Rotary Hunger Strikes for Gaza, STFU. Yes, 9 days is a long time to go without food, but man, nothing says I don’t really believe this like saying it’s indefinite and then bailing when it gets too rough.
Rudy got suspended from his radio show mid-sentence while he was on the air. The broadcast was cut while he was whinging on again about the 2020 election. The station owner hosted the rest of the show for the weekend.
The show wasn’t canceled, but the end result is the same: the biggest of Rudy’s three reported sources of income is no longer incoming. That leaves his podcast and Social Security checks.
Things aren’t going so good for Trump, either. He has enough delegates already to be the Republican nominee, but in the state Republican primaries that are still being held, he’s not cracking 80% of the votes in some of them.
The primaries are moot now. Instead of not voting, among the people that take the time to vote, an average of 20% of them are casting theirs for the candidates that dropped out in February. Most go to Nikki Haley and a few go to Ramaswamy or maybe DeSantis.
Down in Florida, Judge Cannon said that there’s just too many motions that have to be gone through, so she’s indefinitely postponing the documents trial against Trump. Of course, let’s just handwave away the fact that the motions began building up because she let them build up.
Sounds like a win for Trump, right? Mayyyyyyyyyyyyyybe, mayyyyyyybe not. See, there’s two other trials that haven’t started because the documents trial had to be scheduled first. With that no longer an issue…
Over in NY for the hush money coverup fraud trial, messages were presented as evidence that Trump had posted years ago where he praised Michael Cohen, and then there were newer messages where he tore into Cohen. The old “when he likes you, Trump sings your praises to the heavens, but when he no longer likes you, he makes sure everyone knows.”
Well, everyone in the court got to see the difference before and after and the response was laughter. Instead of tearing down Cohen’s credibility, it backfired. The prosecution has a couple other witnesses ready to testify, but they are now ready to rest their case.
Trump at a recent meeting: Hey, oil executives. Give me a billion dollars and I’ll tank environmental regulations and get rid of electric vehicles.
Trump at a recent meeting: People aren’t paying me enough to get their picture taken with me.
Though Trump says Nikki Haley will not be his pick for vice president, he’s still looking for a woman for that job because one of the other contenders, Kristi Noem, has her own problems that involve a book, a dog and a gun. But according to Trump insiders, he’s willing to pick Haley if she agrees to pay his legal bills. So I guess for the low, low price of around $100M, you too can buy your way into becoming Vice President of the United States.
Of course, that all depends on Trump winning in November. You could fork over the dough and wind up like those at an awards show, unenthusiastically clapping your hand and saying, “I’m so happy” when someone else’s name is called.
This one gets me. From what I have read on this she did the right thing here, but the tone is just off and the info too slim for people who don’t understand. My issue with her is her authoritarian streak that’s about a mile wide.
Also, double off and tripple oof, someone is going to prison, likely lots of someones. And there goes a Democrat in the house. And really, anyone this obvious and stupid shouldn’t be in politics anyway.
Depends who you listen to.
On one side it’s “She failed to train her dog and then shot it when it didn’t behave”
On the other side it’s “She had a dangerous dog which she put down”
I don’t know where the truth lies, like everything, probably somewhere in the middle.
That’s probably my main issue with that incident (no idea about her in general). If you have to put down an animal, it’s not something you should be boasting about later.
I am sure its supposed to show how tough she is. I wasn’t going to vote for her anyway. Not a fan of some of her ideas, enough people push for censorship from the left, don’t need the right doing it too.
So Rudy’s having his 80th birthday party and decides to pull a “hold my beer” and taunt the Arizona AG via Twitter: If you can’t find me by tomorrow morning to serve me the indictment papers, you have to give up.
An hour later, the Arizona AG reposts Rudy’s message with this preface: “The final defendant was served moments ago. @RudyGiuliani nobody is above the law.” There were agents waiting outside to see if he was at the location. He was.
Rudy deleted the tweet. The AG reposts the screencap she made.
Rudy starts saying at the AZ court hearing today (probably via a virtual meeting) he wasn’t hiding from anyone. It’s just that he’s been receiving threats and can’t afford any security, so he has “very specific rules” that explain why agents couldn’t serve him the papers at his NY apartment.
Right. Because when you’re trying to protect yourself and you don’t answer the door or the ones at reception won’t let people in, it’s totally natural to broadcast the equivalent of “Nyah, nyah, nyah. You can’t catch me.”
