OUR CRIMINAL EX-PRESIDENT

[HipKat]

But, but, but they're not violent

Federal Judge Overseeing Trump D.C. Criminal Case Threatened

Judge Tanya Chutkan may decide as soon as Friday whether to impose a full protective order prohibiting Donald Trump and his lawyers from making public any of the evidence in the federal election fraud case against the former president, or whether to give him more latitude.

But however that shakes out, a broader and more consequential issue may still be looming: Are there any limits to what Trump and his lawyers can say to criticize the case, impugn special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecutors or heap scorn on the judge? Or is Trump exempt from normal strictures because he’s running for president?

The local rules governing federal court in Washington, D.C., are surprisingly stringent. In order to avoid interfering with a fair trial or prejudicing “the administration of justice,” lawyers are prohibited under rule 57.7 from making any public statement about “the identity, testimony, or credibility of prospective witnesses,” and “any opinion as to the accused’s guilt or innocence or as to the merits of the case or the evidence in the case."

Every jurisdiction has a set of local court rules, which are usually made by a committee of judges and lawyers, and then evolve over time. This particular Washington rule appears to be stricter than most, and some legal scholars believe the language is unconstitutional on free speech grounds. But it only applies to the lawyers, and the real question remains what Trump, the defendant, can get away with.

The Washington rules also allow a judge to issue a special order in “a widely publicized or sensational criminal case,” restricting what the lawyers — and the defendant — can say in public. Those sorts of rules have passed constitutional muster, as long as they are very specific. Such a gag order was imposed in 2019 on Trump adviser Roger Stone after he posted a photo of the federal judge presiding over his Washington trial with crosshairs superimposed over her image. 

Legal experts say Chutkan faces an almost impossible dilemma, though, should she decide to impose any restrictions: How can you limit the speech of a leading candidate for president? And what would she do if Trump failed to comply with the order?

“Judge Chutkan is being put in an extremely difficult position,” said Peter Zeidenberg, a longtime criminal defense attorney based in Washington. “I’m glad it’s her having to decide, and not me.”

After months of directing vitriol at Smith, Trump this week impugned the judge, saying on his Truth Social site: “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!”

Experts say statements like that go to the heart of why there are rules about pretrial public comments, because the point is to prevent either side from seeking to influence the prospective jury pool. But like so much with Trump, experts say this case is different.

“In this unique situation, the judge has to balance Trump’s interest as a candidate and also the public interest in hearing him not only on policies, but his position on guilt or innocence,” said Stephen Gillers, a law professor and expert in legal ethics at New York University.

Especially given that the special counsel charged Trump in an extremely detailed “speaking indictment,” he said, it would be unfair to bar the former president from responding in public.

“The public wants to know his story,” Gillers said.

That said, a criminal defendant granted release on bail doesn’t have the same constitutional rights as everyone else, said Andrew Weissmann, a former prosecutor and NBC News legal contributor who was lead prosecutor in then-special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. Judges can and do impose all sorts of conditions on criminal defendants, such as drug testing or a prohibition on carrying firearms.

Most defendants probably couldn’t get away with insulting the judge in their case, said Arthur Berger, a Washington lawyer and legal ethics expert. But for Trump, Berger and others agree, the red line is likely to be statements that could be perceived as witness tampering or threats, such as Trump’s recent post announcing, “If you go after me, I am coming after you,” which he said was not aimed at prosecutors or the judge.

“You can say, ‘I think this court stinks,’” said David Schoen, a criminal defense lawyer who represented Trump in his second impeachment. “You can’t corruptly try to influence a particular witness.” 

If Trump did make statements deemed to cross a line, Gillers said, the judge could impose a gag order after giving each side a chance to weigh in — but it would have to be narrow and specific to pass constitutional muster.

And then she would have to enforce it. She could threaten to hold Trump in contempt, which carries with it penalties of fines or jail. Or she could threaten to change the terms of his release and jail him that way. Either scenario is hard to imagine. Would the Secret Service follow Trump to jail?

