Tag: legal

In Disney Lawsuit, Ron DeSantis Dick-Kicked *Himself*

Post By Politics , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

It is delightful watching Florida failson Ron DeSantis’s political aspirations flame out so spectacularly. Even before the klieg lights of an official presidential campaign, he’s demonstrated that he’s both unserious and unlikable — plus getting saddled with the Tiny D moniker and forcing us all to contemplate him eating pudding with his hands. But perhaps the most egregiously self-inflicted dick-kicking is the debacle of DeSantis’s war on Walt Disney.

After Disney offered mild criticism of the governor’s filthy “Don’t Say Gay” bill that made it illegal to acknowledge the existence of gay people in schools, DeSantis vowed to take revenge on the company.

“I think they crossed the line,” he said at a press conference the next day. “We’re going to make sure we’re fighting back when people are threatening our parents and threatening our kids.”

Now, just as it’s hard to prove actual malice in a defamation case (hey, Fox!), it is very hard to establish someone’s subjective motivation in court. And furthermore, there’s a strong presumption in favor of legislative regularity — that is, courts will assume that legislators are acting in good faith when they pass laws. A politician would have to be an absolute fucking idiot to tell a reporter, “I though it was a mistake for Disney to get involved and I told them, ‘You shouldn’t get involved, it’s not going to work out well for you.”

Only a moron would write in the Wall Street Journal: “When corporations try to use their economic power to advance a woke agenda, they become political, and not merely economic, actors. In such an environment, reflexively deferring to big business effectively surrenders the political battlefield to the militant left. […] Leaders must stand up and fight back when big corporations make the mistake, as Disney did, of using their economic might to advance a political agenda. We are making Florida the state where the economy flourishes because we are the state where woke goes to die.”

And if we might quote Disney’s very good lawyers, only someone drunk on power would surround himself with sycophants so singularly dedicated to saying the quiet part out loud:

Senator Joe Gruters said, “Disney is learning lessons and paying the political price of jumping out there on an issue.”

The House bill’s sponsor, Representative [Randy] Fine, proudly confirmed that the Legislature had “looked at special districts” only because “Disney kicked the hornet’s nest” by expressing a disfavored political viewpoint. “What changed,” he said, was “bringing California values to Florida.”

Christina Pushaw, then Governor DeSantis’s press secretary, warned corporations that might consider expressing disfavored viewpoints, “Go woke, go broke.”

[…]

Senator [Doug] Broxson was explicit about the bill’s retaliatory intent: “We joined with the Governor in saying it was Disney’s decision to go from an apolitical, safe 25,000 acres, and try to be involved in public policy. […] We’re saying ‘you have changed the terms of our agreement, therefore we will put some authority around what you do.’ And I gladly join the Governor in doing that.”

Whodathunk that a party which mocks the Left for “safe spaces” would get so comfortable in the echo chamber of Fox News and its hill cousins OAN and Newsmax that it would forget that the rest of us can hear you when you confess that your intent is to violate the Constitution? Fitting, though, that it comes directly on the heels of Fox paying almost $800 million because its entire C-suite was messaging each other about the plan to feed the audience lies about election fraud in an effort to maintain market share.

After Disney and its very good lawyers had the outgoing board transfer much of its power to Disney, DeSantis once again promised vengeance.

“Come hell or high water we’re going to make sure that policy of Florida carries the day. And so they can keep trying to do things. But ultimately we’re going to win on every single issue involving Disney I can tell you that,” he told reporters. “That story’s not over yet. Buckle up. There’s going to be more coming down the pike.”

And indeed there was more, with incoming board members vowing to void the contract devolving power to the Walt Disney Company with approval from the Legislature. Yesterday, the new board — that is, the one whose members couldn’t be bothered to monitor public notices or attend their predecessors’ meetings where they signed that contract — met and passed a resolution declaring the contract void.

