Update on Trump Legal Cases

[silverscreenselect]

There's going to be a busy week ahead in the Georgia case against Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants.

1) One defendant, Ken Chesebro, has already received an October 23 trial date after his speedy trial request. Sidney Powell also made the same request too late in the day Friday for the judge to take action. Odds are, her trial will be combined with Chesebro. Any similar motions from other defendants must be filed this week.

2) Five defendants, including Mark Meadows, are seeking removal of their cases to federal court under the provisions of a 1789 law that allows federal officials to remove a case if they are charged in state court for conduct that was part of their official duties. If successful, Willis would still prosecute but the trials would not be televised (in all likelihood) and the jury pool would include rural north Georgia as well as the Atlanta area. Meadows' case will be heard in Federal court Monday, with the others later. Trump is expected to file a similar motion. This will be an evidentiary hearing, and Brad Raffensperger and others have been called to testify. Meadows must satisfy the burden of proof to get removal, meaning presenting evidence which could cause him to testify, a very risky proposition since the testimony could be used against him in his criminal trial. The judge hearing the case was appointed by Obama. Most legal experts consider these motions unlikely to succeed. This case will probably be appealed to the US Supreme Court.

3) One defendant, Harrison Floyd, remains in jail today. He is the former leader of Black Voices for Trump and accused of two counts involving intimidation of poll worker Ruby Freeman. Floyd was arrested earlier this year in Maryland on misdemeanor charges of assaulting an FBI agent. He's trying to get a public defender to represent him.

4) Also tomorrow, Judge Chutkan in DC will set a date for Trump's federal trial related to the election conspiracy. Jack Smith has requested a January 2 start date for the trial.

[silverscreenselect]

Trump's arraignment has been set for September 6 at 9:30 am, with the other defendants' arraignments following his the same day. Rudy Giuliani will be second, followed by John Eastman. The defendants will be formally entering their not guilty pleas. It's unclear whether the arraignments will be televised or if the defendants will be required to be present or can appear via Zoom.

[Ritterskoop]

I just love that dude's name really is pronounced CHEESE-BRO.

[silverscreenselect]

Not the Georgia case per se, but it has a bearing.

A New York federal judge entered a default judgment against Rudy Giuliani in the defamation lawsuit brought by two Fulton County election workers. Giuliani had earlier issued a stipulation that he knew the comments he made about the workers were false. However, he attempted to reserve his rights to claim that they were only an opinion and protected speech. The judge rejected Rudy's verbal gymnastics, saying his stipulations "hold more holes than Swiss cheese." Because Rudy had not responded to several deadlines set by the judge to provide discovery material to the plaintiffs, the judge entered the default against him. That's permissible under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure but is considered an extreme remedy. The judge apparently felt Rudy deserved it.

The immediate effect of this ruling is that Rudy is on the hook for $132,000 in plaintiffs' legal fees. I'm not sure if this award is an increase of the earlier award of $89,000 entered against him or an entirely new award. The case will now proceed to trial solely on the issue of damages, which rate to be substantial.

While this is a civil case, Rudy and several other defendants in the Georgia election case have been charged with multiple felonies regarding false statements regarding the election workers and attempted intimidation of those workers.

[silverscreenselect]

The report of the Fulton County special grand jury was unsealed today and revealed that the grand jury recommended indicting a total of 39 defendants. This grand jury was originally empaneled to investigate the criminal activity in connection with the 2020 election and spent months doing so. They did not, however, have the ability to indict. DA Willis then presented their findings to the regular grand jury, which issued 19 indictments last week.

Among those on the special grand jury's report were Senators Lindsey Graham, David Perdue, and Kelly Loeffler. Perdue and Loeffler lost their seats in the January 2021 runoffs in Feorgia. The special grand jury also recommended indicting all 16 fake electors. Only three were indicted. A judge ordered Willis to recuse herself from proceeding against current Lt. Governor Burt Jones because of a conflict of interest. A special prosecutor is looking into possible charges against Jones. It's believed that Willis has reached immunity agreements with several of the other fake electors in exchange for trial testimony. Others who were in the report but not indicted include Michael Flynn, Lin Wood (who has surrendered his Georgia bar license), and Boris Epshteyn.