Less than two days after he got served, Rudy reaches an agreement with Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss which says he will not do the following: “publishing, causing others to publish, and/or assisting in others’ publication of any statements that suggest that Plaintiffs, whether mentioned directly, indirectly, or by implication, engaged in wrongdoing in connection with the 2020 presidential election” In return, they will drop their second lawsuit against him. There goes more potential sources of income for Rudy.
Interesting timing, no?
Meanwhile, in Trump’s hush money coverup fraud trial, the prosecution did rest their case after Cohen testified. The defense only had two witnesses before resting their case: the first was someone that made a spreadsheet to track who made and received phone calls.
The second was a lawyer that Cohen almost hired at one point, Robert Costello. His job was to back up the defense’s work to reduce Cohen’s credibility. That didn’t go so well, because for the first time that a lot of people can remember, the courtroom was cleared so Judge Juan Merchan could talk to Costello about Costello’s behavior in court. Clearing a courtroom does not happen very often.
Before that happened, Merchan first drops a big hint along the lines of “Excuse me? What did you just say?” Costello doesn’t get the hint. Out goes the jury.
Merchan begins dressing him down. You don’t say “Jeez” if you don’t like the judge’s ruling. You don’t say “Strike it” if you’re trying to halt your testimony and start over because only the judge can strike testimony. (That’s what a lawyer can say if they want to pause a line of questioning and rephrase it, but not witnesses.) You don’t give the judge side eye if you don’t like a ruling and you don’t roll your eyes.
The above’s from the transcript that was released later. And then it got worse. Just as Merchan is about to get the jury back in, he asks Costello, “Are you staring me down right now?” Costello says he isn’t.
Out goes everyone that’s attending the trial, with one reporter confused about why they’re being herded out.
Merchan lays down the law, notifying Costello his conduct is contemptuous. If he stares down Merchan one more time, he’s removed from the stand and his entire testimony is stricken. Merchan has to prompt Costello to answer if he understood. Costello asks if he can say something. Merchan shuts that down. “This is not a conversation.”
Today, the prosecution got a chance to question Costello and asked him about emails he sent back then. One made it sound like he was playing Cohen: Here’s what we do to keep Cohen from figuring out we’re being directed by Rudy Giuliani and Trump.
At some point, possibly yesterday, Cohen answered questions about why he didn’t hire Costello. Cohen didn’t trust that Costello wouldn’t run to Rudy and Trump and tell them what Cohen told him.
All in all, you’ve got Trump’s lawyers changing their behavior to employ Trump’s attack tactics and you’ve got witnesses for Trump that hurt his case way more than they might have helped.
Finally, not only is Trump’s media company asking for an extension on filing their newest financial statements due to having to change auditors again, it lost $327M in Q1. But they did earn $770K.
Still waiting on the federal statute that was violated to make it a federal crime and how a state court can try one. The main thing the court cases against Trump have shown me is how screwed up our legal system is and how easy it is to charge someone with a crime until something sticks. Everyone waves around the 88 indictments like a battle flag, 34 of them are this case and I have yet to have someone explain exactly what the statute violated is. The rest of them have been tabled indefinitely. Due to shoddy police work, tampered evidence, or the DA sleeping with her staff and questionable case work.
I have heard for at least 6 years now how the walls are closing in on Trump, and after the walls fall apart everyone just walks away like nothing happened. No consequences for the Russian lies, none for the Ukraine BS, none for anything. If Trump was as stupid and evil as everyone says he is then at the very least he would have burned the people who did the Steele Dossier and the questionable wire tapping, not just keep employing half of them. He is either an utter genius, it’s all made up bullshit, or his opponents make the Keystone Cops look good, and in all three cases it just makes me support him over Biden more.
In other news. The pier in Gaza is done at a cost of over 320 million, which is amazing because we already owned the damn thing and the military people employing it are paid pennies. And so far 569 tons of aid has left the pier, with only 15 truckloads making it to the warehouse with anything on them. Even before this Hamas has been stealing over 60% of the aid and has made over 500 million reselling the goods to buy more weapons, these weapons purchases being why aid isn’t coming through Egypt as the Egyptian government won’t allow Israel to inspect the pallets before letting them through. Saturday 11 of 16 trucks were stripped, and they stopped deliveries Sunday. No security on these vehicles, basically the only trucks driving through these areas, people are simply mounting them and taking everything off, and then it’s collected by Hamas at gun point.
