Tag: rudy giuliani

Rundown: The Trump legal cases to watch in 2024

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This year promises to be a busy one for the Trump legal team, with the former US president facing accusations of wrongdoing – ranging from the civil to the criminal to the unconstitutional – in multiple states and jurisdictions. Here is a look at the four criminal indictments (and others) that Donald Trump will be facing in 2024, even as he vies to retake the presidency in November. 

Donald Trump has been charged with a total of 91 felony counts in four criminal indictments, with the former president facing possible prison sentences in each case. 

  • Special Counsel Jack Smith charged Trump with four counts related to federal election interference for his attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential vote (trial set for March 4)
  • Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg indicted Trump on 34 felony counts involving the falsification of business records to conceal hush money payments (trial set for March 25)
  • The special counsel unsealed 37 felony charges related to mishandling classified documents at Trump’s Florida estate (trial set for May 20)
  • Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis brought a total of 41 counts against Trump and 18 others related to election interference (trial requested for August 5).

As his legal team exercises its options for legal challenges, appeal and delays, trial dates are subject to change. 

Trump is also awaiting a verdict in a far-reaching civil fraud case in New York that could see the dismantlement of his business empire. Attorney General Letitia James has requested that Trump be banned from real estate dealings and from operating businesses in the state. 

Adding to his legal woes are individual challenges filed in more than a dozen states alleging that Trump is ineligible to run for president under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which disqualifies anyone who has “engaged in insurrection” against the United States after having sworn an oath to support the Constitution as “an officer of the United States”. Trump’s legal defense has argued that a president is not “an officer of the United States” and so the 14th Amendment clause does not apply to him. After the Colorado Supreme Court disqualified him from the 2024 state ballot in December, Trump asked the US Supreme Court to reverse the decision; if the high court agrees to hear the case, its ruling would affect all such outstanding cases at the state level. 

Trump denies wrongdoing in all of the charges he faces.  

Federal election interference: four counts

Special Counsel Jack Smith unveiled four felony counts against Trump related to his attempts to overturn the results of the presidential election, including his actions during the January 6, 2021, assault on the US Capitol: 

  • conspiracy “to defraud the United States by using dishonesty” to obstruct the work of the federal government in certifying the results of the presidential election;
  • conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, i.e., “the certification of the electoral vote”;
  • obstruction of an official proceeding regarding same; and
  • conspiracy to prevent others from exercising their constitutional right to vote and to have their votes counted.

Smith’s August 2023 indictment focuses on the attempt to substitute fake electors and pressure then vice president Mike Pence not to certify the results of the 2020 election. The indictment also recounts Trump’s infamous call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which Trump asked him to “find 11,780 votes” that would win Trump the state.

The indictment notably avoided charging Trump with inciting an insurrection or “seditious conspiracy”, thereby sidestepping what could have been a First Amendment free-speech defense. It accuses Trump instead of fraudulently pushing claims he knew to be untrue after numerous members of his entourage told him the 2020 election was legitimate.

Trump and his legal team argue the case is politically motivated, an attempt to undermine his 2024 bid for the presidency. His lawyers have also argued that Trump is immune from prosecution because his actions that day were taken as part of his official role as president – the now infamous “presidential immunity” argument. 

Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who is presiding over the case, has rejected that argument, saying the office of the president “does not confer a lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass”. Chutkan “has consistently taken the hardest line against Jan. 6 defendants of any judge serving on Washington’s federal trial court”, according to the AP.

The most serious of the four charges carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison but is subject to a judge’s discretion.

Read the full indictment here.

Falsifying business records in New York: 34 felony counts

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg brought 34 felony counts against Trump in April 2023 for falsifying business records “to conceal criminal conduct” from voters in the runup to the 2016 election. The falsified records “mischaracterized, for tax purposes, the true nature” of payments made to tabloids to suppress damaging information about Trump as well as hush money paid to conceal his extramarital affairs.

While falsifying business records is a misdemeanor under NY law, it becomes a felony if the records were falsified as part of committing separate crimes, in this case violations of NY election laws, exceeding caps on campaign contributions or making false statements to tax authorities. The indictment alleges that Trump representatives organised a “catch and kill” scheme to pay off tabloids that were preparing to run stories damaging to Trump. Trump “then went to great lengths to hide this conduct, causing dozens of false entries in business records to conceal criminal activity, including attempts to violate state and federal election laws”, Bragg’s statement said.

This indictment marked the first time a former US president has ever been charged with a crime.

Longtime Trump attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations in 2018 – among them a $130,000 payment he made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels through a shell corporation – and served a three-year prison sentence, most of it under house arrest. Bragg’s indictment also alleges that Trump asked Cohen to try to delay the payment to Daniels until after the 2016 election, saying that “at that point it would not matter if the story became public”.

Cohen has since testified against Trump in a separate civil fraud case filed by NY Attorney General Letitia James (see below).

Trump faces up to four years in prison for each count if convicted on fraudulent bookkeeping charges, but a judge could impose these sentences to be served consecutively.

Read the full indictment here.

Mishandling classified documents: 37 felony counts 

Trump was indicted in June 2023 on 37 felony charges related to the removal and retention of classified documents, including 31 violations of the Espionage Act. The documents were stored haphazardly in unsecured areas of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club and residence, including in a ballroom, a bathroom, his bedroom and a storage room. On at least two occasions, Trump shared some of these documents – including a “plan of attack” and a “classified map related to a military operation” – with individuals who did not possess a security clearance.

The FBI opened a criminal investigation into the unlawful retention of classified material at Mar-a-Lago in March 2022 and a grand jury subpoena ordered Trump to return all documents with classified markings. According to the indictment, Trump then “endeavored to obstruct the FBI and grand jury investigations and conceal his continued retention of classified documents” by, among other things, suggesting his attorney hide or destroy the requested documents and instructing others to conceal them. 

“Our laws that protect national defense information are critical to the safety and security of the United States, and they must be enforced,” said Special Counsel Jack Smith, who led the investigation. “Violations of those laws put our country at risk.”

Trump faces up to 10 years in prison for each count of “willfully” retaining national defense documents under US espionage provisions and up to 20 years for each count of obstructing justice for refusing to turn over the documents.

Read the full indictment here.

Election interference in Georgia: the most complex case

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis charged Trump and 18 others – including Trump’s former attorney Rudy Giuliani and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows – with 41 counts related to conspiring to overturn the 2020 presidential election, including impersonating a public official, forgery and pressuring public officials to violate their oaths.  

The charges, 13 of which are against Trump, include violations of Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) law, often used to target organised crime. The use of the RICO act was an unusual move that alleges the defendants were part of a “criminal enterprise” focused on keeping Trump in office and allows each defendant’s statements to be used against the other accused.

The Georgia indictment is arguably the most complicated of the criminal cases Trump is facing: it details 161 separate acts across seven states that were allegedly part of a sweeping conspiracy to overturn the election. Some of the defendants, which include fake GOP electors, are accused of illegally accessing voter data, sharing that stolen data with other states, and of breaching voting machines.

Some of Trump’s co-accused have already pleaded guilty, agreed to testify and promised to cooperate with the prosecution. Perhaps even more ominously for Trump, a RICO conviction in Georgia carries a mandatory minimum sentence of five years.

Read the full indictment here. 

In addition to the charges outlined above, Trump is facing both civil and criminal cases related to his business dealings as well as allegations of sexual abuse.

