Israel More Isolated Than Ever After Trump’s Recent Statements
Lucas Leiroz
March 29, 2024
Former American president recognizes that the Zionist regime made a serious mistake in showing the results of its war campaign in Gaza.
Former American President Donald Trump, despite maintaining a reasonably lucid stance regarding the Ukrainian conflict, is a radical Zionist and has shown on several occasions that he is willing to support Tel Aviv in its genocidal war against Gaza’s Palestinians. However, the strategic errors committed by the Zionist regime are so serious that they are forcing even Trump to object to Israel’s practices.
Recently, during an interview with an Israeli newspaper, Trump warned that Tel Aviv is “losing international support” due to its war in the Gaza Strip. He advised the Israelis to “end” the military campaign as quickly as possible, thus preventing Israel from becoming even more isolated on the international arena. More than that, the former American president condemned the Israeli anti-humanitarian attacks, describing the destruction of residential facilities in Gaza as a “big mistake”, severely criticizing the actions of the Zionist regime.
In a way, Trump’s speech is hypocritical, as he criticizes the explicit aspect of Israeli actions. He does not seem to be really concerned with the crimes committed by Israel, but with the fact that such crimes are damaging the international image of the Zionist regime. However, this type of connivance with Israel’s crimes was already expected from a Zionist leader like Trump, which is why the mere fact of criticizing Zionist explicitness is actually surprising.
“It’s a very bad picture for the world. The world is seeing this… every night, I would watch buildings pour down on people (…) Go and do what you have to do. But you don’t do that (…) And I think that’s one of the reasons that there has been a lot of kickback. If people didn’t see that, every single night I’d watch and every single one of those… And I think Israel wanted to show that it’s tough, but sometimes you shouldn’t be doing that,” he told journalists.
As is well known, Trump and Netanyahu were close allies during the Republican government in the U.S. Some analysts considered Trump the “most pro-Israel president in history.” The severe sanctions on Iran, the opening of the American embassy in Jerusalem and the mediation of the Abraham Accords are some examples of how Washington and Tel Aviv were close allies during the Trump era.
However, relations between Trump and Netanyahu entered into crisis after the Israeli leader recognized Joe Biden’s victory and congratulated the then new American president in 2020. According to several analysts, Trump felt “betrayed” by Netanyahu, changing his personal opinion on the Zionist politician. Obviously, it is not possible to assess how much Trump really felt affected by such actions by Netanyahu, but it is obvious that relations between the former American president and the Israeli prime minister are no longer as stable as they used to be.
Despite supporting Israel, Trump has maintained a critical stance towards Zionist actions in Gaza. According to the former American leader, Tel Aviv “was not prepared” to face Hamas. He admits that Israel has committed several serious strategic errors during the war, damaging not only its military interests, but also its international image, becoming an increasingly isolated state.
It is interesting to see that there is a growth in critical opinion regarding Israel among Trump and his supporters. This shows that the Zionist regime’s anti-humanitarian practices are damaging even Israel’s most solid and traditional alliances. The more Israel attacks civilians and destroys non-military infrastructure, the more public opinion endorses criticism of the regime and stops supporting it in the war against the Palestinians in Gaza. With this, Israel’s isolation on the international arena becomes a reality.
Despite being a Zionist, Trump is above all a “political businessman”. The former American president is known for his pragmatism, signing alliances or breaking agreements in accordance with the interests of the U.S. Trump increasingly seems to realize that continuing to support Israel unconditionally does not seem like an appropriate move, as this would harm Washington’s international relations with important countries that condemn Israeli crimes.
With the U.S. elections approaching and a Trump victory becoming increasingly possible, Netanyahu is certainly quite isolated right now. Israel has frictions even in its traditional ties with the U.S. and the EU, as its government’s explicit crimes generate condemnation around the world. Trump seems to be realizing this and trying to save his own political image from the usual association with Netanyahu.
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/ ... tatements/
Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy
Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy
The 61bn dollar question is what Trump does now
Martin Jay
April 26, 2024
The southern border issue is still left hanging while Ukraine’s borders take precedent with U.S. lawmakers.
Until just a few days ago, no one in the world had heard of Mike Johnson. The Republican House speaker in the House of Representatives made world acclaim when he threw his weight behind an aid package for Ukraine totalling some 61bn USD and throwing the cat among the pigeons in so doing.
Johnson has made a lot of friends in the Democratic party and lost a few from his own party in making the aid package happen, while he insists that he was briefed by intelligence experts which urged him to rush the bill through. Perhaps he was offered incentives. We may never know. But the deal that went through was so unprecedented that it has left many Republicans wondering if there is any point in having a majority in the House at all, especially given that the southern border issue is still left hanging while Ukraine’s borders take precedent with U.S. lawmakers.
The move was a decisive victory for Biden though, at least in the short term whereas for Trump many analysts are saying that his one master card he had to play during the elections – that he personally will stop the war in Ukraine along with the spending – has now been shown to be a busted flush. For Biden and for his western elitist surfs, the objective was clear: keep the business of war going as long as possible with Zelensky in power to extract maximum profits. The flawed thinking is of course that those who signed off the aid package are literally using the plastic sacks of cash as a way of keeping warm as they chuck it onto the bonfire of the vanities otherwise known as the war that Biden didn’t want but was very much brought about by a nervous reaction to the so-called election interference in 2016.
The real flaw in the failed joined-up thinking is that the money will have some if any impact on the war itself. The real crisis Zelensky has is not so much with military hardware as he claims but more with infantry. This latest tranche of military aid will provide missiles, which is the new thinking from Kiev and the NATO knuckleheads. Just like the Americans were convinced they could win the war in Vietnam with air superiority, the thinking now in Ukraine is that missiles and missile defences are the game changer.
However, no one can blame Biden for the stunt which drew Trump in and made him now a signed-up member of the crankies. Analysts now point out that Trump has crossed one of his own red lines and will not have the punch it will require to win in December as he and many of his supporters actually backed the bill. Was he playing a bluff? Will he say once in office “I only signed it as I knew it would put Biden in a much tougher hole to climb out of but now I’m president, I’m going to stop the war in an instant by stopping the cash flow”? Hard to say. Hard to double guess Trump’s mind when he doesn’t even know himself and so many of his decisions about his own self-preservation and glutenous business cravings rather than salient political common sense. But can this money have any real impact between now and December, given what we know about stockpiles in the U.S. and how long it even takes to get kit to Ukraine, even if it is ready and good to go? Russia will of course take advantage of this military failure of Zelensky and push ahead with their tanks on firm ground now, with the winter well behind them, with Biden playing a high stakes gamble that Americans won’t be asking him in the mid-winter how is it that he can’t find 160 odd billion dollars for fighting poverty in the U.S., while he can to pay the salaries of civil servants in one of the most corrupt countries on the planet.
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/ ... -does-now/
Martin Jay
April 26, 2024
The southern border issue is still left hanging while Ukraine’s borders take precedent with U.S. lawmakers.
Until just a few days ago, no one in the world had heard of Mike Johnson. The Republican House speaker in the House of Representatives made world acclaim when he threw his weight behind an aid package for Ukraine totalling some 61bn USD and throwing the cat among the pigeons in so doing.
Johnson has made a lot of friends in the Democratic party and lost a few from his own party in making the aid package happen, while he insists that he was briefed by intelligence experts which urged him to rush the bill through. Perhaps he was offered incentives. We may never know. But the deal that went through was so unprecedented that it has left many Republicans wondering if there is any point in having a majority in the House at all, especially given that the southern border issue is still left hanging while Ukraine’s borders take precedent with U.S. lawmakers.
The move was a decisive victory for Biden though, at least in the short term whereas for Trump many analysts are saying that his one master card he had to play during the elections – that he personally will stop the war in Ukraine along with the spending – has now been shown to be a busted flush. For Biden and for his western elitist surfs, the objective was clear: keep the business of war going as long as possible with Zelensky in power to extract maximum profits. The flawed thinking is of course that those who signed off the aid package are literally using the plastic sacks of cash as a way of keeping warm as they chuck it onto the bonfire of the vanities otherwise known as the war that Biden didn’t want but was very much brought about by a nervous reaction to the so-called election interference in 2016.
The real flaw in the failed joined-up thinking is that the money will have some if any impact on the war itself. The real crisis Zelensky has is not so much with military hardware as he claims but more with infantry. This latest tranche of military aid will provide missiles, which is the new thinking from Kiev and the NATO knuckleheads. Just like the Americans were convinced they could win the war in Vietnam with air superiority, the thinking now in Ukraine is that missiles and missile defences are the game changer.
However, no one can blame Biden for the stunt which drew Trump in and made him now a signed-up member of the crankies. Analysts now point out that Trump has crossed one of his own red lines and will not have the punch it will require to win in December as he and many of his supporters actually backed the bill. Was he playing a bluff? Will he say once in office “I only signed it as I knew it would put Biden in a much tougher hole to climb out of but now I’m president, I’m going to stop the war in an instant by stopping the cash flow”? Hard to say. Hard to double guess Trump’s mind when he doesn’t even know himself and so many of his decisions about his own self-preservation and glutenous business cravings rather than salient political common sense. But can this money have any real impact between now and December, given what we know about stockpiles in the U.S. and how long it even takes to get kit to Ukraine, even if it is ready and good to go? Russia will of course take advantage of this military failure of Zelensky and push ahead with their tanks on firm ground now, with the winter well behind them, with Biden playing a high stakes gamble that Americans won’t be asking him in the mid-winter how is it that he can’t find 160 odd billion dollars for fighting poverty in the U.S., while he can to pay the salaries of civil servants in one of the most corrupt countries on the planet.
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/ ... -does-now/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy
Trump Promises to Deport All Undocumented Immigrants, Resurrecting a 1950s Strategy − But It Didn’t Work Then and Is Less Likely to Do so Now
Posted on May 7, 2024 by Yves Smith
Yves here. I have to confess to not previously having heard of the Eisenhower “wetback” deportation scheme, which I find an interested bit of media-promoted amnesia. Since the 1960s press did give some attention to Cesar Chavez’s boycotts to get better labor conditions and pay for farmworkers, who were often seasonal migrants (the post mentions the Bracero program to regularize migrant farm workers with a sub-minimum wage but also called for decent working conditions, and hence regularized their status; it ended in 1964 and Chavez increasingly opposed illegal immigration). Irrespective of the history, illegal immigrants have become a hot button, with opponents (either to them at all or their current numbers) extending beyond the hard core right wing. So Gordian-knot-cutting scheme has voter appeal despite its practical failings.
By Katrina Burgess, Professor of Political Economy, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. Originally published at The Conversation
While campaigning in Iowa last September, former President Donald Trump made a promise to voters if he were elected again: “Following the Eisenhower model, we will carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” he said. Trump, who made a similar pledge during his first presidential campaign, has recently repeated this promise at rallies across the country.
Trump was referring to Operation Wetback, a military-style campaign launched by the Eisenhower administration in the summer of 1954 to end undocumented immigration by deporting hundreds of thousands of Mexicans. “Wetback” was a widely used ethnic slur for Mexicans who illegally crossed the Rio Grande, the river dividing Mexico and the U.S.
Trump says that he can replicate Operation Wetback on a much grander scale by setting up temporary immigration detention centers and relying on local, state and federal authorities, including National Guard troops, to remove the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants now living in the U.S.
As a migration scholar, I find Trump’s proposal to be both disturbing and misleading. Besides playing to unfounded and dehumanizing fears of an immigrant invasion, it misrepresents the context and impact of Eisenhower’s policy while ignoring the vastly changed landscape of U.S. immigration today.
Operation Wetback
In May 1954, U.S. Attorney General Harold Brownell appointed Joseph Swing, a retired general, to lead the Immigration and Naturalization Service, or INS, in a “special program to apprehend and deport aliens illegally in this country from areas along the southern border.” Until 2003, the INS was responsible for immigration and border control, now handled by multiple federal agencies, including Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Swing ramped up a decade-long practice of using special task forces composed of INS agents who could be rapidly deployed where needed in order to locate and deport undocumented workers. The operation began in California and then spread to Arizona and Texas. INS agents set up roadblocks and raided fields, factories, neighborhoods and saloons where immigrants were working or socializing. The INS also built a vast wire-fenced security camp, according to the Los Angeles Times, in order to detain apprehended immigrants in Los Angeles before sending them to the border.
Captured immigrants were put on hot, overcrowded buses or rickety boats and sent to designated border crossings in Arizona and Texas, where they were forced to cross back into Mexico. Some found themselves stranded in the Mexican desert just over the border. In one incident, 88 migrants died of sunstroke before the Red Cross arrived with water and medical attention. Others were delivered to Mexican authorities, who loaded them onto trains headed deeper into Mexico.
By mid-August, INS agents had deported more than 100,000 immigrants across the U.S. Southwest. Fearing apprehension, thousands more reportedly fled back to Mexico on their own. Most of these immigrants were young Mexican men, but the INS also targeted families, removing nearly 9,000 family members, including children, from the Rio Grande Valley in August. There is also evidence of U.S. citizens getting caught up in the INS sweeps.
Operation Wetback wound down its operations a few months later, and Swing declared in January 1955 that “the day of the wetback is over.” The INS disbanded its special mobile task forces, and the deportation of undocumented immigrants plummeted over the next decade.
Not Just About Deportation
Operation Wetback made the headlines and disrupted countless lives, but it was more show than substance when it came to deportation.
The government’s claim to have deported more than 1 million Mexicans during the summer of 1954 does not stand up to scrutiny. The 1.1 million figure was for the entire fiscal year, which ended in June 1954, and a sizable share of these apprehensions were repeat arrests, sometimes in a single day. Moreover, over 97% of these deportations occurred without a formal order of removal. Instead, migrants agreed, or were coerced, to leave the country after being apprehended.
Despite Trump-like rhetoric decrying a “wetback invasion” across the U.S.-Mexico border, Operation Wetback’s main objective was not to remove Mexican immigrants but rather to frighten U.S. farmers, especially in Texas, into hiring them legally.
This tactic largely worked. A crucial but often overlooked detail about Operation Wetback is that it happened at the same time as the Bracero Program, a massive guest-worker program between the U.S. and Mexico. Between 1942 and 1964, U.S. employers issued over 4.6 million short-term contracts to more than 400,000 Mexican farm workers. Nearly three-quarters of these contracts were issued between 1955 and 1964 – after the INS carried out Operation Wetback.
Operation Wetback is unlikely to have led to a dramatic decline in undocumented immigration had Mexican workers not had a legal option for entering the United States. As one immigrant caught up in Operation Wetback commented, “I will come back – legally, if possible. If not, I’ll just walk across again.”
The INS explicitly recognized the connection between the Bracero Program and the decline in undocumented immigration in a 1958 report, stating that “should … a restriction be placed on the number of braceros allowed to enter the United States, we can look forward to a large increase in the number of illegal alien entrants into the United States.”
It is no coincidence that the lull in migrants illegally crossing the U.S-Mexico border after Operation Wetback did not last once the Bracero Program ended in 1964. Mexicans still had strong incentives to migrate, but now they had to do so without visas or work contracts, contributing to a steady increase in border arrests after 1965 that surpassed 1 million in 1976 and reached nearly 2 million in 2000.
Mexican agricultural workers are seen in California in 1943. Farm Security Administration – Office of War Information photograph collection (Library of Congress)
Real Lessons
If he were to win the presidency again, Trump would have the legal authority to deport undocumented immigrants, but the logistical, political and legal obstacles to doing so quickly and massively are even greater today than they were in the 1950s.
First, most undocumented immigrants now live in cities, where immigrant sweeps are more difficult to carry out. The INS learned this lesson when Operation Wetback shifted from the largely rural Southwest to urban areas in the Midwest and Pacific Northwest in September 1954. Despite transferring hundreds of agents to these locations and using similar tactics, INS agents produced far fewer apprehensions as they struggled to find and detain immigrants.
Second, the U.S. undocumented population is much more dispersed and diverse than in the 1950s. Today, Mexicans are no longer in the majority, and nearly half of undocumented immigrants live outside the six major hubs for immigrants – California, Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey and Illinois.
Third, most undocumented immigrants in the U.S. did not sneak across the border. An estimated 42% entered the country legally but overstayed a visa illegally. Another 17% requested and received a short-term legal status that protects them from immediate deportation.
Finally, mass deportations are likely to spark a more broad-based resistance today than happened in the 1950s. Once staunchly opposed to undocumented immigration, most labor unions and Mexican-American organizations are now in the pro-immigrant camp. Likewise, the Mexican government, which helped with Operation Wetback, is unlikely to allow massive numbers of non-Mexicans to be deported to its territory without the proper documentation.
Trump has not supported a way to provide undocumented immigrants with a legal alternative, which means that migrants will keep finding ways to cross illegally.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/05 ... o-now.html
Posted on May 7, 2024 by Yves Smith
Yves here. I have to confess to not previously having heard of the Eisenhower “wetback” deportation scheme, which I find an interested bit of media-promoted amnesia. Since the 1960s press did give some attention to Cesar Chavez’s boycotts to get better labor conditions and pay for farmworkers, who were often seasonal migrants (the post mentions the Bracero program to regularize migrant farm workers with a sub-minimum wage but also called for decent working conditions, and hence regularized their status; it ended in 1964 and Chavez increasingly opposed illegal immigration). Irrespective of the history, illegal immigrants have become a hot button, with opponents (either to them at all or their current numbers) extending beyond the hard core right wing. So Gordian-knot-cutting scheme has voter appeal despite its practical failings.
By Katrina Burgess, Professor of Political Economy, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. Originally published at The Conversation
While campaigning in Iowa last September, former President Donald Trump made a promise to voters if he were elected again: “Following the Eisenhower model, we will carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” he said. Trump, who made a similar pledge during his first presidential campaign, has recently repeated this promise at rallies across the country.
Trump was referring to Operation Wetback, a military-style campaign launched by the Eisenhower administration in the summer of 1954 to end undocumented immigration by deporting hundreds of thousands of Mexicans. “Wetback” was a widely used ethnic slur for Mexicans who illegally crossed the Rio Grande, the river dividing Mexico and the U.S.
Trump says that he can replicate Operation Wetback on a much grander scale by setting up temporary immigration detention centers and relying on local, state and federal authorities, including National Guard troops, to remove the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants now living in the U.S.
As a migration scholar, I find Trump’s proposal to be both disturbing and misleading. Besides playing to unfounded and dehumanizing fears of an immigrant invasion, it misrepresents the context and impact of Eisenhower’s policy while ignoring the vastly changed landscape of U.S. immigration today.
Operation Wetback
In May 1954, U.S. Attorney General Harold Brownell appointed Joseph Swing, a retired general, to lead the Immigration and Naturalization Service, or INS, in a “special program to apprehend and deport aliens illegally in this country from areas along the southern border.” Until 2003, the INS was responsible for immigration and border control, now handled by multiple federal agencies, including Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Swing ramped up a decade-long practice of using special task forces composed of INS agents who could be rapidly deployed where needed in order to locate and deport undocumented workers. The operation began in California and then spread to Arizona and Texas. INS agents set up roadblocks and raided fields, factories, neighborhoods and saloons where immigrants were working or socializing. The INS also built a vast wire-fenced security camp, according to the Los Angeles Times, in order to detain apprehended immigrants in Los Angeles before sending them to the border.
