#Attorney for Criminal Appeals in Florida

[simply-ivanka]

Trump and the Lawfare Implosion of 2024

Will his prosecution end up putting him back in the White House?

Wall Street Journal

By Kimberley A. Strassel

What’s that old saying about the “best-laid plans”? Democrats banked that a massive lawfare campaign against Donald Trump would strengthen their hold on the White House. As that legal assault founders, they’re left holding the bag known as Joe Biden.

In Florida on Tuesday, Judge Aileen Cannon postponed indefinitely the start of special counsel Jack Smith’s classified-documents trial. The judge noted the original date, May 20, is impossible given the messy stack of pretrial motions on her desk. The prosecution is fuming, while the press insinuates—or baldly asserts—that the judge is biased for Mr. Trump, incompetent or both. But it is Mr. Smith and his press gaggle who are living in legal unreality, attempting to rush the process to accommodate a political timeline.

What did they expect? Mr. Smith waited until 2023 to file legally novel charges involving classified documents, a former president, and a complex set of statutes governing presidential records. The pretrial disputes—some sealed for national-security reasons—involve weighty questions about rules governing the admission of classified documents in criminal trials, discovery, scope and even whether Mr. Smith’s appointment as special counsel was lawful. Judge Cannon notes the court has a “duty to fully and fairly consider” all of these, which she believes will take until at least July. This could push any trial beyond the election.

Mr. Smith’s indictments in the District of Columbia, alleging that Mr. Trump plotted to overturn the 2020 election, have separately gone to the Supreme Court, where the justices are determining whether and when a former president is immune from criminal prosecution for acts while in office. A decision on the legal question is expected in June, whereupon the case will likely return to the lower courts to apply it to the facts. That may also mean no trial before the election.

A Georgia appeals court this week decided it would review whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis can continue leading her racketeering case against Mr. Trump in light of the conflict presented by her romantic relationship with the former special prosecutor. The trial judge is unlikely to proceed while this major issue is pending, and the appeals process could take up to six months.

Which leaves the lawfare crowd’s last, best hope in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s muddled charges on that Trump 2016 “hush money” deal with adult-film star Stormy Daniels. That case was a mess well before Judge Juan Merchan allowed Ms. Daniels to provide the jury Kama-Sutra-worthy descriptions of her claimed sexual tryst with Mr. Trump, during which she intimated several times that the encounter was nonconsensual.

Mr. Trump is charged with falsifying records, not sexual assault, and even the judge acknowledged the jury heard things that “would have been better left unsaid.” He tried to blame the defense for not objecting enough during her testimony, but it’s the judge’s job to keep witnesses on task. Judge Merchan refused a Trump request for a mistrial, but his openness to issuing a “limiting instruction” to the jury—essentially an order to unhear prejudicial testimony—is an acknowledgment that things went off the rails. If Mr. Trump is convicted, it’s also a strong Trump argument for reversal on appeal.

Little, in short, is going as planned. The lawfare strategy from the start: pile on Mr. Trump in a way that ensured Republicans would rally for his nomination, then use legal proceedings to crush his ability to campaign, drain his resources, and make him too toxic (or isolated in prison) to win a general election. He won the nomination, but the effort against him is flailing, courtesy of an echo chamber of anti-Trump prosecutors and journalists who continue to indulge the fantasy that every court, judge, jury and timeline exists to dance to their partisan fervor.

These own goals are striking. Mr. Smith wouldn’t be facing delays if he’d acknowledged up front the important constitutional question of presidential immunity, or if he’d sought an indictment for obstruction of justice and forgone charging Mr. Trump with improperly handling classified documents, which gets into legally complicated territory. The federal charges might carry more weight with the public had Mr. Bragg refrained from bringing a flimsy case that makes the whole effort look wildly partisan. And Ms. Willis’s romantic escapades have turned her legal overreach into a reality-TV joke.

Democrats faced a critical choice last year: Try to win an election by confronting the real problem of a weak and old president presiding over unpopular far-left policies, or try to rig an outcome by embracing a lawfare stratagem. They chose the latter. Perhaps a court will still convict Mr. Trump of something, although that could play either way with the electorate. Lawfare as politics is a very risky business.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

S.V. Dáte at HuffPost:

WASHINGTON ― For Donald Trump, Tuesday’s election has come to this: It’s either the White House or the Big House. If he wins, the coup-attempting former president, already a convicted criminal, will be able to postpone his Georgia and New York state prosecutions until he is no longer in office. As for his two federal cases, he would be able to make them disappear forever by simply ordering his attorney general to dismiss them. “Those will be dismissed on Jan. 20. Both of them,” said Ty Cobb, a former Trump White House lawyer and onetime federal prosecutor who thinks his old boss deserves prison time. “There’s a compelling interest for the country to deter this treasonous bullshit and the mishandling of sensitive information.” Trump himself confirmed he would end the federal prosecutions by firing special counsel Jack Smith in an interview last month with pro-Trump radio host Hugh Hewitt. “It’s so easy — I would fire him within two seconds,” Trump said. Smith has headed the election interference and classified documents investigations.

The New York and Georgia cases, meanwhile, would at best go into hibernation, lawyers said, because courts have ruled that presidents must have the ability to carry out their duties under the Constitution, notwithstanding state legal cases. “The state cases, because of the supremacy clause, nothing much will occur,” said Karen Agnifilio, a former prosecutor in Manhattan. “He can be sentenced in New York state, but he will not get anything that bleeds into his presidency. So maybe community service? A fine? Nothing?” A Trump victory over Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris would mark the first time in American history that voters have put a literal criminal into office. Among former presidents, only Richard Nixon even came close to facing charges for his attempt to cheat in the 1972 presidential election and his subsequent attempts to cover it up. He was preemptively pardoned by newly sworn-in Gerald Ford days after Nixon resigned from office in 1974.

Trump, in contrast, already faces three active criminal cases against him: in state court in Georgia, for his attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss there; in federal court in Washington, D.C., for his actions leading up to and during his Jan. 6, 2021, coup attempt; and in New York state court, for falsifying business records to hide a $130,000 hush money payment to a porn star days ahead of the 2016 election. There was a second federal prosecution, in South Florida based on Trump’s refusal to turn over secret documents he took with him to his Palm Beach country club upon leaving the White House, that was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon. Smith is appealing to have those charges reinstated. The New York case would be his most immediate threat, should he lose. A New York City jury in May found him guilty on every count. Sentencing is now set for Nov. 26. Though it is a white-collar crime and Trump is still legally a first-time offender, Judge Juan Merchan can consider Trump’s lack of remorse, the seriousness of the crime ― intended to sway the 2016 presidential election ― as well as Trump’s multiple violations of Merchan’s gag order forbidding the former president from attacking witnesses and court officers in the case.

Today, this election will determine the fate of any chance of whether Donald Trump will be held accountable for his crimes.

If he loses, he’ll be in a heap of legal trouble. If he wins, he’ll be off scot-free.

[lost-carcosa]

In every Judge Joe Dredd story I’ve ever read, there is at least one almost comically obvious moment when the author makes clear that the protagonist is a jackbooted fascist and not someone to admire. This may come across to the average reader as heavy-handed, but when the richest man in the world misreads the character as heroic, you can see why such heavy-handedness is sometimes necessary.

Shortly before former Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida withdrew his nomination for attorney general, Elon Musk posted on X that Gaetz was the “Judge Dredd America needs to clean up a corrupt system and put powerful bad actors in prison.” Generally speaking, one’s model for justice should not be a fascist invented in part to illustrate the distinction between elite impunity and the brutality that ordinary people face. (Were Dredd’s zero tolerance for lawbreaking evenly applied to obscenely wealthy scofflaws like Musk himself, it would surely be less appealing to him.)

