#evan corcoran

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Robert Faturechi, Justin Elliott, and Alex Mierjeski at ProPublica:

Nine witnesses in the criminal cases against former President Donald Trump have received significant financial benefits, including large raises from his campaign, severance packages, new jobs, and a grant of shares and cash from Trump’s media company. The benefits have flowed from Trump’s businesses and campaign committees, according to a ProPublica analysis of public disclosures, court records and securities filings. One campaign aide had his average monthly pay double, from $26,000 to $53,500. Another employee got a $2 million severance package barring him from voluntarily cooperating with law enforcement. And one of the campaign’s top officials had her daughter hired onto the campaign staff, where she is now the fourth-highest-paid employee. These pay increases and other benefits often came at delicate moments in the legal proceedings against Trump. One aide who was given a plum position on the board of Trump’s social media company, for example, got the seat after he was subpoenaed but before he testified.

Significant changes to a staffer’s work situation, such as bonuses, pay raises, firings or promotions, can be evidence of a crime if they come outside the normal course of business. To prove witness tampering, prosecutors would need to show that perks or punishments were intended to influence testimony. White-collar defense lawyers say the situation Trump finds himself in — in the dual role of defendant and boss of many of the people who are the primary witnesses to his alleged crimes — is not uncommon. Their standard advice is not to provide any unusual benefits or penalties to such employees. Ideally, decisions about employees slated to give evidence should be made by an independent body such as a board, not the boss who is under investigation. In addition to the New York case in which Trump was convicted last week, stemming from hidden payments to a porn star, Trump is facing separate charges federally and in Georgia for election interference and in another federal case for mishandling classified documents.

Attempts to exert undue influence on witnesses have been a repeated theme of Trump-related investigations and criminal cases over the years. Trump’s former campaign manager and former campaign adviser were convicted on federal witness tampering charges in 2018 and 2019. The campaign adviser had told a witness to “do a ‘Frank Pentangeli,’” referencing a character in “The Godfather Part II” who lies to a Senate committee investigating organized crime. Trump later pardoned both men in the waning days of his presidency. (He did not pardon a co-defendant of the campaign manager who had cooperated with the government.) During the congressional investigation into the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a former White House staffer testified that she got a call from a colleague the night before an interview with investigators. The colleague told her Trump’s chief of staff “wants me to let you know that he knows you’re loyal and he knows you’ll do the right thing tomorrow and that you’re going to protect him and the boss.” (A spokesperson for the chief of staff denied that he tried to influence testimony.)

Last year, Trump himself publicly discouraged a witness from testifying in the Georgia case. Trump posted on social media that he had read about a Georgia politician who “will be testifying before the Fulton County Grand Jury. He shouldn’t.” One witness has said publicly that, when he quit working for Trump in the midst of the classified documents criminal investigation, he was offered golf tournament tickets, a lawyer paid for by Trump and a new job that would have come with a raise. The witness, a valet and manager at Mar-a-Lago, had direct knowledge of the handling of the government documents at the club, the focus of one of the criminal cases against the former president. “I’m sure the boss would love to see you,” the employee, Brian Butler, recalled Trump’s property manager telling him. (The episode was first reported by CNN.) In an interview with ProPublica, Butler, who declined the offers, said he looked at them “innocently for a while.” But when he added up the benefits plus the timing, he thought “it could be them trying to get me back in the circle.”

ProPublica with some hard-hitting journalism here, as 9 witnesses in Donald Trump’s multiple criminal cases have received significant financial benefits from both his campaign and his businesses.

See Also:

MMFA: National news media are glossing over Trump’s “shady” financial benefits to witnesses

[nodynasty4us]

Special Counsel Jack Smith is currently in pursuit of Trump attorney Evan Corcoran. Smith and his team believe that Corcoran is in possession of information that the feds need, and that has been withheld under the umbrella of attorney-client privilege. ... One circumstances in which privilege does not apply is if the attorney participated in furtherance of a crime. So, that is precisely what Smith argued in a court filing yesterday, that Corcoran is helping Trump to commit a crime.

