Trump 59: The Walls Are Closing In, So Naturally He's Running Another Grifting Scheme

[GreyhoundFan]

The Tangerine Toddler is not going to be happy:

[Dandruff]

7 hours ago, Xan said:

Somebody needs to explain to Big Stupid that this case isn't going to be tried by the voters or swayed by public opinion.

Morgenthau retired 14 years ago and died 4 years ago.  He also hated crooked politicians so I doubt he's spinning in his grave over Donny's troubles.

I'm getting stuck on "...would be spinning in his grave if he were told...".  First, shouldn't it be "was told"?  Second, why would the soul of a decayed corpse need to be told?  Wouldn't it either know or not know?

Jackass.

[livinginthelight]

Interesting that the Trump design was so dark on the belly of the plane. Most other designs are much lighter in color on the bottom.  I assume (though am just guessing) this is so the plane is more difficult to visually track from the ground.  Reagan's Air Force One at the Reagan Library is largely reflective on the bottom.

Trump, of course, was all about "Look At Me!"

Edited March 11, 2023 by livinginthelight

[smittykins]

On 3/9/2023 at 9:58 PM, Xan said:

Donny is going berserk over on Truth Social.  I guess he got the news that they want him to testify before a grand jury regarding the Stormy Daniels case.  I'm not even going to dignify his rants with screenshotting them.  It's basically, "They're only coming after me because I am BY FAR the frontrunner for the 2024 election!  Go after the Bidens!  Hunter's laptop!  Witch hunt!  I didn't even have an affair with Stormy Horseface Daniels! (Yes, he went there.) Statute of limitations! Weaponized justice system!"

You forgot “Buttery males!” 🙃

[GreyhoundFan]

10 hours ago, livinginthelight said:

Interesting that the Trump design was so dark on the belly of the plane. Most other designs are much lighter in color on the bottom.  I assume (though am just guessing) this is so the plane is more difficult to visually track from the ground.  Reagan's Air Force One at the Reagan Library is largely reflective on the bottom.

Trump, of course, was all about "Look At Me!"

Here’s a little more on the issues with TFG’s design choices:

Oh, and Boeing is finding out that Everything Trump Touches Dies. 

[fraurosena]

They’re probably going for an anonymous jury to avoid jury tampering— something that is to be expected in any trial against Trump. We all know how crazy and unhinged MAGAts can get when Dear Leader is threatened. Protecting a jury from coercion and intimidation is only logical.

 

[Shrubbery]

On 3/11/2023 at 8:29 AM, Dandruff said:

I'm getting stuck on "...would be spinning in his grave if he were told...".  First, shouldn't it be "was told"?  

I hate to be the person that defends anything that Deranged Donnie does, but yeah, that’s the subjunctive. Grammatically it’s sound. 

I’m not going to touch the content with a ten-foot-pole because my stomach is still upset from the 11 seconds of that J6-choir clip that I managed to watch before I started dry heaving.

[47of74]

On 3/10/2023 at 7:36 PM, GreyhoundFan said:

 

DeSanctimonious?  Is that the best Fuck Face can come up to describe Ron DeFascist?

7 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Here’s a little more on the issues with TFG’s design choices:

Oh, and Boeing is finding out that Everything Trump Touches Dies. 

Boeing jumped into bed with the orange fornicate so it's all of them. 

[Xan]

The entire plane remodel is so typically Donald.  He wanted thick carpets that would cause trouble for rolling carts.  He wanted marble fixtures in the bathrooms that were too heavy for the plane.  He wanted the plane painted in his own colors even though it would mean some areas might overheat due to the dark colors.  He wanted gold plated stuff everywhere.  

The man has no sense and no taste.

[fraurosena]

Trump's delay tactics are backfiring.

Trump Gets Caught Trying to Play Judges to Manufacture Trial Delays

Quote

Faced with an onslaught of expensive lawsuits ranging from fraud to racketeering, former President Donald Trump is desperately trying to delay several trials well into the 2024 presidential election season—and he was just called out for the scheme.

Trump’s lawyers have until Wednesday to explain how they tried to play two New York judges off each other by double-booking trials to potentially delay them both.

Trump already pushed back a potential late 2023 trial over duping investors to Jan. 2024, citing a conflict with the New York Attorney General’s trial over his fake financial statements to banks. But when Trump’s team recently sought to delay that AG trial, they got caught.

An attorney has alerted U.S. District Judge Lorna G. Schofield in federal court and Justice Arthur F. Engoron in state court that they may be getting played.

“Donald Trump has a history of leveraging his presidential-campaign activities to delay and avoid judicial proceedings,” attorney Roberta Kaplan wrote in a letter sent to both judges. “We anticipated that, should the case schedule run into 2024, Mr. Trump will begin to argue that his campaign obligations must take precedence over his participation in this case, including at trial.”