Captured immigrants were put on hot, overcrowded buses or rickety boats and sent to designated border crossings in Arizona and Texas, where they were forced to cross back into Mexico. Some found themselves stranded in the Mexican desert just over the border. In one incident, 88 migrants died of sunstroke before the Red Cross arrived with water and medical attention. Others were delivered to Mexican authorities, who loaded them onto trains headed deeper into Mexico.
By mid-August, INS agents had deported more than 100,000 immigrants across the U.S. Southwest. Fearing apprehension, thousands more reportedly fled back to Mexico on their own. Most of these immigrants were young Mexican men, but the INS also targeted families, removing nearly 9,000 family members, including children, from the Rio Grande Valley in August. There is also evidence of U.S. citizens getting caught up in the INS sweeps.
Operation Wetback wound down its operations a few months later, and Swing declared in January 1955 that “the day of the wetback is over.” The INS disbanded its special mobile task forces, and the deportation of undocumented immigrants plummeted over the next decade.
Not Just About Deportation
Operation Wetback made the headlines and disrupted countless lives, but it was more show than substance when it came to deportation.
The government’s claim to have deported more than 1 million Mexicans during the summer of 1954 does not stand up to scrutiny. The 1.1 million figure was for the entire fiscal year, which ended in June 1954, and a sizable share of these apprehensions were repeat arrests, sometimes in a single day. Moreover, over 97% of these deportations occurred without a formal order of removal. Instead, migrants agreed, or were coerced, to leave the country after being apprehended.
Despite Trump-like rhetoric decrying a “wetback invasion” across the U.S.-Mexico border, Operation Wetback’s main objective was not to remove Mexican immigrants but rather to frighten U.S. farmers, especially in Texas, into hiring them legally.
This tactic largely worked. A crucial but often overlooked detail about Operation Wetback is that it happened at the same time as the Bracero Program, a massive guest-worker program between the U.S. and Mexico. Between 1942 and 1964, U.S. employers issued over 4.6 million short-term contracts to more than 400,000 Mexican farm workers. Nearly three-quarters of these contracts were issued between 1955 and 1964 – after the INS carried out Operation Wetback.
Operation Wetback is unlikely to have led to a dramatic decline in undocumented immigration had Mexican workers not had a legal option for entering the United States. As one immigrant caught up in Operation Wetback commented, “I will come back – legally, if possible. If not, I’ll just walk across again.”
The INS explicitly recognized the connection between the Bracero Program and the decline in undocumented immigration in a 1958 report, stating that “should … a restriction be placed on the number of braceros allowed to enter the United States, we can look forward to a large increase in the number of illegal alien entrants into the United States.”
It is no coincidence that the lull in migrants illegally crossing the U.S-Mexico border after Operation Wetback did not last once the Bracero Program ended in 1964. Mexicans still had strong incentives to migrate, but now they had to do so without visas or work contracts, contributing to a steady increase in border arrests after 1965 that surpassed 1 million in 1976 and reached nearly 2 million in 2000.
Mexican agricultural workers are seen in California in 1943. Farm Security Administration – Office of War Information photograph collection (Library of Congress)
Real Lessons
If he were to win the presidency again, Trump would have the legal authority to deport undocumented immigrants, but the logistical, political and legal obstacles to doing so quickly and massively are even greater today than they were in the 1950s.
First, most undocumented immigrants now live in cities, where immigrant sweeps are more difficult to carry out. The INS learned this lesson when Operation Wetback shifted from the largely rural Southwest to urban areas in the Midwest and Pacific Northwest in September 1954. Despite transferring hundreds of agents to these locations and using similar tactics, INS agents produced far fewer apprehensions as they struggled to find and detain immigrants.
Second, the U.S. undocumented population is much more dispersed and diverse than in the 1950s. Today, Mexicans are no longer in the majority, and nearly half of undocumented immigrants live outside the six major hubs for immigrants – California, Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey and Illinois.
Third, most undocumented immigrants in the U.S. did not sneak across the border. An estimated 42% entered the country legally but overstayed a visa illegally. Another 17% requested and received a short-term legal status that protects them from immediate deportation.
Finally, mass deportations are likely to spark a more broad-based resistance today than happened in the 1950s. Once staunchly opposed to undocumented immigration, most labor unions and Mexican-American organizations are now in the pro-immigrant camp. Likewise, the Mexican government, which helped with Operation Wetback, is unlikely to allow massive numbers of non-Mexicans to be deported to its territory without the proper documentation.
Trump has not supported a way to provide undocumented immigrants with a legal alternative, which means that migrants will keep finding ways to cross illegally.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/05 ... o-now.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy
Alvin Bragg’s Theories (Plural) of the Case in People v. Trump May Be Gradually Emerging (There Are Three)
Posted on May 8, 2024
By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
One of my flaws as a debater on the negative side was that I found it difficult to prepare for cases that I thought were really, really stupid. As a result, my rebuttals were not as crisp as they might have been. It may well be that the same bad attitude has carried over into my coverage of New York prosecutor Alvin Bragg’s oft-misnomered “hush money” care, People vs. Donald J. Trump. The good news is that in the course of researching for this case, I found the docket — thanks, Google. Not! — and so now I can go through all the filings, and better yet, the transcripts, before the verdict finally arrives. At last being able to do the reading will be a great relief to me and possibly to you, since news coverage has been utterly miserable, childishly personality-driven (unlike Colorado vs. the United States, which had legal minds from across the spectrum doing serious analysis although, to be fair, of another stupid case).
However, People v. Trump is not only stupid (and it is often stupid in the complex ways that certain operatives are stupid), it is bewildering and befogged. It feels like a good deal of the action has been taking place off-stage, and so it’s hard to blame even well-intentioned reporters for being confused. Take this oft-repeated talking point, with Byron York at the Washington Examiner giving a example:
Perhaps the weirdest, and by far the most unjust, thing about former President Donald Trump’s trial in New York is that we do not know precisely what crime Trump is charged with committing. We’re in the middle of the trial, with Trump facing a maximum of more than 100 years in prison, and we don’t even know what the charges are! It’s a surreal situation.
Surreal indeed, but what York writes is not quite true; Bragg had four (4) theories of the case, that is, four charges (now he has three (3) but we’ll get to that). However, as we shall see, these theories have been presented in filings, and seem not to have been presented in open court, or presumably they would have been reported on.
Bragg’s architecture in People vs. Trump is what Just Security editor Asha Rangappa amusingly labeled a “felony bump-up,” described by Andrew McCarthy:
As we’ve noted many times, the actual charge against Trump (multiplied into 34 felonies by Bragg) is falsification of business records with fraudulent intent. That is a substantive offense, not a conspiracy (i.e., to be guilty, you actually have to carry out the criminal act, not just agree to do it). Business-records falsification is normally a misdemeanor under New York law (§175.05) but it can be inflated into a felony — with a prison sentence of up to four years for each offense — if prosecutors can prove that the defendant’s fraudulent intent included the concealment of “another crime.”
So, as we showed in NC here, there are two layers to People vs. Trump: The Business Records Offense, and the “Object Offense.”[1] By itself, the business records offenses are misdemeanors; only when they are combined with one or more object offenses — Bragg’s theories of the case — do they become felonies (although, amusingingly, the object offense(s) can also be misdemeanor(s)).
Because I have not yet done the reading, this post will be informative, rather than analytical; I will look at the state of play using Bragg’s architecture. This is in itself newsworthy! First, I will look at the business records offenses, and then at the object offenses. I will then address the election conspiracy aspect of the case, then Molineux Rule, and conclude.
The Business Records Offenses
The business records offenses are accurately described by Andrew McCarthy:
Just to remind you, the allegation in the indictment is that Trump fraudulently caused his business records to be falsified eleven years after this encounter [between Stormy Daniels and Trump]. The encounter makes no difference to the proof of the charges. The state’s theory is that Trump’s records are false because they described as ongoing ‘legal services’ what was actually the reimbursement of a debt to Trump’s lawyer [Michael Cohen] (in connection with a legal transaction in which the lawyer did, in fact, represent Trump). Whether the debt arose out of paying Stormy for an NDA or some other obligation is of no moment to the question of whether the book entry ‘legal services’ accurately describes the payments to Cohen.
Here again my bias against stupid arguments may be working against me. That said, Cohen was lawyer and a fixer. Are we really really going to argue about whether a fixed performed “legal services” or not? (This argument reminds of Engoron’s view that there was only one real estate investor in Manhattan who ever engaged in puffery: Donald Trump.)
The “Object Offense(s)”
Let’s start with the text of Judge Merchan’s “Decision & Order, Feb. 15, 2024” (this seems to be in response to a Motion to Dismiss from the Trump team, but that’s not on the docket, at least not earlier than the Decision and Order, as I would expect to be):
As you can see, the People (Bragg) have four theories for the “object offense.” Merchan then throws out the fourth, leaving three:
(Oddly, it seems that Merchan, in his decision and order, is doing a good deal of tidying up and summarizing of Bragg’s brief responding to Trump’s Motion to Dismiss; it’s almost like he’s directing Bragg on how to present his case.) Here, depressingly, is a diagram from Brookings Institution-adjacent entity Lawfare that summarizes the state of Bragg’s architecture[2] (I’ve added some helpful annotations in red):
Let’s go through each layer in turn. On § 175.10, the statute reads:
A person is guilty of falsifying business records in the first degree when he commits the crime of falsifying business records in the second
degree, and when his intent to defraud includes an intent to commit another crime [the “object offense”] or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.
McCarthy comments:
Yet, in his major pre-trial ruling, Merchan endorsed Bragg’s theory that because §175.10 says “another crime” rather than “another New York crime,” there is no bar to Bragg’s endeavoring to prove that Trump was concealing a federal crime. (See Merchan’s pre-trial opinion, pp. 12–14.) By this loopy logic, Bragg similarly has jurisdiction to enforce, say, Chinese penal statutes, sharia’s hudud crimes, and perhaps even the criminal laws of Rome (after all, under the Bragg/Merchan rationale, the statute doesn’t say the “other crime” must still be in existence).
I don’t think that’s a bad argument; we’ll see how it goes on appeal (though, as we shall see, not all the object offenses are Federal).
So much for the business records layer. Now to the object offenses.
First, the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA). McCarthy writes:
Judge Juan Merchan is orchestrating Trump’s conviction of a crime that is not actually charged in the indictment [none was]: conspiracy to violate FECA (the Federal Election Campaign Act — specifically, its spending limits). That should not be possible in the United States, where the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment mandates that an accused may only be tried for a felony offense if it has been outlined with specificity in an indictment, approved by a grand jury that has found probable cause for that offense.
Yet, Judge Merchan has swallowed whole Bragg’s theory that he can enforce FECA. The judge not only ruled pre-trial that Bragg could prove the uncharged federal crime; he has abetted Bragg’s prosecutors in their framing of the case for the jury as a “criminal conspiracy,” notwithstanding that no conspiracy is actually charged in the indictment — under either federal or state law. And although the trial has been under way for just a week, Merchan has already made key rulings patently designed to convince the jury that Trump’s complicity in a conspiracy to violate FECA has already been established.
LawFare comments:
Trump has leveled multiple legal challenges against Bragg’s use of FECA as an object offense, arguing in his motion to dismiss that a violation of federal law can’t serve as the “other crime” under § 175.10. Merchan, however, held it could. Trump also argued that FECA preempts state law and thus rules out prosecution under § 175.10 with FECA as the object offense. Merchan rejected this argument as well, relying on a ruling last July to that effect by Judge Alvin Hellerstein of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in the context of rejecting Trump’s attempt to remove this case to federal court.
I think “loopy,” as above, is a fair word here. Under Federalism, do we really want the States enforcing (and, presumably, interpreting) Federal Law? How about the Espionage Act? Or closer to home, the Public Health Service Act in the midst of a pandemic? Again, we’ll see how this fares on appeal[3].
Second, New York State Law § 17-152:
Conspiracy to promote or prevent election. Any two or more persons who conspire to promote or prevent the election of any person to
a public office by unlawful means and which conspiracy is acted upon by one or more of the parties thereto, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.
(Note again that this can be the object offense, even if it’s a misdemeanor.) Bragg’s use of § 17-152 has been described as “novel” and “twisty.” From NC:
“Business Insider asked two veteran New York election-law attorneys — one a Republican, the other a Democrat — about the law, also known as ‘Conspiracy to promote or prevent election.’ Neither one could recall a single time when it had been prosecuted. Two highly respected law professors specializing in New York election law said the same…. However, while the two attorneys were highly skeptical of the DA’s newly focused strategy, the two election law professors told BI they were confident it would lead to a conviction. Sure, 17-152 has never been used before, they said. But that doesn’t mean it won’t work now that the dust has been blown off…. [Jeffrey M. Wice, who teaches state election law at New York Law School] noted that two judges — Merchan and Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, a Manhattan federal judge who rejected Trump’s attempt to move the hush-money case to federal court — upheld the use of 17-152 in this case.” But wait! There’s more! “[W]hat if that underlying crime is section 17-152 — conspiring to mess with an election through ‘unlawful means?’ Things will get “twisty,” [Brooklyn attorney and former Democratic NY state Sen. Martin Connor] said, when prosecutors try to show that Trump’s falsified business records are felonies because of an underlying crime — 17-152 — that itself needs proof of a conspiracy to do something ‘unlawful.’ ‘You’re having an underlying crime within an underlying crime to get to that felony,’ Connor told BI. ‘It’s novel,” he said with a laugh. ‘It’s novel,” he repeated. Section 17-152 needs its own underlying criminal conspiracy, he said. ‘Two or more conspiring to elect or defeat a candidate — that’s the definition of every political campaign,’ he joked. ‘It’s only when you conspire to do it by unlawful means that you violate this law.’ Having an election-conspiracy statute like 17-152 on the state election-law books makes little sense, he said. ‘It would appear to cover something like three people getting together and saying, ‘Let’s break into our opponent’s headquarters and destroy all his equipment,’ Connor said.”
Lawfare expands on “twisty”:
During opening statements on April 22, prosecutor Matthew Colangelo emphasized the role of § 17-152 in the district attorney’s case, declaring, “This was a planned, coordinated long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected.” Senior Trial Counsel Joshua Steinglass further underlined the importance of the statute the following day, describing § 17-152 as “the primary crime that we have alleged” as an object offense. “The entire case is predicated on the idea that there was a conspiracy to influence the election in 2016,” Steinglass said.
But § 17-152 requires that a conspiracy be carried out by “unlawful means”—so what “unlawful means” is Bragg alleging? Here, the legal theory loops back around to point to the other three potential object offenses: FECA violations, tax fraud, and AMI’s and Cohen’s misdemeanor falsifications of business records under § 175.05.
Third, tax fraud. Lawfare comments:
The potential tax fraud arises from the particular method by which the Trump Organization reimbursed Cohen for his payments to Daniels. Bragg alleges that “defendant reimbursed Cohen twice the amount he was owed for the payoff so Cohen could characterize the payments as income on his tax returns and still be left whole after paying approximately 50% in income taxes.” Here, Bragg points to federal, state, and local prohibitions on providing knowingly incorrect tax information.
The twist here is that because Cohen reported his income as greater than it actually was, he paid more in taxes, rather than less—which is probably not what most people have in mind when they think of tax fraud. On this point, Bragg argues that “under New York law, criminal tax fraud in the fifth degree does not require financial injury to the state” and that “[f]ederal tax law also imposes criminal liability in instances that do not involve underpayment of taxes.” Merchan seems to have been convinced, rejecting Trump’s argument “that the alleged New York State tax violation is of no consequence because the State of New York did not suffer any financial harm.” He does not explain further, simply writing, “This argument does not require further analysis.”
I’m totally not a tax lawyer, so I can’t express a view (but I imagine it’s likely that there will be a member of the jury who was prosecuted by the IRS for paying too much tax).
Fourth, § 175.05. This is the National Enquirer “catch and kill scheme” that so dominated early coverage of the trial, when David Pecker was a witness; Merchan tossed it out as an object offense, though as Lawfare notes:
Note that while Merchan ruled out these third-party § 175.05 violations as object offenses for Trump’s violation of § 175.10, they’re still available to Bragg as a means by which to get to § 17-152.)
(Lawfare also has an interesting discussion of whether, if Bragg presents all three remaining theories, the jury has to agree on all three, and what the burdens of proof for each are.)
Election Conspiracy
Matthew Colangelo, now working in Bragg’s office, formerly deputy director of the president’s National Economic Council, chief of staff at the Department of Labor, deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, and a campaign consultant for the DNC, opened People vs. Trump as follows. From the transcript (I’ve added some helpful notes), the very beginning of the case:
This case is about a criminal conspiracy[1] and a cover-up. The defendant, Donald Trump, orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election[2]; then he covered up that criminal conspiracy by lying in his New York business records over and over and over again. In June of 2015, Donald Trump announced his candidacy for president in the 2016 election; a few months later this conspiracy began. He invited his friend, David Pecker, to a meeting at Trump Tower here in Manhattan. Mr. Pecker was the CEO of a media company that, among other things, owned and published the National Enquirer tabloid. Michael Cohen was also at that meeting. He worked for the defendant as the defendant’s special counsel at his company, the Trump Organization. And those three men formed a conspiracy at that meeting to influence the presidential election by concealing negative information about Mr. Trump[3] in order to help him get elected. As one part of that agreement, Michael Cohen paid $130,000 to an adult film actress named Stormy Daniels just a couple of weeks before the 2016 election to silence her and to make sure the public did not learn of the sexual encounter with the defendant. Cohen made that payment at the defendant’s direction, and he did it to influence the presidential election[4].
[1] This is the “Catch and Kill” scheme, which Merchan threw out as an object offense. So no wonder the case feels befogged and surreal, given that the Merchan threw out what Colangelo said the case was “about.” And if the case isn’t “about” the Catch and Kill scheme, what is it about?
[2] Presumably not with business records falsified in 2017, so how did the corruption take place?
[3] How is this not how any candidate would handle oppo? How is more conspiratorial than, say, using a lawyerly cut-out to put the Steele dossier in play, leveraging the dossier to get a FISA warrant, and then infesting one’s opponent’s campaign with spooks?
[4] Yes, it’s called campaigning. If Trump had gotten 51 intelligence officers to say Stormy Daniels was full of it, would that be OK?
Molineux Rule
Here is an explanation of the Molineux Rule, and how a judge’s violation of that rule led overturing Harvey Weinstein’s conviction. From Robert Weisberg at Stanford Law:
The charges in the New York trial were for crimes against three complainants. Weinstein was convicted for raping one of them and sexually assaulting another. The trial judge permitted the DA to introduce several other witnesses who testified to alleged sexual assaults by Weinstein, but those allegations were not part of the criminal charges in the trial. Under New York state’s century old “Molineux rule,” there are severe restrictions on the admissibility of so-called prior bad acts that are not part of the current charges. The concern is that the jury will infer that the defendant has a so-called propensity to commit acts of this sort, thereby distorting their judgment on his guilt about the formally charged crimes. The New York law has a few exceptions, such as where the prior acts are very distinctly relevant to a contested issue about the defendant’s intent, or to show a very distinctive pattern to his behavior. Here, the majority concluded that the trial judge crossed the line and thereby denied Weinstein a fair trial. Also, because the judge admonished Weinstein that if he testified on his own behalf, he would be subject to cross examination on these uncharged acts, the court ruled that Weinstein was unfairly deterred from exercising his right to testify.