Electoral-vote.com

[uboat53]

Okay, I'm sure most of you missed it in the news of Donald Trump's indictment, but can we take a second to talk about Evan Corcoran?

For those who don't know, "Attorney 1" in the Trump indictment is Evan Corcoran. We know even though they didn't give us his name because they describe him doing the search of Mar-a-Lago and, well, we know that Evan Corcoran did that.

Evan Corcoran, Attorney 1, is all over the indictment because the Department of Justice was able to access his notes, and the notes make fairly clear that the fact that all the classified documents were not found by his search on June 2nd, 2022, was not because he lied to the FBI, but because Trump lied to him.

In other words, Mr. Corcoran has done what no other lawyer before him has. He's managed to set things up so that, instead of taking the fall for Trump, he's stitched Trump up instead. Kudos good sir.

[ivovynckier]

The Donald's lawyers will do this and that... Will they get paid is what I want to know. Rudy G.'s still waiting for his dough.

[adankrivervalleynearyou]

glee textposts pt. 7

texts w me and my friends edition

(credit to quest for the batman one)

[1mlostnow]

BIRD LORE

Stevie ‘Bird’ Corcoran was born to Lillian and David on November 2nd, 1978. He grew up in a three bedroom apartment with his two brothers and two sisters in Seattle, Washington.

Physical description-> stevie is blonde with wavy hair that he wears in a mullet. He’s got hazel eyes, he’s 5’10, he’s got snakebite piercings, and a scar covering the left side of his face.

Backstory -> TW SH/SA/Neglect/Abuse -> Stevie’s mother, Lillian, left after the twin girls, Emma and Lilly (1985), were born. Their financial situation was already bad, but David completely denied their struggles and continued to spend like it was nothing. This forced the two eldest, Mikey (1976) and Stevie, to have to steal food for their other siblings. Danny (1979) was usually in charge of watching the twins. When they were old enough to stay home on their own, because there was no way David would be trusted to watch them (he acted like a teenager, he’d have his loud friends over until late hours watching football and playing poker). When they could stay on their own, Mikey and Stevie brought Danny on one of their ‘shopping trips’ but he tripped and fell, getting the three of them caught. Stevie stayed behind and took the fall while his brothers ran, and he was taken in by police (he was 17). David picked him up and kicked him out of the apartment. He moved in with Gabi and her parents for the remainder of his senior year of high school. During this stage of his life he was incredibly depressed and used sh to cope. This would go on for a while, even as he worked at PPTH. He had earned enough in scholarships and outside work that he was able to entirely afford to earn his bachelors and PhD at University of Washington, where he got…fruity…with his roomate, who dropped out after two months. -> During his time there, he met Lauren at a bar one night. He was drunk, feeling a hell of a lot of internalized homophobia, and decided to go home with her to “fix himself”. He changed his mind when they got there but she wouldn’t listen and he could hardly stand on his own. So he let her do whatever. She became pregnant with Anna, and they got married, because that’s how he was raised. -> Lauren and 4 year old Anna attended Stevie’s final graduation where he earned his PhD, and he informed her that he wanted a divorce. As soon as that went through, he moved to New Jersey. He got a job at PPTH in the forensics department, and he was informed on his first day that the department head had quit, moving him up to the position. -> Gabi moved up there soon after and they moved into a duplex together. He wasn’t in much contact with any of his siblings besides Mikey, but he occasionally gets Christmas cards from the others.

Workplace relationships and dynamics (still editing) ->

Emilie -> they have breakfast 😋😋

Cosmo -> acquaintances, they bring each other food

Syd -> Cousins :D

Hen -> like surrogate father type thing

Teagan -> yappers 😮‍💨

Reina -> she and Anna are besties

Ev -> boyfriends 😝

Flux -> they’re friends :) flux has been trying to tell him for years that he’s probably bi at the least.

