Classic Daddy State

He constantly bitches about how everything is rigged against him, while he's busy rigging it against everybody but himself and a few of his cronies.

Daddy State Awareness

• The Daddy State lies as a means of demonstrating power.
• The lies have practically nothing to do with the subject of the lies.
• Lying about everything creates chaos, which helps condition us to stop thinking, and look to them for "guidance".
• Once we're totally dependent on them, we'll accept the premise that they can do anything they want.

The goal is to dictate reality to us

THE RULES:

1. Every accusation is a confession.

Trump is poised to bypass his legal woes thanks to judges he appointed

The string of victories reflects luck and timing.

Donald Trump is on the cusp of emerging unscathed from his four criminal prosecutions — thanks almost entirely to the decisions of four judges he appointed.

Trump’s three Supreme Court picks formed a decisive bloc to declare presidents immune from prosecution for official conduct — freezing the charges he faces in multiple jurisdictions for trying to subvert the 2020 election and putting his New York conviction in doubt. Then his nominee to the federal court in Florida, Judge Aileen Cannon, handed him another victory by dismissing the charges he faces for hoarding classified documents and concealing them from investigators.

Her decision earned a shout-out from Trump as he accepted the Republican nomination on Thursday. “A major ruling was handed down from a highly respected federal judge in Florida, Aileen Cannon,” he said.

Trump’s string of victories reflects what experts say is extraordinary luck and timing. He’s the first president since Ronald Reagan to appoint three justices to the Supreme Court, and the first to ever face criminal charges that, soon thereafter, landed in front of the very judges he put on the bench.

“This is a perfect example of serendipity, how the occurrence of events and trials and tribulations of the judicial process have all combined to work in favor of Donald Trump,” said Gene Rossi, a former federal prosecutor and civil litigator.

But it’s also a function, those experts say, of the fact that Trump rose to power in an era when conservatives — who had been burned in the past by judicial picks that later broke ranks — had begun perfecting a strategy of appointing judges who would more reliably rule in their favor. President Joe Biden, too, has appointed judges whose backgrounds appear more reliably liberal, though it’s not yet clear whether he will have the same impact on the judiciary as his predecessor.

“Today, given that politics are so important in securing a judicial appointment, I can see how that sort of concern can spread,” said David Zaring, professor of legal studies from the Wharton School of Business. “[Trump] got so lucky — people don’t usually get a chance to appoint three justices to the Supreme Court in one term. Trump got it and then the Supreme Court gave him a very favorable ruling after that.”

Cannon’s ruling in the documents case had nothing to do with the substance of the charges — widely considered to be the most clear-cut case Trump faces. Cannon found that Attorney General Merrick Garland overstepped his authority when he named Smith special counsel, invalidating the entire prosecution. But the decision — which legal experts suggested would likely be reversed on appeal — nevertheless put Trump’s already-slim odds of facing trial this year effectively out of reach.

“Given her record in this prosecution so far, I can see why people would think that … she’s in the bag for the man who appointed her,” said Zaring, who said he sees some merit and conservative thinking behind the ruling, even though he views it as likely to be overturned. “Unfortunately, I think it’s going to be impossible to avoid people coming to that conclusion.”

Cannon, in particular, represents a stark example. She was confirmed to the bench in November 2020, days after Trump lost reelection to Joe Biden. And she drew widespread criticism two years later after she slowed the investigation by granting a longshot push by the defense to require that an independent monitor review materials the FBI seized from Mar-a-Lago.

A conservative appeals court panel, which featured two Trump appointees, ultimately rebuked Cannon and unfroze the case, but the delay aided defense efforts to postpone the case, part of Trump’s broader strategy to push his criminal cases past the 2024 election.

“Talk about pure luck,” said University of Massachusetts Dartmouth political science professor Kenneth Manning, who studied Trump trial court judges for a 2020 paper “They drew an inside straight when they had Aileen Cannon. When the federal prosecutors chose to charge him in Florida instead of D.C.”

To Trump’s defenders, the favorable rulings by his own judges are a sign of their willingness to make unpopular — but legally correct — calls.

“The judges appointed by Trump are ruling in his favor. The judges appointed by Democrats are going against him,” said Tim Parlatore, who has represented the former president at. “It does correctly undermine the public’s trust in the system because sometimes judges do things that are political.”

Parlatore said he largely agreed with the decisions the Trump-appointed judges are making but said the system would function better if it wasn’t so easy to predict outcomes based on the party of the president who appointed them.

Not all of Trump’s appointees have ruled uniformly in his favor throughout his yearslong odyssey through the criminal justice system. In 2022, the Supreme Court rebuffed his effort to shield his White House papers from the Jan. 6 select committee, and it declined to consider his Cannon-backed effort to keep the documents investigation frozen.

Before Trump left the White House, several of his own appointees issued fierce rebukes of his and his allies’ efforts to overturn election results in a handful of swing states. And one of Trump’s appointees, U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich, issued a key ruling that upheld the validity of special counsel Robert Mueller’s appointment — a decision that now stands in contrast to Cannon’s conclusion about Smith. But that willingness to buck party lines may be an increasingly rare phenomenon.

Zaring, the Wharton professor, studied Trump’s appointees to the appellate court and found that they were younger, far likelier to have worked in political jobs or the White House and had “a ton of exposure to the conservative legal establishment.

“I just don’t think it used to be that way,” he said. “Unfortunately,” Zaring said. “I think that both Democratic and Republican presidents have been very good at seeking ideologically compatible appointees to the judiciary.”

Goose-n-Gander Time, Kids

Aileen Cannon dismissed the classified documents case against Trump by ruling the special counsel appointment was bogus. So Hunter Biden's team filed a motion to vacate his conviction under the same rubric.

So we may be about to see just how fucked up the Third Branch is.

Or maybe, we'll see SCOTUS wriggle and squirm and invent a whole new way to blow their chance to redeem some of their credibility.

Or maybe they'll wait a bit, looking for the right time to torpedo Trump.