Within an hour, Disney filed a federal lawsuit seeking declaratory judgments that both of the laws passed by the Legislature regarding Disney’s special tax district are unconstitutional.

“There is no room for disagreement about what happened here: Disney expressed its opinion on state legislation and was then punished by the State for doing so,” they wrote, adding later, “This is as clear a case of retaliation as this Court is ever likely to see.”

As every lawyer predicted when the plan to magic away the contract was first floated (except for TinyD, who appears to have forgotten ConLaw), Disney alleges that the law violates the Contracts Clause, which provides that “No State shall … pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts.” Similarly they allege violations of Due Process, the First Amendment, and the Takings Clause, since the state is in effect seizing private property for public use “without just compensation.”

It is just as hilariously unconstitutional as everyone said it was a year ago when DeSantis declared this fatwa on Mickey Mouse. Back then, the prevailing wisdom was that this goober would back down and not force Disney to confront him head on. But he didn’t … and so here we are.

And, PS: The case has been assigned to Judge Mark Walker, an Obama appointee who already struck down DeSantis’s “Stop Woke Act” DEI ban. EL-OH-EL.

[Walt Disney Parks & Resorts Inc. v. DeSantis, docket via Court Listener]

Catch Liz Dye on Opening Arguments podcast.

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Trump-indicting D.A. Alvin Bragg has a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day in federal court

Post By Politics , , , , , ,

Previously, dear reader, we told you about how New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg faceplanted in federal court when seeking an immediate injunction against Jim Jordan without even giving the other side a chance to respond. The whole thing arose from the subpoena of Mark Pomerantz, who used to work for in the district attorney’s office. Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil scheduled a hearing for today where both sides could be heard and …

Get out some popcorn, folks, because it did not go well for Bragg, at all.

First up, we have a report from the hearing itself:

Some highlights:

… Judge Vyskocil interrupted Bragg’s attorney Theodore Boutrous repeatedly throughout the hourlong hearing, accusing him of playing politics.

‘There’s politics going on here on both sides here,’ Vyskocil said. ‘Let’s be honest about that.’

That’s fair.

One of the arguments that the Bragg team made was that Jordan’s subpoena threatened to improperly expose the District Attorney’s office’s inner workings and deliberations—which might arguably be privileged from questioning by the House Judiciary Committee. Except it turns out that Mark Pomerantz kind of wrote a whole tell-all book and did some interviews discussing why he thought Trump should be indicted, which led to this exchange:

In a particularly cutting series of questions, the judge asked Boutrous directly: ‘How does this book, which is chock full of what Mr. Pomerantz calls an ‘insider account,’ how does it not disclose mental impressions, deliberations of the office, the internal workings of the District Attorney’s office, how is there not a waiver [of any potential privilege]?’…

Bragg’s general counsel Leslie Dubeck addressed the waiver question in separate questioning, which was equally incisive.

‘Have you read this book?’ Vyskocil, who had a copy of the tome, asked.

‘Yes,’ Dubeck acknowledged.

‘Does it preserve your confidences?’ the judge needled.

Dubeck acknowledged that Pomerantz did not and said he opened himself to criminal and civil liability. The judge then pointedly asked whether the DA’s office took any actions to block the distribution of the book.

We’ll be coming back to that issue in a minute but the answer was ‘no.’ And then after the hearing, the judge issued a ruling, denying Bragg’s motion for a preliminary injunction:

And the opinion is a thing to behold. For starters, she discusses Pomerantz’s book in detail, including several observations about the very case Trump was indicted under:

‘Within DANY, the case against Trump arising out of payment of so-called ‘hush money’ to Stephanie Clifford was referred to as the ‘zombie’ case.’

DANY is the acronym used for the NY District Attorney’s Office.

‘The facts surrounding the payments ‘did not amount to much in legal terms. Paying hush money is not a crime under New York State law, even if the payment was made to help an electoral candidate.’’