I think he’s also close with Danny, Bruce, and Andy, and they’re what he’d consider his friend group. Also—zombiebusters!

This will be edited!! Also lmk if there’s typos 😝 or if sm doesn’t make sense

[arizonaaaaaa]

Glee cast sings The Fame by Lady Gaga

Made some threads on twitter, will post them here and talk about it endlessly since there’s no character limit here, I think

Just Dance feat. Colby O’Donis sung by Artie, Puck and Sam in “Prom Queen”

-I’m 70% confident Kevin mentioned they were going to sing this in a mash-up with Dj Got Us Fallin’ in Love, Puck and Sam’s country voices worked a lot in Friday so I think they would do something interesting with Just Dance, maybe not something everyone would like but I’m ver curious about it, no doubts Artie would slay the rapping.

LoveGame sung by Brittany and Quinn

-I can’t imagine a scene or episode where this could happen, maybe a cheerios practice in season 2, I thought about including Santana but I don’t think her voice would fit, I also ultimately wanted it to be a Fierce duet as their friendship was barely explored in glee.

Paparazzi sung by Rachel and Shelby in “Theatricality”

-I absolutely hate Poker Face gcv, it’s terrible, and the worse part: it’s sung by Lea and Idina, they are SO GOOD, and they would do such a good job, anyways, if they still wanted to do something slower and more broadway-y I think Paparazzi would be the fit, the song is very dramatic after all.

Poker Face sung by Santana Lopez

-editing this part, while I’d love a Tincedes duet, this song talks about having sex with men but thinking about woman, like, for real, she’s the one that has to sing this song, I feel dumb for not doing this earlier but oh well, plus, her voice would fit better in my opinion

Eh, Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say) sung by Quinn Fabray in season 2

-I believe she could’ve sung this after Sam broke up with her and started dating Santana, the song is very slow, kind of like a ballad so I think it would fit Quinn’s more softer voice.

Beautiful, Dirty, Rich sung by Sugar Motta

-this could take place later in season 3 or in season 4 if they created a storyline where Sugar could sing, while not being the best singer, Vanessa Lengies can sing, and if I’m being honest, beautiful, dirty and rich describes Sugar very well.

The Fame sung by Blaine Anderson with the Warblers in season 2

-one of the infinite season 2 Blaine solos, not the biggest fan of acapella music but the warblers do it decently and I can almost listen to the warblers doing some “ding-ding-dee” in replace of the guitar in the beginning of the song.

Money Honey sung by Brittany, Kitty, Marley, Sugar, Tina and Unique in “Naked”

-the original episode focuses a lot on Rachel and the glee boys, honestly I don’t even remember if Brittany or Marley have lines this episode, either way, Wannabe and I Love It are very good and fun numbers so I’d love to see them perform this, I’d specially like to see Sugar singing the line “That's M-O-N-E-why so sexy?”.

Starstruck feat. Flo Rida & Space Cowboy sung by Artie and Brittany in “Blame It On the Alcohol”

-honestly I can’t exactly picture a scene where this could happen, maaaybe a karaoke sort of scene where both of them are singing? I don’t know, all I know is that Gaga in this song sounds a lot like Heather Morris to me.

Boys Boys Boys sung by Kurt Hummel in late season 2

-Kurt is hot, that’s true, he’s attractive, and even if a lot of guys weren’t romantically or sexually attracted to him, all of them liked Kurt, and Kurt deserved a song to show how awesome he was, this is it, instead of singing “Boys, Boys, Boys, we love them” as in Kurt’s attraction towards men, it would be “Boys, Boys, Boys, we love them” as in all of the boys happy that the awesome Kurt is back, and of course Kurt would be the only one actually singing, that’s Kurt “I’m singing a duet with the most talented person in the club … myself” Hummel after all.