Judge Merchan allowed Daniels to present some pretty lurid testimony. From Jonathan Turley (who is mostly pounding the table these days, but that’s an appropriate method here):
The prosecution fought with Trump’s defense counsel to not only call porn star Stormy Daniels to the stand, but to ask her for lurid details on her alleged tryst with Trump.
The only assurance that they would make to Judge Juan Merchan was that they would “not go into details of genitalia.”
For Merchan, who has largely ruled against Trump on such motions, that was enough.
He allowed the prosecutors to get into the details of the affair despite the immateriality of the evidence to any criminal theory.
Neither the [catch and kill] NDA nor the payment to Daniels is being contested. It is also uncontested that Trump wanted to pay to get the story (and other stories, including untrue allegations) from being published. The value of the testimony was entirely sensational and gratuitous, yet Merchan was fine with humiliating Trump… The most maddening moment for the defense came at the lunch break when Merchan stated, “I agree that it would have been better if some of these things had been left unsaid.” He then denied a motion for a mistrial based on the testimony and blamed the defense for not objecting more. That, of course, ignores the standing objection of the defense to Daniels even appearing, and specific objections to the broad scope allowed by the court. This is precisely what the defense said would happen when the prosecutors only agreed to avoid ‘genitalia.’ … Merchan said that he is considering a limiting instruction for the jury to ignore aspects of the testimony. But that is little comfort for the defendant. The court was told that this would happen, it happened, and now the court wants to ask the jury to pretend that it did not happen. Merchan knows that there is no way for the jury to unhear the testimony.
Merchand’s potential violation of The Molineux Rule could relevant on appeal for two reasons: First, the obvious potential to distort the judgment of the jury, as Weisberg says. More subtly, it could “unfairly deter” Trump “from exercising his right to testify.” Trump he really going to take the stand so Bragg can question him about all matters of his sex life short of genitalia?
Conclusion
I hope this serves as a reasonable summary of the state of play on the various elements of Bragg’s architecture (besides giving an account of the befogged and bewildering nature of the trial generally). Let’s close with a nasty twist of thought about the jury:
All it takes to block a conviction is one juror holding out. If members of the jury announce following deliberations that they can’t reach a unanimous verdict, the judge can give them an Allen charge, sending them back to essentially try again. But that would be a controversial move, as it is often viewed as a judge pressuring the holdout to join with the majority.
All that being said, this case would probably be a pretty quick conviction under normal circumstances. But imagine the incentives for a potential holdout: a book deal, traveling the country giving paid speeches to MAGA crowds, the prime-time interview on network television … and that’s just the beginning.
The consensus, across the board, does seem to be for quick conviction, working on the assumption that jurors do their civic duty. However, I think it’s very likely that Merchan has given grounds for appeal; Surtout, pas trop de zele, as Talleyrand once said.
NOTES
[1] Judge Merchan writes: “The ‘object offense’ referenced by Defendant as well as the terms ‘other crime” and ‘another crime’ carry equal meaning.” In my earlier post, I used “other crime,” but I think “object offense” is the more descriptive term, so I will use it going forward.
[2] Note that this diagram is different in detail from the earlier diagram from Asha Rangappa, presented here.
[3] McCarthy also makes the political point:
The campaign laws are so complex that the FEC’s role includes the promulgation of “regulations to implement and clarify these laws.” For its part, the Justice Department has produced an exacting enforcement manual of well over 200 pages, which has been edited numerous times, in order to walk federal prosecutors through the complex web of statutes and regulations.
Why does this matter? Well, if you weren’t born yesterday and you follow the news even casually, then you know that the Department of Justice is so territorial about its jurisdiction that it would make a tiger wilt in admiration. Similarly, the FEC jealously guards its turf. Do you really think for a moment that the Biden Justice Department and the FEC would sit in silent passivity if any other state prosecutor, besides Bragg in this particular case, usurped federal authority and undertook to enforce federal law — in a matter as to which the DOJ and FEC, after thoroughly investigating, had decided not to prosecute?
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/05 ... three.html
Posted on May 8, 2024
By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
One of my flaws as a debater on the negative side was that I found it difficult to prepare for cases that I thought were really, really stupid. As a result, my rebuttals were not as crisp as they might have been. It may well be that the same bad attitude has carried over into my coverage of New York prosecutor Alvin Bragg’s oft-misnomered “hush money” care, People vs. Donald J. Trump. The good news is that in the course of researching for this case, I found the docket — thanks, Google. Not! — and so now I can go through all the filings, and better yet, the transcripts, before the verdict finally arrives. At last being able to do the reading will be a great relief to me and possibly to you, since news coverage has been utterly miserable, childishly personality-driven (unlike Colorado vs. the United States, which had legal minds from across the spectrum doing serious analysis although, to be fair, of another stupid case).
However, People v. Trump is not only stupid (and it is often stupid in the complex ways that certain operatives are stupid), it is bewildering and befogged. It feels like a good deal of the action has been taking place off-stage, and so it’s hard to blame even well-intentioned reporters for being confused. Take this oft-repeated talking point, with Byron York at the Washington Examiner giving a example:
Perhaps the weirdest, and by far the most unjust, thing about former President Donald Trump’s trial in New York is that we do not know precisely what crime Trump is charged with committing. We’re in the middle of the trial, with Trump facing a maximum of more than 100 years in prison, and we don’t even know what the charges are! It’s a surreal situation.
Surreal indeed, but what York writes is not quite true; Bragg had four (4) theories of the case, that is, four charges (now he has three (3) but we’ll get to that). However, as we shall see, these theories have been presented in filings, and seem not to have been presented in open court, or presumably they would have been reported on.
Bragg’s architecture in People vs. Trump is what Just Security editor Asha Rangappa amusingly labeled a “felony bump-up,” described by Andrew McCarthy:
As we’ve noted many times, the actual charge against Trump (multiplied into 34 felonies by Bragg) is falsification of business records with fraudulent intent. That is a substantive offense, not a conspiracy (i.e., to be guilty, you actually have to carry out the criminal act, not just agree to do it). Business-records falsification is normally a misdemeanor under New York law (§175.05) but it can be inflated into a felony — with a prison sentence of up to four years for each offense — if prosecutors can prove that the defendant’s fraudulent intent included the concealment of “another crime.”
So, as we showed in NC here, there are two layers to People vs. Trump: The Business Records Offense, and the “Object Offense.”[1] By itself, the business records offenses are misdemeanors; only when they are combined with one or more object offenses — Bragg’s theories of the case — do they become felonies (although, amusingingly, the object offense(s) can also be misdemeanor(s)).
Because I have not yet done the reading, this post will be informative, rather than analytical; I will look at the state of play using Bragg’s architecture. This is in itself newsworthy! First, I will look at the business records offenses, and then at the object offenses. I will then address the election conspiracy aspect of the case, then Molineux Rule, and conclude.
The Business Records Offenses
The business records offenses are accurately described by Andrew McCarthy:
Just to remind you, the allegation in the indictment is that Trump fraudulently caused his business records to be falsified eleven years after this encounter [between Stormy Daniels and Trump]. The encounter makes no difference to the proof of the charges. The state’s theory is that Trump’s records are false because they described as ongoing ‘legal services’ what was actually the reimbursement of a debt to Trump’s lawyer [Michael Cohen] (in connection with a legal transaction in which the lawyer did, in fact, represent Trump). Whether the debt arose out of paying Stormy for an NDA or some other obligation is of no moment to the question of whether the book entry ‘legal services’ accurately describes the payments to Cohen.
Here again my bias against stupid arguments may be working against me. That said, Cohen was lawyer and a fixer. Are we really really going to argue about whether a fixed performed “legal services” or not? (This argument reminds of Engoron’s view that there was only one real estate investor in Manhattan who ever engaged in puffery: Donald Trump.)
The “Object Offense(s)”
Let’s start with the text of Judge Merchan’s “Decision & Order, Feb. 15, 2024” (this seems to be in response to a Motion to Dismiss from the Trump team, but that’s not on the docket, at least not earlier than the Decision and Order, as I would expect to be):
As you can see, the People (Bragg) have four theories for the “object offense.” Merchan then throws out the fourth, leaving three:
(Oddly, it seems that Merchan, in his decision and order, is doing a good deal of tidying up and summarizing of Bragg’s brief responding to Trump’s Motion to Dismiss; it’s almost like he’s directing Bragg on how to present his case.) Here, depressingly, is a diagram from Brookings Institution-adjacent entity Lawfare that summarizes the state of Bragg’s architecture[2] (I’ve added some helpful annotations in red):
Let’s go through each layer in turn. On § 175.10, the statute reads:
A person is guilty of falsifying business records in the first degree when he commits the crime of falsifying business records in the second
degree, and when his intent to defraud includes an intent to commit another crime [the “object offense”] or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.
McCarthy comments:
Yet, in his major pre-trial ruling, Merchan endorsed Bragg’s theory that because §175.10 says “another crime” rather than “another New York crime,” there is no bar to Bragg’s endeavoring to prove that Trump was concealing a federal crime. (See Merchan’s pre-trial opinion, pp. 12–14.) By this loopy logic, Bragg similarly has jurisdiction to enforce, say, Chinese penal statutes, sharia’s hudud crimes, and perhaps even the criminal laws of Rome (after all, under the Bragg/Merchan rationale, the statute doesn’t say the “other crime” must still be in existence).
I don’t think that’s a bad argument; we’ll see how it goes on appeal (though, as we shall see, not all the object offenses are Federal).
So much for the business records layer. Now to the object offenses.
First, the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA). McCarthy writes:
Judge Juan Merchan is orchestrating Trump’s conviction of a crime that is not actually charged in the indictment [none was]: conspiracy to violate FECA (the Federal Election Campaign Act — specifically, its spending limits). That should not be possible in the United States, where the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment mandates that an accused may only be tried for a felony offense if it has been outlined with specificity in an indictment, approved by a grand jury that has found probable cause for that offense.
Yet, Judge Merchan has swallowed whole Bragg’s theory that he can enforce FECA. The judge not only ruled pre-trial that Bragg could prove the uncharged federal crime; he has abetted Bragg’s prosecutors in their framing of the case for the jury as a “criminal conspiracy,” notwithstanding that no conspiracy is actually charged in the indictment — under either federal or state law. And although the trial has been under way for just a week, Merchan has already made key rulings patently designed to convince the jury that Trump’s complicity in a conspiracy to violate FECA has already been established.
LawFare comments:
Trump has leveled multiple legal challenges against Bragg’s use of FECA as an object offense, arguing in his motion to dismiss that a violation of federal law can’t serve as the “other crime” under § 175.10. Merchan, however, held it could. Trump also argued that FECA preempts state law and thus rules out prosecution under § 175.10 with FECA as the object offense. Merchan rejected this argument as well, relying on a ruling last July to that effect by Judge Alvin Hellerstein of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in the context of rejecting Trump’s attempt to remove this case to federal court.
I think “loopy,” as above, is a fair word here. Under Federalism, do we really want the States enforcing (and, presumably, interpreting) Federal Law? How about the Espionage Act? Or closer to home, the Public Health Service Act in the midst of a pandemic? Again, we’ll see how this fares on appeal[3].
Second, New York State Law § 17-152:
Conspiracy to promote or prevent election. Any two or more persons who conspire to promote or prevent the election of any person to
a public office by unlawful means and which conspiracy is acted upon by one or more of the parties thereto, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.
(Note again that this can be the object offense, even if it’s a misdemeanor.) Bragg’s use of § 17-152 has been described as “novel” and “twisty.” From NC:
“Business Insider asked two veteran New York election-law attorneys — one a Republican, the other a Democrat — about the law, also known as ‘Conspiracy to promote or prevent election.’ Neither one could recall a single time when it had been prosecuted. Two highly respected law professors specializing in New York election law said the same…. However, while the two attorneys were highly skeptical of the DA’s newly focused strategy, the two election law professors told BI they were confident it would lead to a conviction. Sure, 17-152 has never been used before, they said. But that doesn’t mean it won’t work now that the dust has been blown off…. [Jeffrey M. Wice, who teaches state election law at New York Law School] noted that two judges — Merchan and Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, a Manhattan federal judge who rejected Trump’s attempt to move the hush-money case to federal court — upheld the use of 17-152 in this case.” But wait! There’s more! “[W]hat if that underlying crime is section 17-152 — conspiring to mess with an election through ‘unlawful means?’ Things will get “twisty,” [Brooklyn attorney and former Democratic NY state Sen. Martin Connor] said, when prosecutors try to show that Trump’s falsified business records are felonies because of an underlying crime — 17-152 — that itself needs proof of a conspiracy to do something ‘unlawful.’ ‘You’re having an underlying crime within an underlying crime to get to that felony,’ Connor told BI. ‘It’s novel,” he said with a laugh. ‘It’s novel,” he repeated. Section 17-152 needs its own underlying criminal conspiracy, he said. ‘Two or more conspiring to elect or defeat a candidate — that’s the definition of every political campaign,’ he joked. ‘It’s only when you conspire to do it by unlawful means that you violate this law.’ Having an election-conspiracy statute like 17-152 on the state election-law books makes little sense, he said. ‘It would appear to cover something like three people getting together and saying, ‘Let’s break into our opponent’s headquarters and destroy all his equipment,’ Connor said.”
Lawfare expands on “twisty”:
During opening statements on April 22, prosecutor Matthew Colangelo emphasized the role of § 17-152 in the district attorney’s case, declaring, “This was a planned, coordinated long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected.” Senior Trial Counsel Joshua Steinglass further underlined the importance of the statute the following day, describing § 17-152 as “the primary crime that we have alleged” as an object offense. “The entire case is predicated on the idea that there was a conspiracy to influence the election in 2016,” Steinglass said.
But § 17-152 requires that a conspiracy be carried out by “unlawful means”—so what “unlawful means” is Bragg alleging? Here, the legal theory loops back around to point to the other three potential object offenses: FECA violations, tax fraud, and AMI’s and Cohen’s misdemeanor falsifications of business records under § 175.05.
Third, tax fraud. Lawfare comments:
The potential tax fraud arises from the particular method by which the Trump Organization reimbursed Cohen for his payments to Daniels. Bragg alleges that “defendant reimbursed Cohen twice the amount he was owed for the payoff so Cohen could characterize the payments as income on his tax returns and still be left whole after paying approximately 50% in income taxes.” Here, Bragg points to federal, state, and local prohibitions on providing knowingly incorrect tax information.
The twist here is that because Cohen reported his income as greater than it actually was, he paid more in taxes, rather than less—which is probably not what most people have in mind when they think of tax fraud. On this point, Bragg argues that “under New York law, criminal tax fraud in the fifth degree does not require financial injury to the state” and that “[f]ederal tax law also imposes criminal liability in instances that do not involve underpayment of taxes.” Merchan seems to have been convinced, rejecting Trump’s argument “that the alleged New York State tax violation is of no consequence because the State of New York did not suffer any financial harm.” He does not explain further, simply writing, “This argument does not require further analysis.”
I’m totally not a tax lawyer, so I can’t express a view (but I imagine it’s likely that there will be a member of the jury who was prosecuted by the IRS for paying too much tax).
Fourth, § 175.05. This is the National Enquirer “catch and kill scheme” that so dominated early coverage of the trial, when David Pecker was a witness; Merchan tossed it out as an object offense, though as Lawfare notes:
Note that while Merchan ruled out these third-party § 175.05 violations as object offenses for Trump’s violation of § 175.10, they’re still available to Bragg as a means by which to get to § 17-152.)
(Lawfare also has an interesting discussion of whether, if Bragg presents all three remaining theories, the jury has to agree on all three, and what the burdens of proof for each are.)
Election Conspiracy
Matthew Colangelo, now working in Bragg’s office, formerly deputy director of the president’s National Economic Council, chief of staff at the Department of Labor, deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, and a campaign consultant for the DNC, opened People vs. Trump as follows. From the transcript (I’ve added some helpful notes), the very beginning of the case:
This case is about a criminal conspiracy[1] and a cover-up. The defendant, Donald Trump, orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election[2]; then he covered up that criminal conspiracy by lying in his New York business records over and over and over again. In June of 2015, Donald Trump announced his candidacy for president in the 2016 election; a few months later this conspiracy began. He invited his friend, David Pecker, to a meeting at Trump Tower here in Manhattan. Mr. Pecker was the CEO of a media company that, among other things, owned and published the National Enquirer tabloid. Michael Cohen was also at that meeting. He worked for the defendant as the defendant’s special counsel at his company, the Trump Organization. And those three men formed a conspiracy at that meeting to influence the presidential election by concealing negative information about Mr. Trump[3] in order to help him get elected. As one part of that agreement, Michael Cohen paid $130,000 to an adult film actress named Stormy Daniels just a couple of weeks before the 2016 election to silence her and to make sure the public did not learn of the sexual encounter with the defendant. Cohen made that payment at the defendant’s direction, and he did it to influence the presidential election[4].
[1] This is the “Catch and Kill” scheme, which Merchan threw out as an object offense. So no wonder the case feels befogged and surreal, given that the Merchan threw out what Colangelo said the case was “about.” And if the case isn’t “about” the Catch and Kill scheme, what is it about?
[2] Presumably not with business records falsified in 2017, so how did the corruption take place?
[3] How is this not how any candidate would handle oppo? How is more conspiratorial than, say, using a lawyerly cut-out to put the Steele dossier in play, leveraging the dossier to get a FISA warrant, and then infesting one’s opponent’s campaign with spooks?
[4] Yes, it’s called campaigning. If Trump had gotten 51 intelligence officers to say Stormy Daniels was full of it, would that be OK?
Molineux Rule
Here is an explanation of the Molineux Rule, and how a judge’s violation of that rule led overturing Harvey Weinstein’s conviction. From Robert Weisberg at Stanford Law:
The charges in the New York trial were for crimes against three complainants. Weinstein was convicted for raping one of them and sexually assaulting another. The trial judge permitted the DA to introduce several other witnesses who testified to alleged sexual assaults by Weinstein, but those allegations were not part of the criminal charges in the trial. Under New York state’s century old “Molineux rule,” there are severe restrictions on the admissibility of so-called prior bad acts that are not part of the current charges. The concern is that the jury will infer that the defendant has a so-called propensity to commit acts of this sort, thereby distorting their judgment on his guilt about the formally charged crimes. The New York law has a few exceptions, such as where the prior acts are very distinctly relevant to a contested issue about the defendant’s intent, or to show a very distinctive pattern to his behavior. Here, the majority concluded that the trial judge crossed the line and thereby denied Weinstein a fair trial. Also, because the judge admonished Weinstein that if he testified on his own behalf, he would be subject to cross examination on these uncharged acts, the court ruled that Weinstein was unfairly deterred from exercising his right to testify.
Judge Merchan allowed Daniels to present some pretty lurid testimony. From Jonathan Turley (who is mostly pounding the table these days, but that’s an appropriate method here):
The prosecution fought with Trump’s defense counsel to not only call porn star Stormy Daniels to the stand, but to ask her for lurid details on her alleged tryst with Trump.
The only assurance that they would make to Judge Juan Merchan was that they would “not go into details of genitalia.”
For Merchan, who has largely ruled against Trump on such motions, that was enough.
