But It's A Start

Reiterating: I don't think the death penalty is warranted in most cases. Yes, there are people in the world we don't need - Charlie Manson, Jeffery Dahmer, Celine Dion - but we have to take great care, and make sure it's the only way to get the message across. It has to be a very rare thing to kill someone for their crimes.

That said, I think I have to come dome down on the side of the court in this case.

Revolution is a really shitty way to make the political changes a society needs to make from time time - changes that keep things from getting too far out of balance - and it almost always has its roots in regular people getting fed up with rich people doing whatever they want to do and never facing the consequences. Snuffing a few rich people just might be the deterrent we're looking for, to keep us from blowing the whole thing up.

Vietnam sentences real estate tycoon Truong My Lan to death in its largest-ever fraud case

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Real estate tycoon Truong My Lan was sentenced Thursday to death by a court in Ho Chi Minh City in southern Vietnam in the country’s largest financial fraud case ever, state media Vietnam Net said.

The 67-year-old chair of the real estate company Van Thinh Phat was formally charged with fraud amounting to $12.5 billion — nearly 3% of the country’s 2022 GDP.

3% of US GDP is about $763 billion. I'd want that fucker dead - right now.

Lan illegally controlled Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank between 2012 and 2022 and allowed 2,500 loans that resulted in losses of $27 billion to the bank, reported state media VnExpress. The court asked her to compensate the bank $26.9 million.

Despite mitigating circumstances — this was a first-time offense and Lan participated in charity activities — the court attributed its harsh sentence to the seriousness of the case, saying Lan was at the helm of an orchestrated and sophisticated criminal enterprise that had serious consequences with no possibility of the money being recovered, VnExpress said.

Her actions “not only violate the property management rights of individuals and organizations but also push SCB (Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank) into a state of special control; eroding people’s trust in the leadership of the Party and State,” VnExpress quoted the judgement as saying.

Her niece, Truong Hue Van, the chief executive of Van Thinh Phat, was sentenced to 17 years in prison for aiding her aunt.

Lan and her family established the Van Thing Phat company in 1992 after Vietnam shed its state-run economy in favor of a more market-oriented approach that was open to foreigners. She had started out helping her mother, a Chinese businesswoman, to sell cosmetics in Ho Chi Minh City’s oldest market, according to state media Tien Phong.

Van Thinh Phat would grow to become one of Vietnam’s richest real estate firms, with projects including luxury residential buildings, offices, hotels and shopping centers. This made her a key player in the country’s financial industry. She orchestrated the 2011 merger of the beleaguered SCB bank with two other lenders in coordination with Vietnam’s central bank.

The court found that she used this approach to tap SCB for cash. She indirectly owned more than 90% of the bank — a charge she denied — and approved thousands of loans to “ghost companies,” according to government documents. These loans then found their way back to her, state media VNExpress reported, citing the court’s findings.

She then bribed officials to cover her tracks, it added.

Former central bank official Do Thi Nhan was also sentenced Thursday to life in prison for accepting $5.2 million in bribes.

Lan’s arrest in October 2022 was among the most high-profile in an ongoing anti-corruption drive in Vietnam that has intensified since 2022. The so-called Blazing Furnace campaign has touched the highest echelons of Vietnamese politics. Former President Vo Van Thuong resigned in March after being implicated in the campaign.

But Lan’s trial shocked the nation. Analysts said the scale of the scam raised questions about whether other banks or businesses had similarly erred, dampening Vietnam’s economic outlook and making foreign investors jittery at a time when Vietnam has been trying to position itself as the ideal home for businesses trying to pivot their supply chains away from China.

The real estate sector in Vietnam has been hit particularly hard. An estimated 1,300 property firms withdrew from the market in 2023, developers have been offering discounts and gold as gifts to attract buyers, and despite rents for mixed-use properties known in Southeast Asia as shophouses falling by a third in Ho Chi Minh City, many in the city center are still empty, according to state media.

In November, Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, Vietnam’s top politician, said that the anti-corruption fight would “continue for the long term.”

Next Up

Judge Merchan will have no truck with Trump's shenanigans.

Hush money judge warns Trump’s lawyers to abide by rulings

Judge Juan Merchan on Tuesday warned former President Trump’s lawyers in his hush money case to abide by the court’s rulings.

“The Court advises counsel that it expects and welcome zealous advocacy and creative lawyering,” Merchan wrote.

“However, the Court also expects those advocates to demonstrate the proper respect and decorum that is owed to the courts and its judicial officers and to never forget that they are officers of the court. As such, counsel is expected to follow this Court’s orders,” he continued, also referencing his power to issue criminal contempt punishments.

The stern warning came at the end of the judge’s four-page ruling denying Trump’s request to lift a requirement that the parties seek permission before filing any new motions prior to trial.

Merchan had implemented the requirement on March 8, portraying it as a move to manage the case more efficiently as Trump mounts various attempts to delay his trial at the last-minute.

On Tuesday, the judge accused Trump’s lawyers of attempting to “circumvent” the new requirement by filing one of their proposed motions as an exhibit to their letter seeking permission before Merchan signed off.

“This Court emphasizes that it hopes for and fully expects zealous advocacy from counsel as well as spirited contribution from witnesses and parties alike,” Merchan wrote. “Nonetheless, the Court expects that the line between zealous advocacy and willful disregard of its orders will not be crossed.”