Musk’s media illiteracy is not particularly shocking—it seems to be part of a broader trend tied to the rise of Donald Trump. Genre stories that are meant to highlight the dangers of fascism, cruelty, or selfishness instead end up being misinterpreted or even condemned by those who find fascism appealing or see cruelty and selfishness as aspirational virtues.

The messaging in Dredd stories verges on didactic, but it also assumes at least a tacit objection to fascism in the reader. One of the series’ co-creators, Pat Mills, has said that his model for Dredd and the other judges was the monks at his parochial school, who subjected children to physical or sexual abuse. The stories are set in a dystopian future where several “megacities,” surrounded by a radioactive wasteland, are ruled by draconian judges. Initially established by the character of Eustace Fargo in response to rampant street crime, this judge system empowers its agents to convict and sentence those they deem criminals, and simply kill many of the people they encounter.

As mentioned, the implications of these stories are not exactly subtle. In one 2019 story arc, The Small House, Dredd confronts Judge Smiley, the Justice Department’s chief of black ops, over Smiley’s use of invisible assassins to murder democracy activists in Mega-City One. Dredd’s main objection to Smiley’s operations, it seems, is that Smiley’s assassinations are not following proper protocol. Dredd has no moral objection to killing democracy activists, but it has to be done by the book. Smiley calmly explains to Dredd, “We’re fascists. We rule. It’s the only way we can survive in this irradiated, dead world.”

Dredd is a true believer in the judge system, and as such lacks the corruption of his contemporaries. This renders him ethically superior only to the other fascists, however; he is an unthinking armed goon who would never allow the system to be changed just because the majority would prefer it. He acts fanatically in service to the unjust system he upholds, not to any larger ideals of honor or integrity. In the 2006 storyline Origins, a cryogenically frozen Fargo is briefly thawed and begs Dredd to undo the judge system. “It was never meant to be forever,” Fargo pleads, just before dying. “We’re the monster, we got greedy—wanted everything—so we killed the dream, Joe, we killed America!” Dredd, being Dredd, ignores Fargo’s pleas and, when asked later about Fargo’s last words, says Fargo wanted him to “keep the faith,” forever burying Fargo’s wish to end the judge system in favor of democratic rule.

As Trump reshapes the nation in his image, some of his supporters seem inclined to turn cautionary tales on their head, empathizing with villains or antiheroes to such a degree that they miss the point of these stories entirely, even when the writers make the message as clear as possible. We might call this problem Tony Soprano Syndrome, after the patron saint of flawed antihero protagonists. One undecided voter told a New York Times focus group earlier this year that Trump is “the antihero, the Soprano, the ‘Breaking Bad,’ the guy who does bad things, who is a bad guy but does them on behalf of the people he represents.”

Almost every single thing here is wrong, but it’s wrong in a way that illustrates the illiteracy that I am talking about. The Sopranos is by any measure one of the greatest television series of all time, focusing on the daily travails of a mob boss who tries to balance his mental health with keeping his marriage together and raising his children. But Tony is a murderer whose greed and ambition harm the people he claims to love. He is not a moral exemplar, nor is he intended to be; his selfishness helps no one else and is destructive to all around him. The same is true of Walter White, the protagonist of Breaking Bad, who at one point in the show literally looks at the camera and says of his crimes, “I did it for me.”

Again, the creators could not be more clear that these characters are horrible people whom others should not seek to emulate. There is a difference between thinking Darth Vader is an awesome character in the fictional context of Star Wars and, you know, wanting to be like Darth Vader, a psychotic child-killer. Quite similarly, Trump could not be more clear that he is out for himself, seeking the power of the presidency to enrich himself and his allies, protect himself from legal jeopardy, and bask in the cultlike adulation of his followers. But fans of Tony or Walter, living vicariously through the power and cruelty of the object of their admiration, invert the moral implications of those characters’ stories such that selfishness and malice are justified or laudable. In the same way, Trump supporters treat the real-life Trump, who seeks power for his own gain, as a fictionalized Trump whose vices are in service to a selfless cause.

Tony and Walter are also aspirational figures for a certain type of man experiencing a certain type of midlife crisis because, despite their body aging and their looks fading, they can still shape the world around them with a seemingly infinite capacity to endure or inflict violence. They want to tell themselves they’re protecting something—home and hearth perhaps—but actually want to validate themselves with a justification for hurting someone else, even if they have to invent one.

This is one reason the actor Anna Gunn, who portrayed Walter’s wife, Skylar, drew an intense backlash—she was the embodiment of the nitpicky wife whose jealousy held her husband back from greatness (as a murdering meth kingpin).

Walter represents the emotional state of a particular type of viewer—someone who wants to enjoy his ability to make himself feel good through violence and suffering, and doesn’t want his good time spoiled by a mouthy woman reminding him that the things he is doing are actually bad. This type of reactionary masculinity is itself emblematic of the Trump era, as if conservatives listened to feminist critiques of “toxic masculinity” and decided to shear all virtue from their conception of traditional manhood and retain only those parts that involve dominance and exploitation of others.

Examples abound. Last year, another heavy-handed comic-book adaptation, the television series The Boys—about a covert-ops group that targets the irresponsible corporate-produced “supers” who kill more people than they actually save—made its criticism of fascism so overt that many of its fascist-sympathetic fans began to get upset. These fans complained that the show had gotten “woke” once the plot began to more plainly illustrate the political points it had been making all along, to the dismay of those fans who were living vicariously through the antagonists’ acts of cruelty.

Similarly, the creators of the murderous Marvel Comics’ vigilante the Punisher have repeatedly clarified, to no avail, that, despite possessing some virtues, the character of Frank Castle is not a good guy. In addition to being a murderer, he is occasionally portrayed as a fascist. During the Civil War storyline, Castle is told off by his idol, Captain America, who describes Castle as  “psychotic,” fulfilling a “twisted notion of justice.” The Punisher creator Gerry Conway has called the embrace of Punisher iconography by real-life armed agents of the state “disturbing,” because “the Punisher represents a failure of the Justice system. He’s supposed to indict the collapse of social moral authority and the reality [that] some people can’t depend on institutions like the police or the military to act in a just and capable way.”

The collapse of trust in institutions is one of the stories of the past decade or so. But so is this moral degeneracy, motivated by the need to ideologically justify the place of a corrupt authoritarian strongman in the most powerful government in the world. What looks like declining media literacy may be something much worse—an affirmation of the underlying values in dystopian literature that inevitably lead to the dystopia itself.

[beardedmrbean]

A U.S. judge in Florida on Monday dismissed the criminal case accusing Donald Trump of illegally holding onto classified documents after leaving office, handing the Republican former president another major legal victory as he seeks a return to the White House.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed to the bench by Trump, ruled that Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the prosecution, was unlawfully appointed to his role and did not have the authority to bring the case.

It marked another blockbuster legal triumph for Trump, following a July 1 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that as a former president he has immunity from prosecution for many of his actions in office.

Cannon's ruling came two days after Trump was the target of an assassination attempt at a campaign rally in western Pennsylvania. Trump is set to be formally named the Republican presidential nominee in Milwaukee this week challenging Democratic President Joe Biden in the Nov. 5 U.S. election.

Prosecutors are likely to appeal the ruling. Courts in other cases have repeatedly upheld the ability of the U.S. Justice Department to appoint special counsels to handle certain politically sensitive investigations.

A spokesperson for Smith did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

At the very least, Cannon's ruling throws the future of the case into doubt. Smith is also prosecuting Trump in federal court in Washington on charges involving the former president's attempts to overturn the 2020 election, but his lawyers have not made a similar challenge to the special counsel in that case.

In the documents case, Trump was indicted on charges that he willfully retained sensitive national security documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate after leaving office in 2021 and obstructed government efforts to retrieve the material.

Two others, Trump personal aide Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Olivera, were also charged with obstructing the investigation.

Trump's lawyers challenged the legal authority for Attorney General Merrick Garland's 2022 decision to appoint Smith to lead investigations into Trump. They argued that the appointment violated the U.S. Constitution because Smith's office was not created by Congress and the special counsel was not confirmed by the Senate.