Again, aiding a siege like this only tortures the civilians as the military strips them of everything in order to keep fighting. Of course, we are doing the same damn thing in Ukraine now, Ukraine is beating the crap out of Russia, but is unable to retake land because of the US restrictions on where the equipment given to them can be used. Therefor dragging out yet another war. Ukraine is now sending civilian drones loaded with explosives into Russia and they can’t stop them, blowing up pieces of a refinery the other day at the cost of a few Temu shipments.
It’s amazing to me that Russia, while in the middle of losing a war and suffering from an economic crises, manages to still launch state of the art satellites. It’s like Mad Max with a working SAM missile system on his interceptor running on pig fat.
And while their nuclear program is apparently in shambles they likely still have enough things that will still go bang to ruin someone’s day. I do wonder how many times they will have to try to nuke Ukraine before one actually goes off though.
Also, Hamas has officially thanked American students for supporting Jihad and elimination of the Zionists. And is calling for sieging of American and Israeli embassies around the world. But keep thinking you are fighting for peace assholes.
From my understanding of the judge’s instructions to the jury it seems that they don’t even need to agree on what charge he is guilty and that if a majority think he is guilty of something then he will be convicted. Even if there is no majority on any of the single charges. This whole trial is shady as hell.
Also, Harris is suggesting 2nd mortgages to pay for college so people’s kids can live their dream life. Shut the hell up. A HELOC for college? So every time you look at your college drop out son you think of the 80k in extra mortgage you have to pay in your 60s? I will, and have, help my kids with college, I will not sacrifice my old age for their youth. They will be happier having struggled on their own and not having to take care of me in a few years than having less debt but having me live in the attic.
3rdly, what is it with progressives and their obsession with Supreme Court wives? We have spent decades separating wives from their husbands, they are their own people and their husbands don’t own them, but as soon as a conservatives wife does something they consider out of line it’s a reflection of their husband. Why do liberals expect conservative husbands to control their wives? Most conservative men I know have strong independent wives, who lean on their men out of choice, not because he makes her. Just like I lean on my wife she leans on me, but either of us flapping our jaws is an individual’s choice.
Lot’s of projection there.
Because Merchan said jurors need not agree on which of these theories has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt, the rationale for convicting him is apt to be muddled. “The judge has ruled that the jury does not have to agree on what actually occurred in the case,” Turley says. “Merchan ruled that the government had vaguely referenced three possible crimes that constitute the ‘unlawful means’ used to influence the election: a federal election violation, the falsification of business records, and a tax violation. The jurors were told that they could split on what occurred, with four jurors accepting each of the three possible crimes in a 4-4-4 split. The court would still consider that a unanimous verdict so long as they agree that it was in furtherance of some crime.”
This is all based on Trump knowing and willingly breaking the laws referenced. I seriously doubt he gave it a second thought, and the laws specifically say he had to have done it intentionally.
Not quite. He had to knowingly and willingly done the actions that were criminal. He didn’t have to be aware that he was breaking a specific law. It’s a subtle distinction, but a hugely important one.
I actually agree with you that it’s silly the jurors don’t have to agree on what federal law was broken. But, unfortunately, that’s the way the misdemeanor to felony statute is written. It’s stupid, but Merchan was just applying the law as it was written.
Having said that, I don’t think there’s any doubt that Trump organised paying off Daniels, and falsified business records to make it look like legitimate legal expenses. There’s just too much of a paper trail to make any other conclusion.
I also don’t think there’s any doubt that Trump did it because he believed the story would further damage his chances of winning the election.
It’s after that it gets murky. I think there’s a good chance he will be convicted - because of the way the laws are written. But I also think this is by far the weakest of the cases against him and it’s a pity some of the others couldn’t be the ones to be heard before the election.
Of course moving it to a felony based on committing a felony he hadnt even heen charged with is odd in top of it.
And here’s the deal. Even if convicted it doesnt matter. The case is murky and shaky enough and about something so few people care about tts just ammunition for claiming lawfare. I have read multiple articles on this, and even the ones that assume he is guilty of killing the pope seem to flake out on what is going on. I dont understand how you can use an escalation law on a crime someone hasn’t even been charged with.
But, honestly I am not a lawyer, and lawyer’s opinions seem to be based on their opinion of Trump.
That appears to be true even for the very conservative ones (George Conway comes to mind).
The conservative ones who are not actively anti-Trump don’t really comment on likely sentencing.
