Trump 66: Bond, Can't Post Bond

[sndral]

@apple1 I’m no expert but I have been curious about how the whole DJT/Truth Social IPO would play out, I remember stock market initial public offering frenzies that crashed & burned from way back in the dot com era & have been mystified about how any of the DJT current valuation penciled out. I even fleetingly thought of a meme stock, short squeeze or a pump & dump sort of scenario & it looks like some of those types of scenarios may be in play https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/03/business/trump-media-short-selling.html .

This article https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/03/29/the-trump-media-stock-bubble/.suggests that the stock offering is simply another way for Trump to harvest cash from those wanting to buy his support with less oversight. I guess his 58% stake is protected from creditors for the 6 months he can’t sell (unless his hand picked board allows him to sell) yet he can spend the money the IPO brings in any way he wants.

 

[WatchingTheTireFireBurn]

Some video I watched this morning while getting ready for work - possibly cnn - was talking about trumps's atlantic city casino bankruptcy and how trump used that to pull tons of cash out and left other people holding the bag. so it seems that not only is that his plan....he's practiced it before.

 

 

[sndral]

21 minutes ago, WatchingTheTireFireBurn said:

Some video I watched this morning while getting ready for work - possibly cnn - was talking about trumps's atlantic city casino bankruptcy and how trump used that to pull tons of cash out and left other people holding the bag. so it seems that not only is that his plan....he's practiced it before.

 

 

As Winston Churchill remarked “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” I have some sympathy for the investors in DJT stock who got hosed the last time Trump took a company public 20 or so years ago. Anyone investing this go around OTH, I mean, he even used the same stock sticker as last time FFS.

You’ve already got lawsuits from & against early stakeholders/Trump, a ‘corrected’ SEC filing from the accounting firm warning the co. could go bankrupt, and 2 pre IPO investors heading to prison for insider trading, plus Trump’s history of self dealing & stiffing former shareholders/investors/partners/etc., I mean what’s not to like 😬.

[WatchingTheTireFireBurn]

it's probably good for money laundering. so if that's something you need - probably lots to like.

 

I looooooong for a day when I don't have to listen to all his shenanigans and nonsense and cruddy ness. I don't think anybody is going to enforce a gag order and I truly doubt FL will take the crazy judge off that case either. it's so enraging that rich guy gets to avoid justice so extremely blatantly.

[fraurosena]

If Engoron grants Tish James' request, she can get to see everything Trump's monitor knows.

[GreyhoundFan]

More info on the bond:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

TFG had a fundraiser and is now claiming he raised way more than Biden did. Of course there is no way to prove it until the end of the quarter when the campaign finance reports are due.

Continued:

Spoiler

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Look! Another scam from TFG. Is anyone surprised?

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I hope this does tank his campaign  

 

[GreyhoundFan]

[livinginthelight]

Am I the only one who always reads "TFG" as "The F***ing Git"?

 

[thoughtful]

3 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I hope this does tank his campaign  

 

He seems to have slathered on extra-dark bronzer, with the usual ring of pale flesh around it - in honor of the eclipse, perhaps?  😁

Edited April 8 by thoughtful
riffle

[onekidanddone]

1 hour ago, livinginthelight said:

Am I the only one who always reads "TFG" as "The F***ing Git"?

 

Yes!!!! My words exactly 

[GreyhoundFan]

Another ruling that didn’t go TFG’s way!

 

[GreyhoundFan]

TFG has thrown Lindsey under the bus! I'm guessing Lindsey needed extra waffle fries with his Chick-Fil-A order tonight to soothe himself.

 

[CTRLZero]

15 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

TFG has thrown Lindsey under the bus!

Wow, I wondered what brought this on, and apparently Graham doesn’t agree with Trump’s stance on abortion, plus Ukraine aid, etc.  Here’s a gifted link with more info:  Washington Post - Lindsey Graham finally disagrees with TFG

[GreyhoundFan]

Gee, what a surprise. TFG's newly public stock for his extra-nazi twitter clone has tanked.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

TFG doesn’t seem to sleep:

[GreyhoundFan]

"Don’t overlook these five aspects of Trump’s N.Y. trial"

Quote

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg filed the first criminal case ever against a former president. Despite criticism that the case was small potatoes, the case is more substantial and more likely to lead to conviction and jail time than coverage has suggested. The 34-count business falsification case may be the only case against former president Donald Trump to reach a verdict before the November election. As a result, it may well shake up the presidential race. Here are five things to keep in mind before the trial begins next week.

The same key facts were considered in Trump’s first impeachment.

Trump’s first impeachment seems like ancient history. But House impeachment investigators interviewed Hope Hicks and Michael Cohen, and delved into the facts concerning payment to women to silence them before the 2016 election. The hush money scheme was grist for impeachment because procuring office by corrupt means can be a sufficient basis for impeachment.

While impeachment ultimately focused solely on the Ukraine “perfect call,” obtaining office by corrupt means is central to Bragg’s case. When Trump allegedly falsified documents to disguise the hush money, he violated New York law, Bragg will argue. (“The core is not money for sex,” he told WNYC’s Brian Lehrer. “We would say it’s about conspiring to corrupt a presidential election and then lying in New York business records to cover it up.”)