One retired state judge, who asked not to be quoted because he still oversees New York legal disputes, likened the Trump tactic to a child who separately asks parents for permission to eat more and more candy to trick them both into a better deal.

Randolph M. McLaughlin, a law professor at Pace University, called it an apt analogy—particularly because Trump eventually got caught.

“When children do this—go from one parent to another—if the parents aren’t aware of what the kid is doing, the kid can get away with things. But once the parent is aware the child is playing them against each other, the game is over,” he said.

McLaughlin stressed how rare it is for a lawyer to do what Kaplan did: contact a judge in a separate case to flag questionable behavior.

“I’ve never seen a situation like this where a lawyer who’s not before the court puts the court on notice on what the defendant is doing in the federal case. I think Engoron is going to slam with this,” McLaughlin said. “It’s highly irregular. Then again, we’ve never seen so many actions filed against one person all over the place.”

Justice Engoron has not yet responded to Kaplan’s letter. But he has previously dragged Trump’s lawyers into his courtroom to explain their delay tactics in the past—at one point sanctioning the former president $10,000 a day for refusing to turn over documents and slowing down AG Letitia James’ investigation. Trump was eventually ordered to pay a $110,000 fine.

By contrast, Judge Schofield immediately ordered Trump’s lawyers to explain themselves in writing by March 15.

Trump’s defense attorneys, Clifford S. Robert and Alina Habba, did not respond to questions from The Daily Beast. Instead, a spokeswoman for the team offered a statement saying, “We maintain the utmost confidence that our client will be vindicated at the upcoming trial.”

Kaplan, who wrote the letter on behalf of the investors who argue they were duped by Trump, did not respond to a request for comment. Kaplan has repeatedly called out Trump for his delay tactics in another case she’s working on for journalist E. Jean Carroll, who says Trump raped her in the 1990s—and defamed her when she went public decades later. In that third case, a federal judge has resisted Trump’s attempts to push the trial into later this year.

The two cases in question here are vastly different, but both have one common factor: lies.

In federal court, angry investors say Trump and the adult children he made executives used NBC’s The Apprentice show to knowingly hawk a crappy videophone—one that turned out to be a sour investment. In state court, the New York AG accuses the Trumps and their family company of routinely lying to banks by faking financial statements and inflating property values.

In her letter concerning those two cases, Kaplan noted that Trump’s lawyer, Clifford Robert, agreed to a “firm” trial date in federal court—only to try and push the state court trial, too.

“Based on Mr. Robert’s prior estimate that trial in that case will take longer than eight weeks, the delay that the [Trumps] are now seeking in the NYAG Case would almost inevitably risk interfering with the January 29, 2024 trial date the court has set for this case,” she wrote.

The last-minute request to postpone trials is “consistent with the pattern of delay” judges keep seeing from the Trumps, she said.

Alan David Marrus, a retired state judge in Brooklyn, noted that Kaplan’s “extraordinary action in contacting this judge directly” was “aggressive and unusual.” He explained that Kaplan could have been discreet and done it the way lawyers usually do—by simply notifying the AG and letting the government lawyers do it instead.

“As a former judge, I would find it very disconcerting to receive a letter from a lawyer in another case,” he said, adding that the tactics exhibited by the Trump team show why “transparency is really something we would expect from the lawyers.”

Marrus, who retired in 2016, now runs a civil wedding officiant service called Judges for Love.

The nation’s inundated court system—with too few practitioners and too many cases—often results in schedule scrimaging, with lawyers and judges coordinating calendar dates months ahead of time. Some attorneys use that to their advantage, double booking important hearings or trials and hoping that one of them just falls through. When that happens, lawyers tend to lean on local, elected state judges to give way to the whims of Senate-confirmed federal judges, who have lifetime tenure and greater stature.

“I’ve certainly had the experience of being told by lawyers, ‘I can’t do it because somebody else has scheduled something.’ Very often, people try to trump the state courts with the federal courts,” said Carolyn E. Demarest, a retired New York justice who oversaw the entire commercial division in Brooklyn for more than a decade.

But going back and forth? That’s basically unheard of.

“I would think any judge—including me—would be furious if I found out somebody was trying to play me,” Demarest said. “Usually the judge takes very seriously a firm trial date and does not schedule anything in conflict for themselves. That’s frustrating everybody.”

Outside of New York, Trump’s army of attorneys has been busy trying to slow down the FBI’s investigation of his mishandling of classified records at his gilded Mar-a-Lago estate in South Florida, the Department of Justice review of his attempt to overturn the 2020 election to stay in office, and the Fulton County District Attorney’s probe into his meddling in Georgia’s election. These varied attempts have had limited success, but all of these law enforcement efforts continue to plow forward and are expected to result in multiple indictments later this year.

McLaughlin, the law school professor, said Trump’s games are over.