“She wouldn’t want to place herself in a situation where he calls her bluff and she can’t carry it out,” Berger said. 

“I just can’t imagine that she’s going to lock him up,” Schoen said, echoing the view of other lawyers interviewed. “I think they’re going have to live with it.”

As for his lawyers, the experts said, Trump lawyer John Lauro appeared to have violated Washington local rule 57.7 in his appearances last week on "Meet the Press" and other news shows, because he took direct aim at the merits of the case against his client while discussing some of the evidence. But many said that rule is not often rigidly enforced.

“If you read it literally, nobody could say anything,” Berger said.

Muzzling Trump or his lawyers “would reinforce his First Amendment complaints,” said Bruce Rogow, who represented Stone. “The indictment was a ‘speaking indictment’ so why shouldn’t the defendant’s counsel or the defendant have some latitude in speaking? Jurors will know all about this case from the press long before they get in the box.”

[HipKat]

[SackMan518]

On 8/16/2023 at 7:31 PM, HipKat said:

But, but, but they're not violent

Because they're not. Give me your address so I can send you over for some ANTIFA masks. Free of charge!

[micknaboz]

 

To: Secretaries of State, state election officials, and members of congress

Disqualify Donald Trump from Holding Public Office, Under the Constitution’s 14th Amendment

 

 

https://sign.moveon.org/petitions/disqualify-donald-trump-from-holding-public-office-under-the-constitution-s-14th-amendment/?source=ads.fb.tao.dqtrump-v3_i0t0h1d0_a3&fbclid=IwAR19GIWK1eEhVKGVdUUFjENPHMBkR7X1WB__c6k_jq8v8atSW-VHuh-nujY

[HipKat]

On 8/17/2023 at 7:09 PM, SackMan518 said:

Because they're not. Give me your address so I can send you over for some ANTIFA masks. Free of charge!

Really?? Who's threatening judges and prosecutors?? Pretty sure those are MAGAs

[HipKat]

[SackMan518]

9 hours ago, HipKat said:

Really?? Who's threatening judges and prosecutors?? Pretty sure those are MAGAs

Like the ANTIFA people who set fire up the Mark Hatfield federal courthouse in Portland, Oregon. They were the MAGAs right? The building was the site of over 120 consecutive nights of rioting by BLM and Antifa in 2021. Maybe when they attacked the White House in 2020 when they hurt over 60 Secret Service Agents and almost burned the St Johns Episcopal Church?

YOU ARE IN A CULT. Your Leftist buddies have done more damage and violence far than a million "white supremacists" or "MAGATs" could ever do that.

You are in a Leftist cult on a message board who only differentiate on the gender/trans/LGBTQ from us but all the difference that you're a Democrat puppet. Now don't ever tell me about your ideologist shocktroops tell me that you support the "good guys" while demonizing Conservatives. You will lose every day so go look at some more Media Bias Fact Check from an internet owner that you can't even locate to even have an interview with or even a photo of the guy. Where is he?

/rantover

/getthefuckoutofhere

[HipKat]

3 hours ago, SackMan518 said:

Like the ANTIFA people who set fire up the Mark Hatfield federal courthouse in Portland, Oregon. They were the MAGAs right? The building was the site of over 120 consecutive nights of rioting by BLM and Antifa in 2021. Maybe when they attacked the White House in 2020 when they hurt over 60 Secret Service Agents and almost burned the St Johns Episcopal Church?

YOU ARE IN A CULT. Your Leftist buddies have done more damage and violence far than a million "white supremacists" or "MAGATs" could ever do that.

You are in a Leftist cult on a message board who only differentiate on the gender/trans/LGBTQ from us but all the difference that you're a Democrat puppet. Now don't ever tell me about your ideologist shocktroops tell me that you support the "good guys" while demonizing Conservatives. You will lose every day so go look at some more Media Bias Fact Check from an internet owner that you can't even locate to even have an interview with or even a photo of the guy. Where is he?

