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Happy Autumn Equinox, everybody
Sep 22, 2022
About Judge Cannon
I'll probably go on referring to judges like Aileen Cannon as "Trump's own", but I want to keep in mind that while 45* had to sign off on all of their appointments - for the sake of official protocol - most of these Smarmspace Rangers are on the bench now because The Federalist Society and Mitch McConnell put them there.
Trump is simply a pile of partially animated meat with just enough sentience to hold a pen and sign his name. IOW, he's exactly the schmuck that guys like Grover Nordquist have been salivating for all these years.
That said, looking at her Wikipedia page, I think we get a fair idea of why she's where she is, and what she was put there to do.
FWIW - this was a lame duck confirmation
So anyway -
(pay wall)
A thorough rebuke of Judge Aileen Cannon’s pro-Trump order
From a panel that was two-thirds comprised of fellow Trump-nominated judges, no less.
As U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon ruled twice in the Mar-a-Lago documents case for the former president who nominated her to the bench, many legal experts — including conservatives and executive-power advocates — have strained to understand how she could have reached such conclusions about Donald Trump’s claims.
On Wednesday night, two fellow Trump nominees joined with another judge to provide the rebuke of Cannon’s jurisprudence that those experts suggested might be coming.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit was rather unsparing in unanimously granting the Justice Department a reprieve from Cannon’s order barring them from reviewing documents with classified markings seized from Mar-a-Lago. The stay is temporary, but the reasoning is firm.
They repeatedly rejected not just the Trump legal team’s lack of arguments, but also Cannon’s acceptance of them. Indeed, they suggested it was inexplicable that Cannon ruled for Trump even by her own logic.
The ruling really kicks into gear when the judges address what a 1977 Supreme Court case considered the “foremost consideration” in deciding whether a court such as Cannon’s should exercise jurisdiction in such a case: whether the government “displayed a callous disregard for … constitutional rights” in its seizure.
The judges say Cannon conceded that it hadn’t displayed such disregard, but then disregarded that consideration all the same — and say she thus “abused” her “discretion.”
“Here, the district court concluded that [Trump] did not show that the United States acted in callous disregard of his constitutional rights. No party contests the district court’s finding in this regard,” the judges write. “The absence of this ‘indispensab[le]’ factor … is reason enough to conclude that the district court abused its discretion in exercising equitable jurisdiction here.”
The judges continue, rather dryly: “But for the sake of completeness, we consider the remaining factors.”
Cannon might wish they hadn’t.
On the second test — whether Trump has an interest in the documents marked classified at issue — the judges note that Cannon ruled Trump had an interest in some of the documents seized.
“But none of those concerns apply to the roughly one-hundred classified documents at issue here,” the judges write, before twisting the knife a little more: “And the district court made no mention in its analysis of this factor as to why or how Plaintiff might have an individual interest in or need for the classified documents.”
The judges continue, rather dryly: “But for the sake of completeness, we consider the remaining factors.”
Cannon might wish they hadn’t.
On the second test — whether Trump has an interest in the documents marked classified at issue — the judges note that Cannon ruled Trump had an interest in some of the documents seized.
“But none of those concerns apply to the roughly one-hundred classified documents at issue here,” the judges write, before twisting the knife a little more: “And the district court made no mention in its analysis of this factor as to why or how Plaintiff might have an individual interest in or need for the classified documents.”
Indeed, Cannon’s apparent lack of curiosity — best exemplified by her acceptance of the Trump legal team’s claims that the documents might have been declassified without actually stating as much — was a feature of the remainder of the opinion. The judges repeatedly note Trump’s lawyers weren’t even compelled to furnish arguments on some of the crucial matters at hand. And they say that even if they had been, it might not have mattered.
“Plaintiff has not even attempted to show that he has a need to know the information contained in the classified documents,” they write. “Nor has he established that the current administration has waived that requirement for these documents. And even if he had, that, in and of itself, would not explain why Plaintiff has an individual interest in the classified documents.”
They go on to not only rebuke Cannon’s ruling, but the very idea that Trump’s public, out-of-court claims (which his lawyers have conspicuously declined to echo) that he declassified the documents even matters — a crucial point that shouldn’t be lost in all of this.
“Plaintiff suggests that he may have declassified these documents when he was President. But the record contains no evidence that any of these records were declassified,” the judges write. “And before the special master, Plaintiff resisted providing any evidence that he had declassified any of these documents.”