Lawyers in Smith's office disputed Trump's claims, arguing that there was a well-settled practice of using special counsels to manage politically sensitive investigations.

"This ruling flies in the face of about 20 years of institutional precedent, conflicts with rulings issued in both the Mueller investigation and in D.C. with respect to Jack Smith himself," said Bradley Moss, an attorney who specializes in national security.

Moss also said the ruling raises the question of whether Smith will seek to have Cannon removed from the case.

Cannon's ruling is the latest and most consequential in a series of decisions she has made favoring Trump and expressing skepticism about the conduct of prosecutors. The judge previously delayed a trial indefinitely while considering a flurry of Trump’s legal challenges.

In an unusual move, she allowed three outside lawyers, including two who sided with Trump, to argue during a court hearing focused on Trump's challenge to Smith's appointment.

Conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas also provided a boost to Trump's challenge to the special counsel. In an opinion agreeing with the court's decision to grant Trump broad immunity in the election-related case, Thomas questioned whether Smith's appointment was lawful using similar arguments to those made by Trump's lawyers.

Garland appointed Smith, a public corruption and international war crimes prosecutor, to give investigations into Trump a degree of independence from the Justice Department under Biden's administration.

[eretzyisrael]

by Dion J. Pierre

The University of Florida (UF) has handed down severe and potentially life-altering punishments to seven pro-Hamas rioters who participated in occupying the campus in an attempt to intimidate officials into boycotting and divesting from Israel, according to Fresh Take Florida, a news service of the university’s College of Journalism and Communications.

UF’s disciplinary body was set on slapping the students’ wrists, sentencing most to probation only based on recommendations from “hearing bodies,” until its new dean, Chris Summerlin, intervened and issued full suspensions for as many as four years. The harshest suspensions — including four years for Allan Hektor Frasheri, 21, and three years for other students — while not being formal expulsions, are long enough to make it unlikely that the students serving them will return to the University of Florida.

The seven students have reportedly submitted appeals to overturn their punishments that are pending.

Summerlin’s suspensions may not be the only consequences that the students will face.

According to Fresh Take Florida, the students were part of a group of nine that were arrested by local law enforcement for trespassing and resisting arrest, charges that are being prosecuted by the Alachua County State Attorney’s Office. They are taking their chances at trial, the news service added, noting that all nine have rejected “deferred prosecution,” an agreement that would require them to plead guilty, or no contest, in exchange for the state’s expunging the convictions from their records in the future so long as they abstain from committing more criminal acts.

One of the nine, computer science student Parker Stanely Hovis, 26, — who was suspended for three years — proclaimed on Tuesday that they will contest the state’s cases.

“We did not resist arrest, and we are prepared to fight our charges,” Hovis said in a statement. “We’re standing in solidarity with each other, and collectively demanding that the state drop the charges against us.”

The University of Texas at Austin has also meted out lengthy suspensions to pro-Hamas protesters who violated school rules, a course of action that experts believe is a deterrent against similar behavior in the future.

[mariacallous]

Criminal prosecutors may soon get to see over 900 documents pertaining to the alleged theft of a diary belonging to President Joe Biden’s daughter after a judge rejected the conservative group Project Veritas’ First Amendment claim.

Attorney Jeffrey Lichtman said on behalf of the nonprofit Monday that attorneys are considering appealing last Thursday’s ruling by U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres in Manhattan. In the written decision, the judge said the documents can be given to investigators by Jan. 5.

The documents were produced from raids that were authorized in November 2021. Electronic devices were also seized from the residences of three members of Project Veritas, including two mobile phones from the home of James O’Keefe, the group’s since-fired founder.

Project Veritas, founded in 2010, identifies itself as a news organization. It is best known for conducting hidden camera stings that have embarrassed news outlets, labor organizations and Democratic politicians.

In written arguments, lawyers for Project Veritas and O’Keefe said the government’s investigation “seems undertaken not to vindicate any real interests of justice, but rather to stifle the press from investigating the President’s family.”

“It is impossible to imagine the government investigating an abandoned diary (or perhaps the other belongings left behind with it), had the diary not been written by someone with the last name ‘Biden,’” they added.

The judge rejected the First Amendment arguments, saying in the ruling that they were “inconsistent with Supreme Court precedent.” She also noted that Project Veritas could not claim it was protecting the identity of a confidential source from public disclosure after two individuals publicly pleaded guilty in the case.

She was referencing the August 2022 guilty pleas of Aimee Harris and Robert Kurlander to conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property. Both await sentencing.

The pleas came two years after Harris and Kurlander — two Florida residents who are not employed by Project Veritas — discovered that Ashley Biden, the president’s daughter, had stored items including a diary at a friend’s Delray Beach, Florida, house.

They said they initially hoped to sell some of the stolen property to then-President Donald Trump’s campaign, but a representative turned them down and told them to take the material to the FBI, prosecutors say.

Eventually, Project Veritas paid the pair $20,000 apiece to deliver the diary containing “highly personal entries,” a digital storage card with private family photos, tax documents, clothes and luggage to New York, prosecutors said.

Project Veritas was not charged with any crime. The group has said its activities were newsgathering and were ethical and legal.

Two weeks ago, Hannah Giles, chief executive of Project Veritas, quit her job, saying in a social media post she had “stepped into an unsalvageable mess — one wrought with strong evidence of past illegality and post financial improprieties.” She said she’d reported what she found to “appropriate law enforcement agencies.”

Lichtman said in an email on behalf of Project Veritas and the people whose residences were raided: “As for the continued investigation, the government isn’t seeking any prison time for either defendant who claims to have stolen the Ashley Biden diary, which speaks volumes in our minds.”

[follow-up-news]

The federal judge overseeing Donald Trump's classified documents trial in Florida dismissed the case against the former president Monday on the grounds that the appointment of and funding for special counsel Jack Smith were illegal. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump nominee, said in her 93-page decision that Smith's appointment was "unlawful" and unconditional." The clerk is directed to close this case," she wrote. She issued the decision on the first day of the Republican National Convention, two days after an assassination attempt against Trump. Trump praised the ruling in a statement that referred to Saturday's shooting and said other criminal cases against him should be tossed out, as well. A source who spoke directly with Trump said he was "surprised" but "very happy" with Cannon's decision. Smith's team indicated it would appeal Cannon's decision. “The dismissal of the case deviates from the uniform conclusion of all previous courts to have considered the issue that the Attorney General is statutorily authorized to appoint a Special Counsel," spokesperson Peter Carr said in a statement. "The Justice Department has authorized the Special Counsel to appeal the court’s order.”

[warningsine]

Former President Donald Trump has entered a plea of not guilty to 37 charges related to the alleged mishandling of classified documents. The plea was made during Trump's arraignment at a federal courthouse in Miami on Tuesday, where his lawyers requested a jury trial.

According to CNN, Trump's attorney, Todd Blanche, informed the judge of their plea, stating, "We most certainly enter a plea of not guilty." The former president and his co-defendant, Walt Nauta, were then booked by deputy marshals, with electronic copies of their fingerprints taken. No mugshot was captured as Trump is easily recognizable. The entire booking process lasted approximately 10 minutes.

The charges brought forth by the Justice Department in the classified documents case have intensified the legal jeopardy surrounding Trump, who is currently the frontrunner for the 2024 GOP nomination. The arraignment hearing on Tuesday primarily involved procedural matters, including Trump's plea and discussions regarding the conditions of his pretrial release. Potential restrictions on Trump's conduct throughout the case may also be addressed.

Special counsel Jack Smith was present at the arraignment, emphasizing the significance of the case. Trump is facing 37 felony counts, accusing him of unlawfully retaining national defense information and concealing documents in violation of witness-tampering laws during the Justice Department's investigation into the materials. Nauta, Trump's close aide, was also charged in the indictment, alleging a conspiracy to obstruct the federal investigation.

