Jack Smith Testifies On Trump's Criminal Acts

 

Former Special Counsel Jack Smith was in front of the Republican- led House Judiciary Committee yesterday in closed session to testify on his investigations of the Malignant Fascist's attempt to overthrow the 2020 election results and his unlawful retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lardo:

Former special counsel Jack Smith told a congressional committee Wednesday that his team found "proof beyond a reasonable doubt” that President Donald Trump engaged in a “criminal scheme” to overturn the results of the 2020 election, according to parts of his opening statement obtained by NBC News.

Trump also “repeatedly tried to obstruct justice” to keep secret his retention of classified documents found during an FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, Smith told members of the House Judiciary Committee at a closed-door hearing.

Smith said his team turned up “powerful evidence that showed Trump willfully retained highly classified documents after he left office in Jan. 2021, storing them at his social club, including in a bathroom and a ballroom where events and gatherings took place.”

House Oversight Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, subpoenaed Smith to testify as part of Republican efforts to investigate the special counsel's office. Smith's investigations led to two indictments of Trump: in the classified documents case and in the 2020 election interference case. Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the classified documents case in July 2024, and a separate judge agreed to drop the 2020 case in November 2024 after Trump won re-election.

Trump has repeatedly called for Smith to be prosecuted.

Facing a renewed wave of Republican attacks on his investigations into Trump, Smith was expected to try to use the hearing to correct what his team has described as mischaracterizations about the special counsel investigation.

Smith had wanted to testify in a public setting, but House Republicans refused to accommodate his request.

After the hearing Wednesday, House Judiciary Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin, D-Md., joked that Jordan “made an excellent decision in not allowing Jack Smith to testify publicly, because had he done so, it would have been absolutely devastating to the president and all the president’s men involved in the insurrectionary activities of Jan. 6.” [snip]

Pushing back against criticism of his team's decision to obtain and analyze the phone call records of nine congressional Republicans, Smith told members of the committee that those records “were lawfully subpoenaed and were relevant to complete a comprehensive” investigation.

“January 6 was an attack on the structure of our democracy in which over 100 heroic law enforcement officers were assaulted. Over 160 individuals later pled guilty to assaulting police officers that day,” Smith said. “Exploiting that violence, President Trump and his associates tried to call Members of Congress in furtherance of their criminal scheme, urging them to further delay certification of the 2020 election.”

“I didn’t choose those Members," Smith added, “President Trump did.”

Smith’s report on Trump’s efforts to overturn the election found that Trump “inspired his supporters to commit acts of physical violence” on Jan. 6, 2021, and that Trump knowingly spread “demonstrably and, in many cases, obviously false” claims about the election as part of the effort.

Smith is not expected to testify about Volume II of his report, which focused on Trump’s handling of classified documents... (our emphasis)

The lawless schemes and treasonous behavior the Malignant Fascist engaged in has been laid out in courts for the last three or four years, and needs no further exposition. We look forward to a release of Smith's statement (but probably won't see a transcript of his testimony as long as MAGAt loon Rep. Jim "Gym" Jordan (R-OH) is heading the committee).  The Malignant Fascist has talked about Smith as a potential target for one of his vengeful prosecutions.  Perhaps he's been deterred at least until now by the certainty that, in reviving the January 6 and classified documents cases, he would be opening them up to a whole new cycle of reminding the American public what a treasonous, lawless, corrupt person they've elected.  What little we've seen of Smith's closed door testimony provided a glimpse of the danger to the MF of re-opening those prosecutions to public scrutiny, especially in an election year.

(Photo:  Smith arriving at yesterday's hearing / J. Scott Applewhite, AP)

Dems To AG: Release Report On Trump Classified Docs

 

Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter yesterday to outgoing Attorney General Merrick Garland asking that the Volume 2 report on the case against the Malignant Fascist's theft of classified documents be released, and that the co-conspirators' cases be dropped to satisfy legal concerns about prejudicing their cases. From CBS News:

"Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee are urging Attorney General Merrick Garland to consider dropping the federal charges against Donald Trump's former co-defendants in the classified documents case, Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira, to ensure that the Justice Department can release the rest of special counsel Jack Smith's final report about Trump's alleged crimes. [snip]

Garland previously said he would not publicly release the second part of Smith's report, which details the allegations in the documents case, because the proceedings involving Nauta and de Oliveira were ongoing."

The letter from Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Dan Goldman (D-NY) and other committee members lays out the rationale for the release of the volume:

"The American people now deserve the opportunity to read Volume 2 of Special Counsel Smith's report, which explains how President Trump knowingly retained hundreds of presidential and highly classified records at his Mar-a-Lago club and then deliberately defied subpoenas, obstructed law enforcement, hid evidence, and lied about his continuing retention of these records. It is in the very nature of American democracy that the people have a right to know of the public actions of their public officials, and it is essential to the rule of law that Justice Department special counsel reports continue to be available and accessible to the public."

