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Francisco 2.0

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Posts posted by Francisco 2.0

  1. And from DC:

    The oral argument lasted nearly three hours, as the justices tangled with a lawyer for the former president and a Justice Department lawyer. A majority of the justices appeared skeptical of the idea of sweeping presidential immunity. However, several of them suggested an interest in drawing out what actions may be immune and what may not — a move that could delay the former president’s trial if the Supreme Court asks a lower court to revisit the issues.

    Many of the justices seemed to be considering the idea that presidents should enjoy some form of protection against criminal prosecution. The devil however will be in the details: How should that protection extend?


    And that question will have profound relevance not only for future presidents, but much more immediately for Donald Trump. The court could decide to draw those rules itself in a broad way for history. Or it could send this case back to a lower court to set the rules of what form immunity could take. If the case is sent back for further proceedings, it could have a dramatic effect on the timing of Trump’s trial, pushing it well past the election in November.

     

    Looking back, one of the main points of discussion turned on the question of which situation would be worse: a world in which presidents, shorn of any legal protections against prosecution, were ceaselessly pursued in the courts by their rivals in a never-ending cycle of political retribution, or allowing presidents to be unbounded by criminal law and permitted to do whatever they wanted with impunity.

     

    Sauer, Trump’s attorney, declines to offer a rebuttal. The argument is over.

     

    If the court finds that there is some immunity for official actions, one of the most important questions will be whether prosecutors can still present evidence to the jury of Trump’s official actions (like pressuring the Justice Department and Vice President Mike Pence to do certain things) as evidence that helps illuminate Trump’s knowledge and intent for his private acts as a candidate. Dreeben says the jury needs to understand the whole “integrated conspiracy” but prosecutors would accept a jury instruction in which the judge would say they cannot impose liability for the official actions but may consider them as evidence of his knowledge and intent for the other actions. That’s how courts handle protected speech that is evidence to a larger conspiracy, he notes.

     

    Justice Barrett picks up the question of timing again. She suggests that if prosecutors want to take Trump quickly to trial, they could simply drop those parts of the indictment that seem to be his official acts as president and proceed with only those parts of the indictment that reflect Trump’s private actions taken as a candidate for office. Dreeben is not wild about that idea.


    Dreeben suggests that allegations in the “private acts bucket,” as Justice Jackson just called it, would include things like the scheme to create fake electors and the way in which Trump fomented a mob of his supporters to violently attack the Capitol on Jan. 6.

     

    Justice Barrett seems to signal that she is less likely to find that presidents have blanket immunity for their official acts. When Dreeben says the system needs to balance the effective functioning of the presidency and accountability for a former president under the rule of law, and the existing system does that pretty well or maybe needs a few ancillary rules but that is different from the “radical proposal” put forward by Trump’s legal team, she says: “I agree.”

    Dreeben, in a balancing act that seems to acknowledge that the court is looking for some form of criminal immunity for presidents, says he is trying to do two things at once, neither of them easy. He wants to design a system to find some rules that preserve the “effective functioning of the presidency” but that still allows for “accountability” if presidents violated the law.

     

    Kavanaugh asks Dreeben about Obama’s drone strike that killed an American citizen suspected of terrorism, Anwar al-Awlaki, which Trump’s lawyer invoked in his opening. Dreeben notes that the Office of Legal Counsel analyzed the question and found that the murder statute did not apply to presidents when they were acting under public authority, so authorizing the strike was lawful. This is the way the system can function, he said — the Justice Department analyzes laws carefully and with established principles.

     

    Justice Kavanaugh signals that he is likely to find that presidents must have immunity for their official actions. He talks about how the threat of prosecution by independent counsels (under a law that lapsed in 1999) hampered Presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Clinton, and says a 1984 ruling upholding that structure as constitutional was one of the Supreme Court’s biggest mistakes. (Notably, Kavanaugh was a prosecutor on the staff of independent counsel Ken Starr during his investigation into President Bill Clinton, before becoming a White House lawyer under President George W. Bush.)


