Trump 62: Jack Smith Is Hot On Grandpa Ranty's Case

[GreyhoundFan]

And it continues…

 

[Xan]

Donny has decided that one of his best options is to dump on Washington, DC.   That's certainly going to endear him to the jury pool.  Although, maybe that's what he's trying to do.  I don't think they'll move the trial to West Virginia just because Donald talked trash about DC.  And, again with the polls?  Who gives a shit?

[fraurosena]

Why dig your own grave, when you have attorneys to do it for you?

 

Edited August 4, 2023 by fraurosena

[fraurosena]

I mean, come on! Are they collectively throwing him under the bus before he does, or do they really think admitting to everything but claiming he was too stupid to understand is a good defence?

 

[fraurosena]

Deer Rufus, please make it so! 

Trump demands cameras in courtroom for potential election fraud case

Quote

Donald Trump’s new lawyer will ask a judge to allow cameras in a federal courtroom if the one-term president is indicted with January 6 election fraud charges by the Department of Justice.

Mr Trump has said that he received a target letter from special counsel Jack Smith who could be set to bring criminal charges against the GOP front-runner within days.

“I would hope that the Department of Justice would join in that effort so that we can take the curtain away and all Americans can see what’s happening,” attorney John Lauro said in an appearance on Fox News.

The problem for Mr Lauro is that courtroom photographing and broadcasting are banned in federal court under the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.

“Except as otherwise provided by a statute or these rules, the court must not permit the taking of photographs in the courtroom during judicial proceedings or the broadcasting of judicial proceedings from the courtroom,” the rule states.

Mr Lauro also explained to Fox News why Mr Trump declined Mr Smith’s invitation to appear before the grand jury investigating him.

“There’s no need to appear in front of a grand jury right now. Because President Trump did nothing wrong. He’s done nothing criminal,” he insisted.

 

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Grandpa Ranty is on a tear.

 

[AnywhereButHere]

https://open.substack.com/pub/statuskuo/p/jack-smith-has-set-a-trap-for-trump?r=gc6me&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

It's like Christmas in July (or August) for Jack Smith. Fucknut is handing his case to him on a platter. 

Quote

For months, Trump has telegraphed that he intends to rely upon a defense known generally as “advice of counsel.” This means Trump will claim he was just doing what his legal advisors had said he could do, and therefore he can’t be guilty of conspiring to overturn the election. He recently reaffirmed that he intends to rely upon the defense that he was “advised by many lawyers” that what he did was perfectly legal.

Trump’s new attorney on this case, John Lauro, also has made it clear that this is one of the defenses they will deploy. Trump was “entitled to believe and trust advice of counsel,” Lauro said on the Today show on Wednesday. “You have one of the leading constitutional scholars in the United States, John Eastman, say to President Trump, ‘This is a protocol that you can follow. It’s legal.’ That eliminates criminal intent,” Lauro said.

[Narrator: John Eastman is in fact not one of the leading constitutional scholars in the U.S. and he is actually presently facing disbarment proceedings in California. He has also admitted to Mike Pence and his lawyers that the “protocol” was unsupported by any precedent and would lose unanimously before the Supreme Court.]

Eastman’s credentials and protocols aside, “advice of counsel” is a tough defense to assert. It comes with some preconditions that could prove highly damaging to Trump as well as legal hurdles that the jury could quickly find render the defense unavailable to him. 

The “advice of counsel” defense waives attorney-client privilege

...

The person giving advice actually has to be your lawyer

...

The timeline has to line up

...

They can’t be co-conspirators with you

...

The reliance has to be reasonable, and you can’t lawyer shop

...

Given all of this, Trump’s insistence on proceeding with his advice of counsel defense opens some interesting possibilities—ones upon which Jack Smith appears to have capitalized.

It is fascinating to me, for example, that Smith has identified six co-conspirators in the indictment, all of whom (or nearly all of whom depending on who #6 is) were lawyers allegedly in on the three conspiracies. So let’s game this out a bit.

There are a few ways Trump can get evidence of his advice of counsel defense before the jury. The most straightforward way is for Trump himself to testify. That is generally a terrible idea, and with a defendant like Trump, it would be fraught with risks of perjury because Trump is a habitual liar. It isn’t clear that even Trump would dare take the stand. But it’s hard to see how he gets that evidence in otherwise.

