, James has alleged that Trump overstated the value of his various properties, including Mar-a-Lago, 40 Wall Street, and his penthouse apartment in Trump Tower. The attorney general’s office initially sought to charge Ivanka Trump alongside her brothers Donald Jr. and Eric for signing off on some of the financial statements, but the court dismissed the case against Trump’s eldest daughter, ruling that the statute of limitations had run out on the specific allegations against her.

Trump’s legal team is looking to have the entire case dismissed, citing the narrowed time frame established by the ruling on Ivanka’s charges, Reuters reports. A hearing in the case is expected for September, prior to the planned trial start date of October 2. James is seeking to bar Trump and his sons permanently from operating a business in the state as well as $250 million in fines...

One of the observations I keep making about donald trump's political career is that it's all part of his ongoing financial grift. trump needs to campaign not only to get back into political office to avoid jail, but also to keep his personal coffers as full of money as possible.

The thing is, he never has "enough." It's not that his greed is limitless - it is - it's that trump's borrowed so much and is stuck paying so many loans off that he can't keep up staying above a profit margin. There's a lot of signs that trump is desperately out of money by the fact his own lawyers - and some of his closest allies like Giuliani - aren't getting paid and desperate for money themselves as they face legal troubles stemming from trump's electoral fraud schemes.

Getting hit with a $250 million fine from the state of New York is one thing, and can well expose the financial straits trump and his family are in. What's really going to hurt is if AG James can effectively bar trump and co. from operating any business out of New York.

Shutting down the Trump Organization would put a halt to any ongoing business deals trump is scheming, like the buyout deal for his Truth Social app that's fallen apart and facing its' own bankruptcy. It would certainly put under scrutiny the financial ties trump's company has to the many PACs and fundraisers involved in trump 2024 campaigning.

Granted, trump and his sons can try to re-incorporate in another state - they already tried to do that in Delaware where the legal code is more relaxed, only for James to shut it down arguing it was their attempt to dodge the New York case - but being blocked from any dealings in the literal financial capital of the world in New York City is going to hurt (Okay, Tokyo and London also top the list but I doubt the nations of Japan and the UK will let trump and his family bring their corruption to their shores like that).

What will happen if trump loses his Trump Organization altogether would disrupt any funneling he's doing from the campaign fundraising into that corporation. I would imagine that if James is successful in the civil trial, she and the courts would insist on someone performing a kind of third-party receivership/guardianship on trump's finances to ensure he both pays his fines and ends all business dealings in New York (and likely sell all the properties that makes up his financial empire). A watchdog on his wallet is the last thing trump wants. That would seriously put a crimp in trump's attempts - such as borrowing even more from overseas creditors and banks who would have every legal reason (and maybe legal requirement) to cut him off - to continue lying/defrauding about his own worth.

And trump is all about lying about his own worth. Even to himself.

trump could still campaign and gaslight his own followers - and his Far Right media allies - into believing he's a successful businessman, the illusion of success he'd used since campaigning from 2016 to now. But to the real world, the ones outside that cult, the ones who would have to do business with him: Everyone else would see him as the "clown living on credit" he's been all along

I doubt the judge will issue a summary ruling. The sensible move is to put to jury (jury rulings are harder to appeal successfully) and figure trump and his eldest sons will face the financial consequences.

Let justice be done.

Let trump's worthlessness be exposed for all to see.

A Very Short Con Caught

Even the longest con was never more than an assortment of moments that were in themselves very very short.
-- Ally Carter, Uncommon Criminals

While most of America lauded Carroll's civil courtroom victory over con artist donald trump, another political con artist faced his own gauntlet of justice in another part of New York. Remember old George "What's My Real Name" Santos who got exposed for lying about his resume, his biography, his marriage history, his non-profit scams, his (skip a bit Brother), right after winning a congressional seat from Long Island? 

Well, the Federales finally charged Santos on some serious felonies Wednesday morning. Via Brian Mann at NPR: 

Republican Rep. George Santos surrendered to federal authorities at a courthouse in suburban Long Island on Wednesday facing 13 counts of criminal wrongdoing.

Federal prosecutors say he allegedly "devised and executed a scheme" aimed at defrauding donors to his 2022 political campaign.

"This indictment seeks to hold Santos accountable for various alleged fraudulent schemes and brazen misrepresentations," said U.S. Attorney Breon Peace in a statement...

According to the criminal indictments, Santos claimed money donated to his 2022 campaign would fuel his bid for office, paying for TV advertisements.

Instead, he allegedly spent the cash on luxury designer clothes and to make a car payment and pay personal credit card bills.

Santos also faces a charge that in 2020, he fraudulently applied to receive unemployment benefits when he was employed and running for Congress in his first bid for public office...

I've seen a number of people online question "why the hell commit unemployment benefits fraud when he was making more money with his actual job?" Because, as any con artist will tell you, it's all a game. Many conservatives already viewed unemployment aid as a rip-off committed by lazy freeloaders, why NOT jump in on that "scam" when the federal aid was increased to help during a global pandemic? Also wik, con artists love to have different revenue streams to line their pockets in case one scheme goes dry. Back to the shenanigans:

Long before these charges were filed, it was clear the freshman lawmaker had pushed the boundaries of conventional political scandal. After his victory in last November's midterms, it was revealed that he fabricated most of the persona presented to voters.

