We're still trying to get our arms around what happened. And since it's still happening, we're miles away from the kind of understanding we're going to need if we're going to have any real chance of squaring it all up.
If I'm a former POTUS, and somebody asks me to make a few remarks at their wedding - which they've paid me bucketsful of cash to put on at my club - I dunno - I think I get up and I say nice things about my guests and I make some effort not to make the whole fuckin' thing about me and my most recent failures.
New York, and now Georgia have enlisted the aid of prosecutors who specialize in gang-busting as they ramp up their investigations of Donald (The Daft & Malignant) Trump.
So Trump's lawyers will be very busy trying to defend him, while Trump will be very busy raising money and figuring out ways not to pay them.
The district attorney investigating whether former U.S. President Donald Trump illegally interfered with Georgia’s 2020 election has hired an outside lawyer who is a national authority on racketeering, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has enlisted the help of Atlanta lawyer John Floyd, who wrote a national guide on prosecuting state racketeering cases. Floyd was hired recently to “provide help as needed” on matters involving racketeering, including the Trump investigation and other cases, said the source, who has direct knowledge of the situation.
The move bolsters the team investigating Trump as Willis prepares to issue subpoenas for evidence on whether the former president and his allies broke the law in their campaign to pressure state officials to reverse his Georgia election loss. Willis has said that her office would examine potential charges including “solicitation of election fraud, the making of false statements to state and local governmental bodies, conspiracy, racketeering” among other possible violations.
A representative for Trump did not respond to requests for comment.
Floyd’s appointment signals that racketeering could feature prominently in the investigation. It’s an area of law where Willis has extensive experience - including a high-profile Atlanta case where she won racketeering convictions of 11 public educators for a scheme to cheat on standardized tests.
The investigation of Trump focuses in part on his phone call to Georgia’s secretary of state, asking the secretary to “find” the votes needed to overturn Trump’s election loss, based on false voter-fraud claims.
Willis - a Democrat who in January became the county’s first Black woman district attorney - will have to navigate a fraught political landscape. She faces pressure from Democrats in Atlanta and nationally to pursue an aggressive prosecution, along with scrutiny from Republicans in a state historically dominated by that party.
Everything having to do with Trump (from Trump's end of it) is a matter of Over-Promise and Under-Deliver, which, of course, makes for the obvious flip side, where we experience Over-Anticipation and Under-Satisfaction.
So as we move forward, relishing the idea of finally getting to see somebody stomp the fuck outa that jerk, we have to keep in mind how slippery he's always been, and just as important, the high probability that some very powerful people need him to be their whipping boy - their front guy.
Imagine the wealth that guys like Putin and MBS and Bob Mercer must've amassed that they could afford to make a putz like Donald Trump filthy rich just for playing their patsy this whole time.
The Supreme Court on Monday rejected former president Donald Trump’s last-chance effort to keep his private financial records from the Manhattan district attorney, ending a long and drawn-out legal battle.
After a four-month delay, the court denied Trump’s motion in a one-sentence order with no recorded dissents.
District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. has won every stage of the legal fight — including the first round at the Supreme Court — but has yet to receive the records he says are necessary for a grand jury investigation into whether the president’s companies violated state law.
Vance responded to the court decision with a three-word tweet: “The work continues.”
The current fight is a follow-up to last summer’s decision by the high court that the president is not immune from a criminal investigation while he holds office.
“No citizen, not even the president, is categorically above the common duty to produce evidence when called upon in a criminal proceeding,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority in that 7 to 2 decision.
But the justices said Trump could challenge the specific subpoena, as every citizen may, for being overbroad or issued in bad faith.
A district judge and a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in New York found neither was the case.
Trump’s complaints “amount to generic objections that the subpoena is wide-ranging in nature,” the unanimous 2nd Circuit panel wrote. “Again, even if the subpoena is broad, the complaint does not adequately allege that it is overbroad. Complex financial and corporate investigations are broad by default.”
Similarly, the panel said, “we hold that none of the president’s allegations, taken together or separately, are sufficient to raise a plausible inference that the subpoena was issued out of malice or an intent to harass.”
Vance is seeking eight years of the former president’s tax returns and related documents as part of his investigation into alleged hush-money payments made ahead of the 2016 election to two women who said they had affairs with Trump years before. Trump denies the claims.
Investigators want to determine whether efforts were made to conceal the payments on tax documents by labeling them as legal expenses.
But Vance says there are other aspects of the investigation that have not been publicly disclosed. Court filings by the prosecutors suggest the investigation is looking into other allegations of impropriety, perhaps involving tax and insurance fraud.
Trump’s lawyers told the Supreme Court both of the lower court decisions were faulty. The subpoena was not narrowly tailored, but instead based on one issued by congressional committees. It would cross the line even if it was “aimed at ‘some other citizen’ instead of the president,” wrote Trump’s lawyers William S. Consovoy and Jay Alan Sekulow.
“The court of appeals not only ignored how the district court stacked the deck against the president,” the petition continues. “But it also broke every rule and precedent applicable” to the legal procedure at issue, it said.
Consovoy said it should be easy for the court to at least temporarily put the lower court rulings on hold and hear his case, which in the court’s language is called granting certiorari.
“The President of the United States requests the opportunity to seek certiorari before his confidential financial records are disclosed to the grand jury and potentially the public,” Trump’s lawyers wrote. “Once the records are produced, the status quo can never be restored.”
The appeals court panel shot down his claim that the district attorney’s investigation is limited only to the alleged payments made by Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal. It said that “bare assertion … amounts to nothing more than implausible speculation.”
Vance and his lawyers have said the records are needed for a grand jury investigation, and pledged at the Supreme Court hearing that they would not be released publicly. Since those battles, the New York Times has published a number of stories about Trump’s tax payments and mounting debt based on records it says it has obtained.