But by putting advice of counsel at issue, Trump has also opened the door to prosecutors calling his co-conspirator attorneys to the stand. Without the advice of counsel defense at issue, they likely could successfully block their testimony on grounds of attorney-client privilege. But because Trump has raised the defense, that privilege would be no longer available. They would either have to testify or plead the Fifth. 

Juries aren’t supposed to assume any guilt or criminality from the assertion of the Fifth. But how would it look for Trump to be saying that he merely followed the advice of counsel, yet for none of his counsel to be willing to self-incriminate over what that advice was? The optics would be pretty horrible.

Moreover, it’s pretty clear that Smith is hoping to flip one or more of these co-conspirators. That’s likely why they remain unindicted and unnamed, even though it’s already clear who five of them are.

Now, one way to convince your attorneys to flip on you is to claim that the advice they gave you was criminal, and you merely followed it. In other words, they should go to prison, but not you. Team Crazy, meet the Trump Bus.

But flipping attorneys is problematic, normally, because even if they agree to squawk, prosecutors normally can’t put them on a stand and ask them to testify about communications with their client. That’s because the attorney-client privilege belongs to the client. It isn’t something attorneys by themselves can decide to waive.

But here, again by putting advice of counsel at issue, Trump himself has waived the privilege. That means if one or more of these co-conspirator attorneys flip on Trump, they can speak openly to prosecutors about their communications with him and what they plotted together. And then they can take the stand and say the same. This could be used to prove that Trump indeed was at the top of the three conspiracies and calling the shots, jusy as the indictment alleges, working directly with the co-conspirators to defraud, obstruct and conspire against the voting rights of millions of Americans.

In short, Jack Smith appears to have leveraged the advice of counsel defense by naming a bunch of lawyer co-conspirators. This could permit him to crack open the black box of the conspiracies, should any co-conspirator cooperate. And rather than fight the assertion of the defense on legal grounds, which could set up an issue for appeal, he could allow it to go forward so that all the communications with the co-conspiring attorneys come in and all of them would be fair game for the witness stand.

Then, after closing arguments are done, the jury could still conclude, fairly readily based on jury instructions from the judge on the advice of counsel defense, that Trump has failed to meet his burden of showing that the defense exonerates him. This is because, to recap, the evidence shows

These lawyers weren’t his lawyers;

Trump had the idea to assert election fraud and declare victory before he even talked to them;

The attorneys were all in on the co-conspiracy with Trump;

Trump shopped around for people willing to tell him the “advice” he wanted to hear, and his reliance on that advice was unreasonable.

I’m confident based on the publicly available evidence that each of the above conditions applies. And remember, any one of them means Trump’s advice of counsel defense fails, even after he has given such a huge gift to Smith by waiving attorney-client privilege.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I bet he pitched a fit out of public view. Good.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

[GreyhoundFan]

"If Trump is convicted, Secret Service protection may be obstacle to imprisonment"

Quote

If convicted in any of the three criminal cases he is now facing, Donald Trump may be able to influence whether he goes to prison and what his stay there looks like under a law that allows former U.S. presidents to keep Secret Service protection for life, some current and former U.S. officials said.

Presidents since 1965 have been afforded lifetime protection. Since then, only Richard M. Nixon has waived it, as a cost-saving move for taxpayers 11 years after his resignation.

But unless he follows Nixon’s example, Trump could force politically and logistically complex questions over whether officials should detail agents to protect a former American president behind bars, leave it to prison authorities to keep him safe, or secure him under some type of home confinement, former U.S. officials said.

Could Trump face prison? “Theoretically, yes and practically, no,” said Chuck Rosenberg, a former top federal prosecutor and counsel to then-FBI Director James B. Comey. Rosenberg served briefly as head of the Drug Enforcement Administration in the Trump administration and notably said the president had “condoned police misconduct” in remarking to officers in Long Island that they need not protect suspects’ heads when loading them into police vehicles.

“Any federal district judge ought to understand it raises enormous and unprecedented logistical issues,” Rosenberg said of the prospect Trump could be incarcerated. “Probation, fines, community service and home confinement are all alternatives.”