Justice Delayed

One thing:

It's being shown by a lot of Federalist Society-chosen Article 3 judges that precedent doesn't matter. They're cherry-picking everything, and they'll blow up decades of stare decisis when it fits whatever this "originalist" bullshit means to any given jurist.

We need to stop expecting these people to do what's right.

From the comments:

Judge Aileen Cannon held another useless day long hearing where she entertained the idea that Jack Smith’s appointment as Special Counsel was somehow invalid. Once again Cannon got her idea for the hearing from her usual source. ie: Fox News or some other wingnut outlet. Cannon took a straightforward case that should have been easy for any other Judge to try and get to verdict but in Cannon’s hands the case is an unmitigated disaster. She has held multiple day long hearings that resulted in nothing but delaying the case. Exactly what Trump wanted.

There is no doubt that Judge Cannon is running a law firm from the bench to benefit her one client, Donald Trump.

She is not representing the justice system. She is not adjudicating the case in the matter required by law. She is not a fair and impartial Judge. She is just another in a long line of quisling simps for Donald Trump. And she has bet her entire career on Donald Trump getting elected and promoting her up the chain - Supreme Court? or maybe Attorney General? I would not be surprised to discover that she is wearing a cheap blue suit and too long red Trump tie under her robes and probably Trump sneakers as well. Aileen Cannon is the ultimate MAGA. And that may very well backfire on her after Trump’s defeat this November.

What recourse is there for a runaway and fully corrupted judge like Cannon? The first stop is with her colleagues on the bench. They tried to get her off the case but Cannon refused. And we know why. Cannon has no real concept of justice. She sees her job as defending Trump. She is committed to delaying or dismissing the case against Trump.

We have to operate from the assumption that Cannon will never allow this case to get to a jury or even to a trial. That is the reality. And like so many other MAGA’s, she seems prepared to sacrifice herself, her career and possibly even her freedom for Donald Trump.

When Trump loses, I hope the DOJ takes a long hard look at Cannon’s actions on behalf of Trump and against the people of the United States. Her corruption is obvious, as is her attempts to obstruct justice. Judge Aileen Cannon must face justice for her potential crimes in service to Donald Trump. America will not survive the open and obvious corruption of our judicial system by Cannon and other MAGA judges.

What's That Biden Guy Doing?

200 federal judges.

Now, if we can get SCOTUS to start acting like they're not on the wrong fucking side, we might just have it made.

SCOTUS

Kinda lost in the hubbub swirling around the court's fucked up decision to overturn the Colorado Supremes' ruling that Trump is disqualified from holding office, is the fairly simple fact that both the Colorado Supreme Court and now SCOTUS have let Judge Wallace's finding of fact stand.

ie: Donald J Trump engaged in insurrection against the United States of America.

It Pays To Be Watchful

Timothy Snyder's "On Tyranny"

2. Defend an institution.

Follow the courts or the media, or a court or a newspaper. Do not speak of “our institutions” unless you are making them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions don't protect themselves. They go down like dominoes unless each is defended from the beginning.

The Judiciary is holding - for now. Do we need to reiterate how it's important to pay some little bit of attention, and to show up and vote, so we can get fewer of these fuckin' goon-friendly wingnuts appointed to the courts?

Remember: Every shitty thing authoritarians do is legal, because once they come to power, the first thing they do is to set about altering the legal system so they can claim to have the law on their side - usually as a matter of dire necessity due to whatever "emergency" they've ginned up to scare people into supporting them.

“A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” he wrote. “Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”

            --Donald Trump, Dec 2022 

Goon-friendly judge
Cormack Carney

What They Won't Do

Now here's a headline:

The Far Right Is Calling For Bloody ‘Civil War’ After Trump’s Indictment

Like most of us (I think), I recognize this as potentially very dangerous, but just too silly to believe it'll come to anything more than some really shitty people doing some really shitty things, as they try to show somebody (fake lord knows who) what great "patriots" they are, while actually proving what a buncha gullible fuckin' rubes they've always been and continue to be.

I'm not trying to minimize anything here - the shitty things some of these dipsticks will do are likely to be truly shitty. Americans will die.

Plutocrats will keep working to destabilize American democracy, and they'll always have a receptive audience because there's always a double-digit segment of people who just want trouble.

Watching an old western movie on TV - about a thousand years ago - the usual bar fight scene unfolds, and I asked my dad how come a couple of drunks start trading punches, and suddenly you've got 30 guys throwing furniture and beer mugs, and generally trashing the whole joint?

"Because some of these jokers got nothin' better to do. They're always waiting for a chance to prove they can scrap - just for the hell of it. They think bustin' their knuckles on some other joker's head is how you go about bein' a man."

Minutes after former President Donald Trump was indicted by a grand jury in New York, his supporters flooded social media and extremist message boards with violent and racist threats against the officials prosecuting Trump, as well as bloody civil war.

“This cannot go unpunished,” one member of the rabidly pro-Trump message board The Donald wrote on Thursday night. “The DA needs to pay dearly.”

“None of this will stop unless there is blood in the streets,” another poster wrote.

In Trump’s own statement, the former president called the indictment a “political persecution” and referred to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg as “hand-picked and funded by George Soros,” and stated that Bragg is “doing Joe Biden’s dirty work.”

His far-right supporters mobilized quickly online to echo these comments. Through their vitriol, and calls for war, some supporters also promoted a narrative where Trump’s indictment was actually going to help him win victory in 2024. In some cases, supporters falsely said the indictment was simply a ruse to distract everyone from the shooter in Nashville earlier this week.

“The whole trans terrorist thing must have been polling badly so they decided to indict Trump based on the testimony of a lying jew and lying whore,” one influential neo-Nazi account on Telegram wrote, alongside an AI-generated image of a tattooed, topless Trump in a prison yard.

While Trump supporters did not publicly make specific plans for protests or violence, there were numerous examples of violent rhetoric in response to Trump’s indictment, including calling for violence against Bragg, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, and law enforcement.