Paper Gangsta sung by Quinn, Rachel and Santana

-unlike the previous description which in normal size characters was 11 lines long, I have no idea where or how this would take place, all I say is: their voices fit the song, specially Quinn’s.

Brown Eyes sung by Mike Chang in season 4

-I actually wanted Tina to sing this as her ballads are very good, but re-reading the lyrics (as well as literally the title of the song) Mike would be the perfect choice lyrics wise, brown eyes being Tina’s insecurity is so random but it’s an characteristic of her that I like, we never got an answer on why they broke up, it’s something I wanted to know very bad cause they seemed to be a very understanding couple regarding problems, and on top of that, just give Mike songs, seriously his last song was in season 4 episode 8, he appears in 10 episodes after this and not even a line in a group number? C’mon.

I Like It Rough sung by Santana Lopez in “Laryngitis”

-I can totally picture her singing this to Puck in the glee club, he would be smirking since the song is mildly dirty which would make Mercedes jealous and therefore would give birth to The Boy is Mine, this would also be her first solo on the show so.

Summerboy sung by Kitty and Marley in early season 4

-I can see Kitty wanting to perform with Marley because “they’re friends” (or both dating Puckerman’s in this weird timeline where Noah “I like moms” Puckerman dated a sophomore) anyway, she doesn’t like Marley yet, she just wants Jake back and a reason to call Marley obese or something.

Disco Heaven sung by Brittany, Mercedes and Santana in season 3

-In my original thread I wrote this as a sancedes duet in laryngitis, and… it doesn’t make a lot of sense, their voices would do a good job but lyric wise it doesn’t relate? Personally, throw Brittany in the mix as a Trouble Tones number and boom, maybe this could take place in an alternate Saturday night glee-ver where after Mr Schue ask why they chose this song over any other from the movie Brittany would say: “I chose this cause I want to go to disco Heaven when I die not disco inferno”.

Again Again sung by Marley Rose in season 5

-hey so this song is a bonus track from the album that is not featured in the playlist at the beginning, so in order to hear it you’ll need to access YouTube cause it’s also not on Spotify. Back to the song, this could take place when Marley is suspecting that Jake might be cheating on her, music could end with idk Unique and Kitty hugging her.

Retro, Dance, Freak sung by Harmony

-also a bonus track that’s actually featured in the fame monster album, okay so… this song is very boring… like really boring… the only reason I chose Harmony for this was because it kind of sounds like her, literally because this song is fucking boring and I can’t think of someone else that could sing this.

And that’s it, an entire album with 14 songs and 3 bonus tracks was covered, if you like it please share your opinion, if you didn’t please share as well, the next album will be The Fame Monster, that, due to the shorter numbers of songs it shouldn’t take long for me to post it, bye :)

[gleetournaments]

The Ultimate Glee Ship Tournament: Round 1 Match 1

[posttexasstressdisorder]

Gift link.

[gleesongtournament]

Glee Song Tournament Redemption Round

[theladwhoisweird]

41 years ago, at the night of October 31, 1981.

[nobleflowerr]

The Death Eaters as the Secret History characters.

Obviously Professor Julien is Voldemort. The teacher leading an elite group of students, handpicked and solely under his guiding influence. He’s judged by those outside of his group but wholly worshipped by those in his inner circle. He has a reputation for being unusual and somewhat of a nuisance but no one is willing to stand up to him.

Regulus Black might seem like the obvious choice for Henry Winter but it’s actually Barty Crouch Jr. Barty, who’s always had something to prove. Barty, who was always too smart for his own good. Barty, who, for better or worse, was always going to be someone. Barty came from power and money and this life was the one he chose for himself. He finds in Lord Riddle the father figure he lacked in his own life, and in return he was the dark lord’s golden child, his prodigy. He’s calculated, every action has a reason.

Francis Abernathy is Evan Rosier, a born follower. Never the the brightest of the bunch and yet never the dullest either. While he’s definitely a part of the group, he is exceptionally average. There were more before his time, and there will be more to replace him when he is gone.