‘[T]here appeared to be no [felony] state crime in play.’

‘The invoices and requests for payment from Michael Cohen in connection with the Clifford payments, in a supposed effort to ‘camouflage’ reimbursements, were made ‘throughout 2017 (after Trump’s inauguration as president).’’

‘The DANY prosecution team discussed ‘Michael Cohen’s credibility’ as being one of ‘the difficulties in the case.’’

‘At one point, Bragg ‘commented that he ‘could not see a world’ in which [DANY] would indict Trump and call Michael Cohen as a prosecution witness.’’

‘[T]o charge Trump with something other than a misdemeanor, DANY would have to argue that the intent to commit or conceal a federal crime had converted the falsification of the records into a felony. No appellate court in New York had ever upheld (or rejected) this interpretation of the law.’

‘The statutory language (under which Trump was charged) is ‘ambiguous.’’

‘‘[F]ederal prosecutors would not have to torture or massage [statutory] language to charge Trump with a violation,’ as DANY would have to do.’

Those last three points are significant because the Constitution requires that criminal law be reasonably clear so that people are given reasonable notice about what is and is not a crime ahead of time. This might be grounds for dismissal in a fair hearing.

And this last bit from the book is just painful:

‘While Pomerantz acknowledged Bragg’s right to make prosecutorial decisions, Pomerantz viewed himself as more experienced and qualified than Bragg. … Pomerantz makes a point that he was ‘finishing law school when Alvin was a toddler.’’

Ouch. In our previous post, we wrote this about the lawsuit: ‘We are surprised [Bragg] didn’t write [the Complaint] in ALL CAPS with lots of exclamation points.’ The judge seemed to agree:

The first 35 pages of the Complaint have little to do with the subpoena at issue and are nothing short of a public relations tirade against former President and current presidential candidate Donald Trump. The same is true of the vast majority of the exhibits accompanying the Boutrous Declaration.

That would be the declaration they forgot to attach last time. Besides failing to attach that declaration and a copy of the subpoena, Judge Vyskocil found another mistake in their previous filing:

In this Court, Local Civil Rule 6.1(d) dictates that any party seeking an ex parte order must submit an ‘affidavit of good and sufficient reasons why a procedure other than by notice of motion is necessary, and stating whether a previous application for similar relief has been made.’ No such affidavit was submitted here.

‘Ex parte’ is law Latin meaning roughly “without the other party present.” Normally in court, both sides are supposed to have a chance to be heard, but occasionally there is so much of an emergency that the court can’t wait for the other side to respond. A request for an injunction to stop a deposition about nine days later isn’t one of those kinds of emergencies.

The court also talks about how the defendants were allowed to file a response to the motion for preliminary injunction and how, contrary to the court’s order, Bragg’s team filed a reply to Jordan and the House Judiciary Committee’s opposition:

The day before the scheduled hearing, Bragg filed an eleventh hour reply brief, not authorized by the Court’s Scheduling Order given the compressed time frame in which Plaintiff’s motion was brought on. The reply largely rehashes the same arguments made in the moving brief and, for the first time, addresses the Speech or Debate Clause. … The reply brief was accompanied by a supplemental declaration attaching sixteen largely irrelevant exhibits, consisting of a hodge-podge of social media postings, news articles, television interviews, pleadings from unrelated lawsuits, and a transcript from the arraignment in the Trump prosecution.’

Honestly, this is just bad practice. They were already filing an unauthorized filing (a questionable idea in the first place). They should have made sure that they didn’t make the judge think they were wasting her time, too. If the exhibits were relevant, they should have made that relevance clear.

The opinion goes on discussing all the legal reasons why the Bragg team was failing to convince her, with occasional biting commentary such as ‘Bragg’s throw-everything-at-the-wall approach to privilege is unpersuasive’ and ‘this Court will not quash a subpoena based solely on Bragg’s seemingly endless string of ‘what ifs.’’