/rantover

/getthefuckoutofhere

Your lack of self-awareness or any real awareness is both embarrassing and hysterical at the same time

Trump supporters post names and addresses of Georgia grand jurors online

Texas woman charged with threatening to kill judge overseeing Trump’s federal election interference case

[Albany,n.y.]

[HipKat]

[HipKat]

[micknaboz]

Lock him up

 

 

 

 

[micknaboz]

BIDENOMICS  is fueling a small business boom .

We've seen the best two year period for new business applications on record,  and we're on track for another.

[RichJ]

35 minutes ago, micknaboz said:

BIDENOMICS  is fueling a small business boom .

We've seen the best two year period for new business applications on record,  and we're on track for another.

" I got my foodstamps on time "

[micknaboz]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Navigator Research

 

@NavigatorSurvey

·

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 NEW POLL: By a two-to-one margin, most Americans continue to believe Donald Trump has committed a crime (net +32; 62% committed a crime – 30% did not commit a crime), including independents by 49 points (67% committed a crime – 18% did not).

 

 

9:05 AM · Aug 25, 2023

 

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[HipKat]

Lock Him Up? A New Poll Has Some Bad News for Trump

A new POLITICO Magazine/Ipsos poll punctures some prevailing political narratives about the Trump indictments.

To hear Donald Trump tell it, the fact that he keeps getting indicted by prosecutors is a boon to his reelection effort. “Any time they file an indictment, we go way up in the polls,” he said at a dinner shortly after he was charged by the Justice Department with attempting to overturn the 2020 election.

This counterintuitive claim is questionable on its face — if not demonstrably false upon close examination — but it is one among many dubious arguments that Trump and his allies have advanced in recent months as he has been confronted with four different prosecutions brought by the Justice Department, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and, most recently, the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office in Georgia.

A new POLITICO Magazine/Ipsos poll provides some bad news for Trump: Even as he remains the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination, the cascading indictments are likely to take a toll on his general election prospects.

The survey results suggest Americans are taking the cases seriously — particularly the Justice Department’s 2020 election case — and that most people are skeptical of Trump’s claim to be the victim of a legally baseless witch hunt or an elaborate, multi-jurisdictional effort to “weaponize” law enforcement authorities against him.

Furthermore, public sentiment in certain areas — including how quickly to hold a trial and whether to incarcerate Trump if he’s convicted — is moving against the former president when compared to a previous POLITICO Magazine/Ipsos poll conducted in June. This latest poll was conducted from Aug. 18 to Aug. 21, roughly two-and-a-half weeks after Trump’s second federal indictment and several days after Trump was criminally charged in Fulton County. The poll had a sample of 1,032 adults, age 18 or older, who were interviewed online; it has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points for all respondents.

Here are some of the most notable findings from our latest survey.

1. Most Americans believe Trump should stand trial before the 2024 election

On Monday, Trump’s lawyers will face off against federal prosecutors before U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan over when to schedule his trial in the Justice Department’s 2020 election case — a high-stakes dispute that could have dramatic implications for the 2024 election. Federal prosecutors have proposed that the trial begin on Jan. 2, 2024, while Trump’s lawyers have countered that the trial should take place in April 2026. If Trump gets his way, that would, perhaps not coincidentally, leave him plenty of time to complete his reelection bid and, if successful, shut the case down after retaking the White House.

Americans are far closer to the Justice Department’s position than to Trump’s. Fifty-nine percent of respondents in the poll said that the federal trial in Trump’s 2020 election subversion case should take place before the 2024 Republican primaries begin early next year. A slightly higher number — 61 percent of all respondents — said that the trial should take place before the general election next November.

There was a predictable partisan split among Democrats and Republicans, with nearly 90 percent of Democratic respondents seeking an early trial date and roughly a third of Republican respondents agreeing.