Santos lied in interviews and campaign documents about his education, his professional accomplishments, his record as a champion volleyball player and his family's experiences in the Holocaust.

He also faced multiple investigations into how he raised and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign cash, including a mysterious $700,000 gift he made to his own election effort.

It remains unclear where that money came from...

Which is why I've seen other people online imply that the federal prosecutors are not done filing charges on Santos. THESE are the matters they can present right now in a criminal trial to a judge and jury.

Why Santos - whose provable history underscores a lifetime of check fraud, charity rip-offs, and other low-scale cons - decided to move up to the major leagues to pull off scams he wasn't ready to run only makes sense when you step back and recognize that the entire modern Republican Party has happily turned itself into a massive money-making scheme.

The distance between a novice still-young con artist roughly a decade into the Game and an aging bloated con artist like donald trump who's been at this grifting for fifty years has now closed thanks to the unethical state of the GOP. As David A Graham noted at The Atlantic (paywall):

For Santos to be indicted the same day that a jury in Manhattan found former President Donald Trump liable for sexual assault and defamation against the writer E. Jean Carroll is a fitting symmetry. Both men engaged in ceaseless chicanery for years before entering politics, and both found immediate and unexpected success in their first runs for office. But both men are now also wrestling with the realization that although you can get away with a lot in private life, the political spotlight can sometimes light the way for litigants and prosecutors...

In this way, his story resembles a shorter, smaller-time imitation of Trump’s. In his life as a real-estate developer, entertainer, and self-promoter, Trump was often ensnared in scandals, but he was able to escape serious scrutiny and personal criminal consequences for them. Trump’s methods were not quite so brazen, though they were sometimes pretty blunt: inflating and deflating the value of assets in different filings, for example, or simply inventing square footage for buildings. For decades, he got away with this, but entering politics brought attention he didn’t want...

This is, once again, an indictment of a legal system that continually overlooks white collar crime until it's at a scale of disastrous proportions. It's also a massive indictment of a political environment - thanks to the odious Citizens United ruling by a Republican-shaped SCOTUS - of billions of campaign dollars tempting the grifters into more brazen public acts that cannot be ignored.

My mother just mentioned this to me while driving to and from my nephew's college graduation this weekend: "We jailed Martha Stewart for less." (Now I know where I got that attitude from) Even she gets how troubling all this corruption has gotten.

I hope Santos get exposed for more of the fraud he's committed (especially that $700,000 mystery loan). I hope trump gets nailed to the wall by the New York attorney general for his financial crimes.

Let all the con artists answer for their sins. It is high time we held white collar criminals to stern measures.

The Little Risks in Indicting trump

I went home with the waitress, the way I always do/
How was I to know, she was with the Russians, too?/

I was gambling in Havana, I took a little risk/
Send lawyers guns and money, dad, get me out of this!
- "Lawyers Guns and Money," Warren Zevon

So we'll just get straight to the facts.

Here's what the Manhattan District Attorney filed against donald trump in court this Tuesday April 4th. It ended up as 34 separate counts of Falsifying Business Records, bumped up to felony charges linked to "other crimes" which were implied to be related either to trump's tax records or to his 2016 Presidential campaign (that a straight-up Conspiracy charge wasn't added to the indictment threw a couple of observers off).

Here's a little bit of what Emptywheel describes from what she's read:

Alvin Bragg just explained the case. The argument is that in 2015 and 2016, Michael Cohen, David Pecker, Trump, and others agreed to conduct the catch-and-kill program to help Trump win. That violated three crimes, per Bragg:

• New York State laws prohibiting the promotion of a candidate by false means
• Federal campaign finance laws
• Document falsification by American Media Inc (National Enquirer)

He alleges each invoice and check were an attempt to cover up those 2016 crimes...

There's been interest in how serious a matter this case will be for trump, considering the three other criminal investigations into his misdeeds. For some legal experts, this case is a minor thing and probably not even going to work. Ian Millhiser at Vox is worried the legal theory DA Bragg is using falls under 'dubious' at best:

The actual felony counts arise out of allegedly false entries that Trump made in various business records in order to make the payment to Daniels appear to be ordinary legal expenses paid to Cohen.

But Bragg built his case on an exceedingly uncertain legal theory. Even if Trump did the things he’s accused of, it’s not clear Bragg can legally charge Trump for them, at least under the felony version of New York’s false records law.

As Mark Pomerantz, a former prosecutor in the Manhattan DA’s office who played a significant role in the Trump investigation prior to his resignation in 2022, wrote in a recent book, a key legal question that will determine whether Trump can be charged under the felony version of New York’s false records law has never been resolved by any appellate court in the state of New York.

The felony statute requires Bragg to prove that Trump falsified records to cover up a crime. Bragg has evidence that Trump acted to cover up a federal crime, but it is not clear that Bragg is allowed to point to a federal crime in order to charge Trump under the New York state law...