Departing from his Doral resort in a motorcade, Trump traveled to the courthouse along with Nauta in a separate vehicle. Responding to a bystander's inquiry about his well-being, Trump replied, "great" and waved. Prior to the court appearance, Trump took to social media, lamenting that it was "ONE OF THE SADDEST DAYS IN THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY. WE ARE A NATION IN DECLINE!!!"

High-stakes legal battle begins as former President Trump's case assigned to District Judge Cannon

The hearing on Tuesday marks the beginning of a lengthy and potentially dramatic judicial process, including criminal and appeal proceedings that could span several years. The case has been assigned to US District Judge Aileen Cannon, who was nominated by Trump. Notably, Cannon's previous decision to order a third-party review of an FBI search at Mar-a-Lago was overturned by a conservative appeals court. Magistrate Judge Jonathan Goodman is expected to oversee the proceedings in Miami.

Following the conclusion of Tuesday's hearing, the case will enter a phase of pretrial proceedings, likely involving disputes over evidence and potential motions to dismiss the case before it reaches trial. The Trump defense team will have ample opportunity to prolong the process, potentially extending it beyond the 2024 election.

One crucial aspect that may impact the prosecution is the assignment of Judge Cannon, who resides in Ft. Pierce, Florida, but is part of the pool of judges randomly assigned cases in West Palm Beach, where the new indictment was filed. Legal experts across the spectrum have expressed interest in Cannon's approach, given her controversial handling of the previous Trump lawsuit. Her decisions could potentially cause complications for the prosecution, although the extent of such challenges remains uncertain.

"It is rare to have such influential power as a district judge in a federal case," stated Alan Rozenshtein, a former attorney in the DOJ National Security Division and current law professor at the University of Minnesota. "She could, if she wanted to, cause huge problems for the prosecution. Would they be existential problems? Probably not."

As the legal proceedings continue, the nation will closely watch how this high-profile case unfolds and its potential implications for the former president.

[the-quasar-literata]

August 18, 2023

By Laura Italiano, Camila DeChalus, C. Ryan Barber

It's hard to keep track of Donald Trump's very busy legal docket.

The former president is the subject of at least four major investigations into wrongdoing relating to his handling of White House documents, the election, the insurrection, and his finances — probes based in Florida, Fulton County, Georgia; Washington, D.C.; and New York.

Trump's business also remains under indictment in Manhattan for an alleged payroll tax-dodge scheme. On top of all that, Trump is fighting or bringing a grab-bag of important lawsuits.

Keep up to date on the latest of Trump's legal travails, both criminal and civil, with this guide to the ever-evolving Trump docket.

Indictments

The Trump Organization Payroll Case

The Parties: The Manhattan DA is prosecuting The Trump Organization.

The Issues: Trump's real estate and golf resort business is accused of giving its executives pricey perks and benefits that were never reported as income to taxing authorities.

The company's co-defendant, former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg, has pleaded guilty to the 15-year, payroll tax-dodge scheme.

As part of his Weisselberg agreed to serve 5 months in jail and pay back $2 million in back taxes and penalties.

What's next: Weisselberg also agreed to testify for the prosecution if lawyers for the Trump Organization fight the indictment at trial; an October 24 trial date has been set.

Weisselberg would describe to jurors a tax-dodge scheme in which company executives, himself included, received some pay in off-the-books compensation that included free apartments, cars, and tuition reimbursement. But Weisselberg is hardly the ideal prosecution witness. He still works for Trump Org as a special advisor, and Trump's side is hoping to turn his testimony to its advantage.

The Trump Organization could face steep fines if convicted of conspiring in the scheme by omitting the compensation from federal, state, and city tax documents and by failing to withhold and pay taxes on that compensation.

Criminal Investigations

The Fulton County election interference probe

The parties: Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, Trump, and his Republican associates

The issues: Willis is investigating whether Trump and his associates tried to interfere in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Her probe has expanded to also include investigating an alleged scheme to send a fake slate of electors to Georgia's state Capitol in an attempt to overturn the elections.

She's notified Rudy Giuliani, Trump's former personal attorney, that he's a target in the investigation. Giuliani testified for six hours under court order on August 17.

What's next: A federal appeals court temporarily halted on Sunday a court order for Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, the former chairman of the Judiciary Committee, to testify before the Fulton County special grand jury on Tuesday, August 23.

The Justice Department investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election

The parties: Federal investigators are increasingly scrutinizing the role Trump and his allies played in the effort to overturn the 2020 election.

The issues: The Justice Department is facing pressure to prosecute following a string of congressional hearings that connected the former president to the violence of January 6, 2021, and to efforts to prevent the peaceful handoff of power.

In a series of eight hearings, the House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol described Trump's conduct in criminal terms and pointed to an April court decision in which a federal judge said the former president likely committed crimes in his effort to hold onto power. In that ruling, Judge David Carter called Trump's scheme a "coup in search of a legal theory."

Prosecutors have asked witnesses directly about Trump's involvement in the effort to reverse his loss in the 2020 election and are likely to issue more subpoenas and search warrants in the weeks ahead.

In June, federal investigators searched the home of Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official who advanced Trump's baseless claims of election fraud.

On the same day, federal agents seized the phone of John Eastman, a lawyer who helped advise Trump on how to overturn the 2020 election. A top prosecutor in the Justice Department's inquiry, Thomas Windom, revealed in late July that investigators had obtained a se cord warrant allowing a search of Eastman's phone.

Rep. Liz Cheney, the top Republican on the panel, lost her primary bid for reelection on August 16.

What's next: The Justice Department has remained largely silent about how and whether it would consider charges against Trump, but in July, prosecutors asked witnesses directly about the former president's involvement in the attempt to reverse his electoral defeat. FBI agents descended on Mar-a-Lago on August 8, 2022, with a search warrant.Darren Samuelsohn

The Justice Department investigation into the handling of classified documents

The parties: The FBI searched Trump's estate in South Florida, Mar-a-Lago, on August 8 as part of an investigation into the possible mishandling of government records, including classified documents. Trump and his lawyers alleged prosecutorial misconduct and condemned the search as politically motivated.

The issues: Early in 2022, Trump turned over 15 boxes of documents — including some marked as classified and "top secret" — to the National Archives. But federal investigators scrutinizing the former president's handling of records reportedly grew suspicious that Trump or people close to him still retained some key records. The FBI seized about a dozen boxes of additional documents during the raid of Mar-a-Lago, in a search that immediately demonstrated how Trump's handling of records from his administration remains an area of legal jeopardy.

What's next: A federal judge in South Florida granted Trump's request for an outside arbiter — known as a special master — to review the more than 11,000 documents retrieved from Mar-a-Lago, including about 100 records marked as classified. Judge Aileen Cannon halted the review of those records as part of the Justice Department's criminal inquiry but said intelligence agencies could continue assessing the potential national security risk raised by Trump's hoarding of government records at his West Palm Beach estate. In response, the Justice Department said that bifurcation was unworkable and that Cannon's order had effectively paused the national security assessment.

The Justice Department asked Cannon to exclude the 100 classified documents from the special master review. If she declines to do so by September 15, the Justice Department signaled that it would go to the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.

Civil Investigations

The NY AG's Trump Organization probe

The parties: New York Attorney General Letitia James has been investigating Trump, his family and the Trump Organization for three years.

The issues: James says she has uncovered a decade-long pattern of financial wrongdoing at Trump's multi-billion-dollar hotel and golf resort empire.

She alleges Trump misstated the value of his properties on annual financial statements and other official documents used to secure hundreds of millions of dollars in bank loans and tax breaks. Trump has called the probe a politically motivated witch hunt.

What's next: Court-ordered depositions of Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump, and Donald Trump, Jr., were delayed by the death of family matriarch Ivana Trump. But their depositions finally wrapped on August 10, when Donald Trump testified before investigators in James' Manhattan offices. He pleaded the Fifth more than 440 times.

