Sam Bankman-Fried Fried For Fraud

The jury in the fraud trial of cryptocurrency king Sam Bankman-Fried took less than a day to return a guilty verdict on seven counts involving billions of dollars stolen from investors.

Sam Bankman-Fried was found guilty on Thursday for his role in the collapse of crypto exchange FTX.

After 15 days of testimony and about four and a half hours of deliberations, jurors returned a verdict that found him guilty on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy.

Bankman-Fried looked sunken as the verdict was read out. After the jury was released, he stood, head bowed and shaking as his lawyer spoke in his ear. A few feet behind him, his parents stood watching. As Bankman-Fried was escorted out of the room, he turned back and smiled at his parents. His father, Joe Bankman, put his arm around his wife’s shoulders. As their son left the room, Barbara Fried broke down in tears.

In remarks outside the Manhattan courthouse on Thursday, US Attorney Damian Williams lauded the jury’s verdict, saying the government has “no patience” for fraud and corruption.

“These players like Sam Bankman-Fried might be new, but this kind of fraud, this kind of corruption, is as old as time,” he said.

But Bankman-Fried’s attorney said they were “disappointed.”

“We respect the jury’s decision. But we are very disappointed with the result,” said lead defense attorney Mark Cohen in a statement. “Mr. Bankman Fried maintains his innocence and will continue to vigorously fight the charges against him.”

The sentencing hearing date will be March 28, 2024. He faces up to 110 years in prison.

Bankman-Fried was found guilty of stealing billions of dollars from accounts belonging to customers of his once-high-flying crypto exchange FTX. He was also found guilty of defrauding lenders to FTX’s sister company, the hedge fund Alameda Research, which held FTX customer funds in a bank account.

During his trial, Bankman-Fried said he learned in 2020 that FTX customer funds were held by Alameda but he did not take action to safeguard them.

When he later discovered in the fall of 2022 that Alameda owed $8 billion to FTX, no one was fired.

Other charges Bankman-Fried was found guilty of include defrauding investors in FTX and a money-laundering charge.

“Sam Bankman-Fried thought that he was above the law. Today’s verdict proves he was wrong,” said US Attorney General Merrick Garland, in a statement. “This case should send a clear message to anyone who tries to hide their crimes behind a shiny new thing they claim no one else is smart enough to understand: the Justice Department will hold you accountable.”

Sam here is facing decades in prison, and it couldn't happen to a more deserving little carbuncle of a man. It was a scheme from the start, and people lost tens, if not hundreds of billions in the collapse of his pyramid.

This is a guy who needs to be put in a box until the 22nd century. 

Big Bob's Bribery Blowout

New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez is now facing federal corruption and bribery charges, and it's time for him to go. 

 

A federal grand jury in New York has returned a sweeping indictment against United States Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., chairman of the powerful Foreign Relations Committee.

The investigation focused on a luxury car, gold bars and an apartment allegedly received by Menendez and his wife, Nadine Arslanian. His wife was also indicted.

The indictment charges Menendez, 69, and his wife with having a corrupt relationship with three New Jersey businessmen -- Wael Hana, Jose Uribe and Fred Daides.

The indictment accuses Menendez and his wife of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes in exchange for using the senator's power and influence to seek to protect and enrich the businessman.

"Those bribes included cash, gold, payments toward a home mortgage, compensation for a low-or-no-show job, a luxury vehicle, and other things of value," the indictment said.

In June 2022, federal agents searched Menendez's New Jersey home and found "fruits" of the pair's "corrupt bribery agreement" with the three businessmen, according to the indictment. Investigators found over $480,000 in cash, some stuffed in envelopes and hidden in clothing, as well as $70,000 in Nadine Menendez's safe deposit box.

Also found in the home were over $100,000 worth of gold bars, "provided by either Hana or Daibes," according to the indictment.

Menendez allegedly gave sensitive U.S. government information "that secretly aided the Government of Egypt" and "improperly advised and pressured" a U.S. agricultural official to protect an exclusive contract for Hana to be the exclusive purveyor of halal meat to Egypt, according to the indictment.

 

Yeah, all this is gross, comical, even cartoonish levels of corruption. Gold bars? C'mon.

 

It's New Jersey, but, damn.

 

Get his resignation by the end of the year, and Gov. Phil Murphy appoints someone who promises not to run in 2024 and leaves an open primary is the fairest way to do it.

Either way, Menendez has to go.

[UPDATE] Menendez has stepped down as Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairas Senate rules require a chair indicted under a felony to do so. Multiple Dems are calling on Menendez to resign, including Gov. Murphy and former Obama-era AG Eric Holder.

Not looking good for him to stay on through this.

Garland, Wreathed In Fire

Jim Jordan and the House Oversight Clown Show came for Attorney General Merrick Garland on Wednesday, and through the fire and flames he withstood it all.

 

Garland — carefully and deliberately — defended the country’s largest law enforcement agency of more than 115,000 employees at a time when political and physical threats against agents and their families are on the rise.

“Our job is not to take orders from the president, from Congress, or from anyone else, about who or what to criminally investigate,” the attorney general said. “I am not the president’s lawyer. I will also add that I am not Congress’ prosecutor. The Justice Department works for the American people.”

Questioning in the Republicans’ arsenal focused on allegations that the Justice Department interfered in the yearslong case into Hunter Biden and that the prosecutor in charge of that case did not have the full authority he needed to bring necessary charges.

Republican Mike Johnson of Louisiana asked Garland whether he had talked with anyone at FBI headquarters about the Hunter Biden investigation. The attorney general’s response began with a long pause before he said: “I don’t recollect the answer to that question,” later adding “I don’t believe that I did.”

Garland then said repeatedly that he purposely kept the details of the investigation at arms length, to keep his promise not to interfere.

His testimony came just over a week after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., launched an impeachment inquiry into Garland’s boss, President Biden, with a special focus on the Justice Department’s handling of Hunter Biden’s case.

The White House has dismissed the impeachment inquiry as baseless and has worked to focus the conversation on policy instead.

“These sideshows won’t spare House Republicans from bearing responsibility for inflicting serious damage on the country,” Ian Sams, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement Wednesday.

Hunter Biden’s legal team, on the other hand, has gone on the offensive against GOP critics, most recently filing suit against the Internal Revenue Service after two of its agents raised whistleblower claims to Congress about the handling of the investigation.

Republicans contend that the Justice Department — both under Trump and now Biden — has failed to fully probe the allegations against the younger Biden, ranging from his work on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma to his tax filings in California and Washington D.C.

An investigation into Hunter Biden had been run by the U.S. Attorney for Delaware, Trump appointee David Weiss, who Garland kept on to finish the probe and insulate it from claims of political interference. Garland granted Weiss special counsel status last month, giving him broad authority to investigate and report his findings.

Last week, Weiss used that new authority to indict Hunter Biden on federal firearms charges, putting the case on track toward a possible trial as the 2024 election looms.

When asked by Rep. Dan Bishop, R-N.C., whether he had tried to figure out if Weiss was facing any hurdles in bringing charges against the president’s son, Garland said he had purposely kept his distance to keep a promise not to interfere.

“The way to not interfere was to not investigate an investigation,” Garland said.

One Republican during the more than five-hour hearing came to Garland’s defense

Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado, a former Justice Department prosecutor, told Garland that he was in an impossible situation after inheriting an investigation into the president’s son and would have been criticized no matter what.

“Do you know what people would have said if you had asked for U.S. Attorney Weiss’ resignation when you became attorney general?” Buck asked Garland. “They would have said that you were obstructing the Hunter Biden investigation and you were firing a Republican appointee so that you could appoint a Democrat to slow walk this investigation.”

