An Abuse of Prosecuting Power: trump's Destruction of the Rule of Law

When last I reported on the struggles of Kilmar Abrego Garcia - one man among hundreds of thousands of immigrants getting hunted, jailed, and punished by trump and his lackeys - he was facing false allegations about gang ties while the courts untangled the lies over what was or wasn't an "order of removal".

In the midst of all that, Abrego Garcia got hit with criminal charges, as part of trump's escalation having made this all a personal vendetta. If there's any good news today, it's that the judge overseeing the case dismissed all charges while highlighting that vendetta as a major reason why (via Sergio Martinez-Beltran at NPR):

A federal judge in Tennessee on Friday dismissed criminal charges against Kilmar Abrego García, an immigrant who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador.

Abrego Garcia was charged last year with human smuggling after being returned to the U.S. The charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee. He didn't face charges then, but the Justice Department reopened an investigation into the traffic stop after a federal judge in Maryland ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return from El Salvador.

In his ruling Friday, U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw said the actions by then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche "taints the investigation with a vindictive motive."

"The reopening of the closed HSI investigation is the source of the vindictiveness," Crenshaw said, referring to Homeland Security Investigations, which conducts federal criminal probes.

Crenshaw said the government would not have prosecuted Abrego Garcia if not for his successful lawsuit challenging his deportation to El Salvador.

"Blanche's now unrebutted public statements tying the reopened investigation to Abrego's successful lawsuit taints the investigation with a vindictive motive," Crenshaw said. "The evidence before this Court sadly reflects an abuse of prosecuting power."

One of the things about the American legal system is how much power a prosecutor wields: it's insane what DAs can get away with, and rare are the times that judges ever rein in those powers. That our nation's judges have been overruling and dismissing a lot of criminal matters brought to them under trump's broken Justice Department should tell you how inept and failing the current prosecutors are acting to serve trump's whims.

Just yesterday in an unrelated criminal case, a judge in Chicago tossed out a matter involving a group of ICE protestors - the Broadview Six - when the judge found out the AUSAs heading the prosecution violated a ton of regulations involving the grand jury. 

Marcy Wheeler over at her blog goes into more detail just how screwed up it got:

For months, the defendants in the Broadview 6 case had been trying to get the transcripts from the grand jury, arguing that DOJ’s theory that they had conspired to impede an officer whose car they were accused of blocking did not accord with the law. On April 9, Judge April Perry permitted the government to simply file the jury instructions for her review, rather than responding to the defendants’ argument. But the government actually had to get an extension before they did file the transcripts.

When Judge Perry reviewed the transcripts after receiving them on April 23, she found there were three presentments. And while the instructions on the law were problematic before the first one, it got cleaned up by the time the grand jury returned an indictment...

But she also found they were redacted, and so instructed the government to bring unredacted copies to a hearing on April 29.

The government dismissed the felony, 18 USC 372, and therefore mooted the transcript order.

The defendants, smelling a rat about the redactions, nevertheless persisted in asking for the transcripts. And after the government expressed a willingness to do so, Judge Perry got the full versions earlier this week.

She almost immediately ordered every AUSA involved in redacting the transcripts to show up to a hearing yesterday...

I can tell you on Bluesky when the legal eagles heard about that order, they knew the judge was pissed.

Perry described four problems with the unredacted grand jury transcripts:

• Vouching, in which a prosecutor invokes her own assurances in lieu of evidence
• Improper communications with grand jurors outside the grand jury room
• Dismissal of the grand jurors (one in particular) who objected to the charges
• The redaction of the transcript to hide all that

I'm not a lawyer, but I know what "vouching" is: it's where a guy is basically gaslighting you with "trust me babe, I know what I'm doing" without presenting the actual evidence for a trial that a grand jury is supposed to review. I know what "ex parte" outside communication is, which is something of a no-no. Removing grand jurors - or forcing them out - is supposed to be a huge no-no. And redacting all of that to hide it from a judge tends to make judges believe the prosecutors are straight-up lying to them.

Judge Perry said as much when dismissing the Broadview case (via Edward Helmore at the Guardian (US)):

Perry said she was “incredibly shocked” by the government’s redactions, and that she had never seen the “types of prosecutorial behavior before a grand jury that I saw in those transcripts”.

She added that “trust has been broken”.

These Justice Department officials deserve to face all sanctions and even disbarment once the dust settles. In all, a complete breakdown of ethics, professionalism, and trust. 

Which is what we expected when trump regained high office and brought back his style of bullying, vindictiveness, and incompetency.

trump truly believes the legal system is there to punish enemies, as a reaction to all the times he's been brought to court for all the actual crimes and frauds he's committed over the decades. It doesn't matter how things are supposed to be done in the legal system, trump doesn't care: All he wants are results of everyone he hates and fears suffering in courtrooms under his brand of (in)justice.

Which is why I worry still for Abrego Garcia and all the others facing these miscarriages of justice. The courts may have tossed out these attempts at prosecution, but trump will demand his Justice Department minions generate a new set of criminal allegations based on trump's fearmongering... and that won't CAN'T be proven real in a court of law. 

As long as trump is there to twist the rule of law into his law of misrule, no one is really safe.

Keep fighting. And for the LOVE OF GOD throw every elected Republican official out of office this midterms.

Fighting the Fear in Florida

It's hard to keep track of all the atrocities trump and his thugs are inflicting on the United States, but this one back in June really stood out as they were pulling this shit in my backyard: 

Pandering to the harsh anti-immigrant war on our American communities, Governor DeSantis and his cronies are fast-tracking a migrant detention center in South Florida (via Rachel Treisman at NPR):

Despite resistance, Florida officials are turning an airfield in the Everglades into a migrant detention center, which they've nicknamed "Alligator Alcatraz" due to its proximity to the apex predators.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier proposed the project last week, saying in a video posted to X that, in support of the Trump administration's crackdown on illegal immigration, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had asked state leaders to identify places for temporary detention facilities.

"I think this is the best one, as I call it: Alligator Alcatraz," Uthmeier said, referencing the infamous prison island in San Francisco Bay...

If anyone's paying attention to the overwhelmed ICE "detention facilities" right now, there are serious overcrowding, food availability, and wellness problems to where people are dying in custody. Even this horrific attempt to alleviate crowding at existing facilities won't stop this new prison - it's not a detention center, trust me - from being overcrowded itself. Stephen Miller wants his fucking quotas filled, and doesn't give a damn about treating his and ICE's victims with any basic decency or civil rights.

From what people can see happening at the airfield - there are already protestors gathering, bless them - it's looking like a bunch of portable classrooms getting converted into barracks, which I guarantee you will not be adequately air-conditioned. I doubt there will be any serviceable water or sewage considering that abandoned airfield would need months of dedicated construction efforts to make it genuinely livable.

This isn't going to be a safe or healthy place to get imprisoned...

And it turns out I - and the environmental and civil rights activists as well - was right about that hellhole being unsafe, unsound, and inhuman. Last week, federal judge Kathleen Williams gutted the anti-immigrant bastards for their sins (via AP News / NPR):

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams' injunction formalized a temporary halt she had ordered two weeks ago as witnesses continued to testify in a multiday hearing to determine whether construction should end until the ultimate resolution of the case...

The judge said she expected the population of the facility to decline within 60 days through the transferring of the detainees to other facilities, and once that happened, fencing, lighting and generators should be removed. She wrote the state and federal defendants can't bring anyone other than those who are already being detained at the facility onto the property. The order does not prohibit modification or repairs to existing facilities, "which are solely for the purpose of increasing safety or mitigating environmental or other risks at the site.,"

The preliminary injunction includes "those who are in active concert or participation with" the state of Florida or federal defendants or their officers, agents, employees," the judge wrote in an 82-page order.

The judge said state officials never sufficiently explained why the facility needed to be in the middle of the Florida Everglades. "What is apparent, however, is that in their haste to construct the detention camp, the State did not consider alternative locations," Williams said...

DeSantis and Uthmeier never explained why they put the concentration camp there because they didn't want to repeat under oath their gleeful desire to "witness alligators eating any detainees trying to escape." Cruelty may play well on Fox Not-News but not in a courtroom.

While the legal ruling focuses mostly on the environmental impact of the camp, it helps stall the ongoing efforts by the Far Right under trump and Stephen Miller to incarcerate every dark-skinned person they can find in majority-Democratic cities/states. With any luck, it'll at least end that tasteless and profane merch industry that sprang up promoting "Alligator Alcatraz" like it was fcking Disney World.

If there's any good news right now, it's that ICE and the Florida AG aren't ignoring this court order: reports are that camp is emptying out and should be cleared in a few more days.