On platforms like The Donald, where all five of the top pinned posts on the homepage on Thursday night related to Trump’s indictment, commenters openly called for violence that was largely racist in nature.

Under a post with a photo of Bragg captioned “FAT PIECE OF SHIT!” another user commented: “There once was a time when he would have been lynched for much less.”

“Can’t we put a bounty on Bragg’s head? Time to fight lawlessness with lawlessness,” one user wrote. In response, someone said: “Hey man a lot of us are thinking the same thing, but if I said what should really happen I'd be charged with ‘terroristic threats.’” Another added: “The unjustified prosecution of President Trump is state terrorism. Respond to terrorism with terrorism.”

When one member of The Donald pointed out that the New York Police Department has ordered all officers to report for duty on Friday morning as a precautionary measure,” another user, while talking about the day after the indictment, commented: “Hopefully, it will be remembered as a day of slaughter.”

There were also many users calling for civil war on the platform. “Yeah. I’m down with just getting 1776 round 2 over with. The build up is infuriating,’ one user wrote in response to the news, while another added: “They want you pissed. Looks like WW3 could be off the table for now, so onto plan B: civil war.”

Some users laid out more detailed plans, discussing militias and boycotts and tax avoidance, while another simply wrote: “War.”

The threats of violence, found on a wide variety of platforms ranging from Trump’s own Truth Social to more mainstream platforms like Twitter, notorious message board 4chan, and The Donald, were located by VICE News and researchers from Advance Democracy, a nonpartisan group that tracks extremists online. And though there are no specific plans detailed right now, users on The Donald played a significant role in the planning, incitement, and coordination of violent events on January 6, 2021.

It’s also not just anonymous users on fringe message boards who are using incendiary language to incite anger about Trump’s indictment.

“The political Rubicon has been crossed. There's no going back from this,” Charlie Kirk, a right-wing talk show host, wrote on Truth Social. One of Kirk’s followers responded writing: “There is only one way back & that is WAR!”

Also on Truth Social, Pizzagate conspiracist, right-wing troll and organizer of the Stop the Steal movement, Jack Posobiec simply wrote: “Are you ready” to which many followers replied: “Let’s go.”

Ali Alexander, the Stop the Steal organizer, also posted a video of himself reacting to the news: “You want to raise me an indictment? I’ll raise you a civil war, I’ll raise you a World War 3, I’ll raise you a cap in your ass.” before claiming that “all of these are metaphors.”

On Fox News, sports columnist Jason Whitlock called for men to prepare for what’s coming. "I hope every other man out there watching this show, I hope you're ready for whatever's next. If that's what they want let's get to it,” Whitlock told Fox News host Tucker Carlson. The host himself also weighed in, responding to another quest on his show who claimed the country was becoming an authoritarian state, by saying: “Probably not the best time to give up your AR-15s. And I think most people know that.”

The New York Young Republican Club issued a statement on the indictment that concluded with the line: “President Trump assured us that he was our retribution. Now we must return the rejoinder: our victory will be the joint vindication that our great President Donald J. Trump and our American people both deserve. This is Total War.”

However, though many Trump supporters openly called for violence, members of The Donald also cautioned against protests of any kind, claiming the FBI was simply “baiting” people “to do something.”

“Everyone is too scared to get J6ed,” one user wrote, referencing arrests surrounding the Jan. 6 Capitol riots.

This claim was echoed by far-right disinformation superspreader Alex Jones, who claimed the “deep state” was looking to provoke Trump supporters into a “summer of rage or a civil war” or stage false flag events that would be blamed on Trump supporters. He urged Trump supporters not to take the bait. “We don’t want violence, we want a cultural revolution,” he tweeted.

On 4chan, an anonymous user commented: “Garland should be assassinated.”

On Telegram, neo-Nazi groups were sharing a note that compared the current situation in the U.S. to the build-up to the Spanish Civil War. “Today's indictment of Trump, the Transgender terrorism, the massive recession we are plunging into, countries of the world gravitating commercially/politically away from the United States, and the general Communist agitation happening at every level of the government is simply part of the perfect storm which is likely to cause a calamity that we have yet to come to know,” a post shared by a neo-Nazi active club wrote on Telegram, advocating for followers to create chaos rather than plan specific violent attacks.

Other Nazi figures, unsurprisingly, tried to agitate followers to action. The former leader of a neo-Nazi group designated a terrorist organization in multiple countries declared that this indictment makes the “GOP look spineless,” and urged that the “right must embrace militancy.” He gave his followers a warning that “Trump being thrown in prison will signal the Left's total victory in its multi-generational battle to infiltrate and usurp power in [the] USA. It will require nothing less than a revolution by patriots to reacquire any degree of political agency.”

And in some spaces, like in pro-Trump conspiracy communities like QAnon, the reaction to his indictment has been almost entirely positive. Influencers in the movement have claimed that the imminent arrest is what they have, in fact, been waiting for all along, and means that Trump will eventually be able to arrest other politicians like Hillary Clinton. Some users are claiming that the indictment will be positive forTrump’s election chances as well.

This claim was backed up by the notorious pro-Trump Twitter troll known as Catturd, who tweeted: “President Trump just won 2024.” a post that has been viewed over 1.2 million times and shared widely on other platforms.

“There is NOTHING that will UNITE the MAGA movement on all sides like [them] indicting Trump, NOTHING,” one prominent QAnon influencer wrote on Telegram. “There are MANY who didn’t know who they would be voting for in 2024, who now know FOR SURE after today.”

Waiting

Kathleen Parker is one of the pimpiest of the ideology pimps, so every now and then, she inadvertently gets one right. Which is how she stays in business. As deliberately wrong as she can be, sometimes she stumbles and tells the truth. AKA: The Classic Beltway Gaffe.

So we can file this one under "Even A Blind Hog Roots Up An Acorn Once In A While".