The McCauley twins are the Black sisters, Camilla being Narcissa and Charles being Bellatrix. Bella, who’s known for a twisted sense of cruelness and generations worth of anger boiling in her veins. She is undeniably smart and more than willing to participate. Narcissa is her opposite, her balance. Where Bella is unreliable chaos, Cissy is quiet coolness. She’s seen as the innocent, helpless maiden and this underestimation is her greatest weapon. While she may often seem a victim caught up in everything, it’s clear how tightly her strings are woven into the fate of the others.

Bunny Corcoran belongs to Peter Pettigrew. Peter, who’s kept in the dark. Peter, who’s not a player but a pawn. Peter, who’s only around until his usefulness runs out. Peter, who is, at heart, a coward.

And finally, Richard Papen is Severus Snape. Severus, whose jealousy runs deeper than his hatred. Severus, who knows what it is to want. He’s accepted into a group of the wealthy elite, and it’s shockingly clear how much he doesn’t belong. Richard Papen is an unreliable narrator, prone to weaving a web of lies and Severus, too, is willing to say whatever it takes to get him what he wants. He’s so wrapped up in deceit that not even he can tell his own place in the group.

[mappingthemoon]

Books Read 2024

David Bowie (Little People, Big Dreams) / Ma Isabel Sánchez Vegara ; Ana Albero (ill.) (Francis Lincoln Children’s Books, 2019)

Angels and Insects / A. S. Byatt (Chatto & Windus, 1992)

How to Stay Alive in the Woods / Bradford Angier (Collier Books, 1962)

Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes / Edith Hamilton (Grand Central Publishing, 2011)

True Stories / Sophie Calle (Actes Sud, 2018)

The Lottery and Other Stories / Shirley Jackson (The Modern Library, 2000)

The Healthy Deviant: A Rule Breaker’s Guide to Being Healthy in an Unhealthy World / Pilar Gerasimo (North Atlantic Books, 2020)

The Ascent of Man / J. Bronowski (Little, Brown and Company, 1973)*

David Bowie: His Life on Earth, 1947-2016 / Allison Adato (ed.) (Time Inc. Books, 2016)

“The Paranoid Style in American Politics” / Richard Hofstadter, in: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, The Paranoid Style in American Politics, Uncollected Essays 1956-1965 (The Library of America, 2020)

Underworld / Don DeLillo (Scribner, 1998)

The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child / Nancy Newton Verrier (Gateway Press, Inc., 1993)

Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America’s Race to the Moon / Alan Shepard & Deke Slayton (Turner Publishing, Inc., 1994)

Nevada / Imogen Binnie (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022)

Collected Short Stories and the novel The Ballad of the Sad Café / Carson McCullers (The Riverside Press ; Houghton Mifflin Company, 1955)

The Discovery of the Titanic / Robert D. Ballard w/Rick Archbold ; Ken Marschall (ill.) (Warner/Maidon Press, 1987)

The J. Paul Getty Museum Handbook of the Photographs Collection / Weston Naef (The J. Paul Getty Museum, 1995)

Changing the Earth: Aerial Photographs / Emmet Gowin ; Jock Reynolds (Yale University Art Gallery in association with the Corcoran Gallery of Art and Yale University Press, 2002)

“There’s an Awful Lot of Weirdos in Our Neighborhood” & Other Wickedly Funny Verse / Colin McNaughton (Simon & Schuster, 1987)*

The Anatomical Tattoo / Emily Evans (Anatomy Boutique Books, 2017)

Artists Books / Dianne Perry Vanderlip (cur.) (Moore College of Art ; University Art Museum, Berkeley, 1973)

Risomania: The New Spirit of Printing / John Z. Komurki (Niggli, imprint of Braun Publishing AG, 2017)

American Music / Annie Leibovitz (Random House, 2004)