The bad news is: Where the hell are those poor detainees - most of them honest working people, family members, not at all the criminal rot the fearmongers insist upon - going? There is no way these haters are going to give up the targets of their fear/rage: ICE is most likely shipping these people to the other concentration camps they've been setting up in other Red states across the country. 

This is all going to turn into a sick and cruel game of "hot potato": moving immigrant prisoners from state to state dodging the lawsuits that will get filed in response to any legal abuses the Far Right leaders across those states will inflict on their victims.

If only we had a working Congress that would use its' constitutional powers to rein in a lawless, vulgar, monstrous president shitgibbon. 

Keep fighting. Keep protesting. Stop every concentration camp from getting built. Stop these hatemongers.

The One Crook Who Didn't Go To Jail

At least in Brazil they know what to do with corrupt ex-presidents who stage insurrections to stop elections (via Tiago Rogero and Tom Phillips with Guardian US): 

A Brazilian supreme court judge has ordered the house arrest of former president Jair Bolsonaro for allegedly breaching “preventative measures” which were imposed amid concerns the far-right leader might abscond to avoid punishment over an alleged coup attempt.

According to the ruling on Monday by Justice Alexandre de Moraes, Bolsonaro breached a ban on using social media which was imposed last month, when he was also ordered to wear an electronic ankle tag.

Moraes wrote that as demonstrators took to the streets in several cities across the country on Sunday in support of the former president, Bolsonaro used the social media accounts of allies to share messages containing “clear encouragement and incitement to attack the Supreme Federal Court, and overt support for foreign intervention in Brazil’s judiciary”.

“There is no doubt the precautionary measure was breached,” Moraes wrote...

The arrest order is part of an ongoing supreme court case in which Bolsonaro is accused of leading a plot to overturn the results of the last election, in which current president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva defeated the former army captain.

The trial is expected to conclude later this year, with Bolsonaro facing a potential sentence of more than 40 years in prison.

Many of those protesters urged the US president Donald Trump – who recently hit Brazil with 50% tariffs in retribution for the alleged “witch hunt” against Bolsonaro – to take further action to help save their embattled leader...

Of course trump would attempt to bully the Brazilian people in order to get a fellow corrupt bastard out of legal hot water. trump admires the dictators across the globe as the only humans he'll ever respect. That he's disrupting any foreign relations not just with Brazil but with the rest of South (and Central) America doesn't matter to him and his America First cronies.

trump should have answered for what he did - stirring up rioters to storm Congress and disrupt the electoral count on January 6th - in a court of law, but Biden and his attorney general didn't understand the urgency and took their time, allowing trump's lawyers to delay delay delay until the 2024 election, during which he and his allies in the mainstream media lied and bluffed their way back into the White House and negating any chance of justice.

It remains frustrating to me and millions of others who knew trump was a monster and did everything we could to keep him out of power and yet too many other Americans didn't care - or worse didn't care to know - and made the monster president (again).

What the hell, America. And now the whole world is paying for the crook we wouldn't put in jail.

trump Violating Humanity

As feared, trump and his lackeys aren't respecting the courts. They're still shipping people overseas (via Ximena Bustillo and Jasmine Garsd at NPR):

A federal judge on Wednesday said the Trump administration violated his court order to not deport migrants to countries where they have no ties without giving them sufficient due process to contest their removals.

Judge Brian Murphy in Massachusetts said the Department of Homeland Security's rapid removal of eight migrants abroad went against his April preliminary injunction preventing such deportations. Lawyers for at least one of the men on board say the flight landed in South Sudan; the government hasn't disclosed the destination, saying it's classified.

Murphy left open the possibility of holding the government in contempt for a criminal obstruction in the future.

Sending migrants to South Sudan is a deliberate attempt by trump and cohort to mock the orders, as it's a place still overwhelmed by civil war and violence. And they're doubling down on the slander and accusations towards migrants as "vicious criminals":

The Trump administration earlier doubled down on its decision to send migrants to countries that aren't their own following a legal challenge. It has aimed to use third-country destinations to remove individuals that cannot be sent back to their home countries for a variety of reasons.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Director Todd Lyons told reporters earlier on Wednesday that the people on the flight out of the U.S. had been convicted of crimes in the United States and that ICE was not able to return them to their home countries.

"We found a nation who was willing to take custody of these vicious illegal aliens," said Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, about the Asian men on the flight. "Now, a local judge in Massachusetts is trying to force the United States to bring back these uniquely barbaric monsters who present a clear and present threat to the safety of the American people and American victims."

It's a broad and horrifying brush trump's people are using, even as more disciplined organizations like the Cato Institute are doing their own research and finding a sizable number of these deported migrants were law-abiding and didn't break any immigration laws. McLaughlin, trump, Stephen Miller, all of them are attacking these people with the most vile accusations without specific proofs or cases to back such claims.

trump's been out there defaming Kilmar Abrego Garcia - who at least has been confirmed still alive, but shipped over to another El Salvadoran prison - and yet refusing to obey court orders to have Abrego Garcia brought back, denying the man the opportunity of due process to contest trump's accusations and retain his legal status.

Our government is lying to us, lying to themselves, all to persecute immigrants - even the ones here legally - out of a racist agenda that has a nasty history of destroying everything it touches.

And this will all get worse before we even see an inkling of sanity and justice to restore our better angels. /rage

  

Holy Forking Shirtballs, We Got Ourselves a Pope Guy

There's a ton of stuff going on that I need to catch up on, from previous posts that need updates currently happening in the news.

The easiest thing to report on is that the Cardinals elected a new Pope on the second day of conclave, some considered it unusually fast but the results were just as fast for the last three elections or so, nothing shocking about that. What was shocking is that the smoke didn't come out purple (Prince, why hast thou abandoned us), and that the new Pope is a guy from Chicago (!):

And he's from the South Side of Chicago, home of the beleaguered White Sox, the Daley political dynasty and, until they decamped for Washington and eventually the White House, Michelle and Barack Obama.

The new pope, who has spent much of his career ministering in Peru and leading the Vatican’s powerful office of bishops, was born Robert Francis Prevost on Sept. 14, 1955, at what was then called Mercy Hospital, at the corner of South Prairie Avenue and 34th Street.

But while Prevost made his debut in Chicago, his parents and two older brothers were already living just south of the sprawling city in a working-class suburb called Dolton...

Prevost's father, Louis Prevost, served in the Navy during World War II and worked as a superintendent of schools in the south suburbs of Chicago.

The future pope's mother, Mildred Martinez Prevost, was a librarian with a master's degree in education and two sisters who were nuns.

His mom was a librarian?! (respectful grumbling noises)

The rest of the bio at the NBC News article details Prevost's education, heading to Villanova to get a degree in math before joining a Catholic Order - for St. Augustine - getting another degree in theology and then a doctorate for Canon Law in Rome itself. His career in the church was balanced between work in Peru - to where he got naturalized as a citizen there - and overseeing the Augustinian order as an admin.

The bad news? Prevost got involved in the cover-ups of various sex abuse scandals both the American Midwest and in Peru. While he himself hasn't been accused of the acts, he failed to report the matters or failed to remove the culprits from their positions. It can be argued that the church's bureaucracy was corrupt enough that Prevost couldn't do any other, but it remains shameful that he didn't do more to protect the victims and work to prevent any future ones.

The good news? Prevost's taking the name Leo (the XIV, that's 14 in Latin) as symbolic of what role he wants to perform as pontiff: Reformer. In particular, carrying on his predecessor Leo XIII who stood for workers' rights, better wages, and social justice for the poor on a global level. Leo's already attacking the Artificial Intelligence movement, how it threatens human dignity and labor rights.

There is also the huge implications of the Catholic Church promoting an American-born to the Papacy and how it's a huge rebuke to trump's regime (via Francis (no relation) X. Rocca at the Atlantic (paywalled)):

...the conclave that concluded today in Rome has chosen the first American pope in the history of the Catholic Church: Robert Francis Prevost. Making the milestone even more remarkable is that Prevost was chosen on just the second day of voting by the most geographically diverse body of papal electors in history. Perhaps most surprising of all is that the Church’s first-ever American pope was selected during Donald Trump’s presidency, as Washington assumes a more contentious stance toward the rest of the world...

Many observers are likely to cast Leo as anti-Trump, a role that Francis was often cast in himself. In February, a profile on X apparently belonging to Leo reposted an article criticizing J. D. Vance, who had argued that Catholics should prioritize their family and neighbors over foreigners. And indeed, it seems likely that the new pope will continue policies—such as advocacy for migrants and environmental protection—that his immediate predecessor embraced and that the current U.S. administration largely opposes. But almost any of the 133 men voting in the Sistine Chapel today would have done the same had he been chosen pope... By taking the name Leo, the new pope is clearly signaling an intention to highlight modern Catholic social teaching, a tradition that began with Leo XIII, who reigned from 1878 to 1903.