Opinion

Waiting for a Trump indictment has become an arresting comedy

With apologies to Samuel Beckett, waiting for Donald Trump to be arrested is a bit like waiting for Godot to show up. Only in today’s comedy, Trump never shows up for an event that never happens.

Which allows ample time to consider whether this is good, or bad, for Trump.

Keep in mind it was Trump and not Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg who announced that he’d be arrested Tuesday. Then Wednesday came and then Thursday, and the would-be defendant was still on the campaign trail.

The specificity of his doomsday prophesy should have been a hint that he was fundraising rather than girding for a confrontation with a new archenemy. Within short order of posting about his dreamed-for arrest, Trump’s campaign raised $1.5 million. Not a bad take for an election-denying, rabble-rousing loser. Not to put too fine a point on the matter.

No one expects Trump to be handcuffed or perp-walked, though he doubtless would prefer such a show. He would be fingerprinted, however, photographed for a mug shot and swabbed for New York’s state DNA database.

And to think it all began with an adult-film star and hush money.

To refresh your memory, Stormy Daniels allegedly had a fling with The Don long before he was The Prez. Concerned that she might spoil everything if Americans found out, especially in the wake of his infamous boasts about assaulting women, Trump allegedly directed his sidekick attorney Michael Cohen to pay her off. More shocking than the deed itself was the cheap thrill he took Daniels for. Only $130,000 in exchange for the presidency? She should sue for something, though I can’t think what.

According to Cohen, who testified before the grand jury, he paid Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, with his own money, and Trump reimbursed him for legal fees. (Trump denies everything, including the alleged tryst.) Because the payment was aimed at helping Trump win the 2016 election, Bragg might contend, as prosecutors in the Cohen case did, that the money should have been declared a campaign contribution. Trump did not report the payment, needless to say.

For his part, Bragg may be out of his league. Given Trump’s record of deceptions and antagonisms, not the least of which was his role in inspiring the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, one would think it not much of a challenge. But Trump’s record also includes countless lawsuits, which he files with the gleeful frequency of a parking-ticket scribbler in the District of Columbia. He loves lawsuits and must be pretty good at the racket — or at least at hiring lawyers who are.

When Trump essentially bragged that he’d be arrested Tuesday, it seems he was merely staging a puppet show. He wouldn’t be arrested unless he wanted to be. Once an indictment is issued, all he has to do is quietly turn himself in. But where’s the fun in that? The puppets were the however-many who crowdfunded his next foray on the hustings.

And the arrest? We wait.

Bragg’s case centers on the idea that the Daniels payoff was far above the $2,700 allowed for individual campaign contributions. By not disclosing it, Trump may have violated federal tax rules that apply to political campaigns.

Of course, some might think, So the man had a night out and wanted the broad to keep her trap shut. (Speaking gangster here.) Nobody’s knees got busted. What’s the big deal?

Well, the United States of America got a little bruised. Never mind the utter seediness of Trump — election laws exist to protect us from thugs and criminals, some of whom wear nice suits and, apparently, own tanning booths. But it seems questionable whether Bragg has a solid indictment — and more’s the pity. It’s worth noting that Cohen, who pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court to eight counts, including criminal tax evasion and campaign finance violations, received a three-year prison sentence.

Democrats and other anti-Trumpers have long hoped a criminal conviction would preclude the former president from ever holding public office again. Would that it were so. No law says someone can’t run if indicted. Trump could even serve as president, assuming he’s not in prison.

In 2016, Trump famously told the audience at a Christian college: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” Whether this remains true isn’t clear. As of Wednesday, his “favorable” rating was at 41 percent, unfavorable at 54.8 percent. These numbers have been relatively constant the past two years.

I suppose it’s possible Trump could enjoy some time in penitential seclusion, depending on sentencing if convicted, but I wouldn’t bet the family goat on it. More likely, if he’s indicted at all, Trump will glory in the injustice of Bragg’s folly, raising millions more for another run at the presidency and emboldening his base to save America from traitors.

His arrest could happen any day now. . . . Or, like Beckett’s Didi and Gogo, we could wait forever for Trump to have his day in court.

Today's Oy

We are the stoopid country.

In what has to be the absolute epitome of elitist bullshit, we've decided corporations can be tried for, and convicted of, and punished for their crimes as if they are in fact people - but somehow the people who benefit greatly from the illegal operations of those corporations just kinda skate by.

To be sure, Weisselberg isn't skating - even a few months at Riker's Island is a possible life sentence for a 75-year-old - but these decisions, and the way the law apparently works, makes it look like he's just the patsy on this caper, and the company gets barely a slap on the wrist, having been ordered to pay a lousy million-six for 15 years of fraud.

Fifteen years

And excuse me, but what about the guy whose name is on the letterhead? 

Can somebody please tell me - what's the fuckin' point here?

Donald Trump's company to be sentenced for 15-year tax fraud

NEW YORK, Jan 13 (Reuters) - Donald Trump on Friday will learn how the company that bears the former U.S. president's name will be punished after being found guilty of scheming to defraud tax authorities for 15 years.

A New York state judge will impose the sentence after jurors in Manhattan found two Trump Organization affiliates guilty of 17 criminal charges last month.

The sentencing comes three days after Justice Juan Merchan of the Manhattan criminal court ordered Allen Weisselberg, who worked for Trump's family for a half-century and was the company's former chief financial officer, to jail for five months after he testified as the prosecution's star witness.

Trump's company faces only a maximum $1.6 million penalty, but has said it plans to appeal. No one else was charged or faces jail time in the case.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office, which brought the case, is still conducting a criminal probe into Trump's business practices.

Bill Black, a professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law specializing in white-collar crime, called the expected penalty a "rounding error" that offers "zero deterrence" to others, including Trump.

"This is a farce," he said. "No one will stop committing these kinds of crimes because of this sentence."

The case has long been a thorn in the side of the Republican former president, who calls it part of a witch hunt by Democrats who dislike him and his politics.