  • Trump Organization found liable for fraud; trial verdict expected

New York Attorney General Letitia James filed suit against Trump, the Trump Organization and his three adult children for fraud in September 2022 alleging that Trump systematically inflated his assets and net worth to reap tax benefits and persuade banks to offer Trump entities better terms. James’s office documented more than 200 examples of misleading valuations, among them 23 assets whose values were “grossly and fraudulently inflated”.

In a pretrial summary judgment in September 2023, Justice Arthur Engoron found that Trump and his sons Donald Jr. and Eric inflated the value of Trump assets by between $812 million and $2.2 billion. The overvaluations included Trump’s Florida property at Mar-a-Lago, his penthouse apartment in Trump Tower as well as various golf courses and commercial buildings.

Trump inflated the value of Mar-a-Lago by more than 22 times, according to some estimates, placing its worth between $420 million and $1.5 billion. One independent assessor found its market value to be closer to $27 million while some Palm Beach realtors say it could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. James has argued Trump’s valuation of the property does not take into account the restrictions on its deed, including the stipulation that it cannot be sold or used as a private residence. 

Justice Engoron reportedly took particular exception to the overvaluation of the former president’s Trump Tower penthouse by as much as $207 million, based on the claim that it is almost three times larger than it actually is. “A discrepancy of this order of magnitude by a real estate developer sizing up his own living space of decades can only be considered fraud,” Engoron wrote.

The judge rejected Trump’s argument that his real estate holdings are not overvalued because he could always find a “buyer from Saudi Arabia” to pay the inflated prices.

Engoron also ordered the cancellation of certificates allowing some Trump entities, notably the Trump Organization, to do business in New York and ordered a receiver to be appointed who will manage the dissolution of Trump companies. James has requested that the former president and his sons be removed from managing the Trump Organization.

Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen testified against his former boss in late 2023, saying he and others were specifically told to overvalue Trump’s assets.

“I was tasked by Mr. Trump to increase the total assets, based upon a number that he arbitrarily elected,” Cohen told the court, saying he and former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg would “reverse-engineer the various different asset classes” to increase the value of those assets to “whatever number Trump told us to”. 

The case went to trial in October and closing statements were delivered in January 2024. James was seeking $370 million in penalties and asking that Trump be banned from any real estate dealings and from operating businesses in the state of New York.

Read the full lawsuit here.

  • Trump found liable for sex abuse, defamation of E. Jean Carroll

A jury unanimously found Trump liable in May 2023 for sexually abusing and defaming prominent columnist E. Jean Carroll in the late 1990s, awarding her $5 million in damages in a civil case. The federal trial included testimony from two other women who also say Trump sexually assaulted them. 

A second defamation trial, in which Carroll is seeking $10 million in damages, began in mid-January.

  • Trump Organization convicted of criminal tax fraud 

The Trump Corporation and Trump Payroll Corp., both sub-entities of the Trump Organization, were convicted in December 2022 on all 17 counts for tax crimes including conspiracy and falsifying business records. The Trump Organization was eventually fined the maximum penalty of $1.6 million; the company has said it will appeal. 

The Trump Organization, which is now run by Trump sons Donald Jr and Eric, was accused of hiding much of the compensation it paid executives between 2005 and 2021. Longtime CFO Allen Weisselberg lived rent-free in a Trump building in Manhattan while he and his wife drove Mercedes-Benz leased by the Trump Organization. Weisselberg admitted to not paying taxes on $1.7 million in remuneration during his testimony, adding that he and others also conspired to falsify W-2 tax forms. Weisselberg was sentenced to five months in prison in January 2023 and agreed to pay $2 million in fines.

Following the verdict, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said he didn’t think the $1.6 million fine went far enough. “Our laws in this state need to change in order to capture this type of decade-plus systemic and egregious fraud,” he said outside the courtroom.

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Ex-Trump lawyer Giuliani ordered to pay $148 million in damages for defaming Georgia poll workers

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A jury awarded $148 million in damages on Friday to two former Georgia election workers who sued Rudy Giuliani for defamation over lies he spread about them in 2020 that upended their lives with racist threats and harassment.

Issued on: Modified:

4 min

The damages verdict follows emotional testimony from Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, who tearfully described becoming the target of a false conspiracy theory pushed by Giuliani and other Republicans as they tried to keep then-President Donald Trump in power after he lost the 2020 election.

There was an audible gasp in the courtroom when the jury foreperson read aloud the $75 million award in punitive damages for the women. Moss and Freeman were each awarded another roughly $36 million in other damages.

“Money will never solve all my problems,” Freeman told reporters outside Washington’s federal courthouse after the verdict. “I can never move back into the house that I call home. I will always have to be careful about where I go and who I choose to share my name with. I miss my home. I miss my neighbors and I miss my name.”

Giuliani didn’t appear to show any emotion as the verdict was read after about 10 hours of deliberations. Moss and Freeman hugged their attorneys after the jury left the courtroom and didn’t look at Giuliani as he left with his lawyer.

The former New York City mayor vowed to appeal, telling reporters that the “absurdity of the number merely underscores the absurdity of the entire proceeding.” 

“It will be reversed so quickly it will make your head spin, and the absurd number that just came in will help that actually,” he said. 

It’s not clear whether Giuliani will ever be able to pay the staggering amount. He had already been showing signs of financial strain as he defends himself against costly lawsuits and investigations stemming from his representation of Trump. In September, his former lawyer sued him, alleging Giuliani had paid only a fraction of nearly $1.6 million in legal fees he racked up. 

His attorney in the defamation case told jurors that the damages the women were seeking “would be the end of Mr. Giuliani.” 

Giuliani had already been found liable in the case and previously conceded in court documents that he falsely accused the women of ballot fraud. Even so, the former mayor continued to repeat his baseless allegations about the women in comments to reporters outside the Washington, D.C., courthouse this week.

Giuliani’s lawyer acknowledged that his client was wrong but insisted that Giuliani was not fully responsible for the vitriol the women faced. The defense sought to largely pin the blame on a right-wing website that published the surveillance video of the two women counting ballots. 

Giuliani’s defense rested Thursday morning without calling a single witness after the former mayor reversed course and decided not to take the stand. Giuliani’s lawyer had told jurors in his opening statement that they would hear from his client. But after Giuliani’s comments outside court, the judge barred him from claiming in testimony that his conspiracy theories were right. 

The judgment adds to growing financial and legal peril for Giuliani, who was among the loudest proponents of Trump’s false claims of election fraud that are now a key part of the criminal cases against the former president.

Giuliani is still facing his biggest test yet: fighting criminal charges in the Georgia case accusing Trump and 18 others of working to subvert the results of the 2020 election, won by Democrat Joe Biden, in that state. Giuliani has pleaded not guilty and characterized the case as politically motivated.

Jurors in the defamation case heard recordings of Giuliani falsely accusing the election workers of sneaking in ballots in suitcases, counting ballots multiple times and tampering with voting machines. Trump also repeated the conspiracy theories through his social media accounts. Lawyers for Moss and Freeman, who are Black, also played for jurors audio recordings of the graphic and racist threats the women received. 

On the witness stand, Moss and Freeman described fearing for their lives as hateful messages poured in. Freeman described strangers banging on her door and recounted fleeing her home after people came with bullhorns and the FBI told her she wasn’t safe. Moss told jurors she tried to change her appearance, seldom leaves her home and suffers from panic attacks. 

“Our greatest wish is that no one, no election worker, or voter or school board member or anyone else ever experiences anything like what we went through,” Moss told reporters after the verdict. “You all matter, and you are all important.”