    Dreeben tries to push back on Kavanaugh’s argument by saying that even after Watergate, even after all of the independent counsel investigations mentioned above, the legal system has survived without “having gone off on a runaway train” of actual criminal prosecutions against former presidents.

    We are now over the two-hour mark of the Supreme Court’s arguments in the Trump immunity case. The Justice Department lawyer has continued to face skeptical questions from many of the court’s conservatives, several of whom appear particularly focused on how to draw the line between a president’s core powers and non-core powers. In other words, what actions by a president might be shielded from prosecution and what would not. The questioning suggests that some of the justices may favor a ruling that could lead to more lower-court proceedings, perhaps delaying the trial.

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  2. And I'm back.   From NY:

    We have our first mention of Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law and adviser.


    Pecker says he was walking outside Trump Tower when Kushner “tapped me on the shoulder.” Pecker adds that Kushner said:  “I’ll get you upstairs.”

     

    David Pecker is now describing a post-election meeting he had with Michael Cohen at Trump Tower. Pecker said Cohen told him he had not been reimbursed for his payment to Stormy Daniels. Cohen, who also wanted to be paid a bonus for the year, asked Pecker “if I would talk to the boss on his behalf.”

     

    David Pecker has at least three times described Michael Cohen as warning him that “the boss” — meaning Trump — would be “angry” if Pecker didn’t do whatever was being asked of him in that moment. Prosecutors, who have focused on Trump’s tendency to intimidate people in asking for a gag order, know what they’re drawing out here.

    “I wanted to protect my company, I wanted to protect myself and I wanted also to protect Donald Trump. ”
    David Pecker, former publisher of The National Enquirer

    Pecker reiterates the importance of keeping Karen McDougal’s story quiet, in a striking comment that relates directly to the prosecution’s argument that he conspired with Trump to help him get elected.

     

    Prosecutors showed jurors this article, which I co-authored while at The Wall Street Journal. It revealed The National Enquirer’s $150,000 payment to Karen McDougal. It was published four days before the 2016 election and first introduced the term “catch and kill.”


    Pecker, before a tense and focused courtroom, is recounting Trump calling him three days before election day, after the Journal article was published. He was “very upset, saying how could this happen, I thought you had this under control, either you or one of your people have leaked the story,” Pecker says. The call ended with no goodbye from Trump.

     

    David Pecker, Michael Cohen and others frequently contacted each other on an app called Signal. For those who don’t know it, it’s a free encrypted messaging service that goes to great lengths to keep electronic communications private.

    As the testimony about Stormy Daniels picks up speed, Trump is growing more animated. He has motioned to both of the lawyers sitting next to him, adjusted his shoulders and crossed his arms over his chest.


    The jury seems largely rapt as the Daniels tale starts to unspool. I did notice one yawn, however, from a juror as we slide towards lunchtime.


    As Pecker testifies about conversations he and Michael Cohen had about Stormy Daniels, he keeps his eyes glued to the exhibit and to the prosecutors. I have not seen him glance over at Trump once. He takes a big sip of water and continues to answer questions.

     

    Joshua Steinglass has seemed at ease during this direct examination of David Pecker. He is the most recent addition to this prosecution team but he is a veteran prosecutor at the Manhattan district attorney’s office. He previously led the effort to convict the Trump Organization in 2022 and also secured a conviction against two Proud Boy extremists for a violent brawl in 2019.

     

    David Pecker says he didn’t want The National Enquirer associated with a porn star, meaning Stormy Daniels, because one of the tabloid's biggest distributors was Walmart, where a lot of families shop.

     

     

    David Pecker says that he refused to pay $120,000 for Stormy Daniels's story, noting his previous payments to a doorman shopping an apparently false story about a child fathered by Trump and to Karen McDougal, who said she had an affair with him. “I am not a bank,” Pecker said, explaining his decision.


