jerrymahoney

Oh. So I have outed myself. Which way?

Yes. And likely he will. But until there is an actual trial and verdict, unexpected things can happen.

The New York Times A New York City-based newspaper since 1851 The New York Times is America's newspaper of record and is published by A.G. Sulzberger. https://www.mediamatters.org/new-york-times And the home of Maggie Haberman, Trump's media enemy #1. New York Times Revenue Rises 6.3% Aug. 8, 2023 The company added 180,000 new digital subscribers in the latest quarter, and now has nearly 10 million subscribers in total. The New York Times added 180,000 new digital subscribers in its second quarter, the company said on Tuesday, bringing its total close to 10 million subscribers. The company reported adjusted operating profit of $92.2 million for the three months that ended in June, up from $76.2 million in the same period last year. The company reported total revenue of $590.9 million, a 6.3 percent increase from a year earlier. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/08/business/media/new-york-times-q2-earnings.html

He might; then again, he might not.

No problem.

REDUX Jan. 6 Rioters Have Been Held to Account. That Might Be the Easy Part. To be sure, none of the charges Mr. Trump is facing accuse him of encouraging or inspiring the violence at the Capitol. At worst, the Washington indictment claims that as chaos broke out at the building on Jan. 6, Mr. Trump “exploited the disruption” to further his goal of stopping the election certification. The Justice Department spent considerable effort searching for links between the White House and the rioters and, at least so far, has never publicly established any direct ties between the boots and the suits. What remains to be seen is whether prosecutors find a way to bridge their inquiry into the Capitol attack to their investigation into Mr. Trump’s attempts to overturn his electoral defeat. “We have the fraud charges and we have the seditious conspiracy charges,” said Daniel C. Richman, a former federal prosecutor and a law professor at Columbia University. “But what we don’t yet have is any link between the two beyond vague inferences and thoughts.” https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/06/us/politics/enrique-tarrio-trump-jan-6.html https://archive.ph/FXeXh

OK. It's hard enough to keep track of what has happened without keeping track of what hasn't.

Plea deals from Georgia?

Without reference to any post in particular from The Manchurian Candidate (1962) the late Ms. Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Iselin: Mrs. Iselin: [to her husband] I keep telling you not to think! You're very, very good at a great many things, but thinking, hon', just simply isn't one of them.

Thanks for letting us know you don't care about what others think about that which you do not care what others think.

Friday, September 15, 2023 4:47AM (Chicago time) The judge overseeing the Georgia election interference case has severed the case, ordering that 17 defendants -- including former President Donald Trump -- will not be tried alongside speedy trial defendants Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell on Oct. 23. In a blow to prosecutors, Judge Scott McAfee said severing the remaining 17 defendants was "a procedural and logistical inevitability," and did not rule out the possibility that "additional divisions" may be required later. Trump has already waived his speedy trial rights. https://abc7chicago.com/donald-trump-georgia-election-interference-kenneth-chesebro-sidney-powell/13783562/

... but it isn't what DA Willis wanted as per her Court filing.

Conversely: The case was brought under the state’s anti-racketeering law, meaning the same witnesses and evidence will be used in any trial, they wrote in a brief they said was filed Tuesday. Holding several lengthy trials instead would “create an enormous strain on the judicial resources” of the county superior court and would randomly favor the defendants tried later, who would have the advantage of seeing the state’s evidence and arguments ahead of time, prosecutors wrote. https://apnews.com/article/trump-georgia-election-indictment-trial-ce215bfe9ff54fe389796e2faad4a948

Fewer than 1% of federal criminal defendants were acquitted in 2022 The unprecedented charges against Trump and his subsequent plea raise the question: How common is it for defendants in federal criminal cases to plead not guilty, go to trial and ultimately be acquitted? In fiscal year 2022, only 290 of 71,954 defendants in federal criminal cases – about 0.4% – went to trial and were acquitted, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of the latest available statistics from the federal judiciary. Another 1,379 went to trial and were found guilty (1.9%). https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/06/14/fewer-than-1-of-defendants-in-federal-criminal-cases-were-acquitted-in-2022/

(Judge Chutkan) added that “delay is not an uncommon defense tactic,” one that can lead to witnesses becoming unavailable or forgetting key facts. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/08/28/trump-trial-date-jan-6-election/

Re: The proposed Prosecution 'gag' order: It is FURTHER ORDERED that Defendant shall file any Opposition to the government’s substantive Motion by September 25, 2023, and the government shall file any Reply by September 30, 2023. Date: September 15, 2023 TANYA S. CHUTKAN United States District Judge https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.258149/gov.uscourts.dcd.258149.55.0_2.pdf

No paywall proposed gag order: https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/jack-smith-trump-gag-order.pdf

Special Counsel Seeking Gag Order on Trump in Election Case Prosecutors have asked Judge Tanya S. Chutkan to curb statements from the former president that could intimidate witnesses, influence potential jurors or lead to harassment of others in the case. Sept. 15, 2023Updated 7:57 p.m. ET Prosecutors have asked the judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trump’s federal indictment on charges of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election to impose “a narrowly tailored” gag order on him, citing his “near-daily” social media attacks on people involved in the case, according to court papers released on Friday. The request to Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of Federal District Court in Washington, who has herself been the subject of some of Mr. Trump’s verbal assaults, brought to a head the simmering issue of the former president’s online statements. In a 19-page motion, prosecutors said that some of the people Mr. Trump has gone after on social media — including the special counsel, Jack Smith, who has filed two indictments against him — have experienced subsequent threats from others. Mr. Trump’s statements, they said, could also affect witnesses and the potential jury pool for the trial, which is scheduled to take place in Washington starting in March. Note: The above are the first 3 paragraphs. The archive version is not the complete NY Times article. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/15/us/politics/trump-gag-order.html https://archive.ph/UKaMx

