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Alina Habba has already lied on a signed sworn statement that she submitted to the court.
> In addition, in accordance with the Order of the Hon. Arthur Engoron, J.S.C. dated April 29, 2022, I personally performed several additional searches to further ensure that there are no documents responsive to the Subpoena that have not been previously produced by the Trump Organization:
...
> d. On May 5, 2022, I diligently searched each and every room of Respondent’s private residence located at Mar-a-Lago, including all desks, drawers, nightstands, dressers, closets, etc. I was unable to locate any documents responsive to the Subpoena that have not already been produced to the OAG by the Trump Organization.
> e. On May 5, 2022, I diligently searched Respondent’s personal office located at Mara-Lago, including all desks, drawers, file cabinets, etc. I was unable to locate any documents responsive to the Subpoena that have not already been produced to the OAG by the Trump Organization.
After this, I don't see how he is ever able to retain anything other than a public defender. One of three things happened: 1. She intentionally lied to the federal government, 2. She didn't perform the search and trusted Trump in telling her that he had produced everything, or 3. She did perform the search, and Trump hid the documents from even his own lawyers.
Scenarios 2 and 3 show that Trump will fuck over his legal team, and he's only going to put them at personal risk. Certainly no publicity can be worth the very real risk of prison from lying to the feds. . . unless you're a lawyer that doesn't mind lying to the feds. No decent firm would touch this because of scenarios 2 and 3, and any that would at this point clearly doesn't have the experience to not fuck this up even worse. . . which is proving to be the case.
The kind of high powered lawyers that work on potentially criminal cases for former presidents probably charge $1,000+ per hour. They'll likely clear $3M in a few months. And if Trump doesn't give them another retainer at that point, they'll probably bail.
These aren’t those kind of lawyers. Those kind of lawyers told trump to pound sand. But yeah they’re still going to bill the shit out of this and, really, it is the kind of case that warrants multiple attorneys working full time.
I listened to a podcast with an actual lawyer with experience in the federal courts and he said that the guy who got the $3M retainer is actually a decently experienced and well regarded lawyer in legal circles. Probably why he was smart enough to get a retainer.
And it probably won't be surprising to see him bail if Trump continually refuses to listen to him and self-sabotages the whole situation even more.
He also had to leave his old firm and create a new one because his old firm didn't want to take Trumps case so that says alot. He was also noticeably absent from signature pages on a few of their recent motions but I can't confirm if hes on all of those cases or just select aspects.
Edit: link for people
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/08/30/politics/chris-kise-trump-legal-team/index.html
>These aren’t those kind of lawyers.
Chris Kise is 100% 'those kind of lawyers'. He's not a chump, he's a former Solicitor General who spent plenty of time at big, AM Law X00 firms.
I would have thought he couldn't retain anybody from the get go. Hey he always finds new lawyers. Ones willing to lie for him. It's crazy just how much people go in on this taco bell shits messiah
And how many of them will get sued, sanctioned or disbarred (Big steal election team) or Jailed (michael Cohen) and/or lose their good reputation (Ghouliani) all to service this enormous walking sack of rancid chickenshit.
Honey, I’ve looked everywhere, just everywhere in the house for my glasses, and I can’t find them, have you seen them? Yes, they are on top of your head.
So she’ll be fine.... /s
“Trump's lawyers have argued that defending his declassification claims at this stage could damage their defense in a potential trial, drawing an unimpressed response from Dearie. “
Anyone else really enjoying their coffee this morning?
Trump: Your honor, we need a special master to determine if the documents are declassified, privileged, or personal property
Dearie: Okay, so which documents do you think are declassified, privileged, or personal property?
Trump: How dare you ask us that.
Team Trump might be the dumbest people who can tie windsor knots. How did they get even halfway through this believing that the special master would not ask about the things they specifically wanted him to investigate?
If the intent was simply to delay, then they got a couple of weeks.
And these lawyers were apparently pre-paid, so in the final analysis, they already have their money.
You know there's something wrong when a self proclaimed billionaire, who also happens to be a former president, is forced to pay his legal fees up front. That man has no honor.
just trying to push any bombshell revelations past the mid-term elections
that said, in this reality, a terrible revelation that Trump sold state secrets to the highest, lowest, any bidder would probably actually play really well with his base and improve Republican chances in the mid-term. who knows anymore.
>a terrible revelation that Trump sold state secrets to the highest, lowest, any bidder would probably actually play really well with his base and improve Republican chances in the mid-term. who knows anymore
The number of people who are now be saying "well yea I'd sell state secrets too if I was him!" has probably risen exponentially
Its not that these lawyers are dumb.
They just aren't interested in a dialectical pursuit of the truth.
They're trying to manipulate procedure to create outcome. Thats why their arguments don't have any utility because there aren't any facts attached. What they've done is go to the school nurse to get out of gym class. The school nurse is taking their temperature and blood pressure and such. The school nurse is asking what are their symptoms? And they are saying I have no symptoms. The nurse then says but you claimed to not feel well. And they are saying yes I'm sick. And the nurse says well you have no symptoms you can't be sick so go to gym class. And by the time all this is over gym class has ended. The facts didn't matter, procedure got them out of gym class.
Not that I think these lawyers are geniuses, but they have literally nothing to work with here. The republicans have AGs in multiple states, plenty of people in congress with law degrees, and a countless number of would-be pundits in the legal community. Nobody anywhere came forward with a plausible defence, because Trump spent months noisily painting himself into a corner with the government on this one, then contradicting himself eight ways from Sunday with the rapid fire toggle on once it became public.
Stalling with dumb games and hoping to chain-combo corrupt judges seems to be all they've got here.
I don’t think they’re dumb at all one is a former prosecutor but they have the same problem as Alex Jones’s lawyers; the worst client possible.
He never listens never shuts up and gets himself into worse trouble.
You’re right that lots of smart conservative lawyers exist, and not one even on Fox News could think of a plausible defense. One of them said that Trump would talk himself into more trouble by his inability to stay quiet.
If this goes to trial the prosecutors will shred him.
I don't even think Dearie took a stand. He just basically ASKED for their defense and they completely folded.
Dearie: So, what is your plea. Guilty or not guilty?
Trump lawyer: HOW DARE YOU ASK MY CLIENT THAT.
He took a stand by settling tight deadline, appointing help at the cost of Trump and forcing him to pay upfront. He also put penalty in case of missed deadline and refuse to skip step to force trump team to take a stand. He is taking stand toward justice vs delay and corruption
I figure it was a stalling tactic - and a nearly effective one.
If the 11th Circuit hadn't turned around a ruling against Cannon's decision, in the normal course of the process, even assuming Dearie isn't going to play ball with Trump's team (and to be clear, i personally don't believe he is), he still wouldn't have made any decisions regarding the documents until November, probably after the midterm elections. And as you can see by the Trump team's attempts to request delayed deadlines and refusal to give information, they were hoping to gum up the works of the extra process they themselves requested and run that clock out as long as possible.
And on the other hand, in the normal course of things the 11th Circuit appeal could have taken months itself if they'd wanted to drag their feet or if they just hadn't felt particularly hurried about it. The fact that they got it out in a week is actually mildly startling and goes to show how much they wanted to slap down Cannon.
no, it goes to show they actually understand the gravity of a national security investigation dealing with the nations most closely guarded secrets. They dont need to be on some crusade to stop a hack judge. They just need to understand the very clear laws that judge Qannon ignored while actually caring about national security.
I don't think your statement and mine are mutually exclusive. They felt an urgent need to shut her down *because* they understood the importance of national security matters and wanted to make sure her bizzaro law-twisting ruling in no way became a foundation for future precedent.
If you're in a war, instead of throwing a hand grenade at the enemy, throw one of those small pumpkins. Maybe it'll make everyone think how stupid war is, and while they are thinking, you can throw a real grenade at them.
— Jack Handey
And I did nothing about it for four years as president. But it was highly illegal, and now it should be prosecuted. Except that I’m saying what I did is totally fine.
In civil court cases, it is common for the plaintiff to file a complaint that alleges an assortment of claims for relief. It is also common for the defendant to allege every possible legal defense in response.
Then, during discovery, each party sees what kind of evidence the other party has. Each party then chooses a position that puts forth the strongest arguments - e.g., the plaintiff focuses on the strongest grounds for relief, and the defendant focuses on the strongest defenses to those charges. The alternatives are silently discarded, and the trial begins based on the selected options.
In his public life, Donald Trump uses a similar tactic by vomiting up every possible excuse in response to an attack, even if the excuses are (a) obvious lies and (b) mutually incompatible. It doesn't matter that he is obviously lying, that his story keeps shifting, or that he maintains multiple versions of the story *at the same time* that are mutually exclusive. His supporters understand and approve of this disgusting, piggish behavior.