Atonement: A Novel / Ian McEwan (Anchor Books, A Division of Random House, Inc., 2003)

The Land Where the Blues Began / Alan Lomax (Pantheon Books, 1993)

Snoopy to the Moon! (Peanuts Space Adventures) / Jason Cooper ; Tom Brannon (ill.) (Peanuts Worldwide LLC ; Happy Meal Readers ; Reading Is Fundamental, 2019)

Just for Fun / Patricia Scarry ; Richard Scarry (ill.) (A Golden Book; Western Publishing Company, Inc., 1960)

The Emotionally Absent Mother: How to Recognize and Heal the Invisible Effects of Childhood Emotional Neglect / Jasmin Lee Cori (The Experiment, 2017)

A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing / Eimear McBride (Coffee House Press, 2014)

Bluets / Maggie Nelson (Wave Books, 2014)

The Secret History / Donna Tartt (Ballantine Books, 2002)

Touch Me I’m Sick / Charles Peterson (powerHouse Books, 2003)

Rose-Petal’s Big Decision (Rose-Petal Place) / Nancy Buss ; Pat Paris & Sharon Ross-Moore (ill.) (Parker Brothers, 1984)*

9½ Weeks: A Memoir of a Love Affair / Elizabeth McNeill (Berkley Books, 1979)

Keep Coming Back / Julia Clinker (Nexus Press, 2001)

Parable of the Sower (Earthseed #1) / Octavia Butler (Seven Stories Press, 2016)

Parable of the Talents (Earthseed #2) / Octavia Butler (Seven Stories Press, 2016)

Great Expectations / Charles Dickens (Cherish, [1994])

I’ve Got a Time Bomb: A Novel / Sibyl Lamb (Topside Press, [2014])

My Brilliant Friend: Book One: Childhood, Adolescence (The Neapolitan Novels #1) / Elena Ferrante ; Ann Goldstein (tr.) (Europa Editions, 2012)

Artists’ Books: A Cataloguers’ Manual / Maria White, Patrick Perratt, Liz Lawes on behalf of ARLIS/UK & Ireland Cataloguing and Classification Committee (ARLIS/UK & Ireland ; Art Libraries Society, 2006)

The Book as Art: Artists’ Books from the National Museum of Women in the Arts / Krystyna Wasserman (Princeton Architectural Press, 2007)

Alas, Babylon / Pat Frank (Perennial Classics, 1999)

To the Lighthouse / Virginia Woolf (The Hogarth Press, 1967)

The Photograph as Contemporary Art (World of Art), 3rd ed. / Charlotte Cotton (Thames & Hudson, 2014)

Swamp Water / Vereen Bell (Little, Brown and Company, 1941)

Ongoingness: The End of a Diary / Sarah Manguso (Graywolf Press, 2015)

Selected Poems / T. S. Eliot (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1964)

The New Way Things Work / David Macaulay ; Neil Ardley (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998)

The Little Friend / Donna Tartt (Vintage Books, A Division of Random House, Inc., 2003)

At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches / Susan Sontag ; Paolo Dilonardo, Anne Jump (eds.) (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2007)

It’s All Absolutely Fine: Life Is Complicated So I’ve Drawn It Instead / Ruby Elliott (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2017)

Things Fall Apart / Chinua Achebe (Penguin Books, 2017)

Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast / Natasha Trethewey (University of Georgia Press, 2010)

A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel (Final ed.) / Tom Phillips (Thames & Hudson, 2016)

Tree of Codes (2nd ed.) / Jonathan Safran Foer (Visual Editions, 2011)

Gutshot: Stories / Amelia Gray (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015)

Equus / Peter Shaffer (Scribner, 2005)

National Geographic, vol. 136, no. 6 (December 1969) “Space Record”

Sun Moon Earth: The History of Solar Eclipses from Omens of Doom to Einstein and Exoplanets / Tyler Nordren (Basic Books, 2016)