On Tuesday, Garland released the Volume 1 report dealing with the MF's criminal actions to overturn the 2020 election. Given Garland's infuriating timidity and record of slow-walking the cases against the MF, which resulted in him avoiding justice, doesn't augur well for the Dems' request. 

(photo: Time to find a spine. AG Garland. Getty Images)

 

Trump Tries To Bury Special Counsel's Final Report (UPDATED)

 

On the brink of regaining the power they tried to hold onto un- Constitutionally in their coup attempt on January 6, 2021, the Malignant Fascist (MF) and his MAGAt co- conspirators and enablers are feverishly at work trying to pull off the whitewash of the century:

President-elect Donald Trump and his former co-defendants in the Florida classified documents case launched an effort Monday to block the release of a final report by special counsel Jack Smith that also addresses the election interference case.

Both cases against Trump have been dismissed.

Lawyers for defendants Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira filed a motion Monday night asking U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to block Smith, who prosecuted the case, from issuing his report. They cited the judge's previous ruling that Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional.

“The Final Report promises to be a one-sided, slanted report, relying nearly exclusively on evidence presented to a grand jury and subject to all requisite protections—and which is known to Smith only as a result of his unconstitutional appointment—in order to serve a singular purpose: convincing the public that everyone Smith charged is guilty of the crimes charged,” the four lawyers wrote.

Defense lawyers asked Cannon on Monday to hold a hearing and rule on their motion by Friday, saying they believe the release of the report is “imminent.”

Trump’s lawyers, meanwhile, sent a letter urging Attorney General Merrick Garland to stop Smith from releasing the report. In the letter, Trump’s lawyers called Smith an “out-of-control private citizen unconstitutionally posing as a prosecutor” aiming to politically harm Trump.

“Accordingly, because Smith has proposed an unlawful course of action, you must countermand his plan and remove him promptly. If Smith is not removed, then the handling of his report should be deferred to President Trump’s incoming attorney general, consistent with the expressed will of the People,” they wrote.

Trump’s lawyers said they reviewed a two-volume draft copy of Smith’s report at the special counsel’s office in Washington, D.C., over the weekend.

In his response to the emergency motion, Smith wrote that his office is working to finalize "a two-volume confidential report to the Attorney General explaining the Special Counsel’s prosecution decisions." He said that it would be Garland who decides whether any portion is released to the public and that one volume "pertains to this case." 

Smith said his office won’t transmit that volume to Garland before 1 p.m. ET Tuesday. He also said Garland "has not yet determined how to handle the report volume pertaining to this case, about which the parties were conferring at the time the defendants filed the Motion, but the Department can commit that the Attorney General will not release that volume to the public, if he does at all," before 10 a.m. Friday...

The desperation and legal grasping in the MF's filing is palpable, but we fully expect the classified documents part of the report to be responded to favorably by his pocket judge Cannon, who has been the shadow defense counsel for the MF all along.

On the other hand, Merrick Garland can do one last honorable thing here.  It won't make up for the unconscionable delay in the Justice Department's handling of the "election interference" case that allowed the MF to get off without so much as a slap on the wrist.  But making public at least the part of the report that deals with the insurrection will provide a record that must stand against the blizzard of lies and gaslighting over what happened and who was to blame for the January 6 insurrection that has been an ongoing project of the MF and MAGA world since shortly after the event. 

It will be hard enough for that history to be told with the power shifts about to occur and the media desperate to move on to new narratives.  The report has to come out.

UPDATE:  As expected --

JFC, Judge Cannon actually enjoined release of the Special Counsel report — which is mandated by statute! — and purports to keep injunction in place for three days after the 11th Circuit rules on a similar motion. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

[image or embed]

— Liz Dye (@lizdye.bsky.social) January 7, 2025 at 11:56 AM

 

 

Special Counsel Asks Appeals Court To Reinstate Trump Classified Docs Case

 

ICYMI, Special Counsel Jack Smith is challenging utterly corrupt Judge Aileen Cannon's outrageous decision to dismiss the slam- dunk classified documents case against her cult leader:

Special counsel Jack Smith urged a federal appeals court Monday to reinstate the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump, saying a judge’s decision that dismissed the prosecution was at odds with longstanding Justice Department practice and must be reversed.

Smith’s team said U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon made a grievous mistake by ruling that Smith was unlawfully appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland. That position, prosecutors wrote in a brief filed with the Atlanta-based appeals court, runs counter to rulings by judges across the country as well as “widespread and longstanding appointment practices in the Department of Justice and across the government.”

If allowed to stand, they warned, it could ”jeopardize the longstanding operation of the Justice Department and call into question hundreds of appointments throughout the Executive Branch.”

“The Attorney General validly appointed the Special Counsel, who is also properly funded,” prosecutors wrote. “In ruling otherwise, the district court deviated from binding Supreme Court precedent, misconstrued the statutes that authorized the Special Counsel’s appointment, and took inadequate account of the longstanding history of Attorney General appointments of special counsels.”

