The Conversation -- August 6, 2023
Rema Rahman of the Hill: "Former President Trump on Sunday said his legal team will ask for a recusal of the judge overseeing his case on federal charges related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election as well as a venue change, reiterating that he cannot get a fair trial in Washington, D.C. 'There is no way I can get a fair trial with the judge "assigned" to the ridiculous freedom of speech/fair elections case. Everybody knows this, and so does she!' Trump wrote on Truth Social.... Trump once again also went after special counsel Jack Smith.... 'Deranged Jack Smith ... could have brought this [Biden] "opponent" case years ago, but chose to wait and bring it right in the middle of my election campaign. No way!!! I hope you are watching America,' Trump wrote."
What else has Trump been doing while out on bail? Well, there was the general threat to every anti-Trumper in the world plus many people just doing their jobs: "IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I'M COMING AFTER YOU!" And there are these remarks, made about a likely witness against him: ~~~
~~~ Craig Howie of Politico: "Donald Trump hit back at Mike Pence on Saturday.... 'WOW, it's finally happened!' Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Saturday. 'Liddle' Mike Pence, a man who was about to be ousted as Governor Indiana until I came along and made him V.P., has gone to the Dark Side.... I never told a newly embolded -- Pence to put me above the Constitution, or that Mike was "too honest." He's delusional, and now he wants to show he's a tough guy,' Trump added.'... Pence defended certifying the 2020 election for Joe Biden in response to jeers and insults from a crowd of Trump supporters outside a campaign event in New Hampshire on Friday." ~~~
~~~ Tim Reid & Kanishka Singh of Reuters: "Asked on Sunday on CBS's 'Face the Nation' if he would be a witness against [Donald] Trump if the [insurrection] case goes to trial, [Mike] Pence said he had 'no plans' to testify but did not rule it out."
You Could Get Tossed in Jail for Looking Like a Criminal -- Especially if You're Black. Kashmir Hill of the New York Times: Porcha Woodruff of Detroit, who was eight months pregnant at the time of her arrest [for robbery & carjacking], "is the sixth person to report being falsely accused of a crime as a result of facial recognition technology used by police to match an unknown offender's face to a photo in a database. All six people have been Black; Ms. Woodruff is the first woman to report it happening to her. It is the third case involving the Detroit Police Department, which runs, on average, 125 facial recognition searches a year, almost entirely on Black men.... Gary Wells, a psychology professor who has studied the reliability of eyewitness identifications, said pairing facial recognition technology with an eyewitness identification should not be the basis for charging someone with a crime.... [Surveillance video showed that] the woman involved in the carjacking had not been visibly pregnant...." Ms. Woodruff required medical treatment for dehydration following her release from jail.
California. Eduardo Medina of the New York Times: "A Southern California judge was arrested on Thursday in connection with the killing of his wife, whom police officers found dead from a gunshot wound inside the couple's Anaheim home, the authorities said on Friday. The judge, Jeffrey Ferguson, 72, of the Orange County Superior Court, was booked into the Anaheim Police Department's detention facility on Thursday and held on $1 million bail, the police said. He posted bail on Friday and has been released, according to Orange County Sheriff's Department records." MB: Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think if you or I were arrested for shooting dead a spouse or partner, we would be released on bail.
~~~~~~~~~~
Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President. -- Judge Tanya Chutkan, November 2021, denying Donald Trump's claim of executive privilege to block the House January 6 committee from accessing records from his White House ~~~
~~~ Nick Robertson of the Hill: "The federal judge presiding over former President Trump's election fraud case has ordered his attorneys to respond to prosecutors' request for a protective order by Monday, according to a court filing Saturday. Judge Tanya Chutkan gave Trump's attorneys a single business day to respond to special counsel Jack Smith's request for a strict protective order which would prevent Trump from discussing case evidence in public. Smith made the request last Friday after Trump made a social media post appearing to threaten witnesses in the case. 'IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I'M COMING AFTER YOU!' Trump wrote on Truth Social Friday...." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Update: "Trump's attorneys requested a three-day extension -- until Thursday -- to that deadline Saturday afternoon, claiming federal prosecutors want to move the case along too quickly and that a delay gives them enough time to properly respond.... However, Chutkan denied the Trump team's request for an extension Saturday evening...."