Merchan’s ruling came one day after he refused to delay Trump’s trial further, setting jury selection to begin on April 15. It is set to mark the first criminal trial of a former president.

Trump is charged in the case with 34 counts of falsifying business records over reimbursements to his then-fixer, Michael Cohen, who paid porn actress Stormy Daniels $130,000 just before the 2016 election to stay quiet about an alleged affair with Trump.

Trump, who acknowledges the reimbursements but denies the affair, pleaded not guilty.

The ruling was one of two Merchan issued on Tuesday. He also rejected Trump’s motion to post any communications between the judge and the parties not already made public.

“To be clear, all motions, decisions, orders, and pleadings, normally maintained in the court’s public file are in the public file,” Merchan wrote.

One Step Towards Fair

Way to go, Wisconsin. Good on ya.

Tell yer folks I says hi.

The Courts

Wealthy wingnuts have turned SCOTUS, especially, and some of the lower courts in general, into enclaves of paid political activists.

Opinion

Does it matter which party nominated a judge? Here’s why it does.

“Why does the media insist on identifying the president who appointed the federal judges who make a newsworthy decision? It feeds the misimpression that our courts are just partisan policy arms of the party of the president behind their nomination. Competing judicial philosophies are the source of differences, and one school tends to come from Republicans, the other from Democrats. But the courts are not partisan policy [forums] embracing and continuing the substantive issue fight between the two major parties.”

This email, from a federal appeals court judge, arrived in my inbox shortly after I wrote a column about the appeals court ruling denying former president Donald Trump’s claim of absolute immunity for his acts as president — an opinion, that, as I noted, came from two Biden appointees and a nominee of George H.W. Bush.

As it happens, the judge who emailed me was named to the bench by President Ronald Reagan, but in this situation his party affiliation isn’t relevant. Judges named by presidents of both parties bristle — equally and forcefully — at the journalistic practice of identifying judges this way, and I get that. No one wants to be thought of as a partisan hack, doing the bidding of political allies. And, as my judge friend noted, a big piece of the underlying reality — “competing judicial philosophies” — is far more subtle than hackery.

Still, as I replied to the judge, in the current environment, party is relevant. In a politically salient case, knowing the identity of the president who nominated a particular judge, as well as examining the partisan composition of a three-judge panel (the way federal appeals courts operate), is a reliable predictor of outcome.

Federal judges have argued passionately to me that it disserves the public to reinforce the notion of judges as political actors. I think it’s the opposite: It would be keeping relevant data from readers not to include this information. In recent years, as judicial philosophy has become an increasingly important factor in judicial selection for presidents of both parties, I have made it a practice to note the identity of the president who nominated the judge or judges involved. If judges are behaving in ways that could be predicted by their political affiliations, readers deserve to know. If they are ruling contrary to what might have been expected, that’s significant, too.

Now comes a groundbreaking study by a Harvard Law School professor that buttresses my point — if anything, it suggests we have underestimated the impact of party affiliation on judicial outcomes. Alma Cohen, whose training is as an economist, examined 630,000 federal appeals court cases from 1985 to 2020 and found that the impact of party affiliation went far beyond hot-button issues such as guns or abortion.

Rather, she wrote, “the political affiliations of panel judges can help predict outcomes in a broad set of cases that together represent over 90% of circuit court decisions. The association between political affiliation and outcomes is thus far more pervasive than has been recognized by prior research.” Note, Cohen isn’t contending that partisan affiliation affects 90 percent of cases — just that it has a statistically significant influence on outcomes in this large class of decisions.

Cohen’s hypothesis is that Democratic judges and Republican judges “systematically differ in their tendency to side with the seemingly weaker party.” For instance, in civil litigation between individuals and institutions, such as the corporations or the government, “panels with more Democratic judges are more likely than those with more Republican judges to reach a decision that favors the individual party.”

The same holds true for other types of cases. “In the categories of criminal appeals, immigration appeals, and prisoner litigation, increasing the number of Democrats on a circuit court panel raises the odds of an outcome favoring the weak party,” Cohen wrote. Overall, “switching from an all-Republican panel to an all-Democratic panel is associated with an increase of 55% in the baseline odds of a Pro-weak outcome.” In immigration cases, an all-Democratic panel was twice as likely to produce a finding for the immigrant as an all-Republican one during the 35-year period she studied.

One criticism of earlier examinations of partisan differences among judges has been that they do not take into account unpublished decisions, which account for the vast majority of appellate action. Another is that they focus on the subset of rulings that generate dissents, just a few percentage points of all decisions and around 10 percent of published opinions, those that are deemed to have precedential value. But Cohen’s work showed similar partisan effects among both published and unpublished decisions, and in both unanimous and divided panels.

Among other interesting findings, the impact of a panel composed of nominees of both parties was not symmetrical: “A lone Republican judge on a panel with two Democratic judges has a stronger ‘moderating’ effect on the panel majority than does a lone Democrat on a panel with two Republican judges.” And Democratic appointees seemed more inclined to reverse lower-court rulings than their Republican counterparts: “In civil litigation cases between parties of seemingly equal power, panels with more Democratic judges are less likely to defer to lower-court decisions.”