The contentious, massive probe — involving more than 5 million pages of documents — appears close to filing a several-hundred-page lawsuit that could seek to put the Trump Organization out of business entirely.

Lawsuits against Trump

Lawsuits alleging 'incitement' on January 6

The Parties: House Democrats and two Capitol police officers accused Trump of inciting the violent mob on January 6.

The Issues: Trump's lawyers have argued that his time as president grants him immunity that shields him from civil liability in connection with his January 6 address at the Ellipse, where he urged supporters to "fight like hell."

A federal judge rejected Trump's bid to dismiss the civil lawsuits, ruling that his rhetoric on January 6 was "akin to telling an excited mob that corn-dealers starve the poor in front of the corn-dealer's home."

Judge Amit Mehta said Trump later displayed a tacit agreement with the mob minutes after rioters breached the Capitol when he sent a tweet admonishing then-Vice President Mike Pence for lacking the "courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country."

What's Next: Trump has appealed Mehta's ruling to the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit and requested an oral argument. In a late July court filing, Trump's lawyers said the immunity afforded to the former president cannot be "undercut if the presidential act in question is unpopular among the judiciary."

Galicia v. Trump

The Parties: Lead plaintiff Efrain Galicia and four other protesters of Mexican heritage have sued Trump, his security personnel, and his 2016 campaign in New York.

The issues: They say Donald Trump sicced his security guards on their peaceful, legal protest outside Trump Tower in 2015.

The plaintiffs had been demonstrating with parody "Make America Racist Again" campaign signs to protest Trump's speech announcing his first campaign for president, during which he accused Mexican immigrants of being "rapists" and drug dealers.

Trump fixer-turned-critic Michael Cohen said in a deposition that Trump directly ordered security to "get rid of" the protesters; Trump said in his own deposition that he didn't even know a protest was going on until the next day. His security guards have said in depositions that they were responding to aggression by the protesters.

What's next: Trial is set for jury selection on October 31 in NY Supreme Court in the Bronx.

E. Jean Carroll v. Trump

The Parties: Advice columnist E. Jean Carroll sued Trump for defamation in federal court in Manhattan in June 2019.

The Issues: Carroll's lawsuit alleges Trump defamed her after she publicly accused him of raping her in a Bergdorf-Goodman dressing room in Manhattan in the mid-90s.

Trump responded to Carroll's allegation by saying it was untrue and that she was "not my type." Trump also denied ever meeting Carroll, despite a photo to the contrary.

What's next: Arrangements for the sharing of evidence are ongoing behind the scenes, including for the possible collection of Trump's DNA.

Carroll has said she wants to compare Trump's DNA with unidentified male DNA on a dress she wore during the alleged rape. The trial is tentatively set for Feb. 6, 2023; Carroll has said she would never settle the case.

The 'multi-level marketing' pyramid scheme case

The Parties: Lead plaintiff Catherine McKoy and three others sued Trump, his business, and his three eldest children, Donald Trump, Jr., Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump, in 2018 in federal court in Manhattan.

The Issues: Donald Trump is accused of promoting a scam multi-level marketing scheme on "The Celebrity Apprentice." The lawsuit alleges Trump pocketed $8.8 million from the scheme — but that they lost thousands of dollars. Trump's side has complained that the lawsuit is a politically motivated attack.

What's Next: The parties say in court filings that they are working to meet an August 31 deadline for the completion of depositions.

Michael Cohen's 'imprisonment' case

The Parties: Trump fixer-turned-critic Michael Cohen sued Donald Trump, former Attorney General Bill Barr, and more than a dozen federal prison officials and employees, in federal court in Manhattan in 2021.

The Issues: The president's former personal attorney is seeking $20 million in damages relating to the time he spent in prison for financial crimes and lying to Congress about Trump's dealings in Congress.

Cohen says in his suit that he had been moved to home confinement for three months in the spring of 2020 due to the pandemic, but was then vindictively thrown into solitary confinement when he refused to stop speaking to the press and writing a tell-all book about his former boss. A judge ordered him released after 16 days.

What's Next: A decision is pending on defense motions to dismiss the case.

The Electric Avenue copyright case

The Parties: Eddy Grant, the composer/performer behind the 80s disco-reggae mega-hit "Electric Avenue," sued Donald Trump and his campaign in federal court in Manhattan in 2020.

The Issues: Grant is seeking $300,000 compensation for copyright infringement. His suit says that Trump made unauthorized use of the 1983 dance floor staple during the 2020 campaign. About 40 seconds of the song played in the background of a Biden-bashing animation that Trump posted to his Twitter account. The animation was viewed 13 million times before being taken down a month later.

Trump has countered that the animation was political satire and so exempt from copyright infringement claims. He's also said that the campaign merely reposted the animation and have no idea where it came from.

What's Next: There was an August 21 deposition completion deadline for both sides — including for Trump and Grant. Pretrial motions are not due to be filed until October.

Mary Trump v. Donald Trump

The Parties: The former president's niece sued him and his siblings in 2020 in the state Supreme Court in Manhattan.

The Issues: Mary Trump alleges that she was cheated out of at least $10 million in a 2001 court settlement over the estate of her late father, Fred Trump, Sr.

Mary Trump alleges she only learned by helping with a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times article that she'd been defrauded by her Uncle Donald, her aunt, Maryanne Trump Barry, and the late Robert Trump, whose estate is named as a defendant.

The Times' 18-month investigation "revealed a business empire riddled with tax dodges," the Pulitzer Committee said in praising the piece. Lawyers for the Trumps have countered that it's far too late for Mary Trump to sue over a 2001 settlement that she had knowingly participated in.

What's next: The defendants' motion to dismiss, including on statute of limitations grounds, is still pending.

Lawsuits brought by Trump

Donald Trump v. Mary Trump

The Parties: The former president counter-sued his niece Mary Trump — and the New York Times — in 2021 in New York state Supreme Court in Dutchess County.

The Issues: Mary Trump, the Times and three of its reporters "maliciously conspired" against him, Trump alleges, by collaborating with the Times on its expose of and breaching the confidentiality of the family's 2001 settlement of the estate of Mary Trump's father, Fred Trump, Sr.

What's Next: Mary Trump's motion to dismiss is pending in state Supreme Court in Manhattan, where the case has since been transferred to.

Donald Trump v. Hillary Clinton

The Parties: Trump has sued Hillary Clinton, her campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and prominent Democrats including former DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and former Clinton campaign chair John Podesta in a federal court in southern Florida in March, 2022.

The Issues: Trump alleged in this unusual use of federal racketeering statutes that Clinton and her campaign staff conspired to harm his 2016 run for president by promoting a "contrived Trump-Russia link."

The defendants succeeded in getting the massive lawsuit dismissed in September; a federal judge in Florida said the suit was structurally flawed and called it "a two-hundred-page political manifesto" in which Trump detailed "his grievances against those that have opposed him."

What's Next: Trump's side has promised to appeal the dismissal.

[ahopkins1965]

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New Legal Pathways for Sentence Reduction, Appeals, and Prison Reform in 2025



Brandon Harper

6 hours ago4 min read

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The landscape of post-conviction relief, sentencing reform, and criminal justice advocacy continues to evolve in 2025. With new Supreme Court rulings, legislative reforms, and legal challenges reshaping the way courts handle post-conviction cases, now is a critical time to explore opportunities for sentence reductions, appeals, and prison condition challenges.

This article will break down key legal changes, major cases to watch, and new avenues that could provide relief for incarcerated individuals across the United States. Whether you're a family member advocating for a loved one or an individual seeking post-conviction relief, this guide will provide actionable information on recent developments that may impact your case.