That the new Pope is going to come out swinging for workers' rights is happening just as trump and his oligarch billionaire buddies like Elon Musk are gutting federal workplaces and causing havoc with our trade / tourism industries to where large-scale unemployment is unavoidable.

Leo's position on immigration - similar to Pope Francis' - already puts him in conflict with trump and the sadists in trump's administration (via Ali Bianco and Gregory Svirnovskiy at Politico):

A social media account under the pope’s name repeatedly criticized the Trump administration — and especially Vice President JD Vance — in the months and years before assuming the papacy.

A series of posts under an account for Robert Prevost — now the Bishop of Rome and newly anointed as Pope Leo XIV — shows the Chicago-born Cardinal reposting an op-ed criticizing Vance on his interpretation of his faith, and the strict immigration policies that Vance along with President Donald Trump have touted.

The account in mid-April reposted someone else’s rebuke to Trump’s meeting in the Oval Office with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, and pointed to an op-ed by auxiliary Catholic Bishop Evelio Menjivar of Washington, D.C., highlighting the suffering of migrants summarily deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador.

“Do you not see the suffering? Is your conscience not disturbed?” the op-ed that Prevost reposted reads.

In a more pointed example, the account in February posted an opinion piece from the National Catholic Reporter, a liberal-leaning Catholic newspaper, titled: “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.”

It's telling that the rabid MAGA base are livid about Leo XIV being the head of the largest American Christian denomination (via Greg Sargent at the New Republic (paywalled)): 

Right after the news broke that Robert Francis Prevost was elected as the new pope of the Roman Catholic Church, the internet produced lots of evidence that he has promoted articles critical of JD Vance and Donald Trump, and even expressed sympathy for George Floyd. That prompted MAGA figures to erupt in anger. They attacked the new pope as anti-Trump, pro–open borders, a Marxist, and soft on thugs and drug dealers, as Media Matters documented...

In a podcast with Matt McManus (a contributor to Commonweal) Sargent covers some of the attacks (via transcript):

McManus: Well, I’m sure we’re going to learn a lot more about the new pope’s views over the next couple days as people scour everything he is ever written and everything that he is ever said. The choice of the name Leo is itself significant. Pope Leo was widely regarded as the “People’s Pope” or the “Workers’ Pope” because he is one of the founders of Catholic social teaching. Now, to be clear, the O.G. Pope Leo was by no means a socialist or a Marxist, the way they, say Laura Loomer, is trying to imply that the current Pope Leo is a Marxist. But he did stress that there were significant problems with capitalism that led to the emergence of things like atheistic socialism and atheistic Marxism and called for a conciliation between workers and capitalists that would favor the workers—or at least better their conditions. So I think that in itself is telling about the direction that he is planning on going in.

But if you look at some of the stuff he said over the past couple years, he is very clearly pro-immigrant. Back in 2015, he stated that he was opposed to the death penalty. He spent a long time in Peru, by all accounts living in quite modest circumstances and demonstrating an unusual level of concern for the poor. So that’s all a positive sign.

Sargent: Well, MAGA is not happy about any of it. Charlie Kirk accused the pope of “retweeting George Floyd propaganda.” Laura Loomer erupted over the idea that the Pope seemed to endorse the need to pray for Floyd, calling him a “career criminal” and “drug addict.” MAGA figure Sean Davis called the Pope anti-Trump and pro–open borders...

If you are known by your enemies, then we know Leo XIV is going to be someone standing up for the immigrant, the impoverished, and the "what the hell happened to our jobs" citizenry.

It's still early, but there ought to be a betting line in the UK on how quickly the Pope is going to excommunicate JD Vance, and for whichever sadistic stance Vance will take in defense of trump's crimes.

In the meantime, just be aware the new Pope is a White Sox fan (the first known pontiff to attend a World Series!), an eater of Chicago-style hot dogs and tavern pizza (not sure about deep dish, alas), and now comes with his own Power-Up music intro.

Just as long as Bobby... uh, Pope Leo remembers this one key thing from the Blues Brothers:

Boys, you gotta learn not to talk to nuns that way.

Where Would You Hide, America, When All the Laws Are Laid Flat

Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's!
-- from A Man For All Seasons, written by Robert Bolt

trump's thugs are arresting judges now (via Alanna Durkin Richer, Devi Shastri, and Scott Bauer at AP News): 

Protesters chanted and marched Saturday outside the FBI after agents arrested a Milwaukee judge accused of helping a man evade immigration authorities. The case has escalated a clash between the Trump administration and local authorities over the Republican president’s sweeping immigration crackdown.

Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan is accused of escorting the man and his lawyer out of her courtroom through the jury door last week after learning that immigration authorities were seeking his arrest. The man was taken into custody outside the courthouse after agents chased him on foot.

President Donald Trump’s administration has accused state and local officials of interfering with his immigration enforcement priorities. The arrest also comes amid a growing battle between the administration and the federal judiciary over the president’s executive actions over deportations and other matters...

Court papers suggest Dugan was alerted to the presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in the courthouse by her clerk, who was informed by an attorney that they appeared to be in the hallway.

The FBI affidavit describes Dugan as “visibly angry” over the arrival of immigration agents in the courthouse and says that she pronounced the situation “absurd” before leaving the bench and retreating to her chambers. It says she and another judge later approached members of the arrest team inside the courthouse, displaying what witnesses described as a “confrontational, angry demeanor.”

After a back-and-forth with officers over the warrant for the man, Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, she demanded that the arrest team speak with the chief judge and led them away from the courtroom, the affidavit says.

After directing the arrest team to the chief judge’s office, investigators say, Dugan returned to the courtroom and was heard saying words to the effect of “wait, come with me” before ushering Flores-Ruiz and his lawyer through a jury door into a non-public area of the courthouse. The action was unusual, the affidavit says, because “only deputies, juries, court staff, and in-custody defendants being escorted by deputies used the back jury door. Defense attorneys and defendants who were not in custody never used the jury door.”

A sign that remained posted on Dugan’s courtroom door Friday advised that if any attorney or other court official “knows or believes that a person feels unsafe coming to the courthouse to courtroom 615,” they should notify the clerk and request an appearance via Zoom.

I may not be a lawyer or an expert on law, but from what I do know - my exposure as a journalism student and research librarian - is that judges don't like law enforcement entering their courtrooms threatening to arrest people there. There is an expectation - sort of like treating the spaces as holy ground - that people required to appear before their benches be protected if only in that moment from further police harassment of any kind.

It's become a popular trap for ICE agents, appearing at courthouses to "arrest" the migrants going through the established process to be in the U.S., who are required by the laws to show up regularly for hearings tracking their approval. trump's thugs want to scare these perfectly normal people - some who have broken no laws - into staying away from the courthouses - which is why judges want courts to be safe places - so that the agents can officially claim them breaking the rules and justify arresting them in the first place. It's a sadistic Catch-22 that shouldn't even be happening. 

Marcy Wheeler has her thoughts on the matter:

After Judge Dugan interacted with the arresting officers and, upon learning that they only had an administrative warrant and after telling them they needed a judicial warrant, she directed them to go meet with the Chief Judge (who wasn’t at the courthouse, but who spoke with the ICE officer on the phone). Then, Judge Dugan apparently adjourned Flores-Ruiz’ scheduled hearing and directed him and his attorney to leave via the jury door...

Flores-Ruiz appears to have gone, via back hallways, to the same sixth floor public hallway via which he had entered the court room. According the complaint, both DEA officers saw Flores-Ruiz in the public hallway before he entered the elevator...

Rather than arresting Flores-Ruiz, whom the officers knew was unarmed, there on the sixth floor, one of them rode down the elevator with him and his attorney and the other alerted the other officers. Four of them convened outside of the courthouse and chased him down the street and arrested him, just 22 minutes after he entered Judge Dugan’s courtroom at 8:43.

If the ICE agents were still able to track and arrest Flores-Ruiz, how the hell does that justify obstruction charges? And Dugan pointed out the agents had an administrative warrant, which doesn't really establish the authority to arrest somebody.

In a criminal complaint, the government charged Judge Dugan with 18 USC 1505, obstruction of a proceeding, and 18 USC 1071, concealing a person from arrest. [docket] The FBI arrested Judge Dugan at the courthouse on Friday amid a deliberate media frenzy, up to and including the FBI Director posting a picture of Judge Dugan’s arrest in violation of DOJ guidelines designed to prevent prejudice...

Both Pam Bondi and Stephen Miller also made comments that arguably violate rules prohibiting comments that prejudice a proceeding (remember that Judge Dale Ho already found that Pam Bondi’s public comments about the Eric Adams case likely violated local rules)...