He added, “You would have been criticized either way, whether you acted or did not act in that situation.”

Weiss, since 2018, has overseen the day-to-day running of the probe, while another special counsel, Jack Smith, is in charge of the Trump investigation, though Garland retains final say on both as attorney general.

Garland said no one at the White House had given him or other senior officials at the Justice Department direction about the handling of the Hunter Biden investigation. Asked whether he had spoken with Weiss, Garland said he had followed his pledge not to interfere in the investigation but declined to say whether or how often he had spoken with the newly named special counsel, citing the ongoing investigation.

 

Ken Buck may be the last non-clown in the circus. That doesn't mean much, as I'm sure Buck will be neutered or driven out of the House. But Garland has done his job, despite flames from both the left and the right. 

We'll see how the trials and tribulations go. But what's going on with Donald Trump is not equal to what the Bidens are being put through. Not by a long shot.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith has filed for a gag order on Donald Trump involving his January 6th case before federal Judge Tanya Chutkan, arguing Trump's repeated social media and campaign rally tirades amount to witness intimidation and threats against officers of the court.

Citing threats against individuals former President Donald Trump has targeted, special counsel Jack Smith has asked a federal judge for a narrowly tailored gag order that restricts the 2024 presidential candidate from making certain extrajudicial statements about the election interference case brought against him.

A redacted copy of a government filing — released Friday, after an order from U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan — comes in connection with the election interference case, one of four criminal cases the former president is facing, two of which are federal.

“The defendant has an established practice of issuing inflammatory public statements targeted at individuals or institutions that present an obstacle or challenge to him,” the special counsel's office wrote.

The government said Trump "made clear his intent to issue public attacks related to this case when, the day after his arraignment, he posted a threatening message on Truth Social."

Trump's Aug. 4 post read: "IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I'M COMING AFTER YOU!"

Trump, the office wrote, "has made good on his threat," spreading "disparaging and inflammatory public posts on Truth Social on a near-daily basis regarding the citizens of the District of Columbia, the Court, prosecutors, and prospective witnesses.

"Like his previous public disinformation campaign regarding the 2020 presidential election, the defendant’s recent extrajudicial statements are intended to undermine public confidence in an institution—the judicial system—and to undermine confidence in and intimidate individuals—the Court, the jury pool, witnesses, and prosecutors," the prosecutors wrote.

At an event in Washington, Trump made his first public remarks on the filing by attacking Smith, arguing that the special counsel "wants to take away my rights under the First Amendment, wants to take away my right of speaking freely and openly."

Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, responded earlier Friday by calling the filing "nothing more than blatant election interference because President Trump is by far the leading candidate in this race."

This is hardball stuff on the part of Smith and the DoJ, and of course nobody should be surprised by the part where Trump violated this order almost immediately Friday evening and is risking Chutkan citing him for contempt.  In fact, I expect Trump will absolutely push this as far as he can because he wants the process to break down. He wants riots and violence and bloodshed if she does try to put him behind bars, and he's going to all but openly dare her to do so.

 

At the very least, as Steve M. points out, it's daily free publicity through the primaries and election where Trump gets to martyr himself and get tens of millions of voters on his side.

 

Maybe Trump will eventually be convicted and imprisoned. But for now, he's playing these people for fools. He engages in harassment and intimidation, and that becomes news; the system tries to rein him in, and that becomes news; he whines that he's being censored, and that's news, too -- and then, if there is a limited gag order, he'll really complain about censorship (news again) and then defy the order (also news). And the court probably won't have the courage to do the one thing that might stop the harassment and intimidation, which is to jail him for a few days, but either way he wins: either he beat the system or he's a political prisoner.

And this is just one of his cases. They're all going to be like this as the trials approach (and then there'll be the trials).

Trump shouldn't be allowed to get away with the things he's done, obviously, but I wonder if the legal system has guaranteed his nomination (and possibly smoothed his path to another general-election win) by rallying right-wingers and right-centrists to his cause. Would he have been easier to beat in the primaries if he'd never been indicted? I think he still would have won the nomination, though I'm not sure. It's obvious that he's coasting to a primary victory because he's up on charges. Let's hope he doesn't coast to a general-election victory for the same reason -- because he's rallied more voters to his side than the lackluster Biden.

 

This is clearly Trump's plan and it's already rallying his base: the worse of a system-destroying virus he becomes, the more likely he'll be put in a position where he can finish that system off for good. He's all but got the primaries sewn up at this point before a single vote has been cast. If Trump is able to delay any consequences (and let's remember there's an entire political party 100% dedicated to making sure those consequences never materialize) and Republicans are able to impeach Biden for months on end, there's a significant possibility that Trump's going to win and we're all fucked.

The fact that the White House is ready to play and win this game gives me hope however. We have to stand up to this bullshit.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

The constant attacks by Donald Trump against federal law enforcement and his calls for his MAGA faithful to "fight together" has resulted in the Justice Department getting so many credible threats that the agency now has an anti-domestic terrorism task force to deal specifically with all the threats against agents and prosecutors.

 

Prosecutors and FBI agents involved in the Hunter Biden investigation have been the targets of threats and harassment by people who think they haven’t been tough enough on the president’s son, according to government officials and congressional testimony obtained exclusively by NBC News.

It’s part of a dramatic uptick in threats against FBI agents that has coincided with attacks on the FBI and the Justice Department by congressional Republicans and former President Donald Trump, who have accused both agencies of participating in a conspiracy to subvert justice amid two federal indictments of Trump.

The threats have prompted the FBI to create a stand-alone unit to investigate and mitigate them, according to a previously unreleased transcript of congressional testimony.

“We have stood up an entire threat unit to address threats that the FBI employees’ facilities are receiving,” Jennifer L. Moore, then an executive assistant director of human resources for the FBI, told the House Judiciary Committee in June. “It is unprecedented. It’s a number we’ve never had before.”

“It’s going to be about 10 people when it’s finished,” she said. “We are still in the process of staffing it right now. But their sole mission on a daily basis is threats to FBI employees at facilities.”

Moore told lawmakers that threats to FBI agents and facilities had more than doubled — there were more in the six months from October to March than in the previous 12 months. More recent data was not available; officials say the pace of threats increased after the FBI investigations of Trump became public last summer and has not slowed since.

The FBI declined to comment.

Natalie Bara, president of the FBI Agents Association, a nonprofit group that advocates for current and retired agents, said in a statement, “FBI Special Agents and their families should never be threatened with violence, including for doing their jobs. This is not a partisan or political issue. Calls for violence against law enforcement are unacceptable, and should be condemned by all leaders.”

Federal prosecutor Lesley Wolf, who had been part of U.S. Attorney David Weiss’ team investigating Hunter Biden, got such a barrage of credible threats that she sought security help from the U.S. Marshals Service, according to previously unreleased testimony from an FBI official to the House Judiciary Committee last week. Two IRS agents on the case have accused Wolf of making decisions that appeared favorable to Biden. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.

Special counsel Jack Smith and his team have long been protected by an armed security detail, as is Robert Hur, the special counsel appointed to investigate classified documents found at President Joe Biden’s home and office.

On Thursday, the Atlanta office of the FBI said in a statement that it is aware of threats of violence against officials in Fulton County, Georgia, and is working with the county sheriff's office. Trump and 18 other defendants face state charges in Fulton County in connection with alleged election interference.

The field office declined to provide details of any investigations, but said, "[E]ach and every potential threat brought to our attention is taken seriously. Individuals found responsible for making threats in violation of state and/or federal laws will be prosecuted."