He allowed the prosecutors to get into the details of the affair despite the immateriality of the evidence to any criminal theory.
Neither the [catch and kill] NDA nor the payment to Daniels is being contested. It is also uncontested that Trump wanted to pay to get the story (and other stories, including untrue allegations) from being published. The value of the testimony was entirely sensational and gratuitous, yet Merchan was fine with humiliating Trump… The most maddening moment for the defense came at the lunch break when Merchan stated, “I agree that it would have been better if some of these things had been left unsaid.” He then denied a motion for a mistrial based on the testimony and blamed the defense for not objecting more. That, of course, ignores the standing objection of the defense to Daniels even appearing, and specific objections to the broad scope allowed by the court. This is precisely what the defense said would happen when the prosecutors only agreed to avoid ‘genitalia.’ … Merchan said that he is considering a limiting instruction for the jury to ignore aspects of the testimony. But that is little comfort for the defendant. The court was told that this would happen, it happened, and now the court wants to ask the jury to pretend that it did not happen. Merchan knows that there is no way for the jury to unhear the testimony.
Merchand’s potential violation of The Molineux Rule could relevant on appeal for two reasons: First, the obvious potential to distort the judgment of the jury, as Weisberg says. More subtly, it could “unfairly deter” Trump “from exercising his right to testify.” Trump he really going to take the stand so Bragg can question him about all matters of his sex life short of genitalia?
Conclusion
I hope this serves as a reasonable summary of the state of play on the various elements of Bragg’s architecture (besides giving an account of the befogged and bewildering nature of the trial generally). Let’s close with a nasty twist of thought about the jury:
All it takes to block a conviction is one juror holding out. If members of the jury announce following deliberations that they can’t reach a unanimous verdict, the judge can give them an Allen charge, sending them back to essentially try again. But that would be a controversial move, as it is often viewed as a judge pressuring the holdout to join with the majority.
All that being said, this case would probably be a pretty quick conviction under normal circumstances. But imagine the incentives for a potential holdout: a book deal, traveling the country giving paid speeches to MAGA crowds, the prime-time interview on network television … and that’s just the beginning.
The consensus, across the board, does seem to be for quick conviction, working on the assumption that jurors do their civic duty. However, I think it’s very likely that Merchan has given grounds for appeal; Surtout, pas trop de zele, as Talleyrand once said.
NOTES
[1] Judge Merchan writes: “The ‘object offense’ referenced by Defendant as well as the terms ‘other crime” and ‘another crime’ carry equal meaning.” In my earlier post, I used “other crime,” but I think “object offense” is the more descriptive term, so I will use it going forward.
[2] Note that this diagram is different in detail from the earlier diagram from Asha Rangappa, presented here.
[3] McCarthy also makes the political point:
The campaign laws are so complex that the FEC’s role includes the promulgation of “regulations to implement and clarify these laws.” For its part, the Justice Department has produced an exacting enforcement manual of well over 200 pages, which has been edited numerous times, in order to walk federal prosecutors through the complex web of statutes and regulations.
Why does this matter? Well, if you weren’t born yesterday and you follow the news even casually, then you know that the Department of Justice is so territorial about its jurisdiction that it would make a tiger wilt in admiration. Similarly, the FEC jealously guards its turf. Do you really think for a moment that the Biden Justice Department and the FEC would sit in silent passivity if any other state prosecutor, besides Bragg in this particular case, usurped federal authority and undertook to enforce federal law — in a matter as to which the DOJ and FEC, after thoroughly investigating, had decided not to prosecute?
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/05 ... three.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy
Trump loudly booed at Libertarian convention when he asks attendees to ‘nominate me or at least vote for me’
Kate Sullivan
By Kate Sullivan, Aaron Pellish and Steve Contorno, CNN
Updated 6:56 AM EDT, Sun May 26, 2024
Former President Donald Trump was loudly and consistently booed throughout his speech Saturday at the Libertarian Party’s national convention, particularly when he asked attendees to “nominate me or at least vote for me.”
The heckling began the moment the former president took the stage, and some of his supporters in the room tried to drown out the boos with chants of “We want Trump.”
“Now I think you should nominate me or at least vote for me, and we should win together,” Trump said. “Because the Libertarians want to vote for me … and it’s very important because we have to get rid of the worst president in history.”
Trump added, “Only do that if you want to win; if you want to lose, don’t do that. Keep getting your 3% every four years.” (In 2016, Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson earned more than 3% of the popular vote – a high point in the party’s history.)
Trump left the stage after 34 minutes, marking one of his shortest campaign speeches to date. The Libertarian Party is expected to select its presidential nominee Sunday.
Trump’s stop at the Libertarian convention marked an unconventional one for a presumptive Republican nominee, but it is illustrative of his campaign’s intensifying concern over third-party candidates. The outreach to Libertarians follows weeks of stepped-up attacks by Trump aimed at Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose high-profile independent White House bid is increasingly viewed by the former president’s advisers as a potential problem in an election expected to be decided by a narrow margin in a handful of states.
Kennedy addressed the convention Friday, and his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, attended Trump’s speech and is set to speak Sunday.
The scene inside the Washington Hilton was at times raucous, as Trump supporters and Libertarians clashed. The chair of the Libertarian Party took the stage ahead of Trump’s speech to tell supporters of the former president sitting in the front rows to make room for the Libertarian delegates.
“I don’t want to, like, fight with people or beg and plead. Let’s just make room for the delegates, because those are the people you’re trying to persuade, right? You are already sold. Our delegates are not sold, and President Trump is here to try to sell them,” Angela McArdle said.
“Those of you who are Donald Trump supporters, I think what I would like to see tonight is for us to all get along and come to an understanding and find areas of agreement even if we don’t agree to vote for the same person,” she added.
Also ahead of the speech, Secret Service agents confiscated rubber chickens that the super PAC aligned with Kennedy’s presidential campaign had passed out to attendees.
“No lighters, no water bottles, no noisy chickens,” one agent yelled to attendees waiting to go through the security checkpoint.
Tony Lyons, the co-chair of the pro-Kennedy American Values 2024 super PAC, confirmed to CNN that the group had distributed the rubber chickens at the convention Saturday.
Attendees jeer Trump as he speaks at the Libertarian convention on May 25, 2024. Jose Luis Magana/AP
Libertarians in the crowd at times confronted Trump supporters, and some audience members were escorted out of the venue. One Libertarian critic of Trump was forced to leave after CNN observed him throwing a punch at a Trump-supporting audience member. Several people toward the front of the room turned their backs to Trump as he spoke.
One of Trump’s few loud applause lines Saturday came when he announced that if elected, he would commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the underground website Silk Road, which let users anonymously buy and sell anything from drugs to hacking tutorials. Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison in 2015 following his conviction on seven counts ranging from money laundering to drug trafficking, and many attendees at the Libertarian convention have been arguing for his pardon.
Trump also received cheers when he said he would put a Libertarian in his Cabinet and appoint Libertarians to senior positions in his administration in a potential second term.
Prior to the speech, the Trump campaign said it anticipated getting an unfriendly reception from some attendees – former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, now a Trump surrogate, received loud boos when he mentioned the former president in his speech at the convention Friday.
“Do we know that it’s not exactly home base? Absolutely. There will be people who want him to be there and people who don’t want him to be there, but we’re on offense and competing for nontraditional votes in order to unite the country,” Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller told CNN.
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden’s campaign cast Trump as “anti-freedom” ahead of his address.
“Donald Trump says his Republican Party is the party of freedom, but tell that to the women who have had the freedom to make their own health care decisions ripped away and their pregnancies monitored by the government,” Biden campaign spokesperson Kevin Munoz said in a statement Saturday.
Biden was also invited to speak at the convention but didn’t respond, McArdle told CNN earlier.
At a news conference immediately following Trump’s speech, Chase Oliver, a Libertarian presidential candidate, said that he believed it was a mistake to invite Trump but that he was proud that Libertarians heckled the former president during his remarks.
“I don’t like having a war criminal on this stage. I don’t feel he deserves a spot on this stage,” Oliver said. “While I think it was a mistake to have invited Donald Trump, I’m glad he got to see a glimpse of what a real Libertarian reception feels like.”
Michael Rectenwald, another Libertarian presidential candidate, said he believed the party achieved some gains by inviting Trump to the convention, pointing to the former president’s commitment to commute Ulbricht’s sentence.
“We got a major political party candidate to say that he would free Ross Ulbricht,” Rectenwald said at the news conference. “We moved the needle toward liberty.”
Still, Rectenwald acknowledged that Trump’s remarks were unlikely to persuade Libertarians to vote for the former president.
“There are no people in this room in the Libertarian Party at risk for falling for Trump’s bullsh*t,” he said.
Trent Nestle, a Libertarian delegate from Tennessee, told CNN that Trump’s pledge to commute Ulbricht’s sentence wouldn’t be enough to convince him to back the former president.
“I want to see it happen,” Nestle said. “It won’t change my vote in November.”
https://us.cnn.com/2024/05/25/politics/ ... index.html
A bad day for the Dumpster. While the Libs are class enemies who would as soon put communists against the wall(something Rainer Shea doesn't seem to get) they are at least honest conservatives where as The Donald is a phony self-aggrandizing con-man. Which is not to say that Genocide Joe is a 'lesser evil', oh no. We're fucked either way and the best that can be hoped for is a combination of third party votes and record low turnout
to unmistakably signal the necessity for change.
Kate Sullivan
By Kate Sullivan, Aaron Pellish and Steve Contorno, CNN
Updated 6:56 AM EDT, Sun May 26, 2024
Former President Donald Trump was loudly and consistently booed throughout his speech Saturday at the Libertarian Party’s national convention, particularly when he asked attendees to “nominate me or at least vote for me.”
The heckling began the moment the former president took the stage, and some of his supporters in the room tried to drown out the boos with chants of “We want Trump.”
“Now I think you should nominate me or at least vote for me, and we should win together,” Trump said. “Because the Libertarians want to vote for me … and it’s very important because we have to get rid of the worst president in history.”
Trump added, “Only do that if you want to win; if you want to lose, don’t do that. Keep getting your 3% every four years.” (In 2016, Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson earned more than 3% of the popular vote – a high point in the party’s history.)
Trump left the stage after 34 minutes, marking one of his shortest campaign speeches to date. The Libertarian Party is expected to select its presidential nominee Sunday.
Trump’s stop at the Libertarian convention marked an unconventional one for a presumptive Republican nominee, but it is illustrative of his campaign’s intensifying concern over third-party candidates. The outreach to Libertarians follows weeks of stepped-up attacks by Trump aimed at Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose high-profile independent White House bid is increasingly viewed by the former president’s advisers as a potential problem in an election expected to be decided by a narrow margin in a handful of states.
Kennedy addressed the convention Friday, and his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, attended Trump’s speech and is set to speak Sunday.
The scene inside the Washington Hilton was at times raucous, as Trump supporters and Libertarians clashed. The chair of the Libertarian Party took the stage ahead of Trump’s speech to tell supporters of the former president sitting in the front rows to make room for the Libertarian delegates.
“I don’t want to, like, fight with people or beg and plead. Let’s just make room for the delegates, because those are the people you’re trying to persuade, right? You are already sold. Our delegates are not sold, and President Trump is here to try to sell them,” Angela McArdle said.
“Those of you who are Donald Trump supporters, I think what I would like to see tonight is for us to all get along and come to an understanding and find areas of agreement even if we don’t agree to vote for the same person,” she added.
Also ahead of the speech, Secret Service agents confiscated rubber chickens that the super PAC aligned with Kennedy’s presidential campaign had passed out to attendees.
“No lighters, no water bottles, no noisy chickens,” one agent yelled to attendees waiting to go through the security checkpoint.
Tony Lyons, the co-chair of the pro-Kennedy American Values 2024 super PAC, confirmed to CNN that the group had distributed the rubber chickens at the convention Saturday.
Attendees jeer Trump as he speaks at the Libertarian convention on May 25, 2024. Jose Luis Magana/AP
Libertarians in the crowd at times confronted Trump supporters, and some audience members were escorted out of the venue. One Libertarian critic of Trump was forced to leave after CNN observed him throwing a punch at a Trump-supporting audience member. Several people toward the front of the room turned their backs to Trump as he spoke.
One of Trump’s few loud applause lines Saturday came when he announced that if elected, he would commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the underground website Silk Road, which let users anonymously buy and sell anything from drugs to hacking tutorials. Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison in 2015 following his conviction on seven counts ranging from money laundering to drug trafficking, and many attendees at the Libertarian convention have been arguing for his pardon.
Trump also received cheers when he said he would put a Libertarian in his Cabinet and appoint Libertarians to senior positions in his administration in a potential second term.
Prior to the speech, the Trump campaign said it anticipated getting an unfriendly reception from some attendees – former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, now a Trump surrogate, received loud boos when he mentioned the former president in his speech at the convention Friday.
“Do we know that it’s not exactly home base? Absolutely. There will be people who want him to be there and people who don’t want him to be there, but we’re on offense and competing for nontraditional votes in order to unite the country,” Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller told CNN.
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden’s campaign cast Trump as “anti-freedom” ahead of his address.
“Donald Trump says his Republican Party is the party of freedom, but tell that to the women who have had the freedom to make their own health care decisions ripped away and their pregnancies monitored by the government,” Biden campaign spokesperson Kevin Munoz said in a statement Saturday.
Biden was also invited to speak at the convention but didn’t respond, McArdle told CNN earlier.
At a news conference immediately following Trump’s speech, Chase Oliver, a Libertarian presidential candidate, said that he believed it was a mistake to invite Trump but that he was proud that Libertarians heckled the former president during his remarks.
“I don’t like having a war criminal on this stage. I don’t feel he deserves a spot on this stage,” Oliver said. “While I think it was a mistake to have invited Donald Trump, I’m glad he got to see a glimpse of what a real Libertarian reception feels like.”
Michael Rectenwald, another Libertarian presidential candidate, said he believed the party achieved some gains by inviting Trump to the convention, pointing to the former president’s commitment to commute Ulbricht’s sentence.
“We got a major political party candidate to say that he would free Ross Ulbricht,” Rectenwald said at the news conference. “We moved the needle toward liberty.”
Still, Rectenwald acknowledged that Trump’s remarks were unlikely to persuade Libertarians to vote for the former president.
“There are no people in this room in the Libertarian Party at risk for falling for Trump’s bullsh*t,” he said.
Trent Nestle, a Libertarian delegate from Tennessee, told CNN that Trump’s pledge to commute Ulbricht’s sentence wouldn’t be enough to convince him to back the former president.
“I want to see it happen,” Nestle said. “It won’t change my vote in November.”
https://us.cnn.com/2024/05/25/politics/ ... index.html
A bad day for the Dumpster. While the Libs are class enemies who would as soon put communists against the wall(something Rainer Shea doesn't seem to get) they are at least honest conservatives where as The Donald is a phony self-aggrandizing con-man. Which is not to say that Genocide Joe is a 'lesser evil', oh no. We're fucked either way and the best that can be hoped for is a combination of third party votes and record low turnout
to unmistakably signal the necessity for change.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy
Donald Trump Conviction Open Thread
Posted on May 31, 2024 by Yves Smith
Dear patient readers,
Normally, such a big story would merit a proper post. However, this and other Trump cases have been Lambert’s beat and he is not on duty for an original post today. I am not well positioned to step into his shoes since the press coverage has been so awful over the course of the trial that I have often gone into MEGO (My Eyes Glaze Over) when encountering it. Lambert said that he would have had to spend twice as much time as he has to have a better grasp of what happened in the courtroom, and also put on a moon suit instead of his usual waders.
Obviously the Trump side will appeal. They need Constitutional theories since it seems vanishingly unlikely any New York court will reverse, no matter how sound the argument. I assume they will be looking hard at the Sixth Amendment for a basis:
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence
Lambert and other commentators pointed out that the original indictment did not specify what crime the prosecution was relying on to turn the misdemeanor records offense into a felony. Can that be depicted as a failure to inform Trump of the accusation with sufficient specificity to enable him to prepare a proper defense?
Lambert did point to an additional issue, although I have no idea whether it can be ginned up into a basis for appeal. In yesterday’s Water Cooler, he had gone through the judge’s instructions in detail, including the jury’s verdict sheet:
On “The Charged Crimes,” p 27:
“Verdict Sheet,” p. 53:
[1] These are the counts in Bragg’s indictment; each of the 34 counts is a separate business records offense.
[2] Notice the checkboxes that Merchan does not include:
Surely the voting public has an interest in knowing which object offense caused Trump’s misdemeanors (if any) to be converted into felonies. An absurdly minor tax violation? The much bruited and salacious catch-and-kill scheme? A campaign finance violation? Merchan, apparently, has no care for the voters. I would speculate that — with the possible assistance of the flex-net working the lawfare on this project — having maximized the paths to conviction with capacious definitions of unanimity, Merchan would prefer not to “show his work,” and reveal how those definitions worked out in reality. Whether this is grounds for appeal I don’t know, but I find it appalling. “Our law”! “Our democracy”!
This verdict sheet obscures what the jury’s findings of facts were on which object offense(s) led the misdemeanor business records offense to be upped to a felony. Is that an arguable due process violation?
I trust readers will opine on what this conviction means for the campaign. You can be sure both parties will be flogging it. Trump has apparently started a new round of fundraising based on it. If the Biden campaign makes his case significantly about Trump having been found guilty, does that give him a boost, or is it simply a variant of “Orange man bad and I’m not him”?
Some of the reactions. Pointedly middle of the road USA Today had a headline over the fold that Truth Social shared tanked after the verdict. From its main story on the implications, How will Donald Trump’s guilty verdict hit his reelection bid? Is his political fallout here?:
Former President Donald Trump’s 2024 White House campaign now enters unknown territory: Voter reaction to the first major party nominee to be convicted of crimes….
While the challenge is unprecedented, Trump’s approach is very familiar: Attack the legal system.
“This was a rigged decision, right from day one,” Trump told reporters at the courthouse on Thursday less than an hour after being found guilty and echoing past comments the Republican has made designed to brace voters for the possibility of a guilty verdict…
One thing Trump likely won’t have to worry about anytime soon: Prison. He plans to appeal the verdict, and that process could drag out for years.
NBC has a much splashier landing page as far the verdict is concerned than USA Today:
Contrast with ABC, which almost seems to be treating the decision as oldish news:
At CBS, clearly the big story but no big caps, banner headline across all columns treatment:
From Edward Luce, Larry Summers’ former speechwriter, in Trump’s guilty verdict puts America’s political system on trial in the Financial Times:
The Republican party’s nominee now joins his former campaign manager, senior political adviser, chief White House strategist, and national security adviser as a convicted criminal. The jury’s speed and unanimity leave little doubt about the watertightness of the verdict….
Within minutes of the verdict, senior Republicans rushed to condemn the trial as a politically motivated sham and a travesty of justice. Democrats were commensurately jubilant that justice had been served and that no man is above the law. These polarised reactions were both unsurprising and ominous. They seal this presidential election’s fate as a contest over the rule of law….
The big question is whether the verdict will sway the relatively small number of US voters who neither hate nor love him. Polls suggest that a large share of swing voters would view Trump differently if he were a convicted felon. But what people tell pollsters in the abstract has little bearing on how they will respond to the onslaught of contradictory propaganda they will now face.