Trump also faces a $250 million civil lawsuit by state Attorney General Letitia James accusing him and his adult children Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump of inflating his net worth and the value of his company's assets to save money on loans and insurance.

Bragg and James are Democrats, as is Bragg's predecessor Cyrus Vance, who brought the criminal case. Trump is seeking the presidency in 2024, after losing his re-election bid in 2020.

At a four-week trial, prosecutors offered evidence that Trump's company covered personal expenses such as rent and car leases for executives without reporting them as income, and pretended that Christmas bonuses were non-employee compensation.

Trump himself signed bonus checks, prosecutors said, as well as the lease on Weisselberg's luxury Manhattan apartment and private school tuition for the CFO's grandchildren.

"The whole narrative that Donald Trump was blissfully ignorant is just not real," Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass told jurors in his closing argument.

Weisselberg's testimony helped convict the company, though he said Trump was not part of the fraud scheme. He also refused to help Bragg in his broader investigation into Trump.

The Trump Organization had put Weisselberg on paid leave until they severed ties this week. His lawyer said the split, announced on Tuesday, was amicable.

Weisselberg, 75, is serving his sentence in New York City's notorious Rikers Island jail.

State law limits the penalties that Justice Merchan can impose on Trump's company. A corporation can be fined up to $250,000 for each tax-related count and $10,000 for each non-tax count.

Trump faces several other legal woes, including probes related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, his retention of classified documents after leaving the White House, and efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia.

It Gets Worse

Trump is always shopping for a sympathetic judge - and to be clear, there's generally nothing wrong with that, except when it gets real fuckin' obvious that there's something really fuckin' wrong with it.

Legal scholars criticize judge's 'laughably bad' ruling in favor of Trump 'special master' request

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon on Monday granted former President Donald Trump's request for a third-party "special master" to review the more than 11,000 documents federal agents took from his Mar-a-Lago residence under a search warrant on Aug. 8, separating out any that may violate attorney-client privilege or executive privilege.

Cannon, nominated by Trump in 2020 and confirmed after his electoral defeat, also ordered the Justice Department to stop using the documents for investigative purposes in its criminal probe of Trump's handling of highly classified government documents. She allowed a parallel intelligence community review of potential national security harm from the storage of top secret documents in a non-secure private club.

Legal scholars called Cannon's ruling unprecedented, in the sense that it goes against decades of court precedent — especially expanding the special master role to include executive privilege potentially claimed by a former president over the executive branch, for government-owned documents the Justice Department argues Trump had no right to take or keep.

This was "an unprecedented intervention by a federal district judge into the middle of an ongoing federal criminal and national security investigation," University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck tells The New York Times. "Enjoining the ongoing criminal investigation is simply untenable," agreed Paul Rosenzweig, a George W. Bush administration official.

"To any lawyer with serious federal criminal court experience who is being honest, this ruling is laughably bad, and the written justification is even flimsier," Duke University law professor Samuel Buell tells the Times. "Donald Trump is getting something no one else ever gets in federal court, he's getting it for no good reason, and it will not in the slightest reduce the ongoing howls that he is being persecuted, when he is being privileged."

Former Attorney General William Barr was more blunt. "I think it's a crock of sh-t," he told the Times on Friday. "I don't think a special master is called for." He made similar comments to Fox News, arguing that a special master is a "waste of time" and the FBI appears totally justified in seizing the documents.

Justice Department spokesman Anthony Coley said the DOJ is "examining the opinion and will consider appropriate next steps in the ongoing litigation." If the department appeals Cannon's ruling, the appeal would be heard by the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit, where six of the 11 active judges are Trump appointees.

Power Is All

We grant an awful lot of power and authority to government, so we have to be able to rein it in - to put a check on it - so it doesn't just run over us when any kind of lynch mob gets up a head of steam.

And sometimes we get a good look at the real damage that power can do when we allow cops and elected law enforcement entities to stick it out to the bitter end, as they try to prove somebody guilty who had nothing to do with the crimes, but everything to do with some "law-n-order" freak willing to fuck people over to save face.

You may recall that Donald Trump figures in this sorry episode that points up how shitty our "justice system" can get.

NYT: (pay wall)

Sixth Teenager Charged in Central Park Jogger Case Is Exonerated

Steven Lopez had a robbery charge linked to the 1989 attack cleared from his record.

A forgotten co-defendant of the Central Park Five, who, like them, was charged with the rape of a jogger in a case that shook New York City and the nation, had a related conviction overturned Monday in downtown Manhattan.

The case against the Five — teenagers of color who were innocent of the 1989 sexual assault on a white woman but who were convicted on the basis of false confessions that the police elicited — continues to shape attitudes surrounding racism in the criminal justice system, the media and society. But the story of the sixth man — Steven Lopez — had previously been all but ignored.

Mr. Lopez, who was arrested when he was 15, struck a deal with prosecutors just before his trial two years later to avoid the more serious rape charge, instead pleading guilty to robbery of a male jogger.

Like his peers, he went to prison; collectively, the group served close to 45 years. Soon after the true assailant in the Central Park rape was identified in 2002, the authorities overturned the rape convictions against the five men. They have gone on to win a $41 million settlement from New York City and become the subjects of films, books and television shows.

The story of Mr. Lopez, now 48, is far less well-known.

His robbery conviction was tossed out and the indictment dismissed in State Supreme Court by the chief administrative judge, Ellen N. Biben. It was the first exoneration under the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, who vowed during his two years on the campaign trail to bolster the work of the office’s wrongful conviction unit.

“We talk about the Central Park Five, the Exonerated Five, but there were six people on that indictment,” Mr. Bragg said before the hearing.

A lawyer for Mr. Lopez, Eric S. Renfroe, addressed his client directly during the proceeding. “It is truly painful to see how this system failed you,” he said.

Mr. Lopez could be heard saying only two words in court — “thank you,” to Judge Biben — and declined to comment afterward.