 

Republicans have found agents ready to accuse FBI and Justice Department officials of wrongdoing in the Hunter Biden and Donald Trump cases, and those officials are being targeted by constant, consistent, credible threats to their lives. This includes Georgia officials prosecuting Donald Trump and his election interference case.

Nobody's been hurt, yet. But Trump and other GOP 2024 hopefuls keep turning up the heat, and eventually someone's going to get burned. Remember, we have an entire series of trials, convictions, and sentencings because Donald Trump fomented a violent insurrection against the federal government. People were hurt and killed as a result of Trump's statements leading up to January 6th, 2021.

The Justice Department is scrambling to contain the growing threats now. Remember, the FBI office here in Cincy was attacked for this reason last year. More violence leading up to the 2024 election has always been part of the GOP plan. This is being done deliberately.

Keep that in mind.

Hunting The Hunter, Con't

The weird legal saga of Hunter Biden continues, as Special Counsel David Weiss is now charging the President's son with felony gun possession.

 

President Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden has been indicted by special counsel David Weiss on felony gun charges.

The charges bring renewed legal pressure on the younger Biden after a plea agreement he struck with prosecutors imploded in recent months.

The younger Biden has been charged with two counts related to false statements in purchasing the firearm and a third count on illegally obtaining a firearm while addicted to drugs. The three charges carry a maximum prison sentence of 25 years, when added together.

Prosecutors have spent years scrutinizing Hunter Biden's business endeavors and personal life -- a probe that appeared to culminate in a plea agreement the two sides struck in June, which would have allowed him to plead guilty to a pair of misdemeanor tax offenses and enter into a pretrial diversion program to avoid prosecution on a felony gun charge.

But that deal fell apart during a court hearing in July after U.S. Judge Maryellen Noreika expressed concern over the structure of the agreement and questioned the breadth of an immunity deal, exposing fissures between the two parties.


Weeks later, on Aug. 11, Attorney General Merrick Garland elevated Weiss, who was originally appointed by then-President Donald Trump, to special counsel, granting him broader authority to press charges against Hunter Biden in any district in the country.

Prosecutors subsequently informed the court that a new round of negotiations had reached "an impasse," and attorneys for Hunter Biden accused Weiss' office of "reneging" on their agreement.

 

So yeah, 25 years in federal prison is no joke, but as Marcy Wheeler wrote over the weekend, Weiss may not have the slam dunk case that he thinks he does.

There’s something missing from coverage of the claim, made in the second-to-last sentence of a Speedy Trial filing submitted Wednesday, that David Weiss will indict Hunter Biden before September 29, when — according to calculations laid out by prosecutor Leo Wise in the filing — the Speedy Trial Act mandates an indictment.

None of the coverage has considered why David Weiss hasn’t already charged the President’s son.

The filing was submitted in response to an August 31 order from Judge Maryellen Noreika; its very last sentence politely asked her to butt out: “[T]he Government does not believe any action by the Court is necessary at this time.” Given the unusual nature of this legal proceeding, there may at least be question about Wise’s Speedy Trial calculations. One way or another, though, the Speedy Trial clock and the statute of limitations (which Wise said in July would expire on October 12) are ticking.

It would take probably half an hour to present the evidence for the weapons charge — which would consist of the form Hunter signed to purchase a gun, passages from Hunter’s book, a presumed grand jury transcript from Hallie Biden, and testimony from an FBI agent — to a grand jury. It would take maybe another ten minutes if Weiss wanted to add a false statements charge on top of the weapons charge. There certainly would be no need for a special grand jury.

Any tax charges would be more complicated, sure, but they would be in one or another district (probably Los Angeles), ostensibly severed from the weapons charge to which the misdemeanors planned as part of an aborted plea deal were linked.

So why wait? Why not simply indict and avoid any possible challenge to Speedy Trial calculations?

The answer may lie in something included in a long NYT story citing liberally from an anonymous senior law enforcement official who knew at least one thing that only David Weiss could know. That story explains that Weiss sought Special Counsel status, in part, to get, “added leverage in a revamped deal with Mr. Biden.”

If Weiss indeed sought Special Counsel status to get leverage for a deal, then at least last month when he asked for it, he wasn’t really planning on indicting Hunter Biden. He was hoping to get more tactical leverage to convince Hunter Biden to enter into a plea agreement that would better satisfy GOP bloodlust than the plea that failed in July.

Now he has used the opportunity presented by Noreika’s order to claim he really really is going to indict Hunter, a claim that set off predictably titillated reporting about the prospect of a Hunter Biden trial during the presidential election.

Again, if you’re going to charge Hunter Biden with a simple weapons charge, possibly a false statements charge, why not do it already, rather than threatening to do it publicly? Why not charge him in the week after Noreika entered that order, mooting all Speedy Trial concerns?

Whatever Weiss's game is, he's moving ahead now. Why he didn't do so before, well, we'll find out.

Last Call For Shutdown Countdown, Legal Eagles Edition

Trump's minions are planning to try to put bills defunding the conducting of all of his trials until after the November 2024 election.

Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) is proposing two amendments to an appropriations bill that would defund the various prosecutions of former President Trump.

He is adding to the defense of the former president mounted by Trump allies in the House as they circle the wagons in the face of four indictments.

Clyde, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, on Monday announced plans for two amendments to the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies (CJS) fiscal 2024 appropriations bill that would “prohibit the use of federal funding for the prosecution of any major presidential candidate prior to the upcoming presidential election on November 5th, 2024,” according to a press release.

One amendment would pertain to federal prosecutions and the other addresses federal funding for state prosecutions.

That bill, one of 12 regular appropriations bills, is expected to be marked up in the House Appropriations Committee after the House returns in mid-September.

Clyde said he is taking aim at special counsel Jack Smith, who has led charges against Trump relating to attempts to overturn the 2020 election results and retention of classified documents; Manhattan, N.Y., District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D), who charged Trump in relation to 2016 hush-money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels; and Fulton County, Ga., District Attorney Fani Willis (D), who charged Trump again in relation to the 2020 election.

“Due to my serious concerns about these witch hunt indictments against President Trump, I intend to offer two amendments to prohibit any federal funds from being used in federal or state courts to prosecute major presidential candidates prior to the 2024 election,” Clyde said in a statement. “The American people get to decide who wins the White House — not Deep State actors who have shamelessly attacked Donald Trump since he announced his first bid in 2015. It is imperative that Congress use its power of the purse to protect the integrity of our elections, restore Americans’ faith in our government, and dismantle our nation’s two-tiered system of justice. I’m fully committed to helping lead this effort, and I call on my House Appropriations colleagues to join me in this righteous fight.”

Other staunch allies of Trump in the House have also pledged to use the funding process to defund the prosecutions against Trump.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has said she would introduce an amendment to defund Smith’s office, and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) in July introduced a bill to do so. Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) earlier this month introduced a bill to defund Smith’s federal salary.

 

So yes, House Republicans have a medicine chest full of poison pills to try to shut down the federal government next month, and this is but a few of the efforts to do so. We'll see how strongly Democrats are willing to stand against this idiocy. 

You have to admire these clowns designing legislation to block "all" prosecutions of "any" presidential candidates until after the election, as Trump may not be the only one this applies to by the time next year rolls around (looking at you, Vivek.)

Last Call For Hunting The Hunter, Con't

A lot of ink has been spilled over Hunter Biden's laptop over the last several years, but as Marcy Wheeler notes, the person who may have to answer for the Hunter Biden plea deal may not be Hunter Biden at all, but Justice Department Special Counsel David Weiss.

