Last Call For Orange Meltdown, Con't

The NY Attorney General's investigation into the Trump Organization has officially become a criminal investigation, and things just got real interesting as this means both the federal and state probes are now criminal.

 

New York Attorney General Letitia James is joining the Manhattan district attorney's office in a criminal investigation of the Trump Organization, James' office said Tuesday. 

The attorney general office's investigation into the Trump Organization, which has been underway since 2019, will also continue as an ongoing civil probe, but the office recently informed Trump Organization officials of the criminal component. 

"We have informed the Trump Organization that our investigation into the organization is no longer purely civil in nature. We are now actively investigating the Trump Organization in a criminal capacity, along with the Manhattan DA," James' spokesman Fabien Levy told CNN. "We have no additional comment." 

A lawyer for the Trump Organization declined to comment when reached by CNN. 

James' office is working with Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance's Office, whose wide-sweeping probe into the Trump Organization has looked into whether the company misled lenders and insurance companies about the value of properties and whether it paid the appropriate taxes. 

Vance's office is examining millions of pages of documents that include Trump's tax returns. 

A person familiar with the investigation said a couple of investigators with the New York attorney general's office, who are steeped in knowledge about the Trump Organization, have joined the district attorney's team. A different person familiar with the matter said the New York attorney general is still conducting a civil investigation.

 

I still don't think the probe will result in criminal charges however, or any charges against Trump. Doing so would almost certainly lead to a massive terrorist attack or series of attacks in New York City that would make January 6 and even 9/11 look like a picnic. 

Yes, the Biden administration would quickly restore order, but that would result in lots of other pop-up attacks all over the place, and governors in some states aren't going to cooperate even if charges are filed.

Still, it is one step closer to Trump getting what he deserves, and what America needs to happen.

A Supreme Ruling On Gunmerica

In a unanimous 9-0 opinion from Justice Thomas, the Supreme Court made it very clear that "community caretaking" exception to warrantless Fourth Amendment search and seizure procedures by police in a person's home has limits, and those limits include guns.

 

On Monday, the Supreme Court released its opinion in Caniglia v. Strom, which unanimously held that a lower court’s extension of Cady v. Dombrowski’s “community caretaking” exception into the home defied the logic and holding of Cady, as well as violated the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement. With the court’s unanimity in Caniglia, the home remains the most sacred space under the Fourth Amendment; its sanctity literally houses its privilege. Sans warrant, exigency or consent, governmental search and seizure within it is unconstitutional.

During an August 2015 argument with his wife, Edward Caniglia offered her one of his unloaded guns and requested that she put him out of his misery. Instead, she threatened to call 911. After the couple’s argument continued, she left the marital home to overnight at a hotel. When she returned the next day, she enlisted Cranston, Rhode Island’s police department to perform a wellness check on her husband. They did. They also arranged transportation for Edward to obtain a psychiatric evaluation at a local hospital. He agreed to go, but only after officers purportedly agreed not to confiscate his weapons. However, as soon as he left, officers — apparently by deceiving his wife — entered the Caniglia home and seized Caniglia’s handguns and ammunition. Caniglia sued, alleging that the officers violated his Fourth Amendment rights. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit sided with the officers by relying on Cady, a 1973 decision that upheld the warrantless “caretaking” search of a car that had been in an accident.

The court’s opinion, written by Justice Clarence Thomas, was devoid of the fearsome, compelling specter raised in the briefing and during argument regarding the potential for troubling eventualities — for instance, that Caniglia may have harmed himself or his wife (or, perhaps, other innocent/intervening victims). A pithy four pages “long,” the opinion was unanimous and unambiguous: If police do not have the homeowner’s consent, an “exigent” circumstance, or a judicial warrant authorizing a search, then no version of Cady’s car exception applies to police entry into the home under the Fourth Amendment. “What is reasonable for vehicles is different from what is reasonable for homes,” Thomas wrote.

As always with realty – and, per Caniglia, the court’s Fourth Amendment jurisprudence — location matters. Specifically, the location of Cady’s warrantless search and seizure – a post-accident, routine search of an intoxicated, off-duty officer’s damaged and impounded car — simply cannot compare to a search of and seizure within a home. Governmental searches of vehicles regularly occur via exceptions to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement; a myriad of decisions have constitutionalized warrantless searches of vehicles, their compartments, their containers and even their occupants. Not one of these warrantless exceptions is available for the home.

Accordingly, caretaking under Cady is not carte blanche for police to search or seize within the home, nor do their “caretaking” duties create a “standalone doctrine that justifies warrantless searches and seizures in the home,” Thomas wrote. Cady, itself, he noted, drew an “unmistakable distinction between vehicles and homes,” constitutionally embedding the exception outside the home.

That police may engage in a myriad of “civic” community caretaking functions did not move the court off its jurisprudential bright line. Certainly, such functions give texture to the modern, sometimes complex, role of policing. They do not, however, supplant the constitutional sanctity of the home. Accordingly, the Caniglia court declined the opportunity to expand Cady’s “community caretaking” exception and permit warrantless entry into the home.

 

The overarching theme here is that short of an exigent emergency, cops can't search your home and take your things. None of those things applied in this case, and the court reaffirmed unanimously that this is the case.

It was a simple call, even for Clarence Thomas to make.

The House Republican Performative Caucus, Or Welcome To The Clown Show

Breaking news, the clown show that is the House Republican caucus is in fact full of clowns, and they're too busy being clowns to vote on legislation.

The top five freshman members of Congress who've missed the most votes this year are all House Republicans, according to data collected by Quorum.

By the numbers: Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) led the pack, missing 16.2% of votes. Cawthorn ranks sixth overall among all members — both House and Senate — in terms of missed votes. 

The House Democratic freshman who missed the most votes is Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), No. 14 on the list, at 2.82%. 

Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), No. 12, missed the most votes in the Senate as a freshman, at 3.14%.

What they're saying: “Rep. Cawthorn married the love of his life on April 3rd of 2021. Due to his honeymoon, he missed House votes occurring between April 13th and April 16th," his spokesman Micah Bock told Axios. 

Four of the votes that Sen. Lummis missed were due to a record-level blizzard that hit Wyoming this year, Lummis's office said.

 

Sure, that's an excuse, because all the House votes took place in four days in April, right? And it's weird, because Wyoming's other senator, John Barasso, made those votes.

Even more so than the House GOP entering freshmen of the last decade, this class seems to think that they'll get reelected by not doing anything in the House except being assholes.

And they will get reelected, because their Republican voters in red districts think the federal government is illegitimate and broken anyway, so why not have a Congressperson dedicated to making sure it stays that way?

They don't want representation. They want entertainment. They want to own the libs. Period.

Welcome to the clown show, rookies.