Pittsburgh’s South Side (Images of America) / Stuart P. Boehmig (Arcadia Publishing, 2006)

Books read in 2024; asterisks * denote rereads. Favorites this year were Ian McEwan & Donna Tartt, LOVE a good coming-of-age story with a perceptive & melodramatic protagonist set in that liminal period between childhood and adulthood!! Pretty sure the main reason I grabbed the Donna Tartt books while thrifting was just from seeing the occasional tumblr user obsess about them, and oh man I was not disappointed! It is rare that I speed through a 600-page novel but, ugh, the way she puts words together is so riveting. Dickensian levels of detail! Speaking of which, I did actually read a Dickens book this year, Great Expectations, which ended up on my list a few years ago after a stranger on the bus tried to initiate conversation with me by asking what I was reading. He said that Great Expectations was his favorite book, and I was like, “oh cool, I read that in high school, I liked it,” and he was like, super excited that I had also read his fave classic. Well, later on after I got off the bus, I realized I had gotten that title confused with The Great Gatsby (which I did read in high school along with millions of other Americans probably) and I felt bad for accidentally deceiving Random Guy on the Bus, so the next time I saw a copy of Great Expectations at the thrift store, I picked it up. Not bad!!

What else? I’m very late to the Elena Ferrante party, but I enjoyed My Brilliant Friend in text form wayyy better than my attempt to listen to the audiobook five years ago (I just could not follow the audio version and couldn’t get into the story). Charles Peterson’s Touch Me I’m Sick was a fave photo book of the year; it had been on my list since 2015, whoops (I had to interlibrary loan it). This year I read a pretty even mix of books from my to-read list (earliest titles added 2015), books from my to-read pile (items I have thrifted within the past few years), and random interruptions to those lists. Oh, I also read a TON of essays and articles about artists’ books (not listed above) for the class I took at Rare Book School in the summer. I read a couple painfully healing books about motherhood and adoption (The Primal Wound / Nancy Newton Verrier & The Emotionally Absent Mother / Jasmin Lee Cori) that I wish I could’ve encountered earlier in my life but also who knows, maybe this year was cosmically the perfect time for my brain to be receptive. I picked up Alas, Babylon because it was a title I remembered seeing my dad reading at the kitchen table one time when I was a kid. (It’s a 1959 novel about surviving in post-nuclear apocalypse small-town Florida; there is some light misogyny and racism of its era, but also the librarian plays an important role, which I thought was sweet. A couple paragraphs are devoted to the librarian’s perennial struggles [pre-apocalypse] to secure funding, to keep the populace’s attention in spite of modern distractions like tv and air conditioning!) Finally, I also really enjoyed Moon Shot (which I took with me to the eclipse on April 8); here's what I wrote about it in my reading spreadsheet: “The writing style wasn’t particularly phenomenal, yet I was still moved to tears several times while reading … about witnessing the beauty of space, the thrill of exploration, the astronauts’ successes and tragedies, and at the end, the simplicity and sentimentality and symbolism of the Apollo-Soyuz friendships. I can’t help but wonder what the fuck it is about billionaires … that they seemingly don’t become overwhelmed with the desire to save and protect our fragile planet after seeing it from space, a feeling many astronauts seem to have experienced.”

In general, I do most of my reading on the bus during my commutes to and from work, so I get in about 30-60 minutes per day of reading. But also this year I had several incidents of extensive sustained silent reading due to long waiting periods during travel – I read at least the first 100 pages of The Secret History while I was stuck overnight at Newark Airport in July; in August, I read almost all of Parable of the Talents on an Amtrak from Atlanta to Greensboro, then a chunk of Great Expectations on the way back. It was so nice to have that kind of IMMERSIVE, hours-long reading experience again! And especially with such richly detailed & descriptive stories! In 2025 I hope to be able to devote more time to slow, analog reading.