The appeal is the latest development in a prosecution that many legal experts have long considered a straightforward criminal case given the breadth of evidence, including surveillance video and an audio recording of Trump’s own words, that Justice Department investigators accumulated during the course of the probe. But over the last year, the case has been snarled by delays as Cannon, a Trump-appointed judge, entertained assorted Trump team motions before ultimately dismissing the prosecution in a stunning decision that brought the proceedings to at least a temporary halt.   [snip]

The case, one of four federal and state prosecutions brought against Trump, includes dozens of felony charges alleging that Trump illegally retained classified documents from his presidency at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida and obstructed the government’s efforts to get them back. Trump has pleaded not guilty.

At issue in the appeal is a provision of the Constitution known as the Appointments Clause, which requires presidential approval and Senate confirmation for certain public officials, including judges, ambassadors and “all other officers of the United States.” (our emphasis)

How long the 11th Circuit will take to rule on the Special Counsel's motion is unclear, but however it rules (even if it removes the corrupt Cannon from the case, something the Special Counsel didn't ask for), there's no possibility of the case going to trial before the November election.  The appeal may also end up in the Republican Supreme Court, where corrupt Justice Clarence Thomas has already signaled he thinks Special Counsel appointments are invalid (which prompted Cannon to issue her ruling).

With the prospect of VP Harris becoming the 47th President of the United States (everybody vote, dammit!) no longer a long- shot, Cannon's maneuvering to help her benefactor avoid the consequences of his felonious behavior may yet come a cropper.  Obviously, the election result as well as how many other corrupt Republican judges in the system are willing to help their cult leader will be the final test of whether the most manifestly lawless person ever to become President faces those consequences.

(Photo illustration: Salon/Getty Images/ US District Court for the Southern District of Florida)

 

Gag Order Sought For Trump's "Assassination" Lie

The dangerous lie now swirling around the violent MAGA ecosystem is that in the classified documents search, FBI agents were sent to Merde o' Lardo to use deadly force against the Malignant Loser.  He's spread the lie in a fundraising e-mail and other places to stir up his mouth breathing cult to distract from his looming criminal trials.  The lie has caused Special Counsel Jack Smith to seek a gag order from the court to prevent acts of violence against law enforcement by the cult. Sadly, it has little prospect of approval, since it's directed at foot-dragging Trump acolyte Judge Aileen Cannon, who's working to delay the classified documents trial ad infinitum:

"Special counsel Jack Smith in a Friday filing called on the judge overseeing former President Trump’s classified documents case to block Trump from speaking about the case in a way that could endanger law enforcement officials.

In his request, Smith asked the court to impose a condition that would bar Trump from making public statements that could 'pose a significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger to the law enforcement agents participating in the investigation and prosecution of this case.' [snip]

The move comes after the former president falsely claimed in an email Wednesday that President Biden was 'locked & loaded and ready to take me out' — twisting language from the terms approved for law enforcement as they prepared to search his Mar-a-Lago residence for classified records in 2022.

In reality, the language only allows for deadly force 'when necessary,' such as when someone 'poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or to another person.' 

The prosecutors noted in the filing that the FBI’s search of the Palm Beach resort was done intentionally when Trump and his family were away. And, they added, it was coordinated with the Secret Service, without force."  (our emphasis)

A number of the media outlets we've seen cover this story have actually failed to mention that the Malignant Loser and his family weren't even at his resort when the search occurred, choosing to focus on the search warrant's boilerplate "deadly force" procedure. In any event, if this motion by Special Counsel Smith is treated like other prosecution motions, we can expect to see it collecting dust in Cannon's office while the Malignant Loser repeats the lie over and over, sowing the seeds of violence.

 

Cannon Continues Slow-Walking Docs Trial

Trump-appointed Federal District Court Judge Aileen Cannon has one mission above all others: to delay the Merde o' Lardo stolen classified document case beyond the election, if not to kill it altogether. The deliberately slow pace that Cannon has set in ruling on mostly frivolous motions from the Malignant Loser's lawyers have delayed the trial start date indefinitely, something that cheers the Malignant Loser and justifies his appointment of her to the bench. Her favorite delaying move is to hold lengthy hearings on various defense motions and not issue a ruling, as in yesterday's hearing on co-conspirator and Trump butt boy Walt Nauta's motion to dismiss the case against him:

"The heated arguments played out in a morning proceeding in Fort Pierce, Florida, that had been scheduled for Walt Nauta, one of former President Donald Trump’s co-defendants, to present arguments that special counsel Jack Smith’s team had selectively and vindictively brought charges against him.

But the hearing quickly diverted into a longstanding disagreement over an August 2022 meeting between prosecutor Jay Bratt and Nauta’s defense attorney, Stanley Woodward. Woodward has claimed in court proceedings and filings that Bratt attempted to pressure him into convincing Nauta to cooperate against Trump by threatening to affect a potential judgeship nomination. Cannon did not issue a ruling from the bench on Nauta’s motion that the case be dismissed on those grounds.

