INDICTED (INDICATED) #3 USA v Donald Trump - Judge Tanya Chutkan - #J6 Election Interference, Fake Electors - Jack Smith

[Luke]

Thank you, RTH! Gabe is excellent, really enjoyed him and his fast pace.

[RVInit]

Holy shit. He just attacked the Judge AGAIN in D.C., this time with a picture of her. He “reposted” someone elses’ nonsense so he thinks that makes it ok? What a lunatic.

[Kendra]

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrum ... 0439412597

How dare lowlife prosecutor, Deranged Jack Smith, break into my former Twitter account without informing me and, indeed, trying to completely hide this atrocity from me. What could he possibly find out that is not already known. Just like the early morning raid of Mar-a-Lago! Why isn’t the DOJ raiding Crooked Joe Biden, the most CORRUPT (and Incompetent!) President in the history of the United States?

[Reality Check]

How dare lowlife prosecutor, Deranged Jack Smith, break into my former Twitter account without informing me and, indeed, trying to completely hide this atrocity from me. What could he possibly find out that is not already known. Just like the early morning raid of Mar-a-Lago! Why isn’t the DOJ raiding Crooked Joe Biden, the most CORRUPT (and Incompetent!) President in the history of the United States?

Dear Orange Asshole:

He used a thing called a search warrant, you know, issued by a federal judge.

[Foggy]

What could he possibly find out that is not already known?

Your DMs, Don. What you put in your DMs is not known ... yet.

[Reality Check]

What could he possibly find out that is not already known?

Your DMs, Don. What you put in your DMs is not known ... yet.

Yes, the DM's could be quite interesting. Also Jack Smith could have access to drafts and deleted Tweets.

[Sam the Centipede]

Thanks for the WaPo link, appreciated.

The Guardian has an article focusing on Fani Willis, which paints quite a picture of a very strong person: ‘He’s going to be very surprised’: Georgia DA Fani Willis prepares to face off with Trump

There's some commentary on the use of Georgia's RICO statutes, which the article hints can be used for prosecutorial overreach. Me no lawman, me no have opinion, lawfolk they can argue much.

[RTH10260]

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrum ... 0439412597

How dare lowlife prosecutor, Deranged Jack Smith, break into my former Twitter account without informing me and, indeed, trying to completely hide this atrocity from me. What could he possibly find out that is not already known. Just like the early morning raid of Mar-a-Lago! Why isn’t the DOJ raiding Crooked Joe Biden, the most CORRUPT (and Incompetent!) President in the history of the United States?

Dear Donald, it's all about preserving the chain of custody for the evidence. Get the tweets (including deleted ones) directly from the horses mouth, so to say.

[pipistrelle]

Joe continues to be brilliantly corrupt and terribly senile.

[bob]

[raison de arizona]

https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/ ... 4707647596

Oh my, Elmo has been very bad and now he has to pay.

Special counsel obtained Trump DMs despite ‘momentous’ bid by Twitter to delay, unsealed filings show
Judge Beryl Howell lit into Twitter for taking steps to give Donald Trump advance notice about the search warrant.

Special counsel Jack Smith obtained an extraordinary array of data from Twitter about Donald Trump’s account — from direct messages to draft tweets to location data — newly unsealed court filings reveal.

But it took a bruising battle with Twitter’s attorneys in January and February — punctuated by a blistering analysis by a federal judge, who wondered whether Elon Musk was attempting to “cozy up” to the former president by resisting the special counsel’s demands — before prosecutors got the goods.

Ultimately, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell held Twitter (now known as X) in contempt of court in February, fining the company $350,000 for missing a court-ordered deadline to comply with Smith’s search warrant. But the newly unsealed transcripts of the proceedings in her courtroom show that the fine was the least of the punishment. Howell lit into Twitter for taking “extraordinary” and apparently unprecedented steps to give Trump advance notice about the search warrant — despite prosecutors’ warnings, backed by unspecified evidence, that notifying Trump could cause grave damage to their investigation.

“Is this to make Donald Trump feel like he is a particularly welcomed new renewed user of Twitter?” Howell asked.

“Twitter has no interest other than litigation its constitutional rights,” replied attorney George Varghese of WilmerHale, the firm Twitter deploys for much of its litigation.

