Trump on Trial

Joyce Vance agrees
https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/joyce-vance-trump-looks-increasingly-desperate-from-hush-money-case-going-to-trial-208693317681

Quote :

Adding to a litany of complaints registered this week with the appeals court, Bove argued that trial Judge Juan Merchan “exceeded his authority” in refusing to postpone the case until the Supreme Court rules on an immunity claim Trump raised in another of his criminal cases. Trump’s lawyers argue some evidence in the hush-money case could be excluded if the Supreme Court rules in his favor.

Because? Maybe his lawyers want to argue that buying pussy falls under his official presidential duties?

(That didn't work for Clinton...)

Karen McDougal is on the witness list for the Stormy Daniels case.
https://www.msnbc.com/alex-wagner-tonight/watch/playmate-s-inclusion-as-potential-witness-in-trump-trial-may-hint-at-prosecution-strategy-208835653999

Both Karen and Stormy signed NDAs for $150,000 in the lead-up to 2016, but if I understand the law correctly, that does not prevent them from testifying against Mushroom Dick. I don't think an NDA is actually legally enforceable, is it?

Headline on HuffPost today:
"Trump’s Lead-Off Trial Will Determine If He Illegally Cheated To Win In 2016"

Mrs NoCo asked last night－very reasonably I thought－after a similar statement on the nightly news, if the trial determines that Mushroom Dick cheated to win in 2016, whether his entire presidency could be invalidated, if everything he did could be erased and undone (including all his judicial appointments), and whether the history books could simply show an asterisk for this period.

Trump wants to testify.
https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/us-news/ill-tell-the-truth-donald-trump-vows-to-testify-in-stormy-daniels-hush-money-trial-as-he-just-found-101713021349371.html

Consensus is, if he does, it'll be over quickly.

NoCoPilot wrote:

Fucking UNBELIEVABLE corruption in our legal system.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-bond-reduced-fraud-appeal_n_660198c0e4b059750143d44c

Even that may be too much for him.

Trump Bond Company Makes VERY ALARMING Filing

Per the prosecutors Trump has already violated the gag order ten times.  On Tuesday judge Merchan will hold a hearing to determine if this is true, and if so, what the punishment should be.

The court is closed Wednesdays.

Merchan should sentence DJT to sit in jail from Tuesday evening until Thursday morning when the court reconvenes.

Just to show him that he means business, and this is not a game.

Andrew Weissmann agrees with me.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/andrew-weissmann-donald-trump-jailt-time_n_662219c8e4b0bf7f0137b9b1

Thom Hartmann wrote:

Under New York law, the judge can immediately hold him in contempt of court if Trump does things in front of the judge, but if he does them outside the courtroom and the judge wants to go for criminal (jail) sanctions rather than civil (fines) sanctions, he has to have a separate hearing to do that. Thus, the delay to next Tuesday for the hearing on Trump’s violations of his gag order. This is actually bad news for Trump; it indicates that Judge Merchan is taking the contempt charges seriously and laying the foundation for actually tossing Trump in jail for a day or more.

Meanwhile Merchan has stomped on the frivolous motions from the Nodfather's legal team. That's a good sign.

Quote :

Judge Warns Trump Attorneys They Need To Accept His Decisions
Merchan appears tired of spending time addressing procedural issues that Trump’s team has already asked him to address, saying, “At this point, what’s happening is defense is targeting individual decisions one by one by one by one … there comes a point where you accept my rulings.”

“My rulings are what they are. I’ve entertained your motions, I’ve entertained your arguments in good faith,” he said.

“We’re going to have opening statements on Monday morning. This trial is starting.”

Then there's this:

Quote :

Finally, multiple press reports, verified by George Conway on X, suggest that when Trump falls asleep he also starts farting, and the smell is so bad that it’s a problem for his attorneys. Noel Casler has repeatedly said that when he worked with Trump on Celebrity Apprentice the billionaire (?) was wearing diapers that were often soiled and smelly, grossing out the NBC film crew. I’m reluctant to make fun of elderly people who are incontinent, but this is another way that the patina of “strongman” gets etched away from Trump because he has to sit in this courtroom all day every day of his trial and, if the reports are true, the smell is extraordinary.

Astonishing.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-immunity-supreme-court_n_662a6777e4b09d8df9d5b71f?n8g

Even more astonishing: SCOTUS may buy this argument.
https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/trump-immunity-supreme-court-clarence-thomas-recusal-rcna149251

Consensus among MSNBC legal experts is that SCOTUS will rule that the president has absolute immunity.

What hasn’t been discussed is this: what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

Biden could use his new absolute immunity to remove five Justices. Biden could order DJT incarcerated at Guantanamo, along with 40 or 50 of his closest friends. Biden could remove from office 149 Republicans who voted in favor of the coup.

And nobody could do anything about it. Because, it would CLEARLY be an "official act" to Preserve our Democracy from bad people with ill intentions.

NoCoPilot wrote:

Consensus among MSNBC legal experts is that SCOTUS will rule that the president has absolute immunity.

Because they don't care.  Alito and Thomas are working very hard to be able to retire in the next 4 years (and Thomas has an unfathomable position anyway). They're only concerned about their own retirements.  Fuck the country at large.