Trump is now facing three, separate criminal cases, with the prospect of at least one more on the horizon. He has a pending March trial date in a New York state fraud case. He was charged by special counsel Jack Smith in federal court in Florida over the handling of classified documents that were taken from his Mar-a-Lago home after he left the White House. In federal court in D.C., Smith’s team alleges Trump conspired to subvert the results of the 2020 election. He could soon be charged in Georgia on similar allegations.

The charges Trump faces technically come with the possibility of decades in prison — though pleas, verdicts and possible punishments are very far off.

Mary McCord, who served as acting assistant attorney general for national security during President Barack Obama’s administration and led the department for the first several months under Trump, said Trump presents unique challenges to the Justice Department. Ensuring some penalty for a former president under Secret Service detail would require extensive discussions and potential accommodations, “because it really would be a pretty enormous burden on our prison system to have to incarcerate Donald Trump.”

The question is an open one at the U.S. Secret Service. Asked whether a former president who does not waive protection can be incarcerated, agency spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said, “The Secret Service does not have a comment or response, only because there is no such policy or procedure that currently exists.”

“We won’t have any further comment,” added Marsha Espinosa, spokeswoman for the Secret Service’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security.

How do you imprison a former president?

Former and current Secret Service agents said that while there is no precedent, they feel certain the agency would insist on providing some form of 24/7 protection to an imprisoned former president. And, they say, the agency is probably planning for that possibility, seeking to match to some degree its normal practice of rotating three daily shifts of at least one or two agents providing close proximity protection.

“This question keeps getting raised, yet no official answers” from the Secret Service, said Jonathan Wackrow, a former Secret Service agent and now chief operating officer for Teneo Risk, a corporate advisory and communications firm. “However, we can infer how security measures could be implemented based on existing protective protocols. Unless there are changes in legislation or the former president waives protection, the U.S. Secret Service would likely maintain a protective environment around the president in accordance with their current practices.”

Current and former agents said Trump’s detail would coordinate their protection work with the Federal Bureau of Prisons to ensure there was no conflict about duties or about how they would handle emergencies, as well as the former president’s routine movements in a prison — such as heading to exercise or meals. The Secret Service, they said, would maintain a bubble around Trump in any case, keeping him at a distance from other inmates.

“In some ways, protection may be easier — the absence of travel means logistics get easier and confinement means that the former president’s location is always known,” Wackrow said. “Theoretically, the perimeter is well fortified — no one is worried about someone breaking into jail.”

The Justice Department’s Bureau of Prisons declined to say whether former presidents with Secret Service protection could be incarcerated, or to comment on circumstances of a possible Trump designation. However a spokesman said general factors can include the level of security an inmate requires, any health needs, proximity to their release locations and “separation and security measures to ensure the inmate’s protection.” The bureau has had to handle VIP inmates in the past, though minimum security camps often have dormitory style housing.

Another agency official said it was in a position similar to the Secret Service, lacking a policy or procedure.

What would sentencing look like?

The prospect of potentially decades in prison for Trump is politically loaded, though the charges he faces could carry such a penalty. After entering a not-guilty plea in Miami federal court on June 13, Trump claimed he was being threatened with “400 years in prison,” adding up the statutory maximum penalty for the 37 counts against him. The charges he faces in D.C. related to his alleged efforts to stay in power despite losing the election could add additional decades, based on that math.

Judges almost never apply maximum penalties to first offenders and rarely stack sentences rather than let them run concurrently. However, federal sentencing guidelines are highly technical. Specialists estimate that a first offender convicted of multiple counts of willfully retaining national defense information and obstructing or conspiring to obstruct an investigation by concealing evidence might face a range of anything from 51 to 63 months on the low end — about five years — to 17½ to 22 years on the high end — or about 20 years, given Trump’s alleged leadership role and abuse of trust.

Similarly, Jan. 6 riot defendants convicted at trial of two of the same counts with which Trump is charged — conspiring to or actually obstructing an official proceeding — have faced sentencing guideline ranges as high as seven to 11 years, and as low as less than two years.

But judges always have the final say.