“Similarly,” the ruling says, “the President’s allegations of bad faith fail to raise a plausible inference that the subpoena was issued out of malice or an intent to harass.”
Vance is seeking the records from Trump’s longtime accounting firm, Mazars. In his response to the Supreme Court in the current fight, Vance said that the “obvious explanation for the subpoena’s breadth … is that the investigation had extended beyond the Cohen payments.”
Vance said in his brief to the court that, since the subpoena was first issued more than a year ago, it was time to let the investigation run its course.
“Applicant has had multiple opportunities for review of his constitutional and state law claims, and at this juncture he provides no grounds for further delay,” Vance wrote. “His request for extraordinary relief should be denied, and the grand jury permitted to do its work.”
Yeah, we might get to see some of the real dirt on Trump, but not if it means we get to see the real dirt on the real forces of evil that have been propping him up for 30 fuckin' years.
The Daddy State always has that ace-in-the-hole. Rule 6:
Total criminalization: if we're all guilty, then you can't hold me responsible without the risk of exposing your own culpability.
The corollary is: "I'll protect you as long as it's in my interest to do so - or until I figure out how to throw you to the dogs to cover my own ass."
Every February through the 90s, I spent a weekend at either Trump Plaza or Trump Taj Mahal.
That's where the New Jersey chapter of ACEP (ER Docs) held their annual conference, and I was obliged (also happy) to attend - not because it was Trump or Atlantic City, but because setting up my little booth to showcase my wares in the exhibit hall was part of what I did to earn my filthy lucre.
It was not a happy place though. Whenever the point of the exercise is pretty much exclusively to separate people from their money, the enterprise always attracts some not very wholesome characters. Not that everybody who worked there was a money-grubbing asshole, but I'm hard pressed to remember anyone who didn't have that kind of glassy predatory look about them. It's just something that happens to people in that kind of environment.
It's little wonder a guy like Trump believed he could thrive there. And in spite of his apparent failures (how the fuck do you go broke in the casino business?), he did just fine for himself - prob'ly (IMO) because his end was just to put up a front for the money laundering operations run by his Russian mob "partners".
Anyway, the Metaphors Department has been working overtime lately, and - well - this:
Paraphrasing David Corn: Monuments to racist assholes are being torn down all over the place.
Trump's legacy will be in keeping with that of every Conqueror-Wanna-Be - ego-centric, delusional, narcissistic, abusive and ultimately self-destructive.
Trump’s legal team exited after he insisted impeachment defense focus on false claims of election fraud
The implosion of former president Donald Trump’s legal team comes as Trump remains fixated on arguing at his second impeachment trial that the 2020 election was stolen from him, a defense that advisers warn is ill-conceived and Republican strategists fear will fuel the growing divide in the GOP.
South Carolina lawyer Karl S. “Butch” Bowers Jr. and four other attorneys who recently signed on to represent the former president abruptly parted ways with him this weekend, days before his Feb. 9 Senate trial for his role in inciting the attack on the U.S. Capitol. On Sunday evening, Trump’s office announced two new lawyers were taking over his defense.
Two people familiar with the discussions preceding the departure of the original legal team said that Trump wanted them to make the case during the trial that he actually won the election. To do so would require citing his false claims of election fraud — even as his allies and attorneys have said that he should instead focus on arguing that impeaching a president who has already left office is unconstitutional.
That approach has already been embraced by many Republican senators, many of whom cited it when they cast a test vote against impeachment last week.
Trump’s lawyers had initially planned to center their strategy on the question of whether the proceedings were constitutional and on the definition of incitement, according to one of the people, who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the internal conversations.
But the former president repeatedly said he wanted to litigate the voter fraud allegations and the 2020 race — and was seeking a more public defense of his actions. Bowers told Trump he couldn’t mount the defense that Trump wanted, the person said.
“It truly was mutual,” the person said. “The president wanted a different defense. The president wanted a different approach and a different team.”
Trump spokesman Jason Miller also said Sunday that the split with his lawyers was mutual but rejected the notion that the former president wants to focus on election fraud in the Senate trial, calling that account “fake news.”
“The only guidance offered has been to focus on the unconstitutional nature of the impeachment to which 45 senators have already voted in agreement,” Miller wrote in a text message.
Bowers and the other lawyers who quit Trump’s defense team did not respond to requests for comment. CNN first reported that Trump wanted his attorneys to center his defense on his claims of election fraud.
On Sunday evening, Trump’s office announced in a statement that Atlanta-based trial attorney David Schoen and Bruce L. Castor Jr., a former district attorney in Montgomery County, Pa., would lead his defense team. The two lawyers will bring “national profiles and significant trial experience in high-profile cases to the effort,” the statement said.
Schoen previously served as a lawyer for Trump adviser Roger Stone when he sought to appeal his conviction for lying and witness tampering in a congressional investigation. He also was in discussions with financier Jeffrey Epstein about representing him days before his death while awaiting sex-trafficking charges and has said he does not believe Epstein killed himself. During his time as district attorney, Castor had declined to prosecute actor Bill Cosby and was later sued by accuser Andrea Constand in a case that was settled.
The disarray inside Trump’s circle comes as the House Democratic impeachment managers focus intensely on building a powerful and emotionally compelling argument that the former president’s words led his supporters to ransack the Capitol.
The House impeachment article charges Trump with “incitement of insurrection” in the invasion of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 by a pro-Trump mob.
The Democrats have been working around-the-clock in preparation for the trial — including on Saturday night, when the news broke of Trump’s legal team collapsing, according to people familiar with their activities.
The impeachment managers are compiling footage from Jan. 6, including cellphone recordings of protesters attending Trump’s rally that morning and video from inside the Capitol after protesters breached it.
Their aim is to present stark evidence of how Trump’s words and actions — including his long-running attacks on the integrity of the election — influenced the rioters. The attempted insurrection left five dead, including one member of the U.S. Capitol Police. In addition, two officers, one with the D.C. police, have since died by suicide.
