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"Preposterous in an ethical society, but we’re actually not that anymore here in the land of feverish #Trump idolatry a la Fidel #Castro in 1959. The American right-wing caudillo, who tried to derail democracy and took off with secret military documents he shared and hid from the FBI, can do no wrong."
FABIOLA SANTIAGO writes for the #MiamiHerald
We need more reporters, columnists, politicians and activists linking Trump to Castro and Hugo Chavez.
#TrumpTrial 🧵starts HERE. #legal #Trump 1/…
👀Via Katie Phang:
Interestingly: Eric Trump has accompanied his father to court today. Perhaps Trump’s legal team heard all of the chatter about the appearance to the jury with no family members being present?…
👀 “Google and Twitter recently provided hundreds of files to #Michigan prosecutors for their 2020 election subversion probe, complying with search warrants that investigators obtained after CNN revealed secret social media accounts belonging to pro-#Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, who played a major role in the fake electors plot.” #legal
Despite the legacy media’s relentlessly hostile coverage, #Biden is absolutely walloping #Trump among people who get their news from real news outlets.
Poll: Biden and Trump supporters sharply divided by the media they consume
Supporters of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are sharply divided by, among other things, the sources they rely on to get their news.Ben Kamisar (NBC News)
1/... Emptywheel:
New Yorkers will be amused that nepo-kid's idea of stamina is stopping by a Bodega after a 7 hour day sitting on your ass and a USSS escort drive across town.
Eric #Trump: His stamina, I've never seen anything like it in my life. He'll be in trial all day long only to step out and do events at bodegas and go to Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. The whole world knows his toughness
The Face of Christian Authoritarianism: Giving to Trump What Is Trump’s
How American Christianity moved from right-wing activism to outright idolatry in the Trump eraAlan Elrod (Liberal Currents)
This is my dog when I was little.
He used to sleep in my parent's room in a basket at the bottom of a closet.
After his death my parents kept his basket and my father would never, EVER close the closet's door because "Oodie needs to be able to come to sleep".
Now ask me what I think of Kristi Noem.
#kristinoem #dog #republicans #MAGA #animalrights #Trump #DogsOfMastodon
"It’s a rogue court, a thoroughly corrupt one, one that is so far gone in its corruption that it feels free even from the practical obligation to clothe its corruption for the sake of appearances."
#SupremeCourt #Trump #corruption
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"We cannot pretend that this is normal or acceptable. Indeed, the MAGA extremists are depending on Democrats to be temperate, refined, and reserved in the face of corruption. The time for presumptions of goodwill and deference to the Court has passed. It abused our trust and refused to regulate itself. We must do so before it is too late."
~ Robert B. Hubbell
#SupremeCourt #Trump #corruption
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https://roberthubbell.substack.com/p/weekend-reader-comments-330
"The display we saw yesterday was a vivid illustration of how the Court has gone thoroughly rogue, cutting itself off from even the appearances of the processes that give it legitimacy. That is the core of the current Court’s corruption."
~ Josh Marshall
#SupremeCourt #Trump #corruption
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The gift link below is from Robert B. Hubbell at Today's Edition.
Peering into the Corrupt Court's Pretensions and Corruption
There were so many things that happened yesterday in the Supreme Court’s...TPM
(1/2)
That's why I said, "...should be ruled unconstitutional,..." It might not be, given the fact that the complete institutional setup was meant to protect the WASP landed gentry.
How inadequate the system.of checks and balances has proven to be could be seen by the repeatedly failed attempts to hold rogue office holders to account: #OJohnRogge, #Agnew, #Nixon, #Trump, #Alito,...the systemic failures even have a tendency to grow worse.
While the...
@philip_cardella
Via Andrew Weissmann said this last night. These are creative, and hopefully potentially effective, options:
#Trump #GagOrder options in addition to fine/jail:
- put a monitor over his use of social media posts
- hold sentence on a contempt finding until after trial over
- advise Trump that his contempt of gag order can be considered at sentencing upon conviction.
All can be used by Judge Merchan.
#TFG is loyal only to himself. Not even to his wives. OFC not to his party people.
https://mstdn.social/@knittingknots2/112337706368046704
Team Trump Fine With Pissing Off MAGA to Compete With Biden
Obviously the delay was the point.