Nor did Cannon rule on a motion she heard during an afternoon session Wednesday, brought by all three of the case’s defendants, who claimed that the indictment suffers technical flaws that required the dismissal of the charges.

Cannon seemed skeptical of those arguments, while also expressing concern about a jury’s ability to understand legal nuances in the case at a future trial.

Real people have to decide these issues,' Cannon said." (our emphasis)

Suggesting that the case is too complex for a jury to comprehend may reflect more on her incompetence and her pretense that the clear and simple evidence of her patron's mishandling of classified material and obstruction of their return is complicated. It's worrisome that the Department of Justice under feckless Attorney General Merrick Garland hasn't taken more aggressive action to seek Cannon's removal from the case on the grounds of clear bias, now that there's no hope for a completed trial before the November election.

(photo: Cult leader and acolyte)

 

QOTD: Remove Judge Cannon From Docs Case

 

Former Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks on MSNBC discussing Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon's continued delay in setting a trial date and not dispensing of the Malignant Loser's frivolous motions to obstruct the trial:

"She has made bad decisions that have no relationship to what the law is in this case. She has refused to make decisions that should have been made months ago. [snip]

She is not dumb, but she is really not doing her job. There is a rule that judges, one of their jobs, is to set a trial date. So her saying this is too complex a case, I'm not going to set a trial date, that seems to be something that could be subject to a mandamus, and that's something that may have to be. And that may mean that getting a new judge would be delaying the case, but I would rather delay it for a new judge and not worry that she will take this and after the jury's impaneled, do something that would deal with double jeopardy so she would dismiss the case and make it impossible to retry him." (our emphasis)

Cannon has to be removed from this case, for obstructing it and for sheer incompetence. The concern, as Wine-Banks noted, is that once the jury is impaneled (if ever), she'll find something in the Government's handling of the case to dismiss it, so the Malignant Loser would never face trial. 

 

Trump's Idiotic Docs Argument Dismissed

Likely feeling intense pressure after Special Counsel Jack Smith challenged her latest attempt to delay and rig the classified documents case in favor of her patron, Federal District Judge and MAGA incompetent Aileen Cannon ruled today that the Presidential Records Act did not permit him to retain highly classified documents. Cannon still has multiple decisions that she's been sitting on that need to be decided before trial. From the Washington Post:

"Trump’s defense team argued the Presidential Records Act took priority over the Espionage Act when it came to highly classified documents that he took to his private residence in Florida after his presidency. On Thursday, Cannon shot down that argument, saying the PRA “does not provide a pre-trial basis to dismiss” either the mishandling charges or the related obstruction charges against Trump.

The decision comes two days after special counsel Jack Smith made a court filing saying the judge was pursuing a legal premise about the PRA that was 'wrong,' and urged her to rule, adding that if she decided otherwise, he wanted to appeal any such decision quickly." (our emphasis)

"Pre-trial basis to dismiss." It doesn't provide any basis actually, pre-trial or anytime. But she's keeping her options open, apparently.  She also may have read the tea leaves with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which reversed her earlier in this case, and to which Special Counsel Smith was ready to file a writ of mandamus to force her hand on this and other decisions. Whatever her motivation, be assured she'll do everything to delay and undermine the Justice Department's case, one that is the most straight forward of the cases now pending against the Malignant Loser in multiple jurisdictions.

(photos: Lord and master)

Cannon Lays Groundwork For Trump Not Guilty Verdict

 

The Malignant Loser's favorite judge, corrupt hack Aileen Cannon, is daring Special Counsel Jack Smith to go to the 11th Circuit and get her reversed and removed from the Mar-a-Lardo classified documents case.  He needs to do it, based on her most recent egregious order:

The judge overseeing Donald Trump's classified documents case has given the jury routes to find the former president not guilty in a "perplexing" court order, an attorney has said.

Judge Aileen Cannon is overseeing the Republican nominees' Mar-a-Lago indictment in which Trump was charged with retaining national security information—including U.S. nuclear secrets and plans for military retaliation in the event of an attack—and obstructing efforts to retrieve them in June 2023.

Prosecutors have said Trump took documents that he was no longer authorized to have after leaving the White House in January 2021 and that he resisted repeated requests by federal officials to return them. Trump has denied all wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty to the charges.

On Monday, Cannon issued an order instructing lawyers to file proposed jury instructions by April 2 in which she laid out two different legal scenarios, one which would instruct the jury to decide whether Trump did not have the authorization to keep classified documents found on his property, and the second assuming Trump had authority to keep the records because he was president, as per an understanding of the Presidential Records Act (PRA).

Trump's legal team has filed a motion saying the act allowed him to retain the materials as his own personal property and Cannon is yet to rule on it.

Reacting to the order in her blog, Civil Discourse, former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance criticized it, calling it "perplexing" and "crazy."

She wrote: "Although the order is only two pages, it's perplexing.