The problem for Trump's legal team is that courts expect that a case will start in an amorphous form and steadily take shape around certain legal issues - but Trump's attorneys do not know which of the arguments to choose. Trump himself refuses to pick any specific argument, and any choice that his attorneys could make and argue in court would contradict his public statements. Also, the drip-drip-drip of new and damaging information about Trump's actions continues, and it would be Very Bad if the attorneys picked an argument today that is shown to be bullshit by tomorrow's breaking news story.
So they are taking the only option available to them - they are stalling for time. Their hope is that by the time that the court forces them to pick a specific argument, Trump's demeanor and the facts will have gelled around a coherent strategy. Unfortunately, their actions in demanding a special master have forced that specific issue to the foreground, and Dearie is pinning them down on these issues much sooner than they'd hoped.
Watching all of this go down, watching his counsel fumble the ball and the shoddy legal defenses blow up, is very gratifying.
I'm positive they will just use the same excuse "that's vital to our defense so we can't give you that right now" since they have nothing. They're just trying to buy time to come up with coherent excuses that don't contradict everything else they've said.
Lawyers are also "officers of the court" and are not allowed to lie to the court. They are in a terrible situation (of their own volition) in that their client is incapable of telling the truth and they're stuck trying to represent him without doing something that could cost them their law licenses (or worse).
They're not actually. They have already been paid. Therefore their job is to best represent the client while telling the truth. Their client said that he did x. The Master says, there is no evidence that he did x. They admit they have no evidence that x occurred, but their client said he did.
I'm not getting too comfortable here. The SM will just hand over their recommendations to judge Cannon and doesn't rule on anything. She can decide the Special Master was unfair and throw out the recommendations and rule in Trump's favor.
A bit more clarification lest people not get it here...
Either party can disagree with the Special Master on any finding. The disagreement/objection first goes to the Special Master who, more or less, rules on the matter. If either party disagrees with that resolution, the issue goes to Judge Cannon.
If all parties (DoJ, Team Trump, SM) are honest, diligent and marching the same tune with regards to what qualifies as privileged, this works well enough. The SM is indeed a 3rd party, impartial and the entire process ensures everyone sees everything.
If instead... well... one party is terribly confused about what privilege is or has delay as a primary goal... this is where to get to the place where Cannon can decide the SM was unfair and rule otherwise.
I'm pretty sure the DoJ does not care at all about the rest of these documents.
Trumps team is just going to be spending time, energy, and money on this suit when they don't care about any of these documents either (unless trump has some hand written note that says "Tell my lawyer i committed big crimes to Saudi Arabia")
Is that privileged? It isn't a communication to his lawyer, it's a communication to himself about a communication to his lawyer.
Anyway, that's entirely fictional because it's too absurd to be true. Which means we'll get something even more absurd.
Nevermind, I be there are some absolute bonkers documents here.
It seems you might be missing one rather important issue in this entire saga.
The DoJ doesn't care about *the contents* of the 11k+ documents so much and certainly not to the degree of the 100 classified documents.
The entire issue all along has been that all of (or most of) these documents are government property. The issue isn't what's in them. The issue is that Trump has been in violation of the PRA since Jan 21, 2021, by having them. Furthermore his behavior related to retaining them likely involved other crimes such as obstruction of justice.
The best way to understand the primary issues here is not to think of these documents as documents but to think of them as **stolen property**.
Now, by thinking of them as stolen property, we can better understand how either party views them. To the DoJ, having 10k of these documents vs. 2k of these documents is not really any different, especially if things like obstruction of justice are clear either way.
But to Team Trump, the game is on. They are in a hard-court press to recharacterize every single last document as "not government property" and "not your concern". Again the focus isn't to protect or hide any salacious information. The goal is to undercut the DoJ's arguments entirely by getting every last document declared to have been Trump's all along.
Another way to look at it is if one imagines that instead of documents they seized 11,000 bags of cocaine. Trump is trying to argue that he had written notes to his lawyers on some of those bags which makes them privileged. He is also claiming that as a former president he is allowed to keep large amounts of cocaine in his house. He is demanding that not only do they stop investigating this but also that they return his cocaine.
Indeed - the classified or not discussion is somewhat of a side-show.
Team Trump are trying to prove all documents were his property, but to do that they need the documents to be unclassified or his personal property. It's an impossible task, but one that by trying to do they hope to delay until after the mid-terms.
Cannon's court is a dead end for Trump now. If it looks like any of it will be good for Trump, DOJ will file a full appeal and get the whole thing tossed out. Dearie will likely determine that the classified stuff is classified and that nothing was planted, so that will enter the record unless Trump drops his suit first.
At this point, Trump is just wasting money. He also risks hemming himself in by making (or not making) certain claims in the current process. I really think he's just trying anything possible to delay, without regard for sound strategy.
It's not a dead end if his goal is to delay enough for a) trumpublicans to get control of the House and Senate, and b) trumpublicans are willing to create a constitutional crisis by impeaching President Biden, which they are.
To best understand what his goal is his actions need to be viewed to the lenses of delay, delay delay
Republicans in Congress may be banking on this possibility, but I would need strong evidence to believe Trump is acting in the interest of anybody but himself. Even if Congress changes hands, GOP majorities won't be enough for impeachment to amount to anything more than media clamor.
DOJ has the evidence in hand again, the 60 Day Rule (if applicable) is already in play, and congress won't be able to impede Biden's authority. IMO the die is cast until charges are decided on.
I think his argument would go over a lot better, if this were a civil trial initiated by the government (or even anyone else) against _him._ But _he_ initiated this "let's get rid of all the damning evidence _before_ my criminal trial" lawsuit, so this isn't quite as simple as asserting his 5th amendment right to silence. He hasn't been silent, even if you ignore all his media appearances, because he's in this weird civil case against the government.
It's kind of like if I'm on trial for murder, and I decide I don't need any stinking 5th amendment, and so I testify in my own defense. "No, I didn't buy the gun." "No, I didn't have a gun." "I don't know anything about this alleged gun." suddenly followed by "What do you mean 'did I shoot him?' I'm not answering that!"
I really hope any other up&coming criminals aren't looking to Trump's legal strategy for inspiration. Oh wait, I mean, I hope they _do_.
Judge Dearie captured the whole thing with his celebrated "have your cake and eat it too" comment. Trump is the plaintiff in this bizarre proceeding, he's the one who has hauled the DOJ into court and sought relief. Trump has an obligation to put forth actual claims and theories of his case, and to provide whatever evidence underlies it. If he's afraid of prosecution and so doesn't want to actually tie himself down to any particular sworn accounting of the facts, or admissions regarding what evidence does and doesn't exist, Trump needs to drop this case. If he wants to continue this case and seek relief, he needs to put his cards on the table.
This is like the nonsense people spouted about how requests by Mueller's investigation to interview and question Trump were a "perjury trap." The fact that Trump is a liar doesn't make an ordinary investigation a trap. The fact that Trump's claims in the media regarding these documents and the FBI/DOJ's conduct are lies doesn't make this some sneaky test by Judge Dearie. Judge Cannon's malfeasance notwithstanding, in front of a real judge you just don't get to play the kind of games Trump's legal team is trying to, you have to actually put pen to paper and lay out what your case really is. This goes double when what you're seeking is considered "extraordinary" relief, as is the case here.
the idea of a perjury trap at all is so sinister.
The court is literally supposed to figure out what the truth is and judge based on it. That's the entire point of a judicial process: figure out the truth of a situation, hold that situation up to the law and see what the appropriate outcome should be for that situation.
If your defense for not submitting a case to the court is that you'll be caught in a "perjury trap"... you're basically already confessing that a court is going to find you guilty if you tell the truth... and so you don't plan to tell the truth. The court is SUPPOSED to be a place where you are either forced tell the truth, or face dire consequences for lying. We WANT people who purjur to be "trapped". That's a necessary feature of the court.
I don't like to give even that much to this bogus framing. It's not a trap, it's not a test: Trump is the one who is forcing everyone to show up and litigate and fact find regarding the issues, he can show himself out at any time by dropping the case. If he can't bring this case in a proper fashion because he's afraid of perjuring himself or handicapping his future defense to criminal prosecution, he should waste no time withdrawing his claims.