In an interview, Yusef Salaam and Raymond Santana, two of the Central Park Five, voiced their support for Mr. Lopez, who has not been in contact with them, or the three other members: Korey Wise, Kevin Richardson, and Antron McCray.

“It’s only right that he’s exonerated,” Mr. Santana said. “He’s due that.”

A Signed Confession

Mr. Lopez was 15 when he was arrested and charged with the rape of the jogger, the 28-year-old investment banker, Trisha Meili. Mr. Lopez also faced charges linked to the robbery of a male jogger in the park that same night, April 19, 1989.

According to the review of his case conducted by the Manhattan district attorney’s post-conviction justice unit, Mr. Lopez had been arrested in Central Park after a series of assaults, including that of the male jogger who was thrown to the ground and beaten.

The police held the teenagers at a precinct for hours and hours, pushing them on the details of what had happened in the park. The teens, who were between 14 and 16 years old, said they were led to blame each other for the crime.

Revisiting the Central Park Jogger Case

Five teenagers of color, known as the Central Park Five, were wrongfully convicted of raping a white woman in 1989 in a case that shook New York City and the nation.Exoneration: The convictions against the five men were overturned after the true assailant was identified in 2002. They would later win a $41 million settlement from the city.
‘When They See Us’: In 2019, a Netflix mini-series retold the story of the case, depicting the excruciating toll that persecution and incarceration had on the five boys.
Looking Back: In a series of conversations with The Times, the Central Park Five discussed the fateful events of the case 30 years later.

Mr. Lopez was in a holding cell for about 20 hours before he was questioned. His parents, who were not native English speakers, were present, but no translators were provided. After nearly two and a half hours of questioning, a detective wrote out a statement that Mr. Lopez and his father signed.

The statement placed Mr. Lopez at the scene of the attack on the male jogger. But despite aggressive questioning, Mr. Lopez refused to say he had been involved in the assault on Ms. Meili.

While a number of the other teenagers, questioned under similar duress, said that Mr. Lopez had committed crimes against both the male and female jogger, there was no forensic evidence tying him to the attack on the male jogger, who did not identify Mr. Lopez as one of his assailants. Forensic investigators, however, identified a hair found on Mr. Lopez’s clothing as possibly belonging to the female jogger. (Later, it was determined that the original investigation’s analysis of hair strands was unreliable.)

Ms. Meili had been badly beaten and left for dead. Details of the crime horrified New York City and inflamed racial tensions. Mr. Lopez and the other five boys were charged with rape. (Ms. Meili remained anonymous for more than a decade following the attack before identifying herself; she has objected to the settlement and believes that more than one person attacked her. She could not be reached Monday for comment.)
Convictions and Exonerations

The teens arrested that night, all of whom were Black or Hispanic, were treated as symptoms of a city descending into crime-ridden chaos. They were condemned by the police, prosecutors, the media and a famous real estate developer, Donald J. Trump, who placed full-page ads in the city’s newspapers calling for the death penalty. They were often called “beasts” or a “wolf pack,” as if they were not human.

Trump has never apologized, never retracted any of his statements, and never issued any kind of clarification.

He's consistently gaslighted on the subject, basically shrugging it off as if it never even happened.

“They wrapped their arms around us and looked at us as the pariahs,” Mr. Salaam said. “Wanting, really, for us to be lynched.”

Their trials came the year before the brutal beating of Rodney King. Police misconduct and coercive tactics were not the front-burner issues they are today.

It was decided that the six teenagers charged with the rape would be tried in three separate proceedings. Mr. McCray, Mr. Salaam and Mr. Santana were convicted on Aug. 18, 1990. Mr. Richardson and Mr. Wise were convicted on Dec. 11, 1990. All five maintained their innocence throughout.

A month later, as his trial was scheduled to begin, prosecutors offered Mr. Lopez a plea bargain in which he would plead guilty to first-degree robbery in exchange for having the rape charge dropped. Mr. Lopez agreed and was sentenced to one and a half to four and a half years in state prison.

In February 2002, DNA evidence indicated that an uncharged suspect, Matias Reyes, had attacked the jogger. Mr. Reyes, who was serving time for a separate rape and murder, confessed to the crime.

That year, the Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, moved to have the rape convictions thrown out over the objections of police leadership. In the litigation that followed the exoneration of the Central Park Five, it emerged that a number of those who had been prepared to testify against Mr. Lopez disavowed their previous statements about his guilt. One said that he had only named Mr. Lopez after being told the name by police detectives.

In 2014, the Central Park Five received $41 million from New York City. Once, the five teenagers had represented to many people a city that was on the verge of spiraling out of control. But their story came to symbolize the overreach of the justice system, the gullibility of the media and American society’s deeply ingrained racism toward Black and brown youth.
The Forgotten Man

Until Monday, Mr. Lopez had been a forgotten element in their story. He was not featured in the 2012 documentary that Ken Burns made about the case, and no actor playing him appeared in Ava DuVernay’s 2019 television dramatization of the case, “When They See Us.”

Mr. Lopez’s story was overlooked, in part because he pleaded guilty. (Another defendant, Michael Briscoe, pleaded guilty to assaulting a third jogger; his conviction stands.) He served more than three years of his sentence and did not appeal his conviction.

Instead, nearly 20 years after the exoneration of his co-defendants, and having spent two years working with Mr. Renfroe, Mr. Lopez quietly reintroduced himself to the Manhattan district attorney’s office in February 2021, asking that his conviction be reviewed. The following month, the office began its review.

On the campaign trail, Mr. Bragg made the revamped unit a central tenet of his campaign, and upon taking office he recruited Terri S. Rosenblatt, well known in New York legal circles for her work on criminal defense and civil rights cases, to lead it.

Ms. Rosenblatt said that Mr. Lopez’s exoneration was notable as an example of something that happens too often: an innocent defendant, pleading guilty.

“We talk about wrongful trial convictions a lot, but there can be guilty pleas that are wrongful too,” she said.