Yet it is hard to imagine there could be an upside to Trump’s conviction. Even after his chief rival for the nomination, Nikki Haley, had dropped out of the race earlier this year roughly a fifth of Republican voters still voted “uncommitted” in the ensuing primaries. Were even a small share of those either not to vote, or go for Biden, it could tip the outcome in a close election. Democrats should nevertheless be wary of pocketing a legal verdict as a political win.
A much longer discussion at CNN, Trump conviction heralds a somber and volatile moment in American history, similarly focuses on the “rule of law” issue and related threat to “our democracy”. The initial remarks by Biden spokescritters suggest that the campaign will double down on those themes. They no doubt hope that this messaging will work better than it has now that convictions are in hand. We’ll see soon from polling data what the impact is.
The CNN article interestingly points out that this prosecution was risky:
CNN presidential historian Timothy Naftali said Thursday that Trump’s call to arms for a campaign against the legal system will mean that every Republican will be forced to put it at the center of their 2024 campaigns. “That is going to create, in my view, a torrent of poison that will be likely worse than we saw in the ‘Stop the Steal’ campaign that preceded January 6. And that is going to further unsettle an already sensitive country,” Naftali said. “I worry about it because the ‘Stop the Steal’ campaign created widespread doubt about the honesty of our electoral system and led many people to believe that fraud had been committed in 2020.”
A question that long hovered over this trial is whether the crime — falsifying financial records to hide a hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels to mislead voters in 2016 — was sufficiently serious for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to risk the extraordinary political consequences of indicting an ex-president. Prosecutors’ use of Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen as their star witness, despite his own conviction on tax charges and for lying to Congress, was deeply controversial. Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins Thursday that the timing of the trial — in the middle of an election campaign — was unfair to the ex-president.
But the charges were not just cooked up by prosecutors as Trump claimed. They were brought by a grand jury. The ex-president was offered the presumption of innocence until proven guilty, and he was judged by a jury of his peers. Even now, the Constitution he claims has been hijacked will protect him with a full array of appeals, as in all of his other criminal cases.
But once a jury has delivered a verdict, justice is considered served. So the immediate Republican attacks on the judge, the court and the verdict represent an extraordinary effort by one of the country’s two major political parties to turn against the integrity of the legal system.
Fox interestingly looks to be first to run a story based on talking to voters. One can assume big-time sample bias, so again we’ll need polls and more focus groups to get a reading (paging Frank Luntz)
And to round things out, some takes from the Twitterverse. Weirdly tweets on this conviction are not prominent in my feeds (“following” and “for you”). Is Musk suppressing the story? From a search, mainly triumphal reactions:
But there are others:
So we are in fog of politics. More will become clear in the coming week, most of all the impact on Trump in the polls.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/05 ... hread.html
*****
So, the first knife is stuck...there will be others. So it seems the ruling consensus will try to bury the Trump candidacy in convictions. Potentially risky given his minions tendency to believe whatever he says. (A belief largely fostered by us prols being lied to by the ptb forever.) Nonetheless, this will chip away at his support in the mushy middle. And with more to come there will be an cumulative effect. Regardless of how he is kept out of office, by fair means or foul, there will be a bad reaction. But 'fair' means will engender less thereof. At least I'm guessing that's the plan. We shall see...
Regardless of how many convictions he ain't going to jail. Ya think this is China or Russia or something? Amerika does not jail billionaires, it would set a bad precedent.
As for The Man hisself, yes, he's guilty and yes he is being persecuted, though solely by the press, persistently and probably with increasing vitriol as November approaches. Biden's regime need not dirty it's hands with friends like that. I would not expect the Party to reject him at the convention, that would destroy the party in it's current form. Trump's protests are from the heart, make no mistake. He truly feels that he's being treated unfairly. Because all of this crap he's being accused of is all in a days work(if ya can call it that) for his ruling class peers. And they always get away with it, great wealth has great benefits. His great sin against that ruling consensus is not his divisiveness(they benefit from that), his obnoxious egomania, his real crimes, but rather his unreliability and incompetence in executing the imperialist program. The only thing he got 'right'<sic> was his trade war against China, and that an accident of ego not conscious implementation of policy.
We are stuck with evil in November. Vote socialist if you are able or stay home. The lowest turnout in history would be a vindication of sorts.
Posted on May 31, 2024 by Yves Smith
Dear patient readers,
Normally, such a big story would merit a proper post. However, this and other Trump cases have been Lambert’s beat and he is not on duty for an original post today. I am not well positioned to step into his shoes since the press coverage has been so awful over the course of the trial that I have often gone into MEGO (My Eyes Glaze Over) when encountering it. Lambert said that he would have had to spend twice as much time as he has to have a better grasp of what happened in the courtroom, and also put on a moon suit instead of his usual waders.
Obviously the Trump side will appeal. They need Constitutional theories since it seems vanishingly unlikely any New York court will reverse, no matter how sound the argument. I assume they will be looking hard at the Sixth Amendment for a basis:
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence
Lambert and other commentators pointed out that the original indictment did not specify what crime the prosecution was relying on to turn the misdemeanor records offense into a felony. Can that be depicted as a failure to inform Trump of the accusation with sufficient specificity to enable him to prepare a proper defense?
Lambert did point to an additional issue, although I have no idea whether it can be ginned up into a basis for appeal. In yesterday’s Water Cooler, he had gone through the judge’s instructions in detail, including the jury’s verdict sheet:
On “The Charged Crimes,” p 27:
“Verdict Sheet,” p. 53:
[1] These are the counts in Bragg’s indictment; each of the 34 counts is a separate business records offense.
[2] Notice the checkboxes that Merchan does not include:
Surely the voting public has an interest in knowing which object offense caused Trump’s misdemeanors (if any) to be converted into felonies. An absurdly minor tax violation? The much bruited and salacious catch-and-kill scheme? A campaign finance violation? Merchan, apparently, has no care for the voters. I would speculate that — with the possible assistance of the flex-net working the lawfare on this project — having maximized the paths to conviction with capacious definitions of unanimity, Merchan would prefer not to “show his work,” and reveal how those definitions worked out in reality. Whether this is grounds for appeal I don’t know, but I find it appalling. “Our law”! “Our democracy”!
This verdict sheet obscures what the jury’s findings of facts were on which object offense(s) led the misdemeanor business records offense to be upped to a felony. Is that an arguable due process violation?
I trust readers will opine on what this conviction means for the campaign. You can be sure both parties will be flogging it. Trump has apparently started a new round of fundraising based on it. If the Biden campaign makes his case significantly about Trump having been found guilty, does that give him a boost, or is it simply a variant of “Orange man bad and I’m not him”?
Some of the reactions. Pointedly middle of the road USA Today had a headline over the fold that Truth Social shared tanked after the verdict. From its main story on the implications, How will Donald Trump’s guilty verdict hit his reelection bid? Is his political fallout here?:
Former President Donald Trump’s 2024 White House campaign now enters unknown territory: Voter reaction to the first major party nominee to be convicted of crimes….
While the challenge is unprecedented, Trump’s approach is very familiar: Attack the legal system.
“This was a rigged decision, right from day one,” Trump told reporters at the courthouse on Thursday less than an hour after being found guilty and echoing past comments the Republican has made designed to brace voters for the possibility of a guilty verdict…
One thing Trump likely won’t have to worry about anytime soon: Prison. He plans to appeal the verdict, and that process could drag out for years.
NBC has a much splashier landing page as far the verdict is concerned than USA Today:
Contrast with ABC, which almost seems to be treating the decision as oldish news:
At CBS, clearly the big story but no big caps, banner headline across all columns treatment:
From Edward Luce, Larry Summers’ former speechwriter, in Trump’s guilty verdict puts America’s political system on trial in the Financial Times:
The Republican party’s nominee now joins his former campaign manager, senior political adviser, chief White House strategist, and national security adviser as a convicted criminal. The jury’s speed and unanimity leave little doubt about the watertightness of the verdict….
Within minutes of the verdict, senior Republicans rushed to condemn the trial as a politically motivated sham and a travesty of justice. Democrats were commensurately jubilant that justice had been served and that no man is above the law. These polarised reactions were both unsurprising and ominous. They seal this presidential election’s fate as a contest over the rule of law….
The big question is whether the verdict will sway the relatively small number of US voters who neither hate nor love him. Polls suggest that a large share of swing voters would view Trump differently if he were a convicted felon. But what people tell pollsters in the abstract has little bearing on how they will respond to the onslaught of contradictory propaganda they will now face.
Yet it is hard to imagine there could be an upside to Trump’s conviction. Even after his chief rival for the nomination, Nikki Haley, had dropped out of the race earlier this year roughly a fifth of Republican voters still voted “uncommitted” in the ensuing primaries. Were even a small share of those either not to vote, or go for Biden, it could tip the outcome in a close election. Democrats should nevertheless be wary of pocketing a legal verdict as a political win.
A much longer discussion at CNN, Trump conviction heralds a somber and volatile moment in American history, similarly focuses on the “rule of law” issue and related threat to “our democracy”. The initial remarks by Biden spokescritters suggest that the campaign will double down on those themes. They no doubt hope that this messaging will work better than it has now that convictions are in hand. We’ll see soon from polling data what the impact is.
The CNN article interestingly points out that this prosecution was risky:
CNN presidential historian Timothy Naftali said Thursday that Trump’s call to arms for a campaign against the legal system will mean that every Republican will be forced to put it at the center of their 2024 campaigns. “That is going to create, in my view, a torrent of poison that will be likely worse than we saw in the ‘Stop the Steal’ campaign that preceded January 6. And that is going to further unsettle an already sensitive country,” Naftali said. “I worry about it because the ‘Stop the Steal’ campaign created widespread doubt about the honesty of our electoral system and led many people to believe that fraud had been committed in 2020.”
A question that long hovered over this trial is whether the crime — falsifying financial records to hide a hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels to mislead voters in 2016 — was sufficiently serious for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to risk the extraordinary political consequences of indicting an ex-president. Prosecutors’ use of Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen as their star witness, despite his own conviction on tax charges and for lying to Congress, was deeply controversial. Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins Thursday that the timing of the trial — in the middle of an election campaign — was unfair to the ex-president.
But the charges were not just cooked up by prosecutors as Trump claimed. They were brought by a grand jury. The ex-president was offered the presumption of innocence until proven guilty, and he was judged by a jury of his peers. Even now, the Constitution he claims has been hijacked will protect him with a full array of appeals, as in all of his other criminal cases.
But once a jury has delivered a verdict, justice is considered served. So the immediate Republican attacks on the judge, the court and the verdict represent an extraordinary effort by one of the country’s two major political parties to turn against the integrity of the legal system.
Fox interestingly looks to be first to run a story based on talking to voters. One can assume big-time sample bias, so again we’ll need polls and more focus groups to get a reading (paging Frank Luntz)
And to round things out, some takes from the Twitterverse. Weirdly tweets on this conviction are not prominent in my feeds (“following” and “for you”). Is Musk suppressing the story? From a search, mainly triumphal reactions:
(Other 'X' shots at link)Ryan Silvey
@RyanSilvey
·
Follow
It only takes ONE juror to hang a jury. Juror #2 answered that Trump’s Truth Social was their only source of news and not even THAT person voted Not Guilty on even ONE charge.
Please save your rigged/sham/kangaroo takes for your echo-chamber friends & donors.
5:34 PM · May 30, 2024
But there are others:
(Other 'X' shots at link)Ron Rule
@ronrule
·
Follow
I’m voting for Trump.
I don’t even like him.
I’m just tired of the left. Tired of DEI & gun laws & tax hikes & climate nonsense & billions to foreigners.
I’m not voting for the man. I’m voting for the pissed off bull-in-a-china-shop who wants to burn DC to the ground.
11:56 AM · May 30, 2024
So we are in fog of politics. More will become clear in the coming week, most of all the impact on Trump in the polls.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/05 ... hread.html
*****
So, the first knife is stuck...there will be others. So it seems the ruling consensus will try to bury the Trump candidacy in convictions. Potentially risky given his minions tendency to believe whatever he says. (A belief largely fostered by us prols being lied to by the ptb forever.) Nonetheless, this will chip away at his support in the mushy middle. And with more to come there will be an cumulative effect. Regardless of how he is kept out of office, by fair means or foul, there will be a bad reaction. But 'fair' means will engender less thereof. At least I'm guessing that's the plan. We shall see...
Regardless of how many convictions he ain't going to jail. Ya think this is China or Russia or something? Amerika does not jail billionaires, it would set a bad precedent.
As for The Man hisself, yes, he's guilty and yes he is being persecuted, though solely by the press, persistently and probably with increasing vitriol as November approaches. Biden's regime need not dirty it's hands with friends like that. I would not expect the Party to reject him at the convention, that would destroy the party in it's current form. Trump's protests are from the heart, make no mistake. He truly feels that he's being treated unfairly. Because all of this crap he's being accused of is all in a days work(if ya can call it that) for his ruling class peers. And they always get away with it, great wealth has great benefits. His great sin against that ruling consensus is not his divisiveness(they benefit from that), his obnoxious egomania, his real crimes, but rather his unreliability and incompetence in executing the imperialist program. The only thing he got 'right'<sic> was his trade war against China, and that an accident of ego not conscious implementation of policy.
We are stuck with evil in November. Vote socialist if you are able or stay home. The lowest turnout in history would be a vindication of sorts.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy
New York Man Goes Down the New York Way
ARI PAUL
Election Focus 2024Donald Trump is now the first former US president to be convicted of a felony, found guilty on 34 counts of “in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush money payment to a porn actor who said the two had sex” (AP, 5/31/24). Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement (5/30/24) that Trump was found “guilty of repeatedly and fraudulently falsifying business records in a scheme to conceal damaging information from American voters during the 2016 presidential election,” and that his prosecutors “proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Trump illegally falsified 34 New York business records.”
Trump’s shot at retaking the White House is far from finished (Guardian, 5/30/24), and he may very well evade jail (NBC, 5/30/24), but the right-wing press is howling anyway.
‘A bizarre turducken’
What if Mr. Trump loses the election and then is vindicated on appeal? If Democrats think that too many Republicans today complain about stolen elections, imagine how many more might next year.
The conviction sets a precedent of using legal cases, no matter how sketchy, to try to knock out political opponents, including former presidents. Mr. Trump has already vowed to return the favor. If Democrats felt like cheering Thursday when the guilty verdict was read, they should think again. Mr. Bragg might have opened a new destabilizing era of American politics, and no one can say how it will end.
The New York Post (5/31/24) ran the front-page headline “Injustice,” while its editorial board (5/31/24) argued that Democrats’ happiness at the conviction “itself is ample reason for the court of public opinion to vote [President Joe Biden] out come Election Day.”
The Washington Post (5/31/24) reported on the meltdown at Fox News:
“This is a very sad day for all of us, irrespective of party, irrespective of affiliation,” Fox News host Jeanine Pirro said on the network’s 5 p.m. show. “We have seen the criminal justice weaponized to bring down a candidate for president and a former president.”
On her 7 p.m. show, Laura Ingraham called it “a disgraceful day for the United States, a day that America may never recover from,” while 9 p.m. host Sean Hannity called it “a conviction without a crime.”
All too typical
Yet, for journalists who looked at the Manhattan courtroom, Trump sat there like many other New York politicians and political influencers whose criminality brought them down. Trump, who was born in Queens and made his name in Manhattan, is a businessman shaped by the New York City real estate industry and the political machines around it. That’s an exciting place to be. But it’s also a very corrupt one (WHEC, 8/13/21).
In this context, Trump’s conviction is less a partisan witch hunt or a crossing-the-Rubicon moment for US history, and more another New York politician getting caught up in a scandal that is all too typical of the city and state that made him.
New York, of course, is hardly unique in having a tradition of officials getting caught with their hands in the till. But those who follow New York politics can cite a long line of prominent politicians brought down by corruption investigations.
Sheldon Silver, the lower Manhattan Democrat who for 20 years ruled the state assembly with an iron fist, died in federal custody due to corruption charges (Guardian, 1/24/22).
A Democratic senate majority leader, Democrat Malcolm Smith, was given “seven years in prison after being convicted of trying to bribe his way onto the Republican ballot in the 2013 race for New York City mayor” (Politico, 7/1/15). Smith was followed by Pedro Espada Jr., who was subsequently sentenced to five years in prison for embezzling from federally funded healthcare clinics (New York Times, 6/14/12).
While former Gov. Eliot Spitzer never saw a courtroom, a federal investigation into a prostitution ring revealed him as a client and ended his political career (NPR, 3/12/08).
The current New York City mayor, Democrat Eric Adams, is under federal investigation for possible illegal connections to Turkey (CBS, 5/21/24). His buildings department commissioner, Republican Eric Ulrich, has been charged with running “a years-long scheme doling out political favors in exchange for more than $150,000 in bribes” (New York Post, 9/13/23).
Prosecution of corruption isn’t confined to the public sector; the former federal prosecutor for Manhattan, Preet Bharara, made a name for himself by going after white-collar criminals (New Yorker, 3/13/17). And let’s not forget the many union leaders nabbed for corruption over the years (New York Post, 7/26/00; New York Times, 5/20/09, 8/5/09; CNN, 8/5/23).
Removed from sordid politics
Obviously, in the US consciousness, the president stands above all over elected leaders, including Supreme Court justices and congressional leaders, as well as the top honchos at the state level. The president leads the military, represents the nation on the world stage, and stands (theoretically) as a unifying figure for the American people. But this mythology of a sort of king-like figure not only warps the notion of small-r republican governance, but removes the president from the rest of sordid politics in an extremely dishonest way.
For those who have studied Trump’s career, despite rising to the White House and photo shoots all over the world, he is, in essence, a product of New York City. His business empire, political dealings and image in the tabloid press were created and shaped by New York’s dirty political culture.
The conviction will be the stuff of partisan rabble in the media for days and weeks. But in reality, he’s just another member of the city’s political and business class who got caught committing banal crimes. Media would be better off framing his conviction in the context of how routine it was, given the venue, rather than offering it as a novel soul-searching moment for the nation.
https://fair.org/home/new-york-man-goes ... -york-way/
Nice try....All true but trying to separate this from politics is a fool's errand.
ARI PAUL
Election Focus 2024Donald Trump is now the first former US president to be convicted of a felony, found guilty on 34 counts of “in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush money payment to a porn actor who said the two had sex” (AP, 5/31/24). Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement (5/30/24) that Trump was found “guilty of repeatedly and fraudulently falsifying business records in a scheme to conceal damaging information from American voters during the 2016 presidential election,” and that his prosecutors “proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Trump illegally falsified 34 New York business records.”
Trump’s shot at retaking the White House is far from finished (Guardian, 5/30/24), and he may very well evade jail (NBC, 5/30/24), but the right-wing press is howling anyway.
‘A bizarre turducken’
The Wall Street Journal editorial board (5/30/24) painted Bragg’s case against Trump as “a bizarre turducken, with alleged crimes stuffed inside other crimes.” It suggested the DA was motivated less by executing the law than by kneecapping Trump’s bid for the White House. The whole affair, the paper said, leads us to more division:
“If Democrats felt like cheering Thursday when the guilty verdict was read, they should think again,” the Wall Street Journal (5/30/24) warned, as “Mr. Trump has already vowed to return the favor.”
What if Mr. Trump loses the election and then is vindicated on appeal? If Democrats think that too many Republicans today complain about stolen elections, imagine how many more might next year.