And she came back to the devastating fact that Pomerantz wrote a book about it all, rubbing salt in both Bragg’s and Pomerantz’s wounds:

Pomerantz complains that he is in a ‘legally untenable position’ because he will be forced to make a choice between ‘legal or ethical consequences’ or ‘potential criminal and disciplinary exposure.’ … Pomerantz is in this situation because he decided to inject himself into the public debate by authoring a book that he has described as ‘appropriate and in the public interest.’

Finally, Bragg cannot seriously claim that any information already published in Pomerantz’s book and discussed on prime-time television in front of millions of people is protected from disclosure as attorney work product (or otherwise). … On the record at the hearing on the motion for emergency relief, Bragg’s counsel admitted that Pomerantz’s book did not preserve the confidences of the District Attorney’s Office. While Bragg maintains that Pomerantz’s inappropriate disclosures cannot waive DANY’s privilege, such a claim is belied by DANY’s inaction in response to Pomerantz’s known plan to publish a book about DANY’s investigation into President Trump. If that information ever was protected from disclosure as attorney work product, the protection has been waived by DANY.

Oops.

CB Cotton, a Fox News correspondent captures the text on the docket, which is frankly unusually long:

She also captures footage of Pomerantz leaving the courthouse:

Of course, there was whining and screeching from the left:

Keep raging.

Literally, nothing pictured constitutes evidence of a conflict of interest.

Cope, Mark.

It even veered into weird anti-Czech bigotry:

And conspiracy theories were spun, because of course:

And an alleged former coworker wrote a pretty critical thread discussing the decision that starts here, but we won’t be publishing it in full because this post is long enough:

One commenter even apparently has reached the bargaining stage:

But some cheered the ruling:

This tweeter also found an interesting passage in the opinion:

As did Mr. Klasfeld:

Which also triggered at least one liberal:

And this person veered off topic, but her sentiment is interesting:

Still, the story isn’t over yet. While the hearing went badly for Team Bragg, they can still file for an emergency stay before the notoriously liberal Second Circuit, and they are already making moves to do so:

Technically, that is only a notice of an appeal and Bragg’s team has to file the actual appeal with the Second Circuit. But I’m sure that these consummate professionals will file that appeal quickly and properly …

Oh, right. So maybe not.



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Biden’s rebuke of a bold, reform-minded crime law makes all Americans less safe

Post By Stock , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

President Joe Biden’s support for a Republican-led effort to nullify the Washington D.C. City Council’s revision of its criminal code, signed into law on Monday, plays into the fear narrative that is being increasingly advanced across the U.S.

Biden could have used his platform and clout to clarify the actual substance of the carefully crafted District of Columbia proposal — and adhere to his campaign commitment to reduce the number of incarcerated Americans.

Instead, the president ignored the glaring problems in D.C.’s existing criminal code, which the 275-page long package of revisions was designed to address. This included reforming the draconian and inflexible sentencing requirements that have swelled the District’s incarceration rate and wasted countless resources imprisoning individuals who pose no danger to public safety. By rejecting this decade-plus effort, the president decided that D.C. residents have no right to determine for themselves how to fix these problems.

“ There are communities across the U.S. that see virtually no violent crime, and it isn’t because they’re the most policed. ”

Biden’s decision is the latest backlash to U.S. justice reform coming from both sides of the political aisle.

Instead of doubling down on failed tough-on-crime tactics, Americans need to come together to articulate and invest in a new vision of public safety. We already know what that looks like because there are communities across the country which see virtually no violent crime, and it isn’t because they’re the most policed.

Safe communities are places where people (even those facing economic distress) are housed, where schools have the resources to teach all children, where the water and air are clean, where families have access to good-paying jobs and comprehensive healthcare, and where those who are struggling are given a hand, not a handcuff.

This is the kind of community every American deserves to live in, but that future is only possible if we shift resources from carceral responses to communities and shift our mindset from punishment to prevention. 

