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On Monday, in the ongoing Manhattan trial of former President Donald Trump, a witness for the prosecution gave some startling testimony. While on the stand being questioned by the defense, former Trump Organization controller Jeffrey McConney testified that former President Trump did not personally order payments made to attorney Michael Cohen, who allegedly paid the "hush money" payment to porn star Stormy Daniels. //
"President Trump did not ask you to do any of the things you just described ... correct?" Bove asked.
"He did not," McConney replied. //
The defense, clearly, cannot argue that the payments were made without the former president's knowledge since he had to sign the checks. But the original order for the payments may have originated with someone in Donald Trump's employ, rather than with the man himself; it seems like it would be difficult for the prosecution, at this point, to prove anything else beyond a reasonable doubt.
It's hard to see how this isn't damaging to the prosecution either way.
So much has gone awry with this trial that one has to begin to wonder if Alvin Bragg's motivation here isn't simply to keep former President Trump off the campaign trail. If so, it isn't working. Trump is campaigning in off-hours and receiving big rounds of applause from New Yorkers. //
cupera1 anon-l9w2
an hour ago
The Trump Soviet Union show trial in NY City is a Rube Goldberg legal construction that cannot work. The original alleged crime is a simple misdemeanor under a New York law against falsifying business records. This law passed the statute of limitations over five years ago. Bragg looked at this case at that time and passed on it. Then Trump announced his candidacy to run for president and everything changed.
To defibrillate the case against Trump they claimed that misdemeanor was connected to an election violation. The two statues that they cite: one state and one federal cannot be used. The state election statue can’t be used because the law can only be applied to NY state elected offices, Trump was running for President, a federal office. Federal law can’t be tried in a state court. The FEC looked at this case and laughed at it.
While the explanation may seem plausible, altering the order of documents represents a serious form of evidence tampering that could completely undermine the prosecution's case.
Perhaps even more extraordinary, the prosecution then admits that they misled the court by previously indicating that the evidence had been left untouched since its seizure last year.
"The Government acknowledges that this is inconsistent with what Government counsel previously understood and represented to the Court," the legal filing notes. //
etba_ss JSobieski
5 hours ago
It's his job to know, not guess. Therefore, he is either incompent and lied when he certified something was true when he didn't know that for a fact or he did know and lied about it. Either way, Smith lied.
It wasn't simply a random throwaway line. He certified to the court that the documents weren't viewed and weren't tampered with. Both happened. So he either lied in original filing by stating something as fact that he didn't know or he is lying now.
Otherwise, a lead prosecutor could have his team do things and not tell him and then he could claim it didn't happen and be under no obligation to the truth. He has to certify to truth, so there is no way around him lying. Either he lied about knowing or knew and lied about it not happening.
According to Kachouroff, if the court of appeals or the Georgia Supreme Court were to rule in Floyd’s favor, it would mean Willis indicted the defendants without proper jurisdiction. Not only would that cause her entire case to crumble like a house of cards, but such a ruling would also remove her immunity. This would leave her and Fulton County vulnerable to a multimillion-dollar lawsuit for violating the civil rights of each of the defendants.
This hasn't gotten the coverage it deserves — and it may turn out to mean nothing — but on April 25, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas asked Trump lawyer John Sauer a question people seem to be ignoring.
“Did you, in this litigation, challenge the appointment of special counsel," Justice Thomas queried, referring to Jack Smith being appointed by Merrick Garland. //
Two former Attorneys General, Edwin Meese and Michael Mukasey, filed an amicus brief that questions whether or not Jack Smith has the right to prosecute Trump.
The Federalist asked NARA whether the pallets shipped by GSA included the documents that were later confiscated by Smith’s team during their raid of Mar-a-Lago, and NARA’s media staff responded that the agency had “no awareness about the contents of the materials on the pallets and had no involvement in the move project that is referenced in the GSA emails.”