[silverscreenselect]

A federal judge has denied Mark Meadows' request to remove his case to federal court, meaning he's going to be tried with the other 18 defendants in Fulton County. A federal law provides that any time a federal official is charged with state crimes while acting in their official capacity, they can have the case tried in federal court. It's usually been applied when a law enforcement officer is charged with a crime while making an arrest or serving a warrant. Several other defendants, who didn't have as strong a case as Meadows, have filed similar motions, but the judge hasn't set a hearing date for them. This ruling means their chances of success aren't very good. Trump also plans to file a similar motion. Meadows will appeal the ruling to the 11th Circuit (and presumably the Supreme Court from there).

[silverscreenselect]

The judge in the Georgia Trump trial ruled today that the trial for the other 17 defendants, including Trump, will not begin on October 23 as DA Willis requested. No date has been set for that trial or trials. The judge set a deadline of December 1 for filing motions for those 17 defendants and said he expects to rule on them by the end of the year. He also said that Ken Chesebro and Sidney Powell will be tried together, even though the charges against them stem from different acts. Chesebro is charged in the fake electors scheme while Powell is charged in connection with the Coffee County breaking.

Everyone (including DA Willis, I'm sure) knew that starting the trial for Trump on October 23 would be a longshot. He and the other defendants will have the advantage of seeing the DA present much of her case and many of her witnesses this fall. Anything a witness testifies to at this trial can be used to impeach their testimony at a subsequent trial for Trump or others. And of course, should Chesebro and/or Powell be acquitted, that would be an enormous public relations plus for Trump and the others.

Anything witnesses testify to at the Chesebro/Powell trial can't be used against Trump or the others unless those witnesses also testify at a second trial. However, as a practical matter, people will know what goes on here and Trump's name is going to come up many times during this trial. So a mixed bag for him.

[Bob78164]

I'm reading that on Meet the Press, Donny stated that he ignored the advice of his lawyers that he'd lost the election because he didn't respect them. (*chortle*) So much for his ability to rely on the advice-of-counsel defense. --Bob

[jarnon]

I'm reading that on Meet the Press, Donny stated that he ignored the advice of his lawyers that he'd lost the election because he didn't respect them. (*chortle*) So much for his ability to rely on the advice-of-counsel defense. --Bob

I watched Meet the Press today. An excerpt:

FMR. PRES. DONALD TRUMP: I’m not acknowledging. No. I say I won the election.
KRISTEN WELKER: Okay. Even though, again, your lawyers told you, you did not.
FMR. PRES. DONALD TRUMP: No, no. No.
KRISTEN WELKER: Did you, just let me understand --
FMR. PRES. DONALD TRUMP: Some people told me that.
KRISTEN WELKER: Okay.
FMR. PRES. DONALD TRUMP: But many people told me the opposite.
KRISTEN WELKER: You called some of your outside lawyers — you said they had crazy theories. Why were you listening to them? Were you listening to them because they were telling you what you wanted to hear?
FMR. PRES. DONALD TRUMP: You know who I listen to? Myself. I saw what happened. I watched that election, and I thought the election was over at 10 o’clock in the evening.
KRISTEN WELKER: You were listening to your instincts?
FMR. PRES. DONALD TRUMP: My instincts are a big part of it. That’s been the thing that’s gotten me to where I am, my instincts. But I also listen to people. There are many lawyers. I could give you many books. There are books that are written on how the election was rigged. There are numerous books that were written on how the election was rigged.
KRISTEN WELKER: Just to be clear, were you listening to your lawyers’ advice, or were you listening to your own instincts?
FMR. PRES. DONALD TRUMP: I was listening to different people. And when I added it all up, the election was rigged. There are books that are written --
KRISTEN WELKER: Were you calling the shots though?
FMR. PRES. DONALD TRUMP: In fact, Mollie Hemingway wrote a great book --
KRISTEN WELKER: But were you calling — 
FMR. PRES. DONALD TRUMP: – called “Rigged” --
KRISTEN WELKER: – the shots ultimately?
FMR. PRES. DONALD TRUMP: Excuse me. Mollie Hemingway, who’s highly respected and great, she wrote a book, a bestselling book called “Rigged.”
KRISTEN WELKER: Were you calling the shots, though, Mr. President, ultimately?
FMR. PRES. DONALD TRUMP:As to whether or not I believed it was rigged? Oh, sure.
KRISTEN WELKER: Okay.
FMR. PRES. DONALD TRUMP: It was my decision. But I listened to some people. Some people said that. Like, guys like Bill Barr, who was a stiff, but he wasn’t there at the time. But he didn’t do his job because he was afraid. You know what he was afraid of? He was afraid of being impeached. He was petrified to be impeached. And he — how do you not get impeached? Don’t do anything.