"It's two page of crazy stemming from the Judge's apparent inability to tell Trump no when it comes to his argument that he turned the nation's secrets into his personal records by designating them as such under the Presidential Records Act."

"I've never had a judge say, 'you know, I have no idea what the law is here, so lets make a couple of different assumptions about it, and even though they're both wrong, give me some ideas,'" she added.

"The assumptions in Judge Cannon's two scenarios virtually direct the jury to find Trump not guilty, by suggesting that a president can hold onto any government property he wants to as long as he designates it as personal before he leaves office. The only questions she leaves open is whether anyone can second guess a former president who pinky promises he decided something was personal before he went back home. For instance, in the first one, she directs the lawyers to assume that juries get to examine each item a former president is charged with retaining and decide whether the government has proven that it is personal or presidential. So, it's up to the jury to decide what's personal and what isn't."...  (our emphasis)

"Crazy" and "perplexing" are the least of it.  Malignant Loser- appointed Cannon has been trying to derail or delay this slam- dunk trial from the moment it was assigned to her.  She's shown her hand over and over again as a tool of the treasonous Malignant Loser.  Haven't we seen enough to get this compromised hack off the case?

Pull the damn trigger before more time, if not the case, is lost.

Ominous Statement From Trump Docs Judge

In the classified documents case against the Malignant Loser, Trump-appointed Federal District Judge Aileen Cannon has consistently ruled for her patron on pre-trial motions, and has been rebuked by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals for doing so. That doesn't seem to affect Cannon, whose efforts to delay the trial until after the November elections are clear. Now, she's in the process of reviewing amicus briefs from organizations and individuals in support of the Malignant Loser's nonsensical claim of total immunity. True to form, she's indicating that those briefs supporting the Malignant Loser will be helpful to her deliberations:

"Cannon filed to the Florida federal court Wednesday a paperless order accepting two amicus briefs, one from the America First Legal Foundation and one from former Reagan era Attorney General Ed Meese, calling on the Florida federal judge to dismiss charges against Trump, court records show.

'The Court has reviewed the motions' Cannon writes, 'and finds that the proposed amicus bring to the Court's attention relevant matter that may be of considerable help to the Court in resolving the cited pretrial motions.'" (our emphasis)

We're surprised to see the zealous old reactionary fossil Ed Meese is still alive, much less authoring an amicus brief. The America First Legal Foundation is run by fascist former Malignant Loser aide Stephen Miller, who crafted his cruel and ineffective immigration policy and is a true believer in the Malignant Loser's warped policies. Nevertheless, Cannon thinks their filings may be of "considerable help to the Court" (in dismissing the case against her patron, she didn't say).

Every week brings yet another reason to try to get this biased judge removed from the case by the 11th Circuit Court, and yet another disappointment that it hasn't been done. 

 

QOTD -- Willing To Be Manipulated

 

"... As the Government argued to the Court yesterday, the trial date in the District of Columbia case should not be a determinative factor in the Court’s decision whether to modify the dates in this matter.  Defendant Trump’s actions in the hours following the hearing in this case illustrate the point and confirm his overriding interest in delaying both trials at any cost.  This Court should [not] allow itself to be manipulated in this fashion."  -- excerpt of a brief filed by Jay Bratt, Counselor to Special Counsel Jack Smith in Malignant Loser Judge Aileen Cannon's court this morning.  Cannon is a willful participant in the Malignant Loser's attempts to evade justice by delaying his trial in the classified documents case until after the 2024 election (presuming he's going to pardon himself should he get back in power).  

We're hoping, after Cannon inevitably sides with the Malignant Loser's attorneys once again, that the Government file a motion seeking to remove her biased ass from the case. 

 

Aussie Billionaire Paid Bigly For Trump Access

Anthony Pratt, the Australian billionaire that the Malignant Loser spilled classified secrets to about our nuclear submarine capabilities, has been talking to the Special Counsel about other conversations he's had with the Malignant Loser. Pratt bought his way into the Malignant Loser's Merde O'Lardo club to mingle with the corrupt host and club members, hoping to get business contacts and tax breaks favorable to him in the U.S. According to interviews he's had with Federal prosecutors, Pratt used some serious brown-nosing and money to get into the Malignant Loser's circle of friends, and got an earful from the corrupt 45th President in return. From the New York Times:

"In his interviews with prosecutors, Mr. Pratt recounted how Mr. Trump once revealed to him sensitive information about American nuclear submarines, an episode that Mr. Trump denies. Another witness told prosecutors about hearing uncorroborated reports that Mr. Pratt spent $1 million for tickets to a Mar-a-Lago New Year’s Eve gala — voluntarily paying the club a huge markup for tickets that actually cost $50,000 or less, according to two people with knowledge of the previously unreported testimony. [snip]

Behind closed doors, however, Mr. Pratt described Mr. Trump’s business practices as being “like the mafia,” according to covert recordings obtained by “60 Minutes Australia” and shared with The Times.