 

To understand why, a review of the current state of the (known) legal case is in order.

On August 11, as Merrick Garland was announcing that he had given David Weiss Special Counsel status, Weiss’ prosecutors filed a motion to dismiss the charges against Hunter Biden. After describing that, “When the parties were proceeding to a negotiated resolution in this matter, a plea in this District was agreed upon,” the filing said that because Hunter did not plead guilty, it may have to file charges in the district where venue lies. At the same time, Weiss also moved to vacate the briefing schedule in the gun diversion.

Judge Maryellen Noreika gave Hunter a day to respond to the motion to vacate. That response, signed by Chris Clark but including Abbe Lowell on the signature line, explained that Hunter planned to fulfill the terms of the gun diversion agreement, which the government had stated was a contract between the two parties.

[T]he Defendant intends to abide by the terms of the Diversion Agreement that was executed at the July 26 hearing by the Defendant, his counsel, and the United States, and concurs with the statements the Government made during the July 26 hearing,1

The Government stated in open court that the Diversion Agreement was a “bilateral agreement between the parties” that “stand[s] alone” from the Plea Agreement, and that it was “in effect” and “binding.”

But, “in light of the United States’ decision on Friday to renege on the previously agreed-upon Plea Agreement, we agree that those issues are moot at this point.” Effectively, Hunter’s team was saying they considered the gun diversion as still valid, recognized everything else was moot, and described that it was moot because the government had reneged on the terms of the deal.

Then Abbe Lowell entered his appearance in the case. And Clark moved to withdraw from the case because — given that the plea and diversion would be contested — he might have to serve as a witness.

Mr. Clark’s withdrawal is necessitated by recent developments in the matter. Pursuant to Delaware Rule of Professional Conduct 3.7(a), “a lawyer shall not act as advocate at a trial in which the lawyer is likely to be a necessary witness unless… disqualification of the lawyer would work substantial hardship on the client.” Based on recent developments, it appears that the negotiation and drafting of the plea agreement and diversion agreement will be contested, and Mr. Clark is a percipient witness to those issues. Under the “witness-advocate” rule, it is inadvisable for Mr. Clark to continue as counsel in this case.

Noreika never actually approved Clark’s withdrawal, but the defense team filed notice that Hunter consented to the withdrawal while the docket remained active.

Meanwhile, Noreika ordered the government to reply to Hunter’s response on the briefing, and ordered Hunter to respond to the thing she failed to ask about in the first place, whether he objected to the dismissal of the charges.

Hunter’s team agreed that the charges must be dismissed, but reiterated that the court had no oversight over the diversion agreement (which had been Noreika’s complaint from the start).

Without adopting the Government’s reasoning, as venue for the existing information does not lie in this District, the information must be dismissed.

Further, the Defendant’s position is that the enforceability of the Diversion Agreement (D.I. 24-1 in No. 23-cr-00061-MN) has no bearing on the United States’ Motion to Dismiss for Lack of Venue (D.I. 31 in No. 23-mj-00274-MN), and any disputes regarding the effect of the Diversion Agreement are therefore not before the Court at this time.

The government, meanwhile, filed a seven page reply attempting to claim that the government did not renege on the plea that had been negotiated in advance of its filing in June, by describing how after Hunter refused to plead guilty because Leo Wise, an AUSA who had not been involved in the original deal, claimed its scope was far narrower than Hunter understood, the parties did not subsequently agree on one to replace the signed deal Hunter entered into.

First, the Government did not “renege” on the “previously agreed-upon Plea Agreement,” as the Defendant inaccurately asserts in the first substantive sentence of his response. ECF 33, Def. Resp. at 1. The Defendant chose to plead not guilty at the hearing on July 26, 2023, and U.S. Probation declined to approve the proposed diversion agreement at that hearing.

Then Noreika dismissed the charges.

David Weiss may have plenty of time to argue with Lowell, relying on Chris Clark’s testimony, that he should not be held to the terms of signed agreements he entered into in June.

But the two important takeaways from all this are, first, that Hunter Biden is stating that before the plea hearing, Weiss attempted to change the terms of the signed plea deal, and second, that Chris Clark is no longer bound by any terms of confidentiality that will allow him to prove that’s true.

These twin stories are a warning shot to Weiss — before Hunter even gets more discovery on all the other problems with this investigation — what that is going to look like.

 

Remember, the entire Hunter Biden "bribery scandal" has been a railroad job from the start. Merrick Garland giving David Weiss Special Counsel status is the proverbial rope for Weiss to hang himself with. 

Now, normally, misconduct by a prosecutor like Weiss would be reviewed by the feckless Office of Professional Responsibility. But that’s less likely with a Special Counsel, because of the reporting structure for an SCO. And that’s particularly true here given the involvement of Associate Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer in earlier discussions about the plea. Weinsheimer oversees OPR, and so any review by OPR presents a conflict. Indeed, Weiss may have asked to be made SCO precisely so he could escape the purview of OPR.

But to some degree that may not matter.

That’s because there are already parallel investigations — at TIGTA and at DOJ IG — into the leaking that occurred during this investigation. David Weiss was already going to be a witness in them, because Gary Shapley made claims about what Weiss said personally at a meeting on October 7, 2022, a meeting that was called first and foremost to discuss leaks.

So if Michael Horowitz wanted to subpoena Weiss to find out whether he was the senior law enforcement official denying things only he could deny, to find out whether days after being made a Special Counsel, Weiss decided to violate DOJ guidelines to which he still must adhere, the only way Weiss could dodge that subpoena might be to resign from both his US Attorney and his Special Counsel appointment.

And if Weiss and DOJ IG didn’t already have enough to talk about, there’s this passage from the NYT, with its truly epic use of the passive voice: “Mr. Weiss was quietly assigned,” by whom, NYT didn’t choose to explain.

NYT corrected their earlier error on the date of the failed plea hearing, but the date here is probably another: Both IRS agents and the FBI agent have testified that this occurred in 2019, not 2018. Indeed, Joseph Ziegler testified, then thought the better of it, in a period when Bill Barr was making public comments about all this, that Barr himself was involved, which would date it to February 2019 or later, in a period when Barr was engaged in wholesale politiciziation of the department. Who assigned Weiss to investigate Joe Biden’s son as Trump demanded it would already be a question for any inquiry into improper influence, but it’s nice for NYT to make it more of one, in a story otherwise repeatedly sourced to “a senior law enforcement official” who might know.

I don’t know whether Hunter Biden’s lawyers deliberately intended to bait Weiss into responding in the NYT. But under DOJ guidelines, he is only permitted to respond to these claims in legal filings, after Abbe Lowell makes it an issue after Weiss files an indictment somewhere, thereby confirming precisely the concerns raised in these stories and creating another avenue of recourse to address these issues.

But whether that was the intention or not, that appears to be what happened.

 

The Hunter Biden case is a massive example of prosecutorial misconduct, and we're going to find out how deep this particular rabbit hole goes.

Retribution Execution, Con't

Trump and his MAGA cronies are working on formalizing plans to investigate, charge, and arrest hundreds, maybe thousands of Democratic politicians, Justice Department lawyers, FBI investigators, staffers, and analysts involved in the federal probes of Donald Trump criminal activities starting with Jack Smith, Merrick Garland, and Joe Biden.

 

DONALD TRUMP IS a long, long way from winning the GOP primary, let alone retaking the White House. But he always has revenge on his mind, and his allies are preparing to use a future administration to not only undo all of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s work — but to take vengeance on Smith, and on virtually everyone else, who dared investigate Trump during his time out of power.

