The Tiny Scandals and Trials

[ti-amie]

[patrick]

She will deny the gag order request

[ti-amie]

Here's the updated list of countries convicted felons can't visit.

Tristan Snell
@TristanSnell
Here are the 37 countries Donald Trump can no longer enter now that he is a convicted felon:

1. Argentina
2. Australia
3. Brazil
4. Cambodia
5. Canada
6. Chile
7. China
8. Cuba
9. Dominican Republic
10. Egypt
11. Ethiopia
12. Hong Kong
13. India
14. Indonesia
15. Iran
16. Ireland
17. Israel
18. Japan
19. Kenya
20. Macau
21. Malaysia
22. Mexico
23. Morocco
24. Nepal
25. New Zealand
26. Peru
27. Philippines
28. Singapore
29. South Africa
30. South Korea
31. Taiwan
32. Tanzania
33. Tunisia
34. Turkey
35. Ukraine
36. United Arab Emirates
37. United Kingdom

[ponchi101]

Let's get real. If he wins the election, all those countries will find a way to let him in. It is not as if you can say no to the POTUS.
Other than that, he is not a world traveller.

[Owendonovan]

Here's the updated list of countries convicted felons can't visit.

Tristan Snell
@TristanSnell
Here are the 37 countries Donald Trump can no longer enter now that he is a convicted felon:

1. Argentina
2. Australia
3. Brazil
4. Cambodia
5. Canada
6. Chile
7. China
8. Cuba
9. Dominican Republic
10. Egypt
11. Ethiopia
12. Hong Kong
13. India
14. Indonesia
15. Iran
16. Ireland
17. Israel
18. Japan
19. Kenya
20. Macau
21. Malaysia
22. Mexico
23. Morocco
24. Nepal
25. New Zealand
26. Peru
27. Philippines
28. Singapore
29. South Africa
30. South Korea
31. Taiwan
32. Tanzania
33. Tunisia
34. Turkey
35. Ukraine
36. United Arab Emirates
37. United Kingdom

So it's El Salvador we're exiling them to?

[ti-amie]

Here's the updated list of countries convicted felons can't visit.

Tristan Snell
@TristanSnell
Here are the 37 countries Donald Trump can no longer enter now that he is a convicted felon:

1. Argentina
2. Australia
3. Brazil
4. Cambodia
5. Canada
6. Chile
7. China
8. Cuba
9. Dominican Republic
10. Egypt
11. Ethiopia
12. Hong Kong
13. India
14. Indonesia
15. Iran
16. Ireland
17. Israel
18. Japan
19. Kenya
20. Macau
21. Malaysia
22. Mexico
23. Morocco
24. Nepal
25. New Zealand
26. Peru
27. Philippines
28. Singapore
29. South Africa
30. South Korea
31. Taiwan
32. Tanzania
33. Tunisia
34. Turkey
35. Ukraine
36. United Arab Emirates
37. United Kingdom

So it's El Salvador we're exiling them to?

Isn't El Salvador the country that made crypto it's currency?

Owen I was thinking the same thing re an exile. After the way he's persecuted people from Central America wouldn't that be rich?

[ponchi101]

El Salvador indeed switched to crypto.

[ti-amie]

Full text of the post by @KatiePhang

“One campaign aide had his average monthly pay double, from $26,000 to $53,500. Another employee got a $2 million severance package barring him from voluntarily cooperating with law enforcement. And one of the campaign’s top officials had her daughter hired onto the campaign staff, where she is now the fourth-highest-paid employee.”

Witness tampering? Did these people commit perjury on the stand? Will they hire lawyers smart enough to do what DA Bragg did or will they join Weisselberg at Rikers? Don't forget he went after Judge Merchan's daughter for what he did for the daughter of one of his employees? #ETTD

[ti-amie]

Here's the link to the Pro Publica article with receipts.




Eric Umansky
@ericuman
·
12h
Team Trump tried to kill this story.

They sent us a cease-and-desist letter demanding the story not be published.