A conviction would impose accountability for the scheme that helped put Trump in the White House. That would be a key affirmation of the rule of law.

Yes, if convicted his punishment might include jail time.

Norman Eisen, former counsel to House impeachment managers (who investigated the hush money scheme as described above), in an analysis and compendium of trial materials, “Trying Trump: A Guide to His First Election Interference Criminal Trial,” employs a unique argument to conclude that “Trump’s case presents legally cognizable aggravating factors that make a sentence of incarceration not only possible but likely, and there are many examples of first-time offenders charged with this offense getting jail time.” Eisen explains how he reached that conclusion:

New York State aggregate case data suggest that approximately one in ten cases in which the most serious charge at arraignment is falsifying business records in the first degree (and in which the court ultimately imposes a sentence) results in a sentence of imprisonment. Our analysis of the raw data available from New York State shows that between November 2020 and March 20, 2024, there were 457 cases with a final disposition in which the most serious charge at arraignment was falsifying business records in the first degree. Fifty-five of these cases — or approximately 12 percent of the total — resulted in a prison sentence.

Comparing cases in which first-time offenders were sentenced to incarceration for falsifying business records in commission of campaign finance violations, he concludes incarceration would not be unusual punishment in this case. Since the judge in determining punishment would consider the number of other pending criminal cases against Trump and Trump’s behavior (e.g., threatening court personnel, flouting gag orders), he could well sentence Trump to some time behind bars.

Trump’s counsel blew it on a possible immunity defense.

No matter the result, the Supreme Court’s decision on immunity in the Jan. 6 case cannot help Trump in New York for two reasons. First, the hush money scheme was set up before the election, although payments continued into his presidency. And second, Trump’s attorney dropped his appeal from a ruling from U.S. District Court Judge Alvin Hellerstein that the case could not be removed and was not preempted by federal law because “evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the matter was a purely a personal item of the President — a coverup of an embarrassing event.” Trump’s counsel let stand Hellerstein’s ruling that “money paid to an adult-film star is not related to a President’s official acts.”

Having failed to keep the issue alive, even a very favorable ruling from the Supreme Court would not allow Trump to re-raise the issue. That’s precisely what New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan held last week in rejecting Trump’s last-minute gambit to delay the trial.

Trump’s behavior could risk a contempt of court ruling — or worse.

Many Americans express frustration that Trump’s attacks on the courts’ legitimacy and on judicial personnel and their families have not been adequately punished. That may change.

Merchan issued an order on March 26 prohibiting him from making public statements about witnesses, counsel other than Bragg or their families, court staff, and jurors. Within days, Trump attacked Merchan’s daughter, leading the judge to expand the order.

However, out-of-court statements may not constitute the highest risk of Trump landing in contempt. He must sit in court day after day as former associates (such as Cohen) testify against him and prosecutors accuse him of mounting a coverup to win election. Few Trump-watchers think he has the self-control to remain quiet. What then?

The judge could set a series of escalating fines. (Judge Arthur Engoron in the New York civil case twice fined Trump for violating a gag order barring certain public statements; Trump soon stopped.) Theoretically, Merchan could also detain him, even briefly, in the holding cell behind the courtroom used for defendants not out on bail.

Trump’s true comeuppance: His behavior could adversely affect the judge’s sentencing decision and the jury’s decision on guilt. After all, they will have to decide if Trump is the sort of person to flout the law.

Trump won’t have the ‘deep state’ to blame. And voters may cheer a conviction.

Trump continually plays the victim of persecution and election interference by an alleged “deep state.” (If anything, he is using trials and screeds about them to help win election.) But he’s wrong — and not only because he gets treated no worse, and perhaps better, than any criminal defendant.

Ordinary New York grand jurors indicted him, and run-of-the-mill trial jurors will determine guilt. As Karen Friedman Agnifilo, a veteran of the Manhattan DA’s office, reminds us, “This jury isn’t going to be forced down his throat. He will have chosen the people in this jury.” With 10 peremptory challenges (to eliminate a juror for virtually any reason) Trump will face his jury’s verdict.

Trump shouldn’t count on engendering sympathy for a conviction. Polling from Research Collaborative on the four Trump trials found, “Three-quarters of voters believe that if found guilty, Trump should serve time in prison, including 97% of Democrats, 80% of independents, and 49% of Republicans.” Another poll from Politico showed, “By a more than 2-1 margin, respondents said that a conviction would make them less likely to support Trump (32 percent) as opposed to more likely (13 percent).” In other words, voters may view a conviction and even incarceration as Trump getting his just deserts. No wonder Trump seems increasingly desperate to avoid trial.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"The Arizona Supreme Court just upended Trump’s gambit on abortion"

Quote

It took little more than a day for Donald Trump’s political gambit on abortion to come undone.

On Monday, the former president declined to support any new national law setting limits on abortions. Going against the views of many abortion opponents in his Republican Party, Trump was looking for a way to neutralize or at least muddy a galvanizing issue that has fueled Democratic victories for nearly two years. He hoped to keep it mostly out of the conversation ahead of the November elections.