They add: “In any event, at least for these purposes, the declassification argument is a red herring because declassifying an official document would not change its content or render it personal. So even if we assumed that Plaintiff did declassify some or all of the documents, that would not explain why he has a personal interest in them.”
It’s an opinion that brings home virtually all of the criticism of Cannon’s ruling and even of the significance of the underlying dispute over the classification status of the documents. It’s saying both that she got it wrong — and that it’s beside the point.
But Cannon is hardly the only one to suffer a rebuke in the opinion. Trump has publicly claimed he declassified all of the documents, but his lawyers watered that down to suggest merely that he might have, and Cannon accepted that evidence-free claim as rendering the documents’ status as in dispute. Yet judges signaled that they have no time for any of it. Rather, they repeatedly refer to the documents as classified, without qualifying that description in any way.
They refer to “the roughly one-hundred classified documents at issue here” and repeatedly to “the classified documents.” And in their concluding sentence, they twice flat-out call them classified: “The district court order is STAYED to the extent it enjoins the government’s use of the classified documents and requires the government to submit the classified documents to the special master for review.”
It’s the second time in two days that judges have undercut the Trump legal strategy that Cannon accepted, after the special master, Raymond J. Dearie, pressed Trump’s legal team much more than she had on its unsubstantiated declassification claims.
And for the second time in two days, it comes from judges Trump himself recommended.
“Plaintiff has not even attempted to show that he has a need to know the information contained in the classified documents,” they write. “Nor has he established that the current administration has waived that requirement for these documents. And even if he had, that, in and of itself, would not explain why Plaintiff has an individual interest in the classified documents.”
They go on to not only rebuke Cannon’s ruling, but the very idea that Trump’s public, out-of-court claims (which his lawyers have conspicuously declined to echo) that he declassified the documents even matters — a crucial point that shouldn’t be lost in all of this.
“Plaintiff suggests that he may have declassified these documents when he was President. But the record contains no evidence that any of these records were declassified,” the judges write. “And before the special master, Plaintiff resisted providing any evidence that he had declassified any of these documents.”
They add: “In any event, at least for these purposes, the declassification argument is a red herring because declassifying an official document would not change its content or render it personal. So even if we assumed that Plaintiff did declassify some or all of the documents, that would not explain why he has a personal interest in them.”
It’s an opinion that brings home virtually all of the criticism of Cannon’s ruling and even of the significance of the underlying dispute over the classification status of the documents. It’s saying both that she got it wrong — and that it’s beside the point.
But Cannon is hardly the only one to suffer a rebuke in the opinion. Trump has publicly claimed he declassified all of the documents, but his lawyers watered that down to suggest merely that he might have, and Cannon accepted that evidence-free claim as rendering the documents’ status as in dispute. Yet judges signaled that they have no time for any of it. Rather, they repeatedly refer to the documents as classified, without qualifying that description in any way.
They refer to “the roughly one-hundred classified documents at issue here” and repeatedly to “the classified documents.” And in their concluding sentence, they twice flat-out call them classified: “The district court order is STAYED to the extent it enjoins the government’s use of the classified documents and requires the government to submit the classified documents to the special master for review.”
It’s the second time in two days that judges have undercut the Trump legal strategy that Cannon accepted, after the special master, Raymond J. Dearie, pressed Trump’s legal team much more than she had on its unsubstantiated declassification claims.
And for the second time in two days, it comes from judges Trump himself recommended.
She Said It
Yes, Liz Cheney kinda spilled the beans on chickenshit Republicans in the House.
MSNBC - Morning Joe
Today's Tweet
Mic drop
Forever baffled by the media’s need to paper over the obvious by saying things like, “Trump Defends Declassification Process,” instead of simply telling the truth:
— Mikel Jollett (@Mikel_Jollett) September 22, 2022
“This Dumb-Ass is Obviously Making Shit Up.”
Meanwhile Back At Reality
From here on out, his life is probably going to be a constant string of trials, and judgements against him, resulting in very large payments to people he's been shitting on for 10 years.
I wish no direct harm to him, but here's to watching Mr Jones suffer a long, slow, painful death, as he slithers deeper into a squalid pit of crushing despair and abject poverty.
Alex Jones testifies in trial over his Sandy Hook hoax lies
Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones took the stand Thursday at his defamation trial in Connecticut as he and his lawyer try to limit damages he must pay for promoting the lie that the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre was a hoax.
More than a dozen family members of some of the 20 children and six educators killed in the shooting also showed up to observe his testimony in Waterbury Superior Court, which is about 20 miles (32 kilometers) away from Newtown.