[ti-amie]

[ti-amie]

[ti-amie]

Katie Phang
@KatiePhang
ICYMI: Judge Cannon in the MAL classified documents case has entered an Order amending the scheduling for some upcoming motions:

June 21, beginning at 9:30 a.m. ET (and for the duration of the day, if necessary) on Trump's Motion to Dismiss Indictment based on the Unlawful Appointment and Funding of Special Counsel Jack Smith: This hearing will focus on the Appointments Clause challenge. The Court will hear arguments first from the counsel for the parties, then from amici ("friends of the court" that have been granted the opportunity by the Court to attend court to argue on behalf of a party), and then rebuttal from counsel for the parties.

gov.uscourts.flsd.648653.605.0.pdf (http://courtlistener.com)

[ti-amie]

Katie Phang
@KatiePhang
JUST IN: The Fulton County DA's Office has moved to dismiss the appeal filed by Trump and some of his co-defendants on Judge McAfee's denial of their motion to disqualify DA Fani Willis.

The Fulton County DA's Office argues that the appeal should never have been allowed to move forward in the first place b/c there is a "lack of sufficient evidence based on the explicit factual findings of the trial court."

As the DA's Office argues: "Georgia appellate courts will not disturb a trial court’s factual findings on disputed issues outside of certain, very rare, circumstances. When a trial court makes determinations concerning matters of credibility or evidentiary weight, reviewing courts will not disturb those determinations unless they are flatly incorrect."

With this level of deference being shown to McAfee's factual findings, there is no basis for this appeal to be granted and no basis to reverse McAfee's order denying Fani Willis' disqualification.

The DA's Office goes on to argue that Judge McAfee: "considered everything proffered [by the defendants] and cast a critical eye at the testimony from the District Attorney, [and McAfee] still found that [the defendants] lacked support for claims of a material personal or financial stake [by Willis] in the present case."

The DA's Office points out that the defense's "star" witness, Terrence Bradley, was "such an utter cypher of either credibility or useful information that the trial court felt compelled to discard his testimony in its entirety."

The Motion notes: "The trial court’s concern with any potential 'questions' [about the relationship between Willis and Nathan Wade] stemmed from Wade’s continued presence in the case, a concern that was addressed when Wade withdrew as SADA."

Therefore: "At this stage, Appellants’ remaining evidence therefore relates to possible concerns about future appearances of impropriety that can no longer even come to pass, not to a disqualifying, actual conflict of interest."

[ti-amie]

Judge in Trump Documents Case Rejected Suggestions to Step Aside
Two federal judges in South Florida privately urged Aileen M. Cannon to decline the case when it was assigned to her last year, according to two people briefed on the matter. She chose to keep it.

By Charlie Savage and Alan Feuer
June 20, 2024
Updated 4:16 p.m. ET

Shortly after Judge Aileen M. Cannon drew the assignment in June 2023 to oversee former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents case, two more experienced colleagues on the federal bench in Florida urged her to pass it up and hand it off to another jurist, according to two people briefed on the conversations.

The judges who approached Judge Cannon — including the chief judge in the Southern District of Florida, Cecilia M. Altonaga — each asked her to consider whether it would be better if she were to decline the high-profile case, allowing it to go to another judge, the two people said.

But Judge Cannon, who was appointed by Mr. Trump, wanted to keep the case and refused the judges’ entreaties. Her assignment drew attention because she has scant trial experience and had previously shown unusual favor to Mr. Trump by intervening in a way that helped him in the criminal investigation that led to his indictment, only to be reversed in a sharply critical rebuke by a conservative appeals court panel.

The extraordinary and previously undisclosed effort by Judge Cannon’s colleagues to persuade her to step aside adds another dimension to the increasing criticism of how she has gone on to handle the case.

She has broken, according to lawyers who operate there, with a general practice of federal judges in the Southern District of Florida of delegating some pretrial motions to a magistrate judge — in this instance, Judge Bruce E. Reinhart. While he is subordinate to her, Judge Reinhart is an older and much more experienced jurist. In 2022, he was the one who signed off on an F.B.I. warrant to search Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s club and residence in Florida, for highly sensitive government files that Mr. Trump kept after leaving office.

Since then, Judge Cannon has exhibited hostility to prosecutors, handled pretrial motions slowly and indefinitely postponed the trial, declining to set a date for it to begin even though both the prosecution and the defense had told her they could be ready to start this summer.

