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2 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

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.

This seems like a reach.

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1 minute ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

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

When y’all get together, do you bring your little sticks that you point at the musicians with?

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2 minutes ago, Red Five said:

This seems like a reach.

do not talk about jurors means do not talk about jurors positively or negatively. I don’t care what he said when he was told not to discuss jurors.

Edited by Gatorubet
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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.

Edited by Francisco 2.0
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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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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.

Edited by Francisco 2.0
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Calling Trump frugal is the most ridiculous thing ever. The man has the most garish taste where gold plated and things being yuge equate to classy. He’s not frugal, he’s a deadbeat welcher.

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8 minutes ago, The Original Greaser Bob said:

Has anyone else other than me had the passing thought "Gosh, as I look back on my life, it might have been fun to engage in at least one or two shenanigans/deviltry/monkey business that required a Pecker to "catch and kill"?"

By that you mean you want to have boinked Karen McDougal. 

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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.

Edited by Francisco 2.0
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Is there a legal ground for McDougal to demand more compensation?  Stormy got $130,000 for one sexual encounter.  McDougal got $150,000 but had to put out multiple times for his limp-dick fatass.  Surely, there's some financial wiggle room in there.  No?  

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Just now, LTbear said:

Worth noting: there is no sex in the world worth $130,000.

It’s all relative. If you’ve got Saudi oil sheikh or Russian oligarch money, that kind of money can be found in the couch cushions of your private 747.

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5 minutes ago, LTbear said:

Worth noting: there is no sex in the world worth $130,000. But I guess fatass morons have no choice. 

Not so sure about that, how many guys have paid more in a standard divorce to have sex with another woman and be done with their wife?  

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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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7 minutes ago, royiv said:

It’s all relative. If you’ve got Saudi oil sheikh or Russian oligarch money, that kind of money can be found in the couch cushions of your private 747.

I stand by my statement 

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3 minutes ago, BamaATL said:

Not so sure about that, how many guys have paid more in a standard divorce to have sex with another woman and be done with their wife?  

To clarify, no one time sexual encounter is worth 130k. If that's what someone has to pay for divorce to get out of a shitty marriage, so be it. 

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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.

Edited by Francisco 2.0
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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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28 minutes ago, LTbear said:

Worth noting: there is no sex in the world worth $130,000. But I guess fatass morons have no choice. 

@Brisketexan’s talk on this site says otherwise. He’d probably shell that out for Sela 

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The Senate majority leader, in 2020: (approximately “Convicting on impeachment charges is not necessary. We have a criminal judgement system which is the proper forum for these charges.)” 

 

Trump’s lawyer, arguing before SCOTUS: “The only remedy for illegal acts committed by POTUS is impeachment. It has been exactly so for over 240 years.”

Fuck these fucks in their fucking fuckholes.

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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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Just now, Willfully Horn said:

 

The Senate majority leader, in 2020: (approximately “Convicting on impeachment charges is not necessary. We have a criminal judgement system which is the proper forum for these charges.)” 

 

Trump’s lawyer, arguing before SCOTUS: “The only remedy for illegal acts committed by POTUS is impeachment. It has been exactly so for over 240 years.”

Fuck these fucks in their fucking fuckholes.

Hell, one of Trump's attorneys argued that in one of his impeachment trials. "No no, this is legal, not political!"

"Fine, we're pressing charges."

"No no, this is political, not legal!" 

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50 minutes ago, royiv said:

Calling Trump frugal is the most ridiculous thing ever. The man has the most garish taste where gold plated and things being yuge equate to classy. He’s not frugal, he’s a deadbeat welcher.

"Frugal" is a very nice way of describing behavior we've pointed out about Trump here and elsewhere: It's not that he doesn't buy; it's that he won't pay afterwards.

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25 minutes ago, LTbear said:

To clarify, no one time sexual encounter is worth 130k. If that's what someone has to pay for divorce to get out of a shitty marriage, so be it. 

Eh, if that much money were the only thing between me and a night of intimate and slippery bliss with Mila Kunis, I'd be on the phone with my bank to convert equity to cash that minute.

23 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

Karen McDougal is damn hot 🔥🔥🔥

She was reasonably okay before she became Trump's sloppy seconds. She ain't hot enough to overcome that.

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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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10 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

It's mostly because Merchan holds a mental health court on Wednesdays and considers it too important to push off.

Good for him.

For the next six weeks every day is going to be mental health court for him

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19 minutes ago, Willfully Horn said:

 

The Senate majority leader, in 2020: (approximately “Convicting on impeachment charges is not necessary. We have a criminal judgement system which is the proper forum for these charges.)” 

 

Trump’s lawyer, arguing before SCOTUS: “The only remedy for illegal acts committed by POTUS is impeachment. It has been exactly so for over 240 years.”

Fuck these fucks in their fucking fuckholes.

friday-movie-that-was-different.gif

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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.

 

Edited by Francisco 2.0
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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.

Edited by Francisco 2.0
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8 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

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.

Seems like the fix there is to nullify the DOJ memo, rather than create a king every 4 years

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12 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

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.

 

It is very sobering that one colossal piece of shit American is close to dismantling 250+ years of American democracy in such a short period of time. Maybe this was always coming and Trump is simply the useful idiot for those who've been plotting this for a long time.

Edited by C-Man
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44 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

Alito suggests there are not enough legal safeguards in place to protect presidents against malicious prosecution if they don’t have some form of immunity.

Maybe I missed it in the NYT synopsis, but the rebuttal to the notion that a motivated prosecutor could indict even a presidential ham sandwich with Dijon, is that presidents are afforded abundant legal counsel, and the precedent is that if an empowered government official declares an action legal, then an individual cannot be charged, much less convicted, for that action.

 

Who knew so many high court justices were DT posters? Holy shit, with their skin crawling they sharply rebuke any mention of the particulars of Trump’s indictments. The claim that what’s important is the abstract, the general effect of their eventual ruling. Hey fuckwads, if the meta doesn’t address this micro, then it is bullshit.

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