Both sides face tight deadlines to prepare for the trial. The House team must file its briefs Tuesday. Trump’s defense team lawyers must file their briefs on Feb. 8.
Democrats face a difficult task in persuading enough GOP senators to join them in voting to convict the former president. During a key test vote last week, all but five Republicans backed Trump in an objection to the proceeding lodged by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.).
But Trump’s determination to mount a defense centered on the false claims that fraud tipped the outcome to President Biden could rattle GOP senators at a time when some in the party are facing pressure from donors and more moderate voters to reject such conspiracy theories.
“Trump went 0 for 60 in trying to make the voter fraud argument,” said veteran GOP lawyer Ben Ginsberg. “So Republican senators have no desire to be put on the spot in having to judge his unproven allegations of voter fraud.”
Ginsberg warned that Democrats have “so much raw material” that will allow them to “paint a picture of Trump that’s never been painted before of his involvement in the violence and insurrection.”
“And Trump plays right into their hands in talking about the fraud, for which he has been unable to produce any proof,” he said. “Which is why it’s a completely perilous defense. I can’t imagine any lawyer agreeing to present that case.”
It is also unclear whether Democratic Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), who will preside at the trial, will permit the president’s team to introduce claims of alleged voter fraud.
The collapse of Trump’s legal team could “force the president now to turn to a better strategy,” one that would save him “from self-immolation,” said Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law professor at George Washington University who declined an offer to represent the president at the impeachment trial.
If Trump insists on arguing that the election was stolen, he would be on a destructive path, Turley said.
“That claim is viewed by many senators as one of open contempt for their institution,” he said. “As it stands now, he would be acquitted by a fair margin. If he pursued that path, it could change the view and the votes of some senators.”
The former president’s allies have also urged him to move forward with a defense based on constitutional questions.
In a recent interview with The Washington Post before Trump split with his lawyers, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said the legal team planned to argue that impeaching a president who had already left office was unconstitutional, without getting into any battle over who won the election.
“It’s a simple case, really,” he said.
But Trump, who has been ensconced at his private estate in Florida since leaving the White House, has continued to insist that he actually won the election, according to people familiar with his comments.
As the trial nears, the former president’s circle of advisers has drastically narrowed. He is continuing to talk with his personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani, who led his efforts to subvert the election results. But former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, outside lawyer Jay Sekulow and former campaign lawyer Justin Clark have made clear they want no part of his defense strategy over the Capitol attack.
Some advisers have told Trump that he should testify in his own defense, but that is broadly seen as a bad idea and is unlikely to happen.
Cipollone and Giuliani did not respond to requests for comment.
With the help of Graham, Trump had assembled a team of five lawyers led by Bowers, an ethics and campaign law expert in South Carolina who had worked in the Justice Department under President George W. Bush.
The group included three former federal prosecutors in the state — Deborah Barbier, Johnny Gasser and Gregory Harris — as well as a North Carolina lawyer, Josh Howard. All left the Trump defense team Saturday, according to people familiar with the situation.
Miller said that only Barbier and Bowers had officially been named to the team.
The selection of a South Carolina-based legal team was a dramatic shift from Trump’s previous impeachment last year, when he was charged with abusing his power and obstructing Congress in pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Biden and his family.
During that trial, Trump was defended by lawyers experienced on the national stage. They included Kenneth Starr, the former special prosecutor whose work led to President Bill Clinton’s impeachment; Sekulow, who had defended Trump in other cases; and Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard University law professor known for his work in high-profile, controversial cases.
Losing his legal team days before the Senate trial presents a serious challenge, said Norm Eisen, an attorney who served as co-counsel to the Democratic managers during Trump’s first impeachment.
“This is a total disaster,” he said. “These are real trials, even if they are being litigated in the U.S. Senate, and I can tell you, the defense team needs to be prepared for what’s ahead.”
He said the late decision by Trump’s legal team to withdraw was a sign that the lawyers faced a deep ethical conundrum.
“It is anathema under our code of ethics to pull out on a client on the eve of a trial — unless that client places you in an impossible situation,” Eisen said.
If the Trump legal team had argued Trump’s claim that the election was stolen, “they would be arguing an out-and-out lie, and these lawyers were looking at the consequences of that,” he said, noting that other Trump lawyers are now facing ethics complaints, court sanctions and libel suits for pursuing fraud claims with no basis.
“I believe they were unwilling to expose themselves to years of repercussions for doing that,” Eisen said.
IMO - Trump is less interested in "winning" his case than he is in staying in front of a very large audience (his lawyers and his GOP supporters had to insist that he not appear at the trial to argue his own case).
And as usual, since he has no honor or sense of shame, he doesn't care if the attention he gets is humiliating - it only matters that he gets the attention.
I'll be watching how the GOP Senators vote during and after the trial, and how the arguments are framed. I think we're likely to see an attempt to dog-whistle their approval of the election fraud meme. ie: They'll say the election was stolen without saying "it was stolen" out loud and on the record.
Republicans are so bereft of honor that they can't stand up and take the hit for backing Trump in the first place for fear of losing the rubes, so they're burning through all their political capital trying to figure out how to dump Trump in a way that shifts the blame onto someone else.
The Trump Era has been marked by contradiction, dishonor, hypocrisy and the death of irony (part ∞).
Tomorrow at noon, the presidency of Donald J Trump ends with a final ironic demonstration.
The nation's capital city is an armed camp, filled with tens of thousands of National Guard troops with orders to kill anyone who tries to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power.
That is 9 kinds of fucked up. And it's not likely to get much better. Trump will be out, and if we're a little lucky, he'll be tied in knots defending himself from the hundreds of lawsuits and criminal charges he's spent his whole miserable fucking life skating away from.