On Tuesday, the Arizona Supreme Court showed just how difficult it will be to do that. The court resurrected an 1864 law that bans nearly all abortions, except to save the life of the mother. The law also imposes penalties on abortion providers.

Trump had said let the states handle the issue. The Arizona court showed the full implications of that states’ rights strategy.

The Arizona ruling came in a state that will be especially crucial in deciding the outcome of the presidential election, a state that President Biden won by fewer than 11,000 votes and that Trump’s campaign team has eyed as one of the best opportunities for a pickup. It is likely that a referendum to protect abortion rights will be on Arizona’s ballot in November. The court ruling only heightens the significance of the issue for the rest of the campaign year.

But the court ruling reverberated far beyond Arizona’s borders. The Biden-Harris campaign and other Democrats pounced on the ruling in an effort to further their argument that Trump and Republicans are a threat to freedoms.

All abortion politics are national, not local. Abortion developments — new laws, new restrictions, new stories of women caught up in heart-wrenching and sometimes life-threatening decisions — are no longer confined to the geography where they take place. They are instantly part of the larger debate.

That has been true ever since the Supreme Court, in its 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, ended the constitutional right to abortion, which had existed for half a century. That decision, which overturned the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, provided a long-sought victory to abortion opponents, and they have since helped enact highly restrictive laws in states where Republicans control legislatures and the governor’s offices.

Politically, however, Republicans have paid a high price. Time after time, in red states and blue states alike, in both votes to install abortion rights into state constitutions and political campaigns waged around the issue of freedom of choice, Democrats have consistently won, often by significant margins.

The energy of this movement was first seen in Kansas soon after the Dobbs decision, when voters in that Republican stronghold supported keeping abortion rights in the state constitution. It continued through the 2022 midterm elections and after. Abortion rights proponents are working to put referendums on several state ballots beyond Arizona in November. An issue that once was more motivating for abortion opponents has become one of the most energizing issues on the left.

Over the years, Trump has tried to have it all ways on the issue. In a 1999 interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” he said: “I am very pro-choice. I hate the concept of abortion. … I just believe in choice.” By 2011, at a time when he was thinking of running for president and had his eye on the Republican Party, he told the Conservative Political Action Conference, “I am pro-life.”

When he ran for president the first time in 2016, he was asked by Chris Matthews, then of MSNBC, whether there should be punishment for abortion. “There has to be some form of punishment,” he said. “For the woman?” Matthews asked. Trump responded, “Yeah, there has to be some form.”

In that campaign, he vowed to nominate justices to the high court who would vote to get rid of Roe. He made good on that promise and helped install three new members — Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — to give conservatives a 6-3 majority. Once the Dobbs case came before the court, Roe became history. Few decisions in recent years have had such an instantaneous political impact.

Trump has said repeatedly he is proud of what he did to assure that Roe would be overturned. Nobody did more to get rid of Roe than he did, he says. He said it again Monday in the video statement he issued outlining his thinking about a national ban on abortion.

But Trump can also see the political damage that could occur if he had come out in support of a national ban, even one that allowed abortions until the 15th week of pregnancy, as many Republicans favor. To Trump, winning elections — winning his election — is everything and he calculated that a campaign debate about a national abortion law would lessen his chances in November. About that he is not wrong.

His announcement Monday split the right. Many Republicans fell in line behind him, as they always do. But not everyone. His former vice president, Mike Pence, one of the strongest opponents of abortion in the land, called it “a slap in the face” to those who have long fought to restrict abortion and who favor a national law.

So, too, did Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who said that Trump had made a mistake in suggesting that abortion restrictions should be determined by states. Trump fired back at Graham as misguided, arguing that by opposing Trump’s position he was putting Republican candidates at risk.

“Many Good Republicans lost Elections because of this Issue, and people like Lindsey Graham, that are unrelenting, are handing Democrats their dream of the House, Senate, and perhaps even the presidency,” he wrote on Truth Social.

By now it is clear how Trump has used the abortion issue to advance his own political ambitions. By declaring his strong opposition to abortion and by championing conservative nominees to the Supreme Court, he helped to cement support among evangelical Christians. They are now among his strongest backers.

His statement Monday was the latest effort to turn the issue to his personal advantage. On the politics, he is correct about the dangers to Republicans of continuing the intense debate about abortion rights. But as Pence said, he has abandoned those whose interests he once vowed to serve.

There is no safe harbor for Trump and the Republicans at this point. The abortion issue is no less complex and no less difficult for many Americans than it was while Roe was in force. But politically the winds have shifted, and done so dramatically.

Trump can make his own statements about state vs. national restrictions, but the debate set off by the Supreme Court nearly two years ago is not abating, as Arizona’s landmark decision Tuesday showed. Trump set this in motion, and now it is mostly out of his control.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I can't believe the number of crappy items he can slap his name on and sell to rubes.

[GreyhoundFan]

 

Hes panicking. Good. 

[GreyhoundFan]

Hide the ketchup!

[GreyhoundFan]

This is what happens when you get bottom of the barrel lawyers. 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

He’s going to struggle with having to be in court every day. Good.