The private comments, captured while Mr. Trump was still president, provide a rare glimpse into how a businessman on the other side of Mr. Trump’s transactions actually viewed the New York real estate developer’s tactics — with a mix of blunt acknowledgment and admiration for someone so willing to test the boundaries of the presidency. [snip]

At one point, Mr. Pratt said, Mr. Trump discussed the phone call he had with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine earlier that year that had helped lead to Mr. Trump’s first impeachment. “That was nothing compared to what I usually do,” Mr. Trump said, in Mr. Pratt’s recounting.

It is not clear whether Mr. Pratt shared these accounts with prosecutors or whether prosecutors are aware of the recordings.

Mr. Pratt also describes on the recording how Mr. Trump asked his wife, Melania, to strut around Mar-a-Lago in her bikini “so all the other guys could get a look at what they were missing.”  (our emphasis)

It's all there: "the swamp" pay-to-play, the casual misogyny toward his pathetic third wife, the confession that he's engaged in more serious extortion than with Ukraine to get dirt on then-candidate Joe Biden, and for which he was impeached the first time. And it's all likely in the hands of prosecutors. Pratt got something out of his "investment" in the Malignant Loser, too:

"By the end of Mr. Trump’s first year in office, his presidency was bearing fruit for Mr. Pratt. The Australian Financial Review estimated that Mr. Trump’s 2017 corporate tax cut helped increase Mr. Pratt’s personal wealth by more than $2 billion."  (our emphasis)

That's $2 billion the U.S. Treasury will never see, thanks to the Malignant Loser, who's now calling his bean-spilling billionaire acquaintance a "red haired weirdo from Australia." That's like the pot calling the kettle black.

(photo: The Malignant Loser and the "red haired weirdo from Australia". Mick Tsikas/AAP)

 

Trump's Favorite Judge Looks To Delay Trial

 

 

Trump-appointed Federal District Court Judge Aileen Cannon is again trying to tip the scales in helping the Malignant Loser drag out the Merde O'Lardo classified documents case against him. Last year, she was rebuked and reversed by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals for her decision to appoint a special master to review the classified documents that the Malignant Loser stole from the White House. She set a very generous May 2024 trial date, allowing her former President to further delay trial and judgement. Now, she's paused several pre-trial deadlines in response to the Malignant Loser's appeal for a delay, insuring that the trial date will slip to his benefit. From Salon.com's report:

"U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon authorized a paperless order delaying the deadlines she'd previously set for October 2023 through May 2024, when the trial for Trump and his three co-defendants in the case is scheduled to start in Fort Pierce, Florida.

Though Cannon's order doesn't address the May 20 start date for the trial itself, it does state that all of the scheduled deadlines connected to classified information are on hold "pending consideration and resolution" of a Trump motion proposing a new timeline that was filed last month."

In a separate filing, the Malignant Loser asked for an extension of the trial to a date beyond the 2024 elections, a classic legal tactic of his, and something that Cannon seems favorable to. Some reactions from legal experts was captured by RawStory:

"'Not a good sign for those who want a trial in May. We haven’t even reached the point in CIPA where the court has truly difficult decisions to make,' tweeted former DOJ official Brandon Van Grack, who worked on the Russia probe led by special counsel Robert Mueller.

Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance concurred, saying, 'This is a judge who is happy to see the case move slowly.'

Meanwhile, former Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe was scathing: 'I was among those who once called her a 'loose Cannon.' That was wrong. She’s firmly anchored — to one thing and one thing only: Donald Trump’s interest in escaping accountability until after the election. It’s a complete disgrace.'"  (our emphasis)

Cannon is pushing the boundaries to help her benefactor, and it may again result in a rebuke from the Court of Appeals. Reassigning the case to a Federal judge that lacks her bias has to be on the table.

"You Don't Know Anything About The Boxes"

We appear to have a cooperating witness in the classified documents case, and she's about as close to the Malignant Loser as you can get -- his personal secretary, Molly Michael.  As one might expect, she has some explosive information on the Malignant Loser's handling of classified documents, and about a little matter of obstruction:

One of former President Donald Trump's long-time assistants told federal investigators that Trump repeatedly wrote to-do lists for her on documents from the White House that were marked classified, according to sources familiar with her statements.

As described to ABC News, the aide, Molly Michael, told investigators that -- more than once -- she received requests or taskings from Trump that were written on the back of notecards, and she later recognized those notecards as sensitive White House materials -- with visible classification markings -- used to brief Trump while he was still in office about phone calls with foreign leaders or other international-related matters.

The notecards with classification markings were at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate when FBI agents searched the property on Aug. 8, 2022 -- but the materials were not taken by the FBI, according to sources familiar with what Michael told investigators.

When Michael, who was not present for the search, returned to Mar-a-Lago the next day to clean up her office space, she found the documents underneath a drawer organizer and helped transfer them to the FBI that same day, sources told ABC News.