But Mr. Trump’s lawyers have also urged her to delay any trial until after the election, and her handling of the case has virtually ensured that they will succeed in that strategy. Should Mr. Trump retake the White House, he could order the Justice Department to drop the case.

As Judge Cannon’s handling of the case has come under intensifying scrutiny, her critics have suggested that she could be in over her head, in the tank for Mr. Trump — or both.

Against that backdrop, word of the early efforts by her colleagues on the bench to persuade her to step aside — and the significance of her decision not to do so — has spread among other federal judges and the people who know them.

Neither Judge Cannon nor Judge Altonaga directly responded to requests for comment, including by emails sent via the clerk of the district court, Angela E. Noble. Ms. Noble later wrote in an email: “Our judges do not comment on pending cases.”

It is routine for novice judges to look to more experienced jurists for informal advice or mentoring as they learn to perform their new roles. And as the district’s chief, Judge Altonaga has a formal role in administering the federal judiciary in South Florida.

But ultimately, Judge Cannon is not subject to the authority of her district court elders. Like any Senate-confirmed, presidentially appointed judge, she has a life tenure and independent standing and is free to choose to ignore any such advice.

The two people who discussed the efforts to persuade her to hand off the case spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter. Each had been told about it by different federal judges in the Southern District of Florida, including Judge Altonaga.

Neither of the people identified the second federal judge in Florida who had reached out to Judge Cannon. One of the people confirmed the effort to persuade Judge Cannon to step aside but did not describe the details of the conversations the two judges had with her. The other person offered more details.

This person said each outreach took place by telephone. The first judge to call Judge Cannon, this person said, suggested to her that it would be better for the case to be handled by a jurist based closer to the district’s busiest courthouse in Miami, where the grand jury that indicted Mr. Trump had sat.

The Miami courthouse also had a secure facility approved to hold the sort of highly classified information that would be discussed in pretrial motions and used as evidence in the case. Judge Cannon is the sole judge in the federal courthouse in Fort Pierce, a two-hour drive north of Miami. When she was assigned to the case, the courthouse in Fort Pierce did not have a secure facility.

Because Judge Cannon kept the case, taxpayers have since had to pay to build a secure room — known as a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or S.C.I.F. — there.

After that initial argument failed to sway Judge Cannon to step aside, the person said, Judge Altonaga placed a call.

The chief judge — an appointee of former President George W. Bush — is said to have made a more pointed argument: It would be bad optics for Judge Cannon to oversee the trial because of what had happened during the criminal investigation that led to Mr. Trump’s indictment on charges of illegally retaining national security documents after leaving office and obstructing government efforts to retrieve them.

In August 2022, the F.B.I. obtained a search warrant from Judge Reinhart to go to Mar-a-Lago to hunt for any remaining classified documents that Mr. Trump had failed to turn over after receiving a subpoena for them.

The agents found thousands of government files that Mr. Trump had kept, even though under the Presidential Records Act they should have gone to the National Archives when he left office. The files the F.B.I. recovered included over 100 marked as classified, including some at the most highly restricted level.

Soon after the search, Mr. Trump filed a lawsuit against the government protesting the seizure of the materials, which he claimed were his personal property, and asking for a special master to be appointed to sift through them. Rather than letting Judge Reinhart handle that lawsuit, as would be the normal procedure, Judge Cannon chose to decide the matter.

Shocking legal experts across ideological lines, she barred investigators from gaining access to the evidence and appointed a special master, although she said that person would only make recommendations to her and she would make the final decisions.

Judge Cannon’s decision was unusual in part because she intervened before there were any charges — treating Mr. Trump differently from typical targets of search warrants based on his supposed special status as a former president.

She also directed the special master to consider whether some of the seized files should be permanently kept from investigators under executive privilege, a notion that was widely seen as dubious since it has never successfully been made in a criminal case.

Prosecutors appealed to the Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta. In a repudiation, a three-judge panel that included two Trump appointees reversed her order and ruled that she never had legal authority to intervene in the first place.

“It is indeed extraordinary for a warrant to be executed at the home of a former president — but not in a way that affects our legal analysis or otherwise gives the judiciary license to interfere in an ongoing investigation,” the panel wrote.