Maureen Dowd of the New York Times: "The man who tried to overthrow the government he was running was held Thursday by the government he tried to overthrow, a few blocks from where the attempted overthrow took place and a stone's throw from the White House he yearns to return to, to protect himself from the government he tried to overthrow.... While Trump goes for the long con, or the long coup -- rap sheet be damned, it's said that he worries this will hurt his legacy. He shouldn't. His legacy is safe, as the most democracy-destroying, soul-crushing, self-obsessed amadán ever to occupy the Oval. Amadán, that's Gaelic for a man who grows more foolish every day." Thanks to P.D. Pepe for the lead. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Dewey, Cheatham and Howe, LLP. Alan Feuer, et al., of the New York Times: "The legal team that Mr. Trump has assembled to represent him in the twin prosecutions by the special counsel, Jack Smith, is marked by a tangled web of potential conflicts and overlapping interests -- so much so that Mr. Smith's office has started asking questions.... Some of the lawyers involved in the cases are representing both charged defendants and uncharged witnesses. At least one could eventually become a defendant, and another could end up as a witness in one case and Mr. Trump's defender in a different one.... Many of the lawyers are being paid by Save America PAC, Mr. Trump's political action committee, which has itself been under government scrutiny for months. Some of the witnesses those lawyers represent work for the Trump Organization, Mr. Trump's company, but their legal defense has ... been arranged ... by Mr. Trump's own legal team.... Just this week, prosecutors ... asked Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who is overseeing the documents case, to conduct a hearing 'regarding potential conflicts arising from the complex client list of one lawyer, Stanley Woodward Jr.... Prosecutors appear to have similar qualms about another lawyer in the documents case, John Irving, who represents Carlos De Oliveira, Mr. Trump's other co-defendant...." Read on for the details of the stunt Trump lawyer/witness for the prosecution Evan Corcoran may be planning to avoid having to testify against Trump on a crucial issue in the documents case.
** Confessions of a Co-conspirator. Josh Marshall of TPM: In an interview with "Tom Klingenstein, the Chairman of the Trumpite Claremont Institute," Trump Co-conspirator 2 John Eastman "invokes the Declaration of Independence and says quite clearly that yes, we were trying to overthrow the government and argues that they were justified because of the sheer existential threat America was under because of the election of Joe Biden.... Eastman ... makes clear [the insurrectionists] were ... justified in doing so; and the warrant for their actions is none other than the Declaration of Independence itself.... 'There's actually a provision in the Declaration of Independence that a people will suffer abuses while they remain sufferable, tolerable while they remain tolerable[,' Eastman argues]. 'At some point abuses become so intolerable that it becomes not only their right but their duty to alter or abolish the existing government.... So that's the question.... Have the abuses or the threat of abuses become so intolerable that we have to be willing to push back?' The answer for Eastman is clearly yes and that's his justification for his and his associates extraordinary actions....
"Abraham Lincoln ... said ... on the eve of the Civil War in his first inaugural address (emphasis added): 'This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.' In other words, yes, you have a revolutionary right to overthrow the government.... But the government has an equal right to stop you, to defend itself or, as we see today, put you on trial if you fail. The American revolutionaries of 1776 knew full well that they were committing treason against the British monarchy. If they lost they would all hang.... [Eastman and his cohort] knew it was a coup and they justified it to themselves in those terms."
Isn't it terrible that so many reporters from so many media outlets are challenging one another in the game of "Gotcha, Supremes!"?? The New York Times just advanced the paper's position: ~~~
~~~ Jo Becker & Julie Tate of the New York Times: "... in a documentary financed by conservative admirers, Justice [Clarence] Thomas ... waxes rhapsodic about the familiarity of spending time with the regular folks he meets along the way in R.V. parks and Walmart parking lots.... [BUT] His Prevost Marathon [R.V.] cost $267,230 [in 1999].... And Justice Thomas, who in the ensuing years would tell friends how he had scrimped and saved to afford the motor coach, did not buy it on his own. In fact, the purchase was underwritten, at least in part, by Anthony Welters, a close friend who made his fortune in the health care industry.... [The true source of funding for the purchase] leaves unanswered a host of questions about whether the justice received, and failed to disclose, a lavish gift from a wealthy friend ... [and whether Thomas failed to comply with] an obligation to report the arrangement under a federal ethics law." The article goes into detail about the purchase and payment, and unearths another foreign jaunt Thomas apparently took at Welters' expense but did not report. (Also linked yesterday.)~~~
~~~ Marie: When you think about it, "Gotcha, Supremes!" has all the makings of a board game, a la "Monopoly." You advance when your marker lands on "Clarence & Ginny cruise on Harlan's yacht" or "Insufferable Sam takes luxury fishing vacay in billionaire Paul's Alaska resort," but it's a bummer when your marker stops on "Chief John refuses to testify before Senate" or "Insufferable Sam writes a WSJ op-ed."