"Trump’s lawyers don’t expect the Supreme Court to bless his absurd immunity claims. 'We already pulled off the heist,' says a source close to Trump." #scotus #trump
Team Trump Is Celebrating the Supreme Court Immunity Case, Win or Lose
Trump’s lawyers don’t expect the Supreme Court to bless his absurd immunity claims. “We already pulled off the heist,” says a source close to Trump.Adam Rawnsley (Rolling Stone)
On his 3rd day of testimony, #Pecker, the fmr #NationalEnquirer publisher, described his involvement in the #CatchAndKill of the stories of 2 women who claimed to have had sex w/ #Trump: #KarenMcDougal, a Playboy model, & #StormyDaniels, the porn star whose 2016 #HushMoney payoff forms the basis of the #criminal case.
#Trump is charged w/falsifying 34 business records to cover up a $130k payment to #StormyDaniels, who has said they had a sexual encounter in 2006 & was shopping that story in the weeks before the 2016 presidential election.
Trump denies the charges & ever having had sex w/ either woman.
He could face probation or prison if convicted.
#Pecker testified that as part of the #CatchAndKill #conspiracy #AMI paid #KarenMcDougal $150k for her story, w/no intention of ever publishing it.
Pecker expected repayment from #Trump. He asked #MichaelCohen who would handle it, & Cohen responded, “The boss will take care of it.”
Because Pecker had such a hard time getting Trump to pay, he was unwilling to buy the 3rd story: #StormyDaniels’s.
“I am not a bank,” Pecker recalled saying.
#Pecker suggested that #MichaelCohen buy #StormyDaniels's story, leading to the #HushMoney deal, repayments & records at issue.
The prosecution’s discussion of the deal w/ #KarenMcDougal —brokered in summer 2016— demonstrated that the payment was part of a #conspiracy to #influence that year’s #election.
Pecker said that McDougal’s payment was disguised as a contract for services, to avoid violating #CampaignFinance #laws.
#criminal #law #Trump #TrumpTrial #ElectionInterference #CatchAndKill
“I wanted to protect my company, I wanted to protect myself & I wanted also to protect Donald Trump,” #Pecker said.
Pecker was asked whether he believed #Trump was concerned that his wife or family would find out. But Pecker suggested that Trump’s concerns were electoral, not personal.
Pecker testified to at least 2X when Trump asked after #KarenMcDougal, referring to her at a Trump Tower meeting as “our girl.” He also asked about her during a meeting at the #WhiteHouse.
The Trump Tower meeting also included #JamesComey, then the #FBI dir, #ReincePriebus, who was chair of the RNC, #SeanSpicer the WH press sec & #MikePompeo the dir of the CIA.
Totally normal.
At that meeting #Pecker reassured #Trump that everything was fine.
Trump then told the group that Pecker probably “knows more than anyone else in this room.”
“It was a joke,” Pecker testified, adding, “They didn’t laugh.”
#criminal #law #TrumpTrial #CatchAndKill #conspiracy #ElectionInterference
#Pecker said on Tues he had agreed to be the “eyes & ears” of the #TrumpCampaign & used #AMI to deal w/threats to #Trump’s reputation.
After the #AccessHollywood tape came out in Oct 2016, where Trump’s boasts about groping women, one of Pecker’s editors scrubbed an AMI publication’s website of a 2008 article describing Trump as a “playboy man.”
#criminal #law #TrumpTrial #CatchAndKill #conspiracy #ElectionInterference #HushMoney
Despite that, #Trump often made his displeasure known, #Pecker testified, either through #MichaelCohen or direct calls. Pecker described Trump as “very angry” & “very aggravated.”
Pecker said, “I felt that Donald Trump was my mentor,” Pecker said, adding, “I still consider him a friend.”
Trump’s lawyers, led by Emil Bove, started their #CrossExamination trying to show that such deals were “standard operating procedure” in the supermarket #tabloid business.
That offered the first look at defense’s strategy: normalizing #criminal acts.
The #CrossExamination also showed the seedier side of #tabloids, incl’g the admission that #Pecker’s magazines bought stories as leverage against #celebrities.
