KENNEDY: Well...this trial I think says more about our politics than it says about an alleged crime. Mr. Bragg, I don't know him either. My observation is that if you want to hide something from him, you put it in a law book. He's bringing a felony criminal trial, but he hasn't proved a felony. //
Bragg is charging Trump with what are essentially paperwork violations. Those wouldn't be prosecutable, though, if they didn't occur in the process of committing another felony. What is that felony? We have no idea and neither does the jury. At this point, it's not even clear the judge is going to make the prosecution define it. What we do know is that the Department of Justice, far from a friend of the former president, looked at all this and deemed there was no case.
There are also issues revolving around how Bragg managed to upgrade the misdemeanors surrounding the accounting of the "hush money payment" to felonies, which allowed the prosecution to get around the statute of limitations. In short, we have two misdemeanors that require an underlying crime, yet they've been upgraded to felonies based on a supposed crime that hasn't been defined. It's so stupid that even left-wing sources have been questioning the wisdom of it.
Bill Maher came out following the Stormy court appearance to completely dispute her contentions. He explained how he interviewed the actress in 2018, and when he gave her the chance to take the victimhood path, she sternly refused.
Daniels: "I have no idea. It is not a me too case. I wasn't assaulted. I wasn't raped. I wasn't attacked or raped, or coerced or blackmailed. They tried to shove me in to the #MeToo box to further their agenda. And first of all, I didn't want any part of that because it's not the truth, and I'm not a victim in that regard."
That is not only 180 degrees in opposition to her testimony, but on the stand, her account of the affair dropped many of the buzzwords and phrases heard from the movement. //
Steve Krakauer @SteveKrak
·
A journalism "tell" - look for what stories DON'T get covered.
On CBS' marquee Sunday show "Face the Nation," the NYC Trump trial didn't get mentioned at all. On CNN, only a passing reference. NBC relegated it to the final panel segment.
Doesn't bode well for the prosecution.
3:37 AM · May 13, 2024
It looks like the ‘strongest’ legal case against Trump is based on yet another set of lies from corrupt federal agencies. //
Recent court disclosures give two indications that federal employees could have planted the classified documents used to mire Trump and several aides into a sprawling investigation and an election-interfering court case. The first is the explosive evidence revealed Friday: For 11 months, the special counsel’s office hid that it misplaced some — we don’t know how many or which — of the same allegedly classified documents it claims Trump criminally possessed at Mar-a-Lago. //
Second, there’s the also newly uncovered fact that a federal agency sent “two pallets” of documents to Mar-a-Lago while the National Archives and Records Administration was setting up this documents case. It’s unknown who all had access to these document boxes during their packing, temporary storage in Virginia, and transit to Trump’s home. Were those boxes a setup too? Imagine if some boxes the feds sent amid NARA’s dispute with Trump were also boxes the DOJ can’t verify as being in their original state. //
We also learned just last week that the White House and Department of Justice lawyers colluded with NARA to develop what became the special counsel’s classified documents indictment, starting an entire year before the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, according to documents reviewed by reporter Julie Kelly. Just the News reports the collusion between NARA and the White House could have begun as early as a few weeks into the Biden presidency, according to White House visitor logs.
So of course the classified documents case didn’t arise from concern over legal improprieties, as the complete lack of prosecution for the same conduct from Joe Biden, Mike Pence, Hillary Clinton, James Comey, and DOJ leakers also proves. It was a political hit from the beginning, using federal agencies and resources to strangle Democrats’ top political opponent and override the votes of half the country. Talk about an insurrection.
Simon Ateba
@simonateba
·
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Ahead of Michael Cohen’s testimony against Trump Monday, @CNN legal analyst says, “I’ve never seen a witness who’s lied to Congress, who’s lied to court, who’s lied to the IRS, who’s lied to the Southern District of New York, who lied to his banker.” WATCH
3:49 PM · May 10, 2024 //
GBenton
10 hours ago
Alvin Bragg's running the biggest bluff in history and he's got nothing. I can see why they didn't want this case to go first. Between that lying harlot and Cohen and the judges disgraceful gag order and allowing reversable errors, they're boosting Trump's cred with the voters and possibly heading for an aquittal since at least two of the jurors are lawyers and know that this is a sh1tshow from top to bottom - not to mention there is no crime and Bragg has no jurisdiction to prosecute federal crimes.
I think Bonchie's hunch might be right. Hung jury or found not guilty since this case was NEVER ready for prime time and they just wanted to bloody up Trump with salacious nonsense like the Billy Bush tapes.
Florida case, toast. GA case, not likely to happen before the election. DC case - Gonna call it now, Supremes either send it back to the lower courts and it doesn't happen before the election or they rule he's got enough immunity to void that case outright.
And Trump is vindicated -- Jack Smith gets charged for his shenanigans and Biden destroys the Dem party by proving Trump right that the system is totally corrupt.
That's what it looks like right now. Far cry from what the Dems probably thought -- I think their goose was cooked when fatass James didn't bankrupt Trump with her fake fraud case and instead he's billions richer, lol.