Presidential Race 2028
Not Exactly Yer Lincoln-Douglas Debates. Julia Shapero of the Hill: "California Gov. Gavin Newsom's (D team slammed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' (R) counterproposal for a debate as a 'joke' on Saturday, claiming that the Republican presidential candidate's suggested rules are meant to 'hide his insecurity and ineptitude.' 'What a joke,' Newsom spokesperson Nathan Click said in a statement, according to Politico. 'Desantis' counterproposal is littered with crutches to hide his insecurity and ineptitude -- swapping opening statements with a hype video, cutting down the time he needs to be on stage, adding cheat notes and a cheering section.... Ron should be able to stand on his own two feet. It's no wonder Trump is kicking his ass.'"
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Reader Comments (16)
The Orange Monster’s treason-loving crime family consigliere, John Eastman, seeks to wrap himself and his insurrectionist horde in the Declaration of Independence in a sleazy attempt to excuse their murderous attempted overthrow of the government by saying…
“At some point abuses become so intolerable that it becomes not only their right but their duty to alter or abolish the existing government.”
Gee, guess what, Johnny, the American people did exactly that to the totalitarian dictatorship you tried to install through violence and treason. They exercised their right to abolish the Fatty fatwa against the United States. Intolerable abuses? You can say that again. The people’s response is called a free and fair election. Something you and your fascist boss know nothing about.
Democracy. Try it sometime.
@Akhilleus: I find it absolutely stunning that a lawyer -- who is sworn to uphold the law -- would advocate for an open rebellion against the federal government. This is not "civil disobedience" in the civil rights tradition, where -- for instance -- young Black people dress up nicely and sit at a lunch counter where Blacks are not welcome or Black Lives Matters protesters rally against racist police brutality.
The California Bar has moved to disbar Eastman, but as far as I can tell, the Bar has not yet made a decision. Maybe Eastman knows something we don't if he's willing to admit his legal theory for conspiring to overthrow the government is based on a declaration of treasonous intent.
And for the press to describe Eastman or any of his fellow coup plotters as "conservative lawyers" is irresponsible. Aiding & abetting open, armed rebellion against your own government obviously is political radicalism; it is not "conservative," by any stretch of the definition.
BTW, it's not entirely clear to me that the First Amendment protects Eastman's advocacy for rebellion inasmuch as he was involved in a conspiracy to do just that. Of course now that Trump is no longer president*, there's not a clear & present danger of such a coup plot succeeding, but the danger, IMO, is on pause. It's not over.
I truly want to know what "abuses" eastman found so intolerable that he felt obligated to try to overthrow the government. The Confederates talk in vague terms about Democrats "destroying 'our' country" but from what I have seen, they accuse Democrats of doing the things they were actually doing: Weaponizing Justice and the IRS, bending all the departments to benefit themselves. eastman simply didn't want the gravy train to stop.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/05/politics/trump-mike-pence-delusional-truth-social/index.html
t****'s campaign tried to say that Friday's "truth" was "political speech" aimed at his primary opponents, but this is aimed directly at the testimony of halfpence. It looks as if he's trying to get himself thrown in jail.
@NiskyGuy: I agree. In fact, I don't think it matters whom Trump now claims he was threatening. Since he has attacked many people, from high-profile political figures right down to low-paid local election workers, any reasonable person who is even remotely in the public eye and who has criticized Trump could take it as a personal threat. And -- more important -- any violent Trumpbot could read the threat as one he should carry out for the Dear Leader against any number of people whom the Trumpbot perceives as Enemies of Trump.
Trump is trying to claim, after the fact, that the threat was protected political speech. I don't think so. It reminds me more of the line from "The Shining": "I'm coming Dan! You can't get away! I'm right behind you!"
Yeah, it's difficult to come up with a list of those "abuses" Eastman claims he and his ilk suffer, but I'll give it a shot.
Progressive taxation
Environmental regulations
OSHA's oversight of work places.
Minimum wage laws
Support and protection of worker unions
Demand for equal protection under the law, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender or religion...
Overall, governing in the interests of the common good.
What a bunch of spoiled, privileged selfish boys whose philosophy of government comes down to "Me, Me, Me."
Well, kids, as AK. is wont to say––––if you belong to a group whose signature piece is collecting as much money as possible no matter from whom which gives said group clout and power then TRUTH is not in the cards. In order to get away with this we have/had early on "Alternative Facts"≠≠ thanks to Kellyann but taken to new heights as the years sped on. It's almost like comparing all those items Ken posted that Eastman looks at as "abuses" to a child who refuses to see certain disciplines as positive, rebels and runs wild. Maybe a stretch here, but what we have going on here is a bunch of spoiled brats trying to beat the system. And the biggest brat of all is Fatty under fires that he thinks he can extinguish.
One more thing (for now) about Eastman’s excuse for treason, “intolerable abuses” perpetrated by the government.