“Without question, if it were anyone else [but Trump], prison would be a certainty,” said Thomas A. Durkin, a former federal prosecutor who teaches national security law at Loyola University Chicago. However, he said, “The Secret Service waiver issue is a novel and complex issue” that could theoretically factor into an exception.

The Justice Department has mounted at least a dozen investigations into the removal or unlawful retention of classified information since 2005. Pentagon employees, contractors and people employed by the FBI, the CIA and National Security Agency have all been convicted and sentenced to prison. Among the most recent, former contractor Harold Martin was convicted in 2019 and is serving a nine-year prison term for taking home a huge number of hard and digital copies of classified materials — the equivalent of 500 million pages. And former FBI analyst Kendra Kingsbury was recently sentenced to nearly four years in prison after taking home more than 300 documents including materials related to al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.

But other high-ranking U.S. officials who pleaded guilty got probation, including President Bill Clinton’s former national security adviser Sandy Berger in 2005 and retired U.S. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, a former CIA director, in 2015. Berger admitted to concealing and removing five copies of a classified document from the National Archives, and was ordered to pay a $50,000 fine and give up his security clearance for three years. Petraeus was sentenced to two years of probation and fined $100,000 following revelations that he shared some materials with his biographer and lover.

The acceptance of a plea deal is a crucial consideration. In the only case of an American president or vice president to be convicted of a crime, U.S. prosecutors involved in the federal bribery prosecution that led to Vice President Spiro T. Agnew’s resignation in 1973 said prison time never became an issue — because he entered a plea deal.

“It was clear from the very beginning that there would be no deal if he had to go to jail,” recalled Russell T. Baker Jr., former Maryland U.S. attorney.

“We in the department debated with [attorney general] Elliot Richardson whether or not we should insist on a jail term, but Agnew, his lawyers kept saying and we believed there would be no deal then, so it never really rose as an issue,” Baker said.

Agnew, a former Maryland governor, received three years probation and a $10,000 fine after agreeing to enter a plea to a criminal tax felony for failing to report hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and kick backs he received as a county executive.

U.S. prosecutors have charged more than 300 people with obstructing Congress’s certification of the election, and those sentenced after trial have received around three and a half years in prison on average, although Army veteran Jessica Watkins, an Ohio bar owner who stormed the Capitol in military-style formation with the Oath Keepers, got eight and a half years. None who went to trial have escaped prison time.

Neither a felony conviction nor incarceration bar a candidate from running for president. Trump currently leads a growing field of Republican candidates, and said post-indictment he will not quit, “I’ll never leave.”

What are the complications of confinement?

“While it is unusual … the complexity of the conditions of confinement could have an impact on the sentence a judge imposes,” said Nancy Gertner, a retired federal judge and Harvard Law School professor.

Gertner cited a body of law that allows a judge to consider whether a frail defendant might be subject to abuse in prison, and a case in which she recognized that a non-U.S. citizen would not qualify for programs such as drug or mental health treatment.

Unlike Berger and Petraeus whose crimes appear to be “one-offs,” Trump is accused of a “much more sustained problem,” she said.

“On the other hand, there are the political considerations, and the uniqueness of the case,” she added.

Gertner said the Secret Service has handed off security duties in the past, such as when former first lady Hillary Clinton was protected by State Department security as secretary of state. The Secret Service can direct and oversee protection by others, assigning a special detail to work inside the Bureau of Prisons, or potentially helping prison officials enforce a custodial sentence at home — potentially such as at Trump’s Bedminster, N.J., or Mar-a-Lago residences or elsewhere.

“Who knows how that would pan out?” Gertner said. She added, “I think the answer would be, an accommodation could be made. … The fact that there have been accommodations in the past for various situations suggest there could be accommodations now.”

 

[Alisamer]

Ugh. That makes it sound like no matter what the results of the trial, effectively little will change for Trump. He'll be confined most likely to Bedminster, where he can play golf every day all he wants, just instead of heading out to meet his constituents in rallies he'll rule them from his palace like a king. He'll have his butlers and assistants and cronies, still, running to do his bidding and bring him hamburgers and Diet Coke. 

If house arrest was to actually matter, he'd have to be banned from using technology like social media, disallowed from media interviews, limited in his access to visitors, and confined to an actual building, not just the place itself. 