And even if Bragg’s legal team convinces New York’s own courts that this prosecution may move forward, there is also a very real danger that the Supreme Court of the United States, with its GOP-appointed supermajority, could decide that it needs to weigh in on whether Trump should be shielded from this prosecution.

The Supreme Court has long held, under a doctrine known as the “rule of lenity,” that “fair warning should be given to the world, in language that the common world will understand, of what the law intends to do if a certain line is passed.” Thus, when the meaning of a criminal statute is unclear, the Constitution sometimes requires that statute to be read narrowly because an unclear criminal law did not give potential defendants “fair warning” that their conduct was illegal...

Bragg, in other words, has built one of the most controversial and high-profile criminal cases in American history upon the most uncertain of foundations. And that foundation could crumble into dust if the courts reject his legal arguments on a genuinely ambiguous question of law...

On the other side of the legal argument, Quinta Jurecic at the Atlantic views the case as bad for trump and thinks trump's behavior from 2016 onward could establish grounds for a jury to convict: 

Bragg consistently framed the charges in his press conference as efforts to hold Trump accountable for lies to the public. The statement of facts alleges that Trump and his team set the hush-money payments in motion to better his chances in the 2016 election: “The Defendant did not want this information to become public because he was concerned about the effect it could have on his candidacy,” the district attorney writes of McDougal’s account of an affair. Trump schemed with Cohen to pay off Daniels after news broke in early October 2016 of the Access Hollywood tape, further endangering his campaign. As sketched by Bragg, this was a coordinated effort to deny American voters relevant information in advance of the election. According to the statement of facts, Trump initially suggested to Cohen “that if they could delay the payment until after the election, they could avoid paying altogether, because at that point it would not matter if the story became public.”

Trump did not just purchase silence ahead of the 2016 vote. He worked while he was in office to complete the cover-up. When The Wall Street Journal first began reporting about the payments to Daniels and McDougal in 2018, Trump lied repeatedly to the American public and claimed that he had no knowledge of the matter. Before that, as Bragg sets out and as Cohen admitted in his plea deal with the Southern District of New York, Trump repaid Cohen with a series of checks in 2017, after Trump had sworn the oath of office. According to Bragg, the two finalized the arrangements for repayment in a February 2017 meeting held in the Oval Office itself.

Even Jurecic admits Bragg needs to bring more facts to establish directly how the laws were broken. But she sees enough already to think Bragg has a solid criminal case to bring against trump. She also doesn't see any of this affecting the other - more damaging - criminal cases trump faces in Georgia and Washington DC. Even if Bragg misses his shot, Fulton County DA Fani Willis and Special Counsel Jack Smith won't.

So while the Manhattan indictments are nice, we still as a nation have a ways to go before we see justice done with all of trump's sins.

John Cole at Balloon Juice said it best yesterday, and you need to read his quotes in full (this is the part that nails it):

It’s tiring because of the awful shit I am going to have to listen to like “If they can do this to Trump they can do this to anyone!!!one!!!1ELEVEN” No fucking shit. They already do this to everyone else. Are you unaware of the carceral nature of the United States? Are you unaware that every prosecutor in the country chooses to threaten accused with horrible penalties from a jury trial to get them to plead to something lesser? Are you unaware that Michael fucking Cohen did jail time for this already? Are you this blissfully fucking ignorant that the reason we are JUST NOW indicting Trump is because his money and stature and position as President shielded him from earlier prosecution? Are you unaware he was the fucking unindicted co-conspirator in the Cohen case? Trump isn’t being targeted because he is Trump. He was PROTECTED until now because he was Trump. Fucking hell...

Let justice be done.

March 30 2023: IT'S HAPPENING

Dammit! It had to happen while I was getting groceries on my way home!!!

To the AP NEWS (thanks to Michael R Sisak, Eric Tucker, Colleen Long, and Jennifer Peltz)!

A Manhattan grand jury has voted to indict Donald Trump on charges involving payments made during the 2016 presidential campaign to silence claims of an extramarital sexual encounter, the first ever criminal case against a former U.S. president and a jolt to Trump’s bid to retake the White House in 2024.

The indictment, confirmed Thursday by Joe Tacopina, a lawyer for Trump, and other people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to discuss sealed criminal charges, is an extraordinary development after years of investigations into his business, political and personal dealings. It is likely to galvanize critics who say Trump lied and cheated his way to the top and embolden supporters who feel the Republican is being unfairly targeted by a Democratic prosecutor...

The indictment(s) is/are sealed for now, meaning we don't know the specifics, but we should find out soon, probably when trump is required to appear in court.

Trump, who has denied any wrongdoing and has repeatedly attacked the investigation as politically motivated, was expected to surrender to authorities next week, though the details were still being worked out, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to discuss a matter that remained under seal...

The fate of the hush-money investigation seemed uncertain until word got out in early March that Bragg had invited Trump to testify before a grand jury, a signal that prosecutors were close to bringing charges.