The real-world impact of these differences is striking. Had Al Gore become president in 2000 instead of George W. Bush, Cohen estimated that a two-term Gore presidency, and the judges he would have appointed, would have changed the outcome in about 10,000 cases over the next 20 years, including 2,500 improved outcomes for individuals in civil litigation, about 1,100 improved outcomes for private parties in civil suits against the government, about 2,500 improved outcomes for criminal defendants in criminal appeal, about 1,500 improved outcomes for immigrants in immigrations appeals and about 1,100 improved outcomes for prisoners in prisoner litigation.

“It’s important to know that this effect is not just in highly controversial cases,” Cohen told me. “It’s in almost all cases.”

All of which is to underscore not only why I identify judges by party, but, as the presidential election looms, how important it is for all of us to pay attention to the composition of the courts. Who becomes president makes a difference, not just for the Supreme Court, but for lower courts as well. As much we might prefer it to be otherwise, party matters.

Retribution

What happened to Navalny is indicative of what happens in a country where the leader is not subject to the rule of law.

And why is Putin so sure he'll never be held to account for his murders?

Because he has absolute immunity

Overheard

A study published last year in the Review Of Economic Studies concludes that investments can actually pay dividends down the road.

Huh. Now whooda thunk it?

Is the Social Safety Net a Long-Term Investment? Large-Scale Evidence From the Food Stamps Program 

, , , 

The Review of Economic Studies, rdad063, https://doi.org/10.1093/restud/rdad063

Published: 08 June 2023

Abstract

We use novel, large-scale data on 17.5 million Americans to study how a policy-driven increase in economic resources affects children's long-term outcomes. Using the 2000 Census and 2001–13 American Community Survey linked to the Social Security Administration's NUMIDENT, we leverage the county-level rollout of the Food Stamps program between 1961 and 1975. We find that children with access to greater economic resources before age five have better outcomes as adults. The treatment-on-the-treated effects show a 6% of a standard deviation improvement in human capital, 3% of a standard deviation increase in economic self-sufficiency, 8% of a standard deviation increase in the quality of neighbourhood of residence, a 1.2-year increase in life expectancy, and a 0.5 percentage-point decrease in likelihood of being incarcerated. These estimates suggest that Food Stamps’ transfer of resources to families is a highly cost-effective investment in young children, yielding a marginal value of public funds of approximately sixty-two.

Three From Politico

‘Preposterous’: Federal judge decries efforts to downplay Jan. 6 violence, label perpetrators ‘hostages’

Judge Royce Lamberth, who has handled dozens of Jan. 6 cases, lamented the false rhetoric spread by Donald Trump and his allies.

The longest-serving district judge on the federal bench in Washington, D.C., warned Thursday that false rhetoric about the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — including the sorts of lies hurled by former President Donald Trump and some of his congressional allies — poses an ongoing danger to the nation.

Judge Royce Lamberth, a Reagan appointee to the bench, said the “destructive” misinformation, spread by political leaders who have downplayed and misrepresented the attack, had become pervasive.

“In my thirty-seven years on the bench, I cannot recall a time when such meritless justifications of criminal activity have gone mainstream,” Lamberth lamented in a seven-page public court filing.

- more -

The Trump defense industrial complex goes a bit quiet after Carroll verdict

‘Trump chaos is baked in the cake at this point,’ one Republican strategist said.

The most notable thing about the Republican call-and-response following the E. Jean Carroll verdict was that there was barely any response at all.

On Friday night and into the weekend, the story of former President Donald Trump being ordered to pay the writer $83.3 million in damages stemming from her defamation case against him didn’t lead Fox News, which was consumed instead with the immigration crisis on the Southern border. The Daily Caller was busy flogging Hunter Biden. And on the right-wing network Newsmax’s pages, the verdict ran beneath reporting on a bathroom bill in Utah, Israel and Vince McMahon.

“Everyone is just trying to pretend it didn’t happen,” said Jason Roe, the former executive director of the state Republican Party in Michigan.

In the past, when prosecutors or the courts have smacked Trump, the former president fumed and the GOP rage machine spun itself into overdrive, framing the court developments as acts of political persecution. In the Carroll case, the first part happened, but not the second.

That most Republicans were not talking about $83 million in damages reflects both a discomfort with, and an uncertainty about, the political implications of the verdict. It also hints at a latent fear: that the ruling may prove to be a turnoff for some independent or conservative-leaning women in the suburbs.

- more -

Judge orders release of DOJ memo justifying not prosecuting Trump

Amy Berman Jackson blasts former Attorney General William Barr’s spin on the Mueller report as “disingenuous.”

A federal judge has ordered the release of a key Justice Department memo supporting former Attorney William Barr’s conclusion that former President Donald Trump should not be prosecuted for obstruction of justice over episodes investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller.

U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson issued that ruling in a withering opinion that accused Barr of being “disingenuous” when describing Mueller’s findings and found that the Justice Department was not candid with the court about the purpose and role of the 2019 memo prepared by Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel.

In response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, Justice Department attorneys argued that the memo was part of the process of advising Barr on whether Trump should be prosecuted, but Jackson said the analysis consisted of a post hoc rationalization of a decision already made.

“The review of the document reveals that the Attorney General was not then engaged in making a decision about whether the President should be charged with obstruction of justice; the fact that he would not be prosecuted was a given,” wrote Jackson, an appointee of former President Barack Obama.

Jackson linked Justice Department’s effort to keep the memo secret to Barr’s initial descriptions of Mueller’s conclusions, declaring both efforts misleading.