“NARA was harassing Trump throughout 2021 for what they insisted were government records apparently WITHOUT contacting GSA to search dozens of boxes in their possession,” Kelly observed.
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/1🚨EXPLOSIVE — Unsealed docs reveal just how intimately the Biden White House worked with NARA to trigger the Special Counsel classified docs investigation of President Trump.
This confirms our own research that this prosecution is politically tainted and should be dismissed:
1:27 PM · Apr 26, 2024 //
As RedState previously reported, this week, an unredacted version of former President Trump's motion for discovery in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case released by Judge Aileen Cannon has already suggested collaboration between NARA, the Justice Department, and the Biden administration. The motion shows bias within NARA, including internal emails from General Counsel Stern discussing strategies to prejudice President Trump and timing public communications with Congress. Three days after these communications, the Biden Administration directed NARA to reject Trump's claim of executive privilege and disclose records to the January 6th Committee.
Central to the former Justice Antonin Scalia law clerk's arguments in January and Thursday is that when a man becomes president, he becomes a part of the constitutional machinery, no longer a regular citizen.
In this construct, the president is always the president, and the only way to laicize him is through a House impeachment and a Senate conviction for conduct that then becomes vulnerable to criminal prosecution. //
etba_ss Cappy Hamper
2 hours ago
It is actually worse. Roberts is the worst sort of justice, where in an attempt to preserve the "integrity" of the Court and avoid wading into political matters, his decisions are always guided by politics, not the law. In an effort to appear above politics, he is the most political creature on the Court.
Not political in the sense of advancing one party, but political in that every decision is filtered through the lens of how it will be viewed, the consequences, attacks, and preserving the Court's power. He sees himself as the hero of the SCOTUS, whose job it is to protect its power far more than to correctly interpret the Constitution and the law. This is why he upheld Obamacare under the "tax" provision, while ignoring that he had to disagree with his own opinion to take the case up. This is why he wanted to uphold the LA law in Dobbs, but not overturn Roe.
I think it would be preferable if they had pictures of him. Instead, he really just is this cowardly, feckless, weak and depraved. //
Random US Citizen etba_ss
2 hours ago
Roberts has turned the SC in to My Lai--he's destroying the court in order to "save" it. History isn't going to look kindly on that, either because constitutional order will fail and Roberts attacks on the rule of law will be seen as one cause of the collapse, or because constitutional order will prevail (an unlikely outcome) and he'll be seen as an obstacle that had to be overcome.
Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius. //
anon-of-yo-biz
2 hours ago
Is it really being argued that Bin laden was a "political" enemy? Was Hitler a "political" enemy? Can we never object against tyranny, hatred, and murder unless we have compatible political or religious views? It seems that the word bigot has grow to include all forms of just resistance. //
Cafeblue32 anon-of-yo-biz
an hour ago edited
This is intentional. The left is destroying language by making specific terms no longer their definition, or getting rid of them altogether. The purpose of language is clear and precise comminication so as to not be misunderstood and creat a bunch of unneccesary problems.The left's purpose is to deconstruct language to be less clear, so specific sexes become they/thems, Catperson, or whatever the hell. They remove gender indicators in gender-specific languages. They use persons instead of men and women, family units instead of marriage and family, how is everyone instead of "How are you guys doing?" The more generic they can make the language, the more they can re-invent it to mean whatever they want it to mean.
And here we are-men are women, Israel is genocidal, Palestine is a legitimate state, Putin is ready to roll into New York, illegal able bodies men wearing expensive jeans and sneakers are refugees, illegal squatters are residents, the American flag is racist and the LGBTGFY flag is to fly high above them all everywhere an American flag is flown around ther world. Working class conservatives are racists and fascists while Palestininas calling for the end of Jews and demand for sharia law are freedom fighters. Etc etc.
Rush said it long ago: words mean things. That's why they work so hard to destroy them.
Blue State Deplorable
5 hours ago
Justice Alito just asked Dreeben about the wisdom of his approach to just rely on the discretion and good motivations of Justice Department officials given the history of abusive, partisan prosecutions...