Limits on when courts can interfere with a criminal investigation “apply no matter who the government is investigating,” it added. “To create a special exception here would defy our nation’s foundational principle that our law applies ‘to all, without regard to numbers, wealth or rank.’”

Mr. Trump’s lawyers appealed to the Supreme Court, but it declined to hear the case. In December 2022, Judge Cannon dismissed Mr. Trump’s lawsuit.

Six months later, the grand jury in Miami indicted Mr. Trump, alleging in detail how he had stored highly sensitive documents in a bathroom and on a stage at Mar-a-Lago and persistently led his aides and lawyers to stymie efforts by the Justice Department and the National Archives to recover them.

Under the district’s standard practices, according to its clerk, the new case went into a system that would randomly assign it to one of a handful of judges whose chambers are in the West Palm Beach division, which covers Mar-a-Lago, or in either of its two adjoining divisions, Fort Pierce and Fort Lauderdale.

It went to Judge Cannon.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/20/us/p ... ments.html

[ti-amie]

I am not a lawyer. I'm not lawyer adjacent in any way but reading this even I went "What?" a couple of times.

Katie Phang
@KatiePhang
Special Counsel, Jack Smith, was present today in court today. He sat behind counsel's table. Arguing on behalf of the DOJ today was James Pearce. Arguing on behalf of Donald Trump was Emil Bove (Todd Blanche was also present). Counsel for Co-Defendants, Carlos De Oliveira and Walt Nauta, were also present. No defendants were present.

Bove: SCO (Special Counsel's Office) should not have access to the “permanent, indefinite appropriations” on which it is currently relying as a funding source.

Bove: The SCO was not properly established by “other law” (similar to the arguments that the defense used on Friday) and that the “independent counsel” that Congress authorized to use the permanent, indefinite appropriations are different than special counsel.

Cannon: What's your cognizable injury that results from SCO accessing the funding?
Bove: The imminent threat of liberty restraint to Donald Trump resulting from the continuing prosecution or a conviction.

Cannon: The payment of money has to be authorized by statute, but it isn't here, right?
Bove: Correct.

Cannon: Is there any cap to the funding?
Bove: No, which is why you have to be wary about who can access the money...There is a separation of powers problem to fund these 2 separate investigations, especially with no check on the scope of what's going on.

Bove: The government contradicted itself between its arguments Friday and today, saying on Friday that the prosecution emphasized the regulations to which the special counsel is subject to minimize its independence, while today saying that the special counsel needs to argue for its independence to qualify for the permanent, indefinite appropriations.

Cannon: You’ve argued that the Special Counsel is taking inconsistent opinions, but aren't you doing the same thing, just flip-flopped?
Bove: The defense's main argument is the “other law,” meaning there is no such other law authorizing the special counsel to be appointed, and the issue of the lack of sufficient oversight/the special counsel’s independence is an alternative argument.

Thread

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Conversation
Katie Phang
@KatiePhang
·
1h
Bove: SCO (Special Counsel's Office) should not have access to the “permanent, indefinite appropriations” on which it is currently relying as a funding source.

Bove: The SCO was not properly established by “other law” (similar to the arguments that the defense used on Friday)
Show more
Katie Phang
@KatiePhang
·
1h
Cannon: What's your cognizable injury that results from SCO accessing the funding?
Bove: The imminent threat of liberty restraint to Donald Trump resulting from the continuing prosecution or a conviction.
Katie Phang
@KatiePhang
·
1h
Cannon: The payment of money has to be authorized by statute, but it isn't here, right?
Bove: Correct.

Cannon: Is there any cap to the funding?
Bove: No, which is why you have to be wary about who can access the money...There is a separation of powers problem to fund these 2
Show more
Katie Phang
@KatiePhang
·
1h
Bove: The government contradicted itself between its arguments Friday and today, saying on Friday that the prosecution emphasized the regulations to which the special counsel is subject to minimize its independence, while today saying that the special counsel needs to argue for
Show more
Katie Phang
@KatiePhang
Cannon: You’ve argued that the Special Counsel is taking inconsistent opinions, but aren't you doing the same thing, just flip-flopped?
Bove: The defense's main argument is the “other law,” meaning there is no such other law authorizing the special counsel to be appointed, and the issue of the lack of sufficient oversight/the special counsel’s independence is an alternative argument.