“ Too often it’s easier to advocate for locking people up than it is to innovate and advance a new vision for public safety.  ”

In the wake of particularly traumatic years, as well as growing divisiveness that has politicized criminal justice reform, it is not surprising that many people believe their communities are less safe. While public perceptions of crime have long been disconnected from actual crime rates and can be heavily influenced by media coverage, the data tells a mixed story. Homicide rates did increase in both urban and rural areas in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and record levels of gun sales.

While early available data suggests these numbers are trending down, it’s too soon to tell, especially given the nation’s poor crime data infrastructure. What is clear is that there is no evidence that criminal justice reform is to blame for rising crime, despite well-funded attempts by those resistant to change and who are intent on driving a political agenda to make such a claim stick. 

Yet fear often obscures facts; people are scared for their safety and want reassurance. Too often it’s easier to advocate for locking people up than it is to innovate and advance a new vision for public safety. 

We need leaders who can govern with both empathy and integrity – who can provide genuine compassion to those who feel scared while also following the data about how to create safer communities. And all the data points to the need for reform. 

“ Mass incarceration costs U.S. taxpayers an estimated $1 trillion annually.”

Mass incarceration costs U.S. taxpayers an estimated $1 trillion annually, when you factor in not only the cost of confinement but also the crushing toll placed on incarcerated people and their families, children, and communities. Despite this staggering figure, there’s no real evidence that incarceration works, and in fact some evidence to suggest it actually makes people more likely to commit future crimes. Yet we keep pouring more and more taxpayer dollars into this short-sighted solution that, instead of preventing harm, only delays and compounds it. 

We have to stop pretending that reform is the real threat to public safety and recognize how our over-reliance on incarceration actually makes us less safe. 

Reform and public safety go hand in hand. Commonsense changes including reforming cash bail, revisiting extreme sentences and diverting people from the criminal legal system have all been shown to have positive effects on individuals and communities.

At a time of record-low clearance rates nationwide and staffing challenges in police departments and prosecutor’s offices, arresting and prosecuting people for low-level offenses that do not impact public safety can actually make us less safe by directing resources away from solving serious crimes and creating collateral consequences for people that make it harder to escape cycles of poverty and crime. 

Yet, tough-on-crime proponents repeatedly misrepresent justice reform by claiming that reformers are simply letting people who commit crimes off the hook. Nothing could be further from the truth. Reform does not mean a lack of accountability, but rather a more effective version of accountability for everyone involved. 

Our traditional criminal legal system has failed victims time and again. In a 2022 survey of crime survivors, just 8% said that the justice system was very helpful in navigating the legal process and being connected to services. Many said they didn’t even report the crime because of distrust of the system. 

When asked what they want, many crime survivors express a fundamental desire to ensure that the person who caused them harm doesn’t hurt them or anyone else ever again. But status quo approaches aren’t providing that. The best available data shows that 7 in 10 people released from prison in 2012 were rearrested within five years. Perhaps that’s why crime victims support alternatives to traditional prosecution and incarceration by large margins. 

For example, in New York City, Common Justice offered the first alternative-to-incarceration program in the country focused on violent felonies in adult courts. When given the option, 90% of eligible victims chose to participate in a restorative justice program through Common Justice over incarcerating the person who harmed them. Just 7% of participants have been terminated from the program for committing a new crime. 

A restorative justice program launched by former San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón for youth facing serious felony charges was shown to reduce participants’ likelihood of rearrest by 44 percent within six months compared to youth who went through the traditional juvenile justice system, and the effects were still notable even four years after the initial offer to participate.

Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt launched a groundbreaking program last year to allow people convicted of violent offenses to avoid prison time if they commit to behavioral health treatment. As of January, just one of 60 participants had been rearrested for a misdemeanor. 