Defense attorney Joseph Sibley had told jurors they should compensate the women for what they are owed, but he urged them to “remember this is a great man.”

An attorney for Moss and Freeman, in his closing argument, highlighted how Giuliani has not stopped repeating the false conspiracy theory asserting the workers interfered in the November 2020 presidential election. Attorney Michael Gottlieb played a video of Giuliani outside the courthouse on Monday, in which Giuliani falsely claimed the women were “engaged in changing votes.” Giuliani kept pressing false election claims even after the verdict, telling reporters, “I know my country had a president imposed on it by fraud.” 

“Mr. Giuliani has shown over and over again he will not take our client’s names out of his mouth,” Gottlieb said. “Facts will not stop him. He says he isn’t sorry and he’s telegraphing he will do this again. Believe him.”

The judge overseeing the election workers’ lawsuit had already ordered Giuliani and his business entities to pay tens of thousands of dollars in attorneys’ fees. In holding Giuliani liable, the judge ruled that the former mayor gave “only lip service” to complying with his legal obligations while trying to portray himself as the victim in the case.

(AP)

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Checks & Imbalances: Vivek Ramaswamy’s Driving Obsession

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Today we take a close look at Vivek Ramaswamy’s business career – and what it tells us about his political ambitions.

This Surprising Obsession Drives Vivek Ramaswamy And His Presidential Campaign

On what feels like the hottest morning amid the hottest August in recorded history, Vivek Ramaswamy sits coolly on a plush leather couch in his campaign bus, chomping on an apple and brimming with self-belief, reports John Hyatt. Thirty-six hours earlier, the 38-year-old political neophyte was the breakout star in the first Republican presidential debate of the 2024 primary season. “My gut instinct is that I’m going to be the nominee, that I’m going to win the general election in a landslide,” he says, before positing why that could be: “I think I am closer to Trump in 2015 than Trump today is to Trump in 2015. You only get to be the outsider once.”

That’s among the more truthful things he’s in the habit of saying. Eight years ago, Donald Trump turned every American political assumption upside down. He ran for president as a businessman without any political experience, any realistic platform or any repercussions from scandals that would have blown out pretty much every politician, ever. Instead, he was grievance personified, which, combined with uncanny messaging instincts, enabled him to pull an inside straight and punch his ticket to the White House.

MORE FROM FORBESThis Surprising Obsession Drives Vivek Ramaswamy And His Presidential CampaignBy John Hyatt

Tracking Trump

How Trump, Master Of Avoiding Paper Trails, Finally Got Caught With One

Donald Trump has all kinds of tricks to avoid paper trails. He refuses to use email. He ditches cell phones. He’s famous for tearing documents to shreds, reports Dan Alexander. And when asked about something nefarious, like the inflated net worth statements he sent to lenders over the years, he feigns ignorance, even to authorities: “I didn’t get involved in it very much.”

But it’s hard to both convince lenders that you stand by documents and to persuade prosecutors that you had little to do with those same documents. That explains how Trump landed in his current predicament, accused by New York State of engaging in a years-long fraud by telling banks and insurers he had more money than he actually did. Judge Arthur Engoron sided with prosecutors Tuesday, ruling before the trial had even started that Trump was personally liable for fraud.

MORE FROM FORBESHow Trump, Master Of Avoiding Paper Trails, Finally Got Caught With OneBy Dan Alexander

Did Judge Kill The Trump Organization? What Fraud Ruling Means For Ex-President’s Business

A New York judge ordered the dissolution of businesses owned by former President Donald Trump and his associates in a ruling Tuesday that found the ex-president and his company committed fraud—a decision that could have a devastating impact on Trump’s company and its operations in New York, though the full scope of the order still remains to be seen, reports Alison Durkee.

MORE FROM FORBESDid Judge Kill The Trump Organization? What Fraud Ruling Means For Ex-President’s BusinessBy Alison Durkee

By The Numbers

$17.5 billion

The estimated value of Rupert Murdoch and family’s fortune.

$5,000

The amount of campaign donations Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.) plans to return to Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), “in envelopes stuffed with $100 bills,” after the latter was indicted.

At least eight

The number of investigations, criminal cases and lawsuits involving Rudy Guiliani.

From The News Desk

How TikTok Has Exposed Celebrities And Politicians’ Closest Personal Contacts

Beyonce. Ed Sheeran. Charli D’Amelio. The Bidens. Members of Congress. Abortion activists.

They’re just a handful of the high-profile celebrities and public figures whose closest contacts could be searched and scrutinized by nearly any TikTok or ByteDance employee around the world this year with few restrictions, according to people familiar with one of the company’s social graph tools and a trove of internal images, videos, audio and communications related to it that were obtained by Forbes, reports Alexandra S. Levine.

MORE FROM FORBESHow TikTok Has Exposed Celebrities And Politicians’ Closest Personal ContactsBy Alexandra S. Levine

Sen. Robert Menendez Pleads Not Guilty To Bribery Charges

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) pleaded not guilty to three felony counts Wednesday after being indicted for allegedly taking bribes from several New Jersey businessmen, marking Menendez’s second set of criminal charges—as the senator maintains his innocence in the case and refuses to leave Congress, reports Alison Durkee.

MORE FROM FORBESSen. Robert Menendez Pleads Not Guilty To Bribery ChargesBy Alison Durkee

Here’s How Much 2024 Presidential Candidate Larry Elder Is Worth

Larry Elder pitches his presidential campaign as an act of personal sacrifice, reports Monica Hunter-Hart. “I’m not flush like some of the other candidates, so this is a big financial hit for me,” says the California media icon, who Forbes estimates is worth $4 million. “I gave up my nationally syndicated column. I gave up my radio show. I gave up my TV show.”

MORE FROM FORBESHere’s How Much 2024 Presidential Candidate Larry Elder Is WorthBy Monica Hunter-Hart

Bernie Sanders Has Hauled In $2.5 Million In Book Payments Since 2011

Sen. Bernie Sanders earned $2.5 million from book advances and royalties from 2011 through 2022, according to his annual financial disclosures. During that period, political committees for the Vermont independent bought $843,000 worth of books from his publishers.

MORE FROM FORBESBernie Sanders Has Hauled In $2.5 Million In Book Payments Since 2011By Zach Everson

Quiz

Vivek Ramaswamy named his biotech company Roivant Sciences. What does “Roi” stand for?

a. Radiating overconfidence internally

b. Return on investment

c. Riding on Iowa

d. Rupture of integrity

Check if you got it right here.

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#Checks #Imbalances #Vivek #Ramaswamys #Driving #Obsession

Trump surrenders at Atlanta jail, gets mugshot taken and is then released

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Former U.S. President Donald Trump was arrested at a Georgia jail on August 24 on racketeering and conspiracy charges for trying to overturn the 2020 election results in the southern State.

During a brief session lasting less than 30 minutes, the 77-year-old Mr. Trump was booked on 13 charges at Atlanta’s Fulton County Jail, according to records published by the sheriff’s office.

Mr. Trump’s height was listed by the jail as six foot three inches (1.9 meters), his weight as 215 pounds (97 kilograms) and his hair color as “Blond or Strawberry.”

Explained | The indictment against Donald Trump 

Mr. Trump left Atlanta jail roughly 20 minutes after surrendering, reported AP. He was released on $200,000 bond and headed back to the airport for his return flight home to New Jersey.

Mr. Trump arrived in Georgia on August 24 evening to surrender on charges that he illegally schemed to overturn the 2020 election in that State, a county jail booking that yielded a historic first: a mug shot of a former American President.