Mr. Santana agreed: “We know now that the system is flawed and it needs to be fixed,” he said.

Mr. Bragg, who in January became the first Black Manhattan district attorney, was a 15-year-old teenager living in Harlem when the Central Park case first began to make headlines. He recalled relating effortlessly to the experiences of the young men, saying that he had played basketball and had ridden the bus past the same park where the events that led to their arrests took place.

Mr. Bragg was a friend of Ken Thompson, who was the first Black Brooklyn district attorney and who, before his death in 2016, became known for the work of a unit that reinvestigated questionable convictions.

Mr. Bragg stressed that, in times of public concern about safety — as was the case in 1989 and as is the case again today — exonerations like that of Mr. Lopez could help restore faith in the legal system.

“I am beyond humbled to be in a position to really replicate that work,” he said.

Today's Brian

Brian Tyler Cohen - getting our panties all knotted up because of Merrick Garland's memo.

Or maybe Garland is inoculating DOJ from charges of "political motivation" by reiterating the department's commitment to being apolitical - so when they finally get down to it (and the memo may actually portend to something imminent), they can point back to the memo and countervail those accusations.

Not that any of this is going to cut any ice with "conservatives", but process does matter.

And believe me, I get frustrated as fuck with what seems like a really slow pace. But while I wish Mr Garland would pick it up a little, I have to believe he's the guy who can do what we need done.

People Are Watching

It seems not to do a whole lot of good, but Americans are in fact coming to the realization that we live in a place that's too fucked up in too many ways.

CNN:

Doctor who treated victims at parade shooting says the dead had "wartime injuries"

Dr. David Baum, who treated victims in the Highland Park shooting on Monday, described some of the horrific injuries he witnessed.

Baum and his wife were at the parade, and their grandson was a participant. When their family ran away from the shooting, the doctor ran toward the scene.

Baum said some of the dead were "blown up."

"The horrific scene of some of the bodies is unspeakable for the average person. Having been a physician, I've seen things in ERs, you know, you do see lots of blood. But the bodies were literally — some of the bodies — it was an evisceration injury from the power of this gun and the bullets. There was another person who had an unspeakable head injury. Unspeakable," he told CNN.

Speaking as parade-goers' belongings could be seen abandoned at the scene in the background, Baum said the suburban community in Illinois will never be the same.

"I grew up here, and I moved back here with my wife. We raised our kids here. My daughter and my son-in-law moved here because they were concerned about gun violence and carjackings in the city when they had their son. And now people are, you know, they're scared to take their kids to nursery school. But what I saw was just families' lives forever changed because they were walking down with their kids and their scooters and somebody who shouldn't have had access to a high-powered rifle got up on a rooftop and decided to do what he wanted to do," Baum said.

Robert E. Crimo III, identified by police as the person suspected of shooting and killing six people and wounding dozens of others at the July 4 parade, was arrested on Monday hours after the shooting.

"You know, to me, you can't drink until you're 21, but I still do not know why this country allows an 18-year-old to have a weapon that was meant for war. And the injuries ... that I saw — I never served — but those are wartime injuries. Those are what are seen in victims of war, not victims at a parade," Baum continued.

Debra Baum said people were killed within 30 seconds.

"Today, it's just hitting me more how sad I am. And I'm also thinking we all have to change our behavior until this gets under control. I'm not going to a parade anymore. I'm not going to a sports event. I'm afraid for my grandson to go to school. We all have to change our behavior and not do the things we love to do because of this situation," she said.

"I don't think the average person has to see a body eviscerated or a head injury that's unspeakable ... to understand what the problem is with this country," Dr. Baum said. "And the problem with this country is the failure to recognize that every week, you all are going to a different community with a different Uvalde. And Uvalde was in Highland Park in a small way. I mean ... what happened in Texas is horrific. What happened here is horrific. The fact that my kids and my grandson and all of these other kids from this community who are nice community members were walking down the street on scooters in their wagon, that's all they have to know. They don't have to see what I saw. ... The people who were gone were gone instantly," he said.

So, some asshole with a gun kills 6 and sends 30 others to the hospital when he opens fire on a 4th of July parade, he leads the cops on a merry little chase, and they nab him without much incident.

Meanwhile, another black man is gunned down.

In this case, yes, Walked had a gun and the dumbass did apparently take a shot at the cops as he was trying to escape. One shot.

But when he lit out on foot, the cops fired 90 rounds, hitting the guy 60 times, and then they found he was unarmed, having left his gun in his car.

Sky News - Jaylon Walker shot 60 times

We have cops who are more than happy to support gun rights - many buying the whole deal about 2nd amendment and how an armed citizenry is necessary to a free state and blah blah blah - so we have guns out the ass. Which means we have law enforcement officers who are prepared for war, and hit the streets expecting to be a gunfight at some point in their careers - many of whom go looking for the trouble - sometimes causing the trouble - they're supposed to be trained to prevent.

And all of that is on top of the gut-wrenching continuation of a "justice system" badly skewed against anyone other than white males.

USAmerica Inc, you are nine kinds of fucked up.

The System Holds

Our little experiment in self-government is bending eight ways from Sunday, but it ain't broke yet.

One thing that stands out: The Trump Gang went after political opponents on some very sketchy grounds - legal, but technical and nit-picky.

The people they "busted" may have done some questionable things, but they mostly stayed within the law. 

On the other side, it's pretty obvious that Trump and his goons operated outside the legal boundaries, always hanging out it smarmspace, playing the loophole game, or flat-out denying the legitimacy of the law itself when they've been caught.

Two things:

Daddy State Awareness, Rules 7 and 7a

The law is my sword, but not your shield.

The law is my shield, but not your sword.

Timothy Snyder - On Tyranny, point #3

Recall professional ethics. When the leaders of state set a negative example, professional commitments to just practice become much more important. It is hard to break a rule-of-law state without lawyers, and it is hard to have show trials without judges.