I say toss him in a federal prison, in solitary. That'll keep him away from other inmates and make it easy for him to be "protected" by secret service or prison guards. 

[fraurosena]

6 minutes ago, Alisamer said:

If house arrest was to actually matter, he'd have to be banned from using technology like social media, disallowed from media interviews, limited in his access to visitors, and confined to an actual building, not just the place itself. 

Or do something in between the two. Take a small, very stark building and dedicate that to his imprisonment. Somewhere in the middle of nowhere, with a small outside space for some fresh air each day, but no golfing or other such pleasantries. Arm the place to the teeth, not only to keep others out but also to keep him -- and his secret service detail -- in. Let the members of the secret service detail switch on a rapid continuous loop (they're not supposed to be incarcerated with him after all) and in effect keep Trump in solitary. No social media, no internet, no outside contacts other than his attornies or his immediate family members-- if these last ones would even want to visit him.

[Dandruff]

4 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Grandpa Ranty is on a tear.

The Supreme Court?  Where's Mike Lindell when you need him?

10 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Or do something in between the two. Take a small, very stark building and dedicate that to his imprisonment. Somewhere in the middle of nowhere, with a small outside space for some fresh air each day, but no golfing or other such pleasantries. Arm the place to the teeth, not only to keep others out but also to keep him -- and his secret service detail -- in. Let the members of the secret service detail switch on a rapid continuous loop (they're not supposed to be incarcerated with him after all) and in effect keep Trump in solitary. No social media, no internet, no outside contacts other than his attornies or his immediate family members-- if these last ones would even want to visit him.

Or build one - a customized Presidential prison facility that can accommodate Secret Service, etc.  Someplace desolate and hard to reach, surrounded by prison fencing and accessible via a single guarded road.

[GreyhoundFan]

Now. Right now.

[GreyhoundFan]

Oh, the indignities Mr. Trump must endure...

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[Dandruff]

4 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Now. Right now.

Which superhero make-believe card does he plan to use?

[GreyhoundFan]

I hope the judge puts a full gag order on him. 

 

[IrishCarrie]

12 hours ago, Dandruff said:

Or build one - a customized Presidential prison facility that can accommodate Secret Service, etc.  Someplace desolate and hard to reach, surrounded by prison fencing and accessible via a single guarded road.

That's would be a seriously good movie opening...a corrupt president has been sentenced and is being held in a secure unit in the wilds of Nebraska. Secret service detail and the army are obviously on their constant guard for crazy supporters trying to break the President out.

Unfortunately they ordered Chinese food the night before and all of them except one are lying on their beds, clutching their stomachs and moaning, only getting up to dash to the bathroom. 

One of them didn't eat the Chinese food because he was already a little queasy from eating too many Mars bars earlier in the day - he's the type that binge eats when he's bored. 

MAGA trucks surround the compound and armed insurrectionists start to climb the fence and creep slowly through the woods.

Idris Elba stars in 'Nebraska Has Fallen'.

Edited August 5, 2023 by IrishCarrie

[Shrubbery]

„If you go after me, I’m coming after you“ sounds like trying to intimidate a jury if you ask me, on top of threatening judge and prosecutors.

I don’t see why a special presidential prison couldn’t be built, either new or by repurposing some federal object. (Alcatraz is empty, isn’t it?) 

It probably wouldn’t be some shack in the Nebraskan wilderness but something that ticks a lot of infrastructure boxes (I suppose considering the age of the mango moron, quick access to a hospital being one), like some sort of former office building in Virginia or similar. 
 

Alas, still a long way to go until such plans become relevant but I just hope there is a taskforce in the relevant Department (Justice? Interior?) that is preparing some just-in-case ideas.

[fraurosena]

 

7 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I hope the judge puts a full gag order on him. 

 

Trump's "Oh, SHIT!" reaction:

 

[47of74]

1 hour ago, fraurosena said:

 

Trump's "Oh, SHIT!" reaction:

 

Then slap a gag order on the orange asshole, followed by making him report to jail.

[47of74]

2 hours ago, Shrubbery said:

„If you go after me, I’m coming after you“ sounds like trying to intimidate a jury if you ask me, on top of threatening judge and prosecutors.

I don’t see why a special presidential prison couldn’t be built, either new or by repurposing some federal object. (Alcatraz is empty, isn’t it?) 