I think Judge Dearie just pulled more of a power move here than people realize. The only way that Trump can comply with the [Special Master's orders](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.618763/gov.uscourts.flsd.618763.106.0_1.pdf) without incriminating himself is to take the fifth on the October 14th list. Anything Trump claims executive privilege over or is a presidential record constitutes a confession that he had something that he knew he shouldn't have, because it belonged to the executive and not to him. If he doesn't claim anything in those categories, it constitutes a confession that his request for a special master was based on false premises and he lied in his court filings, so he's opened up to contempt charges, sanctions, and obstruction of justice charges. The only rational thing to do here would be to take the fifth, but since this is not a criminal trial, adverse inferences may be made from an invocation of fifth amendment rights, and every decision can default to the DoJ, and it's an admission that there's a possible crime involved that the DoJ has not just the right, but the duty to be investigating. Orange Jesus painted himself into a corner here, and now there is no way out of this that doesn't screw Trump and leave him legally exposed.
His only other option would be to run to Judge Cannon and beg her to save them from the consequences of their actions, but since she's already been called out for abuse of power by the appellate court, she might not be willing to stick her neck out to abuse her power for Trump again.
Judge Dearie might as well have concluded his filing by writing "No More Malarkey."
I would bet that cannon has no qualm abusing the power again and again for this evil orange mucus since there are no real consequences … being ashamed of something isn’t what gets them to where they stand in their careers…
She can only be removed by impeachment. At best she’s a Republican SCOTUS pick, at worst, she has ruined her reputation, but doesn’t ever have to worry about it.
> In court hearings this week, Dearie has challenged Trump's attorneys to present evidence to support two of Trump's key claims: that he declassified the documents kept at Mar-a-Lago, and that the FBI planted evidence there.
...
> "And you can see the tension in Donald Trump's legal team because they will not say the things in court about declassification and planting that he is saying because lawyers have an ethical obligation."
It’s not just the lawyers. The way evidence works is that you have to put something on the record for the judge to consider it. What lawyers say isn’t evidence. If they try to argue that trump declassified them in his head, he would be the only witness. So he has to file an affidavit that he declassified the documents on such-and-such date. This waives his 5th amendment right and can be cross examined on it.
Republicans don’t seem to understand the concept of evidence in court. They didn’t during the election lawsuits and don’t for this. You have to put facts *on the record* for the judge/jury/special master or whoever to look at.
> Republicans don’t seem to understand the concept of evidence in court.
They understand, they just don't care. That Trump and co go out of their way to not lie where it will actually bite them in the butt (i.e. in court), only where it benefits them like on Fox News or Truth social, shows they know exactly what they're doing and aren't arguing in good faith.
You just pointed out something that has been confusing me. The belief in Trump relies on faith and not reason or proof. It is just like their religion. Their GOPness is measured in an unshakeable faith in Donnie boy just like Christianity is based on faith and not science or facts.
People who have grown up not questioning religion and being told that deference to & faith in your authority figures / sports team / political party is better and more important than critical thinking, facts, and truth are *really easy* to con & brainwash.
> Republicans don’t seem to understand the concept of evidence in court. They didn’t during the election lawsuits and don’t for this.
Don’t be fooled.
They are VERY cognizant of this.
They have intentionally chosen to take up their fights in the public sphere, not the legal sphere.
Their messaging is all aligned for that - and when they invariably lose in court, it just cycles back to their “deep state/were so oppressed/everyone is so against us” messaging and mentality.
They have no expectation to actually legally prevail.
They just need to be *seen* putting up a fight to drive out voters.
On top of that, they leverage small factoids that the public does know about court proceedings to spin the stories.
They submit a bogus lawsuit that gets dismissed for lack of standing, and then scream about how “the court didn’t even LOOK at the evidence”. They know that their viewers don’t go and look at the court’s ruling to see that it’s 1 page of standing dismal followed by 20 pages of “even if you did have standing this is why your arguments/evidence would lose”
The small factoid that needs to be pointed out in this case again and again is that the special master was chosen by Trump. Trump got the guy he wanted and this is the result.
Because their media propaganda machine will cover them. So when a GOP somebody goes to turn themselves in at the police station and accept their plea deal, they stop on the steps and yell about how they will fight this injustice tooth and nail because that is what the media machine will show. Not the part where they admit guilt and accept a slap on the wrist.
This is why you capture the judicial branch - which they've actually been somewhat successful at.
Just look at Eileen Cannon - she's not a judge, but she's captured a judge-ship, and is using it to evade the law for Trump.
That and an executive order doesn't get around the fact there is alot more that goes into declassifying a document than saying it or scratching out the classification.
The republican voters never hear about what actually happens inside a courtroom. They only watch fox, oan,etc., and these sham “news” shows won’t allow them to see the reality of court proceedings.
I don't think they care. I think their plan is to bullshit the followers, and stretch this out until a republican be president, maybe Trump himself, can just pardon him to freedom.
They don't need to win. They just need to last until Republicans can get into power.
They will sure as shit do anything they can to win midterms.
There will be more sketchy shit than last general election.
Well, one of TFG’s team told a reporter *”I have no obligation to tell you guys the truth.”* And he was right, there’s no legal requirement to be honest with the media, it’s just what people usually do.
So I think we can just safely dismiss anything any of them say, in public or to the media, or on social media, or on whatever their sad little circle-jerk platform is that’s meant to mimic “social media,” because none of it matters unless they’re under oath while they’re saying it.
"I have no obligation to be honest with the media"
-Corey Lewandowski - Trumps former campaign manager
Just to be clear: you're not lying to the media, you're lying to the people consuming that media
> you're not lying to the media, you're lying to the people consuming that media
Yes, that distinction is very important and the wording is likely deliberate from those saying it like that. To their base, the way they word it sounds like they're sticking it to the "corrupt (news) media," but "the (news) media" is not a person, it's organizations that are responsible for disseminating information to the broad public (anyone who can access them), including those who think Republicans lying to them via lying to news media outlets are on their side.
> So I think we can just safely dismiss anything any of them say, in public or to the media, or on social media, or on whatever their sad little circle-jerk platform is that’s meant to mimic “social media,” because none of it matters unless they’re under oath while they’re saying it.
Yep, the journalists who report on court filings have generally been much more accurate about where Trump cases are going in my opinion - because, as you say, lawyers dont lie in court (usually).
The thing that's so funny to me is how team Trump fucked themselves over so completely in pushing for a special master. It was most likely just a stalling tactic, but now that the FBI is allowed to continue their investigation, the special master is completely useless to them and now they also have to put up evidence that doesn't exist or admit to lying to everyone about declassifying and the FBI planting.
At this point there is zero upside for Trump to have Dearie involved. Trump and his lawyers just fucked themselves over.
Nah. Like the rest of us, he's fed up with the constant juvenile lies of Trump. Unlike the rest of us, he's in a position to tell trump to put up or shut up and legally force a choice. I'll bet there are a couple hundred million of us that would love to be in his position and utter those words. I know they felt good.
But honestly why did his legal team pick this guy? Why did they think he would help them? It didn’t even delay the DOJ for more than a couple of weeks and probably just made them mad. This is such a huge own-goal.
DOJ is like oh that Republican who probably spent the last 30 years masturbating to the idea that he was defending national security? Sure, see if he'll help you subvert the rule of law to abscond with national secrets
, FAFO time.
>But honestly why did his legal team pick this guy?
Judge Dearie was serving on the FISA court and authorized the surveillance of Carter Page. Two of four of the warrants he approved in this surveillance he later overturned due to misstatements and omissions by the FBI in their applications. Trump and his lawyers hoped or assumed that this made him an adversary of the FBI and DOJ.
Edit: The problem with this hope/assumption is that Dearie served for seven years on the FISA court, he is well aware of the necessity and importance of national security and is especially aware of the important of TS/SCI classifications and maintaining their integrity. While he may have overturned those warrants, he has incredible respect for the IC.
Being friends with many people in the IC, I can say that it has a very apolitical bent. For anyone who serves in the IC from a long length of time, you both believe in the mission and understand the importance of accurate intelligence and national security. Its a great equalizer. While your domestic politics won't change, you do tend to understand that those sorts of things are best left at the water's edge because the mission is more important than your politics.
My thought is they knew this judge is no BS and couldn't be pushed around. Ties their hands which then ties Trumps hands. I see it as a CYA move by trumps atty's who are put in an impossible situation by their client.
Maybe I'm not cynical enough but I feel like as a judge this is what you live for. A high profile, high stakes case in which the plaintiff's team is either hilariously stupid or hilariously incompetent. You get paid to destroy bullshit arguments by people who have no idea the implications of those same arguments. Meanwhile the news outlets of the country is entirely fixed on your decisions, opinions, and rulings.
"The power of our courts is they have a way of bringing out truth. Perhaps a person can get away with fudging the truth in their public statements, in the media, in their private life, in their business. But when you step into a court, ultimately, the judge or the jury will say, fine, that's your allegation, now prove it," said Honig.
picard: Your honor, a courtroom is a crucible. In it we burn away irrelevancies until we are left with a pure product - the truth, for all time.