“Not only was the Attorney General being disingenuous then, but DOJ has been disingenuous to this Court with respect to the existence of a decision-making process that should be shielded by the deliberative process privilege,” she wrote. “The agency’s redactions and incomplete explanations obfuscate the true purpose of the memorandum, and the excised portions belie the notion that it fell to the Attorney General to make a prosecution decision or that any such decision was on the table at any time.”

- more -

10 Counts - Obstruction Of Justice

Today's Jennifer

Closing arguments today, followed by jury instructions from the judge, and then twelve jurors commence to deliberatin' on how much Trump will be hit up for.

So far, he seems to be trying to run his usual game, where he tells the guy he's trying to get money out of that he's rollin' in dough, and then turns around and tells the tax guy he's not really all that rich.

He's been bragging this whole time about Mar-A-Lago (eg) being worth a billion-five, maybe more, and that he's got an easy $400K in his petty cash fund and blah blah blah.

The jury in Georgia stung Rudy for $148 million, so we'll see. This could get even crazier.

hoist on one's own petard

Per Ayn Rand: Contradictions exist, but they cannot prevail.

Jennifer Rubin's Green Room

26,000 rape-related pregnancies in Texas since Roe v. Wade was overturned

Is It A Sign?

For the record, my crystal ball has been in the shop since forever.

Seems like the Bat Shit Caucus and Wingnut Media get wackier and more apocalyptic-sounding every day.

I get the feeling it's because they know - and Trump knows - they're losing badly and Trump is almost literally 9 or 10 months away from at least one long stretch at The Grey Stone Hotel.

Today's Brian

Shut your mouth when you're out in the lobby, and say what you have to say in the courtroom, under oath.

Stop pretending you've had absolutely no agency over what happens in your life.

Take responsibility for your actions, and stop whining about a "rigged system" every time somebody holds you accountable for something you've done wrong.

Buncha whiny-butt pussies.

It's Starting To Rain Shoes

Mark Meadows sued by book publisher over false election claims

The publisher of Mark Meadows’s book is suing the former White House chief of staff, arguing in court filings Friday morning that he violated an agreement with All Seasons Press by including false statements about former President Trump’s claims surrounding the 2020 election.

“Meadows, the former White House Chief of Staff under President Donald J. Trump, promised and represented that ‘all statements contained in the Work are true and based on reasonable research for accuracy’ and that he ‘has not made any misrepresentations to the Publisher about the Work,’” the publishing company writes in its suit, filed in court in Sarasota County, Fla.

“Meadows breached those warranties causing ASP to suffer significant monetary and reputational damage when the media widely reported … that he warned President Trump against claiming that election fraud corrupted the electoral votes cast in the 2020 Presidential Election and that neither he nor former President Trump actually believed such claims.”

The suit comes after ABC News reported that Meadows received immunity to testify before a grand jury convened to hear evidence from special counsel Jack Smith, reportedly contradicting statements he made in his book.

“Meadows’ reported statements to the Special Prosecutor and/or his staff and his reported grand jury testimony squarely contradict the statements in his Book, one central theme of which is that President Trump was the true winner of the 2020 Presidential Election and that election was ‘stolen’ and ‘rigged’ with the help from ‘allies in the liberal media,’ who ignored ‘actual evidence of fraud,’” the company writes in the filing.

According to Meadows’s testimony, as reported by ABC News, Trump was being “dishonest” with voters when he claimed victory on election night. ABC reported that Meadows admitted Trump lost the election when questioned by prosecutors.

He also told prosecutors he has yet to see any fraud in the 2020 election that would shift Trump’s loss to President Biden, ABC reported.

The suit notes that the opening sentence to one chapter in Meadows’s book was, “I KNEW HE DIDN’T LOSE.”

The company is asking for the $350,000 it paid Meadows as an advance for the book, $600,000 in out-of-pocket damages, and at least $1 million each for reputational damage suffered by the company and loss of expected profits for the book, which they argue plummeted given Meadows’s involvement in numerous investigations regarding Jan. 6.

The suit reveals a long and tense relationship between Meadows and his publisher, which has published a suite of books from conservative figures.

In December 2021, All Seasons Press sent a letter to Meadows saying it would withhold the final of three $116,666 advance payments over concerns his book may contain false information. The suit also notes it planned to continue with publication “pending an investigation.”

A few days later the company got a letter from attorney Blake Meadows, whom the suit says is Meadows’s son, demanding the final installment.

“Mr. Meadows is aware of the specious allegations that were published regarding a portion of the book which was taken out of context, and which have already been addressed by both Mr. Meadows and former President Trump in multiple press releases,” Blake Meadows wrote, according to the suit.

All Seasons Press said it decided to publish the book “after conducting the appropriate due diligence and based upon repeated assurances from Meadows that facts in the Book were true.”

But it argues that as “rumors circulated in the media” that Meadows could be a cooperating witness with prosecutors, the book’s bottom line was harmed.

“As a result, public interest in the Book, the truth of which was increasingly in doubt, precipitously declined, and ASP sold only approximately 60,000 of the 200,000 first printing of the Book,” the suit states.

A request for comment made to Meadow’s attorney in the election interference case was not immediately returned, nor was a message left with Blake Meadows.