It was the reaction of independents, however, that may prove most ominous for Trump. Nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of independents said that Trump should stand trial before next November — a figure that suggests particular interest in and attentiveness to a case that effectively alleges that Trump tried to steal the last election. By way of a rough comparison, when we asked a similar question in June following Trump’s indictment by the Justice Department in Florida concerning his retention of classified documents, fewer than half of independent respondents (48 percent) said that the trial in that case should take place before next November.

2. About half of the country believes Trump is guilty in the pending prosecutions

The claims on the part of Trump and his supporters that he is the victim of a “witch hunt” also seem to be having little effect on the views of Americans across the entire population. About half of the country — including overwhelming majorities of Democrats and roughly half of independents — believe that Trump is guilty of the series of charges.

Among the four pending cases, the Manhattan District Attorney’s prosecution produced slightly less robust figures, with a total of just 48 percent of respondents reporting that they believe Trump is guilty in that case, which concerns alleged hush money payments to the adult film star Stormy Daniels.

Befitting our polarized country, bare majorities said that they believe Trump is guilty in the other cases — 51 percent in the pending Justice Department and Fulton County prosecutions concerning the 2020 election, and 52 percent in the Justice Department’s classified documents case.

3. A conviction in DOJ’s 2020 election case would hurt Trump in the general election

Our latest poll also makes clear that it would be unhelpful for Trump’s presidential bid if he is federally convicted of a criminal scheme to steal the last election at the same time that he is asking the American people to send him back to the White House.

A plurality of respondents (44 percent) said that a conviction in the case would have no impact on their likelihood of supporting Trump, but the numbers tipped decisively against Trump among those who said that the result would inform their vote. Nearly one-third of respondents (32 percent) said that a conviction in the case would make them less likely to support Trump, including about one-third of independents (34 percent).

Only 13 percent of respondents said that a conviction would make them more likely to support Trump, and that figure was comprised mostly of Republicans.

4. There is considerable room for the numbers to get worse for Trump

Despite the seeming tsunami of news coverage of Trump’s legal issues, a sizable portion of the public is still learning about the alleged crimes of the former president.

Most respondents said that they understand the charges in the pending cases either very well or somewhat well, with the highest numbers — more than 60 percent — saying so about the federal prosecutions. But somewhere between roughly one-quarter and one-third of respondents said that they do not understand the charges in the cases well.

That could change as the cases proceed through litigation — and, in particular, if one or more cases goes to trial before next November.

It is reasonable to assume that the media coverage and the facts revealed at any trials would, on balance, be unhelpful to Trump as a political matter, even if he manages to avoid convictions. Criminal defendants generally do not come out looking better at the end of highly publicized trials, even if they get off at the end of the day.

If there is a strong defense to the charges as a factual matter, Trump and his lawyers have yet to provide it. After the latest indictment in Fulton County, for instance, Trump publicly said that he would hold a press conference and release a report that would prove his innocence.

Curious Americans were ultimately left hanging. Two days after his announcement, Trump called off the presser.

5. Half of the country believes Trump should go to prison if convicted in DOJ’s Jan. 6 case

We also asked respondents what the punishment should be, if anything, if Trump is convicted in the Justice Department’s 2020 election case. Fifty percent of respondents said that he should go to prison, including a large majority of Democrats (87 percent) and a slight majority of independents (51 percent).

Another large number of respondents were open to alternative sanctions: 16 percent of respondents said that Trump should get probation, but no imprisonment, if convicted, and 12 percent of respondents said that he should simply get a financial penalty. Only 18 percent (largely comprised of Republicans) said that there should be no penalty even upon a conviction.

The results suggest that Americans may view Trump’s conduct surrounding the Jan. 6 riot and his effort to overturn the election as more serious than those in the criminal cases that were filed against Trump earlier this year. When we asked respondents comparable questions in June, only 43 percent of respondents said that Trump should go to prison if convicted in the Justice Department’s classified documents case, while 40 percent said that Trump should go to prison if convicted in the Manhattan District Attorney’s case regarding the payments to Stormy Daniels.