BTW, I liked Kristen Welker as host. She's a Philly product, and she acknowledged Andrea Mitchell, who also began her career here, as a roile model.

[silverscreenselect]

Judge McAfee in the Georgia Trump case issued an order to protect jurors. Reporters, defendants, and observers will be prohibited from photographing jurors or identifying them in any way or revealing any personal details. If lawyers refer to jurors, they will do so by Juror Number only. Jury selection is not permitted to be televised anyway, nor are TV cameras allowed to show the jury. DA Willis requested this extra layer of protection after the names and addresses of the special grand jurors in the case were leaked and some of them received threats.

[silverscreenselect]

I've renamed this thread to cover Trump's legal situation a little more generally. This week has been very bad for him.

1) A New York trial judge granted Attorney General Letitia James's motion for summary judgment against Trump, Trump Jr., and Eric Trump. The case involves a widespread pattern of business fraud. The judge found as a matter of law that Trump and his sons were guilty of knowingly filing false financial statements that vastly overstated the value of his holdings to get credit. The judge listed numerous examples in his opinion and ruling. In one instance, Trump stated that his New York apartment, which is 11,000 square feet was actually 30,000 square feet. Said the judge:

A discrepancy of this order of magnitude, by a real estate developer sizing up his own living space of decades, can only be considered fraud. Exacerbating defendants’ obstreperous conduct is their continued reliance on bogus arguments, in papers and oral argument. In defendants’ world: rent-regulated apartments are worth the same as unregulated apartments; restricted land is worth the same as unrestricted land; restrictions can evaporate into thin air; a disclaimer by one party casting responsibility on another party exonerates the other party’s lies. That is a fantasy world, not the real world.

The judge ordered that the business certificates of Trump's New York companies be canceled immediately, meaning that he can no longer do business through those companies. Receivers will be appointed to manage the properties, including Trump Tower, until the case's conclusion. Some of the properties may be sold off to pay the organization's debts. (Trump will undoubtedly appeal.) The case will now proceed to trial on the issue of what other remedies to award. James is seeking $250 million in penalties from the various defendants.

2) Judge Chutkan in the Washington DC election case denied Trump's motion to recuse herself. That ruling can't be appealed until after the trial, if Trump loses.

3) Hunter Biden has sued Rudy Giuliani and one of his attorneys for invasion of privacy in revealing the so-called contents of his laptop. In the suit, Biden does not admit that the information revealed, including his revealing pictures, came from his laptop or that this laptop even exists. Instead, Biden contends that regardless of how Giuliani got this information, he was guilty of hacking and disseminating it. Biden brought the suit in Califonia which has stricter invasion of privacy laws than many other states.

[silverscreenselect]

Fani Willis has gotten the first guilty plea in the Georgia Trump case. Scott Hall, a bail bondsman, pled guilty to five misdemeanor counts of election interference and received five years probation, a fine and community service. He will apparently be able to keep his license as a bail bondman. He's also going to testify against other co-defendants. Hall is one of the people on video caught breaking into the Coffee County elections office and was charged originally with six felony counts. His presumed testimony will have the greatest impact on Sidney Powell, whose trial starts in late October. Powell was charged on the same counts as Hall was originally.