Mr. Trump’s surrender, coming amid an abrupt shake-up of his legal team, follows the presidential debate in Milwaukee the night before featuring his leading rivals for the 2024 Republican nomination — a contest in which he remains the leading candidate despite broad legal troubles. His presence in Georgia, though likely brief, is swiping the spotlight anew from his opponents after the debate in which they sought to seize on his absence to elevate their own presidential prospects.

Mr. Trump landed in Atlanta shortly after 7 p.m. and was to be driven, through the city’s rush-hour traffic, to jail for the booking process. Wearing his signature white shirt and red tie, he offered a wave and thumbs up as he descended the steps of his private plane.

The Fulton County prosecution is the fourth criminal case against Mr. Trump since March when he became the first former President in U.S. history to be indicted. Since then, he’s faced federal charges in Florida and Washington, and this month he was indicted in Atlanta with 18 others — including his ex-chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani — under a racketeering statute normally associated with gang members and organized crime.

Former President Donald Trump steps off his plane as he arrives at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, on Aug. 24, 2023, in Atlanta.
| Photo Credit:
AP

Mr. Giuliani surrendered on August 23 and posed for a mug shot. Meadows, who had sought to avoid having to turn himself in while he sought to move the case to federal court, turned himself in August 24. The bond was set at $100,000.

Explained | How will the indictments affect Donald Trump?

The criminal cases have spurred a succession of bookings and arraignments, with Mr. Trump making brief court appearances before returning to the 2024 campaign trail. He’s turned the appearances into campaign events amid a far lighter schedule than his rivals, with staff delighting in wall-to-wall media coverage that has included news helicopters tracking his every move.

The campaign has also used the appearances to solicit fundraising contributions from his supporters as aides paint the charges as part of a politically motivated effort to damage his reelection chances. As Mr. Trump was en route from New Jersey to Atlanta, his campaign sent a message saying, “I’m writing to you from Trump Force One, on my way to Atlanta where I will be ARRESTED despite having committed NO CRIME.”

As afternoon turned to evening, scores of Mr. Trump supporters had gathered outside the jail where the ex-president was to surrender, some waving flags with Trump’s name, as officials tightened security measures.

His Atlanta surrender was different from prior ones, requiring him to show up at a problem-plagued jail — but without an accompanying court appearance for now. And unlike in other cities that did not require him to pose for a mug shot, Fulton County officials have taken a booking photo as they would any other defendant.

District Attorney Fani Willis has given all of the defendants until August 25 afternoon to turn themselves in at the main Fulton County jail. On August 24, her office proposed an October 23 trial date, though the complexities of the 19-person case — and potential scheduling conflicts with other Mr. Trump prosecutions — would appear to make it all but impossible. The date seemed to be a response to early legal manoeuvring by at least one defendant, Kenneth Chesebro, who requested a speedy trial.

Just ahead of his expected surrender, Mr. Trump hired a new lead attorney for the Georgia case.

Prominent Atlanta criminal defence attorney Steve Sadow took the place of another high-profile criminal defence attorney, Drew Findling, who had represented Mr. Trump as recently as Monday when his bond terms were negotiated. But by August 24 Mr. Findling was no longer part of the team, according to a person with knowledge of the change who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

Mr. Sadow, who has represented a rapper, Gunna, who pleaded guilty last year in a racketeering case also brought by Willis, said in a statement that “the president should never have been indicted. He is innocent of all the charges brought against him.”

“We look forward to the case being dismissed or, if necessary, an unbiased, open-minded jury finding the president not guilty,” he added. “Prosecutions intended to advance or serve the ambitions and careers of political opponents of the President have no place in our justice system.”

It’s not the first time this year that Mr. Trump has shaken up his legal team either in the run-up to an indictment or in the immediate aftermath. One of his lead lawyers, Tim Parlatore, left the legal team weeks before Mr. Trump was indicted in Florida on charges of illegally hoarding classified documents, citing conflicts with a top Trump adviser. Two other lawyers, James Trusty and John Rowley, announced their resignations the morning after that indictment was returned.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. He said in a social media post this week that he was being prosecuted for what he described in capital letters as a “perfect phone call” in which he asked the Republican Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, to help him “find 11,780 votes” for him to overturn his loss in the State to Democrat Joe Biden.

Mr. Trump is expected to turn himself in at the Fulton County jail, which has long been a troubled facility. The Justice Department last month opened a civil rights investigation into conditions, citing filthy cells, violence and the death last year of a man whose body was found covered in insects in the main jail’s psychiatric wing. Three people have died in Fulton County custody in the past month.

Unlike in other jurisdictions, in Fulton County, arraignments — in which a defendant appears in court for the first time — generally happen after a defendant surrenders at the jail and completes the booking process, not on the same day. That means Mr. Trump could have to make two trips to Georgia in the coming weeks though the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office has said some arraignments in the case may happen virtually if the judge allows, or he could waive Mr. Trump’s arraignment.

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Has James Comer Just Been Begging FBI To Let Him Sniff Rudy’s Russian Spy Farts This Whole Time?

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Peruse if you will a few video clips.

Republican Senator Chuck Grassley is “not interested in whether the allegations against Vice President Biden are accurate or not.”

He’s not interested in whether the allegations are accurate or not.

But isn’t there a document at the FBI? Hasn’t Chuck Grassley seen it? Doesn’t it say Joe Biden did a buncha bads? “Let’s put it this way, there are accusations in it,” said Grassley on Fox News this morning.

YOU BETCHA.

But what about the FORMMMMMMM? Haven’t Grassley and House Oversight Committee Banjo Deliverance Moron Dumbfuck Pork-Brained Idiot James Comer been saying the FBI has a FORRMMMMMMMMMMM? And doesn’t FORRRRRRMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM say that Joe Biden did a stinky in a place with a people and a thing?

Comer has been presenting pretty hard evidence that Joe Biden did a stinky in a place with a people and a thing! (Jingle jangle dingle dangle banjo banjo STRUM!) And as soon as he finds some a-them whistleblower informant thingies he’s lost, he’s gonna blow this Biden scandal wide open! (Time for singin’, time for jokes! Gather ’round and join us, folks! Hee-hee! Hee-haw-haw! Hee-hee! Hee-haw-haw!)

James Comer Knows What Joe Biden Did! Party’s Over, Joe! Resign Before He Tells Everybody What You Did!

James Comer NAILS! Biden For Maybe Knowing About Possible Schemes His Family Coulda Done With Perhaps China?

Oh No, What Is Joe Biden Doing To James Comer’s Informants Who Are Definitely Real And Not Imaginary?

Well, Comer explained yesterday that he had a call with FBI Director Christopher Wray, and Comer said Wray told him there is a form, and the form says a thing, but Wray won’t give him the form, the form what says the thing. And NOOOOOW? Now Comer gonna have to do CONTEMPTS to Chris Wray! (Yeeeee HAW! It’s time for a hoedown!)

Wray offered to let him see the form, though.

We have been making fun of James Comer and Chuck Grassley, but mostly James Comer, for quite a while about his pathetic investigations. He’s just a devastatingly stupid man. And he cannot seem to keep himself from standing in front of TV cameras and telling us how stupid he is. We can’t even keep up with it. Every five seconds it seems like he’s on TV, admitting accidentally that his loser clown probes into Hunter Biden’s penis are simply meant to hurt Joe Biden. (Remember when Kevin McCarthy did thatvis à vis Hillary and Benghazi? Guess who’s stupider than Kevin McCarthy.)

