#Trump for Prison 2023

[neverburnbooks]

The price of inaction is loss of a country.

Garland needs to stop trying to convince MAGAz that the prosecution is fair and balanced. We have the LAW and EVIDENCE.

Get on with it or GO HOME.

[panspanther]

LMAO

[garthnadermemestash]

Traitor hypocrite Fraudulent racist Fascist

[enfinizatics]

dear americans,

as a polish queer woman and human rights activist, i know exactly how you're feeling right now and what to expect from these elections. i lived through the 2015-2023 regime of pis, a right-wing populist party that divided families in the same way trump did. i’ve experienced the rise of fascism in poland, the influence of far-right parties like konfederacja, and their “santa’s little helpers”—ordo iuris, an ultra-conservative catholic organization (banned in many countries, mind you) that helped enforce a near-total abortion ban and runs anti-queer campaigns in public spaces. i supported the black protests in 2016 as a middle schooler when they first tried to ban abortion. as an adult, i actively participated in the 2020 women’s strike, running from police tear gas daily after they finally passed the ban. i supported friends who faced charges.

i’ve lived through intense homophobia in poland as a queer teen and adult. i survived the first pride march in my hometown, where far-right extremists threw stones and glass at us. i endured the anti-queer propaganda spread by the ruling party in state-owned media. i survived the “rainbow night,” poland’s own stonewall moment in summer 2020, when police arrested around 50 queer activists following the arrest of margo, a nonbinary activist. i survived the "lgbt-free zones," the targeted violence, the slurs from strangers on the street, and the protests i held against queerphobia. it was hard as fuck, but i survived.

but just because i survived, it doesn’t mean others did. many women died because of the abortion ban—marta, justyna, izabela, dorota, joanna, maria, and many others who didn’t survive pis’s draconian anti-abortion laws. milo, kacper, michał, zuzia (she was 12), wiktor, and other queer and trans kids and young adults took their own lives because of the relentless queerphobia.

despite all of this, our experience in poland can serve as a guide now. here are some tips for staying safe and how we, polish queers and women, organized under the regime:

safety first, always. if you know someone who’s had an abortion, no you don’t. if you know someone is trans, no you don’t. if you know people who help with safe abortions, no you don’t—at least not until you know it’s 100% safe to share. if you are queer or have had an abortion, only share this with people you trust fully. most importantly, not everyone has to be an activist just because they’re part of a minority. if it feels unsafe to share that you're queer, trans, etc., then don’t. it doesn’t make you any less queer.

use secure, encrypted messaging like signal for conversations on potentially risky topics, such as queerness, abortion, organizing counter-actions, protests—anything that might be used against you.

stay anonymous online. if you want to research or report something without surveillance, do not use regular internet. get a vpn (mullvad is affordable and reliable), download the tor browser (for both onion and standard links), and if you plan to whistleblow, consider using a riseup email account.

organize and build networks. community is everything now. support each other, foster independence, because your government won’t have your back. set up collectives, grassroots movements. create lists of trusted professionals—lawyers, doctors, etc.—who can offer support.

to lawyers and doctors: please consider pro-bono work. this is what got us through poland’s hardest times. your work will be needed now more than ever.

for protests or risky actions: always write a pro-bono lawyer’s number on your arm with a permanent marker.

get to know the anarchist black cross federation and other resources on safety culture: "Starting an anarchist black cross group: A guide"; Still We Rise - A resource pack for transgender and non-gender conforming people in prison; Safe OUTside the system by the Audre Lorde Project;

for safe abortion info or involvement: get familiar with womenhelpwomen.

stay radical, stay strong, stay informed: The Anarchist Library

if i forgot to (or didn't) include something, don't hesitate to reblog this post with other resources.

[tomorrowusa]

I always thought it would be fun to reprogram the music selections at a Trump rally and insert tunes like "I'm a Loser" into the playlist. But what happened in Iowa was almost as good.