That’s one hellluva rebuke right there from Justice Alito. 😂
2E Son of Nel
5 hours ago
Roberts just slammed the lower court "a former president can be prosecuted for his official acts because the fact of the prosecution means that the former president has acted in defiance of the laws."
Whatever happened to the presumption of innocence until proven guilty? "The fact of prosecution" does not mean that he has "acted in defiance of the laws." It merely means that he's accused of acting in defiance of the laws. Presumably the accuser still has to prove his case.
Roberts was entirely correct here. But with Democrats prosecuting Republicans it's always "the seriousness of the charges" and not the evidence that matters. //
Min Headroom llme 2E Son of Nel
3 hours ago edited
I found the argument that being prosecuted is proof that the defendant broke laws breathtaking. It’s worthy of Stalinist Russia, and if democrats want to blather about threats to democracy, then this is it. //
bpbatch
5 hours ago
The breakneck speed that all of these trials are occurring and the reaction immediately necessitated by SCOTUS is more Cloward/Piven "flood the system" Marxist garbage in real time. Pray the Court takes the time to breathe and make an intelligent, measured, and patient decision in all of these matters. //
According to Politico, many well-known legal and political commentators have been getting together on previously unreported, weekly off-the-record Zoom calls to talk about the lawfare against former President Donald Trump. //
The group’s host is Norman Eisen, a senior Obama administration official, longtime Trump critic and CNN legal analyst, who has been convening the group since 2022 as Trump’s legal woes ramped up. Eisen was also a key member of the team of lawyers assembled by House Democrats to handle Trump’s first impeachment. //
Laocoön of Troy
11 hours ago
Same thing they did with JournoList back in the day. Some of the same people too. Krystol, Rubin, and others among the upscale NYC/National Review crowd.
On Monday, Judge Aileen Cannon released an unredacted version of former President Trump's motion for discovery in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case. The document appears to show collaboration between the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the Justice Department, and the Biden administration to develop the case.
The 34 charges against Trump were magicked into felonies by the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who contends there's an overarching federal election crime at play. //
The New York State legislature made a similar move for E. Jean Carroll so the founder of LinkedIn and ardent leftist Reid Hoffman could bankroll a new round of lawfare. //
In the fraud case that isn't fraud and which defrauded no one, //
And we haven't even touched on the FBI's Mar-a-Lago raid over documents Trump is allowed to have under the Presidential Records Act. Or the attempt to get Trump off the ballot using the 14th Amendment. Even the U.S. Constitution is fungible to these leftists.
And now we're in jury selection in Trump's latest case, which is literally a bookkeeping case in which Trump paid his attorney over time for services rendered that included making sure Stormy Daniels and another woman signed non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) and were paid for them. Daniels has never been charged with extortion for breaking her NDA and demanding more money or she'd tell the media... //
Trump's being publicly humiliated and kept off the campaign trail — a feature, not a bug of this lawfare — because he booked payments to his lawyer in 2017, which, let's note for clarity, is after the 2016 election. Bragg contends these payments were in furtherance of stealing an election. //
Maximus Decimus Cassius
8 hours ago edited
We're in a phase where people have not quite figured out what is going on. I suppose that is understandable to a degree, but the fog, normalcy bias and refusal to accept reality is a bill which is going to come due someday, and I don't think anyone will like the cost.
The Ruling Class / left / Democrats, et al, are not afraid of the American people, but they are terrified of Donald Trump. The Covid-19 gaslighting, forced vaccinations of an experimental drug with minimal benefit but astonishingly severe side-effects, the inhumane lockdowns and omnipresent censorship with minimal resistance, together with the jackbooted thuggery against J6 patriots, again, with almost zero protest after the Stasi arrests started, leaves no doubt that the DC Junta does not fear the peasants.