Hmmm…
Let’s see…on January 6, the government was controlled by Donald Trump. There were zero “intolerable abuses” by Joe Biden. He was still a private citizen with no ability to control any government agency, department, or service. He couldn’t even ring for cleanup in aisle seven. Everything was still operating under Trump. There were, of course, plenty of intolerable abuses committed by that fascist crook, so is that what Eastman was referring to?
Perhaps he was insisting that the intolerable abuse was that the Fat Fascist lost a free and fair election.
Or maybe the idea was that when Biden was sworn in there might be “intolerable abuses”. I’m pretty sure the Declaration of Independence wasn’t written to address stuff that might happen at some future date. “Hey guys, King George might do something we can’t stand, maybe in a year or two. Revolt!!”
This is tantamount to someone saying “See that guy over there? In a couple of years, he might hit someone with his car while driving drunk. Arrest him now!”
Okay, it’s all stupid. But Dr. Johnson was right on the money when he talked about a scoundrel’s last refuge.
Wrapping oneself in a flag which stands for things one despises is the height of mendacity.
@Akhilleus: I think I know what the "intolerable abuse" is and it had already occurred: minorities voting. Trump & Co. tended to cite the intolerable voters who lived in majority-minority area like DE-troit & Philly & Atlanta. Or Maricopa County, Az., where 30% of the people are Mexican rapists. I mean Hispanics.
Not only did these minorities vote, their votes were enough to turn the presidential results in several states from Trump to Biden.
So -- although your argument is a good one -- it's not necessarily central to Eastman's argument, which by his own admission, relies on a document that declares "all men are created equal," and by "men," it means white males, preferably ones who have property stakes in governance.
I've been voting over 50 years in Florida and have yet to see a "Freeholders Election, but just checked Wikipedia and at the start of the 2023 legislative session they were still on the books.
A relic of the past that can still rear its head under the law.
@Bobby Lee: Thanks. Oh, that's what I like about the South. I wasn't precisely sure what a "freeholders' election" was, so I checked the Googles: "Typically, a voter had to be a free, adult, male resident of his county, a member of the predominant religious group, and a 'freeholder.' A freeholder owned land worth a certain amount of money. Colonists believed only freeholders should vote because only they had a permanent stake in the stability of society."
With his rant against the judge, it really looks as if the former guy’s strategy is to get thrown in jail. Maximum chaos.
If Mr. Eastman was familiar with history, he would have known that the first rule of justifying revolution is winning it. If you don't, it's treason and there is no sufficient justification. If you do, any reasons you put forth will serve.
Sometimes it takes 600 years (ask the Irish about that). Our latter-day Confederates have only been at it for about 60; I start the clock around Goldwater's defeat when people with money and access to media started to correspond seriously.
Re: the only justification for revolt…
In James Clavell’s novel of 17th C Japan, “Shogun”, the European “anjin” (pilot or navigator) has a sit down with the regional lord, Toranaga. In a touchy discussion, Blackthorne, the pilot, suggests a way out of Toranaga’s difficult political situation with the ruling shogun: overthrow. Toranaga responds that there is never a justification for such treason. “There’s one” says Blackthorne. “If you win.”
Toranaga recognizes the peril. If he goes at the king and misses, he dies, the fate of all, historically, who attempt to overthrow the ruler, no matter their country, affiliation, or station. You miss, you die, and not quickly or cleanly.
It’s only confederate traitors in this country who believe they deserve cheers and absolution for their treason. And not only that, believe that the ruling party that beat them handily, deserves death while they get another shot at the throne.
By the way, if I remember the plot correctly, Toranaga, the new shogun, has the dethroned leader buried up to his neck. He lasted three days.
Wonder how long Fatty and Eastman and Giuliani and the other traitors would last.
How to give "aspiration" a bad name:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/08/06/trump-jan6-lawyer/
His lawyer's explanation of why the Pretender's behavior was legal is right up there with other standard Republican aspirations. Wish there were more white people to vote and fewer of those others. That women would just shut up and do what they are told. That trickle down economics didn't really mean what it sounds like. That Hunter Biden was really as big and successful a crook as Javonka. That Covid was just the flu. That vaccines kill you.
And that still growing Republican laundry list of "alternative" facts that would make the world so much nicer if only they were so...
The Pretender ruins everything, even hope. Heretofore I'd always linked aspiration to idealism. Silly me.
Ken,
Trump and his treasonous, violent, scheming, mendacious cohort don’t have aspirations. They have ass-pirations. Hopes that voters don’t see them for the gigantic assholes they truly are.
There again, ass-pire sounds like a huge fart. For fatso Trump that would be fatulent flatulence.