Jones has been in Connecticut this week in preparation for his appearance. He held a news conference Wednesday outside the courthouse, bashing the proceedings — as he has on his Infowars show — as a “travesty of justice” and calling the judge a “tyrant.” He made similar comments on his way into the courthouse Thursday, indicating he may invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and not answer some questions.
“This is not really a trial,” he said. “This is a show trial, a literal kangaroo court.”
You have the right express your opinion, Alex, but - wow - just ... yeah - good luck, son.
Plaintiffs attorneys began by asking Jones whether he believed Judge Barbara Bellis was a tyrant and whether he calls a lot of people tyrants.
“Only when they act like it,” he said.
Several victims’ relatives, meanwhile, have given emotional testimony during the trial about being traumatized by people calling the shooting fake, including confrontations at their homes and in public, and messages including death and rape threats. The plaintiffs include an FBI agent who responded to the shooting and relatives of eight of the victims.
Bellis last year found Jones liable by default for damages to plaintiffs without a trial, as punishment for what she called his repeated failures to turn over documents to their lawyers. The six-member jury only will be deciding how much Jones and Free Speech Systems, Infowars’ parent company, should pay the families for defaming them and intentionally inflicting emotional distress.
Bellis began the day going over with Jones the topics he cannot testify about — including free speech rights, the Sandy Hook families $73 million settlement earlier this year with gun maker Remington (the company made the Bushmaster rifle used to kill the victims at Sandy Hook), the percentage of Jones’ shows that discussed Sandy Hook and whether he profited from those shows or a similar case in Texas.
“This is not the appropriate forum for you to offer that testimony,” Bellis said. Jones indicated that he understood.
Bellis said in court on Wednesday that she was prepared to handle any incendiary testimony from Jones, with contempt of court proceedings if necessary.
Jones also was found liable by default in two similar lawsuits over the hoax lies in his hometown of Austin, Texas, where a jury in one of the trials ordered Jones last month to pay nearly $50 million in damages to the parents of one of the children killed. A third trial in Texas is expected to begin near the end of the year.
When Jones faced the Texas jury last month and testified under oath, he toned down his rhetoric. He said he realized the hoax lies were irresponsible and the school shooting was “100% real.”
“I unintentionally took part in things that did hurt these people’s feelings,” testified Jones, who also acknowledged raising conspiracy claims about other mass tragedies, from the Oklahoma City and Boston Marathon bombings to the mass shootings in Las Vegas and Parkland, Florida, “and I’m sorry for that.”
Jones had portrayed the Sandy Hook shooting as staged by crisis actors as part of gun control efforts.
Testimony at the current trial also has focused on website analytics data run by Infowars employees showing how its sales of dietary supplements, food, clothing and other items spiked around the time Jones talked about the Sandy Hook shooting.
Evidence, including internal Infowars emails and depositions, also shows dissention within the company about pushing the hoax lies.
Jones’ lawyer Norman Pattis is arguing that any damages should be limited and accused the victims’ relatives of exaggerating the harm the lies caused them.
The relatives have testified that they continue to fear for their safety because of what the hoax believers have done and might do.
Jennifer Hensel, whose 6-year-old daughter Avielle Richman was among the slain, testified Wednesday that she still monitors her surroundings, even checking the back seat of her car, for safety reasons. She said she is trying to shield her two children, ages 7 and 5, from the hoax lies. A juror cried during her testimony.
“They’re so young,” she said of her children. “Their innocence is so beautiful right now. And at some point there are a horde of people out there who could hurt them.”
Ukraine vs Russia
Especially when the REMFs on your right flank start to bitch about how you're not being tough enough, you need to take a firmer hand, and blah blah blah.
And even more especially when you repeat the threat to use nukes, as you try to spin your fucked invasion of Ukraine into "poor poor pitiful Russian - everybody's being mean to me".
- Demand soars for flights out of Russia, border traffic up
- Russia conscripting tens of thousands to fight
- Ukraine's Zelenskiy appeals to world to punish Moscow
- Violence on eve of referendums in southeastern areas
- U.N. Security Council to discuss Ukraine conflict
President Vladimir Putin's new mobilisation campaign escalates a war that has already killed thousands, displaced millions, pulverised cities, damaged the global economy and revived Cold War confrontation.
Though polls have suggested widespread domestic backing for Russia's intervention in Ukraine, mass conscription may be a domestically risky move after past Kremlin promises it would not happen and a string of battlefield failures in Ukraine.