Meadows has previously suggested portions of his book were inaccurate, including a detail about how Trump tested positive for COVID-19 days before his first debate against now-President Biden.

Trump denied the claim and called it “fake news,” which led Meadows to say during an interview in December 2021 that the claim from his own book was “fake news.”

Meadows has not been charged in the federal government’s election interference case, but he has been charged in a sprawling racketeering and election law case in Georgia.

Go Colorado

When push comes to shove, I want this Kirschner guy on my side.

Accountability

We're in a long drawn out process of teaching Donald Trump that he has to start behaving like a normal civilized human being.

And if he doesn't, then he's going to jail, where he will await trial to decide whether or not he spends the better part of the rest of his miserable life in a federal prison.

That's the message Judge Chutkan is trying to convey to Mr Trump. He will be held to account.

And it's about fuckin' time.

Judge reimposes restrictions on Trump’s speech in Jan. 6 case

A federal judge has reimposed limits on former president Donald Trump’s public statements in advance of his trial on charges of conspiring to subvert the results of the 2020 election.

U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan on Sunday evening put back in place an order she had lifted nine days earlier to give Trump and U.S. prosecutors more time to argue whether the restrictions were unconstitutional, as attorneys for the former president had claimed. Trump can now ask a higher court for an emergency stay pending appeal, but in the meantime he is bound by Chutkan’s limits. If Trump violates the gag, as he did a similar order by a state judge in New York, Chutkan will have to decide how to punish the former president and leading presidential candidate.

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A notice that Chutkan had denied Trump’s request that she stay the gag order throughout his appeal was posted on the electronic docket of the federal court in Washington at about 7 p.m. Sunday, but the judge’s underlying opinion and specific order were not immediately available on the computer system.

Under the existing order Trump and all interested parties in the case are barred from making or directing others to make public statements that “target” individual attorneys, witnesses, “any reasonably foreseeable witness,” or court staff involved in the case or the substance of their testimony. While the order was on hold, Trump posted a comment on social media calling special counsel Jack Smith “deranged” and saying former chief of staff Mark Meadows would be a lying coward if he testified for the prosecution. Both comments involved some of the exact type of language Chutkan deemed out of bounds.

Trump appeared to potentially to violate Chutkan’s order 75 minutes after she gave notice that it was reinstated, attacking his former attorney general and potential witness, William P. Barr.

“I called Bill Barr Dumb, Weak, Slow Moving, Lethargic, Gutless, and Lazy, a RINO WHO COULDN’T DO THE JOB,” Trump said in part of an 88-word post on his social media platform that both belittled the man he chose to serve as the nation’s top law-enforcement officer and exaggerated his crowd sizes. “So now this Moron says about me, to get even, ‘his verbal skills are limited.’ Well, that’s one I haven’t heard before. Tell that to the biggest political crowds in the history of politics, by far. Bill Barr is a LOSER!”

About 19 minutes after his post about Barr, Trump complained on social media: “The Corrupt Biden administration just took away my First Amendment Right To Free Speech.”

In other cases, violators of gag orders have gone to jail, but the logistics and political implications of imprisoning a former president and current presidential candidate make that unlikely. Trump is personally furious about the gag order, advisers told The Washington Post, but his campaign sees it as a political asset; any punishment would likewise feed into Trump’s narrative that he is a victim of government persecution. In New York, the judge overseeing Trump’s civil fraud trial has fined the ex-president $15,000 for repeated comments attacking a court clerk.

Trump “knows the effect of his targeting and seeks to use it to his strategic advantage while simultaneously disclaiming any responsibility for the very acts he causes,” prosecutors wrote in opposing the stay — “harassment, threats, and intimidation.”

They noted that Chutkan herself has received a death threat from a Trump supporter after being attacked online by Trump and that a Trump supporter went to the home of former president Barack Obama after Trump tweeted the address. Prosecutors also said Trump’s public criticism of Mike Pence on Jan. 6, 2021, was concerning enough that Secret Service agents protecting the vice president were notified.

Trump’s lawyers maintain that any court-imposed limits are unconstitutional suppressions of “core political speech” because “his reelection campaign … is inextricably intertwined with this prosecution and his defense.” Moreover, they say, his 100 million social media followers have a right to hear his point of view.

Chutkan rejected that argument in her ruling, saying he could criticize the prosecution as political and unfounded without personal attacks that could intimidate people involved in the case and mislead the public.

“Mr. Trump is a criminal defendant,” she said. “First Amendment freedoms do not allow him to launch a pretrial smear campaign against participating government staff, their families, and foreseeable witnesses.”

She singled out Pence, saying Trump could make “statements criticizing the campaign platforms or policies of [his] current political rivals” without getting into expected testimony. Pence had made his decision not to help overturn the election results on Jan. 6 part of his campaign, saying Trump betrayed the U.S. Constitution and endangered lives. Pence dropped out of the race this weekend.

Prosecutors said in their filings that in the five days it was in effect, the gag order was working. Trump posted to social media about 182 times in that period, repeatedly claiming that President Biden and the Justice Department were trying to silence him. “The Order … leaves him entirely free to do those things,” the government said.

A spokesperson for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Ari Explains

One of the things that has become a complete bugaboo is the fairly simple fact that when normal people don't know enough about some issue - eg: all this Trump shit - we go in search of good info, knowing "good" info is not all that easy to find, while an awful lot of truly shitty people are willing to put out all kinds of total bullshit that gets internalized by gullible (but honestly trusting) people who've been sucked in because cynically manipulative assholes feel no compunction about amping up the rage in order to cash in on it - either politically or monetarily, or both.