The conservative ones who are anti-Trump (GC) talk about possible jail time as home detention would be pointless.
The rabidly liberal ones (Meidas Touch) talk about 34 sentences of 4 years.
Personally, I think 34 sentences would be an injustice as it’s basically one crime split into 34 parts.
Though I would love to see Trump in jail for some of the stuff he’s done, I’m really not sure that this is the one I’d pick for that to happen.
Breaking news: Trump has been convicted on all 34 charges.
I’m not surprised that he has been convicted, nor that it was all 34 counts. If he was convicted of one he almost had to be convicted of all of them, and as stated previously, the way the law was written a conviction isn’t surprising.
Sentencing is set for July 11th - which is somewhat suprising as New York sentencing hearings are normally 2-3 weeks, not 6. However, given the landmark nature of the case, it’s only somewhat surprising.
First president to be impeached twice.
First ex-president to get a felony conviction.
He is unique.
Regardless of how murky the case was, Trump’s team didn’t handle it well. Instead of presenting a better case than the prosecution and being able to refute the charges, their only course of action seemed to be to spread enough doubt to get one juror to say no. Todd Blanche’s closing argument included a question along the lines of “you don’t want to throw my client in jail, do you?” Judge Merchan had to admonish him about it because that’s not the jury’s job. Sentencing is his.
Based on the report that says Trump was smiling and laughing with Blanche late in the day, Trump thought they’d succeeded. He wasn’t smiling any more when it was suddenly announced the jury had reached a verdict and each of the 34 counts was confirmed with “guilty”, followed by each juror confirming that’s how they’d voted.
There will be an appeal but it may not happen before the election. Trump will probably approach it as “I don’t like that verdict, so I want it undone”, rather than the requirement of showing that something wrong happened in the trial that affected the outcome. Given how poorly his legal team did on this trial, they’d handle the appeal just as poorly.
Any sentence Merchan passes involving jail time will probably be put on hold since the campaign is still under way. Financial penalties might go forward. This is a state-level felony conviction, which means Trump can’t pardon himself if he becomes president again, and Biden can’t pardon him, either. The NY governor can, but only after what’s required by the court has been met and it doesn’t erase the conviction.
The sentencing will be on July 11, just before the Republican National Convention.
Since Trump’s motivation for running for president included delaying the debts he had to pay, there would be motivation for him to find a way to stay in office. He talked about a third term before not long after he got elected in 2016 and he’s been talking about it again more recently. So there’s a non-zero chance of him pursuing it.
What this all boils down to is, as of this moment in time, Donald Trump is a convicted felon running for president. Right around the time the news broke, the price of his TMTG stock fell 15%, reducing the value of his stake in the company by $532M. It recovered a bit but ended at down 4% for the day.
There has been talk about sanctions for Blanche about that because he absolutely knew he wasn’t allowed to say that. The sanctions might not be trivial either because it’s seen to be akin to jury tampering - and you can see why too. “Is he guilty or not?” is fundamentally different to “Do I want to send an old man to prison?” - especially when jail time isn’t guaranteed.
And people STILL want to vote for him! I don’t get it. I couldn’t believe it when it was announced that he was president. I was expecting our first woman president.
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So was Hillary, thus strengthening the trend of calling elections you don’t win fradulent.
Honestly, if you don’t want a second Biden term, what else do you do at this point? If you have issues with Joe showering with his daughter, or his son using his influence to make money, or his serial llying for decades, or his comments about minorities, who the hell else do you vote for now?
I am seeing more support for Trump since these cases came up and now than ever before.
I don’t want a second Biden term earlier. But the only viable alternative is terrifying. I’m hoping for better options four years from now but not holding my breath.
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And here it goes. This trial looked like a witch hunt, the reasoning was convoluted, and the judgment odd. If I was to charge Trump with anything it would be the most cut and dried shit I could come up with. I’d take the misdemeanor charge and put it in a cast iron case, just to pin something on him. He’s beaten just about every case. And the big one he lost is also odd as hell.
From just minutes after the sham trial verdict was announced, our digital fundraising system was overwhelmed with support, and despite temporary delays online because of the amount of traffic, President Trump raised $34.8 million dollars from small dollar donors. Not only was the amount historic, but 29.7% of yesterday’s donor’s were brand new donors to the WinRed platform. President Trump and our campaign are immensely grateful from this outpouring of support from patriots across our country. President Trump is fighting to save our nation and November 5th is the day Americans will deliver the real verdict.