But even though some of the shit might fade into the background for a while, we'll still have plutocratic assholes trying to shit-can our democracy. They came too close to knocking us off - they'll probably pull back, consolidate, and regroup for the next assault.
The big ambition of small men always leads them to pursue their dreams of building their little fiefdoms so they can pretend at being emperors.
Because whether for good or ill, "The Greater Fool" is a double-edged sword.
When some shit like Qult45's un-reality gets going, it's hard to stop.
They can keep it going almost like a runaway nuclear reaction when the fuel pile reaches critical mass.
If you stack up the shit fast enough, then it's easier to make that shit sound plausible than it is to refute each separate turd. And because people will begin to believe the shit just through repetition, then eventually, it has to come down to finding a way to force the thing to a screeching halt so somebody can at least sort one piece of it out.
It's not a nice analogy because it's not a nice task - sorting thru the shit. Which is why guys like Trump do the dirtiest nastiest shittiest things they can think of - because somebody has to get down in all that muck to make it stop, and not many people are lining up to volunteer for the duty.
But once that one piece has been taken apart, then the Gordian Knot starts to unravel and the whole mess begins to flip the other way. It "suddenly" becomes a lot easier to see how similar the individual instances of bullshit were, and that makes it easier to see most of what Qult45 has been up to for the bullshit it's always been.
The main avenue for forcing the halt, and unraveling the knot has traditionally been the courts.
And don't get me started on how hard Republicans have been working at fucking up the whole court system - suffice to say we still have a shot at making this thing work in favor of someone other than some rich legacy puke in spite of "conservative" efforts.
Anyway, here's hoping Mr Trump is heading for some very rough water.
On the other side of Donald Trump’s turbulent presidency, the lawyers are waiting.
Leaving aside his Senate impeachment trial, mounting government investigations include a civil probe by New York Attorney General Letitia James, a criminal probe by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., and a federal probe by acting U.S. Attorney for D.C. Michael Sherwin that may include Trump’s role in the catastrophic storming of the U.S. Capitol this month.
But already pending for the soon-to-be South Florida retiree is a trio of lawsuits that allege defamation, fraud and more fraud — all of which are helmed by one attorney.
“I became the go-to person to sue the president,” says Kaplan, 54, with considerable relish.
She is in many ways the ideal legal adversary to take on Trump. Kaplan is a brash and original strategist, with neither a gift for patience nor silence, a crusader for underdogs who has won almost every legal accolade imaginable. Kaplan, says New York Democratic Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in an email, “has been indispensable in the fight against the cancer of hate and division that Trump spent four years exacerbating.”
Before the presidency, Trump was often as engaged in legal tussles as he was in real estate, suing and threatening to sue his way out of financial trouble. With a return to private life, “his terror is that he will no longer be protected by the office and will have to deal with these lawsuits,” says his niece. Trump faces the prospect of spending considerable time in the role of defendant. Kaplan says she will seek to depose him in all three cases. Trump’s lawyers did not respond to requests for comment on the cases in this story.
For much of her career, there was little in Kaplan’s professional bio to suggest she would become an attorney suing behemoths. Kaplan, known to all as Robbie, is a self-described “traditionalist,” in pearls, pumps and, pre-coronavirus, superior blond highlights, who long worked as a top commercial litigator at Paul, Weiss, one of the nation’s preeminent firms, where the fees tend to be if-you-have-to-ask-you-surely-can’t-afford-us.
But she became increasingly identified as an advocate for liberal causes and outside-the-box legal strategies. She is a lesbian, an observant Jew and a die-hard Democrat for whom 12 hours constitutes a light work day.
“My maternal grandmother always hated a bully,” Kaplan says during a series of phone interviews. “One really good job for going after bullies is to be a lawyer.”
Since launching her own firm four years ago, Kaplan has initiated a constellation of cases against powerful, often intimidating forces: white supremacists, major Hollywood players, the president of the United States. Legal writer Dahlia Lithwick calls her “an attorney general for the resistance.”
Stanford University law professor Pamela Karlan says of their frequent legal conversations: “Robbie’s not calling about feelings. She wants to fix it first. She’s the least diffident person I’ve ever met. Plenty of smart people worry about failing. They worry about every little thing. Robbie doesn’t worry about that. In a really disarming way, she doesn’t care if people view her as hyperaggressive.”
In Kaplan’s third Trump case, she represents participants in ACN, a multilevel marketing company promoted on “The Celebrity Apprentice.” They’re suing not ACN, but the former host and his three oldest children, accusing them of endorsing the company as a promising business opportunity.
While Trump billed himself as a populist, Kaplan perceived a consistent disconnect in how Trump University and other enterprises allegedly took advantage of the very people whose interests he claimed to champion.
“Because of his prominence, he marketed his ability to convince unsophisticated, very poor Americans to invest,” says Kaplan, who was indignant that Trump “would exploit people like this to line your own pockets.”
(In a Business Insider story, a Trump organization spokesperson responded to the suit by saying, “Before enrolling with ACN, every participant acknowledged in writing that they are ‘not guaranteed any income.’ ” In that story, ACN co-founder Robert Stevanovski claimed the plaintiffs were told that Trump was getting paid to endorse the company. “I think it’s politically motivated that they’re going to sue him and the family and not us,” he said.)
Kaplan remains most celebrated for the Edie Windsor case that, in 2013, successfully struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, paving the way with stunning alacrity for the legalization of same-sex marriage two years later to the day.
Among Kaplan’s strategic moves — “I don’t know where I found the chutzpah to do this” — was to help coax Bill Clinton to publish a Washington Post opinion piece renouncing his 1996 support of DOMA before she appeared before the nation’s highest court. United States v. Windsor remains the only U.S. Supreme Court case that she has ever argued.