Also today, the federal judge denied the requests of former assistant AG Jeffrey Clark and three fake electors to have their cases removed to federal court. Yesterday, Trump's lawyers issued a written statement indicating he would not try to have his case removed, instead expressing confidence in the Georgia legal system.

[silverscreenselect]

Former Trump attorney Sidney Powell has pled guilty in Georgia the day before her trial was supposed to begin. She was charged with various counts in connection with the Coffee County election office break-in. She's will plead guilty to six misdemeanor charges and receive probation, a fine, and have to write a letter of apology to the people of Georgia. More important, she's agreed to testify against other defendants in the case.

This is how these Rico cases in Georgia work. Scott Hall pled guilty earlier this month and received a similar sentence. He had the goods on Powell, because they were both in on the Coffee County break-in. But he is a local bail bondsman and wouldn't have any info on the high-level strategy sessions involving Trump and other defendants, including Ken Chesebro, whose trial begins tomorrow. She can implicate Trump, Chesebro, Giuliani, Eastman, Meadows and the other higher-ups.

[silverscreenselect]

Add another guilty plea to the Trump 19, now the Trump 16. Kenneth Chesebro, whose trial was supposed to begin today, pled guilty to one felony count. He will serve five years probation, 100 hours of community service, $5,000 in restituion, and write an apology letter to the people of Georgia. It's unclear what effect this guilty plea will have on his ability to practice law in the future. He will also testify against his other co-defendants in any upcoming trials. Chesebro was the author of the fake elector scheme.

So now there's no trials scheduled for the remaining defendants in the case. My guess is that Fani Willis is about done with handing out no-jail-time deals to defendants since between Chesebro and Sidney Powell, they've probably got firsthand testimony against just about all the higher-ups in this case. Anyone else copping a plea will do some time unless they have something really, really valuable to offer in terms of testimony.

[jarnon]

Add another guilty plea to the Trump 19, now the Trump 16. Kenneth Chesebro, whose trial was supposed to begin today, pled guilty to one felony count. He will serve five years probation, 100 hours of community service, $5,000 in restituion, and write an apology letter to the people of Georgia. It's unclear what effect this guilty plea will have on his ability to practice law in the future. He will also testify against his other co-defendants in any upcoming trials. Chesebro was the author of the fake elector scheme.

So now there's no trials scheduled for the remaining defendants in the case. My guess is that Fani Willis is about done with handing out no-jail-time deals to defendants since between Chesebro and Sidney Powell, they've probably got firsthand testimony against just about all the higher-ups in this case. Anyone else copping a plea will do some time unless they have something really, really valuable to offer in terms of testimony.

That makes it easier to schedule trials for the remaining defendants. It also stops their lawyers from getting a preview of the prosecution’s case. And we don’t have to worry about how to pronounce Chesebro.

[Weyoun]

Too bad - now Powell will not be releasing the Kraken. Flock, we will never know the truth!

[silverscreenselect]

The judge in Trump's ongoing New York fraud trial has fined him $5,000 for violation of the gag order imposed earlier this month. Trump had posted some derogatory comments on his campaign website and Truth Social about Judge Engoron's law clerk (saying she was Chuck Schumer's girlfriend), leading to the gag order. Trump deleted the Truth Social post but left the comments on his website up until two days ago, when they were spotted by Meidas Touch, a watchdog site. The judge appeared to accept Trump's attorneys claims that leaving the comments up on the website was an inadvertent oversight, but the judge imposed the fine and added in his order:

Make no mistake: future violations, whether intentional or unintentional, will subject the violator to far more severe sanctions, which may include, but are not limited to, steeper finanical penalties, holding Donald Trump in contempt of court, and possibly imprisoning him.

The gag order didn't prevent Donald Trump, Jr., another defendant in the case, from reposting an article hours later that claimed Judge Engoron was acting on the orders of a Democratic PAC and repeated the same allegations about the Judge's law clerk. Since this last statement was posted late in the day today, no word yet on how the judge will react to Trump, Jr.'s comments.