"Every normal person is (concerned)," said one man, identifying himself only as Sergey, disembarking in Belgrade after a flight from Moscow. "It is OK to be afraid of the war."
Anti-war protests in 38 Russian cities saw more than 1,300 people arrested on Wednesday, a monitoring group said, with more planned for the weekend. Some of the detainees had been ordered to report to enlistment offices on Thursday, the first full day of conscription, independent news outlets said.
Putin's defense minister has said the call-up is intended to enlist about 300,000 men.
Prices for air tickets out of Moscow soared above $5,000 for one-way flights to the nearest foreign locations, with most sold out for coming days. Traffic also surged at border crossings with Finland and Georgia. read more
One Russian man arriving at Istanbul Airport said he left partly over the Kremlin's decision. "It can lead to lots of problems for lots of Russians," said Alex, grabbing his suitcase at a baggage carousel.
Russia scoffed at reports of a mass exodus as exaggerated.
National airline Aeroflot said it would refund people unable to fly as planned because they had received a call-up.
Sep 21, 2022
Color Me Unsurprised Too
(pay wall)
Opinion
Shocker: Most Republicans oppose plan to avert a 2024 Trump coup
As early as Wednesday, the House will vote on a new bill that would plug holes in the arcane law that Donald Trump exploited in his failed effort to overturn his 2020 loss. GOP leaders are whipping against the bill, meaning Republicans will widely oppose it.
Let’s not allow the meaning of this to get lost in a fog of euphemisms. If House Republicans get their way, it will make it easier for a future GOP-controlled House to conspire with one or more corrupt GOP governors and other state actors to overturn a 2024 presidential election loss.
House Republicans, of course, offer different reasons for opposing the new bill, which would reform the Electoral Count Act of 1887. But they don’t withstand scrutiny. And House GOP opposition to this reform matters. It’s another marker of how radicalized and tightly aligned with Trump a GOP House would be.
Beyond the House, GOP opposition matters for another critical reason: It could end up rendering reform weaker, even if it does pass into law.
The House bill would clarify that the vice president’s role in counting presidential electors is purely ceremonial. It would make it harder for Congress to throw out legitimate electors and protect against corruption of certification of electors at the state level. All those would address ECA flaws that Trump attempted to seize on to invalidate President Biden’s electors.
House Republicans offer a range of motives for their opposition. The most absurd is from Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), who told Politico the bill is “a political weapon to beat up on Donald Trump and not about preventing a Jan. 6 from ever happening again.”
That will be a widespread argument, so let’s take it on. If these reforms are anti-Trump, it’s only in that they target ECA flaws that Trump actually did try to exploit. And those flaws did help spark the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol by letting Trump raise expectations that the outcome might be reversible. Indeed, Trump incited the crowd expressly to complete his scheme of exploiting those holes in the ECA.
So preventing another Jan. 6 must entail a response to what Trump did. Banks can’t admit this: GOP orthodoxy requires treating Trump as mostly or entirely blameless for the violence. Which gets at the real reason most Republicans oppose reform: Supporting it acknowledges what happened.
House GOP leaders are also circulating a memo explaining why Republicans should oppose reform. It insists the bill constitutes a “federal takeover of elections”; allows “Democrat election lawyers” new opportunities to “abuse” the process with lawsuits; and allows Congress and courts to encroach on states’ oversight of elections.
All this is wildly hyperbolic. In one important way, the bill reduces Congress’s control over states by making it harder for members to throw out electors certified by them.
Beyond that, these objections appear targeted at an important but poorly understood element of reform. It’s complicated, which is why Republicans are trying to demagogue it.
The bill requires governors to certify electors in keeping with state laws as they existed before election day to prevent post-election certification of fake electors in defiance of the popular vote. If a governor violates this duty, a federal judicial panel would designate the legitimate slate of electors and require Congress to count them.
This is about guarding against a dire threat: If a corrupt governor certifies fake electors, and a GOP House counts them, under an unreformed ECA they would probably stand, creating chaos or worse. Under the House reform, if a governor refuses to certify the correct electors, the court selects another state official to certify them.
This is meant to ensure that the process unfolds according to the state’s own laws. State legislatures have carried out their constitutional role in determining how electors are appointed by passing laws requiring appointment in keeping with the popular vote. ECA reform safeguards against abuses of those laws by political actors caught up in passions of the moment. That’s why the Cato Institute’s Andy Craig describes these reforms as “conservative.”