Trump’s attorneys declined the invitation, but a lawyer closely allied with the former president briefly testified in an effort to undercut the credibility of Trump’s former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen.

Late in the 2016 presidential campaign, Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 to keep her silent about what she says was a sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier after they met at a celebrity golf tournament.

Cohen was then reimbursed by Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, which also rewarded the lawyer with bonuses and extra payments logged internally as legal expenses. Over several months, Cohen said, the company paid him $420,000.

Earlier in 2016, Cohen had also arranged for the publisher of the supermarket tabloid the National Enquirer to pay Playboy model Karen McDougal $150,000 to squelch her story of a Trump affair in a journalistically dubious practice known as “catch-and-kill.”

The payments to the women were intended to buy secrecy, but they backfired almost immediately as details of the arrangements leaked to the news media.

Federal prosecutors in New York ultimately charged Cohen in 2018 with violating federal campaign finance laws, arguing that the payments amounted to impermissible help to Trump’s presidential campaign. Cohen pleaded guilty to those charges and unrelated tax evasion counts and served time in federal prison.

Trump was implicated in court filings as having knowledge of the arrangements, but U.S. prosecutors at the time balked at bringing charges against him. The Justice Department has a longtime policy that it is likely unconstitutional to prosecute a sitting president in federal court...

The state legal system doesn't have to abide by that DOJ policy, but the implications of a sitting President under those circumstances obviously delayed matters until trump was out of the White House.

But this has never even happened for former Presidents before. For all the potential criminal misdeeds that Presidents could commit before, during, and/or after office, none of them have reached this accountability moment before. Nixon almost did until Ford pardoned him. Bill Clinton could have faced indictment but he made a plea agreement to suspend his law license for five years and pay fines.

It's official: donald trump is indicted. He is facing at least one felony criminal charge.

To everyone who complained about DA Alvin Bragg dragging his heels, please apologize.

Let the celebrations - and the worries about wingnut violence - begin!

(starts playing the one dance song from his teen years that still gets his feet moving)

"And now on with the opera. Let joy be unconfined. Let there be dancing in the streets, drinking in the saloons and necking in the parlor!" - Groucho Marx, A Night At the Opera

WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Update 3/31/23: Some additional notes to make:

The arraignment is officially set for Tuesday April 4 in the afternoon, so there's pretty much a whole weekend for the Far Right wingnuts to stoke themselves into enough of a frenzy to stage a riot in Manhattan before then. /sigh

A leaked report that has some veracity to it tells us trump is facing at least 30 separate counts, which is telling legal experts that Bragg's office uncovered a lot more serious stuff than just hush-money payouts to cover up trump's alleged affairs. One report suggests a number of counts on First Degree Falsifying Business Records, which is a Class E felony carrying a minimum of a year in jail each count.

Even with all this, those legal experts are also hinting that Bragg doesn't even have that strong a case. They're worried that juries tend to be lenient on matters where the defendant is covering up sexual affairs, that some of the witnesses against trump are tainted, and that Bragg waited too long to pursue this case risking trump's lawyers having a good chance to throw out part or all of the charges due to statutory limits. Those experts may not understand that 1) unlike previous adulterers who turn regretful on the stand, trump remains arrogant and defensive, and 2) Bragg and his team apparently uncovered a lot of financial corruption during their previous trial against trump's corporation to where a jury could convict on that instead of the affairs. 

trump is still facing a serious criminal matter in Manhattan: That the experts believe this is the weakest case should tell everybody how fcked trump is going to be when the Fulton County GA indictments into election fraud (which has the slam-dunk evidence of trump himself on audio) - as well as the federal Special Counsel indictments into BOTH trump's theft of classified docs AND his involvement in the January 6th Insurrection - drop on him.

And for all the storm and fury trump is unleashing over these indictments, it may not even be the worst of it. trump's never faced a criminal court case (only civil cases), and trump's not prepared to deal with the likelihood the judge is going to set harsh restrictions on himself to keep him from raging against all this in public. Given the obvious attention this trial faces - this is international news, a former President facing historic justice - the judge could well insist on gag orders to prevent any pre-trial conflicts and risks to the defendant's (trump) right to a fair trial. Even to where the judge could put that gag order on the defendant himself, whose social media rants could well enflame people interfering with his own right to an honest jury of his peers.

trump's already issued threats to the DA's office and to Bragg directly, and Bragg is already receiving death threats by the boxload. Given this, the judge setting bail could arguably detain trump to stop or reduce trump's danger to the prosecution (and any jury being formed): If not in prison without bail, at least home arrest to where trump can't leave the city without permission from the courts. THAT would unleash a political firestorm our nation's never seen before. The odds of trump refusing to abide by any bail agreement are pretty fucking high.

Everything's not going to calm down. This weekend will be just another escalation of the wingnut madness we've been suffering since 2015, and next Tuesday is going to escalate even more. Gods help us.

Still, get the popcorn and the body armor ready.