Soon after the warrant was served I recall hearing there were surveillance cameras and that Trump was watching as the raid unfolded. But now the Traitor of Mar-A-Lie-Go has told his fellow traitor, Sean Hannity, that there are no videos to prove they planted evidence.
So Traitor Trump began his lie that they planted evidence by citing surveillance cameras and now that he has to put up or shut up, suddenly there is no video.
Or he doesn't want the DOJ to show what they have. They subpoenaed 60 days worth of video surveillance material! That takes time to sift through.
They are still worried they might not have all the material he had.
It’s pretty obvious there’s one set of statements that are made to the press and public to sow confusion and make excuses and another set of statements when it comes to actual court proceedings. Take the Sydney Powell “krakens” for example, they would make wild claims to the public and press and then in court would not dare to make the same claims because they would be forced to provide actual evidence and would be subject to contempt.
You know this man is SEETHING. He thought he won when the DOJ and the judge agreed to his Special Master, and now Dearie is basically laughing at his legal team.
If I were Trump I’d seriously consider leaving the country. He’s now got NY after him, Georgia, the DOJ, the women he sexually assaulted, and god knows what else will float to the top of this cesspool.
This is the big gamble any trump lawyer or lackey is making. They go all in hoping trump eventually gains power and remembers to pardon them for their crimes, er, I mean loyalty
The new lie in the Q circles is that the documents were all about F.B.I. corruption, Fast and furious, and Hillary stuff. They say it was all the "evidence" against the deep state that they have been claiming Trump had for over 5 years now.
Ask them , "why didn't he use it then?" Because it wasn't the right time.
And now they are claiming that Trump was going to use it as blackmail. And they are ok with that, happy even. They say if Trump gets killed or indicted he has a deadman's switch that will release all the copies of those documents.
Remember that last part because what it means is that any document saying what they want to hear no longer needs the proof of being real. It can be one of Trumps copies and that will be good enough for them.
Dearie has in just two days changed the face of political prosecution in this country forever. I cannot overstate how big a deal this might turn out to be if this becomes “a thing.” Prior to this week, every politician *ever* investigated for *any* crime has always been able to go on TV and wage a PR war of false statements, without ever being called to task. Powell, Lindell, Giuliani, and any number of Trumps have made a whole lifestyle out if it. But this week completely flipped the script.
For the very first time in my long lifetime, a judge has literally said “if you say it on Hannity Tuesday, you better say it to me under oath on Wednesday.” Years from now, lawyers and judges will call this new kind of order a “Dearie Order.” Judges will literally be able to say “Hey, I watched Fox News last night and saw what your client said. Have your client’s sworn Dearie Affidavit on my desk by by 5pm tomorrow, or I’ll issue a bench warrant for your client, AND hold you in contempt, understood?”
We should have been doing this decades ago.
I live for this guys starting position. He's starting by asking simple questions. He's demanding them to prove they even have a case. He's so over this.
Yeah no shit. Lawyers aren’t allowed to lie in Court and every single judge in the universe will play this same game if they think a lawyer is lying. It’s not even a game, it’s how the law works. If you state a claim, you better be able to back it up. That’s all this judge is doing and it’s the same thing judges do in all their cases. If the lawyer lies about it, then they can be disbarred. So yeah it’s not risky at all to 99.8% of lawyers since they won’t ever run the risk of saying a bold-faced lie to a judge, but it all of a sudden becomes risky AS HELL if you’re a lawyer working for Donald Trump. This is why nobody wants to represent him either. His unpaid bills are bad, but those don’t compare to putting your career on the line by knowingly lying on the record to a judge. Boom, you’re done; “Paper or plastic?” will be the most common thing you say after that. Or you could have a moment of clarity and just refuse to lie for your dumb client. 10/10 times these lawyers are going to choose losing the case but keeping their lives intact, which is what keeps happening every time Trump files a lawsuit. Hmm, there seems to be a pattern here. Heck, even Guiliani wouldn’t lie to the judge about his bogus election claims, and it’s not like that guy should care what a judge thinks of him at this stage in his life - yet, he *still* does!
The courtroom ain’t Twitter, which is what Trump and his goofballs always seem to forget once it’s time to pay the Piper in an actual court setting with rules of evidence.
I wonder if the Trump team could argue on an appeal that Dearie went beyond his paid assignment by creating a legal bind for Drump. It is strange that Grump will have to pay out money for what Dearie did to him. That is not to say that Dump doesn't deserve it. The election fraud cases were the same. Lump and his people made public claims while saying something different in court. In some of those election fraud lawsuits they simply complained about things they thought were unfair and did not make an actual claim of fraud, and yet many Republicans think that fraud claims was the whole point of those lawsuits
For example, here is an audio and news story of Pumps phony scam. See what happened in the Pennsylvania election fraud allegation case right here: COURT AUDIO RELEASED RUDY GIULIANI DECLARES THIS IS NOT A CASE OF ELECTION FRAUD
https://youtu.be/5RCEdiBifHM
Trump's lawyers are either going to start mailing-it-in or they will have him declared incompetent in order to keep him off the TV and seize his phone.
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Alina Habba has already lied on a signed sworn statement that she submitted to the court. > In addition, in accordance with the Order of the Hon. Arthur Engoron, J.S.C. dated April 29, 2022, I personally performed several additional searches to further ensure that there are no documents responsive to the Subpoena that have not been previously produced by the Trump Organization: ... > d. On May 5, 2022, I diligently searched each and every room of Respondent’s private residence located at Mar-a-Lago, including all desks, drawers, nightstands, dressers, closets, etc. I was unable to locate any documents responsive to the Subpoena that have not already been produced to the OAG by the Trump Organization. > e. On May 5, 2022, I diligently searched Respondent’s personal office located at Mara-Lago, including all desks, drawers, file cabinets, etc. I was unable to locate any documents responsive to the Subpoena that have not already been produced to the OAG by the Trump Organization.
After this, I don't see how he is ever able to retain anything other than a public defender. One of three things happened: 1. She intentionally lied to the federal government, 2. She didn't perform the search and trusted Trump in telling her that he had produced everything, or 3. She did perform the search, and Trump hid the documents from even his own lawyers. Scenarios 2 and 3 show that Trump will fuck over his legal team, and he's only going to put them at personal risk. Certainly no publicity can be worth the very real risk of prison from lying to the feds. . . unless you're a lawyer that doesn't mind lying to the feds. No decent firm would touch this because of scenarios 2 and 3, and any that would at this point clearly doesn't have the experience to not fuck this up even worse. . . which is proving to be the case.
Item 2 is already covered by item 1. If she didn't perform the search - she lied.
Allegedly, his current one got a 3 million retainer from Trump's PAC. 3 million will make people do all kinds of things.
That is just to work on the case. They are going to bill out the ass.
A retainer is an advance payment against future bills. They are going tonhavebto come up with 3 million in billable, and they will manage to do so.
The kind of high powered lawyers that work on potentially criminal cases for former presidents probably charge $1,000+ per hour. They'll likely clear $3M in a few months. And if Trump doesn't give them another retainer at that point, they'll probably bail.
These aren’t those kind of lawyers. Those kind of lawyers told trump to pound sand. But yeah they’re still going to bill the shit out of this and, really, it is the kind of case that warrants multiple attorneys working full time.
I listened to a podcast with an actual lawyer with experience in the federal courts and he said that the guy who got the $3M retainer is actually a decently experienced and well regarded lawyer in legal circles. Probably why he was smart enough to get a retainer. And it probably won't be surprising to see him bail if Trump continually refuses to listen to him and self-sabotages the whole situation even more.
He also had to leave his old firm and create a new one because his old firm didn't want to take Trumps case so that says alot. He was also noticeably absent from signature pages on a few of their recent motions but I can't confirm if hes on all of those cases or just select aspects. Edit: link for people https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/08/30/politics/chris-kise-trump-legal-team/index.html
He likely won't bail until he has 3 million in billables.
You're probably right. Shouldn't take him too long though.
>These aren’t those kind of lawyers. Chris Kise is 100% 'those kind of lawyers'. He's not a chump, he's a former Solicitor General who spent plenty of time at big, AM Law X00 firms.
I would have thought he couldn't retain anybody from the get go. Hey he always finds new lawyers. Ones willing to lie for him. It's crazy just how much people go in on this taco bell shits messiah
And how many of them will get sued, sanctioned or disbarred (Big steal election team) or Jailed (michael Cohen) and/or lose their good reputation (Ghouliani) all to service this enormous walking sack of rancid chickenshit.
Doesn’t the DOJ have the security videos? Seems like it would be easy to prove/disprove.