Well listen.

We have a surprise, and it is that the document that James Comer is huffing paint about, the one he’s just been pretty sure the FBI has, is one of the paint-huffing documents Rudy Giuliani gave the FBI back in 2020. Remember that? Back when Rudy would go to Ukraine, get some documents from Russian spies, and then come back to America and pull them out of his underpants and try to get then-attorney general Bill Barr to smell them? Yeah those.

Bill Barr was so impressed with Rudy Giuliani’s “evidence” that he got a US attorney in western Pennsylvania named Scott Brady to handle the very important task of sifting through the “Ukraine evidence” on the Bidens provided by Giuliani. Literally everything Rudy had to share about the Bidens was a bath salts-grade conspiracy theory, and yes, some it came from the Kremlin, and it had all been roundly debunked.

In other words, Barr stuffed this shit in Pittsburgh because it was too stupid even for him to deal with.

That’s apparently where this document came from that Comer’s got his farm dog lipstick out about. Does this mean Rudy’s wet farts are James Comer’s “informant” and/or “whistleblower”? LMAO. Kinda sounds like it.

More from Zachary Cohen’s reporting:

In short, the document is probably almost certainly not true, could very well be Russian disinformation, but James Comer doesn’t care. He’s just trying to hurt the Bidens, as he’s accidentally admitted.

Rudy didn’t care if he was colluding with Russian spies before the 2020 election, but he was pretty sure his dirt on the Bidens was true anyway, because obviously. Rudy and GOP Senator Ron Johnson blew off defensive briefings from the FBI trying to tell them that there were Russian spies crawling up their pantlegs. They didn’t care.

Rudy And Ron Johnson Blew Off FBI Warnings About Russian Spies Because PFFFFFFFT DEEP STATE!

Rudy Giuliani: Americans Deserve To Hear My Easily Debunked Russian Spy Lies!

This is all the same goddamned fucking story, over and over and over and over again. it’s the same story Donald Trump was impeached for, when he tried to force Ukraine to help him steal the election. It’s the same story, ever since Russian spies started shoving this shit down Trump people’s pants back in 2018 or so. And that story connects to the story of Russia helping Trump “win” the 2016 election.

And now James Comer is back at the same trough, seeing what he can slurp out of it.

Here, piggy piggy.

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Just got to BlueSky!

I have profiles those other places but I think I forgot how to log on.

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Republicans Are The Lannisters Of American Politics

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The HBO series “Game Of Thrones” dominated television until it ended with mixed feelings in 2019. Despite the sword and sorcery elements, the series managed to engage a wide audience through its political intrigue as the ruling houses schemed to win everything.

One of those houses, the Lannisters, was rich, incestuous and ruthless — similar to the Republican Party except Republicans have few if any of the Lannisters’ positive traits.

The Lannisters, Unlike The Republicans, “Always Pay Their Debts”

The Lannisters’ unofficial motto of “A Lannister always pay his debts” is a fine financial position but also a warning to enemies that they will always settle the score. While Republicans certainly settle their political scores, keeping a promise for repayment is more tenuous, which Republican Rep. Byron Donalds from Florida demonstrated on NBC’s “Meet The Press.”

Donalds decried the Biden Administration and the Democratic Party for not just blankly giving in to the Republicans’ every demand as they hold the world’s financial stability hostage. But all the talking points collapsed after Chuck Todd played a clip of then-President Trump discussing the debt ceiling.

Donalds comes from the same political cesspool as Matt Gaetz and Ron DeSantis, so he gave the game away with zero shame.

DONALDS: Well, first of all, he also said the other day on a rival network that he said that when he was president, and when they asked why he wasn’t saying it now, he said because he’s not president. Listen, Donald Trump is always negotiating —

TODD: Do you realize how absurd that sounds?

DONALDS: That is not absurd. He’s always negotiating, Chuck.

TODD: How is that not absurd? It’s absurd.

DONALDS: Chuck, he’s always negotiating. That’s what he does. And it’s actually one of the reasons why so many deals for our country worked out to our benefit, as compared to his predecessors, both Republican and Democrat, because he’s always negotiating.

TODD: But do you realize how partisan that sounds?

DONALDS: That is not a partisan statement.

TODD: “What is – what is good for me is not for thee.” He’s basically saying, “When I’m president, –

DONALDS: Right.

You know how stupid and nakedly partisan you have to be for anyone in mainstream political media to call it out, much less Chuck “Both Sides” Todd?!

Donalds then tried a little whataboutism that was so provenly false that Chuck Fucking Todd corrected him (again).

TODD: – there’s no negotiating on this. But, hey, when somebody else is president, screw them.”
DONALDS: Well, no, here’s the thing. Let’s be – let’s be realistic now. When Donald Trump was negotiating debt ceiling with Nancy Pelosi, mind you, they negotiated that.
TODD: No, they didn’t.
DONALDS: When they were –
TODD: They raised it without any restrictions.

Losing an argument to Chuck Todd should be an everlasting political wound, like Jamie Lannister’s right hand.

The Republicans’ Lannister-Like Cruelty And Greed

Republicans, like the fictional Lannisters, think they can somehow “shit gold” by just doing cuts that hurt everyone but the rich. Republicans said as much when a reporter asked about raising revenue to “solve” their manufactured debt crisis last week.

When Republicans claim small businesses and family finances are like the federal government’s budget (they aren’t), they conveniently ignore that real world small businesses and families would have to also bring in more revenue to get out of debt. You either raise prices (businesses) or get a raise/second job (families).

The House Budget Committee Chair, Rep Jodey Arrington of Texas, was happy to show his unseriousness on ABC’s “This Week.”

RADDATZ: Well, the President said he’s willing to cut spending by more than a trillion dollars. […] But he also wants Republicans to consider raising revenue. That has been a non-starter for Republicans. But will you reconsider?

ARRINGTON: No, because you couldn’t get tax policies and tax revenues in the Senate bill. We certainly weren’t going to put it in the House bill. So […] it’s not on the table for discussion.

Then there’s full-time podcaster/part-time Republican Sen. Ted Cruz on “Fox News Sunday” spitting out all kinds of bullshit, unchallenged by host Shannon Bream.

It’s not a surprise that this lie was long debunked. But Cruz continued trying to scaremonger to protect the wealthy with some stats on revenue and spending.

CRUZ: In 2017, total government spending was about $4 trillion dollars, tax revenues were about $3.3 trillion dollars. So, we had about a $700 billion dollar deficit. Fast forward to today, total government spending has gone from $4 trillion dollars all the way up to nearly $7 trillion dollars. We nearly doubled government spending since 2017. What has tax revenue done? They’ve gone from $3.3 trillion dollars to right about $5 trillion dollars.

Lyin’ Ted Cruz “conveniently” skipped the $4.9 trillion Trump added, $1.9 of it being tax cuts for the rich by fast-forwarding from 2017 to today, as if the Trump administration never existed.

Cruz’s hate for IRS agents is also to shield his rich sugar daddies, as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen made clear on “Meet The Press.”

YELLEN: We have an enormous gap between the taxes we’re collecting and what we should be collecting, if everyone paid the taxes that they really owe. And that’s really a reflection of tax fraud. It amounts to an estimated $7 trillion over the next decade. […] equipping the IRS with the funding they need to audit high-income individuals and corporations, that’s something that doesn’t cost money. It nets money substantially […]

For Republicans, protecting tax fraud by the rich and corporations is better when you can also be cruel to poor people and marginalized groups.