Beware the Ides of trump

Saw this tweet recently:

 

PS and by "imminent" I don't mean Fanni Willis's cryptic formulation "legally imminent." This is imminent as in next few weeks. As in Beware the Ides of March...
Prosecutors Signal Criminal Charges for Trump Are Likely https://t.co/m97jNjJYWc

— Harry Litman (@harrylitman) March 9, 2023

What this all refers to: the New York City prosecutors are about to wrap up their grand jury investigation into allegations trump paid bribes and covered up his affairs - especially with porn actress Stormy Daniels - during his 2016 Presidential campaign. From Bill Chapell and Andrea Bernstein at NPR:

Former President Donald Trump has been invited to testify before a New York City grand jury — a move that is widely understood to mean Trump could soon face criminal charges related to his financial dealings and the payment of hush money to Stephanie Clifford, the adult film star also known as Stormy Daniels.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office invited Trump to testify next week, according to a person familiar with the investigation.

In New York, an offer to speak in front of a grand jury is typically the last step before a criminal indictment. State law mandates that potential defendants must be given an opportunity to appear before a grand jury to answer questions before they are indicted...

Neither Trump nor his lawyer has signaled whether Trump would accept the invitation, but it is unlikely he would agree to appear. In recent weeks, former Trump campaign officials and business executives have traveled to the D.A.'s office in Lower Manhattan to testify under oath...

trump is unlikely to show, as all he'll do is plead the Fifth (like he did with the New York state tax fraud testimony).

Any possible indictments may not actually happen next week - as the grand jury has to deliberate matters, an official decision from the DA's office will come later - but seeing as how the deadline to testify just happens to fall near March 15th, some sense of poetic karma is in play here.

trump's been on social media screaming "WITCH HUNT" but also arguing that the statue of limitations on such investigations have passed. Under normal circumstances, he'd be right. But the DA's office apparently argued to a judge for extensions on the timeline - since trump was out-of-state between 2017 to 2021 causing damage elsewhere - to where it's unlikely trump's lawyers can throw the matter out on that technicality.

There had been a long time of inaction by Bragg - leading to several assistant DAs resigning in anger about it - to the point where nobody expected this to return as a problem for trump. However, when the criminal case into Trump Organization for tax fraud came back last December with Guilty verdicts across the board, Bragg reopened the matter with this grand jury. Something must have happened more than just the discovery that trump at last was vulnerable: reportedly the deeper examination of trump's finally-released tax returns exposed direct ties to trump's paying off his then-lawyer / bag-man Michael Cohen, which gave the DA's office proof they didn't have when they got Cohen to plead out back in 2018.

This isn't a time for celebration just yet: After all, there's no guarantees the NYC grand jury will come back with indictments to file. We're still looking at months if not years before any indictments come to actual trial, with trump kicking and screaming about it all the way down.

But this is a time for great preparation. If you're inclined, start putting in orders for the champagne. If you're concerned, start watching for angry MAGA drivers speeding about in their coal roller trucks flashing their AR-15s.

Let justice be done, America. trump is toast.

Who IS This Guy?

So a rather bizarre scandal reared its head this week - in a month, nay a life cycle of utter madness ever since 2016 Gods help us, so this being cray-cray is saying something - when the New York Times started looking at the newly elected people from this midterms cycle, and discovered this George Santos who won a US Congressional seat in the Long Island part of New York was, well, lying about his entire goddamn resume and parts of his personal biography.

Since the Times is definitely behind a firewall for me, I'm pilfering much of the info from Raw Story so do help a blog out and donate or subscribe to Raw Story please and thanks. Oh, the report via Travis Gettys (I can't see who the Times reporters are, my bad):

George Santos, a son of Brazilian immigrants who presented himself as a "seasoned Wall Street financier and investor" who owned 13 properties and operated an animal rescue charity, became the first openly gay Republican to win a House seat as a non-incumbent, but a New York Times review of public documents and court filings called into question his résumé.

Both Citigroup and Goldman Sachs told the newspaper they had no record of Santos working there, as he had claimed, and Baruch College found no record that he had graduated in 2010, also as he claimed.

The Internal Revenue Service also found little evidence that his animal rescue group, Friend of Pets United, was a tax-exempt organization.

It gets crazier.

Santos loaned more than $700,000 to his campaign and donated thousands of dollars to other candidates in the past two years, but his company, the Devolder Organization, has virtually no online presence and his financial disclosures don't reveal any clients -- which election law experts say could be a problem if those clients actually exist.

The Times also could not find any records of the properties his family allegedly owns.

This part of the story quickly raises a ton of red flags. If Santos doesn't have a verified source of employment or income (if he's not earning money from the properties he claims to have, for example), then where the hell did that $700,000 he "loaned" to his own campaign come from? This reeks of money laundering. I mean, for all of the fakery surrounding trump's questionable finances, at least he actually owns stuff he can use as collateral to get loans. 

All anyone can confirm at the moment is that George Santos was caught committing checking fraud in Brazil back in 2010, and that Santos had been evicted from residences several times for missing rent payments. 

With a hot scandal to follow, there's been denials and recriminations and further exposure of Santos' falsehoods. He claimed he lost employees in the tragic Orlando Pulse mass shooting, but nobody can tie any of the fallen to his alleged businesses.  The latest report is that Santos may be lying about his family's Jewish background that they fled due to the coming Second World War and Holocaust. 