Politico:

Sussmann acquitted on charge brought by special counsel Durham

The jury acquitted him on a charge that he lied when he allegedly denied he was acting on behalf of any client in alerting the FBI to claims that a secret server linked Trump and a Moscow bank

The first courtroom test for Special Counsel John Durham ended in defeat Tuesday as a federal jury found a Democratic attorney not guilty of making a false statement to the FBI related to allegations of computer links between Donald Trump and Russia.

The jury deliberated for about six hours before acquitting Michael Sussmann, 57, on the single felony charge he faced: that he lied when he allegedly denied he was acting on behalf of any client in alerting the FBI to claims that a secret server linked Trump and a Moscow bank with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

During a two-week trial in federal court in Washington, Durham’s prosecutors argued that Sussmann was acting on behalf of the Clinton campaign and an internet executive when he took two thumb drives of data and white papers on the purported link to FBI General Counsel James Baker about six weeks before the 2016 presidential election.

Sussmann’s defense said the case was flawed on a variety of grounds, including that prosecutors could not prove with certainty exactly what the cybersecurity lawyer and former federal prosecutor said to Baker.

Sussmann’s attorneys also stressed that there was no evidence the Clinton campaign authorized Sussmann to go to the FBI, although he and researchers working for Clinton appeared to have spent an extensive amount of time dealing with the server allegations and were actively encouraging The New York Times to write about the issue in the closing weeks of the presidential race.

In the courtroom, Sussmann showed no evident reaction to the not guilty verdict, although he was masked as most trial participants have been throughout. A prosecutor asked that all 12 jurors be polled and they all confirmed the acquittal.

After U.S. District Court Judge Christopher Cooper gaveled out the trial, Sussmann’s two lead attorneys, Sean Berkowitz and Michael Bosworth, embraced.

In a brief statement outside the courthouse shortly after the verdict, Sussmann thanked his lawyers and said he views the not guilty verdict as a vindication.

“I told the truth to the FBI and the jury clearly recognized that with their unanimous verdict today,” Sussmann told reporters. “Despite being falsely accused, I believe that justice ultimately prevailed in my case.”

Sussmann’s defense team declined to address the crowd of reporters and cameras at the court, but issued a written statement blasting the prosecution.

“Michael Sussmann should never have been charged in the first place. This is a case of extraordinary prosecutorial overreach. And we believe that today’s verdict sends an unmistakable message to anyone who cares to listen: politics is no substitute for evidence, and politics has no place in our system of justice,” Berkowitz and Bosworth wrote.

Durham, who was not a member of the trial team but was present in the courtroom throughout, left the courthouse quietly and later issued a written statement expressing disappointment in the verdict. His prosecutors had described the evidence of Sussmann’s guilty as “overwhelming.”

“While we are disappointed in the outcome, we respect the jury’s decision and thank them for their service. I also want to recognize and thank the investigators and the prosecution team for their dedicated efforts in seeking truth and justice in this case,” the special counsel said.

Several jurors declined to comment on the deliberations as they left the courthouse, but the foreperson spoke briefly with reporters and stressed the burden that the prosecution faced in the case.

“The government had the job of proving beyond a reasonable doubt,” she said, declining to give her name. “We broke it down...as a jury. It didn’t pan out in the government’s favor.”

Asked if she thought the prosecution was worthwhile, the foreperson said: “Personally, I don’t think it should have been prosecuted because I think we have better time or resources to use or spend to other things that affect the nation as a whole than a possible lie to the FBI. We could spend that time more wisely.”

Shortly before the verdict was returned Tuesday morning, the jury sent Cooper a note asking if they had to agree unanimously on the grounds for their verdict. The judge replied that they had to agree on the basis for a guilty verdict, but they could acquit even if jurors differed about which of the various defense theories they accepted.

Following Sussmann’s outreach in 2016, the FBI concluded that the evidence Sussmann presented didn’t support the notion of a link between Trump and Russia’s Alfa Bank. Some agents assigned to the investigation found that the hints of such contacts found in domain name system records were actually caused by a marketing email server sending out spam message, but during the trial, Sussmann’s defense called the FBI’s probe “shoddy” and at least one agent involved conceded it was “incomplete.”

Trump’s aides denied any such link, and a computer security firm hired by Alfa Bank also concluded that the allegations were unfounded.

It’s unclear how the high-profile courtroom setback will impact Durham’s ongoing probe or his ability to bring future charges in his broad investigation into the origins of the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation. Some Durham supporters have praised his pursuit of Sussmann as providing a useful vehicle to publicly air the involvement of the Clinton campaign in efforts to publicize the purported server link and for releasing evidence suggesting that some technical experts who advanced the allegations harbored doubts about them.

However, Justice Department policy generally bars prosecutors from using a criminal case to lay out a broader narrative unless they believe they have the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt evidence needed to get a conviction.

Senior Justice Department officials have been vague about what level of supervision is in place over Durham’s probe, which former Attorney General Bill Barr gave special-counsel status a few weeks before the 2020 election. Attorney General Merrick Garland has said the department is adhering to regulations governing the special counsel’s autonomy, but has declined to elaborate.

Some potential witnesses who declined to testify at Sussmann’s trial and were involved in handling of the server allegations cited concerns that Durham might try to prosecute them.

Durham’s probe, which began in May 2019, has produced two other criminal cases.

Last fall, Durham brought a broader, five-count felony case against a Russian-born researcher for allegedly feeding false information to the FBI in the Trump-Russia probe. The researcher, Igor Danchenko, has pleaded not guilty and is set to go on trial in October in federal court in Alexandria, Va.

In 2020, Durham obtained a guilty plea from a former FBI attorney, Kevin Clinesmith, to a charge that he deliberately altered an email used to obtain secret-court surveillance warrants against Carter Page, an energy analyst who had formerly served as a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign.

Clinesmith conceded altering an email he received and forwarded, but insisted that he believed the information he inserted was true. Durham’s team urged that Clinesmith receive between three and six months in prison, but a judge sentenced him to one year of probation instead.