Meanwhile, in the Senate, the necessary 10 Republicans appear supportive of another version of ECA reform advancing there. That’s a good bill, but not as good as the House version. And Senate Republicans appear opposed to the House bill — for reasons similar to those offered by House Republicans.
So the end result of all this GOP positioning may be something like the Senate bill. Which is to say, weaker reform.
Right now, many Trump-backed candidates are seeking control over election machinery at the state level, including gubernatorial candidates in swing states. That makes it more likely that state-level corruption of the certification process will be attempted next time. Without ECA reform, a GOP House would likely play along, perhaps eagerly.
In that context, the House Republicans’ treatment of this debate is ominous. If their guiding imperative is the refusal to admit to anything seriously untoward about Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, then obviously it’s a small leap to participating in a rerun of that scheme.
Only this time they’ll likely be in the majority and have a better shot. That is, unless ECA reform passes.
Crumbling Trump
And, oh yeah - his kids can fuck all the way off too - if AG James can win it.
Now then, about that Kushner guy.
(pay wall)
Lawsuit alleges $250 million fraud, seeks to bar the Trumps from serving as executives of any company operating in New York
New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit Wednesday accusing former president Donald Trump, three of his grown children and executives at his company of flagrantly manipulating property valuations to deceive lenders, insurance brokers and tax authorities into giving them better rates on bank loans and insurance policies and to reduce their tax liability.
The 222-page civil complaint asks the New York Supreme Court to bar Trump, as well as Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump, from serving as executives at any company in New York, and to bar the Trump Organization from acquiring any commercial real estate or receiving loans from any New York-registered financial institution for five years.
It seeks to recover more than $250 million in what James’s office says are ill-gotten gains received through the alleged deceptive practices. While the lawsuit itself is not a criminal prosecution, James (D) said she has referred possible violations of federal law to the Justice Department and the IRS.
Trump lawyer Alina Habba dismissed the allegations as politically motivated, saying in a statement that the attorney general’s claims are “meritless.”
Read the lawsuit filed against Donald Trump, 3 of his children and Trump Organization
The lawsuit, filed in New York Supreme Court, is the result of a more than two-year investigation by James and names 23 properties in the Trump Organization portfolio, including his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida, his Seven Springs estate in Westchester County, N.Y., and the D.C. hotel he leased from the federal government until he sold it in May.
“The inflated asset valuations in the Statements cannot be brushed aside or excused as merely the result of exaggeration or good faith estimation about which reasonable real estate professionals may differ,” it says.
It adds to a deepening list of legal challenges that Trump faces more than 18 months after he left the White House and at a time when he remains actively involved in Republican politics and has broadly suggested he will run for president again in 2024.
In addition to naming Trump and three of his children personally, the suit names the Trump Organization and Allen Weisselberg, Trump’s longtime chief financial officer who recently pleaded guilty to tax crimes, and controller Jeffrey McConney.
The status of key investigations involving Donald Trump
Trump and his attorneys have dismissed James’s inquiry as politically motivated and have repeatedly said that Trump and his family have done nothing illegal in operating their businesses. Pointing to statements James made on the campaign trail in which she promised to investigate him, Trump has coined her investigation a “witch hunt.”
“Today’s filing is neither focused on the facts nor the law – rather, it is solely focused on advancing the Attorney General’s political agenda," Alina Habba, one of Trump’s lawyers, said in a statement on Wednesday morning. "We are confident that our judicial system will not stand for this unchecked abuse of authority, and we look forward to defending our client against each and every one of the Attorney General’s meritless claims.”
Rather than focusing narrowly on a few instances of misconduct, James’s office portrayed Trump, his family and executives of employing a wide array of fraudulent maneuvers in their dealings with lenders and regulators despite knowing that they were illegal. The suit highlights Trump’s practice of distributing statements of financial condition inflating the values of his properties and sometimes exaggerating how many acres those properties cover or how many homes could be built on them.
Defense attorneys have said in court that commercial real estate firms routinely argue for lower tax appraisals and that the company’s conduct was no different, but James said Wednesday that the misstated valuations cannot be brushed as a “good faith mistake.”
The former president and his family should be held to the same standards as everyday Americans, James said at a news conference in Manhattan, noting that it is illegal for people to lie to banks in order to secure loans to send their children to college or get a home mortgage.
“Claiming you have money that you do not have does not amount to the art of the deal. It’s the art of the steal,” James said, mocking the titled of Donald Trump’s 1987 book. "There cannot be different rules for different people in this country or in this state.”
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