“A little girl with a big mouth.” That’s how Kaplan’s grandmother described her, meant with affection. Growing up in Cleveland, she was a rigorous student who designed a plan. Head East to a top school (Harvard), train as a lawyer (Columbia), become a New Yorker.
Five years ago, that plan expanded to landing a top Justice Department position in Hillary Clinton’s administration.
So, no.
Instead, in the summer of 2017, Kaplan launched her own boutique firm, still a rarity among female corporate lawyers, creating an unusual model that combines lucrative commercial litigation with a progressive public-interest practice. Free from the agendas of risk-averse institutional clients, Kaplan and her colleagues became free to take on any case they believed had merit.
One week after the firm moved into its 71st-floor offices of the Empire State Building, the furniture yet to arrive, Charlottesville erupted.
Believing that Trump’s Justice Department seemed unlikely to seriously investigate and prosecute the people responsible for the violence during the “Unite the Right” rally — he infamously claimed there “were very fine people, on both sides” — Kaplan announced, and this was her precise language to friends and colleagues: “I want to sue Nazis.”
Because, why not?
Within days, Kaplan and her team flew to Virginia. The firm adopted an outside-the-box approach and sued two dozen avowed neo-Nazis, white supremacists and associated groups, invoking the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act to argue that they conspired for months to commit racially motivated violence, thereby making it more of a challenge for the organizers to adopt free speech as a defense. The case is scheduled for trial in October.
In the wake of Harvey Weinstein’s sexual misconduct revelations, Kaplan co-founded the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, which offers financial assistance for plaintiffs filing harassment cases, and she now serves as chair of the Time’s Up organization. Many women who say they have been sexually harassed or assaulted have come to her. The actress Amber Heard sought Kaplan’s representation in ex-husband Johnny Depp’s $50 million case involving a 2018 Washington Post opinion piece by Heard; he alleges she defamed him by implying that he domestically abused her. (The op-ed does not explicitly name him.) In the complaint, the actor denies any abuse took place.
Heard says of Kaplan, “I’m instantly drawn to the type of individual who can look upon the Goliath and say ‘I think I can take you.’ That kind of energy and temerity is rare in the world, especially in the legal world.”
Suing the powerful has brought repeated threats. Kaplan has an apartment in Manhattan but requested that her country home’s location, where she has spent the pandemic working, go unnamed.
Kaplan says the greatest abuse she’s received on social media has come not from neo-Nazis, white supremacists or Trump’s true believers, but from Depp’s vehement online champions.
A hallmark of Kaplan Hecker & Fink is crafting complaints in layman’s language that pack a wallop. The Mary Trump brief is a doozy. “For Donald J. Trump, his sister Maryanne, and their late brother Robert, fraud was not just the family business — it was a way of life,” the complaint begins, before alleging three duplicitous schemes, “The Grift,” “The Devaluing” and “The Squeeze-Out.”
When Carroll first met with Kaplan, the lawyer quickly understood her client’s objective. “I don’t give two flying figs about an apology,” Carroll says. “I am dying to get him in a deposition. I want him to say that I’m not a liar. I just want him to admit that he lied and that, yes, it happened.”
The last few years of Kaplan’s professional life, with her firm swelling from four to 43 elite lawyers, are inextricably intertwined with Trump. Without his election, Kaplan may not have launched her own firm as quickly or filed three lawsuits against him.
“I’m ready. I’m excited,” says Kaplan. In the Carroll case, Kaplan believes that Trump’s proclivity for false and misleading statements, with more than 30,000 of them during his White House term, according to The Post, will be tested when he is under oath. During a 2007 Trump deposition, lawyers caught him making exaggerated claims 30 times, according to a 2016 Post investigation.
“When we depose you, you’re not going to get away with that,” Kaplan says. “He had the mantle of the presidency, and that’s now gone.”
Kaplan is celebrated for her candor. She’s active in LGBTQ causes, recently serving as the board chair of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis. She rhapsodizes about her “big gay Jewish wedding” in 2005 to Rachel Lavine, a liberal activist who serves on New York’s Democratic committee.
Yet Kaplan remained in the closet until law school graduation.
“Robbie is one of the most conventional radicals you’ll ever meet,” Lithwick says.
In 1991, Kaplan came out to her parents at age 25. It did not go well. Her mother walked up to a wall and began banging her head, repeatedly, in dismay. “Which she has apologized for over and over again,” Kaplan says. The family remains close.
Kaplan experienced a rare episode of depression, which led her to consult a therapist named Thea Spyer, who referenced her lesbian relationship in an effort to comfort Kaplan — and whose death in 2009 left a punitive estate tax bill to her partner, Edie Windsor, because their marriage wasn’t legally recognized, sparking the Supreme Court case that helped define Kaplan’s career.
Why did such an outspoken person hide her true identity for so long?
“I’d never been a burn-down-the-ramparts sort of person. I believed in working in institutions,” says Kaplan. “Living a life very much on the margins didn’t appeal to me. I really wanted to have kids. I really wanted to be part of the Jewish community. I really wanted to have a career. All of this would have been unavailable in the world I grew up in.”
She has all of that — the marriage, a son (Jacob, now 14), a goldendoodle. On Sunday mornings, she participates in a Talmud discussion group with her rabbi and Lithwick.
“Also, I knew when I met Rachel there was no way I was going to be able to be in the closet and be with Rachel,” Kaplan says. “Those two things were completely incompatible.” Everyone in the New York gay rights movement knew Lavine. Politics, civic engagement and intellectual rigor were part of the attraction. On an early date in a romantic Chelsea bistro, the two argued at length over the comparative power of the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks during the Russian Revolution.
Although known for her fresh legal arguments, Kaplan was comfortable working in a large firm. She seemed unlikely to go out on her own. In many ways, it’s the boldest professional move she’s made.