There's open questions now if Santos is really gay. After all, he's lied about everything else about himself. (Update: Santos was married to a woman before divorcing in 2019. It could just mean he was bi/closeted and came out afterward. It happens. But he never mentioned the marriage when he campaigned, so... Lie of Omission.)

This story is exposing a lot of sins right now, and not just Santos'. 

The Republican Party at the New York level has to deal with the reality one of their bright new stars is a goddamn fake, not to mention the thousands of campaign dollars they've gotten from this guy puts everyone's ledgers under scrutiny. The entire GOP party in that state has a lot of answering to do.

The Democratic Party at the New York level is also getting yelled at. In this day and age of extreme partisan politics, Oppo Research should be Campaigning 101. This wasn't Santos' first attempt at elected office, and one thing you're supposed to do is go through your opponent's work history and background to find ANY questionable acts and weak spots in their narratives to exploit. While Santos' opponent reportedly did some digging, and then tried to get the papers to follow up, nobody really paid attention until he'd actually won (and ironically getting the attention as a "future GOP star" in a mostly-Dem state). There's a growing push to remove the current party head in New York - who's floundered at keeping the party organized already, this is one more faux pas on him - and this could get ugly.

This is also a massive indictment of our electoral process, especially for the Congressional and state legislative offices. I've complained about this before, that our choices for candidates are barely - if ever - vetted for qualifications to the jobs we're supposed to elect them to. The parties are so desperate to draft celeb candidates - or too beholden to the religious and cultural extremists to allow the more unhinged and vulgar - that they don't care about actual QUALITY of that candidate until it's too late. You would think a stronger background check would be run on these candidates - especially to make sure you don't get anyone like Rick "Medicare Fraud" Scott embezzling from your own party's funds - to guarantee you're presenting the Best and the Brightest to reflect your party's ethos. Guess what Republicans, someone like Santos - and so many others - are proving your party has no ethics at all.

It does not help that the only ones who can even put their names on the ballots for consideration are the only ones who can AFFORD - by clean money or laundered - to run in the first place. It costs money to file for an election primary, it costs thousands of dollars to run any kind of campaign. You can see it with Santos working to buy a win with $700,000 that nobody can confirm came from honest business. Elections have turned into a racket, a billion dollar industry that buys you a lot of political influence that can siphon even more taxpayer money into your own pockets later on. Gods help us with that open scandal.

Everything about Santos demands a full criminal investigation.

Hell, we need to run a criminal investigation to find out who George Santos really IS.

Let the Guilty Verdicts Be Read: trump Is Toast December 2022 edition

Let the Schadenfreude be served. Let the people celebrate. Send some to the common pulpits, and cry out "Liberty, Freedom, and an End to trump franchises!"

I want to hug the army of the Potomac investigators into trump's tax schemes. I want to get the whole of the army of Vicksburg Manhattan District Attorney's office drunk at my own expense. I want to fight some small trump and thrash him.
-- paraphrasing/updating the celebratory words of Henry Adams

Ah, just in case you didn't hear the joyous cheers this afternoon, that New York City criminal trial on the Trump Organization's tax mischief had the jury verdict returned, and the jury found trump's corporate empire guilty on ALL counts (via Andrea Bernstein, Ilya Marritz, and Brian Mann at NPR):

A jury in Manhattan has found former President Donald Trump's company guilty of a long-running criminal tax fraud scheme that lasted into his presidency.

Though Trump and his company have repeatedly faced criminal investigations, this case marks the first time his company has been charged, tried, and convicted on criminal charges.

Trump built his political brand, in large part, on his claim that he was an aggressive and successful businessman...

Considering the number of bankruptcies trump filed over the decades, he was gaslighting about the "successful businessman" bit, and this court verdict confirms it. I digress, let's return to the report:

In all, the jury found two entities controlled by Trump guilty on 17 counts of criminal tax fraud and falsifying business records. The maximum penalty is $1.6 million.

"This was a case about lying and cheating, false documents to the aid of evading taxes for the benefit of individuals and the corporation," Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg said, speaking with reporters after the verdict was delivered.

In a statement, the Trump Organization criticized the verdict and promised to appeal, arguing that blame should fall on the company's executives and not on the firm itself.

"The notion that a company could be held responsible for an employees' actions, to benefit themselves, on their own personal tax returns is simply preposterous," the statement read...

This is trump trying to shift the blame on his handlers, on the people who answered to him when it came to running his corporation. If that was true, then it undercuts any claim trump makes about being the guy who makes all the tough decisions, of being in control of anything. trump can't run from being held accountable here: the company getting convicted has his name on it.

At issue in this trial was whether Weisselberg and another top executive, Trump Organization comptroller Jeffrey McConney acted "in behalf of" the corporate entities when they compensated Weisselberg and other top executives by paying for the apartments and luxury benefits that did not get reported to the tax authorities.

