Donald Trump: Classic or Dud?

love it

Incoming tweetstorm: "The door thing was big - a thread"

those cops probably have electrical and drywall contractors in the family that were stiffed by Trump & Co. years ago

Nowhere is he despised more than in his own hometown

I tend to think NYC cops are the only ones who have reason to dislike him.

I'm putting together a screenplay about those cops. It practically writes itself

Title THE SNUB

In the criminal justice system, crims committed by people with stupid hairdos are considered especially heinous.

DON DON

ACAB: All Cops Are Bad (At Door Etiquette)

DING (DON)G! Who's Hair? Don't Ding Don During Door Duty Dammit (riveting 6 episode docuseries)

lol @ Trump scowling about having to touch a door for the first time in decades

Jonathan Chait's fetish for being told "Jesus, will you just fuck off?" remains as strong as ever...

I assumed all the extremely fat white cops shown on TV were Proud Boys or Proud Boy adjacent. I doubt those pigs have anything but love for Trump.

ugh, unperson, by renaming your link you tricked me into opening NY Mag, which allows very few free articles, and which I'm not going to pay for, just to read this chud

bringing up the Comey stuff is dumb as shit, nobody had a problem with the email thing getting a thorough investigation, the problem was that he did it with literally 10 days to go, singlehandedly swinging the polls enough to let Trump squeak by. had we all known about the Stormy Daniels thing back then who knows? obviously Trump voters will stomach pretty much anything but a swing of like 0.2% is I think all it would've took.

stormy could have spoken up any time she wanted to.

Always, always, always right-click links and select "Open in incognito browser window". Always.

Ken "Popehat" White is apparently unimpressed with the indictment, he usually has a solid legal read on this stuff

Thus, she was under an NDA, aka DJT's favorite three letter acronym.

Fwiw I’ve heard a lot of legal guys say this investigation was kinda weak, but that he may be fucked on the GA and classified docs ones

To be fair to chait, if some conservative district was bringing similar charges against obama, i’d find it suspicious. It is an odd legal theory to make these felonies. (Obama is not an adulterer, I understand, but if he was).

I'm not sure I agree, the instantaneous analysis of this by 'legal experts' on CNN, MSNBC etc. is what seems really weak, and it looks clear from his press conference that he knows what he's doing and has got a bigger case than they think he does. I don't know how the process works and Bragg didn't lay it all out in the indictments which are bare bones, but he seems to think there is ample evidence there was an ongoing conspiracy to falsify campaign records to influence an election

Whatever the case, it's gonna be a long time before this goes to trial, so I'm going to forget about this by, oh, thursday or friday as will everyone else

lawyers I'm hanging with suggest the same, that these charges should not have been brought, probably, but the looming charges are less easy to dismiss.

The strength of Bragg's case is that it doesn't hinge on a vaguely worded law and he has credible witnesses. The easiest part is that the statements were provably false. Beyond that they believe they can bring credible witnesses who will speak to his knowledge of their falsity, his intent to deceive, his motive for deception, and his knowledge of the illegality of that deception. If they convince a jury these are the simple facts of the case, then the legal requirements of the law would compel a guilty verdict.

It all has to go to trial first, though. That's ages away.

xp yes the federal and georgia charges do not seem like small potatoes to me. with this case i don’t understand how it is different from what john edwards was acquitted of but then again I am not a lawyer, just a humble poster

love this (from the Guardian):

As Trump was in court, pleading not guilty to the charges, his supporters had started to drift away from their protest area. The more buttoned-down supporters – the types who will wear a hat, but can’t be bothered carrying a flag, seemed to leave first, leaving behind an assortment of kooks and weirdos who contributed to a slightly surreal atmosphere.

One woman kept saying the United Nations building, about three miles to the north, was the “Synagogue of Satan”. A man tried, in vain, to get a rather convoluted chant about gender pronouns going.