While too many politicians give lip service to reform, those who really care about justice are doing the work, regardless of electoral consequences. We need more bold, innovative leaders willing to rethink how we achieve safety and accountability, not those who go where the wind blows and spread misinformation for political gain. 

Fear should not cause us to repeat the mistakes of the past. When politicians finally decide to care more about protecting people than protecting their own power, only then will we finally achieve the safety that all communities deserve. 

Miriam Aroni Krinsky is the executive director of Fair and Just Prosecution, a former federal prosecutor, and the author of Change from Within: Reimagining the 21st-Century Prosecutor. Alyssa Kress is the communications director of Fair and Just Prosecution.  

More: Wrongful convictions cost American taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Wrongdoing prosecutors must be held accountable.

Plus: Senate votes to block D.C. crime laws, with Biden’s support

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Trump’s Lawyers Continue Pattern Of Bad Faith F*ckery In E. Jean Carroll Defamation Case

Post By Politics , , , , , , , ,

In roughly 10 weeks, come hell or high water, E. Jean Carroll will finally get her day in court. It’s been a hell of a long time coming, with Donald Trump continuing his decades-long campaign of abusing women (allegedly) by abusing the legal process (not allegedly). So it seems like a good time to recap the case so far, including the fireworks this week.

In 2019, the advice columnist E. Jean Carroll accused Trump of raping her in a department store dressing room in the mid-90s. Her account of the assault appeared in her book What Do We Need Men For?: A Modest Proposal, and an excerpt from it which appeared in New York magazine. Trump immediately went on the offensive, telling reporters that he’d never met her, that she was in cahoots with evil Democrats, that she made false accusations against lots of men (Carroll was one of 13 women who accuse CBS’s Les Moonves of sexual assault), that she was only in it for the money, and that anyway he could not have raped her because she wasn’t his type.

In October of 2022, Trump admitted under oath that he had no basis for believing any of the things he’d said but “when people accuse me of something, I think I have a right to be insulting.” This rather undercut his later claim that he made the statements as a part of his official presidential duties, as did in a Truth Social post in 2022 reiterating each and every one of his gross allegations. Similarly Trump’s implication that Carroll was too unattractive to rape was undercut when he looked at a photo of Carroll from the 90s and repeatedly mistook her for his second wife Marla Maples, who was presumably his type.

Back in 2019, Carroll sued Trump for defamation in New York state court, only to have the then-president duck the process server, contest jurisdiction, and refuse to cooperate with discovery. When every other avenue was exhausted and he was finally ordered to submit his DNA to match male genetic material found on the dress Carroll wore the day of the attack, then-Attorney General Bill Barr tried to remove the case to federal court and attempt to substitute the government as defendant. The success or failure of that gambit is still in doubt — the issue of whether Trump was acting within the scope of his presidential duties under DC law when he slagged Carroll in 2019 is currently before the DC Court of Appeals. But in the meantime, Carroll filed a second defamation suit for the 2022 social media post, adding a sexual battery count under New York’s recently enacted Adult Survivors Act.

In both these cases, known as Carroll I and Carroll II, Trump’s lawyers appear to have gone out of their way to piss off US District Judge Lewis Kaplan. Which is a weird strategy, TBQH.

The former president was initially represented in Carroll I by his longtime lawyer Marc Kasowitz, but in 2021 attorney Alina Habba entered her appearance. Habba and Trump recently got slapped with a million dollars in sanctions in the batcrap RICO suit they filed in Florida against Hillary Clinton and half of DC, and her conduct here has been only slightly less egregious. The court has already reamed her out on multiple occasions and described Trump’s legal strategy as at least partly “dilatory” and in “bad faith.” Then two weeks ago Joseph Tacopina, a highly experienced trial lawyer with dozens of celebrity clients, took control of Carroll II. No more shenanigans, he assured Judge Kaplan last week, promising that “If you say April, I’m trying it in April. I’m not running from this obligation.”