[democracyunderground]

On Friday, Kenneth Chesebro pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to file false documents in the Fulton County 2020 election conspiracy case, becoming the second high-level Donald Trump co-defendant to become a state’s witness in two days. Chesebro received an especially lenient sentence of five years’ probation, a small financial penalty, and 100 hours of community service.

With the guilty plea and cooperation deal Georgia prosecutors struck on Thursday with Team Trump attorney Sidney Powell, Chesebro’s plea deal should be viewed as an earthquake in the case against Trump. Given Powell’s close proximity to the former president and his legal advisers at crucial times in his attempts to overturn the 2020 election, her testimony will be particularly devastating not only as to defendant Trump, but to co-defendants Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman.

Chesebro’s testimony, meanwhile, implicates one of the key portions of the conspiracy both in Georgia and in the federal Jan. 6 case against Trump, specifically the efforts to create a slate of “false electors” to use during the Jan. 6 electoral count to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Now that both Chesebro and Powell are cooperating witnesses, the pressure on Giuliani and Eastman to plead and cooperate is exponentially higher.

That the significant cooperation under discussion involves four of Trump’s attorneys underscores the reality that the former president’s regularly touted defense that he was relying on the good-faith guidance of his attorneys during the attempted coup was, and is, nothing more than self-serving fantasy. In the courtroom—as compared with on television or in social media—he has never had the ability to offer that defense.

In court, the advice of counsel “affirmative defense” requires a defendant to prove two things: First, that he relied in good faith on his lawyer’s advice that the conduct in question at trial was legal, and second, that he made a full disclosure of all relevant facts to the attorney before receiving that advice.

Based on my four decades in the courtroom as both federal prosecutor and defense attorney, I can report that the assertion of the attorney-client privilege by a criminal defendant at trial is a black swan event—effective only with the consistent, overlapping trial testimony of both the attorney and the defendant, and the admission into evidence of any documents reflecting the communications or advice they testified about.

Putting aside the substantial evidence that Trump was warned by numerous White House lawyers that his efforts to overturn the 2020 election were in violation of the law, how does Trump establish the advice of counsel defense at trial?

As I have observed in prior articles, he is certainly not able to testify on his own behalf. There are surely no memos to the file, emails, or letters to the client evidencing such advice in writing. Finally in this regard, what lawyer is willing to testify he or she advised Trump it was, for example, lawful for him to ask the Georgia secretary of state to “find” enough votes for him to win that state?

Long before the Powell and Chesebro deals were announced, the absurdity of expecting any Trump attorney’s testimony to be anything but harmful to his cause was made crystal clear by Michael Cohen. More recently, when Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran was forced to testify against the former president based on the “crime fraud” exception to the attorney-client privilege, the testimony he gave and the internal memos he was compelled to produce, proved not to be shields for the former president, but swords to be wielded against him—as it is with Powell and Chesebro, and so it will be with others.

After all, what can you expect when your standard for choosing at least some of your lawyers is their willingness to turn a blind eye to whatever your weak ego and malicious intentions require?

In sum, while Georgia and DOJ attorneys have each received great potential benefits from the Powell and Chesebro deals, it was in no way structured to protect against a defense they know Trump cannot employ.

Finally, speaking of structure, the great deals Powell and Chesebro struck, getting probation while facing up to 20 years in jail on a RICO conviction, are certainly a blessing for them—they even get to finally tell the truth.

But District Attorney Fani Willis’ seeming generosity is a sign of shrewd judgment, not weakness.

Prosecutors have both the carrot and the stick to get what they want, and the two deals Willis just made were large carrots, signaling to the other defendants that she is someone they can deal with, and that there are potentially acceptable pathways out of the mess they are in. At the same time, she has just made her case against other, more significant defendants meaningfully stronger and her stick that much larger.

Of course, Willis is a long way from where she needs to be, but those who had originally feared she had overindicted the 19-defendant RICO case might now be a little less concerned and a little more impressed.