OK - thus endeth the rant.

Let's go to Ari Melber for a pretty good explainer.

And Another One Down

Trump co-defendant Jenna Ellis pleads guilty in Georgia election case

ATLANTA — Jenna Ellis, a former lawyer for Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign, pleaded guilty Tuesday to illegally conspiring to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia, making her the third attorney associated with the former president to accept a plea deal in the sweeping criminal racketeering case.

Ellis, who had been facing two charges including violating Georgia’s anti-racketeering act, pleaded guilty in court Tuesday morning to a single felony count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings. The deal allows her to avoid jail time in exchange for providing evidence that could potentially implicate other defendants and agreeing to testify in any future trials. Ellis worked closely with personal Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, another defendant in the case who faces 13 charges.

The plea marks the first time a senior Trump aide has been held criminally accountable for and has admitted to making false statements that the 2020 presidential election was tainted by widespread fraud. In a hearing Tuesday morning, Ellis tearfully admitted that she was wrong and misled and that she no longer believes those false claims.

“If I knew then what I know now, I would have declined to represent Donald Trump in these post-election challenges,” Ellis said.

Appearing before Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee on Tuesday, Ellis and her attorneys Franklin and Laura Hogue listened as a prosecutor read out details of an amended indictment. According to the details of the agreement, Ellis agreed to complete three to five years probation and 100 hours of community service, and to pay $5,000 in restitution to the Georgia secretary of state. She agreed to write a letter of apology to the state of Georgia.

She is the fourth Trump co-defendant to plead guilty in the case. Atlanta bail bondsman Scott Hall, accused of playing a wide-ranging role in the conspiracy to reverse Trump’s loss in Georgia, pleaded guilty Sept. 29 in a cooperation deal with prosecutors. Former pro-Trump attorneys Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro each pleaded guilty last week on the eve of their scheduled joint trial in the case.

As part of their plea deals, Hall, Powell and Chesebro each recorded a lengthy video answering prosecutors’ questions about their roles and the roles of others in the alleged election interference conspiracy.

Ellis is the second co-defendant with known direct links to Trump to plead guilty in the case. A onetime Fox News regular who was hired in late 2019 as a legal adviser to the Trump campaign, Ellis was part of the post-2020 election legal team, appearing alongside Giuliani and pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell at press conferences where she echoed false claims of election fraud.

She worked closely with Giuliani, traveling to battleground states including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania where prosecutors say she spoke to lawmakers urging them to reject the popular vote results in their states. The Georgia indictment also pointed to memos she wrote for Trump outlining how Vice President Mike Pence could overturn the election results.

Ellis was later admonished by a Colorado judge for the false statements she made about the 2020 election. As part of that proceeding, Ellis admitted that several statements she said back then were false — stating that she acted “with “a reckless state of mind” and telling the court she had acted with “selfish” motives and that her actions had "undermined the American public’s confidence in the presidential election.”

It is not known what Ellis told prosecutors or what documents she might share in the case. Rumors had swirled for weeks that Ellis might be among those seeking a plea deal — in part because of her public complaints that Trump was unwilling to pay her mounting legal bills.

Ellis, who hosts a podcast for the American Family Network, also publicly declared in September that she was unlikely to support Trump’s bid for the 2024 nomination. “I simply can’t support him for elected office again,” Ellis said on her podcast in September. “I have chosen to distance is because of that frankly malignant narcissistic tendency to simply say that he’s never done anything wrong.”

So Much Losing

Donald Trump's Properties Will Likely Be Auctioned Off, Attorney Says

Donald Trump's properties will likely be liquidated and sold off at auction after a judge found he had committed fraud, New York's former assistant attorney general has said.

Tristan Snell was speaking after a court found that the former president had massively inflated the value of some of his properties and ordered that some Trump companies involved be stripped of their corporate licenses. It's one part of Trump's ongoing civil fraud trial.

"The worst outcome that could have come from this case has already been handed down, and that is for the corporate licenses to be canceled," Snell told MSNBC. "The properties are likely going to be liquidated. The properties are probably going to be sold at auction. That's probably what is going to happen. We don't know that for sure, but that is probably where this is headed. So [Trump] is already really, really in trouble."

Snell said that it was important to remember that Trump has already lost, despite his protestations of innocence.

Judge Arthur Engoron ruled last week that Trump, his adult sons, The Trump Organization and other businesses associated with the former president had overvalued several of his properties—including his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida, and his triplex in Manhattan at the Trump Tower—for financial gain.

Trump and his sons responded with incredulity to Engoron's summary judgment last week, which ordered that some of their business licenses in New York be rescinded and that the companies that own the properties named in the judgment be handed over to independent receivers.

Trump's lawyers have vowed to appeal the decision and took issue with the figures used to determine that the properties had been overvalued during the first day of the trial. The former president himself appeared in court on Monday in order to, as he put it, "fight for my name and reputation."

The ongoing trial will now determine the outstanding allegations against Donald Trump and his named associates.

Judge Engoron is presiding over the trial in the $250 million civil lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James against Trump, his adult sons and The Trump Organization. Trump is accused of inflating his net worth by billions of dollars to secure favorable loan terms from banks. He has denied any wrongdoing.