But these absurd kangaroo legal persecutions of Donald Trump clearly demonstrates the elites' fear should PDJT reclaim the White House. And the Ruling Class will stop at nothing to prevent Trump from reclaiming the White House. After all, what is stopping them, or better yet, who is going to stop them?
IMO, the only way out of this and survive is for the Ruling Class, elites, etc. to become suddenly very, very fearful of We the People.
"When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny." //
aminahyaquin CarriedtheM-16forAmerica
6 hours ago
Yes we shouod call it the Biden regime in absentia since Biden is non compos mentis and has clearly, cognitively left the arena.
ModernDayJeremiah aminahyaquin
6 hours ago
Biden is full compost mentis. He has the Mierdas Touch. Whatever he touches turns to crap.
Ultimately, Trump isn't who is on trial here, it's the public's adherence to the American philosophy and foundational principles of governance that are being weighed and decided upon. //
Douglas Proudfoot
10 hours ago
Which Amendments in the Bill of Rights apply to Trump? If they don't apply to Trump, how can you be sure they will apply to you?
The indictments all depend on the false bookkeeping concealing another crime. However, the indictments don’t specify what the other crime is. Without the other crime, the NY State felonies become misdemeanors with a 2 year expired statute of limitations. If the other crime turns out to be a misdemeanor federal finance violation, the statute of limitations has already expired on it. How can 2 misdemeanors, one not even in NY jurisdiction, add up to over 30 felonies?
The judge has ruled that Bragg doesn't have to specify what the concealed crime is.
If this travesty causes Trump to lose the election, we will never have a free election for president again. The Bill of Rights will protect noone. The rule of law will become one Party rule. America game over.
As Lincoln understood about slavery back in the 1850s, the eventual political consequences of tolerating abortion in some states will be the acceptance of it in all the states. (We’ve already seen this with the abortion referendums in Kansas and Ohio, with more referendums on the way.) Moral neutrality on abortion — Trump’s “popular sovereignty” approach — will weaken the foundation for legal prohibition and open the way to tolerance and eventually political acceptance. //
Because of the first principles at stake here, the logic of America’s antebellum slavery debate applies entirely to the abortion debate of our time. Indeed, the two issues are closer than even most pro-lifers realize. Today’s Democrats view abortion just as antebellum Democrats viewed slavery. They think the constitutional rights of an entire class of people (women) depend for their vindication on the denial of all rights to another class of people (the unborn). This is precisely what southern Democrats believed about blacks and slavery, and why they were so adamantly against emancipation.
But the two issues are alike in another way as well: They both represent a grave danger to freedom itself and the survival of our republic. //
Abortion is more than that, though. It cuts right to the heart of our understanding of democracy and self-government — which, as Lincoln said, must have limits, or it becomes despotism. If one person can snuff out the life of another, and no third person is allowed to object, then in what sense do we have self-government? Democratic practice, after all, must be rooted in the principle of human equality. There are some things even a majority cannot justly decide to do, and to deny that is to open the way to tyranny. //
Trump, using the same flawed logic, thinks he can compromise with the pro-abortion power.
He’d be better off following Lincoln, who knew that America could not continue forever divided between slave states and free states, that we would “become all one thing or all the other.”
Throughout American history, abortion was regulated by the states, and it was not the province of the federal government until the Supreme Court announced its Jan. 22, 1973, Roe v. Wade decision, which preempted state abortion laws.
Because pro-abortion forces focused on the federal courts, leading to the high court, rather than through the state legislatures or Congress, the best way to judge a president's pro-life record is to examine their Supreme Court appointees and how they dealt with abortion rights.
For this piece, the focus is on Republican presidents, which puts Trump in context with other GOP chief executives. //
Beginning in 1969 and ending in 2020, Republican presidents have put 15 justices on the Supreme Court. Eight have been pro-abortion, and seven have been pro-life—three of them put on the high court by Trump.