The military has a rock-solid argument against presidential immunity: what if an immune president issues a plainly illegal order to his troops?  That puts them in an untenable position, either carrying out an illegal order and facing prosecution themselves, or defying a direct order... and facing court martial. The paradox blows up the whole idea of civilian control.
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/supreme-court-trump-presidential-immunity-military-national-security-rcna147049

SCOTUS will send the matter back to a lower court to decide what's the difference between "private" and "public" acts－even though this has NOTHING to do with the case before them－and thus delay a decision until after the election.

If Trump wins, he'll simply make the case go away.  If Biden wins, hopefully the Senate will flip Democratic enough to impeach a couple of rogue justices. That's unlikely, unfortunately.

Rachel said tonite she thinks Trump should simply plead guilty and get back out on the campaign trail. None of his supporters believe the trial is real anyway.

Lisa Rubin pointed out that if he pleads guilty, he goes straight into the sentencing phase, and each of his 34 counts carries a penalty of 2 to 5 years imprisonment. If he stays in court for the duration of the trial (6 weeks to a couple months), he'll get to appeal the almost-guaranteed guilty verdict. His appeal could easily stretch beyond the election -- and if he wins, he can simply make the guilty verdict poof.

So, the Godfarter is stuck in a smelly, drab, humiliating trial, with no supporters rallying outside. The judge has imposed a figurative gag (it should be literal, like a Hannibal Lecter mask if you ask me.) Trump is up to 3AM every morning ragetweeting in all caps, so he tends to fall asleep during the endless droning documents testimony that doesn't mention him by name (remember when the news came out that his PDB presidential daily briefings had to mention his name every couple sentences to keep him engaged?) He's being forced to dress up, sit on a hard wooden chair, listen to droning testimony in a chilly courtroom all day every day until maybe the end of June. He can't play with his phone or eat Whoppers or watch OAN.

Rachel says this may be the only punishment he endures.

So he got fined $9,000 for repeated violations of the gag order. That's really going to sting <sigh>. But there's one nice point: this puts him in violation of his bail in the other three criminal trials. So, in theory at least, they could revoke his bail and jail him. Florida won't do that, but somebody might.

I thought about that. Yes, the $9,000 fine is peanuts.  But he also has to take down all nine offending posts, and he's on-record that next time an "incarcerary penalty" will be imposed (jail time).

He's been goading the judge(s) trying to get SOMEBODY to give him a penalty he can campaign on, something he can show to his supporters to fundraise off. He wants to distract from the facts in the case with accusations of persecution, of biased judges and lawyers.

Well Merchan is having none of it.  He's reacting in a very slow, very measured (very frustrating) way.  He's put water on Trump's wick.

And now, if he blasts out more disparagement, he'll spend the night in jail (or a weekend) and it'll look a lot less vengeful and a lot more like a stupid move on his part.

NoCoPilot wrote:

And now, if he blasts out more disparagement, he'll spend the night in jail.

Let me amend this. It won't be "if," it'll be "when." DJT has zero impulse control, he'll violate, 100% certain.

My FERVENT hope is that for his night in jail, they'll make him wear the orange jumpsuit, and somebody will get a picture.

THAT will be epic, and it will change the narrative. A former president in prison garb.

Quote :

"I find you in criminal contempt for the 10th time," Judge Mercgan says, before issuing a warning to Trump.

"Going forward, this court will have to consider a jail sanction," he said.

Merchan said Trump is the past president and perhaps the next one as well, and speaks about how much of a disruption potential jail time would be – for Trump, the trial itself, and the court officers tasked with potentially jailing Trump in the future.

"The magnitude of such a decision is not lost on me, but at the end of the day, I have a job to do," Merchan says, adding that that job includes protecting the "integrity of the judicial system."

[Violation]

Judge: "Stop it, or you're going to jail!"

[Violation]

Judge: "Stop it, or you're going to jail!"

[Violation]

Judge: "Stop it, or you're going to jail!"

[Violation]

Judge: "Stop it, or you're going to jail!"

[Violation]

Judge: "Stop it, or you're going to jail!"

[Violation]

Judge: "Stop it, or you're going to jail!"

[Violation]

Judge: "Stop it, or you're going to jail!"

[Violation]

Judge: "Stop it, or you're going to jail!"

[Violation]

Judge: "Stop it, or you're going to jail!"

[Violation]

Judge: "Stop it, or you're going to jail!"

Class, what have we learned here?

Quote :

Trump's classified documents case delayed indefinitely

We have an update in a separate Donald Trump trial. 
Judge Aileen Cannon has announced she is indefinitely postponing the former president's classified documents case from the 20 May start date. 
Citing the complexity of the case and Trump's myriad of legal issues, Judge Cannon said the court was abandoning its plan to try Trump in the coming weeks. 
She said she would produce another order to clarify a new trial date, but it is unknown when that might be released. 
Trump had long sought a delay in the case, which comes after a number of classified documents were found at his home in Mar-a-Lago.
He is accused of retaining sensitive national security files and has pleaded not guilty to 40 felony charges in that case. 
You can read more about Trump's legal cases here.

Good god.  How is this even possible??