And there’s no sign that a single Tyrion Lannister resides within the Republican Party.

Have a week.



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Lordy, Abby Grossberg Has Tapes!

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The other evening, former Fox News producer Abby Grossberg, whose lawsuit may be a contributing factor for why Tucker Carlson was so unceremoniously fired Monday morning, started making the media rounds with her lawyer. (She thinks her lawsuit is probably a factor.) She appeared on MSNBC with Nicolle Wallace, and her lawyer showed up afterward on the same network’s Ari Melber show.

News, as they say, was made.

She talked about about how Tucker had made her life a “living hell,” and what a disgusting and misogynist place Tucker’s show was to work. (That’s all in her lawsuit.) She talked about how much Tucker liked to say the C-word, about women in general who made him mad, and especially about Sidney Powell, and how Fox News’s lawyers coached her to tell common lies about whether that bothered her. Indeed, she told Wallace that after she gave her original deposition in the Dominion lawsuit, the show threw a special lunch called “Abby Day” because they were so proud of her answers.

And she talked about how bizarrely and preternaturally obsessed Tucker was with making up and spreading conspiracy theories that the terrorist attack of January 6 was some kind of false flag perpetuated by the FBI. Even though lawyers for people on trial for invading the Capitol that day were begging him to stop.

That’s all at the end of this clip, which is quite a highlight reel of the full interview:

According to Grossberg, the now-former Fox News star was “very set on finding an FBI person who was implanted in the crowd” so he could prove the insurrection was a false flag by the government.

“[He was] spinning this conspiracy that they were ultimately the ones responsible for the Capitol attack, not Fox News as they’re about to go into the Dominion trial,” she said. “It was really the FBI that set up this thing, not Fox telling the American people that the election was rigged and the voting machines did it.” Grossberg claimed that even an attorney representing some of the Capitol rioters implored her to push Carlson away from the unhinged theory, but it was to no avail because “everyone was a believer” on the show.

“I went back to them and said, look, there’s no conspiracy theory here. I called the attorney who is representing one of the Proud Boys. He told me on two occasions, ‘There’s no conspiracy, get away from this stuff, this is dangerous. Tell Tucker to stop. I will come on your show, but I’ll absolutely walk off if he asks me this.’ And the result was, find somebody else, Tucker is really intent on this.”

It was bizarre how Tucker latched so quickly on to the idea that the January 6 terrorists were all innocents, and that an attack on them was an attack on all his viewers. And he knew exactly what the assignment was when Kevin McCarthy gave him all those tapes.

Oh well, thank goodness he can’t spew that nonsense to such a big audience night after night anymore.

Maybe he can get some cats and tell January 6 Was A Planned Demolition conspiracy theories to them in his Maine “Hee Haw” studio.

And Lordy, Her Tapes!

Grossberg really did record a lot.

She says she’s got 90 tapes, that she knows of, so far, so it’s definitely not just that Rudy Giuliani tape that came out just before the Dominion trial, where he admitted out loud to Maria Bartiromo that he didn’t have shit evidence for all his voter fraud lies.

In the clip below she explains that Fox News failed to turn over a whole lot of things she provided to them during discovery for the Dominion case, and doesn’t know whether it was intentional or reckless that they failed to turn them over to Dominion. Oh well, she found ’em now! She says she’s also gotten a subpoena in the Smartmatic case.

The next hour on Ari Melber’s show, where Grossberg’s lawyer was a guest, he played a big important tape of Ted Cruz on the phone with Maria Bartiromo on January 2, talking about denying certification of the election on January 6, then standing up a fake commission afterward to investigate all the fake frauds, then use that to overturn the result:

www.youtube.com

From the Washington Post:

If the commission found “credible evidence of fraud that undermines confidence in the electoral results in any given state,” then the state would then call a special session and recertify results, according to Cruz.

“Is there any chance you can overturn this?” Bartiromo asked Cruz.

“I hope so,” he responded.

“Who gets inaugurated?” asked Bartiromo. Ted Cruz said hopefully the commission could figure all that out.

Watch that whole Melber report above to see how much Cruz was plotting. He was working hard to overthrow the government y’all!

Cruz is angrily sending out missives acting like this is all some “gotcha!” by MSNBC and insisting these were things he was saying in public at the time too. And yes, it is true that those plotting the coup were largely doing it in all our faces, because that’s what kind of craven, unpatriotic shitheels they are.

But it’s just another piece of the puzzle, and Abby Grossberg’s lawyer Gerry Flippatos has told Melber and other news media that he’s been in touch with Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is investigating the many-pronged plan to overthrow the government and steal the presidency from its rightful winner Joe Biden.

Have they given Smith all of Grossberg’s Lordy She Has Tapes, which include the ones we’ve mentioned, plus conversations between Maria Bartiromo and Sidney Powell and other Trump campaign people? Flippatos says they’ve talked to “numerous law enforcement agencies” about the tapes, and provided info about how they’ll deliver them:

“We have voluntarily surrendered to the relevant law enforcement agencies details regarding the approximately 90 Otter tapes in Miss Grossberg’s possession and have engaged in discussions with these law enforcement agencies to receive targeted subpoenas regarding any such tapes that may be of interest to them,” he said. Otter is an app that transcribes audio recordings and is popular with reporters and producers.

In summary and in conclusion, she recorded everything and they are ready and willing to help.

Have fun with your upcoming life adventures, everyone on Abby Grossberg’s recordings!

[Daily Beast / Washington Post / CBS News]

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Joe Tacopina: Trump’s Newest Bad Lawyer

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It’s either because he’s a terrible client or never pays his bills or no one wants to be on the losing side, but Donald Trump has an uncanny ability to pick out the worst attorneys to ever pass the bar. His latest legal draft pick: Joseph Tacopina, who appeared on this Sunday’s “Meet The Press” with Chuck Todd.

Similar to an infamous appearance by Rudy Giuliani, Chuck Todd’s oft-suppressed journalistic instincts awakened when given such an incompetent target. The trouble for Tacopina began when Todd asked why Trump got the media and the right-wing into a lather about his impending arrest last week. Tacopina, because he couldn’t just say his client is a bullshit artist who is willing to incite dumbasses to protect his own hide, tried to blame others.

TACOPINA: No, he didn’t make it up, he was reacting towards a lot of leaks coming out of the district attorney’s office. There had been a leak, Chuck, that Monday, the day before that Tuesday, there was a law enforcement meeting, including Secret Service and NYPD, that was going to go through the logistics of the arraignment. […] So he just, I think he just assumed based on those leaks that that’s what was going to happen.

As
Lemony Snicket once wrote, “Assumptions are dangerous things to make, and like all dangerous things to make — bombs, for instance, or strawberry shortcake — if you make even the tiniest mistake you can find yourself in terrible trouble.” Neither Tacopina nor his client have ever learned this lesson, which is why the rest of Tacopina’s answers to Todd’s questions came off as a series of unfortunate events for his credibility. When Todd read some of Trump’s public statements on social media, specifically targeting Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, Tacopina attempted to change the subject.

TACOPINA: So Chuck, as his lawyer, I want to dissect this case, because it’s a case that shouldn’t be brought and wouldn’t be brought if it were anyone other than Donald Trump, let’s be clear about that. Does anyone actually think […] that anyone else would be prosecuted for making a civil settlement in a hush money case with personal funds? Of course not.

Literally that was what Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, was prosecuted for and served federal prison time for. The crime, mind you, that was at the direction of and reimbursed by Donald Trump through his businesses and he’s currently being investigated for.