In the same time frame, Republican presidents have nominated all three chief justices, Warren E. Burger, William H. Rehnquist, and John G. Roberts Jr.—both Burger and Roberts were pro-abortion. //
After Griswold, conservative legal scholars and jurists recognized that if they accepted the concept of unenumerated constitutional rights, the Constitution would be dethroned, and liberals on the high court would have a blank check to do whatever they wanted.
The response to the advocates for unenumerated rights was the strict constructionist movement, which was committed to the text as it was written and understood as it was written. //
The action is now in the states after 50 years in Washington, generally, at the Supreme Court, specifically.
Some people in the pro-life movement sound like Cold War veterans complaining that the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union fell, but the fact remains that Roe and Casey are gone — and Trump made it happen.
For all the recent triumphalism of the pro-abortion movement, none of them like what Trump did to them — and for the unborn.
The Court's abortion decision two years ago said it was up to the individual states to restrict or permit the gruesome end-of-pregnancy operation.
Now, Donald Trump has said that is his position, too, that there should not be a one-size-fits-all policy on abortion in the form of a national ban. That is basically the same states-rights position that the Founding Fathers sought so hard to enshrine across the new government at the very beginning of our national history.
And it has also been the Republican Party's position for all these years.
Some pro-lifers want all or nothing. Now, even Trump is signaling a willingness to take the win and move on to other matters.
We got what we wanted. And that’s what some members of our party are mad about. They want a federal law controlling abortion. Except that’s not what we promised.
It’s hard to understand how one justifies dishonesty as a political strategy. That’s what this is. They are asking that we conduct a bait and switch. We promised that every state would decide for itself, and now it’s, “No, now we’re going to decide for you.” How do you expect people to react to that? We overturned Roe with the understanding that some states would be awesome and largely ban the barbarian practice and that other states, like my own California, would declare open season on fetuses. And that’s what has happened. But you know what? Thousands and thousands of lives have been saved. In the butchery states? No, abortion continues there. But we’ve made progress. We’ve saved lives.
We have to stop making the good the enemy of the perfect and start understanding that progress is made incrementally. The left imposed Roe v. Wade, which made a huge, horrifying leap in one fell swoop. And look what happened. It got overturned in one fell swoop.
The battle against abortion is not going to end by passing a law at the federal level. It just isn’t. First of all, it’s not clear Congress even could enact one. You know, we just threw out a ruling that said the federal government could make abortion laws. //
The Democrats have been beating us around the head with abortion. What they’ll do is call us liars if we try and pass an abortion law, and they have the advantage of truth because we didn’t promise this. We promised the opposite. It’s electoral poison, and there’s a lot more at stake than abortion – free speech, economic prosperity, and peace, to name just a few. But as for abortion itself, if the Democrats get the power, they’ll legalize it up to the moment that a kid gets his driver’s license. If you want to kill more kids, push for a federal abortion ban because that is a certain way of killing more kids.
The way to change abortion is to change hearts and minds one state at a time. I wish we could wave a magic wand and make this barbaric practice disappear. But I’m not a child. I understand that even things I believe in deeply are not going to just happen through the sheer power of rightness. We’ve got a lot of work to do. We can’t just wish the practice away because we accurately assess it as horribly wrong.
Is Donald Trump immoral for feeling the way he does about abortion? There are lots of pro-life people who are ticked off at him, but these people need to understand that Donald Trump, first of all, represents most Americans’ position and, second, that he was the most successful pro-life president in American history. This man has saved thousands upon thousands of lives through his judicial appointments who tossed out Roe. Trump hasn’t betrayed anybody. He just disagrees at the margins.
Trump is looking at things realistically and, yes, politically. And he damn well better look at things politically because there’s a lot more at stake here than abortion in 2024. A lot more.
Cortez told me he has been waiting three and a half months to cross the border. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) had yet to schedule his interview. There was a long line of migrants ahead of him, and, at this point, he was just hoping to get into the U.S. before November 2024.
When I pointed toward America and asked who they wanted to be president, Cortez answered quickly. “I want Biden to win,” he said.