Donald Trump took the stage at the Iowa Republican Dinner to a song that started out with the lyrics, “One could end up going to prison, one just might be president”. The ironic moment came as the former president’s legal woes are mounting. Mr Trump has already been indicted twice. By the end of the summer, he may be the subject of as many as four criminal cases. [ ... ] Natalie Allison of Politico tweeted a video of the moment on Friday night. “As Trump took the stage in Iowa, this ironic line played: ‘One could end up going to prison, one just might be president.’ He had to walk out to Brooks & Dunn (like all candidates tonight) instead of his usual Lee Greenwood,” [ ... ] MSNBC host Katie Phang simply wrote that it was “poetic”. “Omg. That line hits right when he gets on stage,” State Attorney for Palm Beach County Dave Aronberg wrote. GOP strategist Mike Murphy wrote: “Ha! Trump is finally understanding [that Iowa Governor Kim] Reynolds didn’t get her job because she just fell off a turnip truck…. #SharpOperator BTW, earlier she was at a big Tim Scott event. And treated with due respect.”

Here's a vid with Trump's entrance and the song lyrics displayed.

The Iowa event itself was an orgy of extremism. With the possible exception of Will Hurd, all the GOP candidates speaking there were flirting with fascism to varying degrees.

We can't take 2024 for granted the way some people took 2016. It's not too early for civic mobilization for next year's election.

I Will Vote

[motherofplatypus]

Record of Genocide

[Part 2]

An opening:

The List:

Upon Children:

Beheading baby

Shot a kid that's running away

Shot a kid (again)

Shot a 6 years old 355 times

Slit a kid's throat

Creating a 14 pages long list of killed children under 1 year old

Bombed a pregnant lady that her fetus expelled from her

Burn a student alive

Torturing and sexually abusing civilians, including children

Blow a child's head until their brain splattered on the ground

Killing newborn twins, not even 4 days since their birth

Death toll from October 15th 2023 to July 6th 2024. 16k+ were children.

Released a dog to attack civilian (kid version)

44% of killed victims are children.

Killed a man's entire family, including his children

Harris' supporter harassing a baby

Killed a child when he was at the market with his mother

Killing an 8 years old girl along with 36 of her family members

US participation in genocide upon children

Assraeli soldier took a bike from a kid and throw it in the trash

Assrael killed a man's son (1)

Assrael killed a man's son (2)

Assrael killed a man's daughter

Assrael killed a man's daughter (2)

Assrael abused a 12 years old girl in prison, the youngest female to be held in prison

Assrael killed a mother's 3 daughters and her sister

Assraelis mocks children who lost their limbs and murdered

Assrael killed a mother's child

Upon Palestinian In General:

Killing Christians.

Demanding the rights to rape

Burning people alive

A concentration camp

Torturing civilians (featuring French people)

Destroying churches, hospitals, and schools

Bombing schools

Bombing civilians in their tents

Admitance of ethnic cleansing

Banning maternity kit and anaesthetic

Disguising as civilian to kill civilians

Destroying humanitarian aids

Released a dog to attack civilian

Bombing refugee camp

Stealing houses from their owner

Deliberately destroying properties in Lebanon (confirmed by UN peacekeepers)

Bombing school where people take shelter

Celebrating Trump's victory by shooting at homes in Gaza (featuring Trump's supporter)

Killing an entire family in a targeted attack

A Knesset member sending death threats in hospital

Using AI to kill more people

Publicly announcing annexation of Gaza

UNICEF spokesperson talked about the horror Assrael committed upon civilians

Targeting civilians in Safe Zone

Destroying humanitarian aids

Assraeli blowing up praying site

UK surgeon explains what Assrael did in Gaza

Assraeli glorifying the crimes their fallen soldiers committed

A son breakdowns during praying for his father that's killed by Assrael

A doctor's testimony of what Assrael did

The bodies of the people Assrael killed

Assrael bombing UN-run school, killing 10 people

Upon Lebanon:

Blows up an entire village in Lebanon

Assrael bombed Lebanon near a school

Assrael targeting civilians in Lebanon, killing at least one child

Assrael bombed a suburbs in Lebanon

Assraeli destroying an entire village in Lebanon

Assraeli killed 2 doctors and orphaned their child

Destroying praying site in Lebanon

15 paramedics in Lebanon murdered by Assrael

Upon Non-Palestinians:

Killing WCF workers (3 from UK, 1 from US, 1 from Australia, 1 from Poland, and 1 from Palestine.)