    Since the Stormy Daniels story would never have been published, Pecker’s assertion that it would have offended its readers doesn’t make sense — unless he was focused on building a case for plausible deniability were anyone to suggest the payment was an illegal campaign finance violation.


    Pecker is explaining why he and The National Enquirer wanted nothing to do with paying Daniels for her story: “After paying out the doorman, after paying out Karen McDougal, we’re not paying out any more monies,” he told Michael Cohen. And he says he suggested to Cohen “that you should buy this story and you should take it off the market.” He added to Cohen: “If you don’t and it gets out, I believe the boss is going to be very angry with you.”

     

     

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  3. Back in NYC:

     

    The jurors are still on break but the lawyers have been arguing for some time about a complex legal matter involving hearsay in certain exhibits. We’re not going to get into the weeds of the issue — the defense appears to have succeeded in not allowing in text messages about Trump's election between Dylan Howard, who was the editor of The National Enquirer in 2016, and a family member. But Juan Merchan, the judge, also continues to endorse — out of earshot of the jury — the prosecution’s interpretation of Pecker’s arrangement with Trump and Michael Cohen as a conspiracy.

    Pecker has just returned to the stand, and prosecutors and defense lawyers have made clear he’ll still be there tomorrow.

     

    With David Pecker back on the stand, we are turning to the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape.

     

    The tape, which Pecker is describing, featured an outtake of Trump on that show from the 2000s, boasting about grabbing women’s genitals. Pecker describes it as “very embarrassing, very damaging” to the campaign. It was released on Oct. 7, 2016.

    The jurors are mostly maintaining poker faces, but they look incredibly focused.

    Trump muttered something out loud when Pecker offered this analysis.

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  4. A part of this exchange between Justice Alito and the Justice Department's lawyer, Dreeben, gets at a pressure point in American-style democracy and the rule of law. One of the safeguards against illegitimate prosecutions of ex-presidents, Dreeben says, is that if the Justice Department has advised the president that doing something would be lawful, the department could not later turn around and prosecute the now-former president for relying on that advice and doing that thing.

     

    Alito points out that this creates an incentive for presidents to appoint attorneys general who will just tell them that anything they want to do would be legal. Indeed — that is a critique of the Office of Legal Counsel system, in which politically appointed lawyers decide what the law means for the executive branch.


    An example: During the George W. Bush administration, memos about post-9/11 surveillance and torture were written by a politically appointed lawyer with idiosyncratically broad views of a president’s supposed power, as commander in chief, to authorize violations of surveillance and torture laws. The Justice Department later withdrew those memos as espousing a false view of the law, but held that officials who had taken action based on those memos could not be charged with crimes.

    Justice Alito suggests that there is a risk to our stable democracy if presidents who lose close elections would not be allowed to retire in peace but could face prosecution. He has essentially flipped the situation under consideration upside down: that Trump is being prosecuted for having used fraud to remain in power after losing a close election.

     

    Much of the discussion this morning has swirled around the question of whether, without immunity, presidents will be hounded by their rivals with malicious charges after leaving office. Alito and other conservatives on the court seem concerned that the Trump prosecutions will open the door to endless attacks against future presidents.

     

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  5. Justice Jackson presses Trump’s lawyer about why presidents, uniquely among the numerous government officials who make life and death consequential decisions, can’t be constrained by the risk of prosecution if they commit a crime. She fears that future leaders would be "emboldened."

     

    If immunity is taken off the table wouldn’t presidents be emboldened to commit crimes, Justice Jackson asks. “I’m trying to understand what the disincentive is of turning the Oval Office into the seat of criminality,” she says.

     

    “If the potential for criminal liability is taken off the table, wouldn’t there be significant risk that future presidents would be emboldened to commit crimes with abandon while they are in office?” Jackson asks, adding: “Once we say ‘no criminal liability, Mr. President. You can do whatever you want,’ I’m worried we would have a worse problem than the problem of the president feeling constrained to follow the law while he’s in office.”