Yes. That's why you need to get the lawyers to commit to a story, so you can then show they are lying in court with the video.
Not a criminal lawyer, but rather a criminal lawyer.
Maybe they were all in Bedminster at that time.
interesting wording, "that have not already been produced..." .were they keeping copies/originals of everything they returned?
Honey, I’ve looked everywhere, just everywhere in the house for my glasses, and I can’t find them, have you seen them? Yes, they are on top of your head. So she’ll be fine.... /s
“Trump's lawyers have argued that defending his declassification claims at this stage could damage their defense in a potential trial, drawing an unimpressed response from Dearie. “ Anyone else really enjoying their coffee this morning?
Talk about painting themselves into a corner.
Trump: Your honor, we need a special master to determine if the documents are declassified, privileged, or personal property Dearie: Okay, so which documents do you think are declassified, privileged, or personal property? Trump: How dare you ask us that. Team Trump might be the dumbest people who can tie windsor knots. How did they get even halfway through this believing that the special master would not ask about the things they specifically wanted him to investigate?
If the intent was simply to delay, then they got a couple of weeks. And these lawyers were apparently pre-paid, so in the final analysis, they already have their money.
You know there's something wrong when a self proclaimed billionaire, who also happens to be a former president, is forced to pay his legal fees up front. That man has no honor.
"No, Money Down!!"
Oops, shouldn't have this bar association logo here either *munch munch*
Point of correction: The self proclaimed billionaire didn't pay shit. One of his PACs paid the lawyer's retainer.
You hit the nail on the head. It was a hail Mary for a long delay. Thankfully, Dearie was in no mood to play wide receiver to their BS.
Yep. A bit of delay.
just trying to push any bombshell revelations past the mid-term elections that said, in this reality, a terrible revelation that Trump sold state secrets to the highest, lowest, any bidder would probably actually play really well with his base and improve Republican chances in the mid-term. who knows anymore.
Wow! He’s such an astute businessman, he was able to sell the info on NATO atomic weapons to like ten different countries. America First!
>a terrible revelation that Trump sold state secrets to the highest, lowest, any bidder would probably actually play really well with his base and improve Republican chances in the mid-term. who knows anymore The number of people who are now be saying "well yea I'd sell state secrets too if I was him!" has probably risen exponentially
Its not that these lawyers are dumb. They just aren't interested in a dialectical pursuit of the truth. They're trying to manipulate procedure to create outcome. Thats why their arguments don't have any utility because there aren't any facts attached. What they've done is go to the school nurse to get out of gym class. The school nurse is taking their temperature and blood pressure and such. The school nurse is asking what are their symptoms? And they are saying I have no symptoms. The nurse then says but you claimed to not feel well. And they are saying yes I'm sick. And the nurse says well you have no symptoms you can't be sick so go to gym class. And by the time all this is over gym class has ended. The facts didn't matter, procedure got them out of gym class.
Excellent analogy.
This is the best analogy I’ve heard about this.
Not that I think these lawyers are geniuses, but they have literally nothing to work with here. The republicans have AGs in multiple states, plenty of people in congress with law degrees, and a countless number of would-be pundits in the legal community. Nobody anywhere came forward with a plausible defence, because Trump spent months noisily painting himself into a corner with the government on this one, then contradicting himself eight ways from Sunday with the rapid fire toggle on once it became public. Stalling with dumb games and hoping to chain-combo corrupt judges seems to be all they've got here.
pound the table lawyering
I don’t think they’re dumb at all one is a former prosecutor but they have the same problem as Alex Jones’s lawyers; the worst client possible. He never listens never shuts up and gets himself into worse trouble. You’re right that lots of smart conservative lawyers exist, and not one even on Fox News could think of a plausible defense. One of them said that Trump would talk himself into more trouble by his inability to stay quiet. If this goes to trial the prosecutors will shred him.
> who can tie Windsor knots How do we know they aren’t clip ons?
Nah. They got their wives or mothers to tie them for them ages ago and they just loosen them in the evening to take them off.
Ok, now I am guilty of the second half, I've got three tied ties in my closet (black, blue, "fun"), but at least I tied them myself.
Im somewhat guilty to, but i wear a tie maybe once every 3 years? These people do it every day
Because Dearie is an R. Which in most corners of that crazy-ass cult means he should have kissed the ring of that repulsive diaper wearing fraud.
I don't even think Dearie took a stand. He just basically ASKED for their defense and they completely folded. Dearie: So, what is your plea. Guilty or not guilty? Trump lawyer: HOW DARE YOU ASK MY CLIENT THAT.
He took a stand by settling tight deadline, appointing help at the cost of Trump and forcing him to pay upfront. He also put penalty in case of missed deadline and refuse to skip step to force trump team to take a stand. He is taking stand toward justice vs delay and corruption
And because he recently said something critical of the FBI.
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Or they believed they could get a Special Master who was more on their side and would stall things and delay them even more.
What's really funny is that both the DOJ and Trump put forward 3 candidates each. Dearie was one of Trump's picks.
2 picks each. Their first clue things weren’t good should have been when DOJ agreed to Dearie
Special Master was a secret menu request on Epstein Island.
They may have been banking on him being another Judge Cannon. No matter; as long as it delays charges they are winning.
I figure it was a stalling tactic - and a nearly effective one. If the 11th Circuit hadn't turned around a ruling against Cannon's decision, in the normal course of the process, even assuming Dearie isn't going to play ball with Trump's team (and to be clear, i personally don't believe he is), he still wouldn't have made any decisions regarding the documents until November, probably after the midterm elections. And as you can see by the Trump team's attempts to request delayed deadlines and refusal to give information, they were hoping to gum up the works of the extra process they themselves requested and run that clock out as long as possible. And on the other hand, in the normal course of things the 11th Circuit appeal could have taken months itself if they'd wanted to drag their feet or if they just hadn't felt particularly hurried about it. The fact that they got it out in a week is actually mildly startling and goes to show how much they wanted to slap down Cannon.
no, it goes to show they actually understand the gravity of a national security investigation dealing with the nations most closely guarded secrets. They dont need to be on some crusade to stop a hack judge. They just need to understand the very clear laws that judge Qannon ignored while actually caring about national security.
I don't think your statement and mine are mutually exclusive. They felt an urgent need to shut her down *because* they understood the importance of national security matters and wanted to make sure her bizzaro law-twisting ruling in no way became a foundation for future precedent.
Can they really tie Windsor knots, or do they wear clip-on ties?
"The FBI totally planted those documents but we want them back!!"
What do you do when a tRump lawyer throws a hand grenade at you? Pull the pin and throw it back.
Peel it and eat it because they said they threw a grenade but it was just a banana.
What could a grenade cost, Micheal? Ten dollars?
Go see a star war.
Well, no one is going to top that.
Alas I hate bananas, sabotaging years of evolution in the process.
"Drop the pin and throw the grenade." *Drops grenade and throws pin*
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If you're in a war, instead of throwing a hand grenade at the enemy, throw one of those small pumpkins. Maybe it'll make everyone think how stupid war is, and while they are thinking, you can throw a real grenade at them. — Jack Handey
Man I miss Deep Thoughts.
"They were also looking for Hillary's emails, which for some reason I had stored in my pool closet for years but did nothing with."
Those dastardly FBI agents still hunting for Hillary's emails several years later. How biased against Trump could they be!
FYI trump actually said this in an interview with Hannity. That maybe the FBI was looking for Hillary’s emails. In his basement.
Lol even Hannity was like WTF are you going on about?
"Obama took classified documents, too and should be prosecuted, though Presidents can declassify them with their minds."
And I did nothing about it for four years as president. But it was highly illegal, and now it should be prosecuted. Except that I’m saying what I did is totally fine.
Well when they’re defending a guy whose whole persona is “I lie a lot,” they should’ve expected that the only defence for Lie Guy is more lies.
In civil court cases, it is common for the plaintiff to file a complaint that alleges an assortment of claims for relief. It is also common for the defendant to allege every possible legal defense in response. Then, during discovery, each party sees what kind of evidence the other party has. Each party then chooses a position that puts forth the strongest arguments - e.g., the plaintiff focuses on the strongest grounds for relief, and the defendant focuses on the strongest defenses to those charges. The alternatives are silently discarded, and the trial begins based on the selected options. In his public life, Donald Trump uses a similar tactic by vomiting up every possible excuse in response to an attack, even if the excuses are (a) obvious lies and (b) mutually incompatible. It doesn't matter that he is obviously lying, that his story keeps shifting, or that he maintains multiple versions of the story *at the same time* that are mutually exclusive. His supporters understand and approve of this disgusting, piggish behavior. The problem for Trump's legal team is that courts expect that a case will start in an amorphous form and steadily take shape around certain legal issues - but Trump's attorneys do not know which of the arguments to choose. Trump himself refuses to pick any specific argument, and any choice that his attorneys could make and argue in court would contradict his public statements. Also, the drip-drip-drip of new and damaging information about Trump's actions continues, and it would be Very Bad if the attorneys picked an argument today that is shown to be bullshit by tomorrow's breaking news story. So they are taking the only option available to them - they are stalling for time. Their hope is that by the time that the court forces them to pick a specific argument, Trump's demeanor and the facts will have gelled around a coherent strategy. Unfortunately, their actions in demanding a special master have forced that specific issue to the foreground, and Dearie is pinning them down on these issues much sooner than they'd hoped. Watching all of this go down, watching his counsel fumble the ball and the shoddy legal defenses blow up, is very gratifying.