1. Supreme Court Cases That Could Impact Post-Conviction Relief in 2025

Each year, the Supreme Court hears cases that reshape how the justice system handles post-conviction relief, appeals, and sentencing. In 2025, there are several key cases that could affect incarcerated individuals:

Challenges to Habeas Corpus Restrictions: Several cases are challenging the restrictions imposed by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), which severely limits second or successive habeas corpus petitions. If the Court rules in favor of broadening access to habeas relief, thousands of incarcerated individuals could have new pathways to challenge their convictions.

Expansion of Ineffective Assistance of Counsel Claims: The Court is reviewing cases that may redefine what constitutes ineffective assistance of counsel, particularly regarding attorneys who failed to investigate evidence or push for plea deals that were in the best interest of the defendant.

Retroactivity of Criminal Justice Reforms: Several cases are examining whether new sentencing laws, including reductions in mandatory minimums, should be applied retroactively to those already incarcerated.

If any of these cases result in favorable rulings, they could open doors for many incarcerated individuals to seek relief.

View the Supreme Court’s Current Case List: https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docket.aspx

2. Second Look Laws and Sentence Modification Efforts

More states are introducing "Second Look" laws, allowing courts to reconsider long sentences for individuals who have demonstrated rehabilitation. As of 2025, these states have enacted Second Look laws:

California – Youth Offender Parole Hearings allow individuals convicted before age 18 to seek parole after 15 years.

Delaware – Sentence modifications for juveniles convicted before age 18 after serving 20 or 30 years.

District of Columbia – Incarceration Reduction Amendment Act permits individuals under 25 at the time of the offense to seek a sentence reduction after 15 years.

North Dakota – Allows juveniles to petition for resentencing after serving a significant portion of their sentence.

Oregon – Second Look Sentencing allows review halfway through a juvenile’s sentence.

Florida – Sentence reviews for juveniles after serving a specified period.

Illinois – Youthful Parole Law allows parole review after 10 or 20 years, depending on the offense.

Minnesota – Prosecutor-initiated resentencing law enables sentence reductions for rehabilitated individuals.

Washington – Second Chance Act provides sentence reduction opportunities for long-term incarcerated individuals.

Oklahoma – Domestic Violence Survivors Sentencing Act allows resentencing for individuals where domestic violence was a mitigating factor.

Nevada – Proposed legislation in 2024 aims to create Second Look laws for individuals with lengthy sentences.

Federal Level – The Second Look Act was reintroduced in 2024, allowing individuals serving over 10 years in federal prison to petition for sentence reduction.

States Considering Second Look Laws: Michigan and Virginia have pending bills to expand sentence review options.

If you're wondering whether your state has a Second Look law, check with local legal aid organizations or advocacy groups.

Find State-Specific Criminal Justice Reform Information

3. The Expanding Fight Against Unlawful Prison Conditions

In 2025, more prisoners are successfully challenging their conditions of confinement under the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Recent lawsuits and legislative efforts focus on:

Solitary Confinement Lawsuits: Multiple federal courts are now questioning the constitutionality of long-term solitary confinement, with some states moving toward banning or restricting its use.

Inadequate Medical Care Claims: Class-action lawsuits against state prison systems are forcing correctional facilities to provide better healthcare for inmates with chronic illnesses, disabilities, or severe mental health issues.

42 U.S.C. § 1983 Civil Rights Lawsuits: Inmates who have suffered abuse, neglect, or unconstitutional conditions are filing federal lawsuits to seek damages and court-ordered reforms.

If you or a loved one is experiencing inhumane prison conditions, it may be possible to file a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 lawsuit to challenge these violations.

Learn More About Prisoner Civil Rights Cases:

https://www.aclu.org/issues/prisoners-rights

4. How Recent Criminal Justice Reforms Could Help Those Already Sentenced

Recent laws and sentencing reforms in 2025 include:

Biden’s Clemency and Sentencing Reform Initiatives expanding federal clemency efforts and sentence reductions.

Changes to Felony Murder Laws in Illinois, California, and Oregon that eliminate life sentences for certain accomplices.

Expansion of Compassionate Release Laws to broaden criteria for early release due to age, medical condition, or rehabilitation.

These changes may offer new legal avenues for those seeking relief from excessive or outdated sentences.

5. The Push for Expanding Habeas Corpus Rights

Habeas corpus remains one of the most powerful tools for challenging wrongful convictions. In 2025, advocates are working to:

Loosen procedural bars that prevent inmates from filing successive petitions.

Expand access to newly discovered evidence claims, even when past filing deadlines have expired.

Challenge Brady violations (where prosecutors withheld exculpatory evidence) through broader interpretations of due process rights.

Advocates are pushing for federal legislation that would allow more prisoners to bring habeas claims based on newly discovered evidence or prosecutorial misconduct.

Learn More About Habeas Corpus and Post-Conviction Relief

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/habeas_corpus

Conclusion: How to Take Action

The legal landscape is shifting in 2025, and new opportunities for sentence reductions, appeals, and prison reform are emerging. Whether through Second Look laws, Supreme Court decisions, or prison condition lawsuits, there are ways to fight for justice.

If you or a loved one are looking for post-conviction relief options, contact us today at info@postconvictionreliefassociates.com or call (216) 302-0650.

Let’s keep pushing for justice in 2025 and beyond!

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[ivankahasbeentreatedsounfairly]

The NY Times

by Charlie Savage and Alan Feuer

A federal appeals court on Thursday said that it would not block the Justice Department from releasing a report by the special counsel Jack Smith about the two now-closed investigations he conducted into President-elect Donald J. Trump.

In a brief and unsigned order, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, rejected an emergency request from Mr. Trump’s legal team to stop the report from coming out.

But the order does not necessarily mean the report will become public immediately.

Both sections of Mr. Smith’s two-volume report remain for the moment under an injunction put in place this week by a lower-court judge in Florida that is temporarily blocking their release.

The Justice Department has already said that it intends to hold off on releasing the volume that concerns the case in Florida in which Mr. Trump was accused of mishandling classified documents after he left office.

But the department has said that it wants to release the other volume, which details Mr. Smith’s decisions in the case he filed in Washington accusing Mr. Trump of seeking to overturn the 2020 election.

In its order on Thursday night, the appeals court left the injunction in place but said that the Justice Department could take further action seeking to appeal it. Still, the injunction, which was issued by Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who oversaw the classified documents case, is scheduled to last only another three days.

When it expires, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland could go ahead with his plans to release the portion of Mr. Smith’s report concerning the election interference case.

In the meantime, Mr. Trump’s lawyers could try further to stop or delay the release of the report by asking the Supreme Court to step in.

Mr. Smith was forced to drop both criminal cases after Mr. Trump won the 2024 election because of a Justice Department policy that sitting presidents should be seen as temporarily immune from prosecution while in office.

While that meant Mr. Trump had already largely won the legal battle, a final clash has emerged over whether the public will see any of Mr. Smith’s report about his investigative findings and prosecutorial decisions. Department regulations require him to provide that information to Mr. Garland.

The Justice Department has said that Mr. Garland does not intend to release the volume about the classified documents case because charges remain pending against two of Mr. Trump’s co-defendants. Prosecutors have acknowledged that it would not be fair to the men to air the special counsel’s decision-making in the case because it could affect their right to a fair trial.

The new administration is widely seen as being likely to end that case altogether, either by pardoning the co-defendants or by simply dropping it. But it would then be up to Mr. Trump’s appointees whether to release that portion of the report, which Mr. Trump’s legal team has fought to keep suppressed.

[lboogie1906]

Justice Peggy Ann Quince (January 3, 1948) is a former justice of the Supreme Court of Florida, having served as chief justice (2008-10). She was the second African American and third woman to serve as chief justice. She had been a justice of the Court since 1999 and was the first African American woman to sit on the state’s highest Court and the third female Justice. From 1993 to 1997, she served as a judge on Florida’s Second District Court of Appeal (1993-97). On July 1, 2008, she assumed the office of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Florida, the first African American woman to head any branch of Florida government.