For obstruction, it will be contested whether an immigration removal counts as an investigative proceeding. For concealment, it will be contested whether the administrative warrant qualifies, and whether directing Flores-Ruiz via a back hallway to the very same public hallway where the officers had planned to arrest him and had a chance to arrest him amounts to concealment.

Both charges will pivot on Judge Dugan’s intent: whether she had corrupt intent and the intent of helping him evade arrest entirely, or whether she wanted to protect the sanctity of her own courtroom.

Key to her intent is her belief, which she made clear to the officers, that they needed a judicial warrant...

It may also matter that, by description, she didn’t actually look at the administrative warrant, because it might matter if she knew whether Flores-Ruiz had been deported before. In a report published before the arrest, Dugan is quoted as stating that “a warrant was not presented in the hallway on the 6th floor,” and by description, she was not shown one.

Thus far, the complaint seems to want to suggest that Dugan had corrupt intent because she was angry...

But judges get angry for lots of reasons, including that someone showed up outside her courtroom to surprise someone with business in it.

Wheeler's key point:

The arrest has rightly been viewed as an attempt, at a time when Trump and his minions are already making wildly inappropriate attacks on judges, to bully the judiciary.

trump and his lackeys have been getting a lot of pushback from the federal judges over their violations of due process and established norms. So here's the bullies, finding excuses to arrest judges and put the fear of their executive abuses onto the entire third branch of our Constitutional government.

trump despises the legal system, mocks it with every criminal and civil violation all because he'd abused that system for decades, and he now has a Supreme Court in his pocket that will excuse away every sin he's committing now.

Our most basic rights established by the Constitution, in the Bill of Rights, are all under attack. trump and his racist anti-immigrant allies may be attacking only the "dread Others" for now, but they are doing so by shredding due process, the writ of Habeas Corpus, every protection of the Rule of Law set up over centuries of British and American legal rulings that serve ALL AMERICANS to this day.

The second those "Others" - who are human, they are us in spite of the fears that the racists spread - lose legal protections under the Rule of Law, we - the rest of the nation - can and will lose those protections as well.

These judges are fighting to uphold the Rule of Law, defending the centuries of precedence and norms and case history.

And trump will throw every one of those judges into jail.

First they came for...

Update: looks like a late-day sharing at Crooks&Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up from Steve in Manhattan. Thank you, Steve! 

The Revenge Tour

trump promised he would seek vengeance on those who convicted or attempted to convict him on the many crimes he'd committed over the years, and while he's a known liar we all knew this was going to happen because trump is a tiny, spiteful, bitter man who must lash out against those who humiliated him in public (and to the history books). 

So it's one week into his second attempt to fleece and destroy the United States when trump got around to firing anybody he could who was involved in his insurrection and stolen documents federal cases (from Ryan Lucas and Carrie Johnson at NPR): 

The acting attorney general moved on Monday to fire several Justice Department officials who worked on the federal criminal investigations into President Donald Trump, according to two department officials familiar with the matter.

In termination letters sent to more than a dozen officials, acting Attorney General James McHenry wrote that he did not believe they "could be trusted to faithfully implement the President's agenda because of their significant role in prosecuting the president," one of the officials said...

The move comes the same day that Trump's acting U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., Ed Martin, issued a memo announcing a "special project" to review the department's prosecutions of Jan. 6 Capitol rioters, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

Martin instructed prosecutors to provide all information related to the use of a specific obstruction charge, including files, documents, emails, notes and other information. He also describes the use of the charge against rioters as a "great failure," according to the person who described the memo to NPR...

Martin is lying, because those obstruction charges worked in the court trials to convict 1,500 or so rioters who were violent towards law enforcement and threatening the safety of Congressional elected officials and staff. This is trump and his loyalists attempting to rewrite the facts into trump's fantasies. Back to the firings:

President Trump, has lashed out for years at the Justice Department, accusing it of unfairly targeting him and his supporters in what he claims were politically motivated investigations.

He was particularly angry about the two investigations brought by special counsel Jack Smith. One case revolved around Trump's efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and the other case stems from Trump's keeping of classified documents after he left office. Both cases were dropped after Trump won the election.

Department officials, including former President Joe Biden's attorney general, Merrick Garland, have rejected the allegations of weaponizing the department. They point out that the department prosecuted prominent Democrats during Biden's term, including the president's son, Hunter, as well as two prominent Democratic members of Congress.

The horrifying thing is, trump - and those lackeys who have their own agendas against American ideals - needs to accuse Democrats of "politicizing" the Justice Department because he himself wants to turn it into his own political enforcement tool. he needs to turn the courts away from holding him accountable for the many crimes he wants to accomplish back in the Oval Office, and to harass everyone else to keep them broken or too afraid to stop him.

Look at the other firings trump committed over the weekend, when he purged the Inspector Generals of most of the Executive branch agencies that will be most affected by trump's schemes (via Lucia Suarez Sang, Scott MacFarlane, and Nancy Cordes at CBS News):

The Trump administration purged at least a dozen federal inspectors general overnight Friday, multiple sources confirmed to CBS News. It is an unprecedented move that will likely result in legal challenges.

Speaking to reporters abroad Air Force One on his way to Florida, President Trump on Saturday described the firings as "standard" and a "very common thing to do."

But one of the fired inspectors general, Mark Greenblatt, who was nominated to be inspector general of the Interior Department by Mr. Trump during his first term, told CBS News in a phone interview Saturday that he was "stunned" when he received the notification.

Asked why he thinks Mr. Trump fired him and others, he responded, "The most charitable interpretation is that he doesn't believe in our independence or our fairness. The least charitable interpretation is that he wants lackeys to rubber stamp what he's trying to do."

"It's very bizarre," Greenblatt said. "There's no unifying theme as to why he chose this group of 17. It just doesn't make sense, to be completely honest. It does not make sense. No one can figure out what was driving the list."

Don't forget, it was an inspector general who provided direct testimony into trump's illicit phone call to Ukraine withholding funds, which led to trump's first impeachment trial. You can bet trump did not forget that slight either.

If there's any good news, it's that trump's firings may have been illegal, and could well raise the ire of even a Republican-controlled Congress:

The inspector general of the U.S. Small Business Administration, Hannibal "Mike" Ware, said the firings are legally dubious and will be challenged.

Ware, who was among those fired and who chairs the the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, argued in a letter to a White House personnel official that he "does not believe the actions taken are legally sufficient."

According to Ware, he and other inspectors general were sent an email from Sergio Gor, the director of presidential personnel, on Friday informing them that "due to changing priorities, your position as Inspector General...is terminated, effective immediately."

Ware, in his letter, which was obtained by CBS News, recommended Gor reach out to White House legal counsel to discuss the "intended course of action" as "we do not believe the actions taken are legally sufficient to dismiss Presidentially Appointed, Senate Confirmed Inspectors General."

Federal law requires the White House to give Congress a full month of warning and case-specific details before firing a federal inspector general.

The fired inspectors general include many who were appointed during the first Trump administration, according to one source. Ware and Greenblatt were both sworn in during Mr. Trump's first administration. Back in 2020, Mr. Trump fired five inspector generals.

Ware, who is also the chair of the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, an independent oversight body, said in a separate statement that inspector generals are not "immune from removal." However, he echoed that unjustified removals are a "significant threat" to the jobs they're meant to do.

"Congress specifically established the authorities and structure of the IGs to safeguard their vital oversight role, by mandating independence under the IG Act," he said. "Removals inconsistent with the law are a significant threat to the actual and perceived independence of IGs."   

Ware also noted that Congress recently amended the Inspector General Act to require the president to notify Congress 30 days prior to the removal of an inspector general, as well as requiring a "substantive rationale, including detailed and case-specific reasons."

in short: trump has to show cause, direct evidence that all of these inspector generals were in violation of some other law, or performing at a level of incompetence that would justify removal. But trump doesn't have that: All he has are his grievances and his corrupt needs to behave without accountability to anyone.

The firings of career prosecutors at Justice may also be unlawful, but it depends on how the civil service protects their professional employees from wrongful terminations.

This is now all on a Congress that may be controlled by Republicans, and whether they are keen to at least push back against trump's aggressive assaults on the rule of law and threats to their own authority. This is also on a Supreme Court - also controlled by Far Right jurists - who already granted presidents - trump especially - with broader executive powers, to which they could justify these firings and allow trump to escape further accountability.

None of this would be happening, by the by, if 77 million of you sadists and assholes didn't vote for the Convicted Felon and Court-Confirmed Sex Offender.

You're going to see corrupt rule by the worst people now over the coming months, and it's a legitimate question if most of us will even survive any of it.