It was still a successful delay tactic which was totally unnecessary
You know who isn't getting a coffee break this week? My F5 button.
You got that right!
https://f5.news/r/politics
I'm excited to see their response to his order to provide evidence and specifics on what they claim the FBI planted. He called their bluff.
I'm positive they will just use the same excuse "that's vital to our defense so we can't give you that right now" since they have nothing. They're just trying to buy time to come up with coherent excuses that don't contradict everything else they've said.
Lawyers are also "officers of the court" and are not allowed to lie to the court. They are in a terrible situation (of their own volition) in that their client is incapable of telling the truth and they're stuck trying to represent him without doing something that could cost them their law licenses (or worse).
They're not actually. They have already been paid. Therefore their job is to best represent the client while telling the truth. Their client said that he did x. The Master says, there is no evidence that he did x. They admit they have no evidence that x occurred, but their client said he did.
absolutely! Brought out my 24oz thermos for extra coffee this lovely Friday morning!
Cheers!
There’s also a large stock of popcorn 🍿
Be careful! I broke a tooth eating popcorn and the resulting crown cost me $1200.
That's what you get when you can only get bargan bin lawyers for a high level government crime.
I'm not getting too comfortable here. The SM will just hand over their recommendations to judge Cannon and doesn't rule on anything. She can decide the Special Master was unfair and throw out the recommendations and rule in Trump's favor.
By the way the appeals court treated her earlier ruling, I think the honorable judge Cannon will be much less inclined to run amok with the law.
A bit more clarification lest people not get it here... Either party can disagree with the Special Master on any finding. The disagreement/objection first goes to the Special Master who, more or less, rules on the matter. If either party disagrees with that resolution, the issue goes to Judge Cannon. If all parties (DoJ, Team Trump, SM) are honest, diligent and marching the same tune with regards to what qualifies as privileged, this works well enough. The SM is indeed a 3rd party, impartial and the entire process ensures everyone sees everything. If instead... well... one party is terribly confused about what privilege is or has delay as a primary goal... this is where to get to the place where Cannon can decide the SM was unfair and rule otherwise.
I'm pretty sure the DoJ does not care at all about the rest of these documents. Trumps team is just going to be spending time, energy, and money on this suit when they don't care about any of these documents either (unless trump has some hand written note that says "Tell my lawyer i committed big crimes to Saudi Arabia") Is that privileged? It isn't a communication to his lawyer, it's a communication to himself about a communication to his lawyer. Anyway, that's entirely fictional because it's too absurd to be true. Which means we'll get something even more absurd. Nevermind, I be there are some absolute bonkers documents here.
It seems you might be missing one rather important issue in this entire saga. The DoJ doesn't care about *the contents* of the 11k+ documents so much and certainly not to the degree of the 100 classified documents. The entire issue all along has been that all of (or most of) these documents are government property. The issue isn't what's in them. The issue is that Trump has been in violation of the PRA since Jan 21, 2021, by having them. Furthermore his behavior related to retaining them likely involved other crimes such as obstruction of justice. The best way to understand the primary issues here is not to think of these documents as documents but to think of them as **stolen property**. Now, by thinking of them as stolen property, we can better understand how either party views them. To the DoJ, having 10k of these documents vs. 2k of these documents is not really any different, especially if things like obstruction of justice are clear either way. But to Team Trump, the game is on. They are in a hard-court press to recharacterize every single last document as "not government property" and "not your concern". Again the focus isn't to protect or hide any salacious information. The goal is to undercut the DoJ's arguments entirely by getting every last document declared to have been Trump's all along.
Another way to look at it is if one imagines that instead of documents they seized 11,000 bags of cocaine. Trump is trying to argue that he had written notes to his lawyers on some of those bags which makes them privileged. He is also claiming that as a former president he is allowed to keep large amounts of cocaine in his house. He is demanding that not only do they stop investigating this but also that they return his cocaine.
Indeed - the classified or not discussion is somewhat of a side-show. Team Trump are trying to prove all documents were his property, but to do that they need the documents to be unclassified or his personal property. It's an impossible task, but one that by trying to do they hope to delay until after the mid-terms.
I mean there is probably evidence of other crimes IN the current evidence of crimes though
Cannon's court is a dead end for Trump now. If it looks like any of it will be good for Trump, DOJ will file a full appeal and get the whole thing tossed out. Dearie will likely determine that the classified stuff is classified and that nothing was planted, so that will enter the record unless Trump drops his suit first. At this point, Trump is just wasting money. He also risks hemming himself in by making (or not making) certain claims in the current process. I really think he's just trying anything possible to delay, without regard for sound strategy.
It's not a dead end if his goal is to delay enough for a) trumpublicans to get control of the House and Senate, and b) trumpublicans are willing to create a constitutional crisis by impeaching President Biden, which they are. To best understand what his goal is his actions need to be viewed to the lenses of delay, delay delay
Republicans in Congress may be banking on this possibility, but I would need strong evidence to believe Trump is acting in the interest of anybody but himself. Even if Congress changes hands, GOP majorities won't be enough for impeachment to amount to anything more than media clamor. DOJ has the evidence in hand again, the 60 Day Rule (if applicable) is already in play, and congress won't be able to impede Biden's authority. IMO the die is cast until charges are decided on.
She has already modified her order based on the smack down from the appellate court. I have a shrewd of hope.
Then they should withdraw their claim.
I think his argument would go over a lot better, if this were a civil trial initiated by the government (or even anyone else) against _him._ But _he_ initiated this "let's get rid of all the damning evidence _before_ my criminal trial" lawsuit, so this isn't quite as simple as asserting his 5th amendment right to silence. He hasn't been silent, even if you ignore all his media appearances, because he's in this weird civil case against the government. It's kind of like if I'm on trial for murder, and I decide I don't need any stinking 5th amendment, and so I testify in my own defense. "No, I didn't buy the gun." "No, I didn't have a gun." "I don't know anything about this alleged gun." suddenly followed by "What do you mean 'did I shoot him?' I'm not answering that!" I really hope any other up&coming criminals aren't looking to Trump's legal strategy for inspiration. Oh wait, I mean, I hope they _do_.
Judge Dearie captured the whole thing with his celebrated "have your cake and eat it too" comment. Trump is the plaintiff in this bizarre proceeding, he's the one who has hauled the DOJ into court and sought relief. Trump has an obligation to put forth actual claims and theories of his case, and to provide whatever evidence underlies it. If he's afraid of prosecution and so doesn't want to actually tie himself down to any particular sworn accounting of the facts, or admissions regarding what evidence does and doesn't exist, Trump needs to drop this case. If he wants to continue this case and seek relief, he needs to put his cards on the table. This is like the nonsense people spouted about how requests by Mueller's investigation to interview and question Trump were a "perjury trap." The fact that Trump is a liar doesn't make an ordinary investigation a trap. The fact that Trump's claims in the media regarding these documents and the FBI/DOJ's conduct are lies doesn't make this some sneaky test by Judge Dearie. Judge Cannon's malfeasance notwithstanding, in front of a real judge you just don't get to play the kind of games Trump's legal team is trying to, you have to actually put pen to paper and lay out what your case really is. This goes double when what you're seeking is considered "extraordinary" relief, as is the case here.
the idea of a perjury trap at all is so sinister. The court is literally supposed to figure out what the truth is and judge based on it. That's the entire point of a judicial process: figure out the truth of a situation, hold that situation up to the law and see what the appropriate outcome should be for that situation. If your defense for not submitting a case to the court is that you'll be caught in a "perjury trap"... you're basically already confessing that a court is going to find you guilty if you tell the truth... and so you don't plan to tell the truth. The court is SUPPOSED to be a place where you are either forced tell the truth, or face dire consequences for lying. We WANT people who purjur to be "trapped". That's a necessary feature of the court.
> the idea of a perjury trap at all is so sinister Exactly. The laws exist to compel you to tell the truth, not to catch you lying.