Well, issue resolved. The jury believed that Weisselberg and McConney acted in behalf of and on orders from the company executives... which is pretty much trump and half his family.

If there's any damper on the festivities happening tonight, it's the reality that donald trump himself - nor his eldest sons and daughter who were part of these schemes - will not face direct punishment for these crimes. For reasons I still don't fathom, the Manhattan DA's office decided not to pursue trump himself, focusing on the corporate entity itself as though the evidence they had was sufficient only for that.

Thing is, the swiftness of this jury decision, and the fact the jurors convicted on ALL counts, underscores the possibility that even one criminal charge - say, the First Degree charge on Scheme to Defraud - could have been proven in court today. It seems a shame that the DA refused to risk that.

The good news: With the wrap-up on this case - even before the jury verdict was read - DA Bragg had decided to reconsider a criminal matter that should directly imperil trump. Remember the Stormy Daniels Hush Money payoff that sent trump's bagman lawyer Michael Cohen to the slammer? Bragg reportedly is looking into using the information revealed in the tax fraud convictions to reopen the Daniels affair. If you'll recall, trump squeaked out of that matter as "Unindicted Co-Conspirator Individual One." All things being equal, with Cohen and Daniels likely to testify against him, trump won't stay unindicted for long.

A more direct impact from this verdict is that trump's business empire faces dire financial disruptions from here on. Not just the fines - which honestly aren't that severe for even a middling operation like trump's - but the reality that banks, lenders, and other corporations may be restricted in doing any business with the Trump Organization at all. trump's ability to keep grifting is going to take a huge hit.

And this criminal trial has ties to an even bigger headache for trump: The New York State's civil case against trump and his corporation for tax fraud and other financial shenanigans on a grander scale than what the City Attorney could pursue. Not only facing $250 million in fines, the civil case headed by State AG Letitia James could impose harsh sanctions that could pretty much shut the Trump Org completely down. James had a strong case going before this verdict, she has a stronger case going forward.

The best possible thing we can see now is how this jury conviction hurts trump's political chances heading into 2024. Before all this, trump could brazenly strut about claiming he was a great businessman, the best, successful at everything, untouchable. This conviction is the first real dent into trump's illusory gaslighting. All his "success" came from cheating, from evading taxes. trump is not really a success at all.

trump may not be directly convicted, but his empire, the one with his name on it, is convicted. This becomes an albatross around trump's neck he cannot remove. Every political rival he'll face will be able to kick him on these jury rulings and he won't be able to bluff and lie his way out of it.

We can say it truthfully: trump is a tax fraud.

trump is vulnerable now.

trump is toast.

Revel in the Schadenfreude, America.

The Long Wait for Justice Upon trump

I wrote earlier this month that my impatience over the handling of donald trump's legal woes - especially into the matter of him stealing hundreds if not thousands of classified documents when he left the White House in 2021 - would hopefully get satisfaction once the Midterms were over and his fate wouldn't affect the decision-making of American voters.

Well, damn the Man. It's pretty much the end of November. We're all still waiting for that hammer to drop.

Even as every day after the votes have been counted, there is more movement towards making trump accountable for all the crimes he's committed in violation of our voting rights and in violation of our national security.

Just this Tuesday before Turkey Day, trump faced a number of legal defeats that all signal his time running out (via Robert Katzberg at Slate):

On Tuesday, a three-judge panel from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral argument on the federal government’s contention that Judge Aileen Cannon overstepped her authority in limiting the Justice Department’s access to and use of the documents seized earlier this year at Donald Trump’s home in Florida, Mar-a-Lago. Despite the technical nature of the hearing’s dialogue—one that covered, among other things, the nature of interlocutory appeals, the scope of Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, and the limits of equitable jurisdiction—it appears that the government’s position will, at least in part, win the day. Throughout the session, counsel for the former president was unable to satisfactorily respond to skeptical questions from all three panel members. Ignoring the wisdom that one can never predict what a court will do based upon oral argument, it seems that the panel will either rule that Judge Cannon had no jurisdiction to rule on the investigation in the first place, and will vacate all of her prior rulings, or it will severely curtail the review process that she created. In sum, the government had a good day...

If the 11th Circuit does what now seems likely, once the newly appointed special counsel gets up to speed, an indictment of the former president for unlawful possession of the materials found at Mar-a-Lago should quickly follow. The case is both a prosecutorial “slam dunk” and the most effective way to begin prosecuting all matters related to the Jan. 6 riot and the attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

As has been noted by a number of legal observers, the Mar-a-Lago prosecution is much like a simple drug possession case. Donald Trump was in possession of something proscribed by law: not a controlled substance like heroin, but documents that were legally required to remain with the government. The materials in question did not even have to have been classified for their removal to have broken federal law...

Given that there's been already 100 documents deemed classified that shouldn't have been in trump's possession, and trump is facing more than just the Presidential Records Act he violated. Back to Katzberg:

And speaking of the defense, as someone who prosecuted and defended federal white-collar criminal cases for more than four decades, there is none. The ongoing absurdities the former president and his supporters have put forth—whether his undocumented, magical declassification of the top-secret materials; the alleged planting of the documents at his home by the FBI; or any of the other risible claims made—may have provided helpful fodder in the right-wing media, but none of it will help the former president in a court of law.