(on a personal note, this is blog No. 2491, I'm nine away from 2500 which should be celebrated in some way. Maybe if people would visit the Sunshine State Book Festival in Gainesville, FL this February 1st when I'll be there promoting my books! Ow stop hitting me...)

Remaining Awake

The thought that keeps me going in dark days like this one:

Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice. 

-- Martin Luther King Jr., 

trump and the Republicans have turned that arc into a goddamned pretzel, but the fight continues.

And Injustice For All, Because Justice Came Too Late

The January 6th part of Jack Smith's Special Counsel report is officially out.

You can read for yourselves the parts where donald trump intentionally started and condoned a riot in our nation's capitol to interfere with the 2020 election results. These were things Smith was convinced could be proved in a court of law and leading to trump's conviction on federal charges. This is why people called it an insurrection and what should have disqualified trump from ever running for office again.

And yet, he did run for office again. The Republican Party failed to maintain any personal ethics and allowed this viper the chance to run again; Merrick Garland and the Justice Department moved too slow out of fears of politicizing matters, refusing to convene a grand jury and press for indictments for years; the Supreme Court refused to hold trump accountable and even granted more executive powers that trump can now abuse; the mainstream media ignored all the evidence and all the corruption, and failed to label trump as the violent insurrectionist that he is; and above all 77 million of our fellow Americans decided to vote for the crooked son of a bitch back into the White House where trump will inflict worse horrors on the nation.

What the hell, America. THIS monster - this court-confirmed sex offender, this convicted felon, this sociopathic insurrectionist - is what you want to lead you. The cruelty and injustice we're about to suffer is ALL ON YOU.

Yes, Rudy is Contemptible and It's His Own Damn Fault

While donald trump skates free of any real punishment for his 34 felony convictions - what the hell is "unconditional discharge?" Sounds like a bad infection - his would-be Roy Cohn just keeps digging himself deeper into the mudpits. Former NYC mayor, once-federal prosecutor, Noun-Verb-9/11 propagator Rudy Giuliani was found in contempt for the second time regarding his defamation verdicts when he lied about Georgia election officials (via Alex Galbraith at Salon):

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell tore into Giuliani on Friday for violating a permanent injunction against bad-mouthing Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, two women who successfully sued the former New York City mayor for defamation. Howell said that Giuliani continued to disparage the women on his online radio show, "America's Mayor Live," telling the conservative media figure that continuing to speak ill of Freeman and Moss after the court handed down a massive punishment takes "real chutzpah." 

Giuliani's attorneys argued that the Trump hanger-on genuinely believed that Freeman and Moss committed election fraud, a point that held no water with Howell.

“So, what? You’re saying this defamation is never going to stop?" she asked. "He’s never going to stop saying this because he thinks he’s right?”

To make sure that Giuliani is completely clear on the facts around the 2020 election in Georgia, Howell required him to sign a declaration that he's read all the evidence against his claims of fraud. She threatened Giuliani with a $200 fine and potential jail time if he failed to complete the declaration within 10 days.

Giuliani was found in contempt of court by another federal judge earlier in the week, who ruled that Giuliani was failing to turn over his assets to help pay off his nearly $150 million defamation judgment...

With regards to Giuliani's failure to stop repeating the falsehoods that the court trials revealed as lies, this is how damaged the entire Republican Party / Far Right is when it comes to the Real World. Having built up this huge (false) Narrative that Republicans are honest and true and the liberal Democrats are lying cheaters over the decades, when it comes time to prove that Narrative in places where lying isn't allowed - courtrooms - that Republican Narrative falls apart.

Only, the Far Right wingnuts can't ever admit they were wrong (even if they were genuinely misled by others). Admission of lying or deception in one part of that Narrative draws that whole Narrative into dispute and it would collapse on themselves.

And the Far Right profits from that Narrative. Their talk shows, their podcast, their political campaigning and fundraising all draw on the Narrative that "Republicans can never lose, Republicans are the TRUE Americans, Everyone on the side of the Liberals and Democrats are evil Communists looking to eat your babies." 

Look at Rudy. All those millions of dollars that he's supposed to turn over to his defamation victims: All of that earned by decades of Republican pandering, all of that earned by decades of demonizing others not of their tribe. Giuliani can't stop lying about the results of the 2020 election because doing so destroys his audience, and he loses even more money down the road.

As a side note, you'd think that after trump won re-election this 2024 that the "damage" done by his losing in 2020 would fade away. But no. Remember, trump (and the Far Right) can never admit they lost, so even now trump and his lackeys are gearing up further legal attacks against those they still claim "stole" trump's "rightful victory".

This is the pit in Hell that Giuliani made for himself, by the by. He volunteered to be trump's legal attack dog and now he's paying the price in ways that trump can't save him (unless trump and his corrupted DOJ decide to undo centuries of civil court jurisprudence).

If only 77 million voters understood the corruption they voted back into power this election cycle. If only our fellow Americans realized the contempt trump and his Far Right MAGA base have for the Real Truth: Truth based on Facts and Reality.

We're entering into a dark age of disinformation, constant lying and gaslighting, coming at us from all angles and entering every nook of our lives, even into a judicial system that's supposed to stop lying and deceptions as a means of upholding the Constitution and the laws that preserve our rights and our responsibilities.

Gods help us.

I doubt God will help Rudy. He's doomed to either admit his lies or keeping lying straight into a jail cell.

A Thimbleful of Justice But I'll Take It

This may seem too little, too late, but at least the New York state criminal matter into trump's hush money felonies ruling will reach a conclusion before Inauguration Day as Judge Merchan will issue sentencing this Friday January 10th (via Ximena Bustillo at NPR): 

In a decision Friday, New York Judge Juan Merchan noted that his inclination was to not impose a sentence of incarceration. In the filing, Merchan noted that if a sentence was unable to be given before Trump took the oath of office, the only other viable option may be to postpone proceedings until after Trump's presidential term is over.

In May, Trump was found guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, officially labeling him a convicted felon. The decision also comes after Merchan ruled last month that Trump is not immune from a conviction in the case...

After about a day and a half of deliberations, 12 New York jurors said last May that they unanimously agreed that Trump falsified business records to conceal a $130,000 hush money payment to adult-film star Stormy Daniels to influence the 2016 election.

Following the verdict, Trump virtually completed a routine pre-sentencing interview with the New York City Department of Probation. The prosecutors for the Manhattan District Attorney's office, who prosecuted Trump, and Trump's legal teams each submitted sentencing recommendations last month. Those documents have not been released to the public.

Trump also turned his attention to mobilizing donations for his campaign and mounting legal fees by using the conviction as a fundraising tool. Within 24 hours of the guilty verdict, Trump's campaign boasted raising millions of dollars. Trump and his legal team have also vowed to appeal the conviction, a process that could take years...

In a sane world, that May conviction should have been the end of trump's efforts to regain the White House to avoid all legal accountability. Instead, too many other Americans don't seem to give a rat's ass about ethics or character or the necessity of more honest, less criminal leadership. /fume

But if America is supposed to stand for Truth and Justice -if the rule of law and loyalty to the constitution matters more than loyalty to any one person - then it matters that trump face some measure of justice so that history - so that our better angels of our nature - can denounce the lies and gaslighting that trump and his followers will use to wipe away the facts of his sins.

As Austin Sarat notes at Salon:

Merchan has set an example of resistance on the cusp of a second Trump presidency. His ruling will serve this country well as we enter a period in which the occupant of the Oval Office intends to bend judges and others to his will and in which serving him will be the standard against which government officials, journalists, and others will be judged.

Before looking more closely at Merchan’s decision, let me say more about the role of history and memory in a democracy.

Writing in 2019, Jeffries Martin observed that in a democracy, respecting and learning from the past is a singular virtue. “Historical work,” Martin explained, has “long served as a major intellectual bulwark for democratic republics….” He conceded that such work would not in itself “preserve our democracy. But when fostered in a critical and democratic spirit, they constitute an important piece of what we might call a culture of resistance and liberty.” 

In a democracy, we can argue over what history means or what parts of the past should be venerated and which should not be, as fights over monuments have shown.  But, no one gets to re-write history or erase memory to suit their convenience or serve their partisan purposes. In authoritarian or totalitarian regimes, history and memory belong to the powerful. Rewriting and whitewashing the past, whether of a nation or its leaders, is standard operating procedure. As Jason Stanley puts it, “Authoritarians…erase history… seeking to separate us from our own history to destroy our self-understanding and leave us unmoored, resentful, and confused.”