Turns out … not so much. On Thursday, the Daily Beast’s Jose Pagliery reported that Trump’s legal team was preparing to offer to submit to the DNA test, after three years of flatly refusing it. If successful, this would allow Trump to tell jurors that he’d offered his DNA, and Carroll had refused it.

Now, to be clear, discovery in this case is over. You do not get to reopen discovery absent a really freakin’ good reason, and, furthermore, it is Judge Kaplan’s regular practice to keep these disputes off the public docket at least in part because they tend to prejudice potential jurors.

And yet! On Friday, Tacopina docketed a letter motion purportedly seeking a missing appendix to the 2020 DNA report on the dress which was originally filed in state court. Letter motions are filed on the docket, so Trump was conveniently allowed to make a public offer to trade his DNA for the omitted pages.

“Mr. Trump’s DNA is either on the dress or it is not. Why is Plaintiff now hiding from this reality?” he sneered. “We surmise that the answer to that question is that she knows his DNA is not on the dress because the alleged sexual assault never occurred.”

Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge), responded furiously in her own letter, pointing out the impropriety of attempted to reopen discovery on the eve of trial, noting that forensic testing at this late date would by necessity force a delay of trial, and accusing Trump of seeking to poison the jury pool.

Tacopina denied that the testing and concomitant legal wrangling of another expert witness would force a delay — a patently absurd assertion — and accused Carroll of prejudicing potential jurors by writing her book in 2019 and promoting it.

This morning Judge Kaplan denied Trump’s motion in a FURIOUS order which characterized the late motion as either a deliberate, bad faith effort to manipulate the court, or an act of gross incompetence:

The patently untimely request for the appendix thus reflects either a tactical shift or just an afterthought. One possible explanation is that it is an attempt to reverse a deliberate tactical decision by Mr. Trump’s counsel not to raise the question of the appendix over the past three years, a decision perhaps the product of a belief that asking for the appendix might well have resulted in renewed demands for Mr. Trump’s DNA. Another possible explanation is a negligent failure to read the report with any care over the entire three-year period and thus the failure to notice the lack of the appendix. But whatever the explanation, the effort comes too late.

These are not words you want to hear from a judge presiding over your imminent trial. Nor do you want him audibly rolling his eyes at your blasé claim that the blatant violation of agreed upon discovery timelines will have no affect on the trial schedule.

So, this is all going swell. Can’t wait to see what crazy shit they come up with in the next ten weeks. Might this be a strategy to provoke a mistrial, or better still, get the case reassigned to a different judge by provoking Judge Kaplan to leap across the bench and pummel the defendant’s counsel?

If so, you heard it here first. MUST CREDIT WONKETTE.

[Carroll I, Docket via Court Listener / Carroll II, Docket via Court Listener / Daily Beast]

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CO Election Loon Tina Peters Accuses Prosecutors Of Double Murder, NBD

Post By Politics , , , , , , , ,

It’s time to check in with everyone’s favorite election-denying former elections official, Tina Peters. Peters rose to prominence after appearing at Mike Lindell’s Big Lie Cyberfraud Hootenanny claiming to have proof that the Dominion Voting Machines used in Mesa County, Colorado, stole the election for Joe Biden. Never mind that Donald Trump took 62 percent of the vote there, she had video evidence that something hinky went down with those machines.

Unfortunately, the hinkiness turned out to be Peters’s own criminality. Womp womp.

See, Peters was working with goons sent by the Overstock weirdo Patrick Byrne to prove that the Big Lie was actually big true. According to prosecutors, Peters and her deputies Belinda Knisley and Sandra Brown hired a contractor named Gerald Woods, got him a county ID, and then gave the ID to an associate of Byrne named Conan Hayes. Hayes, a former surfer who is likely to be catching something besides waves pretty soon, used it to gain access to the county elections office so that he could both image the voting machines and observe a restricted software update by Dominion staff. To help him get into the building, Peters, Knisley, and Brown did stuff like turn off the security cameras and leave the door unlocked. So crafty!