     

    Justice Jackson steps in to question the assumption that presidents should be immune even for their official actions. Why, she asks, should a president not have to follow the law while doing his or her job? Sauer responds that a president is required to follow the law but what is the remedy if there’s a crime committed? Should the president be sent to prison for a bad decision, he asks.

     

    Justice Barrett asks why presidents are immune from criminal prosecution for official acts unless convicted at impeachment — Trump’s theory — when other officials subject to impeachment, like Supreme Court justices, are not. Trump's lawyer, Sauer, invokes the view of the former solicitor general Robert Bork, when he was helping Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal in 1973. Here is the brief Sauer was referencing.

     

    By my count, there are now at least two justices — Gorsuch and Kavanaugh — who have expressed interest in holding further proceedings to determine whether the allegations in the indictment are presidential acts or private acts. Even holding proceedings would be a victory for Trump because they could easily take months to complete and all but ensure there would be no trial until after the election.

     

    Justice Kavanaugh is asking about the “clear statement rule.” The idea is that if a criminal law is going to apply to an official act by a president, rather than just applying to ordinary people, Congress would have to clearly state in the statute that lawmakers meant for it to apply to the president’s official acts.

     

    Sauer deflects on the answer about whether a president can pardon himself, saying that the central concern is actually whether a president will be able to make bold decisions as the country’s leader without worrying about whether his political opponents may come after him.

     

    Out of left field, Justice Gorsuch asks whether presidents can pardon themselves as a way to prevent successor administrations from prosecuting them.


    Here is an article exploring whether presidents can pardon themselves, something none has ever purported to do so there is no court precedent about whether it can be done.

     

    Justice Kagan is pushing Sauer to take a position on whether a president ordering the military to stage a coup to keep him in power could be considered an official act. Sauer clearly does not want to answer question, saying it depends on circumstance.

     

    Kagan seemed displeased by the exchange with Sauer saying there is no presidential immunity in the Constitution and the framers could have put one in if they had wanted to. “Wasn’t the whole point that the president wasn’t a monarch and the president wasn’t above the law?” she asked.

     

    Sauer, Trump’s lawyer, is falling back on their theory that ex-presidents can be prosecuted for official acts if they were first convicted by the Senate at an impeachment trial. Lower courts have found implausible the notion that there is a link between the political impeachment process and criminal law.


    Notably, at Trump’s second impeachment trial, when he was no longer president, his lawyers urged the Senate to find that he was not subject to conviction because he was no longer in office. Many of the Republican senators who voted to acquit him cited that as their reason. Justice Kagan points out that a former president who left office before impeachment would thereby be immune for, say, having ordered the military to stage a coup.

     

    The issue of timing now emerges squarely. Justice Sotomayor suggests that the question of what is an official act and what is a private act could be argued at trial in front of a jury. If the court ends up deciding in that way, it could mean that the election interference case goes to trial before the election in November.

     

    Justices Alito and Justice Sotomayor are getting at an important issue: If the Supreme Court says there can be no criminal liability for official actions (e.g. Trump talking to the Justice Department), could prosecutors still introduce evidence of the official actions at the trial? Those actions, Sotomayor points out, are still relevant for inferring what Trump’s mental state was for his private actions. Sauer, Trump’s lawyer, wants prosecutors banned from even bringing up official actions to a jury.

     

    If you’re just joining in, the justices have been hearing from Trump’s lawyer, D. John Sauer, in the first part of the oral argument. The justices, both liberal and conservative, have focused much of their questioning around whether a president can face criminal prosecution for private actions taken while in office, as well as how to draw the distinction between private and official acts.

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  6. This has been a strong morning for the prosecution, and we haven’t even gotten to the hush-money deal with Stormy Daniels yet. But the defense may begin cross-examining Pecker today, and it’s hard to assess how well one side is doing until you see the other side.