Once Merchan's sentencing is a matter of record, trump can try to lie and deceive and ignore it as much as he wants, but it will exist as a counter to the false narratives of his "greatness" that will undermine his attempts to literally rewrite history. trump and his lackeys/followers will attack anyone who refers to the ruling, to anyone who openly points out how trump is a convicted felon - and the implications of his failures at both business and deceit - but those attacks will run into the reality that right there in Westlaw (and the legal court references at your law libraries) there is proof trump is a crook.

Merchan has already noted that he will not seek to impose any jail time - either that trump will face only fines and probation, or if any jail time occurs it will be suspended until after his term of office - but trump now faces the possibility that his future - which may be shorter than he thinks because the 22nd Amendment says the presidential term limits is two and nothing about them being consecutive - is not going to be all victory parties at Mar-A-Lago rolling around in millions in cash.

Unless trump decides to act up in court this Friday and compels Merchan to hold him physically in contempt.

One can always hope.

The pity of this tiny amount of justice getting delivered unto trump is how tiny it is. he WAS facing federal charges and Georgia criminal charges in other matters, but now his impending presidency closed shut the federal cases and may prevent the Fulton County office - once they figure out if the DA can oversee the entire case any further - from keeping his charges active (they may still bring to trial the other defendants in that election interference / fake electors cases). 

Any justice that may arise here is that the Special Prosecutor Jack Smith is required to issue his (final?) reports on those inquiries, much like Mueller did with his report, only except this time it's unlikely Attorney General Merrick Garland will redact the ever-loving hell out of Smith's reports the way Barr did to Mueller's.

Which is why trump is now pleading - demanding - that Garland delay the release of those reports, so that HIS puppet Matt Gaetz Pam Bondi can commit massive redactions and rewrites of Smith's findings and hide trump's sins from the public and from history itself.

For the love of God and Truth and America, Garland: Release the Smith Reports in full, without serious redaction (only the names of the innocent and the witnesses who need protection from trump's wrath). And re-release the Mueller Report unredacted while you're at it, so that Barr and trump can wriggle in public disdain for those sins as well.

Truth and Justice, goddammit. Those aren't just words. They're supposed to define what America stands for.

In The Matter of Allegations Relating to Gaetz

Update: Io Saturnalia to Steve In Manhattan for tagging this article for Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up. I hope everyone's safe and healthy and enjoying whatever there is of the holiday spirit. Except for Matt Gaetz. I hope he rots.

I need to get back into the blogging mindset, and what better way to get at it than to report on the nastiness of Florida's Worst Scuzzbucket (AKA Matt Gaetz)?

After all the storm and fury over the House Ethics' investigation into his misconduct with underage women - where the House voted to suppress the committee's report while trump was offering Gaetz control of the Justice Department, all of it rendered moot when Gaetz dropped out after a disastrous meeting with angry Senators poised to deny him the post - the committee decided to leak that report this week anyway.

Going by the summary, here are the things that Gaetz did that crossed a whole bunch of lines (skip to page two):

In sum, the Committee found substantial evidence of the following:

• From at least 2017 to 2020, Representative Gaetz regularly paid women for engaging in sexual activity with him.

• In 2017, Representative Gaetz engaged in sexual activity with a 17-year-old girl.

• During the period 2017 to 2019, Representative Gaetz used or possessed illegal drugs, including cocaine and ecstasy, on multiple occasions.

• Representative Gaetz accepted gifts, including transportation and lodging in connection with a 2018 trip to the Bahamas, in excess of permissible amounts.

• In 2018, Representative Gaetz arranged for his Chief of Staff to assist a woman with whom he engaged in sexual activity in obtaining a passport, falsely indicating to the U.S. Department of State that she was a constituent.

• Representative Gaetz knowingly and willfully sought to impede and obstruct the Committee’s investigation of his conduct.

• Representative Gaetz has acted in a manner that reflects discreditably upon the House.

Based on the above, the Committee concluded there was substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated House Rules, state and federal laws, and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, acceptance of impermissible gifts, the provision of special favors and privileges, and obstruction of Congress.

This is the stuff that the House Ethics committee uncovered in spite of a Justice Department's investigation into Gaetz's criminal behavior back in 2021 that ended up going nowhere. The DOJ argued at the time that they couldn't proceed to criminal charges on Gaetz because their witnesses were either unreliable on the stand or unwilling to testify. You can see that as well in the committee's work where most of the teenage girls claimed their Fifth Amendment rights to avoid self-incrimination, but even then the congresscritters and their staffs were able to put the pieces together that would have made a legitimate criminal case. Goddamn.

One of the horrifying elements of these reports is how much of Gaetz's misconduct was openly known. Not so much the prostitution, but his eagerness to sex women far younger than his own age range and his often drunken (now allegedly drugged) state of mind. Stories were rife about fellow legislators at both the state house and congressional levels how Gaetz would brag about and share pictures of his sexual exploits in the public forums. For all that his fellow congresscritters were bothered by his vulgarity, none of them cared enough to stop him until his business buddy Joel Greenberg got caught and revealed the nastier stuff hiding under the Florida GOP's foundations. 

While a solid number of our Republican elected officials DO care about their own personal conduct and ethics, they do happily turn a blind eye to a lot of this bad behavior because of two reasons: Some of them fear "rocking the boat" and disrupting their party's access to power; and Some of them honestly don't see the harm of sexually exploiting / abusing young women - even underage - because their own conservative philosophy - that women and the young are not part of their elite status and thus exploitable by their laws - allows it.

Granted, Democrats in power get caught in their own sex scandals and misconduct towards young women as well, but on this scale? With this level of disdain and disregard that Gaetz kept displaying towards his targets? You can feel from just reading the report the contempt he had, the lack of emotional connection to most of the girls he manhandled.

When you expand your view to examine the sexual misconduct we've seen over the years, you should notice that when it comes to Republican sex scandals there's an open display of misogyny and toxic masculinity driving most of that behavior. It's at a point where a more nonpartisan government would require full drug testing and ID checks of women under 40 at every Republican-based country club and convention gatherings just to make sure they're not violating laws.

And we STILL haven't seen a full accounting of Jeffrey Epstein's Client List containing the names of Men Of Power - both Republican and Democrat and CEO billionaire alike - who "flew the Lolita Express" engaging in sexual misconduct with seriously underaged girls.

Do us a huge favor, Joe Biden: Just before you leave office this January 20th 2025 PLEASE release the Epstein Client List (redacting the names of victims ONLY) not only to the general public but to every law enforcement agency on the planet.

Women remain abused as long as Men of Power retain that power to abuse them. THIS NEEDS TO END.

And ship Gaetz to the nearest prison for breaking drug use and statutory rape laws, please and thanks this Saturnalia season.

One Sentence Description of trump Selecting Gaetz for Attorney General

trump seriously wants to wreck every last concept of justice in America by choosing a guy the Justice Department - and even his fellow congressmembers - exposed as a sex-obsessed statutory-raping drug abuser who has every reason to force our government to never expose Republican crimes again.

"Make Them Riot": trump Needs to Answer for his Insurrection

On the personal notes, mom's doing okay in the hospital but she's stressed out because dad's in hospice care and she feels she needs to be at home taking care of him. Mom, you're the one with the cracked skull and broken wrist... 

While donald trump won't face the criminal trial before the November general election, the court case focused on his role in the January 6th Insurrection is still proceeding; and got to the point where the special prosecutor Jack Smith presented evidence that's going to be used in that trial. To say that's it damning is an understatement (via Carrie Johnson and Ryan Lucas at NPR):

In a newly unsealed court filing, special counsel Jack Smith provides the most detailed picture yet of his criminal case against Donald Trump for allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 election and why the former president isn't immune from prosecution.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over the case, released the filing, with minor redactions, on Wednesday.

A link to the court documents is here. The redactions for what they're worth are mostly hiding names of trump and his alleged co-conspirators/handlers... which hasn't stopped people from matching them based on the evidence that's already out there.

The special counsel uses the 165-page document to make his case that Trump's actions around the election were made in a private capacity and not in his official role as president.

The filing comes after the Supreme Court ruled this summer that presidents enjoy broad immunity for official acts while in office, but not for unofficial acts as a candidate or a private citizen.

"When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office," the special counsel's team writes. "With private co-conspirators, the defendant launched a series of increasingly desperate plans to overturn the legitimate election results in seven states that he had lost..."

The broad strokes of the special counsel's allegations against Trump have long been known. The filing, though, adds some new details, including sensitive testimony from witnesses and notes taken by former Vice President Mike Pence...

Getting into those details highlighted the lengths to which trump and his cohorts attempted to sabotage, hinder, or destroy the 2020 general election results. The Politico website counted multiple seriously deranged and illegal acts (via Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein):

According to prosecutors, at one point during Trump’s bid to overturn the results, a Trump White House aide overheard Trump tell his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner: “It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell.” The comment was allegedly made on Marine One.