I don't understand why we give a shit how small fry this indictment is. Goddamn, people: celebrate it! Then get involved.

yeah - salad comes before dinner
this is just the opening course

so if trump went to prison would the secret service have to protect him there

no, he'd have to join a gang of other disgraced financiers out in the yard

lol mookieproof, good question

I don’t think the indictment is ‘an odd legal theory’ or ‘small potatoes’ or that it ‘should not have been brought’, I think that that is just rhetoric we accept from lawyers

and lawyers in my experience are brainwashed by law school and in some sense are the most naive people I've ever met

hence why ever hack SCOTUS justice gets "brilliant" modifying their names.

Have any of his supporters argued that what he did was not illegal? Anyway, it really doesn't matter if it's small or big potatoes. This is our legal system. Godspeed, you big asshole, this is what often happens when you do crimes, you get charged with criminality and get a chance to defend yourself.

Yeah if you don't want to be in criminal court being charged with crimes, maybe don't do so much criming like a crimey criminal all the flippin time.

xp ok but you just posted your lawyer friends were saying charges should not have been brought

I'm not sure that naivety is an accurate descriptor. For a prosecutor, the question about whether to charge always has to include the questions, Can I get a conviction? And will it be sustained on appeal? I think many lawyers, with reason, question whether charging a former president with what is usually a misdemeanor, bootstrapped here into a felony, is a good idea.

this just happens to be the opening salvo because it's the oldest of the myriad crimes iirc? I'll take it.

Without doubt, the Georgia and federal cases are much more serious.

A classic of the genre

Donald Trump during his arraignment. Courtroom sketch by 🎨 Jane Rosenberg pic.twitter.com/DdfXkHhnUA

— Reuters Pictures (@reuterspictures) April 4, 2023

Yeah, lawyer friends were just thinking lawyer strategy. There are more crimes than there are charges and trials, because prosecutors pick and choose which to pursue (or so I was told). If this were the only case it would seem desperate, but it's not, and Trump's I presume live in progress outrage I imagine is disproportionately focused on today and not the tougher stuff in store.

one thing about this indictment is someone has already gone to prison for the crime and that person is a prosecution witness, so in that sense i could see a prosecutor thinking it was a pretty good choice, whether its politically a good choice idk maybe they dont care

Cohen was convicted in federal court for tax evasion, making a false statement to a financial institution, excessive campaign contributions and other federal crimes. He was also convicted of perjury in his Congressional testimony. So, crimes arising out of the same set of facts, but different crimes in different court.

that argument actually resonated with the same lawyer friends.

people are saying its small beans but you gotta think that regardless the size of the beans the prosecutions gotta think they have a very strong case here

The news here this morning was showing some pro-Trump campaign nutter speculating that all this will just whoosh him right into the white house in '24.

Which leads me to ask - please don't tell me your country allows felons, or those with felonies hanging over them, to be president. My bf says "they'll allow a president from jail if they could" but surely that isnt right please tell me that isn't right.

well weve never actually elected a felon

you gotta think that regardless the size of the beans the prosecutions gotta think they have a very strong case here

That is true. "You come at the king, you best not miss."

there is no way he will be president again

many xps

Yeah, lawyer friends were just thinking lawyer strategy

which I think is naive

I’m not talking about prosecutors. Most lawyers are not prosecutors and are not having to deal with these questions. (I know you all hate prosecutors here.) I was just speaking about the lawyers I know. One of my best friends graduated from UC Berkeley's Law School. He has made a career out of being a general counsel, as a company’s main source of legal advice. He has been very successful. But when I talk to him about national politics I’m kind of taken aback by his sunny law school optimism about the legal system and law strategy

hate to tell you Trayce, but yes it is OK according to the law as written. there are states where felons can't own guns or vote, but I think those laws are wrong and bad and I'd probably (very reluctantly) have to agree here, if some rad progressive person with a felony ran I would want to vote for them

xp It's not naive. We don't go to court to lose.