     

    Listening to David Pecker’s testimony, you can’t help but wonder how many other powerful politicians and public figures he cut secret deals with as publisher of The National Enquirer to kill incredibly newsworthy stories. We heard of just two, so far. Trump and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

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  7. Joshua Steinglass, the prosecutor, wraps up his questioning about Karen McDougal by asking David Pecker about a contentious exchange with Michael Cohen, in which Pecker got concerned about the potentially unlawful implications of the deal. Cohen was upset with him and screamed: “The boss is going to be very angry at you.” But Pecker — thoroughly anxious at this point — stood firm. “The deal is off,” Pecker recalls telling him then. Pecker concludes by saying that he was never paid for the McDougal deal and we begin a 20-minute break.

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  8. Daniel Rotstein, the man David Pecker used in an ultimately failed effort to secretly obtain reimbursement for the Karen McDougal deal, was his own fixer of sorts. Pecker had long used him to deliver the news that employees would be fired, to the point that Rotstein became known at Pecker’s company as “Dr. Death.”

     

    David Pecker is describing Michael Cohen’s creation of a shell company, Resolution Consultants, to reimburse Pecker for his payoff to Karen McDougal. Cohen, who was then Trump's fixer, would later set up a similarly named company, Essential Consultants, to pay off Stormy Daniels.

     

    We are pretty far into the weeds of disguised monetary transactions related to the McDougal deal. But most of the jurors, perhaps refreshed after their Wednesday off, are still paying close attention, turning their heads from the prosecutor, Joshua Steinglass, to the witness, Pecker, and back again.

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  9. David Pecker is now describing Trump’s interest in obtaining boxes of material regarding Karen McDougal, saying that Trump was worried about what would happen if Pecker got “hit by a bus” or his company was sold. Trump “did not want someone else to potentially publish those stories.”

     

    David Pecker now testifies that he was expecting to be paid back for the $150,000 he sent to Karen McDougal. This is a very important bridge to the third and final hush-money deal. Because Pecker had such a hard time getting Trump to reimburse him, he was later unwilling to buy a third story, Stormy Daniels’s story of having had sex with Trump (which Trump denies). Thus, Michael Cohen bought her story instead, leading us straight to the criminal charges at issue in this trial. There’s a sidebar right now, the lawyers speaking privately with the judge during another crucial moment.

     

    This case is spread through time and hush-money deals in a highly unusual way. We still haven’t reached the payment from which the criminal charges themselves ultimately stem. But Pecker’s testimony about the McDougal deal is important for the prosecution’s argument about Trump’s intent: They argue that he was seeking to win the election through illegal means and the specifics of the McDougal deal help to bolster that argument.

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  10. We are in a nitty-gritty, nuts-and-bolts part of the prosecution’s case, as they introduce invoices and vouchers showing the payments to Karen McDougal.

     

    Joshua Steinglass, the prosecutor, is walking David Pecker through a pretty extensive set of exchanges with Michael Cohen and then transactions to create a payment voucher for McDougal’s lawyer. There’s a sense of anxiety around all that was taking place to try to justify this payment internally and placate Trump’s team.

     

    Steinglass gets louder as he drills into a critical element of the prosecution’s case: that these payments to McDougal were made to influence the election. Trial lawyers often do this sort of thing, heightening their performance with a change in tone or a big gesture to command the jury’s attention.

     

    Earlier, Pecker had a hard time recalling what a text message referred to, in what seemed like it could be an ominous sign for the prosecution. But he’s sounded steadily more confident here, identifying exhibits that corroborate his story about McDougal.

     

    Pecker admits straightforwardly, when asked, that he didn’t “want this story to embarrass Mr. Trump or embarrass or hurt the campaign.” This is the crescendo of his story about McDougal, and hugely powerful testimony for the prosecution.

     

    The testimony is leading into a clear story about knowingly violating campaign finance laws.

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  11. “This is a very, very large purchase,” David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer, says of paying $150,000 to Karen McDougal, a Playboy model who was alleging an affair with Trump.