She was raised by her father, Solomon Quince, a civilian employee of the Navy, in Chesapeake, Virginia. The second of five children, she had to attend segregated schools, but she excelled as a student. She attended Howard University as an undergraduate and received her JD from the Columbus School of Law at The Catholic University of America. She is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority. She worked in the Criminal Division of the Florida Attorney General’s office (1990-93), for the last five years as bureau chief for death penalty appeals. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence #alphakappaalpha

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Kyle Cheney at Politico:

Donald Trump is on the cusp of emerging unscathed from his four criminal prosecutions — thanks almost entirely to the decisions of four judges he appointed. Trump’s three Supreme Court picks formed a decisive bloc to declare presidents immune from prosecution for official conduct — freezing the charges he faces in multiple jurisdictions for trying to subvert the 2020 election and putting his New York conviction in doubt. Then his nominee to the federal court in Florida, Judge Aileen Cannon, handed him another victory by dismissing the charges he faces for hoarding classified documents and concealing them from investigators.

Her decision earned a shout-out from Trump as he accepted the Republican nomination on Thursday. “A major ruling was handed down from a highly respected federal judge in Florida, Aileen Cannon,” he said. Trump’s string of victories reflects what experts say is extraordinary luck and timing. He’s the first president since Ronald Reagan to appoint three justices to the Supreme Court, and the first to ever face criminal charges that, soon thereafter, landed in front of the very judges he put on the bench. “This is a perfect example of serendipity, how the occurrence of events and trials and tribulations of the judicial process have all combined to work in favor of Donald Trump,” said Gene Rossi, a former federal prosecutor and civil litigator.

But it’s also a function, those experts say, of the fact that Trump rose to power in an era when conservatives — who had been burned in the past by judicial picks that later broke ranks — had begun perfecting a strategy of appointing judges who would more reliably rule in their favor. President Joe Biden, too, has appointed judges whose backgrounds appear more reliably liberal, though it’s not yet clear whether he will have the same impact on the judiciary as his predecessor. “Today, given that politics are so important in securing a judicial appointment, I can see how that sort of concern can spread,” said David Zaring, professor of legal studies from the Wharton School of Business. “[Trump] got so lucky — people don’t usually get a chance to appoint three justices to the Supreme Court in one term. Trump got it and then the Supreme Court gave him a very favorable ruling after that.”

Cannon’s ruling in the documents case had nothing to do with the substance of the charges — widely considered to be the most clear-cut case Trump faces. Cannon found that Attorney General Merrick Garland overstepped his authority when he named Smith special counsel, invalidating the entire prosecution. But the decision — which legal experts suggested would likely be reversed on appeal — nevertheless put Trump’s already-slim odds of facing trial this year effectively out of reach. [...] Cannon, in particular, represents a stark example. She was confirmed to the bench in November 2020, days after Trump lost reelection to Joe Biden. And she drew widespread criticism two years later after she slowed the investigation by granting a longshot push by the defense to require that an independent monitor review materials the FBI seized from Mar-a-Lago.

[...] Not all of Trump’s appointees have ruled uniformly in his favor throughout his yearslong odyssey through the criminal justice system. In 2022, the Supreme Court rebuffed his effort to shield his White House papers from the Jan. 6 select committee, and it declined to consider his Cannon-backed effort to keep the documents investigation frozen.

This Politico article details the influence that the judges Donald Trump appointed are helping him evade legal trouble.

[article1111]

An Urgent Call for Justice: Addressing Corruption, Defamation, and Threats to Safety

By Enzo Vincenzi

Corruption, defamation, and threats to safety have no borders. The devastating impacts of these crimes are far-reaching and undermine justice, eroding the foundations of lawful governance and human rights. In my own experience, systemic corruption in both the United States and Costa Rica has not only disrupted my life but has also exposed troubling patterns of misconduct involving public officials, law enforcement agencies, and international representatives.

This article details the injustices I have endured and underscores the need for swift action to uphold justice and restore integrity to our institutions.

Systemic Corruption in the United States

My ordeal began in Lee County, Florida, where I faced an orchestrated campaign of corruption and harassment. Key individuals involved include Sheriff Carmine Marcino, former Sheriff Mike Scott, and an unlawful immigrant named Miriam Pacheco. These parties participated in organized fraud, drug trafficking, and even a conspiracy to commit murder. Despite public exposure of these crimes, including documented solicitation of murder-for-hire (Case No. #53–35825) reported in The Naples Daily News, justice remains elusive due to the complicity of high-ranking officials like former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former FBI Director James Comey.

My false arrest photo, unlawfully publicized by Sheriff Carmine Marcino, has had devastating consequences. The fabricated charges of obstruction of justice and resisting arrest have destroyed my reputation, severely limiting my professional opportunities. This defamatory action represents a blatant abuse of power and highlights a systemic failure to protect the rights of innocent citizens.

Escalating Threats in Costa Rica

Seeking refuge from corruption in the United States, I relocated to Costa Rica with hopes of rebuilding my life and business. Unfortunately, the misconduct followed me. Despite my repeated appeals for protection and assistance, I faced obstruction from U.S. Ambassador Cynthia A. Telles and her staff at the U.S. Embassy in Costa Rica. Their dismissive and negligent handling of my case exacerbated my vulnerability, leaving me exposed to threats and harassment.

Local officials and attorneys in Costa Rica, including Richard Seaton, Carly Huba, and James Huba, have targeted me with fabricated criminal charges and defamatory campaigns. These coordinated attacks are part of a broader scheme to seize my hotel business and property. This conspiracy has not only harmed me personally but has also jeopardized the investments of U.S. citizens who trusted Costa Rica’s legal system.

The Human Cost of Corruption

The ramifications of this corruption extend beyond individual cases. In Costa Rica, greed-fueled corruption has contributed to an alarming rise in crime, including organized murder and fraud. Public officials and attorneys, driven by avarice, have exploited the legal system to rob citizens and investors of their rightful properties. As widely reported in the media, these crimes have escalated the country’s murder rate and endangered countless lives.

Evidence from surveillance footage and public records reveals a disturbing pattern of cover-ups, conspiracies, and violent crimes. The involvement of minors in contract killings highlights a shocking disregard for human life and the rule of law. These atrocities must be met with decisive action to restore justice and protect innocent citizens.

A Demand for Accountability

To address these injustices, it is imperative to hold all responsible parties accountable. The evidence I have presented includes court cases, police records, and witness testimony, all of which document the corruption and misconduct I have faced. My appeals to authorities, including Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves and Judicial Investigation Office (OIJ) Director Randall Zúñiga, emphasize the urgent need for justice.

Key figures such as Sheriff Carmine Marcino and Ambassador Cynthia A. Telles must answer for their roles in perpetuating these crimes. The documented misconduct of these officials, including defamation, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy, represents a gross violation of ethical and legal standards. The integrity of our institutions depends on holding these individuals accountable.

Evidence and Appeals for Justice

On September 14, 2024, I submitted a comprehensive criminal complaint to multiple authorities, including President Rodrigo Chaves and OIJ Director Randall Zúñiga. This complaint contains:

Five Costa Rican court cases with supporting documentation.

Public records from the Costa Rica Supreme Court, Jaco Court, and Jaco Police Department.

Witness testimonies attesting to the hate crimes and conspiracies against me.

Despite the overwhelming evidence, justice remains elusive due to obstruction and negligence by officials such as Fiscal Eduardo Mora Casconte. These failures have emboldened corrupt parties to continue their schemes, jeopardizing the safety and investments of countless individuals.

On September 6, 2024, I also submitted a formal complaint to the Costa Rica College of Attorneys, detailing the roles of Francisco Eiter Cruz Marchena and Carlos Villegas Méndez in facilitating fraud and conspiracy. This complaint was forwarded to U.S. Secretary of State Anthony J. Blinken and the FBI to ensure transparency and accountability.