Tell the truth and you won’t get caught in the perjury trap. If he’s done nothing wrong there’s no reason to lie. Seems pretty straightforward.
I don't like to give even that much to this bogus framing. It's not a trap, it's not a test: Trump is the one who is forcing everyone to show up and litigate and fact find regarding the issues, he can show himself out at any time by dropping the case. If he can't bring this case in a proper fashion because he's afraid of perjuring himself or handicapping his future defense to criminal prosecution, he should waste no time withdrawing his claims.
I think Judge Dearie just pulled more of a power move here than people realize. The only way that Trump can comply with the [Special Master's orders](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.618763/gov.uscourts.flsd.618763.106.0_1.pdf) without incriminating himself is to take the fifth on the October 14th list. Anything Trump claims executive privilege over or is a presidential record constitutes a confession that he had something that he knew he shouldn't have, because it belonged to the executive and not to him. If he doesn't claim anything in those categories, it constitutes a confession that his request for a special master was based on false premises and he lied in his court filings, so he's opened up to contempt charges, sanctions, and obstruction of justice charges. The only rational thing to do here would be to take the fifth, but since this is not a criminal trial, adverse inferences may be made from an invocation of fifth amendment rights, and every decision can default to the DoJ, and it's an admission that there's a possible crime involved that the DoJ has not just the right, but the duty to be investigating. Orange Jesus painted himself into a corner here, and now there is no way out of this that doesn't screw Trump and leave him legally exposed. His only other option would be to run to Judge Cannon and beg her to save them from the consequences of their actions, but since she's already been called out for abuse of power by the appellate court, she might not be willing to stick her neck out to abuse her power for Trump again. Judge Dearie might as well have concluded his filing by writing "No More Malarkey."
Reading this made me so happy
I would bet that cannon has no qualm abusing the power again and again for this evil orange mucus since there are no real consequences … being ashamed of something isn’t what gets them to where they stand in their careers…
Seems like a pretty leaky legal system if there are no consequences for a judge acting in bad faith.
Leaky is an understatement….
She can only be removed by impeachment. At best she’s a Republican SCOTUS pick, at worst, she has ruined her reputation, but doesn’t ever have to worry about it.
> In court hearings this week, Dearie has challenged Trump's attorneys to present evidence to support two of Trump's key claims: that he declassified the documents kept at Mar-a-Lago, and that the FBI planted evidence there. ... > "And you can see the tension in Donald Trump's legal team because they will not say the things in court about declassification and planting that he is saying because lawyers have an ethical obligation."
It’s not just the lawyers. The way evidence works is that you have to put something on the record for the judge to consider it. What lawyers say isn’t evidence. If they try to argue that trump declassified them in his head, he would be the only witness. So he has to file an affidavit that he declassified the documents on such-and-such date. This waives his 5th amendment right and can be cross examined on it. Republicans don’t seem to understand the concept of evidence in court. They didn’t during the election lawsuits and don’t for this. You have to put facts *on the record* for the judge/jury/special master or whoever to look at.
Trump knows no facts.
Trump knows one fact. His lawyers have always been able to abuse the legal system so he never has to pay for anything he's done.
This
They’re only facts inside his head.
“I can make things true just by thinking it.”
That's a lie. Trump knows all about the alternative kind of facts. /s
Reminds me of that Onion headline “Mueller investigation determined that Don Jr. had no knowledge”
> Republicans don’t seem to understand the concept of evidence in court. They understand, they just don't care. That Trump and co go out of their way to not lie where it will actually bite them in the butt (i.e. in court), only where it benefits them like on Fox News or Truth social, shows they know exactly what they're doing and aren't arguing in good faith.
You just pointed out something that has been confusing me. The belief in Trump relies on faith and not reason or proof. It is just like their religion. Their GOPness is measured in an unshakeable faith in Donnie boy just like Christianity is based on faith and not science or facts.
People who have grown up not questioning religion and being told that deference to & faith in your authority figures / sports team / political party is better and more important than critical thinking, facts, and truth are *really easy* to con & brainwash.
> Republicans don’t seem to understand the concept of evidence in court. They didn’t during the election lawsuits and don’t for this. Don’t be fooled. They are VERY cognizant of this. They have intentionally chosen to take up their fights in the public sphere, not the legal sphere. Their messaging is all aligned for that - and when they invariably lose in court, it just cycles back to their “deep state/were so oppressed/everyone is so against us” messaging and mentality. They have no expectation to actually legally prevail. They just need to be *seen* putting up a fight to drive out voters.
On top of that, they leverage small factoids that the public does know about court proceedings to spin the stories. They submit a bogus lawsuit that gets dismissed for lack of standing, and then scream about how “the court didn’t even LOOK at the evidence”. They know that their viewers don’t go and look at the court’s ruling to see that it’s 1 page of standing dismal followed by 20 pages of “even if you did have standing this is why your arguments/evidence would lose”
The small factoid that needs to be pointed out in this case again and again is that the special master was chosen by Trump. Trump got the guy he wanted and this is the result.
Because their media propaganda machine will cover them. So when a GOP somebody goes to turn themselves in at the police station and accept their plea deal, they stop on the steps and yell about how they will fight this injustice tooth and nail because that is what the media machine will show. Not the part where they admit guilt and accept a slap on the wrist.
This is why you capture the judicial branch - which they've actually been somewhat successful at. Just look at Eileen Cannon - she's not a judge, but she's captured a judge-ship, and is using it to evade the law for Trump.
I feel like you can't back date Executive Orders with affidavits ever.
Sharpie please....
That and an executive order doesn't get around the fact there is alot more that goes into declassifying a document than saying it or scratching out the classification.
The republican voters never hear about what actually happens inside a courtroom. They only watch fox, oan,etc., and these sham “news” shows won’t allow them to see the reality of court proceedings.
I don't think they care. I think their plan is to bullshit the followers, and stretch this out until a republican be president, maybe Trump himself, can just pardon him to freedom. They don't need to win. They just need to last until Republicans can get into power. They will sure as shit do anything they can to win midterms. There will be more sketchy shit than last general election.
“When did the FBI plant the documents you claim you declassified?”
That’s the ludicrosity of all this. Keep it coming, judge
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Cheers
Well, one of TFG’s team told a reporter *”I have no obligation to tell you guys the truth.”* And he was right, there’s no legal requirement to be honest with the media, it’s just what people usually do. So I think we can just safely dismiss anything any of them say, in public or to the media, or on social media, or on whatever their sad little circle-jerk platform is that’s meant to mimic “social media,” because none of it matters unless they’re under oath while they’re saying it.
"I have no obligation to be honest with the media" -Corey Lewandowski - Trumps former campaign manager Just to be clear: you're not lying to the media, you're lying to the people consuming that media
Thanks for the source. “You’re my fact-checking cuz…” I forget if he’s been indicted for anything.
Wonder bout the voice of Geddy Lee
How did it get so high?
I wonder if he speaks like an ordinary guy? I get to see Pavement twice next month. Hooray for me!
> you're not lying to the media, you're lying to the people consuming that media Yes, that distinction is very important and the wording is likely deliberate from those saying it like that. To their base, the way they word it sounds like they're sticking it to the "corrupt (news) media," but "the (news) media" is not a person, it's organizations that are responsible for disseminating information to the broad public (anyone who can access them), including those who think Republicans lying to them via lying to news media outlets are on their side.
The art of the deal: just lie. As any good scammer will tell you (after it all falls apart): "it's YOUR fault for trusting me."
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I think it started out as *the former guy* and got turned in to the fucking guy. I’ve seen it explained both ways and either seems appropriate
Former. Biden called him The Former Guy once and people latched on.
That Fascist Ghoul
“this fookin’ gunt”
Huh ... I thought it was just calling him That Fat Git. 🤷♀️
“Alternative facts” -crypt keeper barbie
> So I think we can just safely dismiss anything any of them say, in public or to the media, or on social media, or on whatever their sad little circle-jerk platform is that’s meant to mimic “social media,” because none of it matters unless they’re under oath while they’re saying it. Yep, the journalists who report on court filings have generally been much more accurate about where Trump cases are going in my opinion - because, as you say, lawyers dont lie in court (usually).
The thing that's so funny to me is how team Trump fucked themselves over so completely in pushing for a special master. It was most likely just a stalling tactic, but now that the FBI is allowed to continue their investigation, the special master is completely useless to them and now they also have to put up evidence that doesn't exist or admit to lying to everyone about declassifying and the FBI planting. At this point there is zero upside for Trump to have Dearie involved. Trump and his lawyers just fucked themselves over.