  12. Pecker’s last few minutes of testimony were really key. He said that his company had disguised the hush money payment to Karen McDougal as a deal for services she would perform for American Media. This is hugely important for the prosecution’s case: They have to show that the conspiracy that they accuse Trump of participating in to win the 2016 election was conducted through “unlawful means.” Pecker just indicated that it was. The jury may never catch this complicated point, but it’s enormously important for the legal viability of the case.

     

    The jurors are carefully looking at screens on which the evidence — the contract, text exchanges — is being displayed.

     

    Despite David Pecker’s assertions that he structured the deal with Karen McDougal to avoid violating campaign finance law, his company later admitted doing just that in its 2018 non-prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors.

     

    David Pecker is asked if The National Enquirer had any intention to publish Karen McDougal’s story, which it bought for $150,000. Pecker is blunt: “No, we did not.” This is catch and kill in a microcosm.

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  13. The deal went above and beyond for McDougal and included the hiring of ghostwriters to pen her stories.

     

    Pecker says that the contract was intended to stipulate that McDougal would perform “services” for A.M.I., that there was a basis for the $150,000 she was receiving.

     

    David Pecker is now detailing the agreement American Media Inc., The National Enquirer's parent company, struck with Karen McDougal. The contract guaranteed she would be put on two magazine covers and that the company would have the right to publish fitness columns by her. It’s worth noting how bizarre this set-up was. It wasn’t just buying her story — it was also giving her work within the A.M.I. empire.

     

    David Pecker is an interesting witness on the stand: he’s openly admitting to his involvement in a catch-and-kill scheme and he’s doing so quite candidly. He has also developed a rapport with the prosecutor conducting the direct examination, Joshua Steinglass. The optics of it are also fascinating as these salacious details are coming from a graying, petite man in his early 70’s.

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  14. It’s really interesting to hear Schwarzenegger and Trump linked through Pecker: the two Republican politicians share a lot, including their place in the celebrity hierarchy and their successful campaigns. This also speaks to the media environment in which Trump thrived, one in which name-brand recognition and Hollywood charisma had become more and more important, no matter the industry.

     

    David Pecker just talked about Arnold Schwarzenegger for a long time, coming off as meandering as he described doing catch-and-kill deals for Schwarzenegger once he entered politics. But Joshua Steinglass, the prosecutor, then helped him link those deals to the matter at hand, asking: “Did you come to appreciate the legalities surrounding such an arrangement with a political candidate?” Pecker says he did.

     

    I remember when The Los Angeles Times published its story about Schwarzenegger. It was seismic, and very damaging to him

     

    David Pecker is now describing a 2002 conversation with Arnold Schwarzenegger where he asked Pecker not to run negative stories about him before his run for governor of California. He was ultimately elected and served from 2003-2011.

     

    Pecker says that women did come forward about relationships that they had with Schwarzenegger and he did not publish stories on them. One that Pecker passed on ended up in The Los Angeles Times, he says.

     

    For context, July 2016 was when Trump was becoming the presidential nominee after a hard-fought G.O.P. primary.

     

    This was one of the few memorable stumbles in Pecker’s testimony thus far. It may not end up mattering, but it’s not ideal for the prosecution that the former publisher didn’t go where they were expecting with that question.

     

     

    We are now looking at an exchange between Dylan Howard and David Pecker, The Enquirer's editor and publisher, from July 2016, right around the time the deal to buy Karen McDougal's story took place. A message from Howard says “spoke to MC” (Michael Cohen) “about that other issue.” If Pecker had said the exchange referred to McDougal, it could have helped his credibility here. But he says he doesn't recall what Howard was referring to. Joshua Steinglass, the prosecutor, is now seeking to clarify.

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  15. Programming note:  I have a directors meeting from 9-10 am, so I will be out of pocket.  But I'll catch things up.