The conviction sets a precedent of using legal cases, no matter how sketchy, to try to knock out political opponents, including former presidents. Mr. Trump has already vowed to return the favor. If Democrats felt like cheering Thursday when the guilty verdict was read, they should think again. Mr. Bragg might have opened a new destabilizing era of American politics, and no one can say how it will end.
The New York Post (5/31/24) ran the front-page headline “Injustice,” while its editorial board (5/31/24) argued that Democrats’ happiness at the conviction “itself is ample reason for the court of public opinion to vote [President Joe Biden] out come Election Day.”
The Washington Post (5/31/24) reported on the meltdown at Fox News:
“This is a very sad day for all of us, irrespective of party, irrespective of affiliation,” Fox News host Jeanine Pirro said on the network’s 5 p.m. show. “We have seen the criminal justice weaponized to bring down a candidate for president and a former president.”
On her 7 p.m. show, Laura Ingraham called it “a disgraceful day for the United States, a day that America may never recover from,” while 9 p.m. host Sean Hannity called it “a conviction without a crime.”
All too typical
What comes up over and over again in coverage of both the Manhattan hush-money case―as well as two federal cases against Trump, and one election-related case in Atlanta―is that the prosecution and conviction of a former president is without precedent (Fox News, 5/30/24; New York Times, 5/30/24; NPR, 5/30/24). The theory goes that these prosecutions are so divisive, in such a politically volatile moment, that they should force us to weigh the pursuit of justice against political stability.
Talkshow host Charlie Kirk (Alaska Must Read, 5/30/24) warned that “there will be an unprecedented push to say that Trump CANNOT be allowed to win, that we CANNOT elect a convicted felon.”
Yet, for journalists who looked at the Manhattan courtroom, Trump sat there like many other New York politicians and political influencers whose criminality brought them down. Trump, who was born in Queens and made his name in Manhattan, is a businessman shaped by the New York City real estate industry and the political machines around it. That’s an exciting place to be. But it’s also a very corrupt one (WHEC, 8/13/21).
In this context, Trump’s conviction is less a partisan witch hunt or a crossing-the-Rubicon moment for US history, and more another New York politician getting caught up in a scandal that is all too typical of the city and state that made him.
New York, of course, is hardly unique in having a tradition of officials getting caught with their hands in the till. But those who follow New York politics can cite a long line of prominent politicians brought down by corruption investigations.
Sheldon Silver, the lower Manhattan Democrat who for 20 years ruled the state assembly with an iron fist, died in federal custody due to corruption charges (Guardian, 1/24/22).
On the Republican side, former Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos was convicted, along with his son, for “pressuring companies that relied heavily on government contracts to give his son nominal but lucrative jobs” (Washington Post, 5/12/16). Joe Bruno, Skelos’ Republican predecessor, was also found guilty on corruption charges, though he was acquitted in a retrial (New York Times, 5/16/14).
The Washington Post (5/12/16) could have run this exact same headline about two different New York senate majority leaders over a four-year period.
A Democratic senate majority leader, Democrat Malcolm Smith, was given “seven years in prison after being convicted of trying to bribe his way onto the Republican ballot in the 2013 race for New York City mayor” (Politico, 7/1/15). Smith was followed by Pedro Espada Jr., who was subsequently sentenced to five years in prison for embezzling from federally funded healthcare clinics (New York Times, 6/14/12).
While former Gov. Eliot Spitzer never saw a courtroom, a federal investigation into a prostitution ring revealed him as a client and ended his political career (NPR, 3/12/08).
The current New York City mayor, Democrat Eric Adams, is under federal investigation for possible illegal connections to Turkey (CBS, 5/21/24). His buildings department commissioner, Republican Eric Ulrich, has been charged with running “a years-long scheme doling out political favors in exchange for more than $150,000 in bribes” (New York Post, 9/13/23).
Prosecution of corruption isn’t confined to the public sector; the former federal prosecutor for Manhattan, Preet Bharara, made a name for himself by going after white-collar criminals (New Yorker, 3/13/17). And let’s not forget the many union leaders nabbed for corruption over the years (New York Post, 7/26/00; New York Times, 5/20/09, 8/5/09; CNN, 8/5/23).
Removed from sordid politics
Obviously, in the US consciousness, the president stands above all over elected leaders, including Supreme Court justices and congressional leaders, as well as the top honchos at the state level. The president leads the military, represents the nation on the world stage, and stands (theoretically) as a unifying figure for the American people. But this mythology of a sort of king-like figure not only warps the notion of small-r republican governance, but removes the president from the rest of sordid politics in an extremely dishonest way.
For those who have studied Trump’s career, despite rising to the White House and photo shoots all over the world, he is, in essence, a product of New York City. His business empire, political dealings and image in the tabloid press were created and shaped by New York’s dirty political culture.
The conviction will be the stuff of partisan rabble in the media for days and weeks. But in reality, he’s just another member of the city’s political and business class who got caught committing banal crimes. Media would be better off framing his conviction in the context of how routine it was, given the venue, rather than offering it as a novel soul-searching moment for the nation.
https://fair.org/home/new-york-man-goes ... -york-way/
Nice try....All true but trying to separate this from politics is a fool's errand.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy
Fact check: Trump falsely claims he didn’t call to lock up Hillary Clinton
By Daniel Dale, CNN
Updated 8:00 AM EDT, Mon June 3, 2024
Former President Donald Trump falsely claimed in a new interview that he didn’t make a “lock her up” call for the imprisonment of his Democratic opponent of the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton.
Trump, who faces the possibility of a prison sentence after he was convicted last week on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, was asked in an interview aired Sunday on Fox News about how he had “famously said… ‘lock her up’” in relation to Clinton but did not jail her when he was president.
During his answer, Trump said he had decided that imprisoning Clinton “would have been a terrible thing.” Then he added: “I didn’t say ‘lock her up,’ but the people would all say ‘lock her up, lock her up.’”
Facts First: Trump’s claim that “I didn’t say ‘lock her up’” is false. He called for Clinton’s imprisonment on multiple occasions, including by using the phrase “lock her up.”
Trump often used such rhetoric while criticizing Clinton’s email practices as secretary of state during the Obama administration, which prompted a federal investigation. She was never charged with a crime.
During campaign rallies in 2016, Trump sometimes paused his remarks as his supporters engaged in chants of “lock her up,” giving the chants time to continue. On other occasions, he explicitly repeated those words himself.
“For what she’s done, they should lock her up,” Trump said after the crowd chanted “lock her up” at an October 2016 rally in North Carolina.
“‘Lock her up’ is right,” he said at an October 2016 rally in Pennsylvania.
Trump also explicitly called for Clinton’s imprisonment using different phrasing.
“Hillary Clinton has to go to jail, OK? She has to go to jail,” he said in a June 2016 speech in California. “She has to go to jail,” he repeated in an October 2016 speech in Florida. And at a presidential debate in October 2016, after Clinton said, “It’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country,” Trump responded, “Because you’d be in jail.”
Trump softened his rhetoric shortly after he defeated Clinton in the election, saying he didn’t want to hurt her and didn’t feel strongly about prosecuting her. In his 2020 campaign for reelection, though, he again made calls to “lock her up.”
“You should lock her up, I’ll tell you,” he said at a January 2020 rally in Ohio. At an October 2020 rally in Georgia, after the crowd chanted “lock them up” in relation to the Biden family, Trump said, “You should lock them up. Lock up the Bidens. Lock up Hillary.”
https://us.cnn.com/2024/06/02/politics/ ... index.html
So, what is it? Is it off-the-charts arrogance? Does he take us all, MAGA included, to be fools? Is he nuts? Given that there are numerous video records of said utterance, that millions have heard him say it, is this the cherry on top of a mountain of bald face lies? Is this a jump-the-shark moment?
And as for blaming it all on the MAGAs, who planted that meme in the crowd?
In a liars contest between Trump and Biden I'll place no bets.
By Daniel Dale, CNN
Updated 8:00 AM EDT, Mon June 3, 2024
Former President Donald Trump falsely claimed in a new interview that he didn’t make a “lock her up” call for the imprisonment of his Democratic opponent of the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton.
Trump, who faces the possibility of a prison sentence after he was convicted last week on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, was asked in an interview aired Sunday on Fox News about how he had “famously said… ‘lock her up’” in relation to Clinton but did not jail her when he was president.
During his answer, Trump said he had decided that imprisoning Clinton “would have been a terrible thing.” Then he added: “I didn’t say ‘lock her up,’ but the people would all say ‘lock her up, lock her up.’”
Facts First: Trump’s claim that “I didn’t say ‘lock her up’” is false. He called for Clinton’s imprisonment on multiple occasions, including by using the phrase “lock her up.”
Trump often used such rhetoric while criticizing Clinton’s email practices as secretary of state during the Obama administration, which prompted a federal investigation. She was never charged with a crime.
During campaign rallies in 2016, Trump sometimes paused his remarks as his supporters engaged in chants of “lock her up,” giving the chants time to continue. On other occasions, he explicitly repeated those words himself.
“For what she’s done, they should lock her up,” Trump said after the crowd chanted “lock her up” at an October 2016 rally in North Carolina.
“‘Lock her up’ is right,” he said at an October 2016 rally in Pennsylvania.
Trump also explicitly called for Clinton’s imprisonment using different phrasing.
“Hillary Clinton has to go to jail, OK? She has to go to jail,” he said in a June 2016 speech in California. “She has to go to jail,” he repeated in an October 2016 speech in Florida. And at a presidential debate in October 2016, after Clinton said, “It’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country,” Trump responded, “Because you’d be in jail.”
Trump softened his rhetoric shortly after he defeated Clinton in the election, saying he didn’t want to hurt her and didn’t feel strongly about prosecuting her. In his 2020 campaign for reelection, though, he again made calls to “lock her up.”
“You should lock her up, I’ll tell you,” he said at a January 2020 rally in Ohio. At an October 2020 rally in Georgia, after the crowd chanted “lock them up” in relation to the Biden family, Trump said, “You should lock them up. Lock up the Bidens. Lock up Hillary.”
https://us.cnn.com/2024/06/02/politics/ ... index.html
So, what is it? Is it off-the-charts arrogance? Does he take us all, MAGA included, to be fools? Is he nuts? Given that there are numerous video records of said utterance, that millions have heard him say it, is this the cherry on top of a mountain of bald face lies? Is this a jump-the-shark moment?
And as for blaming it all on the MAGAs, who planted that meme in the crowd?
In a liars contest between Trump and Biden I'll place no bets.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy
Georgia Appeals Court Halts Trump Election Interference Case
Posted on June 6, 2024 by Yves Smith
Yves here. It is a sign of how deeply partisan news reporting has become, above all in matters Trump, that I feel compelled to point a few things out, as unpopular as that might be in some circles.
First, even Trump has due process rights. Fights over procedure, which can include getting seemingly strained arguments heard, are part and parcel for litigation. If you want a graduate course in motions pleading, have a look at our many posts on the Kentucky Retirement Systems case. It was filed year-end 2017 and still has not gotten to discovery (even though the trial court judge has recently cleared what looked like the last big hurdle, the defendants are trying to make an interlocutory appeal). Even in the tiny litigations I have sadly been party to, motions that lead to delay, whether delay is the intended effect or an unwanted by-product, are pervasive and thus are hard to see as unusual or irregular.
Second, the reason for the upset is that the appeals court has set a hearing date on the Trump action versus the continued role of Fani Willis as Fulton County prosecutor in his case for October. If the appeals court looked to be deliberately giving Trump a slot late relative to its current docketing, that would be legitimate grounds for considerable criticism. However, there is no indication in the account below that the court has set the hearing later than one would expect in the normal course of events.
And why the uproar? That this outcome has thrown a wrench in the political timing, of getting the case heard sooner. That is presumably for the two political motives we saw in action in the New York criminal case that Trump just lost: to keep his butt in a seat in court so he could not campaign, and hopefully to secure a victory that would dim his re-election chances.
Has no one heard the saying, “The wheels of justice grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine”? Did they miss the “slowly” part?
Third, I am not enthusiastic about defenses of Willis. She failed to make the required disclosures of the gifts from her boyfriend. In the better-run state of California, at CalPERS alone, failure to make those disclosures is believed to have played a role in the recent departure of Chief Investment Officer Nichole Musicco and scandal for board member Theresa Taylor (who sadly stared it down despite having a background that would make it seem vanishingly unlikely that her oversight was an accident). Even though the disclosure lapse was not the basis for Trump action1, it is serious misconduct.
And as for allegations of unseemly behavior, since when does the White House get involved in state prosecutions? From Fox News:
….embedded in the filing [by a Trump-co-defendant] are invoices for the Law Offices of Nathan J. Wade [Willis’ former co-counsel on the case]. One invoice calls attention to “Fulton County District Attorney’s Office.”
Wade billed the county for a May 23, 2022, event described as “Travel to Athens; Conf with White House Counsel.” Wade charged $2,000 for eight hours at $250 an hour.
Several months later, Wade billed for “Interview with DC/White House” on Nov. 18, 2022. Wade again charged $2,000 for eight hours at $250 an hour, according to the documents.
There is no ‘splaining this away. Either Wade defrauded Fulton County by billing for meetings that never took place, or White House lawyers were meaningfully assisting in this case.
It is deeply saddening to see that coverage of these Trump cases is so wildly partisan, and attempts to counter that are too often demonized on tribal grounds.
By Brett Wilkins. Originally published at Common Dreams
The Georgia Court of Appeals on Wednesday paused proceedings in the election interference case against former U.S. President Donald Trump and other defendants until an appellate panel determines whether the prosecuting district attorney should be disqualified for an alleged conflict of interest.
In a one-page ruling, the court stayed the trial pending the resolution of an appeal by Trump and some of his co-defendants asserting that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, a Democrat, should be removed because of her romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, whom she appointed special prosecutor for the case.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee ruled in March that Willis could remain on the case if Wade resigned, which he did. Willis maintains there was nothing improper about their relationship.
The appellate court’s stay means that McAfee will have to delay a decision on a motion filed by Trump’s legal team arguing he should have executive immunity from prosecution. The right-wing U.S. Supreme Court—three of whose members were appointed by Trump—is expected to rule on the immunity issue in the coming weeks.
Willis charged Trump with 13 criminal counts for alleged violations of Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act related to his participation in a sprawling “criminal enterprise” aimed at overturning the election. A total of 19 people were initially charged; four co-defendants have pleaded guilty and have received punishments including fines, probation, and having to publicly apologize. They also agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.
According toThe Hill:
Oral arguments are tentatively scheduled for October, meaning the case likely will not proceed to trial until after the presidential election, where Trump is the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee and is hoping to retake the White House and grind his cases to a halt. A trial date had not yet been selected.
The Georgia case is one of three federal and state criminal proceedings against Trump related to efforts to subvert the 2020 election and alleged mishandling of classified documents. Last month, Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to hush money payments during the 2016 campaign to cover up alleged affairs.
Reacting to the stay, liberal lawyer and comedian Dean Obeidallah said on social media that “no one should be surprised that the GOP Supreme Court, Trump-owned Judge Aileen Cannon, or the GOP Georgia Court of Appeals are helping Trump.”
“They are all Republicans and they are protecting their presidential nominee,” he added. “This is what judicial corruption looks like!”
_____
1 I suspect because he lacked standing to make it a cause of action; presumably only the relevant government body could have taken it up.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/06 ... -case.html
Posted on June 6, 2024 by Yves Smith
Yves here. It is a sign of how deeply partisan news reporting has become, above all in matters Trump, that I feel compelled to point a few things out, as unpopular as that might be in some circles.
First, even Trump has due process rights. Fights over procedure, which can include getting seemingly strained arguments heard, are part and parcel for litigation. If you want a graduate course in motions pleading, have a look at our many posts on the Kentucky Retirement Systems case. It was filed year-end 2017 and still has not gotten to discovery (even though the trial court judge has recently cleared what looked like the last big hurdle, the defendants are trying to make an interlocutory appeal). Even in the tiny litigations I have sadly been party to, motions that lead to delay, whether delay is the intended effect or an unwanted by-product, are pervasive and thus are hard to see as unusual or irregular.
Second, the reason for the upset is that the appeals court has set a hearing date on the Trump action versus the continued role of Fani Willis as Fulton County prosecutor in his case for October. If the appeals court looked to be deliberately giving Trump a slot late relative to its current docketing, that would be legitimate grounds for considerable criticism. However, there is no indication in the account below that the court has set the hearing later than one would expect in the normal course of events.
And why the uproar? That this outcome has thrown a wrench in the political timing, of getting the case heard sooner. That is presumably for the two political motives we saw in action in the New York criminal case that Trump just lost: to keep his butt in a seat in court so he could not campaign, and hopefully to secure a victory that would dim his re-election chances.
Has no one heard the saying, “The wheels of justice grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine”? Did they miss the “slowly” part?
Third, I am not enthusiastic about defenses of Willis. She failed to make the required disclosures of the gifts from her boyfriend. In the better-run state of California, at CalPERS alone, failure to make those disclosures is believed to have played a role in the recent departure of Chief Investment Officer Nichole Musicco and scandal for board member Theresa Taylor (who sadly stared it down despite having a background that would make it seem vanishingly unlikely that her oversight was an accident). Even though the disclosure lapse was not the basis for Trump action1, it is serious misconduct.
And as for allegations of unseemly behavior, since when does the White House get involved in state prosecutions? From Fox News:
….embedded in the filing [by a Trump-co-defendant] are invoices for the Law Offices of Nathan J. Wade [Willis’ former co-counsel on the case]. One invoice calls attention to “Fulton County District Attorney’s Office.”
Wade billed the county for a May 23, 2022, event described as “Travel to Athens; Conf with White House Counsel.” Wade charged $2,000 for eight hours at $250 an hour.
Several months later, Wade billed for “Interview with DC/White House” on Nov. 18, 2022. Wade again charged $2,000 for eight hours at $250 an hour, according to the documents.
There is no ‘splaining this away. Either Wade defrauded Fulton County by billing for meetings that never took place, or White House lawyers were meaningfully assisting in this case.
It is deeply saddening to see that coverage of these Trump cases is so wildly partisan, and attempts to counter that are too often demonized on tribal grounds.
By Brett Wilkins. Originally published at Common Dreams
The Georgia Court of Appeals on Wednesday paused proceedings in the election interference case against former U.S. President Donald Trump and other defendants until an appellate panel determines whether the prosecuting district attorney should be disqualified for an alleged conflict of interest.
In a one-page ruling, the court stayed the trial pending the resolution of an appeal by Trump and some of his co-defendants asserting that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, a Democrat, should be removed because of her romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, whom she appointed special prosecutor for the case.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee ruled in March that Willis could remain on the case if Wade resigned, which he did. Willis maintains there was nothing improper about their relationship.
The appellate court’s stay means that McAfee will have to delay a decision on a motion filed by Trump’s legal team arguing he should have executive immunity from prosecution. The right-wing U.S. Supreme Court—three of whose members were appointed by Trump—is expected to rule on the immunity issue in the coming weeks.