The sources said Michael also told federal investigators that last year she grew increasingly concerned with how Trump handled recurring requests from the National Archives for the return of all government documents being kept in boxes at Mar-a-Lago -- and she felt that Trump's claims about it at the time would be easy to disprove, according to the sources.

And, the kicker, in true mob boss fashion:

Sources said that after Trump heard the FBI wanted to interview Michael last year, Trump allegedly told her, "You don't know anything about the boxes." (our emphasis)

As far as we know he didn't follow that with "Capiche?"

If the Malignant Loser thought he had unlimited rights to have the classified documents "under the Presidential Records Act" (which he doesn't under the Presidential Records Act), why would he want his personal secretary to lie about her knowledge of the trove of boxes holding classified documents?  The answer, of course, is that he knew he had no business having the documents in his possession.

This case is looking more and more like a slam dunk for Special Counsel Smith, even with the Malignant Loser Judge Aileen Cannon with her thumb on the scales.  Putting the trial off until May 2024 might not be enough to save him from his inherent criminality.

(Photo: you're not supposed to know about these, capiche? / Dept. of Justice)

Trump's Confession Tour Continues

 

The Malignant Loser is unable and unwilling to curb his tendency to confess to crimes, mostly because he believes he's above accountability as an autocratic figure. That's the main reason that his attorneys would do anything to keep him off the witness stand, that and the fact that he'd perjure himself when he wasn't "confessing." His latest stop on the confession tour was with failed TV hostess Megyn "Blackface" Kelly on her SiriusXM show. The interview, as the HuffPo reports, touched on the classified documents case and will make his attorneys cringe and the prosecutors joyous:

"During their discussion, the former president suggested that it is his right to hold on to the top-secret materials, which are at the center of a felony indictment announced earlier this summer.

'I’m allowed to take these documents, classified or not classified,' he told Kelly. 'And frankly, when I have them, they become unclassified. People think you have to go through a ritual. You don’t — at least in my opinion, you don’t.'

Trump justified his stance by pointing to the 1978 Presidential Records Act, a law enacted after the Watergate scandal to clarify that White House documents are the property of the federal government."

His ignorant "opinion" is aimed at his delusional cult, who would believe the moon is made of Swiss cheese if he told them so. He knows they won't bother to actually read the Presidential Records Act, and even if they did, who are they going to believe, him or their lying eyes?

The article compiles a few legal experts' factual opinions about his interview, and they can be summed up as "good news for prosecutors, bad news for the Malignant Loser."

(photo: Very Stable Genius points to his problem)

 

Witness In Trump Classified Documents Case Flips

The dam is starting to give way:

A witness in the criminal case against Donald Trump over the hoarding of classified documents retracted “prior false testimony” after switching lawyers last month and provided new information that implicated the former president, the Justice Department said Tuesday.

The statements from the witness, a Trump staffer identified in court papers as the director of information technology at Mar-a-Lago, was presented to prosecutors weeks before special counsel Jack Smith secured an updated indictment accusing Trump and two others in a plot to delete surveillance video at the Florida property.

Prosecutors said in a court filing Tuesday that the witness told a grand jury in Washington in March that he could not recall any conversations about the security footage

But in July, after being warned by prosecutors that he was a target of the investigation and after being advised that his lawyer might have a conflict of interest because of his representation of others in the probe, the witness received a new attorney from the federal defender's office and provided the Justice Department with information that helped form the basis of the revised indictment against Trump, his valet Walt Nauta and a third defendant, Carlos De Oliveira, the court filing says.

This director of information at Mar-a-Lago is the "Trump Employee 4" identified in earlier filings.

The testimony of this key witness will make it harder for Trumpist judge Aileen Cannon to succeed in her goal of exonerating the Malignant Loser.  Most legal experts have said that, even without this testimony, the Special Counsel's case was a slam dunk.

Another issue Cannon used to try to de- rail/ de- legitimatize the case was responded to as well:

In the filing, the Justice Department also sought to explain its use of grand juries in both Washington and Florida, where charges were ultimately filed. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Florida judge presiding over the case, had earlier asked about the legal propriety of using grand juries in both districts.

Prosecutors said they continued using the Washington grand jury even after charges were filed in Florida for the express purpose of investigating potential false statements by witnesses in Washington. The Washington grand jury completed its term last week, they said.

Will that satisfy Cannon?  Hard to say.  But any more "questionable" calls from Cannon will possibly lead to a motion to have her removed from the trial.

In the meantime, the legal nooses keep tightening around the thick neck of the Malignant Loser.

BONUS:  Not to put too fine a point on it, but this observation from NBC's Ken Dilanian nails it--

"It's like a mob movie," he concluded. "Lawyers being paid by President Trump representing witnesses, suddenly when one gets a different lawyer they utterly change their stories and start remembering things they didn't before."