6. Trump and the GOP’s ‘weaponization’ defense appears to be having limited traction

For months, Trump and his Republican allies have claimed that the Justice Department has been “weaponized” against him by President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland. We asked a series of questions in order to try to get some understanding of what Americans make of this claim. The results were decidedly mixed for team Trump.

Fifty-nine percent of respondents — including nearly two-thirds of independents — said that the Justice Department’s decision to indict Trump in the 2020 election case was based on a fair evaluation of the evidence and the law. At the same time, however, 44 percent of respondents — including 20 percent of Democrats and 40 percent of independents — said that the decision was based on trying to gain a political advantage for Biden.

In fact, more people believe Trump is guilty of weaponizing the legal system than Biden. Fifty-three percent of respondents — including 56 percent of independents — said that the Trump administration actively used the Justice Department to investigate political enemies with little or no evidence of actual wrongdoing. The comparable number for the Biden administration was 45 percent across all respondents, including 43 percent of independents.

7. Trump is the prevailing villain in the story of his indictments

To further test whether the indictments are helping Trump, we asked respondents if they had favorable or unfavorable opinions of the actions, statements and behavior of key players in the federal cases — including not just Trump, but Biden, Garland, special counsel Jack Smith and the Justice Department more generally.

The results were decidedly unhelpful to Trump. Respondents provided Trump with a net favorability rating of -31 percent — the worst figure, by far, in this battery of questions (27 percent favorable vs. 58 percent unfavorable). Biden fared much better than Trump but still came out with a net favorability rating of -9 percent (36 percent favorable vs. 45 percent unfavorable).

By contrast, the Justice Department appears to have come out slightly ahead in the scheme of things, though just barely. Respondents reported a net positive favorability rating for the Justice Department of 7 percent (40 percent favorable vs. 33 percent unfavorable). Smith’s conduct received a net positive favorability rating of 6 percent (26 percent favorable vs. 20 percent unfavorable).

And what about the famously circumspect and temperamentally moderate Garland? Perhaps appropriately for the man, Garland came out exactly even, with a net favorability rating of 0 percent in relation to his handling of the cases (22 percent favorable vs. 22 percent unfavorable).

Notably, a majority of respondents didn’t know whether to approve or disapprove of how Smith and Garland were handling the cases. Both men are still largely in the background. That may change when Trump gets to trial.

[micknaboz]

What's gonna kill Trump and Republicans in general in 2024 is that 53% of Independents that think he's guilty.

Toss in the the abortion issue and  I can see the Dems sweeping the table in 2024, White House, Senate, and House.

[Herodotus]

On 8/8/2023 at 7:08 PM, micknaboz said:

Sure!

Whatever!

You saying the US isn't a democracy?

lmfao

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It hasn't been a democracy in decades.  To be pedantic, its never been a democracy.  Its more of a constitutional representative republic with a strong judiciary and has been since 1804

[Herodotus]

On 8/20/2023 at 5:12 PM, HipKat said:

I really doubt he ever gets packed off to prison

[micknaboz]

10 minutes ago, Herodotus said:

It hasn't been a democracy in decades.  To be pedantic, its never been a democracy.  Its more of a constitutional representative republic with a strong judiciary and has been since 1804

Oh puhleeze!  Next you'll be telling me Russia is a democracy and Putin was elected by 80% of the voters.   LMFAO

[HipKat]

 

 

[micknaboz]

LMAO

[Herodotus]

43 minutes ago, micknaboz said:

Oh puhleeze!  Next you'll be telling me Russia is a democracy and Putin was elected by 80% of the voters.   LMFAO

1. Let it be known it was you and not I who brought up Russia.

2. This thread is not about Russia.  If you want to coax my opinions about Russian electoral politics start a thread

3. Nope, please.  This country has been marching further and further to the right since Nixon.  Hell, the only difference between the DNC and GOP is about 20 years.  

[micknaboz]

You're slipping dude.

[micknaboz]

This is evil personified!    It exceeds even Putin level evil.