But Howell returned to the theme repeatedly during the proceedings, wondering why the company was taking “momentous” steps to protect Trump that it had never taken for other uses. In the hearing on Feb. 7, 2023, Howell referenced Musk, asking: “Is it because the new CEO wants to cozy up with the former president?”

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/1 ... l-00111410

[Kendra]

Nicolle Wallace opened with this story, among others she had on her panel was Pete Strzok. His experience with warrants and Twitter and what kind of information they could find there is well worth a watch.

[bob]

Politico:

Howell pressed the company on who held the keys to Trump’s newly reinstated Twitter account — a group that apparently included Trump’s list of representatives to the National Archives.

Twitter attorneys also revealed that Trump’s account sent “some volume” of direct messages that prosecutors were working to obtain.

Among the data the search warrant commanded Twitter to produce:

— Accounts associated with @realdonaldtrump that the former president might have used in the same device.

— Devices used to log into the @realdonaldtrump account

— IP addresses used to log into the account between October 2020 and January 2021.

— Privacy settings and history

— All tweets “created, drafted, favorited/liked, or retweeted” by @realdonaldtrump, including any subsequently deleted.

— All direct messages “sent from, received by, stored in draft form in, or otherwise associated with” @realdonaldtrump

— All records of searches from October 2020 to January 2021

— Location information for the user of @realdonaldtrump from October 2020 to January 2021

Oh, the Places You'll Go! (I.e., prison.)

The bulk of the battle focused on prosecutors’ demand that Twitter abide by a “nondisclosure” order and refrain from notifying Trump about the search warrant prosecutors had obtained. Twitter raised concerns that prosecutors were seeking data that could be covered by executive privilege — a contention that drew incredulous responses from both prosecutors and the judge, who said Trump was unlikely to be doing government business with senior aides via Twitter DM.

In addition, Howell emphasized that Twitter had little to no insight into the evidence prosecutors relied on to obtain the warrant or the details of their acute concerns that notifying Trump could endanger the investigation and result in harm or intimidation to witnesses.

“You don’t even know the half about the very warrant you are coming in here to delay the execution of,” Howell said.

“First, [Twitter's lawyers] don’t know anything. I mean, they know some stuff. They know what they have read in the newspapers,” [prosecutor] Bernstein said. “But they’re making these confident factual assertions without knowing the actual facts of the investigation.”

And that, my friends, is how you get hired at Twitter.

[Grumpy Git]

Roger Stone - caught in the act?



Melber: We're now going to play for you so you may listen to this new exclusive video.. Stone works with an associate to dictate his plans and arguments for how they had a plan as early as early November

[bob]

[Ben-Prime]

At this rate, I would not be surprised if Elmo proposes that his battle royale with Zuck become a tag team match of Elmo-and-Donnie-Rico versus Zuck-and-Jack-Smith.

[sugar magnolia]

At this rate, I would not be surprised if Elmo proposes that his battle royale with Zuck become a tag team match of Elmo-and-Donnie-Rico versus Zuck-and-Jack-Smith.

I know who my money will be on.

[Dave from down under]

Abigail Jo Shry allegedly called the chambers of Judge Tonya Chutkan on the US District Court of the District of Columbia and left a message Aug. 5 threatening to kill anyone who goes after the former president, according to court documents filed Aug. 11 in a federal district court in Houston.

“You are in our sights, we want to kill you,” Shry allegedly said in the message.

The voicemail ...

[Suranis]

At this rate, I would not be surprised if Elmo proposes that his battle royale with Zuck become a tag team match of Elmo-and-Donnie-Rico versus Zuck-and-Jack-Smith.

I know who my money will be on.

[Grumpy Git]

It's behind a paywall, but here's the court document.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap ... 56.1.0.pdf
Abigail Jo Shry seems nice.

[Kendra]

https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/18/politics ... index.html

When conspiracy theorist Alex Jones marched his way to the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, riling up his legion of supporters, an unassuming middle-aged man in a red “Trump 2020” hat conspicuously tagged along.

Videos and photographs reviewed by CNN show the man dutifully recording Jones with his phone as the bombastic media personality ascended to the restricted area of the Capitol grounds where mobs of then-President Donald Trump’s supporters eventually broke in.