Todd, again, pressed Tacopina about Trump’s attacks on Bragg through social media and Tacopina deflected poorly.

TACOPINA: […] Again, I’m not his social media consultant. I don’t — I think that was an ill-advised post that one of his social media people put up, and he quickly took down when he realized the rhetoric in the photo that was attached to it. But that being said —

TODD: You’re only referring to the baseball bat.

TACOPINA: … I’m not here to defend or support —
TODD: He didn’t take down the other rhetoric. […]

Tacopina then reverted back to his only defense of Trump, mainly that this was “personal funds” and “would have been made payment irrespective of the candidacy or campaign,” which he views as bulletproof for his client. But when Todd pulled his best
Inigo Montoya impression about this “personal funds” argument, Tacopina made a colossal legal mistake that even Todd couldn’t ignore.

TODD: […] So you call it personal funds. It is, in a court of law, it’s been proven —
TACOPINA: It is personal funds.

TODD: — that it was Trump Organization funds.

TACOPINA: It’s personal funds. It was not funds related to the campaign. That’s the distinction —
TODD: But he used a Trump Organization check.

TACOPINA: It’s not campaign finance laws. But Chuck, that’s personal, that’s personal. It has nothing to do with the campaign —

TODD: So everything with the Trump Organization is Donald Trump the person?

TACOPINA: Let’s focus this —

TODD: I mean, you realize the door you’re opening there.

I don’t think Tacopina realized what he did there, Chuck, as his continued answer dug the hole deeper.

TACOPINA: […] These were personal funds. By all accounts, these were personal funds, not campaign funds. It’s personal or campaign – whether Trump Organization, Donald Trump the person, you know, Mar-A-Lago Corporation, whatever it is – they’re personal and not campaign funds. And that’s the key distinction here. If they were campaign funds, we’d be having a different discussion. […]

But, as Todd then pointed out, Tacopina’s client might not be facing campaign finance charges.

Tacopina basically admitted what everyone knows: The Trump family uses his organizations and corporations as their own personal piggy banks, much like they did with the Trump “charities.”

This makes DA Bragg’s case much easier … not that he needs help since he’s done this type of case many times before despite what Trump’s surrogates say.

TODD: But again, what this investigation may end up being is about the, essentially the falsifying business records. Which by the way, this prosecutor has brought over 60 – this one and the previous one – has brought over 60 times over the last four years. This is not an unusual crime to charge somebody with […]

When Todd brought up falsifying business records and ledgers to say the payments were “legal fees,” Tacopina outlined how somehow that was ok in what will probably be what he’s remembered for after all this.

TACOPINA: […] Seriously, what would he personal ledger? “Payment for hush money to quiet an affair that I claim I never had so my family doesn’t get embarrassed.” Is that what he should put in his ledger? There’s no, nothing wrong with putting whatever you want in your ledger […] You’re being petty. […]

Todd ended the segment these clips of a very familiar lawyer saying how this was crime when it was first reported in 2018.

We bet Tacopina wishes his reality show dreams hadn’t flamed out 5 years ago.

Have a week.

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Trump Did THREE Perfect Calls To Overturn Georgia? Go To Three Prisons!

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Let’s get the ball rolling so Fox News doesn’t have to: These Georgia grand jurors are so woke, they probably got a restful night of sleep last night. They’re so woke they probably didn’t even have to drink coffee today. They’re so woke they probably go on dates with Hunter Biden to Silicon Valley Bank in the morning.

OK cool. The Atlanta Journal Constitution dropped some very cool new reporting and interviews with the grand jurors in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s investigation into Donald Trump’s attempts to overthrow the free and fair 2020 election in Georgia. If you’re already cringing hearing “Georgia grand jurors talking to media,” worry not. These people are anonymous and it appears they’re being very careful about blabbing any information they shouldn’t.

What they are telling us, though, is fascinating. For instance, Trump made yet another PERFECT CALL trying to overthrow the election. There was the most famous one — the “find me 11,780 votes” one, to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. There was the one to Frances Watson, the lead investigator in the secretary of state’s office, when he pressed her to get to the “right’ answer on what happened in Georgia.

BEFORE! If Team Trump Is Sh*tting Itself This Much Over THESE Georgia Grand Jury Excerpts, Imagine What’s Under Seal

And now we have Trump’s third perfect call, which jurors heard, to Georgia Republican House Speaker David Ralston, telling him to convene a special session of the Georgia Legislature to overturn Joe Biden’s win and give it to him. Ralston, as we know, did not do that.

One juror said Ralston proved to be “an amazing politician.”

The speaker “basically cut the president off. He said, ‘I will do everything in my power that I think is appropriate.’ … He just basically took the wind out of the sails,” the juror said. “‘Well, thank you,’ you know, is all the president could say.”

We feel like there’s a pattern here.

A juror the AJC talked to spoke of crying in their car at the end of the day, particularly days when they’d hear testimony from people whose lives Donald Trump ruined because he’s a weak sore loser who doesn’t love himself and can’t look his unending failures in the face.

Among the most compelling witnesses, various jurors said, were Fulton County poll workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss, who had received death threats after being singled out by Trump and his then-attorney Rudy Giuliani. Another mentioned Eric Coomer, the onetime executive for Dominion Voting Systems, who left his job after being vilified. Also mentioned was Tricia Raffensperger, the wife of Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who broke down when describing the vitriol and threats leveled at her, one juror said.

“I was pretty emotional throughout the whole thing,” a juror said. “I wouldn’t cry in front of any of the witnesses, but when I would get in my car, I was like, I just left that and I have to just go do my job now?…. I just know things that are hard to know.”

They talked about how they want people to know how serious their deliberations were — especially after the media tour their foreperson took — and the respect for the system and the people who administer it they came away with.

Donald Trump Destroys People’s Lives

GA Grand Jury Foreperson Is Telling Us What We Want To Hear. She Should Stop That.

They talked about understanding the gravity of what they were participating in, as they confronted lockdowns and being protected by SWAT teams and bomb-sniffing dogs. The latter happened the day seditious bastard Michael Flynn showed up and, of course, refused to answer questions.

Speaking of, they talked about the three kinds of witnesses they heard from: those who came freely, those who came under subpoena but answered freely, and those who fought tooth-and-nail and then refused to answer questions, often people who had been in Trump’s inner circle. Those people annoyed the shit out of them, not because of any preconceived notions they had about people taking the Fifth — hearteningly, prosecutors made sure they didn’t have those — but because they knew it was going to take forever and be tedious as fuck.

Of course, jurors report that sometimes when those dicks would refuse to answer questions, prosecutors would helpfully play videos of them talking elsewhere, to fill out the record.

Jurors dropped some details about what some folks did say to them. This quip from Lindsey Graham is getting a lot of play:

“He said that during that time, if somebody had told Trump that aliens came down and stole Trump ballots, that Trump would’ve believed it,” the juror said.

Such a pathetic damned idiot.

One juror talked about how gross it was seeing certain witnesses speak one way to them and then go back out on the campaign trail and say election-denying garbage. But these last quotes are a bit more uplifting:

“I can honestly give a damn of whoever goes to jail, you know, like personally,” one juror said. “I care more about there being more respect in the system for the work that people do to make sure elections are free and fair.”

Said another juror: “I tell my wife if every person in America knew every single word of information we knew, this country would not be divided as it is right now.”

The grand jurors said they understand why the public release of their full final report needs to wait until Willis makes indictment decisions.

“A lot’s gonna come out sooner or later,” one of the jurors said. “And it’s gonna be massive. It’s gonna be massive.”