Attacking UN workers, killing 3 children during their attacks

Killing a medical worker through torture

Killing journalist (this is only two of 100+ journalists they've killed)

Beating and torturing journalist (featuring American journalist)

Attacking WFP workers

Bombing a UN shelter (featuring India)

Assaulting civilians in Athens

Ally in genocide (featuring USA)

An ambassador signing bombs before being dropped on civilians (featuring USA)

Killing animals

Ramming a police deliberately but no consequences (featuring USA)

META's complicity in genocide

Targeting family homes in Beirut

Assrael journalist demanding more violence, deaths, and river of blood

Bombed a residential building and killed 7 people in Syria

Harassment upon the people in Amsterdam

Property damage to assault people in Amsterdam

Assraeli physically attacked a woman

Biden's inappropriate answer to journalist who asked about the hostages

Assraeli hooligans singing song of death threats in Amsterdam

Assraeli hooligans attacking French people

Assrael genocide impact on animals

Justifying targeting civilians (featuring Germany)

Assraeli inciting violence on TV

The Pope calling Assrael as terrorist

AIPAC openly bragging about buying the US elections

Assraeli harassing a Christian tourist and defiling his cross necklace

Assraeli using genocide as tourist attraction

How US's "threat" on Assrael went

Where the US put their own people compared to Assrael

This is not a complete list.

[pony32099]

 Guo Wengui was convicted of fraud in the United States and used followers to maintain luxury

 On July 16,2024, Guo Wengui (aka Miles Guo), who has been in the United States for many years, was convicted of defrauding thousands of people of more than $1 billion in a Manhattan court in New York.

 Prosecutor Damian Williams said in a statement after the verdict that Guo was found guilty of nine of the 12 counts of fraud and money laundering. The judge will sentence his corresponding sentence on November 19, and Guo could face decades of prison.

 Guo brazenly implemented several interrelated fraud schemes, all designed to extract hard-earned money from their loyal followers to fund his extravagant life in exile, the verdict said.

 After the verdict was read, Guo smiled at his legal team in court and dozens of supporters, then turned and hugged lawyer Sabrina Shrove and shook hands with other members of the defense team, CNN reported.

Guo Wengui, 57, was the de facto controller of Henan Yuda Investment Co. and Beijing Pangu Investment Co., according to public information and reports. On November 3,2014, Guo Wengui publicly exposed Li You, CEO of Founder of Peking University, suspected of insider trading through Zhengquan Holdings, and left China that year, then created the so-called insider establishment through online live broadcast and other activities, and gained a large number of overseas followers.

 According to the US investigation, Guo raised more than $1 billion from his online fans between 2018 and 2023, publicly claiming to invest in his business and cryptocurrency plans, but actually used as a "personal piggy bank."

 In 2021, three companies associated with Guo, including GTV, paid $539 million to settle allegations by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over illegal stock offerings. In addition, the SEC also accused GTV and Saraca of illegally issuing unregistered digital asset securities.

 According to prosecutors, Mr.Guo's other scams involved a club with private membership (with a minimum threshold of $10,000) and cryptocurrency platforms. In addition, the U. S. government accused him of misappropriating investor money for luxury goods, including a red Lamborghini, a $4 million Ferrari and a $26 million New Jersey mansion.

 Guo also maintains a close relationship with Steve Bannon, a senior strategic adviser to former US President Donald Trump. Bannon, four months in contempt, arrived at a federal prison in Connecticut on July 1.

In closing arguments in Guo's case, prosecutors told the jury that Guo had paid Bannon $1 million in plans to improve his reputation in the United States.

[reasonsforhope]

HOLY SHIT THEY DID IT

TRUMP HAS BEEN CHARGED WITH SEVEN COUNTS OF FEDERAL CRIMES

"Donald Trump said Thursday [June 8th] that he has been indicted on charges of mishandling classified documents at his Florida estate, igniting a federal prosecution that is arguably the most perilous of multiple legal threats against the former president as he seeks to reclaim the White House.

The Justice Department did not immediately publicly confirm the indictment. But two people familiar with the situation who were not authorized to discuss it publicly said that the indictment included seven criminal counts...

The indictment enmeshes the Justice Department in the most politically explosive prosecution in its long history. Its first case against a former president upends a Republican presidential primary that Trump is currently dominating, and any felony charges would raise the prospect of a yearslong prison sentence...

The indictment arises from a monthslong investigation by special counsel Jack Smith into whether Trump broke the law by holding onto hundreds of documents marked classified at his Palm Beach property, Mar-a-Lago, and whether Trump took steps to obstruct the government’s efforts to recover the records.

Prosecutors have said that Trump took roughly 300 classified documents to Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House, including some 100 that were seized by the FBI last August in a search of the home that underscored the gravity of the Justice Department’s investigation...