The case revolves around Trump’s attempt to overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in Georgia. Trump made a January 2, 2021 phone call in which he pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, to “find 11,780 votes” in his favor, prompting Willis’ investigation.Anna Bower
@AnnaBower
Replying to @RDEliason @AnthonyMKreis and 2 others
Well, also keep in mind that there is at least one defendant who has said he wants to go to trial before 2025 (Eastman) and whose case is not stayed. And Judge McAfee already said he wanted smaller defendant groupings for trial. He could sever the non-appeal defendants.
Willis charged Trump with 13 criminal counts for alleged violations of Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act related to his participation in a sprawling “criminal enterprise” aimed at overturning the election. A total of 19 people were initially charged; four co-defendants have pleaded guilty and have received punishments including fines, probation, and having to publicly apologize. They also agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.
According toThe Hill:
Oral arguments are tentatively scheduled for October, meaning the case likely will not proceed to trial until after the presidential election, where Trump is the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee and is hoping to retake the White House and grind his cases to a halt. A trial date had not yet been selected.
The Georgia case is one of three federal and state criminal proceedings against Trump related to efforts to subvert the 2020 election and alleged mishandling of classified documents. Last month, Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to hush money payments during the 2016 campaign to cover up alleged affairs.
Reacting to the stay, liberal lawyer and comedian Dean Obeidallah said on social media that “no one should be surprised that the GOP Supreme Court, Trump-owned Judge Aileen Cannon, or the GOP Georgia Court of Appeals are helping Trump.”
“They are all Republicans and they are protecting their presidential nominee,” he added. “This is what judicial corruption looks like!”
_____
1 I suspect because he lacked standing to make it a cause of action; presumably only the relevant government body could have taken it up.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/06 ... -case.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy
Trump Derangement and the Phony Rule of Law
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist 05 Jun 2024
Photo illustration: Elise Swain/The Intercept; Photos: Getty Images
Donald Trump is often portrayed as the worst president of all time and now his criminal conviction has made him the butt of many jokes. But his legal troubles may not prevent him from winning again. The worst crimes he and other presidents committed make hush money payments pale in comparison.
“No one is above the law.” - Joe Biden
““The ICC prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is outrageous” - Joe Biden
Apparently some individuals and nations are above international law and are exempt from any requirements that it be obeyed. Joe Biden’s statement about no one being “above the law” was directed at Donald Trump when he was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records. The leaders of the Israeli government, a major U.S. client state, have no such need to follow laws, even those which prohibit the commission of war crimes. Of course Israel’s patron is no different, leaving an ignominious trail of carnage from Haiti to Iraq to Yemen to Libya to Afghanistan and to Somalia, a list of wrongdoing for only the last 20 years.
Cynical political calculus and manipulation of public opinion makes Donald Trump the object of scorn and derision after he was convicted of a 34-count crime of very dubious legitimacy. Trump, in his usual incompetent fashion, used his equally incompetent attorney to pay off an adult film actress with whom he had a tryst. This private peccadillo might have been worthy of finger wagging and smirks, but desperate democrats wanted to keep Trump from running for the presidency again. The case is one in which prosecutorial discretion might have won the day and kept Trump out of court. But Trump is public enemy number one for the simple reason that he refuses to go away and insists on running for president again.
As a former president himself, Trump should have been charged, but as a war criminal. To name but one such offense, his administration’s sanctions imposed against Venezuela deprived that nation’s citizens of access to food and medical care and killed an estimated 40,000 people in 2017 and 2018 alone. That type of crime is one for which Trump will never be punished, nor will any of his predecessors or his successors. United States presidents have de facto immunity for killing thousands of people with bombs, bullets, proxy wars, and sanctions too.
While Trump is pilloried for being caught in a scandal, Joe Biden has worked with the Israeli government to kill an estimated 40,000 people in Gaza. Along with his bipartisan accessories in congress, he has continued to allocate billions of dollars for genocide and war crimes. Occasionally he may engage in a public relations effort and pretend to be angry with Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s leadership or claim that a peace agreement is in the works when it isn’t, but he will always come up with political support and money, some $12.5 billion since October 2023. The genocide would end if the U.S. wanted it to, but supporting Israel has been a consistent position for every U.S. president since 1948, from Harry Truman to Joe Biden.
Unlike the mass death he and other presidents have wrought upon the world, Trump’s real crime is considered unforgivable. He was, as some say, “unfit” for the office of the presidency but not in the way that statement is usually made. Trump had no experience in public office, and far from being the super successful businessman of his imagination, he was a self-promoting huckster whose companies filed bankruptcy six times .
Trump didn’t come from the right schools or have the right friends in the political class, but he knows how to connect with the masses of white people in this country. That political acumen combined with Democratic Party hubris to give him an electoral college victory in 2016. The ruling class quickly got over any hesitancy they had about him when he delivered on the tax cut they had been wanting for years. His lack of skills and his unwillingness to admit when he should seek out advice has been his undoing and his sore loser tantrum on January 6, 2021, sealed his political fate.
And yet Trump remains a force in U.S. politics, with most republicans still supporting him. In fact he raised $53 million after his guilty verdict was announced. Lest anyone forget, in the 2020 election he received more than 74 million votes , a record for a losing candidate. That loyalty has tied the hands of that party’s leadership and they literally cannot get rid of Trump. Democrats are afraid of a 2016 repeat, with Biden being either heartily disliked or resented because he was marketed as the “most progressive president since FDR” who would “cut child poverty in half .” The advertising was false and the 80-year old doddering president only has support from those who are die hard democrats or who hate Trump so much they feel obliged to vote against him.
Trump has also been indicted in three more cases which the establishment hopes will keep him out of office. But a large enough minority of voters believe he has been treated unfairly and may yet vote for him. A weakened Joe Biden might not be able to repeat his 2020 victory.
Late-night talk hosts and social media meme generators are having the proverbial field day with Trump’s conviction. Yet the rule of law that they claim to venerate has been thrown out the window by Biden and congress. Bipartisan leadership invited Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address congress for the fourth time in his political career. The man who thumbs his nose at international law on genocide and war crimes will have the red carpet rolled out yet again while jokes are told at Trump’s expense.
In this country the laws of white supremacy and capitalism rule the day. It is disgraceful that Trump is the first president to be convicted of a crime because he should not be alone. There are many criminals among the 46 presidents of the United States but none of them had any reason to fear the long arm of justice. Trump is in fact an outlier. He commits crimes that the system will not protect.
https://blackagendareport.com/trump-der ... y-rule-law
The Democrats Have Lost Their Trump Card: A Study of Three Issue Areas
Anthony Rogers-Wright 15 May 2024
The Democrats have used the very old tactic of winning votes out of fear, recently that of the MAGA boogeyman. But this tactic is finally beginning to lose its effect.
Samuel Clemens’ (aka Mark Twain) sage aphorism, “History may not repeat itself, but it often rhymes,” is certainly one of the more accurate ways to describe the Democratic Party’s approach to the 2024 presidential election in that it eerily, though not surprisingly, mimics the neoliberal, corporate party’s methodology during the 2016 election - paint Donald Trump as a megalomaniac demagogue and dictatorial mad man who will unilaterally destroy “democracy” to generate so much fear in voters that they would have no other choice but to choose the Democrats. This strategy, of course, failed and resulted in the ignominious defeat of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as well as down ballot Democrats, which handed Trump a “trifecta” government.
Yet, there was and is something even more insidious about this modus operandi; that is, establishing and maintaining, a culture of fear associated with Trump and MAGA Republicans provides the Democrats, in their minds, political and legislative latitudes to do anything they want, no matter how inimical to poor and working people, as well as global stability and peace, and get away with it. Afterall, as we are observing in real time, most, if not all challenges to, or demonstrations of chagrin for the Democrats’ legislative and policy agendas are met with reductive and sophomoric retorts along the lines of, “You want Trump? He would be much worse,” followed by some other liberal bullshit along the lines of, “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” building off of one of Biden’s famous one liners, “Don’t compare me to the almighty, compare me to the alternative.”
Recent polls would indicate that the Democrats’ strategy is far from the apotheosis of electoral politics they would believe. According to a recent survey conducted by the New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Siena College, Trump leads Biden in five of six so-called battleground states that will ultimately determine the outcome of the election. Moreover, according to a CNN poll conducted last month, 61% of respondents view Biden’s presidency as a failure. This, in concert with previous polls also showing Trump leading or within the margin of error, showcases major challenges for Biden and the Democrats - the people are comparing him and his party to “the alternative,” and as discussed herein, on many issues, Biden has actually been worse. Let’s take a look at the issues that are currently thought to have a massive influence on the outcomes of federal elections taking place in six months.
I. Abortion/Reproductive Justice
To be clear, access to reproductive health is a salient issue that demands the full attention of the U.S. polity. At the same time, the assertion of the Democrats that one election in itself will determine the future of reproductive justice is both hyperbolic and unfounded. A simple review of civics indicates President Trump would not have the ability to institute a national abortion ban via executive action. And, the legislative branch would have little ability to codify Roe v. Wade even if Biden pulls off a Buster Douglas, the Democrats flip the House, and miraculously retain the Senate. This was certainly the case in 2022 when Biden and the Democrats passed the Women’s Health Protection Act in the House, which would have prohibited states from promulgating laws that restrict abortions up until the time of “fetal viability.” Despite having a governmental trifecta, the bill never made it to the Senate floor. But even if it did it would never have secured the 60 vote threshold to overcome a Senate filibuster. Whoever controls the House and the Senate following this year’s election will also not have the numbers to garner 60 votes in the Senate to pass any legislation - save for those considered “must pass” such as bills necessary to keep the government funded and reauthorize already profligate military spending.
All to say, the issue of abortion/reproductive justice is likely to be a State issue for the foreseeable future, which will require much more electoral vigilance and investment at the State level - an area where the Democrats have been anemic since the election of Barack Obama in 2008. Trump himself indicated this in a recent interview when he not only indicated that abortion should remain a state’s issue, but also indicated that he would not pursue a national abortion ban. Now I’m not saying that we should take Trump at his word, but I am saying that even if he does renege, he will not have the numbers in the Senate to pull it off. It should also be noted that Trump did speak out against the anachronistic and draconian anti-abortion/forced birth law that was recently upheld by Arizona’s Supreme Court, which was subsequently overturned and it could be argued, that Trump had more influence in repealing the law than Biden given the majority GOP makeup of the Arizona State Legislature.
Abortion has become the Democrats’ new Citizens United, and they have reduced it to a rhetorical exercise bereft of an actual plan to enshrine the right to reproductive justice for all women regardless of class or race. For if the Democrats were actually serious about the health of women, they would not only decry and move to deracinate a capitalist, profit-driven healthcare system that still presents myriad challenges for poor and working women, they would also be speaking more about one of these challenges; higher rates of pregnancy-related deaths among Black and Indigenous women, two constituencies the Democrats cannot enjoy electoral success without. That access to abortions is greatly contingent on the racial identity and economic status of an individual is well established, by attempting to primarily plead their case on this issue to suburban soccer moms who either reside in states where access to abortion is not under threat, or who have the financial means to travel to states where they can safely and legally access abortions, shows that the Democrats are not serious about this issue beyond their belief that it can help them electorally.
The Democrats are doubling and tripling down on the issue of abortion/reproductive justice - both the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) are giving their candidates a steady diet of spoon fed talking points to keep the issue front and center. However, this could actually backfire on the Democrats and showcase their hypocrisy on this matter for the reasons discussed above and also as it pertains to the reproductive justice rights of Palestinian women that have been decimated by the State of Israel’s current genocidal pogrom, which is being facilitated, in large part, by Biden and the Democrats.
II. Climate Change/Environmental Racism
If you speak to the average liberal, they will likely assert that the climate crisis offers Biden one of his best chances to distinguish himself from Trump. The Democratic party continues to take victory laps for passage of Biden’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which is characterized by many as a “historic climate bill.”Liberals proclaim that the IRA proves Biden has been listening to and delivering for key members of the coalition that got him elected including young folk and those who reside in environmental justice communities (aka Disadvantaged Communities), the vast majority Black, Brown, Indigenous and poor folk.
I’ve previously written on why the IRA is less a climate bill and more a poison pill for Black and Indigenous communities, for reasons that include the fact that the “historic climate bill” will open up 600 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas leasing, increase the use of nuclear power, and relies heavily on a scam technology known as carbon capture and sequestration a technology that primarily benefits the fossil fuel cartels that’s proven to fail time and time again, as well as put Black communities at increased risk of pipeline explosions and exposure to toxic emissions as with what occurred in Yazoo County, Mississippi.
The effectiveness of the IRA is being questioned more frequently as of late and there are also questions rising about who primarily benefits/will benefit the most from the large sums of government largesse contained in the bill. One of the environmental groups who are the biggest proponents of the IRA actually developed a calculator that demonstrates how the law will primarily and mostly benefit white, affluent households and their communities .
Currently, it’s estimated that less than 20 percent of IRA and funding from the CHIPs Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), ostensibly to address the climate crisis, has gone out the door. And a closer look at who has received large lump sums of the funds further indicates the IRA may be doing more to help fossil fuel cartels than hold them to account for decades of damage to the climate, climate denialism, and environmental racism. In fact, last August, Biden’s Department of Energy awarded Occidental Petroleum over $1 Billion dollars for a project in Louisiana, which in turn increased the price of the oil giant's shares by 3.3%. Furthermore, changes to the Internal Revenue Service’s 45q tax code included in the IRA are poised to deliver billions more to the fossil fuel industry, and in some cases, actually reward it to utilize carbon capture technology to extract more oil. This seems to explain why fossil fuel cartels are excited by a so-called climate bill as reported by journalist Kate Arnoff in her piece, Why is the Fossil Fuel Industry Praising the Inflation Reduction Act ?
Adding to the Democrats' dilemma of attempting to paint Biden as a climate hero and Trump a climate threat is the fact that Biden has actually approved 50% more oil and gas leasing at this point in his presidency than Trump’s . Biden has approved some of the largest fossil fuel projects in the nation’s history including the Willow Project in Alaska, the Mountain Valley Pipeline, scores of Liquefied Natural Gas export facilities, and, most recently, the largest oil project ever off the coast of Texas. This further proves that under his presidency fossil fuel cartels are cleaning up financially and the people, especially environmental justice communities, will be left to clean up the mess while their health and very lives hang in the balance.
III. Gaza and Palestine - The Less than Grand Finale
During a presidential candidate’s forum in Chicago hosted by local Arab and Muslim organizers and organizations, Dr. Jill Stein, the presumptive Green Party nominee for president, remarked, “For people of the global and moral majority, Gaza is the last straw.” Gaza and Palestine present the Democrats with one of their most byzantine political challenges in, perhaps, a generation as this issue offers them nearly no ability to distinguish themselves from the GOP. The political arm of the zionist industrial complex, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has actually provided a higher average of political contribution to the Democratic Party since 1990.
Israel’s genocidal pogrom against Gaza is one of the few political issues that enjoys bipartisan support of the duopoly. Earlier this month President Biden signed a bi partisan law to send $25 Billion of the people’s money to the State of Israel that will enable the settler colonial nation to continue its assault on Gaza. And last year we watched as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Representative Nancy Pelosi, and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson held hands while leading a chant of, “No Ceasefire” to a pro zionist crowd in D.C.
But it’s not just the policies and military support of Israel that is exposing the duopoly, it’s also the response to the valiant protests across the country led by college and university students, their allied professors and administrators, young people, and a growing coalition of people demanding Palestinian liberation and divestment from the Israeli war machine that reduce the ability of Biden and the Democrats to depict Trump as an authoritarian seeking to suppress free speech and other elements of the First Amendment. From New York City to California, both Democratic Party strongholds, we have witnessed some of the more brutal manifestations of state-sanctioned violence and repressions of everyday folk demanding an end to the genocide and accountability for the Netanyahu regime.
The Democrats know Gaza could very well be the final nail in the coffin of Biden’s dwindling re-election prospects. Biden and the Democrats can rarely, if ever, even find Arab and Muslim leaders willing to speak with them on Gaza, which further denies them the chance to even attempt to suggest that Trump would be worse for the Palestinians.. This is likely why the Democrats have resorted to superficial attempts to flip the narrative through a concerted Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender (DARVO) campaign exercised by their tendentious corporate media arm including, but not limited to MSNBC aka MSDNC, and the New York Times.
For instance, neoliberal negro exemplar, Charles Blow, recently penned an opinion piece in which he appears to be dismissive of the student protests that have resulted in over 2,000 arrests nationwide. In said piece, Mr. Blow, in analyzing the protests, posits, "Republicans are probably overplaying their hand in the way they’ve opposed the protests and vilified the protesters." It seems that Mr. Blow is either completely separated from reality, is suffering from abject ignorance, is clearly a shill for the Democratic Party, or a combination of all three. The fact of the matter is that Biden himself, while holding hands with D(NC)SA’s Representative Alexandira Ocasio-Cortez, labeled all of the protests as “antisemitic” further fueling the antisemitism hypochondria complex engulfing the nation at present. Biden’s feckless assessment is shared by numerous members of his party including Senator John “Shotgun” Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Hillary Clinton who recently suggested that the student protestors are, “ignorant of Middle East history.”
It appears Biden and the Democrats are hoping, as Blow suggests in his piece, that the issue of the genocide in Gaza will experience a “fast metabolism” and simply fade away as an issue by November when voters will inevitably conclude that Trump is more “authoritarian.” That the Democrats and their liberal apparatus actually believe this forms a miasma of abject ignorance and elitism - and it also shows they’ve learned nothing since 2016. Do they really expect people to forget about a rising death toll of innocent civilians emboldened by Israel’s use of U.S. weapons? Is it their assertion that the people will forget that, under the direction of Joe Biden, the U.S. has vetoed every vote for a ceasefire at the United Nations and recently voted against recognizing Palestinian statehood, proving that their calls for a “two state solution” is specious at best? And do they expect people that have been brutalized by law enforcement, many who are trained by the Israeli Defense Force, to simply forget and move on, when we all know that if this kind of wonton exercise of force against civilians and young people was happening under Trump the Democrats would be the first to decry it as an affront on free speech and peaceful assembly?
Conclusion
As demonstrated herein, the Democrats have lost their Trump card and realize, more than anyone, they cannot rely on a reductive, languorous narrative that a second Trump presidency will result in social, climate, economic, and reproductive justice cataclysms without tarnishing their own record and that of Joe Biden’s. Hence why they are throwing unfocused and unprincipled rhetorical haymakers that demonstrate their desperation more than their belief that they have a winning electoral strategy and a candidate who can beat Trump.. Because for all the lies being told by liberal media, Biden’s acolytes, and their masters at DNC HQ the one that’s most profoundly false is that Biden is the lesser of the two evils.
No Compromise
No Retreat
https://blackagendareport.com/democrats ... ssue-areas
Hey, Mr. Tangerine Man …
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence 05 Jun 2024
“If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected — those, precisely, who need the law’s protection most! — and listens to their testimony.” James Baldwin
Hey, Mr. Tangerine Man—
Cook your books for US
Use “felon” as a plus
Babble on … and fuss …
Come to court by bus …
Hey, Mr. Tangerine Man—
Four criminal cases—
You still in our faces
Like 800 bases
Keep us in our places?
Hey, Mr. Tangerine Man—
aka Boss Tweet—
Tool of the rich elite
Fox-box at your feet—
Find your gray bar suite
Hey, Mr. Tangerine Man—
Playin’ the Reich Card—
Not burnin’ off some lard
Runnin’ on the yard—
Paced by your bodyguard
Hey, Mr. Tangerine Man—
Run a RICO $campaign
$election white as Maine …
Weaponize Uncle Toms!