Unlawful Watch List Placement and Defamation

In addition to facing threats abroad, I have been unlawfully placed on a U.S. Department of Homeland Security watch list. This flagging, based on falsified information from Sheriff Carmine Marcino, violates my constitutional rights, including the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection and the 4th Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.

A TSA officer confirmed that fraudulent charges of obstruction and domestic violence, filed by Miriam Pacheco and supported by Sheriff Marcino, remain in their database despite being dismissed. This defamatory labeling not only restricts my freedom to travel but also places my safety at risk by portraying me as a threat to law enforcement.

Legal Demands and Call to Action

I am calling for immediate action to rectify these injustices:

Thorough Investigation: A comprehensive investigation into the actions of Sheriff Carmine Marcino and other complicit officials.

Record Corrections: Removal of all false and defamatory information from public and government records.

Protection of Rights: Upholding my constitutional rights and ensuring fair treatment under the law.

Public Disclosure: Transparency in disclosing defamatory statements and clearing my name.

Additionally, I urge authorities to investigate and prosecute those involved in corruption and conspiracy, both in the United States and Costa Rica. The safety of U.S. citizens and the integrity of international investments depend on our collective commitment to justice.

Conclusion

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” The corruption and defamation I have faced threaten not only my personal safety but also the principles of fairness and integrity that define our societies. I appeal to President Donald J. Trump, President Rodrigo Chaves, and all relevant authorities to take decisive action. Justice must prevail to protect future generations and uphold the rule of law.

May this call for justice serve as a testament to resilience, truth, and accountability in the face of adversity.

God Bless the United States of America and Costa Rica.

Enzo Vincenzi Ocean Beach Jaco Hotel, Costa Rica

Click here for the extended version

[beardedmrbean]

WASHINGTON — Special counsel Jack Smith and his team plan to resign before President-elect Donald Trump takes office, a source familiar with the matter said.

Smith’s office has been evaluating the best path for winding down its work on the two outstanding federal criminal cases against Trump, as the Justice Department’s longstanding position is that it cannot charge a sitting president with a crime.

The New York Times first reported Smith will step down.

The looming question in the weeks ahead is whether Smith's final report, detailing his charging decisions, will be made public before Inauguration Day. The special counsel's office is required under Justice Department regulations to provide a confidential report to Attorney General Merrick Garland, who can choose to make it public.

In late October, Trump said in a radio interview that he would immediately fire Smith as special counsel if re-elected. “It’s so easy — I would fire him within two seconds,” Trump said, adding that he got “immunity at the Supreme Court." The next attorney general could decide not to release Smith's final report as well.

Before Trump’s re-election last week, Smith and his team had continued moving forward in their election interference case against Trump. After Trump’s victory, however, a federal judge overseeing the case agreed to give the special counsel’s office until Dec. 2 to decide how to proceed. 

The Justice Department indicted Trump last year for his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. But Smith's case was hampered early on by appeals from Trump's legal team and then in July of this year by the Supreme Court's ruling that he has immunity for some acts he took as president. In August, Smith's team re-tooled the indictment — stripping it of certain evidence the high court said was off limits and a federal grand jury returned a superseding indictment in the case.

The Justice Department had also charged Trump in Florida with allegedly hoarding classified documents after he left office and then refusing to give them back. But a federal judge dismissed the case in July, saying Smith's appointment was illegal. That case remains on appeal.

When the former president was first indicted, Smith said he would move quickly to trial, but Trump's legal team successfully sought to delay in both cases while then-candidate Trump routinely lambasted Smith at his rallies and online.

The election-interference case in Washington was narrowly focused on Trump, but an open question remains as to whether any unnamed co-conspirators referenced in the indictments face future legal jeopardy.

There’s no Justice Department norm for alleged criminal conspirators to avoid being prosecuted because they are connected to an incoming president, or because that future president is likely to pardon them.

[keep-both-eyes-on-trump]

Trump Watch #10

More nominations by Trump: 

Massad Boulos as senior advisor on Arab and Middle Eastern affairs. 

Boulos is a Lebanese American billionaire businessman and father-in-law of Trump’s daughter Tiffany. 

His appeal centers on his ability to engage with different factions within Lebanese politics including Hezbollah and Lebanese Forces Party. 

Chad Chronister to lead the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). 

Chronister is a sheriff from Hillsborough County, Florida. He has a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and a masters’ in criminology. 

Florida Attorney General, Ashley Moody, has praised his work on the opioid crisis.

He arrested a pastor for holding church services while under stay-at-home orders in March 2020 and is facing MAGA backlash for it.  

Kash Patel to lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). 

Patel is a former public defender who spent several years as a Justice Department prosecutor before serving as a staffer for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence where he ran the committee’s investigation into Russian interference with the 2016 campaign. 

He has embraced Trump’s rhetoric about a “deep state,” called for a “comprehensive housecleaning” of government workers who are disloyal to Trump, and referred to journalists as traitors.  

Charles Kushner to serve as US ambassador to France. 

Kushner is a real estate billionaire and father-in-law to Ivanka Trump. 

He was pardoned by Trump in December of 2020 after serving two years in prison for tax evasion and retaliating against a federal witness. Chris Christie, a US attorney, called it “one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes” he prosecuted.

John Phelan as secretary of the navy. 

Phelan is the founder and chair of Rugger Management LLC, a private investment firm in Florida, and donor to the Trump campaign. 

He has no military experience, and would be the first permanent Navy secretary without military experience since 2009. 

He serves in an advisory position for Spirit of America, a non-profit that supports the defense of Ukraine and Taiwan. 

Keith Kellogg as Special Envoy to Ukraine and Russia. 

Kellogg is a decorated three-star general who is a staunch supporter of an “America First” national security agenda. 

He has been Trump’s top advisor on defense issues and served as chief of staff on Trump’s National Security Council during Trump’s first term.

He is co-chairman of the American First Policy Institute’s Center for American Security and wrote chapters in the group's policy book which lays out a Trump national security agenda. 

He has shown support for Ukraine, but states it is in the best interest for Ukraine and America to seek a ceasefire and negotiate a peace agreement with Russia. 

Jay Bhattacharya to lead the National Institutes of Health.

Bhattacharya is a physician and Stanford University health researcher who criticized pandemic lockdowns and vaccine mandates.

He was one of three authors of the The Great Barrington Declaration, an open letter released in October 2020 that challenged lockdowns and mask mandates and called for speeding herd immunity by allowing low-risk individuals to get infected with COVID-19.

He faced restrictions on social media platforms because of his views and was a plaintiff in Murthy v. Missouri, a supreme court case that contended federal officials improperly suppressed conservative views in their efforts to combat misinformation. 

Jim O’Neill as deputy secretary of HHS.

O’Neill previously served in HHS under George W. Bush, and he was considered by Trump to head the FDA in 2016. 

He has expressed disdain for federal regulation and called for the FDA to only consider safety of a drug to approve it for use rather than safety and efficacy. 

Brendan Carr to lead the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Carr would be elevated from commissioner to chair of the FCC; he will not require Senate confirmation.

He has stated “combating tech censorship is going to be one of the top priorities” for him in order to “restore Americans’ right to free speech.” 

He penned Project 2025’s chapter on the FCC calling for restricted immunity offered by Section 230 for tech giants and tamping down on businesses’ ability to censor protected speech. He also wants tech companies to be more transparent about algorithm changes and decisions to block or demonetize users. 

Like Trump, Carr has taken aim at broadcast media and indicated he will take Trump’s complaints about various news outlets like CBS, NBC, and ABC seriously. 

Howard Lutnick for commerce secretary. 

Lutnick is a billionaire investor and Wall Street CEO.

He will be responsible for enforcing the tariffs Trump campaigned on, for which he has expressed support. He has also expressed support for tax cuts and cryptocurrency where, like Trump, he has business interests.