“Delays work for the defendant. But you can only run the clock out so long. Eventually, judges get wise to this. And I think they’re getting wise,” he said. “They’re playing games with the legal system. It can be an effective strategy, when you have one or two cases. But he’s being pilloried all over the country in New York, Georgia, and D.C. It’s like he’s trying to stop the waterfall.”

 

[47of74]

4 hours ago, Xan said:

The entire plane remodel is so typically Donald.  He wanted thick carpets that would cause trouble for rolling carts.  He wanted marble fixtures in the bathrooms that were too heavy for the plane.  He wanted the plane painted in his own colors even though it would mean some areas might overheat due to the dark colors.  He wanted gold plated stuff everywhere.  

The man has no sense and no taste.

I still say he gold plates his shits to sell to his branch trumpvidian followers.

I do think thought the plane would look better if the blue was closer to that of the US flag but if that causes too many problems I’m fine with the lighter shade of blue.

I’m just glad the planes won’t be as fuck face wanted. 

[Alisamer]

21 hours ago, 47of74 said:

I still say he gold plates his shits to sell to his branch trumpvidian followers.

I do think thought the plane would look better if the blue was closer to that of the US flag but if that causes too many problems I’m fine with the lighter shade of blue.

I’m just glad the planes won’t be as fuck face wanted. 

The current livery for Air Force One is instantly recognizable once it's within decent seeing distance (saw Air Force Two landing once, and immediately recognized it) but is also pretty non-distinct in the air, which seems like a good idea for security. I think of Southwest's planes, which can be spotted easily even at a pretty high altitude, due to their darker paint. I think Trump's design had the dark part on the wrong part of the plane, but also to me looked super generic. Like, if I'd seen that landing I'd think something along the lines of "wow, USAir's commuter jets have gotten bigger than I remember." 

I'm not stuck on a particular look for the presidential plane, but I'm glad it's not going to be Trump's sort of fake-rich tacky. 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[CTRLZero]

I love that “review of his crime-filled presidency” comment, because I tend to forget some of his long list of offenses until he reminds us with his crazed rants. 

[47of74]

3 hours ago, Alisamer said:

The current livery for Air Force One is instantly recognizable once it's within decent seeing distance (saw Air Force Two landing once, and immediately recognized it) but is also pretty non-distinct in the air, which seems like a good idea for security. I think of Southwest's planes, which can be spotted easily even at a pretty high altitude, due to their darker paint. I think Trump's design had the dark part on the wrong part of the plane, but also to me looked super generic. Like, if I'd seen that landing I'd think something along the lines of "wow, USAir's commuter jets have gotten bigger than I remember." 

I'm not stuck on a particular look for the presidential plane, but I'm glad it's not going to be Trump's sort of fake-rich tacky. 

I just saw this on the Air Force web site about the new planes and it seems they did make some adjustments to the color scheme.

Quote

President of the United States Joe Biden has selected the livery design for the "Next Air Force One," VC-25B, a design that will closely resemble the livery of the current Air Force One, VC-25A, while also modernizing for the 21st century.

While accounting for the VC-25B’s larger 747-8i aircraft, the VC-25B livery has three primary differences with the VC-25A’s livery. The light blue on VC-25B is a slightly deeper, more modern tone than VC-25A's robin's egg blue. Additionally, the VC-25B engines will use the darker blue from the cockpit area vice the VC-25A’s robin’s egg blue. Finally, there is no polished metal section on the VC-25B because modern commercial aircraft skin alloys don't allow for it.

A formal contractual decision for a VC-25B livery was not required until this year for Boeing to conduct engineering, certification preparation, and supplier selection activities for the program. The Air Force previously displayed a red, white, and blue livery for the VC-25B because it had been publicly expressed as a preferred livery in 2019. A thermal study later concluded the dark blue in the design would require additional Federal Aviation Administration qualification testing for several commercial components due to the added heat in certain environments.

The VC-25B Program will deliver a new fleet of aircraft to enable POTUS to execute the duties of Head of State, Chief Executive, and Commander in Chief. The aircraft will be uniquely modified to provide the POTUS, staff, and guests with safe and reliable air transportation with the equivalent level of communications capability and security available in the White House.

Yeah I'm not stuck on a particular look either for the new planes.  You raise a good point @Alisamer about the security needs to make it easier for the planes to blend in with their environments.  The fornicate face paint scheme would probably show up a lot easier and would probably generate more of a heat signature.

I'm like this waiting for the fornicate face to rant and rave about how mean Joe Biden chose the lighter scheme.

Edited March 13, 2023 by 47of74

[fraurosena]

I have all my fingers and toes crossed an indictment will follow this week. 

Trump Grand Jury Moves Into Final Phase as Key Witnesses Testify

Quote

New Yorkers on a grand jury who will decide whether to indict former President Donald Trump are finally hearing directly from two witnesses on Monday, damning testimony that was years in the making.