From the Vegans in the News Department: Sam Bankman-Fried living on bread and water because jail won't abide by vegan diet, lawyer says The co-founder of failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX pleaded not guilty to a seven-count indictment charging him with wire fraud, securities fraud and money laundering. Aug. 23, 2023, 1:50 AM +07 An attorney for FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried said in federal court Tuesday his client has to subsist on bread, water and peanut butter because the jail he's in isn't accommodating his vegan diet. Defense attorney Mark Cohen said that Bankman-Fried isn’t getting his prescribed Adderall, which helps him focus, and that he isn’t getting a vegan diet, so he has had to subsist on bread and water with some peanut butter. U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn said she doesn’t think the prison can offer a vegan diet, only a vegetarian one, and she said she would look into the situation right away. Bankman-Fried is being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/sam-bankman-fried-living-bread-water-jail-wont-abide-vegan-diet-lawyer-rcna101231

Off-Off-Topic: Prosecutors: No grounds for judge to recuse in federal case against Trump over 2020 election The former president’s lawyers contend Judge Tanya Chutkan should step aside due to prior comments. 09/14/2023 11:27 PM EDT Special counsel Jack Smith’s office on Thursday sharply rejected former President Donald Trump’s push for U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan to step aside from the federal criminal case related to his bid to subvert the 2020 election. In a 20-page filing, prosecutors said Trump had failed to show any bias by Chutkan against Trump, despite allusions she made to him in a pair of sentencing proceedings against Capitol riot defendants in 2021 and 2022. Rather, argued senior assistant special counsels Molly Gaston and Thomas Windom, Trump “cherry-picks” from Chutkan’s quotes at those hearings to cast accurate and appropriate statements as inappropriate commentary. ... However, judges also have wide latitude to state their views from the bench based on the facts and information they learn in the course of their cases — and both defendants explicitly invited a comparison to Trump and others who stoked the fury of the mob that day. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/14/judge-tanya-chutkan-recuse-trump-case-00116146

Appeals court limits access to GOP congressman’s phone in defeat for special counsel Published 3:40 PM EDT, Wed September 13, 2023 (CNN) A federal appeals court has blocked federal prosecutors from obtaining a swath of cellphone records from a Pennsylvania Republican congressman who worked to overturn Donald Trump’s election defeat in 2020, in a ruling that could have dramatic legal implications that benefit federal lawmakers. The ruling from the three-judge panel of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals made public Wednesday blocks special counsel Jack Smith’s office from obtaining Rep. Scott Perry’s discussions with other lawmakers about the 2020 election. At very least, the appeals court proceedings have put on hold prosecutors’ ability to access a cell phone they wanted to examine of a top, well-connected official backing Trump’s election fraud beliefs after the 2020 election in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/13/politics/scott-perry-congress-phone-ruling/index.html

Georgia Judge Orders 2 Trials for Defendants in Trump Election Case Two defendants will get a speedy trial starting in October, but the others, including Donald J. Trump, can have more time to prepare, the judge ruled. Sept. 14, 2023 Updated 3:36 p.m. ET A judge on Thursday granted former President Donald J. Trump and 16 others a separate trial from two of their co-defendants who will go to trial next month in the Georgia election interference case. A trial date for Mr. Trump and the other 16 co-defendants has not been set. In his order, Judge McAfee described what was to come as a “mega-trial.” But he also raised the possibility that those 17 might not all be tried together in the end, if some make successful arguments to break off their cases. “Additional divisions of these 17 defendants may well be required,” the judge wrote. “That is a decision for another day once the many anticipated pretrial motions have been resolved and a realistic trial date approaches.” https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/14/us/trump-chesebro-powell-trial-georgia.html https://archive.ph/bU6qi

My wife is older than my girlfriend.

Opinion It’s not up to secretaries of state like me to keep Trump off the ballot By Jocelyn Benson September 13, 2023 at 12:18 p.m. EDT Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, is Michigan’s secretary of state and the author of “Secretaries of State: Guardians of the Democratic Process.” Is it up to secretaries of state to determine whether Donald Trump can ever serve in elective office again? That seems to be the nearly universal view of those who say the former president is disqualified from such service under the 14th Amendment and want state secretaries of state to unilaterally keep him off the ballot. But that view is misguided. Whether Trump is eligible to run for president again is a decision not for secretaries of state but for the courts. As secretary of state in a key battleground state — and a former election law professor and law school dean — I am keenly aware of the responsibility that secretaries who serve as their states’ chief election officers bear in reassuring voters that our democracy is secure, fair and accessible, and that election results are an accurate reflection of their will. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/09/13/secretaries-of-state-trump-disqualification/ https://archive.ph/tU3yW

Mick Jagger on David Lettterman's 10 top things he's learned after 50 years in Rock & Roll: #10 You used to play Rock & Roll so you could have sex and do drugs. Now -- you do drugs, so you can still play Rock & Roll and have sex.