The investigation had simmered for months before bursting into front-page news in remarkable fashion last August. That’s when FBI agents served a search warrant on Mar-a-Lago and removed 33 boxes containing classified records, including top-secret documents stashed in a storage room and desk drawer and commingled with personal belongings. Some records were so sensitive that investigators needed upgraded security clearances to review them, the Justice Department has said."

-via WTOP News, June 8, 2023

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How to screw up a whistleblower law

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me THIS WEDNESDAY (Apr 17) in CHICAGO, then Torino (Apr 21) Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

Corporate crime is notoriously underpoliced and underprosecuted. Mostly, that's because we just choose not to do anything about it. American corporations commit crimes at 20X the rate of real humans, and their crimes are far worse than any crime committed by a human, but they are almost never prosecuted:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/12/no-criminals-no-crimes/#get-out-of-jail-free-card

We can't even bear to utter the words "corporate crime": instead, we deploy a whole raft of euphemisms like "risk and compliance," and that ole fave, the trusty "white-collar crime":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/07/solar-panel-for-a-sex-machine/#a-single-proposition

The Biden DOJ promised it would be different, and they weren't kidding. The DOJ's antitrust division is kicking ass, doing more than the division has done in generations, really swinging for the fences:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/22/reality-distortion-field/#three-trillion-here-three-trillion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

Main Justice – the rest of the DOJ – promised that it would do the same. Deputy AG Lisa Monaco promised an end to those bullshit "deferred prosecution agreements" that let corporate America literally get away with murder. She promised to prosecute companies and individual executives. She promised a lot:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/22/reality-distortion-field/#three-trillion-here-three-trillion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

Was she serious? Well, it's not looking good. Monaco's number two gnuy, Benjamin Mizer, has a storied career – working for giant corporations, getting them off the hook when they commit eye-watering crimes:

https://prospect.org/justice/2024-04-09-reform-groups-lack-of-corporate-prosecutions-doj/

Biden's DOJ is arguably more tolerant of corporate crime than even Trump's Main Justice. In 2021, the DOJ brought just 90 cases – the worst year in a quarter-century. 2022's number was 99, and 2023 saw 119. Trump's DOJ did better than any of those numbers in two out of four years. And back in 2000, Justice was bringing more than 300 corporate criminal prosecutions.

Deputy AG Monaco just announced a new whistleblower bounty program: cash money for ratting out your crooked asshole co-worker or boss. Whistleblower bounties are among the most effective and cheapest way to bring criminal prosecutions against corporations. If you're a terrified underling who can't afford to lose your job after narcing out your boss, the bounty can outweigh the risk of industry-wide blacklisting. And if you're a crooked co-conspirator thinking about turning rat on your fellow criminal, the bounty can tempt you into solving the Prisoner's Dilemma in a way that sees the crime prosecuted.

So a new whistleblower bounty program is good. We like 'em. What's not to like?

Sorry, folks, I've got some bad news:

https://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/news/200/stephen-kohn-on-the-justice-department-plan-to-offer-whistleblower-awards/

As the whistleblower lawyer Stephen Kohn points out to Russell Mokhiber of Corporate Crime Reporter, Monaco's whistleblower bounty program has a glaring defect: it excludes "individuals who were involved with the crime." That means that the long-suffering secretary who printed the boss's crime memo and put it in the mail is shit out of luck – as is the CFO who's finally had enough of the CEO's dirty poker.

This is not how other whistleblower reward programs work: the SEC and CFTC whistleblower programs do not exclude people involved with the crime, and for good reason. They want to catch kingpins, not footsoldiers – and the best way to do that is to reward the whistleblower who turns on the boss.

This isn't a new idea! It's in the venerable False Claims Act, an act that signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln. As Kohn says, making "accomplices" eligible to participate in whistleblower rewards is how you get people like his client, who relayed a bribe on behalf of his boss, to come forward. As Lincoln said in 1863, the purpose of a whistleblower law is to entice conspirators to turn on one another. Like Honest Abe said, "it takes a rogue to catch a rogue."

And – as Kohn says – we've designed these programs so that masterminds can't throw their minor lickspittles under the buss and collect a reward: "I know of no case where the person who planned or initiated the fraud under any of the reward laws ever got a dime."