Everything trump's argued about in social media can't stand in a courtroom under oath. trump nor his lawyers can't prove planted evidence, especially when he's been complaining that the documents in his possession are his to begin with. Gaslighting the media is easy: Gaslighting a judge leads to perjury.

The only rational way trump can get out of his blatant violation of the Presidential Records Act is to argue the law itself is Unconstitutional. trump's only defense is that Executive Privilege extends even to former Presidents, but to do so would grant ex-Presidents powers that would conflict with the authority of the current Chief of State. Would this Far Right Supreme Court even go THAT far to protect trump?

For the Justice Department to dig this long - and fight this hard against trump's delaying tactics via judge-shopping for Cannon's help - it would be folly to not follow through on this case. That trump is at least facing a courtroom for his theft of these documents - at the earliest by 2023, to avoid his presumed Presidential run for 2024 - has to be a settled thing. It's now a question of when (it just better be SOON dammit).

For all that happened this past Tuesday, the Reuters newswire documented more:

The conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court cleared the release of Trump's tax returns to the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee...

The committee in its request invoked a federal law that empowers its chairman to request any person's tax returns from the tax-collecting Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

Trump's lawyers have said the committee's real aim is to publicly expose his tax returns and unearth politically damaging information about Trump...

Although Reuters didn't go into the reason(s) why the Ways and Means were looking at trump's taxes, if I recall from other sources it was because the Committee was digging into trump's many violations of the Emoluments Clause. trump had been using his properties to entice and squeeze as much money out of the government (forcing the Secret Service to reside at his hotels at double-billing!) and foreign lobbyists since Day One. It had been this long going after trump on this open grift - delayed either by Republican control of Congress or trump's control of the Justice Department - that only now have the courts cleared this matter.

Problem is, the current Democratic control of Ways and Means is going to end in a month: Republicans won a narrow victory to control the House, and there is no way the MAGA wingnuts running the GOP caucus is going to expose their God-Emperor trump to public scrutiny. If there's anything the current committee can use the tax returns info they now have, they better make it quick before Christmas.

If there's anything else that should get resolved before Christmas, well the New York criminal trial into the Trump Organization got a lot of testimony during the first half of the month, leading up to the prosecution resting their case with the defense resuming matters after Turkey Day (via the Guardian and the AP newswire):

Prosecutors in the Trump Organization’s criminal tax fraud trial rested their case on Monday earlier than expected, pinning hopes for convicting Donald Trump’s company largely on the word of two top executives who cut deals before testifying that they schemed to avoid taxes on company-paid perks.

Allen Weisselberg, the company’s longtime finance chief, and Jeffrey McConney, a senior vice-president and controller, testified for the bulk of the prosecution’s eight-day case, bringing the drama of their own admitted wrongdoing to a trial heavy on numbers, spreadsheets, tax returns and payroll records...

The Trump Organization’s lawyers opened their defense by calling to the witness stand the accountant who handled tax returns and other financial matters for Trump, the Trump Organization and hundreds of Trump entities since the 1980s.

Donald Bender, a partner at Mazars USA LLP, said McConney would call him “numerous times” a week about various tax issues and that he got emails from Weisselberg so often, he even made time to respond while away in the mountains or vacationing in Paris.

Bender said he interacted far less frequently with Trump, his biggest client, attending his 2005 wedding, but otherwise talking to him maybe a couple times a year.

Once Trump became president in 2017, Bender said he would visit him twice a year at the White House so he could sign his tax extensions and returns but those trips ended when the Covid-19 pandemic began.

Trump blamed Bender and Mazars for the company’s troubles, writing on his Truth Social platform last week: “The highly paid accounting firm should have routinely picked these things up – we relied on them. VERY UNFAIR!”

trump's defense is obviously an attempt to dodge accountability for himself, but considering trump himself was the company CEO - had sold himself for years as a great decision-maker and leader - it's kind of hard to tell a jury and the world that he was kept out of the loop for major financial decisions that kept his businesses afloat. Harder still to admit his own business "savvy" didn't clue trump into the many tax dodges happening under his authority.

While trump himself won't face criminal liability here - by a quirk in the law, it's his corporation that's on trial - if the New York legal system can prove guilt here and issue judgment on Trump Organization to where trump can't use it to manage his ongoing cons, this would be a huge victory for holding the corrupt in high office accountable for their sins.

All of this going on while trump jumps into the 2024 Presidential campaign two years early in an obvious attempt to use his status as a "candidate" to avoid any criminal prosecution heading his way. In spite of Attorney General Garland hiring a Special Prosecutor to take over not only the Mar-A-Lago investigation but a multitude of other trump-related investigations as a response.

All we can hope for, all we've been able to hope for since 2015, is the long arc of justice to find trump guilty of the crimes he's openly committed for decades. If justice can be done by the time we're gathered at the Christmas trees to open the presents, please and thank you.

Here's hoping for a festive Saturnalian season.