Well, that gives us hope, because unlike that very nice juror who doesn’t care who goes to jail, we are much meaner than that and we would like to see at least 10 people buried underneath Guantanamo over this, starting with Mr. Perfect Calls himself.

Speaking of, let’s see if he’s going berserk or anything.

We’ll mark that one down as a “yes.”

[AJC]

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Will THIS GUY Expose Hillary’s FBI Conspiracy To Steal Election From Herself To Frame Trump For Russia Stuff?

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Here’s an interesting story to know about, against the backdrop of new House Barely Speaker Kevin McCarthy caterwauling about how Adam Schiff LIEEEEED TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE about Donald Trump’s collusion with Russia and TREEEEASON PARAPHRASED Trump’s very perfect call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, back in more innocent days when Trump was just extorting Ukraine to help him steal the 2020 election in exchange for protection from Russia.

Goddamn, that impeachment seems so much simpler to explain these days, don’t it?

The former top intelligence guy for the FBI’s New York field office, Charles McGonigal, has just been charged in federal courts in both DC and Manhattan with a number of very interesting crimes. For example, after he left the FBI, secretly working for Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska investigating a rival oligarch, and also working on Deripaska’s behalf to get him off the US sanctions list, itself a violation of the sanctions. Also hiding $225,000 in other bribes from a different dude while he was working at the FBI.

So that’s weird, yeah?

Charles McGonigal, 54, who retired from the FBI in September 2018, was indicted in federal court in Manhattan on charges of money laundering, violating U.S. sanctions and other counts stemming from his alleged ties to Deripaska, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. In his role at the FBI, McGonigal had been tasked with investigating Deripaska, whose own indictment on sanctions-violation charges was unsealed in September.

A second indictment, filed in Washington, accused McGonigal of hiding payments totaling $225,000 that he allegedly received from a New Jersey man employed decades ago by an Albanian intelligence agency. The indictment also accused him of acting to advance that person’s interests.

It seems bad for one of the former top intelligence guys at the FBI to be indicted for taking secret bribes and secretly working for the interests of one of Russia’s most powerful oligarchs, yeah? Especially one of the closest oligarchs to Vladimir Putin, Paul Manafort’s former boss, who was seemingly very close to the Russian operation to steal the 2016 election? Is that bad? Paul Manafort, of course, ran the Trump campaign, and pretty much every Russia report produced by the US government has concluded that he was integral to the NO COLLUSION!

Oh, and what was Manafort’s previous work for Deripaska? Propping up pro-Russian forces in Ukraine.

Trump Goon Paul Manafort Made $10 MILLION A YEAR To ‘Benefit Putin.’ Totally Normal!

It’s Manafort. It’s Always Been Manafort. And The Senate Intel Committee Seems To Agree!

NO COLLUSION! NO COLLUSION! You Know, Except For ALL THIS F*CKING COLLUSION!

Hey, Paul Manafort! Remember All That Shit You Pulled To Sell The World On The Ukrainian Dictator? Robert Mueller Remembers!

Most of the regular news reporting on this is extremely dry and weeds-y and virtually unreadable to anyone who isn’t obsessed with this stuff, but this excerpt about McGonigal, way down at the bottom of the Washington Post‘s article, is some extremely important context we will briefly explore:

McGonigal was an expert on Russian intelligence activities targeting the United States, as well as U.S. efforts to recruit Russian spies, said several former intelligence officials who worked with him and spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive matters.

His position at the New York field office would have given him direct access to past and current recruitment efforts, work that was coordinated with the CIA, these people said. McGonigal was well-known at the CIA among officers who dealt with Russia and counterintelligence matters, and he knew the details of some intelligence operations targeting Russia, former officials said.

McGonigal has not been charged with espionage, but the former officials who worked with him said his knowledge and experience would have put him at high risk of being recruited by a foreign government.

Rightwing weirdos are already pretty sure this guy — this guy! Not the last guy or the guy before that, this guy! — will be the key to unraveling the Deep State conspiracy where Hillary Clinton colluded with Russia and the FBI in order to steal the election from herself for the sole purpose of destroying the life and presidency of God-fearing patriot and humble servant Donald Trump. They are pointing to the fact that in 2016, he was head of Cybercrimes at the home office in DC, and was one of the first people who knew about allegations from Trump campaign idiot George Papadopoulos that the Russians had big dirt on Hillary that they were going to deploy against her.

Trump himself is raaaaaaaging over McGonigal’s arrest on Truth Social:

“The FBI guy after me for the Russia, Russia, Russia HOAX, long before my Election as President, was just arrested for taking money from Russia, Russia, Russia,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday. “May he Rot In Hell!”

Yeah OK, buddy, mash your meds up in some ketchup and swallow them.

What’s more interesting to us is what happened later in 2016, closer to the election.

As Heather Cox Richardson explains, October of 2016 was when then-FBI Director James Comey moved McGonigal into that position as head of counterintel at the New York field office. And what was happening in October of 2016, specifically regarding the New York FBI field office? That was the one that was as intent on skullfucking the Clinton campaign as Russia was, the one that seemed to be leaking fake bullshit about Clinton to Rudy Giuliani, who was babbling on the radio that the FBI was going to “revolt” if she wasn’t indicted.

Fox News was cumming itself at the time screaming that Hillary’s indictment was coming, apparently sourced from some dumb bucktoothed idiot types at the New York office who were furious Main Justice wouldn’t sanction their investigation into the Clinton Foundation, since it was based on debunked, Breitbart-funded bullshit from that dumb Clinton Cash book.

As Cox Richardson reminds us, when James Comey went before Congress in 2018, he said he was worried that if he didn’t blabber forth 11 DAYS BEFORE THE ELECTION about the “re-opening” of the Hillary emails investigation, after some “new” (not new) emails were found, that the New York office would leak it. And more:

Former acting attorney general Sally Yates was clearer. She told the inspector general that Comey and other FBI officials “felt confident that the New York Field Office would leak it and that it would come out regardless of whether he advised Congress or not.”

Yeah, so anyway!

Radicalized FBI Sleeper Cell Probably Led By Rudy Giuliani

James Comey Strikes Again (And Again And Again And Again)

Anthony Weiner’s Dick Explodes All Over Hillary Clinton’s Emails

Uh Oh, Did Adam Schiff Do TREASON COLLUSION With The Whistleblower’s Report? (No)

One more thing from Cox Richardson about what McGonigal did after his stint at the NY FBI office:

We also know that after McGonigal left the FBI, he went to work for Brookfield Properties, the multibillion-dollar real-estate company in New York that handled the bailout of Jared Kushner’s 666 Fifth Avenue by a $1.1 billion, 99-year lease—all paid up front—thanks to the Qatar Investment Authority.

And also went to work for Oleg Deripaska, which seems to tell us something about what kinda guy this dude is.

So yeah, huh! Weird stuff.

As she points out, these indictments aren’t about any of that stuff, but we kind of feel like — based on context clues — this guy might NOT end up being the guy who exposes the Deep State conspiracy where Hillary Clinton colluded with Russia and the FBI in order to steal the election from herself for the sole purpose of destroying the life and presidency of God-fearing patriot and humble servant Donald Trump.

We could be wrong.

Talking Points Memo has the indictments and much more on the charges related to the Albanian intelligence thingie, should you want to dive into the weeds.

Also here’s some MSNBC reporting on all this:

www.youtube.com

[Washington Post / Daily Beast / Heather Cox Richardson]

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