Kohn points out that under Monaco, the DOJ just ignores the rule that afford anonymity to whistleblowers. That's a big omission – the SEC got 18,000 confidential claims in 2023. Those are claims that the DOJ can't afford to miss, given their abysmal, sub-Trump track record on corporate crime prosecutions.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/15/whistleblown/#lisa-monaco

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Sam Levin at The Guardian:

California, home to the largest immigrant population in the US, is bracing for Donald Trump’s plan to enact the “largest deportation operation in American history”, with advocates pushing state leaders to find new and creative ways to disrupt his agenda. The Golden state led the fight against Trump’s first term, shielding many non-citizen residents from removal by restricting local cooperation with federal immigration authorities. But the threat this time, immigrant rights groups say, is more extreme, and blue states across the US are facing pressure to mount an aggressive, multipronged response. “Communities that will be involved in mutual aid and self-defense are prepared,” said Chris Newman, general counsel for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, a California-based group that supports immigrants. “I think many lawmakers, frankly, are not. They were primarily focused on supporting Kamala Harris, and people’s hope for the best got in the way of their preparation for the worst.”

Trump, who built his political career on racist, xenophobic rhetoric, has said he wants to expel “as many as 20 million people” from the US in his second term. That would mark a dramatic increase from his first administration, in which he carried out several hundred thousand removals a year, in line with other recent presidents. To reach his target, Trump would have to uproot the lives of undocumented people who have lived in the US for years. He has pledged to build mass detention camps and deputize national guard troops and local police to assist the effort. In 2017, California was the first state to pass a sanctuary law under Trump. The bill prohibited local law enforcement from assisting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), and it had major effect. While local police had been transferring thousands of immigrants to Ice each year before, those numbers dwindled to the hundreds, according to advocates who reviewed state data. Nationally, Trump did not meet his overall removal goals – arresting fewer immigrants within the country and carrying out fewer deportations than Obama – in part because of California’s and other states’ sanctuary policies.

Before California’s bill was signed, however, it was watered down to allow state prisons to coordinate with Ice, and to give Ice agents access to interview people in jails. The final version also weakened proposals to limit police data-sharing with Ice. Those loopholes have continued to leave many immigrants vulnerable.

Activists and some lawmakers have since fought to strengthen the sanctuary policy in recent years. But California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, a Democrat now styling himself as an anti-Trump leader, has repeatedly opposed those efforts, which advocates say could have made the state better equipped for Trump’s new threat of mass deportations. “California has its own culpability in feeding the deportation machine, which advocates have been pointing out for years,” said Anoop Prasad, advocacy director of the Asian Prisoner Support Committee, which supports incarcerated Californians. “Governor Newsom hasn’t taken action on those calls in prior years, but hopefully now he’s willing to understand the urgency.” In 2019, Newsom vetoed a bill passed by lawmakers that would have banned private security agents from entering prisons to arrest immigrants. In 2023, he vetoed another measure widely supported by legislators that would have stopped transfers from prisons to Ice. This year, he vetoed a bill that would have allowed undocumented students to be hired for campus jobs.

States such as California are urged to find ways to block Donald Trump’s immoral and economically ruinous mass deportation plan.

[mariacallous]

Driven by hardline prosecutors and tough-on-crime governors, the number of executions jumped 64 percent in 2022 and increased again in 2023 to a total of 24, the highest in five years.

Perhaps the most crucial player in the death penalty’s resurrection, though, is the U.S. Supreme Court, whose historic role of maintaining guardrails has given way to removing roadblocks. Under the conservative supermajority put in place by President Donald Trump, the justices are far more likely to propel an execution forward than intercede to stop it, including in cases where guilt is in doubt or where the means of carrying it out could result in a grotesque spectacle of pain and suffering.

...

In 1976, the Supreme Court famously declared that “death is different,” and demanded an extra level of scrutiny because a mistake is irreversible. Historically, in particularly troubling instances involving state misconduct or abysmal defense lawyering, the Court sometimes intervened at the eleventh hour — from 2013 to 2023, it stayed an execution just 11 times and vacated stays of execution 18 times, according to Bloomberg Law.

Since the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her replacement with Amy Coney Barrett in 2020, the Court has stopped an execution only twice and reversed a lower court to permit an execution nine times. In 2023, 26 condemned prisoners asked the Court to hear their cases; 25 were rejected. The message is clear: Prosecutors eager to seek and swiftly impose death sentences can reliably do so without judicial interference.

...