Rosters full of MAGAfied lawyers are being assembled. Plans are being laid for an entire new office of the Justice Department dedicated to “election integrity.” An assembly line is being prepared of revenge-focused “special counsels” and “special prosecutors.” Gameplans for making Smith’s life hell, starting in Jan. 2025, have already been discussed with Trump himself. And a fresh wave of pardons is under consideration for Trump associates, election deniers, and — the former president boasts — for Jan. 6 rioters.

The preparations have been underway since at least last year, with Trump being briefed on the designs by an array of attorneys, political and policy advisers, former administration officials, and other allies. The aim is to build a government-in-waiting with the hard-right infrastructure needed to turn the Justice Department into an instrument of Trump’s agenda, according to five sources familiar with these matters and another two people briefed on them.

Trump’s spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on this story.

One idea that has caught thrice-indicted former president’s attention in recent months is the creation of the so-called “Office of Election Integrity,” which would be a new unit inside the Justice Department. It would be tasked not only with relitigating Trump’s lies about his 2020 election loss, but also with aggressively pursuing baseless allegations of election “fraud” (including in Democratic strongholds) in ways that Trumpist partisans believe the department has only flirted with in the past.

This idea was recently pitched to Trump by a longtime Republican activist and an attorney who’s known the ex-president for years, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter. (Republican officials have also begun voicing their own support for state-level offices of election integrity. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis made the proposal a reality in his state. Officials in Tennessee, Missouri, and Wisconsin have proposed the offices, and the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank, proposed a similarly named office.)

And when it comes to Special Counsel Smith’s office — which just handed Trump his third indictment, this one related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election — the former president and his fellow travelers already know what they want: They want the FBI and DOJ to name names.

This year, close advisers to Trump have begun the process of assembling lists of the names of federal personnel who have investigated the former president and his circle for years, and are attempting to unmask the identities of all the DOJ attorneys and others connected to Smith’s office. The obvious purpose of this, according to one source close to Trump, is to “show them the door on Day 1 [if Trump’s reelected]” — and so “we know who should receive a subpoena” in the future.

Such subpoenas would of course be instrumental in Trumpland’s vows to its voters that, should he return to power, Trump and his new attorney general will launch a raft of their own retaliatory “special counsel” and “special prosecutor” probes to investigate-the-investigator, and to go after their key enemies. As it were, Jeffrey Clark, a former DOJ official and a central figure in Trump’s efforts to subvert the legitimate 2020 presidential election results, has been on Trump’s informal shortlist for plum assignments, including even attorney general, in a potential second administration.

Sources familiar with the situation tell Rolling Stone that Trump and his close ideological allies — working at an assortment of MAGA-prone think tanks, advocacy organizations, and legal groups — are formulating plans for a wide slate of “special prosecutors.” In this vision, such prosecutors would go after the usual targets: Smith, Smith’s team, President Joe Biden, Biden’s family, Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI director Christopher Wray. But they’d also go after smaller targets, from members of the Biden 2020 campaign to more obscure government offices.

“There are almost too many targets to keep track of,” says one Trump adviser familiar with the discussions. Trump and members of his inner orbit have already outlined possible legal strategies, examining specific federal statutes they could wield in a Republican-controlled Justice Department to go after Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, who delivered Trump’s first indictment of this year.

 

People should treat this seriously. A second Trump term will be an authoritarian nightmare, and we have to prevent it.  There will be no guardrails and countermeasures next time. As it is, Trump is already vowing retribution and intimidation against the people involved in his legal cases.

Prosecutors on Friday night called a judge’s attention to a social media post from Donald Trump — issued hours earlier — in which they say the former president appeared to declare that he’s “coming after” those he sees as responsible for the series of formidable legal challenges he is facing.

Attorneys from special counsel Jack Smith’s team said the post from Trump “specifically or by implication” referenced those involved in his criminal case for seeking to subvert the 2020 election.

In a court filing just before 10 p.m. Friday, Senior Assistant Special Counsels Molly Gaston and Thomas Windom alerted the judge in Trump’s latest criminal case — U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan — to a combative post Trump sent earlier in the day.

“If you go after me, I’m coming after you!” Trump wrote in all caps Friday afternoon on Truth Social, which is run by a media company he co-owns.

The prosecutors said Trump’s post raised concerns that he might improperly share evidence in the case on his social media account and they urged that he be ordered to keep any evidence prosecutors turn over to his defense team from public view.

“All the proposed order seeks to prevent is the improper dissemination or use of discovery materials, including to the public,” Gaston and Windom wrote. “Such a restriction is particularly important in this case because the defendant has previously issued public statements on social media regarding witnesses, judges, attorneys, and others associated with legal matters pending against him. … And in recent days, regarding this case, the defendant has issued multiple posts—either specifically or by implication—including the following, which the defendant posted just hours ago.”

We'll see what Judge Chutkan does, ordering a response from the Trump legal team by Monday evening.

Denying Trump bail would be a choice fraught with its own dangers, but if you or I posted on social media that we were coming for people after being arraigned on federal charges, you'd better believe there would be consequences. The real "two-tiered justice system" the right keeps squawking about applies to Trump far more than it does Biden.

That's The Sound Of The Police, Con't

The sound of these six white former Mississippi sheriff's deputies who tortured two Black men and shot one in the mouth is a guilty plea deal on federal civil rights charges.

 

Six former Mississippi law enforcement officers have pleaded guilty to charges related to the torture of two Black men, US Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi Darren LaMarca said in a Thursday news conference.

The announcement comes after federal charges were filed against the former law enforcement officers, who “called themselves ‘The Goon Squad’ because of their willingness to use excessive force and not to report it,” according to a federal charging document.

“The people of Mississippi and those of Rankin County expect those who enforce the laws to follow the law, clearly these men did not – they held themselves above the law,” LaMarca said.

The charges include conspiracy against rights, deprivation of rights under color of law, conspiracy to obstruct justice and obstruction of justice, according to online federal court records.

Former Rankin County Sheriff’s Department deputy Hunter Elward faces the most serious of charges – discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence. Court documents name the other officers charged as Brett McAlpin, Jeffrey Middleton, Christian Dedmon, Daniel Opdyke and Joshua Hartfield.

The incident occurred on January 24 in Braxton, Mississippi, just southeast of Jackson. It came to light after two men, Michael Jenkins and Eddie Parker, filed a federal civil lawsuit. Many of the claims in the lawsuit were reflected in the federal charging document.

The two men, who are Black, say six White law enforcement officers entered the home they were in and tortured them for nearly two hours, culminating with Jenkins being shot in the mouth.

“The defendants in this case tortured and inflicted unspeakable harm on their victims, egregiously violated the civil rights of citizens who they were supposed to protect, and shamefully betrayed the oath they swore as law enforcement officers,” US Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement.

FBI Special Agent in Charge Jermicha Fomby described the alleged actions as “horrific.” He added, “I did not expect this to be the actions that we would have subjected upon our citizens in the year 2023.”

“On behalf of our clients Michael Jenkins and Eddie Parker, Black Lawyers for Justice thanks the United States Department of Justice for the historic legal results choices achieved today,” Malik Shabazz, the lead attorney for the victims, said in a statement.

In an interview last month, Parker told CNN: “Justice is what it all boils down to. I’m just like them, you know, whether they in uniform or not.”

 

These assholes are still facing state charges to boot and a plea deal on those charges is expected later this month, and I guarantee you that nothing would have happened to these bastard cops if Trump's "Justice Department" had been the ones in charge still. Merrick Garland got this done in seven months.