Betancourt agreed. “If it’s Trump, it doesn’t matter how much I work or want to work,” he said. “They won’t let me in.” //
the number of illegal migrants soared, with roughly 2 million people entering the United States each year starting in 2021—the highest levels since the U.S. Border Patrol was created in 1924.
So, Mar-a-Lago is worth $18MM? Ummmm…OK.
With the very Soviet-style “verdict first, then trial” show trial proceeding apace in Manhattan, President Donald J. Trump has a delicious opportunity to turn the tables on his persecutors waging lawfare against him, his family, and his companies. //
The house was built by Marjorie Merriweather Post, the Post Cereals heiress and at the time the wealthiest woman in the United States, with her husband, stockbroker Edward F. Hutton. Completed in 1927, the house cost $7 million (equivalent to $118 million in 2022; perhaps Judge Engoron merely forgot a 1 in the hundreds place?).
It is said that in real estate, the three most important things are location, location, location. Mar-a-Lago is truly an unique property. Located on the Southern end of Palm Beach Island, it is the only property on the island to span its width, with both oceanfront and lakefront (hence its name, meaning “sea to lake”). It is not only listed on the United States National Register of Historic Places, it is also a United States National Historic Landmark. //
Hearst Castle has an estimated value of $700 million and Biltmore less than a quarter that amount, at $144 million. In 2022, Forbes magazine valued Mar-a-Lago at $350 million, but Palm Beach real estate professionals (who understand the intangibles that add value to properties on Palm Beach Island) valued the property much higher, with one estimate coming in at $725 million and another at $1 billion.
Now, what Palm Beach properties near Mar-a-Lago are valued at $18 million? Not many. One home to the South that sits on a half-acre on Lake Worth is valued at $40 million. Another to the North that sits on 0.89 acres with neither ocean frontage nor lake frontage, is valued at $37.5 million.
The closest to an $18 million valuation is a house squeezed into 0.28 acres in the middle of the block on a side street that is valued at $18.95 million.
Despite Willis' tough talk, she has actually been slowed down. It's unlikely the Georgia-based trial will happen before the November election at this point, which leads to a big question: What happens if Trump wins and then this vindictive, political prosecutor still garners a conviction in a county with a heavily left-wing jury pool?
There's no easy answer to that. Whether a president can pardon himself is an open question, though one that would likely be answered in the affirmative. Whether a president can pardon himself from a state-level conviction is another issue and one that has no precedent. On its face, the answer appears to be no.
So what then? Are Fulton County authorities going to head to Washington to battle the Secret Service and take Trump into custody?
It'd be a constitutional crisis to move forward with the prosecution of Trump on these ridiculous charges after the election. That's Willis' plan, though, because she isn't doing this to enforce the law. On the contrary, she's already brutalized it beyond all recognition by twisting RICO statutes, but she wants her name in lights. She wants to be the person in the history books who finally "got Trump," consequences to the nation need not apply.
Former Special Counsel Robert Hur resigned from the DOJ one day before the hearing but repeatedly defended its hyperpartisan track record. //
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Classified documents were found...
At the Penn Biden Center? "That's correct."
In President Biden's garage? "Yes."
And in his basement den? "Yes."
And his main floor office? "Correct."
And his third floor den? "Correct."
At the University of Delaware? "Correct."
And at the… Show more
10:54 AM · Mar 12, 2024 //
Several Republicans questioned why Hur decided for the jury that Biden’s actions wouldn’t result in conviction instead of recommending charges and letting the jury decide for themselves. Hur claimed this was his ultimate task but, as multiple representatives noted, Trump faces charges and jail time for similar actions he took as president because someone at the DOJ decided he deserved scrutiny that Biden did not. //
“Joe Biden had 8 million reasons to break the rules,” Jordan said, referring to the $8 million revenue Biden made on his book. Hur did not explicitly disagree with Jordan’s assertion.