While the man’s actions outside the Capitol that day have drawn little scrutiny, his alleged connections to a plot to overthrow the 2020 election have recently come into sharp focus: He is attorney Kenneth Chesebro, the alleged architect of the scheme to subvert the 2020 Electoral College process by using fake GOP electors in multiple states.

When asked by the House select committee where he was the first week of January 2021 and on January 6, Chesebro invoked his Fifth Amendment rights. But a CNN investigation has placed him outside of the Capitol at the same time as his alleged plot to keep Trump in office unraveled inside it.

[Sam the Centipede]

According to The Guardian:

Lawyers for Donald Trump asked the judge in Washington DC overseeing his federal election interference trial to push back the start date to April 2026, almost 18 months after the next presidential election and more than two years from the trial date proposed by the US government.

Trump and his lawyers are to be commended for their interest in judicial efficiency!

Clearly they wish to merge the trial for Trump's crimes in failing to overturn his loss in the 2020 election with the trial for his crimes in failing to overturn his loss in the 2024 election.

[Kendra]

https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/19/politics ... index.html

Prominent conservative legal scholars are increasingly raising a constitutional argument that 2024 Republican candidate Donald Trump should be barred from the presidency because of his actions to overturn the previous presidential election result.

The latest salvo came Saturday in The Atlantic magazine, from liberal law professor Laurence Tribe and J. Michael Luttig, the former federal appellate judge and prominent conservative who’s become a strong critic of Trump’s actions after the election.

Not all in the legal community agree – and what the scholars are proposing would need to be tested in court

Yet Luttig and Tribe’s writings capture a conversation about the Constitution and the 2021 insurrection that is likely to grow heading into the 2024 election season.

They and others base their arguments on a reading of part of the 14th Amendment, a post-Civil War provision that excludes from future office anyone who, previously, as a sworn-in public official, “engaged in insurrection or rebellion … or [had] given aid or comfort to the enemies” of the government.

The pair write: “Having thought long and deeply about the text, history, and purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment’s disqualification clause for much of our professional careers, both of us concluded some years ago that, in fact, a conviction would be beside the point.

“The former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and the resulting attack on the U.S. Capitol, place him squarely within the ambit of the disqualification clause, and he is therefore ineligible to serve as president ever again.”

Tribe expanded on this message in a joint interview with Luttig on CNN Saturday evening, calling it “a monumental issue, the most important constitutional issue of our day.”

“Stay tuned. This is going to be a saga that lasts between now and the election,” Tribe told CNN’s Jim Acosta.

[Sam the Centipede]

Isn't a key problem with that approach that Trump has not yet (!) been convicted of anything insurrection-wise?

Of course Trump aided the enemies of the government. That is a fact. Not adjudicated in court, but still a fact.

A challenge would presumably have to be via the courts; states aren't going to say "oh, Trump's an insurrectionist, we're not putting him on the ballot" … or are they? It would be interesting if one or more did, forcing Trump to challenge the block.

In a challenge to Trump's candidacy, aren't courts going to say "yeah, but prove that in a criminal case first, off you trot"? Or would it be appropriate to prove it in the case itself? That would be fun! What would the standard of proof be? As it's not a criminal charge (he's being blocked from candidacy, not fined or sent to prison), would it be a balance of probabilities issue? If so, good reason to try it, because it's valid for the challengers to say "(a) we're not prosecutors, we can't charge him with anything, and (b) we're not necessarily saying it's true beyond all doubt, only that it's more plausible than the alternative."

If Trump stands, kicking off a few challenge cases seems a good way of harassing the Orange Asshole and his legals. Presumably the only people energized by seeing Trump challenged and the ensuing rants are the assholes who would vote for him anyway.

[bob]

Isn't a key problem with that approach that Trump has not yet (!) been convicted of anything insurrection-wise?

No, or perhaps not necessarily.

The 14th Amendment's prohibition isn't self-executing; it doesn't automatically kick in even if there was a conviction.

So either a ballot official has got to block him from a ballot, or someone has got to sue.

Both are possible. IIRC, some down ballot insurrecting candidate was blocked from a ballot. And some minor Republican candidate (remember, there are dozens and dozens) is suing the quadfectee over his potential disqualification.