    In the meantime, they have started in NYC:

     

    Michael Cohen, David Pecker and Dylan Howard, the National Enquirer editor who interviewed McDougal, had a phone conversation after the interview. Howard said that McDougal was claiming to have had an affair with Trump. Cohen denied the affair had taken place immediately, but then said that he would look into it. Eventually, he said that a member of the group should try to buy the story.


    Pecker, explaining why McDougal said she didn’t want her story told, said, “She said she didn’t want to be the next Monica Lewinsky.”

     

    David Pecker says that allegations about women and Trump were always met by this response from Michael Cohen, Trump’s then-fixer: “It’s not true.”

     

    Pecker resumes testifying about Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who said that she had a sexual relationship with Trump. Prosecutors had saved the specifics of McDougal’s story for today. It’s an attention-catching way to start and the jurors are listening closely in these opening moments.

     

    David Pecker enters, looking as calm and unfazed by the spotlight as ever. Today he is wearing a dark suit, a pink shirt and a dark orange tie. (note:  orange and pink?)  He will resume his testimony as soon as the jurors enter.


    The 12 jurors and six alternates are seated and Pecker’s testimony continues.

     

    They’re now describing Trump's comments at an event this morning as another violation. Trump was asked by reporters about David Pecker’s testimony, and Trump called Pecker “a nice guy.” Prosecutors say it was a message to Pecker and others: be “nice,” or get attacked.


    As the prosecutor, Christopher Conroy, lays out the violations, Trump whispers to his lawyer Todd Blanche and frowns. After they speak, Blanche rubs his face several times.

     

    Prosecutors are submitting what they say are an additional four times Trump has violated the gag order, including an attack on Michael Cohen while speaking to reporters gathered in the hallway outside the courtroom. Those reporters are there so that Trump, who claims he’s denied his constitutional right to speak to them, can do so. Another violation prosecutors mention is an interview in which Trump referred to the jury as "95 percent Democrats."


    “He’s doing what the order tells him not to do,” Christopher Conroy, a prosecutor, about Trump’s alleged additional violations of the gag order.

    Trump enters the courtroom, with an array of lawyers and aides.


    Juan M. Merchan, the judge in the case, has taken his seat, and we are beginning for the day.

     

    The line for members of the public to get into the trial this morning was the longest I have seen. There were easily several dozen people in it. It was a mixed bag of people, but heavy on retirees. A lot of people were talking about the details of the case, like sports fans waiting to get into a big game.

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  16. Casually reading this thread.  I upgraded the den, but I did it with the least amount of planning, fuss, whatnot.  We use an Apple TV and stream everything (Netflix, Youtube TV, Disney)

    Replaced the 70" Sharp we have had since 2012 with a 85" Sony X90L.  Room is 23 x 14 (my recliner, when leaned back, is about 13 from the set).   Put bias lighting behind the set, which improved things visually, especially at night.

    For audio, I had a Pioneer receiver and a modest 2.1 setup with a sub, but wife complained in the past about the size of the speakers, etc.  Plus, you had to do the remote juggling (yeah, I could have purchased a Harmony, but I digress). So....

    Out went the existing setup, and I replaced it all with Sonos.   Arc for the soundbar, a pair of Subs and a pair of Era 300's (with stands) for the rears.  Incredibly easy setup, and it just works.  Judging from Reddit and whatnot people have issues getting Sonos equipment to work properly, but all of that seems directed back at your existing home network and wifi setup.  If it's deficient, Sonos equipment will suffer.  

    I did add a Sony UPB-X700 Ultra HD blu ray player, because reasons.   Bought the Ultra HD version of Oppenheimer and it looks/sounds glorious.

    Wife happy, although it took her a bit to get used to the rear surrounds.  For a week or so, she would always think something was happening in the kitchen.  

     

     

     

     

     

  17. MAGA snowflake example #4612

     

    https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/24/devin-nunes-trump-media-stock-congress-00154054

     

    Quote

    Trump Media & Technology Group CEO Devin Nunes is escalating his fight against Wall Street traders dealing in the company’s stock, turning to his one-time colleagues on Capitol Hill for help.