 

And yes, in 2023 we're still having to turn to Reconstruction-era anti-Klan laws to prosecute white supremacist bastard cops. Not a hell of a lot has changed for us Black folk, either.

 

Black Lives Still Matter.

 

Last Call For Orange Meltdown: 3rd Strike Edition

A big, big day in Trump conspiracy fraud legal news today, not one, not two, but three big stories. First, former Georgia Republican state Sen. Jen Jordan is on the list for Fulton County DA Fani Willis's grand jury.

 

Former Georgia Democratic state Sen. Jen Jordan received subpoenas to testify before a Fulton County grand jury later this month, she told CNN.

The subpoenas to Jordan and independent journalist George Chidi are the strongest indication yet that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis intends to seek indictments in her criminal probe into efforts by Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.

Two grand juries with the power to issue indictments meet regularly in Fulton County, and Willis is expected to go before one of them this month to present her case. The presentment will likely take two days, according to people familiar with the matter.

The witnesses are expected to shed light on different aspects of Willis’ case. While Chidi can share information about the fake GOP electors that convened in Georgia, Jordan witnessed the election presentation Rudy Giuliani and other Trump allies made before Georgia state lawmakers in 2020.

On December 3, 2020, Jordan was at the Georgia Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing about election integrity during which Giuliani, then a Trump lawyer, and other supporters of the former president spread conspiracy theories about widespread irregularities and fraud in the state.

At the hearing, Trump’s team presented a video of what they claimed was evidence of fraud from election night ballot tabulating in Fulton County, allegations that were investigated by the FBI, Department of Justice and state election officials – and proven to be erroneous.

The subpoenas for grand jury testimony call on the witnesses to appear before the grand jury during the month of August and state that witnesses will get 48 hours notice when they are required to appear.

 

As Willis warms up the band in Georgia, the state of Michigan is making its move in its own elector fraud conspiracy case against Mango Mussolini and friends.

A former Republican attorney general candidate and another supporter of former President Donald Trump have been criminally charged in Michigan in connection with accessing and tampering with voting machines after the 2020 election, according to court records.

Matthew DePerno, a Republican lawyer who was endorsed by Trump in an unsuccessful run for Michigan attorney general last year, was charged with undue possession of a voting machine and conspiracy, according to Oakland County court records.

Daire Rendon, a former Republican state representative, was charged with conspiracy to commit undue possession of a voting machine and false pretenses. A lawyer listed on court documents as representing Rendon could not be immediately reached for comment by phone.

Both were arraigned remotely Tuesday afternoon, according to Richard Lynch, the court administrator for Oakland County’s 6th Circuit.

A special prosecutor, D.J. Hilson, has been reviewing the investigation and considering charges since September. He convened a grand jury in March to determine whether criminal indictments should be issued, according to court documents.

In a statement, Hilson said the charges were authorized by “an independent citizens grand jury,” and that his office did not make any recommendations.

Those charged in Michigan are the latest facing legal consequences for alleged crimes committed after embracing Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen.

 

Now, if this was all the bad news Trump's legal team got today, it would still be a hell of a bad way to start the month.

 

But then Jack Smith showed up with the third strike.

A grand jury indicted former president Donald Trump on Tuesday for a raft of alleged crimes in his brazen efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election — the latest legal and political aftershock stemming from the riot at the U.S. Capitol two and a half years ago.

The four-count, 45-page indictment accuses Trump of three distinct conspiracies, charging that he conspired to defraud the U.S., conspired to obstruct an official proceeding and conspired against people’s rights.

“Despite having lost, the Defendant was determined to remain in power,” the indictment charges, saying Trump unleashed a blizzard of lies about purported mass voter fraud, and then tried to get state, local, and federal officials to act to change the vote results.

“These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false. In fact, the Defendant was notified repeatedly that his claims were untrue — often by the people on whom he relied for candid advice on important matters, and who were best positioned to know the facts — and he deliberately disregarded the truth,” the indictment states.

“The attack on our nation’s capitol on Jan. 6 2021 was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy," special counsel Jack Smith said in announcing the indictment. "It was fueled by lies, lies by the defendant.”

Smith also praised the law enforcement officers who defended the U.S. Capitol, saying they “did not just defend a building or the people sheltering in it. They put their lives on the line to defend who we are as a country and a people.”

In broad strokes and particular conversations with officials around the country, the indictment recounts much of what was already known about Trump’s efforts to stay in the White House despite losing the election. But the indictment frames that conduct as a destructive criminal conspiracy that attempted to demolish a bedrock function of American democracy.

While no one else is charged alongside Trump, the indictment describes six unnamed and so far uncharged co-conspirators, who also appear to be in significant legal jeopardy. Some of the individuals are easily identifiable, such as Rudolph W. Giuliani, Trump’s former lawyer.

Giuliani and a number of the other uncharged co-conspirators are identifiable based on details in the indictment and previous reporting by The Washington Post and other outlets. Co-conspirator 2, described as “an attorney who devised an attempted to implement a strategy to leverage the Vice President’s ceremonial role overseeing the certification proceeding” is John Eastman, a law professor.

The indictment describes co-conspirator 3 as an attorney whose unfounded claims of election fraud Trump himself said sounded “crazy” — and the description of that person matches Trump ally Sidney Powell. Co-conspirator 4 is described as a then-Justice Department official who “attempted to use the Justice Department to open sham election crime investigations." Other details of that person’s actions match Jeffrey Clark, whom Trump considered appointing as attorney general in the final days of his administration.

Co-conspirator 5 is described in the indictment as a lawyer who tried to implement a plan "to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding,” — a reference that appears to match Kenneth Chesebro, a Trump attorney who worked on the scheme to enact false presidential electors.

Lawyers for the uncharged co-conspirators did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

 

All the ketchup just hit the walls at Mar-a-Lago tonight.  Rudy Giuliani, Jeffrey Clark, Sidney Powell, John Eastman, and Kenny Chesebro are all going down with him.

It will only get worse for Trump from here.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Donald Trump was indicted on federal charges by Special Counsel Jack Smith on Thursday, but it just wasn't for January 6th charges, as that grand jury is still proceeding.

 

Special counsel Jack Smith on Thursday brought additional charges against former President Donald Trump in the case alleging mishandling of classified documents from his time in the White House.

Prosecutors allege in the updated indictment that two Trump employees – Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira – attempted to delete security camera footage at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort after the Justice Department issued a subpoena for the footage.

De Oliveira told the director of IT at the resort, “that ‘the boss’ wanted the server deleted,” according to the indictment.

Trump, who is already facing 37 criminal charges, was charged with one additional count of willful retention of national defense information and two additional obstruction counts.

Trump was charged with willfully retaining a top-secret document about possible Iran attack plans, which he discussed with biographers during a taped meeting at Bedminster, New Jersey, in July 2021, according to the indictment.

The indictment says the document was a “presentation concerning military activity in a foreign country” and that Trump “showed” it to the biographers during the meeting.

New charges were also filed against Trump’s aide Nauta, and Mar-a-Lago maintenance worker De Oliveira was also added to the case. De Oliveira, 56, was charged with lying to the FBI about moving boxes with classified documents.

Trump and Nauta were previously charged last month and have pleaded not guilty.

De Oliveira was the maintenance worker who helped Nauta move boxes of classified documents around Mar-a-Lago after the Justice Department first subpoenaed Trump for classified documents last May.

CNN has previously reported that surveillance footage turned over to the Justice Department showed Nauta and De Oliveira, moving document boxes around the resort, including into a storage room just before Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran searched it for classified documents.