Newsweek reached out to Christopher Kise, a lawyer for the former president, via email for comment.

The former president's daughter, Ivanka Trump was listed as a witness in James's prosecution case in court filings prior to the trial, having previously been named as a co-defendant.

A court order filed on June 27 this year dismissed Ivanka Trump as a co-defendant as the claims against her were "accrued prior to...February 2016" and that she had not been party to a 2021 tolling agreement between the New York attorney general and the Trump Organization extending the period of statutory limitations on the claims.

The move to becoming a witness in the case against Donald Trump "usually indicates some form of cooperation," an attorney previously told Newsweek, leaving open the potential that Ivanka Trump could give potentially damaging evidence against her family at the trial.

Newsweek reached out to a lawyer for Ivanka Trump via email for comment.

Trump Fraud Trial

It would seem that Trump is coaching his lawyers to make presentations like they're on TV - like it doesn't really matter what you say as long as you look good saying it, and that what you say makes Trump look good.

Habba is very good at the PR-kinda "law, where she makes assertions in declarative terms and in a way that (I guess) is supposed to evoke a favorable response(?)

And that's right up Trump's alley. He lives in a fantasy world where he can just speak his desires into existence, and he expects his lawyers to follow his lead.

(paraphrasing)

"Just say what I tell you to say, and let my Social Media Ratfuckers do the rest."

The tenor of the trial changed during Trump’s lawyers’ opening statements.

In their respective opening statements, the attorney general’s office and lawyers for Donald J. Trump spoke past each other: While the attorney general’s lawyer focused on the specific mechanics by which properties were valued — and why — Mr. Trump’s lawyers continued to argue that, overall, there had been nothing wrong with the former president’s financial statements.

Kevin Wallace, a lawyer for the attorney general’s office, told the courtroom that employees of Mr. Trump had reverse-engineered the value of individual assets — properties like Trump Tower and 40 Wall Street — to arrive at the former president’s desired net worth. He played a clip of Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer, explaining the process, prompting the former president to cross his arms and shake his head, scowling.

But Christopher M. Kise, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, responded in his opening that there was no objective value of the assets and that differing valuations were standard in real estate.

“There was no nefarious intent, it simply reflects the change in a complex, sophisticated real estate development corporation,” he said of the way Mr. Trump’s company represented the assets’ value.

Though Mr. Trump’s lawyers began their opening arguments with a dry presentation, the tenor of the trial changed after a lawyer for Mr. Trump, Alina Habba, gave what she said was an extemporaneous presentation in which she attacked Ms. James as politically motivated and again declared that her client’s business partners had made money from the deals. Mr. Trump watched intently, occasionally nodding in agreement.

That kicked off a sequence in which Justice Arthur F. Engoron went back and forth with Ms. Habba and the other defense lawyers, Mr. Kise and Clifford S. Robert, correcting what he thought were legal errors from their presentations.

Prison Is On His Mind

Through all the usual bluff-n-bluster, Trump is worried about going to prison. 

TRUMP PANICS OVER GAG ORDER AND GOING TO PRISON - 9.21.23
SEASON 2 EPISODE 40: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump has descended into full-fledged panic over the Possible Gag Order and either he is exaggerating for effect – what a shock – or, more likely, his lawyers, preparing an answer to Jack Smith’s request to Judge Chutkan that is due Monday, told him SOMETHING that set his hair on fire and you know the dangers of combustion when spray paint is mixed with open flames. And that imagery is more than a joke about his bottle blondness. It is a forecast of things to come. We are headed to a legal crisis over Trump’s social media posts and his refusal to accede to the rule of law and I don’t know where this ends but at the far end of political science fiction, where it ends is a shootout between United States Marshals and United States Secret Service.

His bail – his NOT being held in a jail cell in the District of Columbia until trial starts – is dependent on him NOT defying the law. As I said last week, at some point, whatever limitations Chutkan imposes upon him, WHEN he violates them, whether it’s the first time or the fiftieth – he is NOT going to surrender. He is not going to let them put him in prison. They are going to have to go and get him. And what happens THEN?

It seems madness to risk the lives of Marshals or Secret Service to protect this semi-sentient pile of feces. But, what? You’re going to have the Secret Service agents protecting him turn around an arrest him? Biden is going to order the head of the Secret Service to order his men to stand down when the Marshals arrive? Trump is going to see the photo-shoot-value in an actual perp walk?

I’m not counting on the last one. Rolling Stone now reports that as you’d expect, the I-don’t-think-about-jail crap he gave to the gullible Kristen Welker in last Sunday’s stenography class is nonsense. Quoting: “In the past several months, Donald Trump has had a burning question for some of his confidants and attorneys: Would the authorities make him wear, quote, “one of those jumpsuits” in prison?... Three sources familiar with his comments say he’s been aking lawyers and other people close to him what a prison sentence would look like for a former American president. Would he be sent to a ‘club fed’ style prison… or a bad prison? Would he serve out a sentence in a plush home confinement?... those who’ve heard him ask these questions about a hypothetical sentencing tell Rolling Stone that it’s clear the gravity of his mounting legal peril is GETTING to Trump."

As an aside, I understand Jann Wenner is asking the same questions.