“What makes a good litigator and lawyer is being a pessimist and risk averse because you need to be looking at problems around the next corner,” says Karlan, who helped prepare Kaplan for the Supreme Court argument. “Robbie has been as successful as she is because she doesn’t appear to be that kind of thinker. She’s an optimist.”
The firm’s high-profile cases have attracted top legal talent, like Joshua Matz, who briefly left the firm last year to help the House Judiciary Committee draft articles of impeachment.
“We’ve learned that in presenting options to Robbie, she will presumptively favor the most aggressive option,” Matz says. “She is jaw-droppingly strategic and savvy on the one hand, and extremely bold on the other.”
It’s also a menschy practice. “What’s unusual is the sheer amount of contact she has with her clients,” Karlan says. Kaplan celebrated Passover with Windsor, who died in 2017. She’s available at all hours for phone consultations. Gifts of food are constant. She sent Heard a box of chicken soup, lox and bagels.
Citing logistical challenges that were better served by local counsel, Kaplan’s firm no longer represents Heard in the defamation case that is scheduled for trial in May.
Yet Kaplan continues to offer Heard legal advice on the case and other legal matters. They speak regularly, sometimes daily. “She is the bravest lawyer I have ever met. She doesn’t get intimidated or scare easily,” Heard says. “The well-behaved woman never interested me. There’s a rebellious part of Robbie. I think of her as my Jewish mother.”
Kaplan’s close friend Sharon Nelles, head of litigation at Sullivan & Cromwell, says: “If you can come at the world the way she does, you are not reined in by whether there are social constructs or boundaries. You can create your own mold. Lawyers for the most part react. Robbie acts.”
Nelles recalls a time when Kaplan called to consult on a case. “She’s yapping at me on the phone and then lets out a little screech.”
Nelles asked what was wrong. “Oh, I’m having a medical procedure,” Kaplan said. “Let me call you back when I get off the doctor’s table.”
Mary Trump hired Kaplan to sue President Trump, his sister Maryanne Trump Barry and the estate of his late brother Robert Trump “because I want justice for my daughter, and for me, and for my dad. If Donald Trump is not going to be held accountable for other things, he needs to be held accountable for this,” she says, adding: “Maybe that will start the dominoes to fall. Maybe other people will feel that they, too, have options and will come forward.” Kaplan’s firm regularly fields inquiries from potential clients who wish to sue Trump.
Carroll cannot wait for her day in court with Trump. She’s already picked out her outfit. Black. Armani.
She also views her lawsuit as symbolic, saying, “It’s for all the women in the country who have been harassed or assaulted by powerful men, and feel helpless to do anything about it.”
So Carroll’s doing something about it.
“I don’t have to be brave,” she says. “Because Robbie Kaplan is brave for me.”
Speculation is running to the crazy side - even crazier that usual.
How far will Trump push the delusion?
Will Qult45 try to set up a counter-inauguration? Are they looking for a direct confrontation in order to give Trump the pretext they think will allow him to declare Martial Law and call out the troops?
Will their efforts be thwarted by Joe's evil plan for a virtual inauguration?
Will Mary Ann put on that leather bustier and go full blown Domme like the Professor always wanted?
Will Gilligan and Mrs Howell get it on with this week's Special Guest Star?
Will Trump continue the bluff-n-bluster right up to the end and then simply run away - as per usual?
Every day is another episode of The American Playhouse Of Stoopid, and it's all just nine kinds of fucked up.
Official plane used by Trump will fly to Scotland just before Biden inauguration – report
Arrival of military plane president has occasionally used fuels questions over Trump’s plans for 20 January
The murk surrounding Donald Trump’s likely whereabouts on his last day as president has thickened considerably with news that an official plane he has used in the past is due to fly to Scotland the day before Joe Biden’s inauguration.
Trump himself is sticking to his refusal to accept his decisive electoral defeat. He has been caught cajoling election officials to “find” thousands of extra votes and is encouraging his supporters to gather for a “wild” day of protest on Wednesday when Congress is due to ratify the result.
The White House has refused to say what he will do when Biden is inaugurated on 20 January, raising the question of whether Trump will even leave the building voluntarily.
Most Trump-watchers expect him to dodge any event that would involve acknowledging his election loss. They predict he will stage a spectacular diversion to detract from Biden’s first day on the job.
Many versions of that scenario have the outgoing president flying to his private club in Florida, Mar-a-Lago. But Scotland’s Sunday Post has reported that Prestwick airport, near Trump’s Turnberry golf course resort, has been told to expect a US military Boeing 757 that has occasionally been used by Trump, on 19 January.
The report said that speculation over a possible inauguration day drama has been fuelled by sightings of US military surveillance aircraft circling Turnberry for a week in November, doing possible advance work.
“It is usually a sign Trump is going to be somewhere for an extended period,” the Post quoted an unnamed source as saying.
The 757 is a smaller, narrower plane than the Boeing 747-200Bs that are normally designated Air Force One. It is more often used by the vice-president and first lady, Melania Trump, than the president.
There was no immediate response to requests for comment from the White House or Prestwick airport.
Leaving the country before formally leaving office would be unprecedented for a US president.
Flying to Scotland before 20 January would be a way to get US taxpayers to pay for the first leg of a post-presidential holiday. It is also possible the flight was booked as a contingency by a candidate surprised by defeat and unsure what to do.
Multiple reports suggest he will face severe difficulties in his heavily indebted business empire.
New accounts published on Monday showed Trump’s array of golf properties in Scotland lost £3.4m in 2019, though Trump Turnberry showed a modest profit.
Meanwhile his neighbours at Mar-a-Lago have launched a legal effort to stop him moving there full-time, saying he is precluded by an agreement he signed in the early 1990s converting the estate from a private residence to a club.
Wherever Trump goes on 20 January, it is unlikely the exit will be quiet or particularly dignified. But it will be unlike any presidential departure the country has ever witnessed.