Like Ol’ Schmo’s bombs …
Hey Mr. Tangerine Man—
aka Orange Julius Caesar—
Capitalist crowd pleaser
What’s your October Surprise?
More Goebbels big lies?
State machine your prize?
Hey, Mr. Tangerine Man—
Right a wrong for WE
WE know freedom ain’t free
You won’t rule us by decree—
Terrorist cult nominee …
Hey, Mr. Tangerine Man—
WE’RE not sleepy—
Ain’t Blinken
Or Biden our time—
For either walking War Crime!
Poet’s Note:
This birthday poem is inspired by the
great Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man.”
© 2024. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist 05 Jun 2024
Photo illustration: Elise Swain/The Intercept; Photos: Getty Images
Donald Trump is often portrayed as the worst president of all time and now his criminal conviction has made him the butt of many jokes. But his legal troubles may not prevent him from winning again. The worst crimes he and other presidents committed make hush money payments pale in comparison.
“No one is above the law.” - Joe Biden
““The ICC prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is outrageous” - Joe Biden
Apparently some individuals and nations are above international law and are exempt from any requirements that it be obeyed. Joe Biden’s statement about no one being “above the law” was directed at Donald Trump when he was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records. The leaders of the Israeli government, a major U.S. client state, have no such need to follow laws, even those which prohibit the commission of war crimes. Of course Israel’s patron is no different, leaving an ignominious trail of carnage from Haiti to Iraq to Yemen to Libya to Afghanistan and to Somalia, a list of wrongdoing for only the last 20 years.
Cynical political calculus and manipulation of public opinion makes Donald Trump the object of scorn and derision after he was convicted of a 34-count crime of very dubious legitimacy. Trump, in his usual incompetent fashion, used his equally incompetent attorney to pay off an adult film actress with whom he had a tryst. This private peccadillo might have been worthy of finger wagging and smirks, but desperate democrats wanted to keep Trump from running for the presidency again. The case is one in which prosecutorial discretion might have won the day and kept Trump out of court. But Trump is public enemy number one for the simple reason that he refuses to go away and insists on running for president again.
As a former president himself, Trump should have been charged, but as a war criminal. To name but one such offense, his administration’s sanctions imposed against Venezuela deprived that nation’s citizens of access to food and medical care and killed an estimated 40,000 people in 2017 and 2018 alone. That type of crime is one for which Trump will never be punished, nor will any of his predecessors or his successors. United States presidents have de facto immunity for killing thousands of people with bombs, bullets, proxy wars, and sanctions too.
While Trump is pilloried for being caught in a scandal, Joe Biden has worked with the Israeli government to kill an estimated 40,000 people in Gaza. Along with his bipartisan accessories in congress, he has continued to allocate billions of dollars for genocide and war crimes. Occasionally he may engage in a public relations effort and pretend to be angry with Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s leadership or claim that a peace agreement is in the works when it isn’t, but he will always come up with political support and money, some $12.5 billion since October 2023. The genocide would end if the U.S. wanted it to, but supporting Israel has been a consistent position for every U.S. president since 1948, from Harry Truman to Joe Biden.
Unlike the mass death he and other presidents have wrought upon the world, Trump’s real crime is considered unforgivable. He was, as some say, “unfit” for the office of the presidency but not in the way that statement is usually made. Trump had no experience in public office, and far from being the super successful businessman of his imagination, he was a self-promoting huckster whose companies filed bankruptcy six times .
Trump didn’t come from the right schools or have the right friends in the political class, but he knows how to connect with the masses of white people in this country. That political acumen combined with Democratic Party hubris to give him an electoral college victory in 2016. The ruling class quickly got over any hesitancy they had about him when he delivered on the tax cut they had been wanting for years. His lack of skills and his unwillingness to admit when he should seek out advice has been his undoing and his sore loser tantrum on January 6, 2021, sealed his political fate.
And yet Trump remains a force in U.S. politics, with most republicans still supporting him. In fact he raised $53 million after his guilty verdict was announced. Lest anyone forget, in the 2020 election he received more than 74 million votes , a record for a losing candidate. That loyalty has tied the hands of that party’s leadership and they literally cannot get rid of Trump. Democrats are afraid of a 2016 repeat, with Biden being either heartily disliked or resented because he was marketed as the “most progressive president since FDR” who would “cut child poverty in half .” The advertising was false and the 80-year old doddering president only has support from those who are die hard democrats or who hate Trump so much they feel obliged to vote against him.
Trump has also been indicted in three more cases which the establishment hopes will keep him out of office. But a large enough minority of voters believe he has been treated unfairly and may yet vote for him. A weakened Joe Biden might not be able to repeat his 2020 victory.
Late-night talk hosts and social media meme generators are having the proverbial field day with Trump’s conviction. Yet the rule of law that they claim to venerate has been thrown out the window by Biden and congress. Bipartisan leadership invited Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address congress for the fourth time in his political career. The man who thumbs his nose at international law on genocide and war crimes will have the red carpet rolled out yet again while jokes are told at Trump’s expense.
In this country the laws of white supremacy and capitalism rule the day. It is disgraceful that Trump is the first president to be convicted of a crime because he should not be alone. There are many criminals among the 46 presidents of the United States but none of them had any reason to fear the long arm of justice. Trump is in fact an outlier. He commits crimes that the system will not protect.
https://blackagendareport.com/trump-der ... y-rule-law
The Democrats Have Lost Their Trump Card: A Study of Three Issue Areas
Anthony Rogers-Wright 15 May 2024
The Democrats have used the very old tactic of winning votes out of fear, recently that of the MAGA boogeyman. But this tactic is finally beginning to lose its effect.
Samuel Clemens’ (aka Mark Twain) sage aphorism, “History may not repeat itself, but it often rhymes,” is certainly one of the more accurate ways to describe the Democratic Party’s approach to the 2024 presidential election in that it eerily, though not surprisingly, mimics the neoliberal, corporate party’s methodology during the 2016 election - paint Donald Trump as a megalomaniac demagogue and dictatorial mad man who will unilaterally destroy “democracy” to generate so much fear in voters that they would have no other choice but to choose the Democrats. This strategy, of course, failed and resulted in the ignominious defeat of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as well as down ballot Democrats, which handed Trump a “trifecta” government.
Yet, there was and is something even more insidious about this modus operandi; that is, establishing and maintaining, a culture of fear associated with Trump and MAGA Republicans provides the Democrats, in their minds, political and legislative latitudes to do anything they want, no matter how inimical to poor and working people, as well as global stability and peace, and get away with it. Afterall, as we are observing in real time, most, if not all challenges to, or demonstrations of chagrin for the Democrats’ legislative and policy agendas are met with reductive and sophomoric retorts along the lines of, “You want Trump? He would be much worse,” followed by some other liberal bullshit along the lines of, “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” building off of one of Biden’s famous one liners, “Don’t compare me to the almighty, compare me to the alternative.”
Recent polls would indicate that the Democrats’ strategy is far from the apotheosis of electoral politics they would believe. According to a recent survey conducted by the New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Siena College, Trump leads Biden in five of six so-called battleground states that will ultimately determine the outcome of the election. Moreover, according to a CNN poll conducted last month, 61% of respondents view Biden’s presidency as a failure. This, in concert with previous polls also showing Trump leading or within the margin of error, showcases major challenges for Biden and the Democrats - the people are comparing him and his party to “the alternative,” and as discussed herein, on many issues, Biden has actually been worse. Let’s take a look at the issues that are currently thought to have a massive influence on the outcomes of federal elections taking place in six months.
I. Abortion/Reproductive Justice
To be clear, access to reproductive health is a salient issue that demands the full attention of the U.S. polity. At the same time, the assertion of the Democrats that one election in itself will determine the future of reproductive justice is both hyperbolic and unfounded. A simple review of civics indicates President Trump would not have the ability to institute a national abortion ban via executive action. And, the legislative branch would have little ability to codify Roe v. Wade even if Biden pulls off a Buster Douglas, the Democrats flip the House, and miraculously retain the Senate. This was certainly the case in 2022 when Biden and the Democrats passed the Women’s Health Protection Act in the House, which would have prohibited states from promulgating laws that restrict abortions up until the time of “fetal viability.” Despite having a governmental trifecta, the bill never made it to the Senate floor. But even if it did it would never have secured the 60 vote threshold to overcome a Senate filibuster. Whoever controls the House and the Senate following this year’s election will also not have the numbers to garner 60 votes in the Senate to pass any legislation - save for those considered “must pass” such as bills necessary to keep the government funded and reauthorize already profligate military spending.
All to say, the issue of abortion/reproductive justice is likely to be a State issue for the foreseeable future, which will require much more electoral vigilance and investment at the State level - an area where the Democrats have been anemic since the election of Barack Obama in 2008. Trump himself indicated this in a recent interview when he not only indicated that abortion should remain a state’s issue, but also indicated that he would not pursue a national abortion ban. Now I’m not saying that we should take Trump at his word, but I am saying that even if he does renege, he will not have the numbers in the Senate to pull it off. It should also be noted that Trump did speak out against the anachronistic and draconian anti-abortion/forced birth law that was recently upheld by Arizona’s Supreme Court, which was subsequently overturned and it could be argued, that Trump had more influence in repealing the law than Biden given the majority GOP makeup of the Arizona State Legislature.
Abortion has become the Democrats’ new Citizens United, and they have reduced it to a rhetorical exercise bereft of an actual plan to enshrine the right to reproductive justice for all women regardless of class or race. For if the Democrats were actually serious about the health of women, they would not only decry and move to deracinate a capitalist, profit-driven healthcare system that still presents myriad challenges for poor and working women, they would also be speaking more about one of these challenges; higher rates of pregnancy-related deaths among Black and Indigenous women, two constituencies the Democrats cannot enjoy electoral success without. That access to abortions is greatly contingent on the racial identity and economic status of an individual is well established, by attempting to primarily plead their case on this issue to suburban soccer moms who either reside in states where access to abortion is not under threat, or who have the financial means to travel to states where they can safely and legally access abortions, shows that the Democrats are not serious about this issue beyond their belief that it can help them electorally.
The Democrats are doubling and tripling down on the issue of abortion/reproductive justice - both the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) are giving their candidates a steady diet of spoon fed talking points to keep the issue front and center. However, this could actually backfire on the Democrats and showcase their hypocrisy on this matter for the reasons discussed above and also as it pertains to the reproductive justice rights of Palestinian women that have been decimated by the State of Israel’s current genocidal pogrom, which is being facilitated, in large part, by Biden and the Democrats.
II. Climate Change/Environmental Racism
If you speak to the average liberal, they will likely assert that the climate crisis offers Biden one of his best chances to distinguish himself from Trump. The Democratic party continues to take victory laps for passage of Biden’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which is characterized by many as a “historic climate bill.”Liberals proclaim that the IRA proves Biden has been listening to and delivering for key members of the coalition that got him elected including young folk and those who reside in environmental justice communities (aka Disadvantaged Communities), the vast majority Black, Brown, Indigenous and poor folk.
I’ve previously written on why the IRA is less a climate bill and more a poison pill for Black and Indigenous communities, for reasons that include the fact that the “historic climate bill” will open up 600 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas leasing, increase the use of nuclear power, and relies heavily on a scam technology known as carbon capture and sequestration a technology that primarily benefits the fossil fuel cartels that’s proven to fail time and time again, as well as put Black communities at increased risk of pipeline explosions and exposure to toxic emissions as with what occurred in Yazoo County, Mississippi.
The effectiveness of the IRA is being questioned more frequently as of late and there are also questions rising about who primarily benefits/will benefit the most from the large sums of government largesse contained in the bill. One of the environmental groups who are the biggest proponents of the IRA actually developed a calculator that demonstrates how the law will primarily and mostly benefit white, affluent households and their communities .
Currently, it’s estimated that less than 20 percent of IRA and funding from the CHIPs Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), ostensibly to address the climate crisis, has gone out the door. And a closer look at who has received large lump sums of the funds further indicates the IRA may be doing more to help fossil fuel cartels than hold them to account for decades of damage to the climate, climate denialism, and environmental racism. In fact, last August, Biden’s Department of Energy awarded Occidental Petroleum over $1 Billion dollars for a project in Louisiana, which in turn increased the price of the oil giant's shares by 3.3%. Furthermore, changes to the Internal Revenue Service’s 45q tax code included in the IRA are poised to deliver billions more to the fossil fuel industry, and in some cases, actually reward it to utilize carbon capture technology to extract more oil. This seems to explain why fossil fuel cartels are excited by a so-called climate bill as reported by journalist Kate Arnoff in her piece, Why is the Fossil Fuel Industry Praising the Inflation Reduction Act ?
Adding to the Democrats' dilemma of attempting to paint Biden as a climate hero and Trump a climate threat is the fact that Biden has actually approved 50% more oil and gas leasing at this point in his presidency than Trump’s . Biden has approved some of the largest fossil fuel projects in the nation’s history including the Willow Project in Alaska, the Mountain Valley Pipeline, scores of Liquefied Natural Gas export facilities, and, most recently, the largest oil project ever off the coast of Texas. This further proves that under his presidency fossil fuel cartels are cleaning up financially and the people, especially environmental justice communities, will be left to clean up the mess while their health and very lives hang in the balance.
III. Gaza and Palestine - The Less than Grand Finale
During a presidential candidate’s forum in Chicago hosted by local Arab and Muslim organizers and organizations, Dr. Jill Stein, the presumptive Green Party nominee for president, remarked, “For people of the global and moral majority, Gaza is the last straw.” Gaza and Palestine present the Democrats with one of their most byzantine political challenges in, perhaps, a generation as this issue offers them nearly no ability to distinguish themselves from the GOP. The political arm of the zionist industrial complex, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has actually provided a higher average of political contribution to the Democratic Party since 1990.
Israel’s genocidal pogrom against Gaza is one of the few political issues that enjoys bipartisan support of the duopoly. Earlier this month President Biden signed a bi partisan law to send $25 Billion of the people’s money to the State of Israel that will enable the settler colonial nation to continue its assault on Gaza. And last year we watched as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Representative Nancy Pelosi, and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson held hands while leading a chant of, “No Ceasefire” to a pro zionist crowd in D.C.
But it’s not just the policies and military support of Israel that is exposing the duopoly, it’s also the response to the valiant protests across the country led by college and university students, their allied professors and administrators, young people, and a growing coalition of people demanding Palestinian liberation and divestment from the Israeli war machine that reduce the ability of Biden and the Democrats to depict Trump as an authoritarian seeking to suppress free speech and other elements of the First Amendment. From New York City to California, both Democratic Party strongholds, we have witnessed some of the more brutal manifestations of state-sanctioned violence and repressions of everyday folk demanding an end to the genocide and accountability for the Netanyahu regime.
The Democrats know Gaza could very well be the final nail in the coffin of Biden’s dwindling re-election prospects. Biden and the Democrats can rarely, if ever, even find Arab and Muslim leaders willing to speak with them on Gaza, which further denies them the chance to even attempt to suggest that Trump would be worse for the Palestinians.. This is likely why the Democrats have resorted to superficial attempts to flip the narrative through a concerted Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender (DARVO) campaign exercised by their tendentious corporate media arm including, but not limited to MSNBC aka MSDNC, and the New York Times.
For instance, neoliberal negro exemplar, Charles Blow, recently penned an opinion piece in which he appears to be dismissive of the student protests that have resulted in over 2,000 arrests nationwide. In said piece, Mr. Blow, in analyzing the protests, posits, "Republicans are probably overplaying their hand in the way they’ve opposed the protests and vilified the protesters." It seems that Mr. Blow is either completely separated from reality, is suffering from abject ignorance, is clearly a shill for the Democratic Party, or a combination of all three. The fact of the matter is that Biden himself, while holding hands with D(NC)SA’s Representative Alexandira Ocasio-Cortez, labeled all of the protests as “antisemitic” further fueling the antisemitism hypochondria complex engulfing the nation at present. Biden’s feckless assessment is shared by numerous members of his party including Senator John “Shotgun” Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Hillary Clinton who recently suggested that the student protestors are, “ignorant of Middle East history.”
It appears Biden and the Democrats are hoping, as Blow suggests in his piece, that the issue of the genocide in Gaza will experience a “fast metabolism” and simply fade away as an issue by November when voters will inevitably conclude that Trump is more “authoritarian.” That the Democrats and their liberal apparatus actually believe this forms a miasma of abject ignorance and elitism - and it also shows they’ve learned nothing since 2016. Do they really expect people to forget about a rising death toll of innocent civilians emboldened by Israel’s use of U.S. weapons? Is it their assertion that the people will forget that, under the direction of Joe Biden, the U.S. has vetoed every vote for a ceasefire at the United Nations and recently voted against recognizing Palestinian statehood, proving that their calls for a “two state solution” is specious at best? And do they expect people that have been brutalized by law enforcement, many who are trained by the Israeli Defense Force, to simply forget and move on, when we all know that if this kind of wonton exercise of force against civilians and young people was happening under Trump the Democrats would be the first to decry it as an affront on free speech and peaceful assembly?
Conclusion
As demonstrated herein, the Democrats have lost their Trump card and realize, more than anyone, they cannot rely on a reductive, languorous narrative that a second Trump presidency will result in social, climate, economic, and reproductive justice cataclysms without tarnishing their own record and that of Joe Biden’s. Hence why they are throwing unfocused and unprincipled rhetorical haymakers that demonstrate their desperation more than their belief that they have a winning electoral strategy and a candidate who can beat Trump.. Because for all the lies being told by liberal media, Biden’s acolytes, and their masters at DNC HQ the one that’s most profoundly false is that Biden is the lesser of the two evils.
No Compromise
No Retreat
https://blackagendareport.com/democrats ... ssue-areas
Hey, Mr. Tangerine Man …
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence 05 Jun 2024
“If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected — those, precisely, who need the law’s protection most! — and listens to their testimony.” James Baldwin
Hey, Mr. Tangerine Man—
Cook your books for US
Use “felon” as a plus
Babble on … and fuss …
Come to court by bus …
Hey, Mr. Tangerine Man—
Four criminal cases—
You still in our faces
Like 800 bases
Keep us in our places?
Hey, Mr. Tangerine Man—
aka Boss Tweet—
Tool of the rich elite
Fox-box at your feet—
Find your gray bar suite
Hey, Mr. Tangerine Man—
Playin’ the Reich Card—
Not burnin’ off some lard
Runnin’ on the yard—
Paced by your bodyguard
Hey, Mr. Tangerine Man—
Run a RICO $campaign
$election white as Maine …
Weaponize Uncle Toms!
Like Ol’ Schmo’s bombs …
Hey Mr. Tangerine Man—
aka Orange Julius Caesar—
Capitalist crowd pleaser
What’s your October Surprise?
More Goebbels big lies?
State machine your prize?
Hey, Mr. Tangerine Man—
Right a wrong for WE
WE know freedom ain’t free
You won’t rule us by decree—
Terrorist cult nominee …
Hey, Mr. Tangerine Man—
WE’RE not sleepy—
Ain’t Blinken
Or Biden our time—
For either walking War Crime!
Poet’s Note:
This birthday poem is inspired by the
great Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man.”
© 2024. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."