It probably wouldn’t be some shack in the Nebraskan wilderness but something that ticks a lot of infrastructure boxes (I suppose considering the age of the mango moron, quick access to a hospital being one), like some sort of former office building in Virginia or similar. 
 

Alas, still a long way to go until such plans become relevant but I just hope there is a taskforce in the relevant Department (Justice? Interior?) that is preparing some just-in-case ideas.

In the old Star Wars novel Isard's Revenge one of the characters mentioned to a captured Imperial the New Republic was planning to stick her in a very isolated prison all by herself and almost no human contact.  That led the Imperial to try to shoot the character, getting shot herself in return.

I believe that's what they should do here.  Put a very well armed self contained prison complex somewhere in far northern Alaska that is ideally at least 50 miles from any other settlement where the only way in or out is helicopter.  Someplace like the North Slope Burrough or the Unorganized Burrough Send fuck face to serve out his sentence there.  Don't tell anyone where it's located either.  Make it a five star luxury resort for the Secret Service and other staff but confine fuck face to a SuperMax cell.  I think something like that would allow the Secret Service to fulfill their duties and keep Branch Trumpvidians away.

[GreyhoundFan]

[fraurosena]

Keep digging, co-conspirator 2.

Eastman Reiterates Support For Full Insurrection

Quote

In an interview released on Thursday, John Eastman restated that he’s an unreconstructed believer that the 2020 election was stolen by the left.

Chairman of the Claremont Institute’s Board of Directors Tom Klingenstein conducted the interview, which was released in three parts, the last of which was published on Thursday.

Klingenstein asked Eastman whether he would have acted in the same way in 1960 as he did in 2020, referencing the belief on the right that John F. Kennedy stole that year’s election from Richard Nixon.

Eastman replied no, and added that the stakes of 2020 represented an “existential threat to the very survivability, not just of our nation, but of the example that our nation, properly understood, provides to the world.”

The Trump 2020 lawyer went on to reference the Declaration of Independence, saying that “our founders lay this case out.”

“There’s actually a provision in the Declaration of Independence that a people will suffer abuses while they remain sufferable, tolerable while they remain tolerable,” he said. “At some point abuses become so intolerable that it becomes not only their right but their duty to alter or abolish the existing government.”

“So that’s the question,” he added. “Have the abuses or the threat of abuses become so intolerable that we have to be willing to push back?”

The interview was recorded before Special Counsel Jack Smith charged President Trump with four counts related to his efforts to reverse the 2020 election. Though Eastman does not appear in the indictment by name, his attorney confirmed to multiple media outlets that the document refers to him as “Co-Conspirator 2.”

Eastman has not been charged with a crime, and his lawyer said last month that he planned to send a letter to state and federal officials investigating Jan. 6 explaining that Eastman committed no crimes.

Eastman made the stunning remarks, which appear to repeat the suggestion that overthrowing the government is a legitimate means to stop what Eastman described as “the modern left wing,” in the last of a series of interviews with Klingenstein. Part one, published in June, addresses Eastman’s belief that the election was stolen. Part two covers what Eastman saw as the legal remedy, while part three asks, as Klingenstein put it, “should you and the president have pursued that legal remedy?”

Eastman said in the interview that his own actions and statements during the run-up to January 6 had been mischaracterized, and at one point claimed that Trump himself read a series of academic law review articles about the Electoral Count Act to brush up on the relevant law.

But it’s the threat that Eastman sees the left as posing which runs through the interview. He at one point describes it broadly as an attempt to “completely repudiate every one of our founding principles,” and in more detail as an attack on everything from sexual and gender norms to gas stoves. He warns of “OSHA telling me what kind of chair I can have in my home office.”

Eastman dropped specific claims of voter fraud in the third interview, and instead pivoted to claims that government agencies had worked to thwart the 2020 election and would do the same in 2024. He cited the Twitter Files, as well as claims that the intelligence suppressed information about Hunter Biden’s laptop.

“If those are the stakes, what are you supposed to do?” he asked. “Sit around and twiddle your thumbs?”

As to the truthfulness of his statements about the Constitution, the fact that he claims "Trump himself read a series of academic law review articles" says it all.