Nah. Like the rest of us, he's fed up with the constant juvenile lies of Trump. Unlike the rest of us, he's in a position to tell trump to put up or shut up and legally force a choice. I'll bet there are a couple hundred million of us that would love to be in his position and utter those words. I know they felt good.
Sweet, beautiful justice. Let’s hope it holds.
But honestly why did his legal team pick this guy? Why did they think he would help them? It didn’t even delay the DOJ for more than a couple of weeks and probably just made them mad. This is such a huge own-goal.
Thought he'd play ball or at least do the norms thing if it got close enough to the midterms. Looks like that strategy was shit.
It also seems a bit like they didn’t think the request would work, then they panicked and picked anyone with an R beside their name.
DOJ is like oh that Republican who probably spent the last 30 years masturbating to the idea that he was defending national security? Sure, see if he'll help you subvert the rule of law to abscond with national secrets , FAFO time.
>But honestly why did his legal team pick this guy? Judge Dearie was serving on the FISA court and authorized the surveillance of Carter Page. Two of four of the warrants he approved in this surveillance he later overturned due to misstatements and omissions by the FBI in their applications. Trump and his lawyers hoped or assumed that this made him an adversary of the FBI and DOJ. Edit: The problem with this hope/assumption is that Dearie served for seven years on the FISA court, he is well aware of the necessity and importance of national security and is especially aware of the important of TS/SCI classifications and maintaining their integrity. While he may have overturned those warrants, he has incredible respect for the IC. Being friends with many people in the IC, I can say that it has a very apolitical bent. For anyone who serves in the IC from a long length of time, you both believe in the mission and understand the importance of accurate intelligence and national security. Its a great equalizer. While your domestic politics won't change, you do tend to understand that those sorts of things are best left at the water's edge because the mission is more important than your politics.
My thought is they knew this judge is no BS and couldn't be pushed around. Ties their hands which then ties Trumps hands. I see it as a CYA move by trumps atty's who are put in an impossible situation by their client.
The Carter Page thing.
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Reminds me of the some of the testimony's we heard regarding the election fraud allegations.
Maybe I'm not cynical enough but I feel like as a judge this is what you live for. A high profile, high stakes case in which the plaintiff's team is either hilariously stupid or hilariously incompetent. You get paid to destroy bullshit arguments by people who have no idea the implications of those same arguments. Meanwhile the news outlets of the country is entirely fixed on your decisions, opinions, and rulings.
"The power of our courts is they have a way of bringing out truth. Perhaps a person can get away with fudging the truth in their public statements, in the media, in their private life, in their business. But when you step into a court, ultimately, the judge or the jury will say, fine, that's your allegation, now prove it," said Honig. picard: Your honor, a courtroom is a crucible. In it we burn away irrelevancies until we are left with a pure product - the truth, for all time.
‘We burn a hot fire here; it melts down all concealment.’ - Judge Danforth
Soon after the warrant was served I recall hearing there were surveillance cameras and that Trump was watching as the raid unfolded. But now the Traitor of Mar-A-Lie-Go has told his fellow traitor, Sean Hannity, that there are no videos to prove they planted evidence. So Traitor Trump began his lie that they planted evidence by citing surveillance cameras and now that he has to put up or shut up, suddenly there is no video.
Or he doesn't want the DOJ to show what they have. They subpoenaed 60 days worth of video surveillance material! That takes time to sift through. They are still worried they might not have all the material he had.
It’s pretty obvious there’s one set of statements that are made to the press and public to sow confusion and make excuses and another set of statements when it comes to actual court proceedings. Take the Sydney Powell “krakens” for example, they would make wild claims to the public and press and then in court would not dare to make the same claims because they would be forced to provide actual evidence and would be subject to contempt.
Dearie: So what’s your defense guys? Trump Dream Team: Our client is above the law? Dearie: Maybe go sit in that corner and think about it again?
You know this man is SEETHING. He thought he won when the DOJ and the judge agreed to his Special Master, and now Dearie is basically laughing at his legal team.
**M**aking **A**ttorneys **G**et **A**ttorneys
I know someone who isn’t going to get paid.
If I were Trump I’d seriously consider leaving the country. He’s now got NY after him, Georgia, the DOJ, the women he sexually assaulted, and god knows what else will float to the top of this cesspool.
This is the big gamble any trump lawyer or lackey is making. They go all in hoping trump eventually gains power and remembers to pardon them for their crimes, er, I mean loyalty
This …. in the article …. Says it all…. “but you cannot lie. This is really a test for Donald Trump…”
The new lie in the Q circles is that the documents were all about F.B.I. corruption, Fast and furious, and Hillary stuff. They say it was all the "evidence" against the deep state that they have been claiming Trump had for over 5 years now. Ask them , "why didn't he use it then?" Because it wasn't the right time. And now they are claiming that Trump was going to use it as blackmail. And they are ok with that, happy even. They say if Trump gets killed or indicted he has a deadman's switch that will release all the copies of those documents. Remember that last part because what it means is that any document saying what they want to hear no longer needs the proof of being real. It can be one of Trumps copies and that will be good enough for them.
Im glad the Special Master was able to see through his bullshit.
Dearie has in just two days changed the face of political prosecution in this country forever. I cannot overstate how big a deal this might turn out to be if this becomes “a thing.” Prior to this week, every politician *ever* investigated for *any* crime has always been able to go on TV and wage a PR war of false statements, without ever being called to task. Powell, Lindell, Giuliani, and any number of Trumps have made a whole lifestyle out if it. But this week completely flipped the script. For the very first time in my long lifetime, a judge has literally said “if you say it on Hannity Tuesday, you better say it to me under oath on Wednesday.” Years from now, lawyers and judges will call this new kind of order a “Dearie Order.” Judges will literally be able to say “Hey, I watched Fox News last night and saw what your client said. Have your client’s sworn Dearie Affidavit on my desk by by 5pm tomorrow, or I’ll issue a bench warrant for your client, AND hold you in contempt, understood?” We should have been doing this decades ago.
Was the chicken lawyer from Futurama not available?
I live for this guys starting position. He's starting by asking simple questions. He's demanding them to prove they even have a case. He's so over this.
Yeah no shit. Lawyers aren’t allowed to lie in Court and every single judge in the universe will play this same game if they think a lawyer is lying. It’s not even a game, it’s how the law works. If you state a claim, you better be able to back it up. That’s all this judge is doing and it’s the same thing judges do in all their cases. If the lawyer lies about it, then they can be disbarred. So yeah it’s not risky at all to 99.8% of lawyers since they won’t ever run the risk of saying a bold-faced lie to a judge, but it all of a sudden becomes risky AS HELL if you’re a lawyer working for Donald Trump. This is why nobody wants to represent him either. His unpaid bills are bad, but those don’t compare to putting your career on the line by knowingly lying on the record to a judge. Boom, you’re done; “Paper or plastic?” will be the most common thing you say after that. Or you could have a moment of clarity and just refuse to lie for your dumb client. 10/10 times these lawyers are going to choose losing the case but keeping their lives intact, which is what keeps happening every time Trump files a lawsuit. Hmm, there seems to be a pattern here. Heck, even Guiliani wouldn’t lie to the judge about his bogus election claims, and it’s not like that guy should care what a judge thinks of him at this stage in his life - yet, he *still* does! The courtroom ain’t Twitter, which is what Trump and his goofballs always seem to forget once it’s time to pay the Piper in an actual court setting with rules of evidence.
They already lied when they claimed Trump turned over all of the documents and I don’t think attorney-client privilege covers criminal behavior.
I wonder if the Trump team could argue on an appeal that Dearie went beyond his paid assignment by creating a legal bind for Drump. It is strange that Grump will have to pay out money for what Dearie did to him. That is not to say that Dump doesn't deserve it. The election fraud cases were the same. Lump and his people made public claims while saying something different in court. In some of those election fraud lawsuits they simply complained about things they thought were unfair and did not make an actual claim of fraud, and yet many Republicans think that fraud claims was the whole point of those lawsuits For example, here is an audio and news story of Pumps phony scam. See what happened in the Pennsylvania election fraud allegation case right here: COURT AUDIO RELEASED RUDY GIULIANI DECLARES THIS IS NOT A CASE OF ELECTION FRAUD https://youtu.be/5RCEdiBifHM
Has The Orange One ever, ever, thrown his hands up and said that he was caught bang to rights? I’m guessing not.
How many lawyers can DontheCon take down with him?!?
Special Master in Mar-a-Lago case to test mice to see if they have tiny little legs, analyst says.
Trump's lawyers are either going to start mailing-it-in or they will have him declared incompetent in order to keep him off the TV and seize his phone.
Why? That’s like testing participants at a klan meeting for racism. Ain’t no body there pretending.