 

So we've reached the cover-up portion of the proceedings, and I wouldn't be surprised if more charges were brought in the weeks ahead against Trump and his Mar-a-Lago staff that assisted in efforts to hide the documents from investigators.

And while the hammer didn't drop on January 6th charges on Thursday, I would surmise that those charges are coming in the weeks ahead too, along with whatever Fulton County, Georgia DA Fani Willis has coming later this summer.

The additional charge involving a document discussed at Trump's Bedminster property now brings that location into play, too.

Expect more legal trouble for Trump, is what I'm saying. As Marcy Wheeler documents, this is big:

While all the journalists were in Prettyman Courthouse in DC, Jack Smith superseded the Florida stolen documents indictment to add Trump employee Carlos De Oliveira — the property manager — to the indictment.

He’s the guy who helped Walt Nauta move boxes around, including loading them to go to Bedminster. Nauta also allegedly asked him to help destroy surveillance footage.

The superseding indictment adds another stolen document count — the Iran document he showed others, which is classified Top Secret — and another obstruction count for attempting to destroy the video footage.

This passage describes how Nauta flew to Florida to attempt to destroy security footage.

This is a key paragraph of the superseding indictment. It shows how Trump uses legal representation to secure loyalty. It’s a fact pattern that crosses both of Trump’s crimes, and may well be in the expected January 6 indictment. It may help to break down the omerta currently protecting Trump.

Just over two weeks after the FBI discovered classified documents in the Storage Room and TRUMP’s office, on August 26, 2022, NAUTA called Trump Employee 5 and said words to the effect of, “someone just wants to make sure Carlos is good.” In response, Trump Employee 5 told NAUTA that DE OLIVEIRA was loyal and that DE OLIVEIRA would not do anything to affect his relationship with TRUMP. That same day, at NAUTA’s request, Trump Employee 5 confirmed in a Signal chat group with NAUTA and the PAC Representative that DE OLIVEIRA was loyal. That same day, TRUMP called DE OLIVEIRA and told DE OLIVEIRA that TRUMP would get DE OLIVEIRA an attorney.

Several uncharged Trump employees have been added to the indictment.

• Trump Employee 3, who simply passed on the information that Trump wanted to speak to Nauta on the day Trump Organization received a subpoena
• Trump Employee 4, who is the Director of IT who had control of the surveillance footage; according to some reports, he had received a target letter
• Trump Employee 5, who is a valet, but from whom DOJ seems to have firsthand testimony

The passage above seems to rely on testimony from Trump Employee 5 and the final exploitation of Walt Nauta’s phone.

 

Trump's discount organized crime family operation in Florida is about to be taken apart. And in order to avoid doing decades of time for their boss, they're going to talk. Trump knows he has to now do everything he can to keep them loyal and that means buying them legal representation. "Don't worry," he says. "I'll take care of you."

And he will. He'll make sure they are sacrificed for him. It's worked for him for decades.

Will it still work now?

Trump Cards, Con't

Trump gets the federal documents trial delay he was looking for, from the judge he appointed.

 

 

A federal judge ordered Friday that the trial in the classified documents case that special counsel Jack Smith brought against former President Donald Trump begin in May 2024.

US District Judge Aileen Cannon said that the trial could begin as early as May 20. A pretrial hearing in the case will be held on May 14.

If that timeline holds, then the trial would fall deep in the 2024 race for the White House, coming amid multiple GOP presidential primaries. It would be a rebuke to Trump and his legal team, who wanted to postpone the trial until after the general election takes place in November 2024.

However, Cannon’s order also means that the case will unfold at a far slower speed than what Smith’s team was proposing, when it recommended a fast-paced timeline that would start the trial in mid-December of this year. Such a schedule would have a trial wrap up before primary voting gets underway in the 2024 election, where Trump is the leading GOP candidate.

The vast majority of state primaries will be finished by mid-May, although Nebraska, Maryland and West Virginia are set to hold their primary elections on May 14. Oregon votes the following week and a handful of states, including New Jersey, are now scheduled to vote on June 4. During his first presidential run, Trump effectively clinched the nomination at the end of May 2016 – before formally becoming the party’s nominee in July at the GOP convention in Cleveland.

While it’s likely the nominating process will be essentially decided by May, recent history has plenty examples of the race remaining a delegate fight until early summer.

 

It's within Judge Cannon's purview to delay the trial until next May, but the issue is she's personally responsible for delaying the proceedings for several months before we even got to this. 

Otherwise, she literally split the difference. How Solomonic. Marcy Wheeler explains it all:

Her order is not, on its face, unreasonable. It sets a CIPA trial for 49 weeks after it was charged, which is solidly within the scope of what it normally takes to bring these cases to trial. She has made this a complex case which is similarly not unreasonable.

The most unreasonable part of her order, thus far, is that she set the trial to be held in her tiny courtroom in Fort Pierce, making it utterly unworkable for the press.

The second most unreasonable part of her order is that she has treated the classified protective order as a month-long fully briefed affair, effectively absolving Trump and his co-defendant of conferring like grown-ups, such that classified discovery might not begin until after August 25, two months of delay she is adding to this timeline on top of the three months of delay she created last year.

Finally, she deferred on the question of whether the election will make jury selection next May impossible.

Again, this is not unreasonable, at least thus far. But she is letting Trump and Walt Nauta stall by obstructing from the outset.

 

Cannon has learned the difference between putting a thumb on the scale of justice instead of 318 metric tons of concrete.  Progress!

Orange Meltdown, Con't

As we get closer and closer to Donald Trump's expected federal indictment on January 6th crimes, Trump Whisperer Maggie Haberman and crew find that Jack Smith's target letter included the notion that Trump's 2020 election fraud efforts may be prosecuted under civil rights statutes.

 

Federal prosecutors have introduced a new twist in the Jan. 6 investigation by suggesting in a target letter that they could charge former President Donald J. Trump with violating a civil rights statute that dates back to the post-Civil War Reconstruction era, according to three people familiar with the matter.

The letter to Mr. Trump from the special counsel, Jack Smith, referred to three criminal statutes as part of the grand jury investigation into Mr. Trump’s efforts to reverse his 2020 election loss, according to two people with knowledge of its contents. Two of the statutes were familiar from the criminal referral by the House Jan. 6 committee and months of discussion by legal experts: conspiracy to defraud the government and obstruction of an official proceeding.

But the third criminal law cited in the letter was a surprise: Section 241 of Title 18 of the United States Code, which makes it a crime for people to “conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person” in the “free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States.”

Congress enacted that statute after the Civil War to provide a tool for federal agents to go after Southern whites, including Ku Klux Klan members, who engaged in terrorism to prevent formerly enslaved African Americans from voting. But in the modern era, it has been used more broadly, including in cases of voting fraud conspiracies.

A Justice Department spokesman declined to discuss the target letter and Mr. Smith’s theory for bringing the Section 241 statute into the Jan. 6 investigation. But the modern usage of the law raised the possibility that Mr. Trump, who baselessly declared the election he lost to have been rigged, could face prosecution on accusations of trying to rig the election himself.

A series of 20th-century cases upheld application of the law in cases involving alleged tampering with ballot boxes by casting false votes or falsely tabulating votes after the election was over, even if no specific voter could be considered the victim.

In a 1950 opinion by the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, for example, Judge Charles C. Simons wrote of applying Section 241 in a ballot box-stuffing case that the right to an honest count “is a right possessed by each voting elector, and to the extent that the importance of his vote is nullified, wholly or in part, he has been injured in the free exercise of a right or privilege secured to him by the laws and Constitution of the United States.”