12:58 PM · Jun 24, 2024
·
32.4K
Views

StrictlyChristo 
@StrictlyChristo
·
23m
The Special Counsel law has been in existence for 50 years and nobody has tried to make frivolous arguments that it was not Constitutional before. We know that partisans in the House will try to undercut its funding, that's why it has to have its own unlimited funding.

Next up was James Pearce, on behalf of the Special Counsel's Office.

Pearce: Special Counsel is independent counsel that can access Congressionally-enacted permanent, indefinite funding.

Cannon: So it's limitless appropriations?
Pearce: Yes, consistent with the idea of "permanent, indefinite appropriations."

Cannon: Can you provide some examples of limitless appropriations?
Pearce: Yes, I can think of two. And it means that they are not limited by time or by amount.

Cannon then started to ask Pearce about the Special Counsel's website that showed the latest expenditure report. She even drilled down on specific line items, including the total amount of expenditures for November 2022-March 2023.

Cannon: Is it $5.4 million or really $9 million?
Pearce: I'm not sure, but we can supplement w/the Court.
Cannon: That would be helpful because these are public documents.
Pearce: I understand, but your Honor, there is no case where any court has suggested that the total amount of expenditures is relevant.
Cannon: But when it's limitless, there is a separation of powers concern...
Pearce: In fact the caselaw says only to focus on the source [of funding] and the purpose [of the funding].
Cannon: Don't interrupt me.

Cannon: What about other funding sources?
Pearce: The DOJ has over a billion dollars that can be used as appropriations to fund the Special Counsel's Office.

Cannon: What happens to prior expenditures (in the event the court rules that SCO isn't allowed to use this funding)?
Pearce: SCOTUS says that you don't look to undo acts that have already happened. So there is no change or effect at all retrospectively.

Pearce: There is “sufficient independence” and the special counsel “strikes that balance of independence and accountability.” Pearce furthers that the special counsel can and should be able to operate outside of the DOJ.

Cannon: Are there any examples that you can think of when an Attorney General rescinds or modifies order of appointment of SC?
Pearce: I can't think of any examples where regulations were rescinded midstream, other than perhaps the Saturday Night Massacre.
Cannon: So this idea of rescission is illusory?
Pearce: That is not in the least correct.

Pearce: So it's not really a question of whether the rescission happened or not, it's how is the power structured.
Cannon: Janet Reno said it's too much political pressure to yank a special prosecutor.
Pearce: There is a presumption of regularity. As far as our SC are concerned, SC have complied with specific framework, complying with DOJ policies, etc.

Pearce: The test of what makes someone a "principal officer" is not whether they are President-nominated and Senate-confirmed.

Ann BlackBird
@AnnBlackBird1
·
32m
Congress can’t defund Jack Smith So now they are looking to Cannon
Interesting

Cannon: What is your substantiation for your argument that there is alternate funding available to the SCO?
Pearce: I can represent that there is the full commitment of the DOJ to fund the Special Counsel in this prosecution.

Finally, Bove gets up for a brief rebuttal.

Bove: There is a problem with the DOJ's alternate source of funding argument. This just highlights the separation of powers problem. DOJ shouldn't be able to say that it has the money to use if the Court rules against the DOJ on the appropriations issue.

Bove: If the DOJ uses that money, then there would be a "political response" from Congress and likely another motion from us and the co-defendants.

Bove: We need more oversight from Congress for the extraordinary and unprecedented things going on here. More is required here given what is at stake. The DOJ's position is disrespectful and unacceptable.

Bove: And this gag order motion this afternoon. They want to gag Trump on the campaign trail and before a presidential debate. Did the AG authorize the filing of this motion?

StrictlyChristo 
@StrictlyChristo
·
28m
They are making frivolous, semantic arguments to a sympathetic judge. A normal judge would not entertain this nonsense. Cannon is in the tank for Trump.

Ava
@Annie1But
·
25m
Her MO: accepting one frivolous motion after another for which she indulges 45 with ‘hearings’, & then takes her own sweet time to rule on anything.

Aside from her endless prevarication, she’s wary about ruling because she’s very much aware of the 11th Circuit’s close scrutiny.