One would think that the media would spend days, if not weeks reporting those details if they could verify that Trump was that president. But he wasn’t. That president was the mythical King of Camelot, the icon of the Democrat Party, and an equal to Lincoln in stature. John Fitzgerald Kennedy was that adulterous cad of a chief executive. //
A washed-up porn pin cushion and her story about blacking out and not remembering what happened should never have seen the light of day or the inside of a courtroom. Her new claims that it wasn’t “about the money” and her insistence that she was an apparent unwilling victim are equal parts garbage, legally irrelevant, and clearly intended to prejudice the 12-person jury. The scandalous testimony Judge Merchan allowed has been, without doubt, utterly irrelevant to the case at bar. Merchan is sheep-dogging a kangaroo court, a political show trial that the KGB’s Lavrenty Beria would be proud of.
I got your attention by leading with a false suggestion. Misdirection. That’s what the prosecution is doing in Manhattan. Trump wasn’t “banging” interns. And this trial isn't about Daniels or her claims. It's [supposed to be] about business documents. But the prosecution got what it wanted. A false suggestion that Trump may have raped Daniels.
Orange Man bad.
Byron York explains:
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has charged Trump with falsifying bookkeeping records of a nondisclosure payment in order to commit or conceal another crime, Bragg still hasn’t revealed what that other crime is. It’s really the key to the whole case. Without the other crime, there would be no charges against Trump in this matter. The fact that we — and that includes the defendant — still don’t know what the other crime is is one of the great injustices of a felony prosecution that never should have happened...[Bragg's] theory is that if Michael Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 in the fall of 2016 to keep her from going public with her story that she and Trump had a sexual encounter and then Trump repaid Cohen in 2017, then that was a campaign contribution and should have been reported to the FEC. The payments were made “for the purpose of influencing any election,” the theory continues, and the Trump campaign should have filed a document with the FEC listing among its campaign contributions and expenditures that it received and spent $130,000 for “hush money.”
If you think that sounds a little odd for an FEC disclosure, you’re right. That’s where one of the critical witnesses to be called by the Trump defense comes in. Bradley Smith is a former chairman of the FEC, and on many occasions, including long before Trump, he has argued that there are all sorts of things a candidate can spend money on that are not legally classifiable as “for the purpose of influencing any election.” ... Smith, having headed the FEC, has many examples from the commission’s enforcement of federal election law that illustrate his point. He knows what he is talking about, and it seems clear that his expert opinion is that paying off Daniels, no matter what one might think of it, is not a campaign expenditure or donation that FECA requires a candidate to disclose. The Trump defense plans to call Smith as a witness. Not because he has any personal knowledge of the Trump transaction but because he understands, and has enforced, the campaign law that Bragg’s prosecutors appear to be planning to use against Trump. But Merchan has forbidden Smith from testifying about most of the issues involved in the case.
Donald Trump plans to use special operations forces assassination squads to wage war on Mexican drug cartels if he's elected president. //
About a quarter million US citizens die each year from overdoses of drugs brought into the US by Mexican cartels. This indirect cost is on top of the 30,000+ annual cartel-related murders. //
I think adopting a strategy the Romans used to defend the frontiers of the Empire makes a lot of sense.
When Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador took office in December 2018, the CIA concluded that drug groups controlled about 20 percent of Mexican territory. By 2022, the US Northern Command concluded that up to 35 percent of Mexico was under direct control of drug cartels. That does not seem like success. If that trend line continues, Mexico will be a narco-state within four years. The drug cartels directly employ about 170,000 people, making it that nation's fifth largest employer. If you consider people who make a living supplying goods and services to the cartels, they are probably the most significant economic engine in Mexico. //
With it becoming more evident by the day that the Chinese government is working hand-in-glove with the cartels to ensure fentanyl wreaks havoc in America, it has come time to recognize that we are facing a military problem, not a law enforcement problem. //
Our southern border is with a failed state. Its government can't enforce its laws, and it isn't a useful partner for keeping our border secure. Where the law ends, lawlessness flourishes. The situation here is no different from piracy in the 17th-century Caribbean ... //
... we can use the doctrine of Hostis humani generis to raise the cost of doing business for drug cartels and staunch the slaughter of millions of Americans in the process. //
ConservativeInMinnesota
12 hours ago
Drugs kill far more Americans than all of our wars ever have. We lost around 58,000 in Vietnam and 418,000 in WW2. We’ve been losing more than 100,000 Americans a year to just Fentanyl since 2021.
We went to war over 3000 deaths on 9/11 and 2400 in Pearl Harbor. How many Americans do we let drug cartels kill before we decide it’s time to shut them down?
Maximus Decimus Cassius writeofcenter
3 hours ago edited
For the left, the end justifies the means--any means. And the fact that the legal community writ large is not up in arms about this travesty of justice tells us all we need to know about the ethics, morals and integrity of the "legal community".
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.
America First Legal
@America1stLegal
·
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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.