Trump's Present and Future possible indictments

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[The Duke]

Donald J. Trump and his organizations have been under investigation
for some years now.

This thread means to put into prospective all of these cases and follow them to wherever they may lead.

Let us start with an over view of all of those cases, and then deal with the most recent information.

Feel free to discuss anything one reads, whether one agrees with it or not, but in a civil way.

Trump court cases: A list of all current and pending legal cases on the ex-president's docket

Donald Trump is on a bad run, with massive losses against the New York attorney general and E. Jean Carroll. His first criminal trial has just begun.

www.businessinsider.com

Does this look like a criminal to you?

Or does this?

Which one looks like they'd kidnap ya, turn you loose and hunt you down for sport, hmm?


I say it's the latter.

 

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Part 1

Jack Smith and his team may have to hold off on the bubbly to ring in 2024. In response to Judge Tanya Chutkan’s request for a proposed trial date for United States v. Trump (the District of Columbia version), they suggested January 2.

It’s the kind of proposal that says the prosecution means business. They have no plans to take off the month of December and then ease back in to the new year. Instead, they’ve asked for a schedule that will keep them working through the Thanksgiving holiday. Their proposed calendar would have Trump filing his pre-trial motions on November 13, with the government’s responses due on November 27. That could add up to a lot of motions with prosecutors only allowed 14 days to respond and with the Thanksgiving holiday landing in the middle of their allotted time.

This seriousness about the calendar is also repeated in the tone of the government’s filing today. In the past, government lawyers have often struck a tone of deference to the former president, giving him the benefit of the doubt on timing issues and treating borderline frivolous arguments, like the ones he made in trying to challenge the Mar-a-Lago search warrant, with serious consideration. That seems to be a thing of the past. In today’s pleading, the government promptly dispenses with any sense of deference, pointing out that the Speedy Trial Act exists as much to vindicate the public’s rights as it does to protect the defendant’s. Prosecutors rely on a 1995 Second Circuit case, United States v. Gambino, for the proposition that “[T]he public has as great an interest in a prompt criminal trial as has the defendant. Certainly, the public is the loser when a criminal trial is not prosecuted expeditiously, as suggested by the aphorism, ‘justice delayed is justice denied.’”

This new tone is a positive development. Trump isn’t entitled to any special deference. He is a private citizen, not a president. Being a candidate doesn’t immunize him from accountability. Prosecutors came right out and said it:

“It is difficult to imagine a public interest stronger than the one in this case, in which the defendant—the former President of the United States—is charged with three criminal conspiracies intended to undermine the federal government, obstruct the certification of the 2020 presidential election, and disenfranchise voters. The D.C. Circuit has determined that ‘[t]here is direct linkage between [the defendant] and the events of [January 6, 2021],’ which it described as ‘the single most deadly attack on the Capitol by domestic forces in the history of the United States.’ Trump v. Thompson…Trial in this case is clearly a matter of public importance, which merits in favor of a prompt resolution.”

The government advised the court it expects to take four to six week to present its case in chief—Trump may take whatever time he wishes to present a case of his own if he chooses to. Many times, defendants do not put on a case, or much of one, and argue that the government has failed to meet its burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, so the jury must acquit. Here it seems likely that Trump will audition several affirmative defenses, including arguing the government is prosecuting him for speech in violation of his First Amendment rights and that all the action he took was in reliance on the advice of counsel so he can’t be prosecuted. Neither appears to be particularly promising. (We’ll take up the First Amendment defense in detail in tomorrow’s “Five Questions With” edition of the newsletter.)

A final decision on the trial date is up to Judge Chutkan. You can read the government’s full pleading here.

https://joycevance.substack.com/p/january-2-a-good-day-for-a-trial?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=607357&post_id=135910171&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email

 

[Sixties Fan]

Part 2

This is the schedule the government has proposed for everything that would need to be accomplished before trial:



The schedule gives Trump ample time to prepare, but he is very likely to ask for a delay, as he’s done in Miami, until after the election is over. The government’s argument that the people are entitled to a prompt trial will take a central role as Judge Chutkan decides whether to accept one of the parties’ proposed trial dates or split the difference. The government dropped an interesting tidbit, that Trump’s lawyers have been aware the prosecution was in the works since June of 2022.



So, the government argues, because Trump saw much of the government’s evidence during the House January 6 committee hearings, has had early contact from the government, and because prosecutors have committed to turn over discovery as soon as Trump agrees to a protective order and in a highly organized “user friendly” form, “the defendant has a greater and more detailed understanding of the evidence supporting the charges against him at the outset of this criminal case than most defendants.” In the government’s view, this means their proposed trial date, five months out, is not unreasonable.



Interestingly, the government has also advised there there is a small amount of classified information that will be included in their discovery. No word on what that involves, but they’ve asked the Judge to take up scheduling for that process tomorrow, Friday, when she considers the protective order that the parties have been unable to reach agreement on, and which needs to be in place before discovery can proceed in the case. Most of the hearing will be open (some parts about classified material likely will not be), and although we won’t get to watch it live, because no cameras in federal court, we should get complete reporting of the proceedings.