Prosecutors said they would prove at trial that Trump and his allies often made up statistics about voter fraud “from whole cloth.” For example, Trump and allies alleged that 36,000 noncitizens had cast ballots in Arizona, changing the figure to “a few hundred thousand” five days later, eventually revising it back to “bare minimum … 40 or 50,000,” then to 32,000 and back up to the original number of 36,000.

One week after Election Day in 2020, Trump told then-Gov. Doug Ducey (R-Ariz.) that he was “packaging up” fraud evidence to share with him, prosecutors wrote. But Trump never provided it. Ducey told Trump that Arizona was all but lost, comparing it to being in “the ninth inning, two outs, and [the defendant] was several runs down,” Smith’s brief recounted...

Never mind that there's already laws to ensure non-citizens can't vote, trump was still using his fearmongering over immigrants to justify overturning legit election results. He and his team kept fibbing the numbers to whatever they needed in that moment to claim whatever victory trump could. And when it came time to present evidence, they never did. Because it was never real. Goddamn him.

Prosecutors, who had more access to telephone records and emails than the congressional committee that investigated Jan. 6, allege that Trump spoke to ally Steve Bannon by phone on Jan. 5 less than two hours before Bannon issued a prescient and provocative prediction on his War Room podcast that “all hell is going to break loose” on Jan. 6...

Well before Jan. 6, an unidentified Trump campaign employee enthusiastically spoke of the potential for a riot in Michigan. The employee, whom prosecutors described as a co-conspirator, allegedly sought to “create chaos” at a polling center in Detroit when it became clear a batch of election returns favorable to Biden was legitimate. “Find a reason it isn’t,” the alleged co-conspirator said to a colleague, prosecutors wrote. When the colleague said an outbreak of violence appeared imminent, the campaign employee replied: “Make them riot” and “Do it!!!”

These are the tidbits that prove trump and his people wanted a riot, all the riots across battleground states as well as the Capitol, in order to disrupt and destroy the results, so he could steal the election and stay in power. trump's "rally" on January 6th was never going to be peaceful: It was a call to violence.

It's terrifying that trump is not going to sit in a courtroom and answer for his misdeeds before the November 5th election day. It's insane that the Republican Party refused to stop trump from forcing himself back atop their ballot, because now we're facing the possibility trump can steal (he can't win the popular vote, at best he can skew the Electoral College or at worst throw the results into chaos) the presidential election.

If trump gets back into the Oval Office he will squash this and every other criminal investigation into his actions. trump will deny New York the 34-count felony conviction and destroy the entire concept of "justice for all" for the nation for all time. We will have a confirmed felon and sex offender as President and he will inflict his criminal passions upon the nation and the world.

This isn't up to the courts anymore: Chief Justice Roberts made certain of that.

This is up to us voters, all of us from Democrats to Independents to even Republicans who respect the rule of law and despise trump and what he stands for.

For all the efforts to suppress voters - for all the lies about who's voting - the Republicans can't win if everyone shows up to vote and NOT vote for them. If the numbers are overwhelming in favor of Democrats - in favor of the pro-choice referendums on many state ballots - the Far Right wingnuts trying to sabotage the results won't have any legal leg to stand on. They would - and should - fail in many of the courtrooms even to the point where trump's own compliant Supreme Court can't save him.

Get the vote out, America. Every single one of us who sees trump for what he is - a failed, corrupt criminal - and who sees Republicans for what they are - broken, fear-driven rage merchants living in their own conspiracy bubbles desperate to rule or ruin - need to show up this election cycle. Be it by mail-in ballot, be it by early voting, be it by standing in line this Tuesday November 5th: We need to show up and vote. Our vote matters. Our vote is our power.

We need to stop trump from committing more crimes, and our vote for Harris/Walz and the Democrats across every seat on the ballots will do that.

Good luck.

Refreshing the Charges Against trump

Oh, and in case you missed it - and you likely did because the New York Times didn't even put it on the front page like they did with Hillary's emails in 2016 /rage - Special Prosecutor Jack Smith re-indicted donald trump for his role in the January 6th insurrection.

David A Graham at the Atlantic has some of the details (paywalled):

When the Supreme Court ruled last month that presidents are immune from prosecution for anything done as an official act, many observers reacted with immediate horror. They warned that the ruling would allow future presidents to act as despots, doing whatever they like without fear of accountability. And in the immediate term, they predicted doom for the federal case against former President Donald Trump for attempting to subvert the 2020 election.

The effect of the ruling on future presidents will not be clear for some time. But Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is prosecuting Trump for the Justice Department, isn’t acting too rattled by the Supreme Court’s decision.

Smith obtained a superseding indictment today in the case against Trump, whom he had previously charged with four felonies. The new document is a little more concise and changes some language, but it keeps the same four felony charges and most of the same evidence. After taking a few weeks to review the Supreme Court ruling, Smith has apparently concluded that it doesn’t change much about his case at all.

Roberts and his conservative buddies on SCOTUS can try to warp reality all they want, but what trump did was criminal and by GOD he needs to answer for it.

In addition to some slight rephrasing here and there, Smith makes two notable changes. First, he takes out all references to Trump’s attempt to involve the Justice Department in his subversion. Trump, who has spent much of his current presidential campaign warning about the “weaponization” of the federal government, attempted just that as he sought to stay in office. The then-president asked the department to issue a letter saying the election was corrupt and then “leave the rest to me and the R[epublican] Congressmen,” according to meeting notes taken by a DOJ official. One of Trump’s confederates was Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department official whom Trump tried to install as acting attorney general to further the scheme, before fierce resistance from DOJ and White House lawyers stayed his hand.

But the Supreme Court ruled that “because the President cannot be prosecuted for conduct within his exclusive constitutional authority, Trump is absolutely immune from prosecution for the alleged conduct involving his discussions with Justice Department officials.” The superseding indictment thus takes out references to Trump’s conversations with these officials. It removes Clark from a list of co-conspirators. And it deletes a section of the initial indictment that explained how Trump tried to enlist the department to help solicit slates of false electors from states.

The fact that Smith and his team were able to re-indict trump to basically the same four charges underscores just how much dirt they still have on trump that the Supreme Court can't wash away (for now).

If I can refer to Marcy Wheeler at Emptywheel to get her take on this:

Altogether, the changes incorporate not just SCOTUS’ immunity decision, but also the DC Circuit’s Blassingame decision deeming actions taken as a candidate for office are private acts, and SCOTUS’ Fischer decision limiting the use of 18 USC 1512(c)(2) to evidentiary issues.

The logic of Blassingame is why Jack Smith included these paragraphs describing that Trump and Pence were acting as candidates.

1. The Defendant, DONALD J. TRUMP, was a candidate for President of the United States in 2020. He lost the 2020 presidential election.

[snip]

5. In furtherance of these conspiracies, the Defendant tried–but failed–to enlist the Vice President, who was also the Defendant’s running mate and, by virtue of the Constitution, the President of the Senate, who plays a ceremonial role in the January 6 certification proceeding.

As I’ve said repeatedly, it’s not clear that adopting the Blassingame rubric will work for SCOTUS, even though they did nothing to contest this rubric...

The decision to supersede this indictment may have turned what could have been an immediate dispute about the viability of the indictment at all into an evidentiary dispute to be managed later...

At the very least, Jack Smith suggests he has something viable on which to arraign Trump (and Trump’s Xitter wails treating this as a real indictment suggest he may believe that)...

This should serve - again - as a reminder to the general American voting public that trump is dangerous, that he's not pursuing the presidency for some lofty purpose: trump is running for President to keep his orange ass out of jail. It's not only the criminal charges trump is still facing - not only in DC but also in South Florida as Smith appeals to the appellate level to reinstate the classified documents case Cannon dismissed, and in Georgia with the state fake electors case - but also the criminal matter in Manhattan where he sits with 34 jury-confirmed felonies (with the presiding judge ruling mid-September on what happens next).

And those are the criminal charges and convictions. trump's civil trials found him liable for business fraud, defamation, and sexual assault (that the judge rose to the level of rape).

We've never had a major national party stoop so low as to have a convicted felon and confirmed sex offender like trump running for the highest office in the land (remember, Debs was a minor party candidate who never had a chance).

Every registered voter in America needs to understand how horrifying and criminal that is, and make certain that trump never gets within 100 miles of the White House again.

For the LOVE OF GOD AND JUSTICE, America, STOP VOTING trump.

Destroying Justice All To Serve trump

Dear America: I am so sorry I jinxed it.

I wrote this back in February:

We've had other corrupt men in high office before, just that none of them reached the criminal lows that trump has. trump's not facing criminal trials because he's a "great conservative American," he's facing criminal trials now because 40 years of bills over his bullshit are finally coming due.