... just not sure what it'll look like, and whether or not Qult45 will start to behave like normal people or go full-blown Berserker the way they've been talking.
If some of this materializes in ways that seriously threaten to send Trump to prison, things could get really dicey.
State prosecutors in Manhattan have interviewed several employees of President Trump’s bank and insurance broker in recent weeks, according to people with knowledge of the matter, significantly escalating an investigation into the president that he is powerless to stop.
The interviews with people who work for the lender, Deutsche Bank, and the insurance brokerage, Aon, are the latest indication that once Mr. Trump leaves office, he still faces the potential threat of criminal charges that would be beyond the reach of federal pardons.
It remains unclear whether the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., will ultimately bring charges. The prosecutors have been fighting in court for more than a year to obtain Mr. Trump’s personal and corporate tax returns, which they have called central to their investigation. The issue now rests with the Supreme Court.
But lately, Mr. Vance’s office has stepped up its efforts, issuing new subpoenas and questioning witnesses, including some before a grand jury, according to the people with knowledge of the matter, who requested anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the investigation.
The grand jury appears to be serving an investigative function, allowing prosecutors to authenticate documents and pursue other leads, rather than considering any charges.
When Mr. Trump returns to private life in January, he will lose the protection from criminal prosecution that his office has afforded him. While The New York Times has reported that he discussed granting pre-emptive pardons to his eldest children before leaving office — and has claimed that he has the power to pardon himself — that authority applies only to federal crimes, and not to state or local investigations like the one being conducted by Mr. Vance’s office.
Mr. Trump, who has maintained he did nothing improper, has railed against the inquiry, calling it a politically motivated “witch hunt.”
The investigation by Mr. Vance, a Democrat, has focused on Mr. Trump’s conduct as a private business owner and whether he or employees at his family business, the Trump Organization, committed financial crimes. It is the only known criminal inquiry into the president.
Employees of Deutsche Bank and Aon, two corporate giants, could be important witnesses. As two of Mr. Trump’s oldest allies — and some of the only mainstream companies willing to do regular business with him — they might offer investigators a rich vein of information about the Trump Organization.
There is no indication that either company is suspected of wrongdoing.
Because grand jury rules require secrecy, prosecutors have disclosed little about the focus of the inquiry and nothing about what investigative steps they have taken. But earlier this year, they suggested in court papers that they were examining possible insurance, tax and bank-related fraud in the president’s corporate dealings.
In recent weeks, Mr. Vance’s prosecutors questioned two Deutsche Bank employees about the bank’s procedures for making lending decisions, according to a person familiar with the interviews. The employees were experts in the bank’s underwriting process, not bankers who worked with the Trump Organization, the person said.
While the focus of those interviews was not on the relationship with Mr. Trump, bank officials expect Mr. Vance’s office to summon them for additional rounds of more specific questions in the near future, the person said.
Glimpses into the investigation have come in court records during the bitter and protracted legal battle over a subpoena for eight years of Mr. Trump’s personal and corporate tax returns and other financial records.
A month after Mr. Vance’s office demanded the documents from the president’s accounting firm, Mazars USA, in August 2019, Mr. Trump sued to block compliance with the subpoena. The case has twisted its way through the federal courts, with the president losing at every turn, and is now in front of the Supreme Court for the second time.
Danny Frost, a spokesman for Mr. Vance, declined to comment on recent moves in the investigation. Alan Garten, the Trump Organization’s general counsel, declined to comment, but recently said that the company’s practices complied with the law and called the investigation a “fishing expedition.”
Aon confirmed that the company had received a subpoena for documents from the district attorney’s office but declined to comment on the interviews with prosecutors. “As is our policy, we intend to cooperate with all regulatory bodies, including providing copies of all documents requested by those bodies,” a company spokeswoman said in a statement.
Deutsche Bank, Mr. Trump’s primary lender since the late 1990s, received a subpoena last year from the district attorney and has said it is cooperating with the inquiry.
In court papers, the prosecutors have cited public reports of Mr. Trump’s business dealings as legal justification for their inquiry, including a Washington Post article that concluded the president may have inflated his net worth and the value of his properties to lenders and insurers.
Michael D. Cohen, the president’s former lawyer and fixer who turned on him after pleading guilty to federal charges, also told Congress in February 2019 that Mr. Trump and his employees manipulated his net worth to suit his interests.
“It was my experience that Mr. Trump inflated his total assets when it served his purposes, such as trying to be listed among the wealthiest people in Forbes, and deflated his assets to reduce his real estate taxes,” he said in testimony before the House Oversight Committee.
Mr. Trump’s supporters have noted that Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to lying to Congress and accused him of lying again to earn a reduced prison sentence.
The Trump Organization’s lawyers are also likely to argue to prosecutors that Mr. Trump could not have duped Deutsche Bank because the bank did its own analysis of Mr. Trump’s net worth.
Over the years, employees and executives inside the bank thought that Mr. Trump was overvaluing some of his assets by as much as 70 percent, according to current and former bank officials. Deutsche Bank still decided to lend Mr. Trump’s company hundreds of millions of dollars over the past decade, concluding that he was a safe lending risk in part because he had more than enough money and other assets to personally guarantee the debt.
The prosecutors’ interviews with the employees were not the only recent activity in the investigation. Last month, The Times reported that Mr. Vance’s office had subpoenaed the Trump Organization for records related to tax write-offs on millions of dollars in consulting fees, some of which appear to have gone to the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump.
According to people with knowledge of the matter, the subpoena sought information about fees paid to TTT Consulting L.L.C., an apparent reference to Ms. Trump and other members of her family. Ms. Trump was an executive officer of the Trump companies that made the payments, meaning she appears to have been paid as a consultant while also working for the Trump Organization.
Mr. Garten, the Trump Organization’s general counsel, argued in a statement at the time that the subpoena was part of an “ongoing attempt to harass the company.” He added that “everything was done in strict compliance with applicable law and under the advice of counsel and tax experts.”