    The former Republican congressman and current Trump Media CEO is pressing top House GOP lawmakers to open up investigations into what he called “anomalous trading” by professional market players betting on the stock to decline.

     

    Quote

    “There are strong indications of unlawful manipulation of DJT stock,” Nunes wrote in a letter to the lawmakers, which was disclosed Wednesday in a regulatory filing by the company — the parent of Donald Trump’s Truth Social media platform. The letter was addressed to House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Financial Services Chair Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) and Oversight and Reform Chair James Comer (R-Ky.).

     

    Quote

    Nunes’s letter marks a new salvo in Trump Media’s attacks on Wall Street over claims that the Trump-controlled company’s stock price is being swayed by professional traders wagering against it. Trump Media, whose stock is majority owned by the former president himself, has undergone severe price swings since debuting in the public markets late last month.

    The stock initially surged as individual investors bought shares, often as a means of showing support for the presumptive GOP presidential nominee. But Trump Media, which trades on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the ticker DJT, has since plunged in value as the company has disclosed more information about its underlying financials and moved to permit some large investors to eventually cash out if they want.

     

    Spoiler

    Wall Street professionals, meanwhile, have raised concern about the prospects of the company’s money-losing business while traders have rushed to bet against the stock, a practice known as short selling.

    Nunes asked the lawmakers to investigate the trading in Trump Media’s stock and “whether any laws including RICO statutes and tax evasion laws were violated, so that the perpetrators of any illegal activity can be held to account.” He said “a thorough and expeditious investigation” should include collecting trading data from the SEC’s massive trading database known as the Consolidated Audit Trail, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and the clearinghouse for U.S. stock trades.

    Spokespeople for Jordan, McHenry, Smith and Comer did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

    Nunes is particularly worried about a specific and illegal type of short-selling activity known as “naked short selling.”

    Typical shorting involves traders borrowing shares that they then sell into the market before buying them back later — hopefully at a lower price to collect the difference. But naked short selling entails never borrowing the stock to start, a far riskier practice.

    Last week, Nunes alleged in a letter to Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman that there was “potential market manipulation” in the company’s stock from naked short selling. A Trump Media spokesperson did not immediately respond to a question on whether the company has reached out to the Securities and Exchange Commission on the issue.

    Fears of naked short selling ballooned among individual investors throughout the pandemic, as day trading became a favorite pastime for many. But there is “no way to ascertain” using public data whether naked short selling is occurring in a stock, S3 Managing Director Ihor Dusaniwsky told POLITICO last week.

    Trump Media’s complaints have not been well-received by the financial community. In both letters over the last week, Nunes has named four trading firms as being particularly active in the stock — including GOP megadonor Ken Griffin’s Citadel Securities. Each of the firms usually handles a substantial amount of individual investors’ trades on a given day.

    A spokesperson for Citadel Securities fired back at the Nasdaq letter last week saying, “Devin Nunes is the proverbial loser who tries to blame ‘naked short selling’ for his falling price.”

    Trump Media spokesperson Shannon Devine responded with a statement saying Citadel Securities is “a corporate behemoth that has been fined and censured for an incredibly wide range of offenses including issues related to naked short selling, and is world famous for screwing over everyday retail investors at the behest of other corporations.”

    Citadel Securities did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the latest letter.

     

    And here's the link to the letter (PDF)

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  18. 22 minutes ago, High Plains Drifter said:

    How would locking him up delay or stop the trail? Wouldn't they just go the lock up and bring him to trial when it started?

     

    17 minutes ago, DigglerontheHoof said:

    Absolutely.  Which is why he'll never do the "crazy don" routine, either.  He's a malignant narcissist who thinks he's perfect.  

     

    11 minutes ago, Fudge Nuggets said:

    No shit.  Last I checked, most murderers are in custody while their trials are ongoing.  

     

    Maybe they go with the Hannibal Lecter move. 

     

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