Jack Smith wrote, “The Government’s proposed trial date represents an appropriate balance of the defendant’s right to prepare a defense and the public’s strong interest in a speedy trial in the case. The Government respectfully requests that the Court set trial to begin on January 2, 2024.” Let’s go.

https://joycevance.substack.com/p/january-2-a-good-day-for-a-trial?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=607357&post_id=135910171&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email

 

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The Fake Electors Memos Are Like the Torture Memos

In college and law school, I made the acquaintance of people who would go on to have a substantial impact on the republic. I was glad to get...

www.dorfonlaw.org

 

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Writing for the Washington Post, Aaron Blake pointed out an interesting development in what Trump is trying to sell to the public as he faces his next indictment package, the one about the “perfect phone call” of January 2021. The one where he pressured the Georgia GOP election chair to alter the results and declare Trump the winner.

The man literally said, “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have.” (He meant, sloppily, that he was facing an 11,779 vote margin of defeat to Biden, and so he wanted GA Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger to hurry up and produce 11,780 more votes for Trump, and do it ASAP. 11,780 more votes. Now. Just “find” them.)

For the past two years and nine months, until very recently, Trump has declared vehemently that the 2020 election was stolen, that he actually received the most votes, and that that is a fact.

Now he is declaring that it’s merely his opinion, it’s what he thinks personally, that the 2020 election was stolen. Check this out, Aaron Blake showcasing quotes from Trump’s Newsmax interview the night before last, with key phrases bolded by me:

Describing the fateful phone call: “I’m telling them that, in my opinion, the election was rigged.”
“I believe I won that election by many, many votes, many, many hundreds of thousands of votes,” Trump said. “That’s what I think.”
“That’s my opinion, and it’s a strong opinion,” he added. “And I think it’s borne out by the facts, and we’ll see that.”

Trump has never before weaseled away from fact-claiming and into subjectivity like this — my opinion, I believe, I think — on the subject of the 2020 election. It suggests a legal strategy, maybe?

But how would that play out? Legal professionals on here may be able to say more, and they have — Trump, as criminal defendant, cannot wrap himself up in a cloak of “my opinion” as an excuse for committing illegal acts. Especially when there is ample evidence that he’d been told, repeatedly, by numerous aides and advisors, that the facts were that he’d lost.

It doesn’t work like that. I can’t sell cocaine “because in my opinion it should be legal”. I can’t steal your car “because in my opinion it looks better in my driveway”. And Trump can’t attempt to overturn the official and accurate results of the 2020 election for President of the United States of America because in his opinion the official result is wrong and he’s not the loser, he’s the winner.

Nope.

But it’s interesting to see him sliding in this direction. It makes me wonder if a few more of his supporters will start to understand what he’s doing here, that he’s no longer confidently declaring it as fact. Maybe some of them, too, will finally get quieter about the Big Lie and begin to slink away from it.

Speaking of supporters — Newsmax itself, more right-wing than Fox, concluded their Trump interview with an on-camera disavowal of Trump’s opinion. That’s a first for them! The interviewer, Eric Bolling, actually cut away from Trump at the end and faced the camera and said, point blank, “Alright, folks. Now, just a note. Newsmax has accepted the election results as legal and final.”

These trials are going to be interesting. Trump cannot afford to plead insanity while simultaneously running for President. But if he does not plead insanity, then he has to go on trial as a defendant who is expected to understand what truth and reality are — and to obey the law, as a citizen who is sane enough to understand that concept.

Trump’s new “my opinion / I think” framing about the 2020 election, and his backing away from claiming the Big Lie as fact, is not going to serve him well in courts of law.

It will also not serve him well in his perpetual $$ grifting from small donors. Recently we’ve heard that as many as 70% of Republican voters say they believe the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump by Joe Biden. A significant percent of Trump’s donations go hand in hand with that belief. And I lurk occasionally on right-wing forums just to get pulse readings from time to time… honestly, there are millions out there who truly and deeply believe it. They don’t wield it, as Trump does, as a tool to try to ward off the personal narcissistic injury of being Trump and losing your re-election bid. They believe it.

Maybe that, too, will begin to change slowly. At least for some % of them. Because for Trump to now be saying all of that is just “my opinion” — that is some truly weak-sauce backpedaling, after all the furious rhetorical spear-chucking he’s done throughout 2021 and 2022. Pathetic. In my opinion.

Well, well: now Trump reframes Big Lie / Stolen Election as just "my opinion" and "what I think"

Writing for the Washington Post, Aaron Blake pointed out an interesting development in what Trump is trying to sell to the public as he faces his next indictment package, the one about the “perfect phone call” of January 2021. The one where he...

www.dailykos.com

 

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