And in Trump's federal interference case, Judge Chutken stayed the limited gag order she imposed on Trump earlier this week until the Circuit Court of Appeals rules on the merits of Trump's appeal of that order.

[Pastor Fireball]

Domino #4 falls. Jenna Ellis--another one of Former Guy's lawyers whom Former Guy will soon falsely claim on his failing Pravda Antisocial site was never his lawyer--has plead out about an hour ago.

[Pastor Fireball]

And there's domino #5. Mark Meadows has been granted immunity by the DOJ in exchange for his testimony against his former boss.

Get the ketchup.

[jarnon]

And there's domino #5. Mark Meadows has been granted immunity by the DOJ in exchange for his testimony against his former boss.

Get the ketchup.

Wow, he got a way better deal than the previous dominoes.

Meadows isn't a lawyer, so he isn't constrained by attorney-client privilege. And the Nixon case demonstrated that executive privilege is not a shield in a criminal trial like this.

[silverscreenselect]

And there's domino #5. Mark Meadows has been granted immunity by the DOJ in exchange for his testimony against his former boss.

Get the ketchup.

Wow, he got a way better deal than the previous dominoes.

Meadows isn't a lawyer, so he isn't constrained by attorney-client privilege. And the Nixon case demonstrated that executive privilege is not a shield in a criminal trial like this.

Meadows' immunity deal does not affect his status in Georgia where he remains one of the defendants in the Trump case. Whatever he's saying before the federal grand jury is not public, so I don't think Willis will have a way to unseal it and use it against him. But he can still be prosecuted in Georgia.

[silverscreenselect]

Per CNN, Fani Willis has been in touch with six additional Trump defendants regarding possible plea deals. No description about the terms of any deal. One defendant, attorney Robert Cheeley, said through his lawyer that he had turned down a deal. Cheeley is charged with ten counts, most involving the fake elector scheme, as well as lying before the grand jury. Two other defendants were named in the CNN report without saying what the results were of any negotiations with the DA's office. They are Misty Hampton, the former Coffee County elections supervisor, and Mike Roman, a Trump campaign official. Hampton was charged with seven counts in connection with the Coffee County breaking, and Roman was charged with seven counts in connection with the fake elector scheme. The CNN report specifically mentioned that Willis had not been in contact with Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, and Mark Meadows, indicating that she intends to come down on them hard, along with Trump.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/25/politics ... index.html

[flockofseagulls104]

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrum ... 4189521013

These are the people who are persecuting Trump. That's what they ran on in their democrat machine-controlled districts.
That's where all their attention is on, ignoring real crimes under their jurisdiction. They are tampering with the 2024 election. That is their sole objective. It's incredibly obvious to anyone but the people who wish to remain willfully ignorant.

Wrong about immigrants, too.

[silverscreenselect]

Mark Meadows, Trump's former Chief of Staff and one of the co-defendants in the Georgia case, is now being sued by his publisher, All Seasons Press, for breach of contract because he knew the statements about election fraud in his 2021 memoir The Chief's Chief were false. The memoir contained the usual claims that Meadows and Trump believed the 2020 election had been stolen. Now, All Seasons says that based on Meadows' more recent statements, he knew what he said in his book was a lie when he wrote it. The publisher wants its $350,000 advance back and damages over $1 million. According to the publisher, the book has sold 60,000 copies out of a printing of 200,000. The book now ranks 298,000 on the Amazon Kindle bestseller list and 55,000 on the hardcover list.

https://apnews.com/article/mark-meadows ... 20election.

[Pastor Fireball]

It's no coincidence that Former Guy has been channeling his inner fuhrer on the same week that leaked videos from Former Guy's former lawyers Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell--both of whom have already pled guilty in the Georgia RICO case--prove what every normal American has known for years: Former Guy had always intended to ignore the will of the American people in 2020 and had always intended to stay in power no matter how bigly he would lose the election.

I don't want to say that DA Fani Willis's case is now a slam dunk thanks to those videos, but she's clutching the basketball in mid-air while the entire defense is busy bloviating in front of the cameras.