Plus our Tina engaged in an act of aggravated Karen-ism, kicking a cop in a bagel shop after getting caught recording a court proceeding on her iPad.

(As a white lady, I am both appalled and a little impressed. Damn, girl!)

Peters lost her race for Colorado Secretary of State (RIGGED!) and is considering a run for chair of the Colorado Republican Party. But her plans might run into a bit of a sticky wicket, since she’s facing two trials in the first week of March on multiple felony and misdemeanor charges arising out of her election hijinks. And to make matters worse, prosecutors have now flipped Knisley and Brown, who took plea deals and agreed to cooperate against their former boss.

OR DID THEY???

On a podcast with local election denier Joe Oltmann, Peters claimed that prosecutors had literally murdered Knisley and Brown’s brothers in separate car “accidents” to force them to testify against her.

Here’s the dialogue, as reported by the Colorado Times Recorder:

OLTMANN: They charged Belinda Knisley who was your Lieutenant. Super-nice person — probably one of the most— I don’t even know like there’s not even a, there’s not a person I think could be more nice to everyone. But they they charged her and then something happened. She stood up, stood up, stood up, and then her brother was murdered. Is that correct? So hit and run, is that what happened?

PETERS: So this past August her brother who I know, Keith, was killed by hit and run.

OLTMANN: They never found the hit & run driver?

PETERS: Not that I know of, no. Then she took a proffer — agreed to testify against me.

OLTMANN: And they called her right after he was killed?

PETERS: Oh yeah, during that same week. Then a month later, my elections manager —

OLTMANN: Who was also charged.

PETERS: Who was also charged. Her brother was also killed by a hit and run.

OLTMANN: Never found him either. Never found that guy either?

PETERS: Not that I know of. And then she took a proffer and agreed to testify against me. And you know, I told them from the very beginning, I said you know we would have to lie to give them what they want. I said just tell the truth all you have to do is tell the truth but people become afraid you know their their families will say Hey you can just make this go away you can’t make this go away.

In fact, while both Brown and Knisley lost their brothers in car accidents, neither man was killed in a hit and run. Brown’s brother actually ran his motorcycle into an SUV, injuring the other driver. Literally none of what Peters and Oltmann said is true, although we suppose Knisley could be a nice person, albeit one who believes a lot of crazy shit.

But Peters is decidedly not a nice person. And neither is Oltmann, who is in the middle of a nasty defamation suit brought by a former Dominion Voting employee who had to go into hiding after the podcaster’s lies implicating him in massive vote fraud went viral thanks to Rudy Giuliani.

“I just wanted everyone to understand that it’s not a coincidence. Not a coincidence that both of your people in your office that were charged with you, their brothers were killed in hit and runs,” Oltmann went on. “Those hit and run drivers were never recovered. In the same week that happened the DA’s reached out to them to get— This is what the criminal enterprise does. This is what evil does and frankly they know they can’t win unless they cheat, lie, steal, and destroy.”

Again: Neither accident featured a hit and run; in both cases the cars involved stayed at the scene, it is all known and documented.

Oltmann then announced that his “Faith, Education and Commerce” organization, AKA FEC United, was launching a jury nullification campaign to ensure Peters’s exoneration.

“We’ll be pushing that all over the state of Colorado,” he said. “It gets very technical when you look at the technicalities of what they’re charging Tina with, and so with jury nullification we want people to have the understanding that you can’t abuse the laws in order to take away your right to vote, and then say, ‘oh that’s ok but she shouldn’t have done this.’”

Well, it’s not kicking a cop. But engaging in an explicit public campaign to taint the jury pool, confident that you’re not going to find yourself locked up for contempt of court or slapped with a gag order is some extremely Privileged White Lady shit. She better hope it works, because otherwise jail is going to be one hell of a rude awakening.

[Colorado Times Recorder]

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