The civil trials are mostly done, and trump has to pay those dues soon. The criminal trials start March, and the countdown to just even ONE felony conviction begins.

Tick fucking tock, trump.

While the criminal trial regarding hush money and election interference in Manhattan happened and trump answered for that (so far), the other three trials got hit with delays and more delays - trump's favorite legal tactic - to where trump can gamble on lying/cheating/stealing his way into the White House and claim Presidential Immunity (as this corrupt SCOTUS intends it).

And today, trump's run for the Mexican Border for the Presidency got a lot sweeter when his judge Aileen Cannon - there is no other way to describe her - dismissed the Mar-A-Lago classified documents case on the argument that the special counsel overseeing it is unconstitutional (via Carrie Johnson at NPR):

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has dismissed the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump in an order Monday morning over the manner in which special counsel Jack Smith was appointed.

“The Superseding Indictment is DISMISSED because Special Counsel Smith’s appointment violates the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution,” wrote Judge Cannon, who was appointed to the bench by the former president.

Special counsel Jack Smith had contested this argument, and other federal courts had upheld the constitutionality of special counsels.

“None of the statutes cited as legal authority for the appointment…gives the Attorney General broad inferior-officer appointing power or bestows upon him the right to appoint a federal officer with the kind of prosecutorial power wielded by Special Counsel Smith," Cannon wrote. "Nor do the Special Counsel’s strained statutory arguments, appeals to inconsistent history, or reliance on out-of-circuit authority persuade otherwise...”

Cannon is using a provision offered by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in his Immunity concurrence, something that no other judge or court agreed with... and will require even more appeals back up to the high court before this mess can ever get straightened out. As it is, Thomas' opinion would negate every special counsel matter currently out there at the federal level... including the matter involving Hunter Biden. But hey, this is a deal for trump, so why bother eh?

Going to Marcy Wheeler at her Emptywheel site for comment:

It’s hilarious.

It’s hilarious, because it doesn’t create any delay that Cannon was not pursuing anyway. Indeed, Jack Smith could immediately appeal this and try to get her tossed, so it may hasten things (unless Trump wins!).

It’s hilarious because it is unbelievably hubristic. The only credible future for Judge Cannon now is Trump’s first SCOTUS appointment in a second term.

It’s hilarious because the way she did this, if it were upheld (not an impossibility given how nutty SCOTUS has gotten), it would be even more useful for Hunter Biden than Donald Trump (especially if Trump didn’t win reelection), because the statutes of limitation on Hunter’s alleged crimes have started to expire.

As for Smith appealing, yes he has. This now depends on how quickly the 11th Circuit handles this... and if the appellate court can remove Cannon for her bias and ineptitude.

And it all depends on the American voters coming out in huge numbers to vote for Biden and deny trump any sanctuary from justice.

trump has defeated justice for now, but he ought to - needs to - answer to the law in spite of the conservatives in the judiciary shredding all of it to protect their hold on power. trump is not running to serve the interests of Americans, he is not running for ideology or purpose, he is not running to uphold the public trust. trump is running to save his own ass from jail, and he will burn everything down to avoid that fate.

America cannot survive a criminal in the White House AGAIN.

To the 81 million of us who voted for Biden in 2020, we have a responsibility to return to the ballot and vote for Joe again. And let us bring about 44 million more with us across all 50 states just to make certain of it.

For the LOVE OF GOD AND COUNTRY AND JUSTICE, America. Do not vote trump this year. 

Dreading a Decision

With the Supreme Court winding down for the summer, there are still a number of key legal decisions they have to issue. The big one being the decision on donald trump's claims of Absolute Immunity from facing criminal prosecution for acts he committed while President Loser of the Popular Vote (Twice).

The Far Right on the Court have already done trump a solid favor by taking up this matter, forcing delays on two of the federal cases trump is facing: One for his mishandling/theft of classified documents at Mar-A-Lago; the other related to his actions - and inactions - during the January 6th Insurrection. Even if the Court comes out with a ruling that says trump still has to stand trial on those charges, the likelihood is that both won't finish - or even start - before the general election this November. While the 34 guilty verdicts trump received in New York court already paints trump as a felon, these federal cases directly focused on trump's unfitness as President, and could have convinced a larger majority of American voters to deny him a second - more corrupt - term.

For all of how this affects the electoral matters, there is still a serious danger regarding the Supreme Court's pending decision on this.

One of the worst possible outcomes would be if a simple majority - five of the Republican-appointed conservatives - approved trump's stance of having Absolute Immunity. It would immediately destroy any check and balance within the Constitution: the Executive branch will become untouchable to the Judicial and Legislative branch. It would give Presidents full power to be tyrants. And it would be insane even for Justices like Alito and Thomas - who've openly supported such Unitary Executive arguments for years - to approve that.

The only thing stopping such a ruling is that it would immediately grant the current President - Democratic Joe Biden - the same immunity, which he could then abuse to his own devices. Considering real-world issues - such as Russian interference supporting a corrupt felon like trump this election cycle, Far Right obstructionism in Congress, and a Supreme Court dominated by unethical Republican-nominated Justices (hello again, Clarence Thomas) - Biden could well argue the need for his administration to cross legal boundaries to perform his duties, and arrest every single one of them without regard to legal niceties. Granted, it would trigger secession from the Red states and open civil war, but an Absolutely Immune President like Biden could ignore things like Posse Comitatus and send a mostly-loyal federal military to overwhelm them all. I doubt the Far Right judges will risk that.

Which could lead to an even worse possibility: The conservative Justices decide to carve out Absolute Immunity but in such a way it covers trump and no one else. Trying to make sure Biden or any future President - unless it's trump again (shudder) - won't use such powers to disrupt or upend any Far Right hold on American politics, those Justices could twist the entire legal system into knots granting an individual certain powers they would deny to others in the same position. Such a ruling would make a mockery of centuries of legal history; ignoring the practice of following and creating precedence, or the idea that persons are equal before the law.

That result would undermine the already crumbling reputation of a partisan Supreme Court. Legal experts who aren't already pandering to trump would cry foul. There would be the likelihood that Biden's Attorney General would argue that ruling "unenforceable" and ignore it, creating a massive crisis dragging in a divided Congress that would have House Republicans impeaching AG Garland and President Biden while the Senate Democrats refuse to vote on the matter. It could still lead to Biden claiming such powers of immunity anyway, since any constitutional norms are clearly out the window.

A more likely scenario is that the Far Right Justices would carve out Selective - not Absolute - immunity, granting that trump while in office was able to perform certain criminal acts "if it fell within the scope of his duties." They would try to align such "criminal acts" to the ones trump is facing charges - a tidy little coincidence - so that Biden and future Presidents can't unleash themselves. But it staggers the mind that the Justices would grant immunity over such high-priority matters as refusing to send in help to subdue a violent riot incited by a President - like in January 6th - or trying to take all those classified documents - like in the Mar-A-Lago matter - that are clear violations of that President's duties.

The best possible decision would be for a majority of the Justices - the Democratic-appointed ones alongside at least two Republican ones - to agree a President doesn't have Absolute Immunity. They could stick to the precedence set by US v Nixon that "no one is above the law" and that Presidents should consider their criminal liability for acts they commit even while in office. It would mean trump is exposed to whatever fate he faces with the federal criminal trials... depending on if the South Florida judge Aileen Cannon will stop her own screw-ups in the Mar-A-Lago case.

In this timeline, Special Prosecutor Jack Smith could arguably speed up the DC trial regarding trump's involvement in January 6th and get that trial going as soon as possible (maybe late July). The classified documents one will clearly not be ready this year, and the Fulton County matter has been delayed until October, so the DC case would be in the clear. Thing is, most legal experts argue that the amount of evidence and witness testimony could take months, making it unlikely the trial would end before November.

That all said, the Far Right Supreme Court could make a ruling not to decide. They could delay the whole argument by sending the matter back down and demanding "clarification" from the lower courts which Presidential acts could be protected by immunity and which shouldn't. That would definitely freeze up the DC trial for now, and put everything on hold until the Court reopens for business in October.

Waiting for justice from this broken Supreme Court has turned into a joke.

It's been clear for some time that the legal system is not going to save us from a corrupt trump or a sadistic self-serving Republican Party. We're going to have to do it at the ballot box.

In spite of all the threats from the Republicans that they're going to suppress the votes, they can't stop or deny us all. If we can get the 81 million who voted for Biden in 2020 - and if we can get the Independent voters and Rational Republicans who refuse to vote for a convicted felon like trump - we can overcome the GOP's plan to steal this election.

Get the vote out, America. Only WE can stop trump from committing more crimes.