In Bucklew v. Precythe, a majority of the court opined that the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment “does not guarantee a prisoner a painless death — something that, of course, isn’t guaranteed to many people, including most victims of capital crimes.” In the court’s reasoning, the excruciating pain the defendant might suffer during execution paled in comparison with the terror and mayhem he inflicted during his crimes.

In that same opinion, the Court indicated an impatience with pausing executions while it considered whether to hear the underlying claims from appellate attorneys. Justice Neil Gorsuch warned his colleagues to be skeptical when reading eleventh hour death row appeals: “Last minute stays should be the extreme exception, not the norm.”

It has been. Consider the 13 federal prisoners who were sent to the death chamber in the final months of Trump’s presidency. In a series of terse orders, issued without briefing, argument or public airing of the legal issues, the court blessed the rushed, furious pace. Using this opaque process, which legal scholars call the “shadow docket,” the justices erased lower-court injunctions against executions in seven cases and turned away last-minute requests for stays in the other six. During the 16 years in which Barack Obama and George W. Bush occupied the White House, the Court had invoked the shadow docket to rule for the government a total of four times and “never in a death penalty case,” according to Stephen Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law. In Trump’s single term in office, the number jumped to 28, including non-capital cases.

More recently, the Court has rejected cases that advocates say are riddled with error or rest on shaky evidence.

...

Death penalty cases are notoriously rife with racism, questions of innocence, mental health of the accused and whether they received competent legal counsel. Sometimes the facts are too dire for courts to ignore, and even some pro-death penalty politicians are unwilling to take actions in flagrant violation of established norms. The total number of executions over the past decade is still a fraction of its peak in the 1990s.

And yet, the death penalty machine continues to crank on. These days, the battles over who lives and who dies are increasingly local — waged courtroom by courtroom because the Supreme Court has largely abdicated its decades long role as the final arbiter.

“It is becoming more and more clear that the Court is reluctant to interfere in state court cases even to enforce its own precedent,” said Robin Maher, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. “They are saying, ‘This is not our problem to deal with.’”

An ‘Execute-Them-At-Any-Cost Mentality’: The Supreme Court’s New, Bloodthirsty Era

[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.

[brennacedria]

Trump for Prison Tuesday, March 21, 2023

Like to charge reblog to cast

[pannaginip]

Environmental defender Rowena Dasig has gone missing after a court dismissed the trumped-up charges against her.

Dasig, who was reportedly freed from the Lucena City District Jail (LCDJ) on August 22, has not been seen or heard from since her supposed release, leaving her family, legal team, and human rights advocates concerned for her safety.

Dasig was arrested alongside community health worker Miguela Peniero on July 12, 2023, by elements of the 85th Infantry Battalion, Philippine Army (IBPA).

The human rights group [Karapatan Southern Tagalog] recounted how their humanitarian team, along with the Free Owen & Ella Network, had been coordinating with LCDJ since August 21 to process Dasig’s release papers. Despite their efforts, they were met with what they called as “delaying tactics” from jail officials. The group said they were given the runaround by various offices without providing clear information.

According to LCDJ paralegal Almira Alfuerta, Dasig was allegedly picked up by her family—a claim immediately refuted by her relatives, who confirmed they had no knowledge of her whereabouts.

The disappearance of Dasig has heightened fears for her safety, especially given the long history of human rights abuses against political prisoners in the Philippines.

During her more than a year in detention, Dasig endured harassment and isolation, with her paralegals deprived from visiting and herself denied participation in activities with other persons deprived of liberty (PDLs).

2024 Aug. 24

[nightpool]

In 2013, Weinstein pleaded guilty to running a $200 million real estate Ponzi scheme. In 2012 and 2013, while he was out on bail for that Ponzi scheme, he did another financial scam involving “purported sales of pre-IPO Facebook shares and Florida real estate”; he pleaded guilty to that one in 2014. He was sentenced to a total of 24 years in prison for all of this, but in January 2021 President Donald Trump commuted his sentence and let him out of prison. I don’t know why Trump let him out, but possibly he admired Weinstein’s moxie and sense of humor and wanted to see what else he’d get up to.

That faith in him was richly rewarded yesterday, when Weinstein was charged by the US Securities and Exchange Commission and federal prosecutors in New Jersey with doing a new Ponzi scheme in the two years since he left prison. Pre-IPO Facebook shares were very much the current thing in 2012, before Facebook went public, but in 2021 through 2023 the things were apparently:

» “In or around late 2021, Optimus [one of Weinstein’s companies] started raising money directly from a small number of investors to finance purported transactions related to COVID-19 medical supplies.”