Pecker described a 2002 meeting in which #ArnoldSchwarzenegger asked Pecker not to run negative stories about him before his run for governor of California. He was elected & served 2003-2011.
#NationalEnquirer fmr publisher David #Pecker’s testimony is expected to conclude today. He’s already spent 3 days on the stand.
#Trump, addressing reporters before entering the courtroom, wished his wife, #Melania, a happy birthday on camera. Then entered the courtroom where he’s on trial for falsifying records to silence 2 women about having extramarital affairs w/him to hide it not from her but from his evangelical Christian electorate. JFC
#Trump is back w/ his criminally indicted adviser #BorisEpshteyn.
Justice Juan #Merchan is on the bench & announces a scheduling clarification, saying that another hearing to determine whether Trump violated his #GagOrder will be held next Thurs morning. We are still waiting for the outcome of Tuesday’s hearing on the gag order, in which prosecutors asked that Trump be held in #contempt & fined at least $10k.
#criminal #law #CatchAndKill #conspiracy #ElectionInterference #MobTactics #NodFarter
#Pecker is back & takes the stand.
The jury is seated & one of the defense lawyers, Emil Bove, resumes his #CrossExamination. #Bove apologizes for making it seem yesterday as if Pecker had lied in a conversation w/ federal prosecutors about whether #HopeHicks had been present for a meeting in #Trump Tower.
Prosecutors have described the meeting, which occurred in 2015, as central to the #conspiracy at the heart of this case.
#criminal #law #TrumpTrial #CatchAndKill #ElectionInterference
#Bove asks #Pecker to describe the negative stories that The #NationalEnquirer ran about #Trump's 2016 #Republican opponents, #BenCarson, #MarcoRubio & #TedCruz. He argues, as he did yesterday, that it was standard operating procedure to run articles like these, in which The NE reran previously reported content. Bove is still trying to convince the #jury that Pecker didn't have some special arrangement w/Trump: Instead, his publication was doing what it had always done.
FYI
Yesterday, prosecutors asked #Pecker to walk through his non-prosecution agreement in connection w/the 2018 federal investigation into the actions of #MichaelCohen & #NationalEnquirer’s parent company #AMI.
#Merchan told the jury that it was offered to provide context & to help them assess Pecker's credibility. He added that it wasn’t evidence of #Trump's guilt.
#criminal #law #CatchAndKill #conspiracy #ElectionInterference #HushMoney
#Bove leading the #CrossExamination of #Pecker, is trying to drive home the idea that The #NationalEnquirer recycled news from other publications. It is seemingly an effort by Bove to show that Pecker wasn't moving mountains to find damaging info about Trump's Republican opponents during the 2016 presidential race.
#Trump is sitting at the defense table w/ his eyes shut as Pecker testifies.
#criminal #law #CatchAndKill #conspiracy #ElectionInterference #HushMoney #MobTactics #NodFarter
#Bove spent a fair amount of time reviewing articles that he said had recycled content in them. But he didn't fully explain how this was standard practice for The #NationalEnquirer, & he has now moved on to another topic. It was somewhat difficult to follow what exactly it was that Bove was trying to imply.
Bove is currently arguing that it was fairly well-known, if not widely spoken about, that The NE was trying to help #Trump during his 2016 campaign.
However when one of the negative stories about #TedCruz came out in 2016 #Trump said:
"I did not know about it, & have not, as yet, read it. Likewise, I have nothing to do w/ the #NationalEnquirer & unlike Lyin' Ted Cruz I do not surround myself w/ political hacks & henchman & then pretend total innocence."
The suggestion by Trump’s lawyer that what #Pecker did for Trump was #SOP is belied by ~20yrs of Pecker helping him.
#criminal #law #TrumpTrial #CatchAndKill #ElectionInterference
#Bove is asking #Pecker about #Dino Sajudin, the #doorman w/a story to sell about #Trump fathering a child out of wedlock. Sajudin was at the heart of the 1st #CatchAndKill deal, in which The NE purchased the story & did not publish it. Bove asks Pecker to repeat that he believed that if the story were true, “it could be the biggest #NationalEnquirer article ever.” Bove appears to be trying to suggest that Pecker would have published it had he been able to verify it.