Mr. Vance’s investigation has spanned more than two years and shifted focus over time. When the investigation began, it examined the Trump Organization’s role in hush money payments made during the 2016 presidential campaign to two women who claimed to have had affairs with Mr. Trump. Prosecutors were examining how the company recorded a reimbursement to Mr. Cohen for one of the payments. Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to federal campaign finance violations for his role in the scheme.
A state grand jury convened by Mr. Vance’s office heard testimony from at least one witness about that issue last year, according to a person with knowledge of that testimony, but the payments have receded as a central focus of the inquiry.
In fresh blow to Trump, U.S. court rejects Pennsylvania election case
A federal appeals court on Friday rejected an attempt by U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign to block President-elect Joe Biden from being declared the winner of Pennsylvania, dealing another significant setback to Trump’s bid to overturn the Nov. 3 election.
“Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy. Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so,” wrote Stephanos Bibas on behalf of a three-judge panel.
“Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here,” wrote Bibas, who was nominated by Trump.
The Trump campaign and its supporters have tried and failed to convince judges of election irregularities in Michigan, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada, all critical to Biden’s victory.
“Voters, not lawyers, choose the President. Ballots, not briefs, decide elections,” said the appeals court opinion.
“On to SCOTUS!” wrote Jenna Ellis, a Trump campaign attorney, on Twitter after the ruling, referring to a planned appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. “The activist judicial machinery in Pennsylvania continues to cover up the allegations of massive fraud.”
Pennsylvania certified Biden, who won the state by 80,000 votes, as its winner this week. Under Pennsylvania law, the candidate who wins the popular vote in the state gets all of the state’s 20 electoral votes.
Trump, a Republican, has refused to concede to his Democratic rival and continues to claim, without evidence, widespread voter fraud.
But as his legal challenges to the results fail, Trump said on Thursday he will leave the White House if the Electoral College votes for Biden when it meets on Dec. 14, the closest he has come to conceding the election.
On Monday, Trump’s administration cleared the way Biden to transition to the White House, giving him access to briefings and funding even as Trump vowed to continue fighting the election results.
Biden won the election 306-232 in electoral votes, including Pennsylvania’s 20. Even if Trump overturned the outcome in Pennsylvania, he would still need to reverse the result in at least two other states to remain as president. TIME RUNNING OUT
While Trump and his supporters continue to wage legal battles, time is running out as states as states have until Dec. 8 to resolve election disputes.
Legal experts have said the cases have no chance of success and may be aimed at undermining confidence in the election. Polls have showed a majority of Republicans believe Trump won the election and many believe the election was tainted, despite a lack of evidence.
Soon after Friday’s ruling, Trump posted a video from Newsmax on Twitter about alleged voter fraud in Nevada.
The Trump campaign filed the Pennsylvania case earlier this month, saying that county election officials had treated mail-in ballots inconsistently and asking U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann to halt certification of the results.
Some counties had allowed voters to fix minor deficiencies with their ballots, such as a missing “secrecy envelope,” while others did not.
Brann dismissed the case on Nov. 21, saying the case was based on “strained legal arguments” and “speculative accusations.”
The Trump campaign said it appealed on the “narrow” question of whether Brann improperly refused to let it amend the lawsuit a second time.
The campaign wants to add back allegations it dropped from the case, including a claim that its due process rights were violated.
The appeals court said many of the claims by Trump campaign are matters of Pennsylvania law but noted the campaign already lost on those issues in state court.
“It never alleges that anyone treated the Trump campaign or Trump votes worse than it treated the Biden campaign or Biden votes,” said the opinion. “The campaign’s claims have no merit.”
The other judges on the panel, Brooks Smith and Michael Chagares, were nominated by George W. Bush, a Republican.
It's all a painfully cringe-worthy game show - it doesn't even rise to the standards of bad "reality TV".
Qult45 devotees keep barking about "fraud" in public, and they keep not bringing fraud cases or examples or evidence to court with them.
Small furniture. Small man. Small wonder he's such a big fuckin' loser.
The election was a fraud. If the Electoral College votes to elect Biden, it'll be a mistake. - and -
Of course I'll leave if I'm not elected.
The kicker is when he gets his hackles up and bitches about "you don't talk to me that way" (President Karen would like to see the manager). All while sitting behind an end table with the presidential seal kinda duct-taped to it, in a room with an unswept carpet and an undecorated Christmas tree.
He plays this shitty little game every time. He preens and builds himself up to be above reproach even when everybody has to know reproach is more than warranted - but then pretending to have options no matter what. He's aways waiting for the outcome to be decided so he can stand in front of that outcome and claim it was his decision - or his choice - or his policy - or his actions - all along.
He made it all happen - for he is truly the great and powerful Donald Of Oz.
Two weeks ago, President Donald Trump declared that he had declassified all documents related to Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election — but now his own chief of staff is saying under oath that isn’t true.
On October 6th, the president claimed on Twitter that “all Russia Hoax Scandal information was Declassified by me long ago,” and then added that “Unfortunately for our Country, people have acted very slowly, especially since it is perhaps the biggest political crime in the history of our Country.”
In a follow-up tweet, the president similarly wrote, “I have fully authorized the total Declassification of any & all documents pertaining to the single greatest political CRIME in American History, the Russia Hoax.”
For good measure, the president also insisted on “no redactions.”
This claim of declassification inspired BuzzFeed News reporter Jason Leopold to file a Freedom of Information Act to get access to those documents.
However, as USA Today reporter Brad Heath reveals, Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows submitted a reply to Leopold’s request indicating that those documents have not been declassified.
“The President indicated to me that his statements on Twitter were not self-executing declassification orders and to not require the declassification of any particular documents,” Meadows said in a filing with the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.