Jurors are hearing from Jennifer Weisselberg, a one-time Trump family confidant embroiled in a bitter divorce who explained how the real estate mogul ordered his top finance executive to dodge taxes and cook the books.

Asked about the investigation outside the DA’s office at 12:30 p.m., Weisselberg told The Daily Beast that “something has changed and it's up-leveled.”

“It’s bigger than any taxes, paper, insurance, banks, insurance… it's bigger than money,” she said.

They are also hearing from Michael Cohen, Trump’s former attorney, who detailed how his boss used him to cover-up a hush payment to a porn star—breaking election laws to protect his 2016 presidential campaign.

Outside the DA’s office, Cohen told reporters he felt “a little twisted inside.”

“It's been a long time coming, five years now, give or take,” Cohen said. “This is not revenge. What this is, is about accountability…he needs to be held accountable for his dirty deeds.”

Investigators with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office have long considered both witnesses problematic due to personal demons, yet crucial to proving what they’ve described as Trump’s mob-like crimes. The decision by prosecutors to put them on the stand behind closed doors—something they’ve avoided doing for years in previous iterations of this investigation—indicates that Trump could be criminally indicted in the coming days, according to two people close to the investigation.

“Looks like they are turning over every stone,” one of those people said, on condition of anonymity.

Another sign that the investigation is moving into its final phases: Prosecutors are giving the former American president the chance to testify too—a rare opportunity that gives criminal defendants a final chance to convince a grand jury to let them off easy.

Typically, an indictment comes just days later.

According to half a dozen New York City defense attorneys, few people ever get that chance—and even fewer take it. Lawyers typically worry that a person facing indictment could actually make things worse by saying too much. But the mere fact that prosecutors are extending this invitation shows that grand jurors will soon be asked to decide whether to indict him.

Prosecutors at this office, formally called the New York County District Attorney’s Office, have been investigating Trump since halfway through his presidency. That’s when details emerged that Trump had ordered Cohen to silence the porn star Stormy Daniels and keep the National Enquirer tabloid from running her story—paying hush money to conduct a dirty tactic called “catch-and-kill.”

The federal prosecutors at the elite Southern District of New York came down hard on Cohen and put him behind bars. But with Trump at the White House and his appointed Attorney General overseeing the Department of Justice, the feds simply wouldn’t pursue the case any further.

That’s when the previous Manhattan DA, Cyrus Vance Jr., picked up the baton and assembled a team of local prosecutors to build a parallel case. These investigators discovered that Trump likely broke state laws by directed the hush money payment, faking real estate property values, and paying his company executives in a way that would dodge taxes, according to an ex-prosecutor’s tell-all book.

But Vance’s successor, Alvin Bragg Jr., wasn’t willing to seek an indictment during his first months in office. A grand jury investigation that was active in early 2022 was shut down, and the probe remained in limbo for nearly two years.

Now, just months after successfully convicting two Trump companies and their chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, Bragg has revived the grand jury investigation.

 

[Xan]

No word yet on who has forced Trump to remove their letters from his book.  He's still pushing forward though.  If you've ever wanted to know what Michael Jackson wrote to Trump, here's your chance!

[Dandruff]

18 minutes ago, Xan said:

No word yet on who has forced Trump to remove their letters from his book.  He's still pushing forward though.  If you've ever wanted to know what Michael Jackson wrote to Trump, here's your chance!

Someone should invite entries to publish a different version of the book with sections ranging from "Positive" to "Lowest Rung of Hell".  Letter writers could be vetted then referenced in the book by initials or some other identifier (for safety's sake).  Imagine Trump's reaction if it sold a hundred times better than his book.

[GreyhoundFan]

A cheerful message from TFG:

 

[Dandruff]

4 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

A cheerful message from TFG:

 

That's about as desperate as I've heard him sound.  AFAIC, he's a proven fail at solving real world problems so he's now projecting an imaginary one that he's the answer to, never mind the details.

Witch hunt, doomsday - got it.

[thoughtful]

56 minutes ago, Xan said:

No word yet on who has forced Trump to remove their letters from his book.  He's still pushing forward though.  If you've ever wanted to know what Michael Jackson wrote to Trump, here's your chance!

I would be so happy if he'd proudly included a letter from Don Novello's Lazslo persona, from back in Trump's New York days, with no clue that it was mocking him. But alas, I don't think there is one.

[GreyhoundFan]

From the latest bund meeting:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[fraurosena]

5 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

 

I hate to give him credit for anything, but saying he is for social security is a smart move on his part. Especially as the Republicans have been all but crying from the rooftops that they want to cut social security and medicaid. He knows that the large majority of people want to keep them, so taking this stance give him a political adavantage over his rivals.

Frankly, I kind of hope he will be the chosen candidate. Biden beat him once before...