In a 1974 Supreme Court opinion upholding the use of Section 241 to charge West Virginians who cast fake votes on a voting machine, Justice Thurgood Marshall cited Judge Simons and added that every voter “has a right under the Constitution to have his vote fairly counted, without its being distorted by fraudulently cast votes.”

The line of 20th-century cases raised the prospect that Mr. Smith and his team could be weighing using that law to cover efforts by Mr. Trump and his associates to flip the outcome of states he lost. Those efforts included the recorded phone conversation in which Mr. Trump tried to bully Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” enough additional votes to overcome Mr. Biden’s win in that state and promoting a plan to use so-called fake electors — self-appointed slates of pro-Trump electors from states won by Mr. Biden — to help block or delay congressional certification of Mr. Trump’s defeat.

“It seems like under 241 there’s at least a right to an honest counting of the votes,” said Norman Eisen, who worked for the House Judiciary Committee during Mr. Trump’s first impeachment. “Submitting an alternate electoral certificate to Congress (as opposed to casting false votes or counting wrong) is a novel scenario, but it seems like it would violate this right.”

 

It seems fitting to go after Trump with a law used to stop Klan intimidation of voters.

 

We'll see what happens, but expect Jack Smith to go to his grand jury very soon to get indictments.

Last Call For Like A Wolverine

Trump and the GOP were all watching Georgia and DC when it came to his legal troubles, but people should have been paying attention to Michigan.

 

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced Tuesday that she has filed charges against 16 people who signed paperwork falsely claiming that President Donald Trump had won the 2020 election as part of a scheme to overturn the results.

Presidents are technically voted in by slates of electors from each state who cast their votes for the candidates selected by their states’ popular votes. In December 2020, as Trump tried to overturn the results of the election, his allies readied alternative slates of electors in several states.

They appear to be the first charges filed against fake electors.

The announcement came the same day Trump said he has been notified that he is the target of an investigation by a Washington-based grand jury examining the Jan. 6, 2021, riot and efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

The 16 people being charged in Michigan allegedly met in the basement of the state's Republican Party headquarters and signed multiple certificates claiming they were “the duly elected and qualified electors for president and vice president of the United States of America for the state of Michigan,” Nessel said in recorded remarks.

“That was a lie. They weren’t the duly elected and qualified electors, and each of the defendants knew it,” she said.

Some of the electors tried to deliver the false documents to the state Senate but were turned away, she said; the documents were later sent to the U.S. Senate and the National Archives "with the intent that Vice President Pence would overturn the results of the election, using the false electoral slate," she said.

Nessel said the "false electors" are being charged with eight felony counts each, including forgery.

"The false electors' actions undermine the public's faith in the integrity of our elections and not only violated the spirit of the laws enshrining and defending our democracy, but we believe also plainly violated the laws by which we administer our elections in Michigan and peaceably transfer power in America," she said.

The 16 people include state GOP co-chair Meshawn Maddock and state Republican National Committeewoman Kathy Berden. Michele Lundgren, who was also charged, has told NBC affiliate WDIV of Detroit that she thought she was signing an attendance sheet for a meeting.

"I didn't even know what an elector was, let alone a fake elector," she told the station

Berden and Lundgren did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday.

When reached for comment, Maddock called the charges "political persecution," saying the country and judges would "put a stop to this to restore our judicial system."

"The democrats know they can’t beat Trump in 24 so they have to use lawfare to try to imprison their opponents," Maddock wrote in an email to NBC News.

 

It's one thing to see Trump indicted again and for Republicans to respond with "Boring, nobody cares".

 

It's entirely another thing to see other Republicans go down because of Trump.  I figure the same will happen in Georgia very, very soon, and let's remember that Jack Smith has been looking into possible federal charges for months now. Felony fraud charges may just be the beginning.

I hope there's a lot more coming.

Trump Cards, Con't

Looks like Trump is going to get his federal documents trial delayed until 2024 after all.

 

The federal judge overseeing Donald Trump’s criminal case in South Florida said Tuesday she doesn’t think the 2024 election will be a deciding factor for her in determining when the ex-president's historic trial begins.

U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon made the comment during a nearly two-hour public hearing on the 37-count criminal indictment that Special Counsel Jack Smith secured in June against Trump and his personal valet and co-defendant, Walt Nauta.

Among Cannon's top early priorities is establishing a schedule for the legal proceedings, and Tuesday's hearing marked the first time she's brought together federal prosecutors and defense attorneys for Trump and Nauta to discuss the matter.

Smith's team has been pressing for a mid-December beginning to the Trump trial, while lawyers for Trump and Nauta want the entire proceeding postponed until after the 2024 election that the former president is running in with the hope of winning back his old White House job.

During Tuesday's hearing, Smith's team appeared to concede their December proposal was aspirational.

"We feel it is very important that we have a trial date to work from, realizing that the trial date may not be set in stone," said Jay Bratt, the Chief of the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section of the Justice Department's National Security Division.

Such a schedule may depend on whether the cases against Trump and Nauta are labeled complex, a designation that the government has opposed. Cannon appeared inclined to find that it was, pressing prosecutors on whether any similar Espionage Act case had such an ambitious schedule. Bratt appeared to concede that he couldn't find one, though he added that Trump's case was different from the fold in an important aspect. The evidence has been available for nearly a year, since the FBI searched and seized the documents at issue in the case in August 2022.

Pressing both the government and the defense, Cannon similarly showed little interest in basing her ultimate decision on waiting until the November 2024 election has passed.

"I can appreciate that more time is necessary, but we need to set a schedule," Cannon told Trump's attorney, Todd Blanche, early in the afternoon session.

Cannon, a Trump appointee, did not issue a decision on a trial date during Tuesday's hearing. Instead, she said she'd be weighing a number of other factors in determining a schedule, including the volume of discovery materials Smith team will be handing over to Trump's defense so it can prepare for the trial.

Court watchers have viewed the trial schedule as a key test for Cannon, whose rulings in favor of the 45th president of the United States received a blistering rebuke late last year.

After the FBI seized the documents from Mar-a-Lago in August 2022, Cannon issued an injunction blocking the government from using them in their investigation. A three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit overturned that order in a blistering rebuke that accused Cannon of undertaking a “radical” restructuring of criminal procedure on behalf of the ex-president.

In the shadow of that decision, Cannon shot down attempts by Trump's team to weigh the case's political backdrop into her consideration, or for prosecutors to respond to insinuations of political persecution by the former president's legal team. Trump's attorney Christopher Kise previously hinted, but had not outright stated, that they wanted to postpone a trial until after the 2024 election.

At one point, Cannon pressed Kise to go on-the-record about that desire.

"Your position is there can be no trial until after the election?" the judge asked.

After Kise answered in the affirmative, Cannon told him that the volume of discovery and anticipated motions would provide a more "suitable" framework for her under the Speedy Trial Act. Trump's attorneys previously accused the government of seeking an "expedited" criminal trial, but special counsel attorney David Harbach said that this formulation gets it backwards.

"It's not a speedy trial that has to be justified," Harbach noted. "It's deviation from a speedy trial that has to be justified."

Despite the unprecedented Justice Department prosecution of a former president, Harbach argued that Trump was no different from any other "busy, important person" who's been indicted.

 

Judge Cannon was all but begging Trump's lawyers to give her a discovery excuse, that the volume of documents would be too much for Trump's team to handle before at least this time next year or something perverse like that.

I don't know exactly how she's going to delay this case until after the election, but it looks like she's going to try.