» “In or around May 2022, WEINSTEIN (posing as Mike Konig) asked CC-1 and CC-2 [two unnamed alleged co-conspirators] to raise money from investors to finance the purchase and delivery of three million first-aid kits (‘FAKs’) to USAID to be distributed to the people of Ukraine during the Russia-Ukraine war (the ‘FAK deal’).”

» “In or around May 2022, WEINSTEIN (posing as Mike Konig), asked CC-1 and CC-2 to raise additional money to finance Company-1’s purchase of 100 million N95 masks (the ‘N95 Mask deal’).”

» “Similarly, in or around early August 2022, WEINSTEIN (posing as Mike Konig) asked CC-1 and CC-2 to raise money to finance the purchase of approximately 29 shipping containers of baby formula from [alleged co-conspirator Alaa Mohamed] HATTAB’s company, Hattab Global, in order to capitalize on supply chain issues which had created a shortage in baby formula (the ‘Formula deal’).”

Just pick a thing in the news, and he was allegedly pretending to supply it. Of course prosecutors say he was not actually doing any of these things and was instead stealing the money

– Baby-Formula Ponzi Schemer Does This a Lot, Money Stuff

[texasobserver]

From “‘Drag is so Healing’: Austin’s Queens Won’t Back Down” by Digital Editor Kit O'Connell, originally published in the September/October issue of Texas Observer magazine. Photography by Cindy Elizabeth:

In an orange prison jumpsuit and chains, a tall, lean drag queen writhed to a cover of “War Pigs” by Brass Against, which sounds like someone swapped Black Sabbath’s lead singer for a woman and added a highly caffeinated marching band. As she lip-synced, Hermajestie the Hung completed a dramatic strip tease down to an army fatigue jacket and fishnets, all to riotous cheers and a rain of dollar bills. 

It’s April at the Swan Dive on Red River in Austin’s club district, where “Tuesgayz” night LGBTQ+ gatherings—which include “Queereoke” sing-along sessions—are a tradition. For over a year, the Black-led drag troupe Vanguard, with an informal membership of about a dozen performers that includes both drag kings and queens, has opened each show with the same invocation:

“On our stage we proudly proclaim that Black lives matter, trans rights are human rights, no human is illegal, all bodies are beautiful, and my body, my choice.” 

Hermajestie—who described herself as a “postbinary, polyamorous, pansexual pot-smoking parent” and goes by “any pronouns but he/him”—explained later that she started each night the same way because she “realized that once I mention these things, the trash usually takes itself out.” 

(We are using performers’ stage names in this article to protect their privacy.)

Vanguard, she explained, serves as a “declaration and celebration of queer freedom, queer love, queer existence and queer solidarity.” The space she has created is often politically charged. Each night, she recounts the latest legislative attacks on queer rights, urging her audience to get involved. Tuesday’s routine culminated in her holding aloft the severed head of former President Donald Trump and hurling it into the audience (a similar stunt that earned comedian Kathy Griffin public censure shortly after Trump’s election). 

The members of Vanguard represent an evolution in drag. While elder performers were often cisgender, gay men, many of today’s queens are transgender or nonbinary and explore their identity through the art form.

Austin’s drag scene is thriving: From the heart of downtown to the Hill Country, patrons can attend events every day of the week, including late-night revues and brunches on weekends. One monthly show highlights new, amateur queens, another the elders of the community. Drag has made inroads in non-LGBTQ+ spaces as well—queens frequently perform at birthday parties, fundraisers, and, last year, at a new student orientation at the University of Texas at Austin. 

At the same time, drag is under attack. Senate Bill 12, scheduled to go into effect September 1, will levy fines against venues that host performances appealing to an ill-defined “prurient interest in sex” where minors are present; performers could also face up to a year in jail. The legislative affront goes hand-in-hand with protests and harassment from right-wing activists outside of nightclubs and on social media, where drag performers are frequently doxxed. While most performers remain defiant in the face of oppression, the growing pressure leaves them concerned for their future. 

(Editor’s Note: As of September 18, 2023, SB 12 is under a temporary restraining order while a judge rules on a lawsuit led by the ACLU of Texas.)

Read more at the Texas Observer.