Also: Cassidy Hutchinson's book includes a sexual assault accusation against Rudy Giuliani. It's the worst sexual misconduct accusation against him in nearly four months. Also Lin Wood flips on the entire Trump crowd. And a tweet from Junior Trump announces his father had died. He was hacked. We think.

B-Block (18:45) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: JD Vance sets some kind of record by averaging more than one lie per sentence in a tweet about an "American journalist held hostage by Ukraine" who is none of the above. Congresswoman Victoria Spartz asks Merrick Garland a question and if he's still thinking about the hearing he's probably asking 'what the hell did she SAY?' And James O'Keefe's obsession with becoming a musical star has now led to the closure of Project (In Vino) Veritas. But who will think of the cast of O'Keefe-Homa!?

C-Block (25:39) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: If Rudy is back in the news then the question: "what happened to Rudy?" is also back in the news and I'll give you the answer: whatever it is, it happened in 1995 or earlier.

 (heavy pay wall)

Trump Privately Frets He Could Be Headed to Prison

• Would he be sent to a “club fed” style prison — or a “bad” one?
• Would he have Secret Service protection?
• And what would they make him wear?

Those are some of the questions Donald Trump is asking his lawyers as his many trials loom

Justice Limited

NOTES:

• 'Bout fuckin' time we started hearing about Mike Flynn and Boris Epshteyn
• There are 20 others who had a hand in this fucked up mess, but they'll walk because "insufficient evidence"
• Lindsey Graham is a smarmy little prick

I guess we just take what we can get.

Georgia Panel Recommended Charging Lindsey Graham in Trump Case

A special grand jury made the recommendation last year after hearing from dozens of witnesses on whether Donald J. Trump and his allies interfered in the 2020 election.

A special grand jury that investigated election interference allegations in Georgia recommended indicting a number of Trump allies who were not charged, including Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the former senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler of Georgia, and Michael Flynn, a former national security adviser.

In its final report, which a judge unsealed on Friday, the panel also recommended charges against Boris Epshteyn, one of former President Donald J. Trump’s main lawyers, as well as a number of other Trump-aligned lawyers, including Cleta Mitchell and Lin Wood.

Mr. Trump and 18 allies were charged in a racketeering indictment that was handed up last month by a regular grand jury in Fulton County, Ga.

The special grand jury, which Fulton County prosecutors convened to help with the investigation, met at an Atlanta courthouse from June to December of last year. It spent much of that time hearing testimony from 75 witnesses on the question of whether Mr. Trump or any of his allies had sought to illegally overturn his 2020 election loss in the state.

Under Georgia law, the panel could not issue indictments itself. In the Trump case, that task fell to a regular grand jury that was seated over the summer. The regular grand jury heard evidence from prosecutors for one day in early August before voting to indict all 19 defendants whom prosecutors had sought to charge.

The special grand jury’s mandate was to write a report with recommendations on whether indictments were warranted in the investigation, which was led by Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney. Ms. Willis asked to convene a special grand jury because such panels have subpoena powers, and she was concerned that some witnesses would not cooperate without being subpoenaed.

Portions of the report were publicly released in February, but those excerpts did not indicate who had been recommended for indictment, or on what charges. The release of the full nine-page report this week was ordered by Judge Robert C.I. McBurney of Fulton County Superior Court.

Mr. Epshteyn declined on Friday to comment about the report. Others whom the advisory panel recommended for indictment did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

After the special grand jury recommended indictments of about 40 people, the district attorney had to weigh which prosecutions would be the most likely to succeed in court. A potential case against Mr. Graham, for example, would have been hampered by the fact that there were conflicting accounts of telephone calls he made to a top Georgia official. Mr. Graham has repeatedly said that he did nothing wrong.

Fulton County prosecutors indicated in court filings last year that they were interested in those calls by Mr. Graham, a onetime critic of Mr. Trump who became a staunch supporter. They were made shortly after the November 2020 election to Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state.

Mr. Raffensperger has said that in those calls, Mr. Graham suggested the rejection of all mail-in votes from Georgia counties with high rates of questionable signatures, a step that would have excluded many more Democratic votes than Republican ones. But the phone calls are not known to have been recorded, and recollections differ about exactly what was said — factors that probably figured in the decision not to charge Mr. Graham.

In a filing seeking Mr. Graham’s testimony, prosecutors said that he “questioned Secretary Raffensperger and his staff about re-examining certain absentee ballots cast in Georgia in order to explore the possibility of a more favorable outcome for former President Donald Trump,” and “made reference to allegations of widespread voter fraud” during those calls.

Mr. Graham has characterized as “ridiculous” the idea that he had suggested to Mr. Raffensperger that he throw out legally cast votes, and the senator’s lawyers have argued that he was carrying out a legitimate investigative function as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In a bid to avoid testifying before the special grand jury last year, Mr. Graham waged a legal battle that made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Ultimately, he was forced to testify.

Afterward, he said that he had spent two hours giving testimony behind closed doors, where he said he “answered all questions.”

Mr. Graham has been critical of prosecutors in the Georgia case and the three other criminal cases against Mr. Trump, characterizing them as liberals who were “weaponizing the law” to unfairly target the former president.

After the Georgia indictment, Mr. Graham told reporters in South Carolina that he was not cooperating with the Fulton County prosecutors, dismissing the idea as “crazy stuff.”

“I went, had my time, and I haven’t heard from them since,” he said.