(Photo: the scene of the crime(s) / via CNN)

Trump-Paid Lawyers Defending Nauta, De Oliveira

With last week's superseding indictment in the Merde O'Lardo classified documents case, a new participant in the Malignant Loser's theft and obstruction scheme, maintenance supervisor Carlos De Oliveira, was named as having asked for security camera evidence to be deleted at the request of "the Boss." Along with the Malignant Loser's valet Walt Nauta, De Oliveira faces felony charges, and is being defended by a lawyer paid by the Malignant Loser's super PAC. Amanda Marcotte points up the problem for the two men in Salon.com:

"As foolish as political loyalty to Trump may be, personal loyalty makes even less sense. Trump's sociopathic worldview, in which he expects loyalty but gives none in return, has been long-established. It's like the law of gravity, that Trump will throw anyone under the bus to save himself. As legal experts have repeatedly pointed out, it's in [Walt] Nauta and [Carlos] De Oliveira's interest to flip on Trump, testifying against him in exchange for leniency from the prosecution. 

That these two men may not see this suggests very strongly that the lawyers hired by Trump to supposedly advise these them are more focused on serving Trump's interests than those of their supposed clients. That's something White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson realized during the House committee's investigation into the events of January 6th. As she told the committee, she had started off with a lawyer provided by Trump, who she said advised her to focus on covering up for Trump, even as she worried it opened her up to prosecution. She decided to hire her own lawyer who, sure enough, told her to be honest with the committee and save herself, instead of saving Trump." (our emphasis)

Marcotte points out that paying for lawyers for Nauta and De Oliveira was not a generous or selfless act by the Malignant Loser. It's a matter of controlling their actions through legal "advice" provided by lawyers on the Malignant Loser's payroll. As in Cassidy Hutchinson's case, that "advice" will assuredly be to line up with the Malignant Loser's defense position.

Nauta, in particular, looks like he believes his destiny is to serve the Malignant Loser loyally, even from a prison cell that his loyalty put him in. De Oliveira may be different and may realize before it's too late that "the Boss" is only interested in saving his own hide, and not his.

BONUS: The New York Times adds further detail to the two men's legal defense.

BONUS II: A third employee, Yuscil Taveras, may also be represented by a Trump-paid lawyer.

(photo: Nauta with Trump-supplied lawyer Stanley Woodward/ Eva Marie Uzcategul | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images)

QOTD -- A Common Criminal

 

"If the allegations in the latest indictment of Donald Trump hold up, the former president is a common criminal — and an uncommonly stupid one.

"Everyone knows, as the Watergate scandal drove home: The coverup is always worse than the crime. Everyone, that is, but Trump.

"According to the superseding indictment handed up late Thursday, even after Trump knew the FBI was onto his improper retention of classified information, and even after he knew they were seeking security camera footage from the Mar-a-Lago storage areas where the material was kept — in other words, when any reasonably adept criminal would have known to stop digging holes — Trump made matters infinitely worse."... --  Ruth Marcus, Washington Post, on the Watergate lesson not learned by the "uncommonly stupid" Malignant Loser, as demonstrated in the superseding indictment issued yesterday.  His relentless lawlessness must be met with relentless accountability.

Superseding Trump Indictment In The Classified Documents Case

 

Not the indictment we were expecting this week, but a big one nonetheless:

Federal prosecutors announced new charges against Donald Trump in his alleged hoarding and hiding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home, alleging the former president and a newly-charged aide tried to keep security camera footage from being reviewed by investigators.

Trump was also hit with a fresh charge, in addition to the 31 counts he already faces, of illegally retaining national defense information.

The indictment charges that Trump and two aides, Waltine “Walt” Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, requested that another Trump employee "delete security camera footage at the Mar-a-Lago Club to prevent the footage from being provided to a federal grand jury.”

De Oliveira is the second Trump aide to be charged in the documents case. Nauta was indicted alongside Trump in June, accused of helping the former president mislead investigators as they sought to retrieve all of the classified documents that remained at the former president’s home and private club after he left the White House.

People familiar with the investigation have told The Washington Post that investigators for special counsel Jack Smith repeatedly pressed De Oliveira to explain his actions from June 2022, when he helped Nauta move boxes around Trump’s home, and in July 2022, when he allegedly had conversations with others about security camera footage. The people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss secret grand jury proceedings, have said investigators grew increasingly skeptical of De Oliveira’s answers as the investigation proceeded. [snip]

Trump was indicted last month in Miami, accused of illegally keeping classified documents at Mar-a-Lago long after he left the White House, and obstructing government efforts to get them back.

That earlier indictment charged him with 37 separate counts, 31 of them for alleged willful retention of national defense information. Each of those 31 counts represents a different classified document that Trump allegedly withheld — 21 that were discovered when the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago last August, and 10 that were turned over to the FBI in a sealed envelope two months earlier. Nauta, his longtime valet, originally faced six charges, including conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding a document, concealing a document and scheming to conceal.

The new indictment adds a total of four charges to the earlier case. All three defendants are now charged with altering, destroying, mutilating or concealing an object, as well as a similar crime of corruptly altering destroying, mutilating or concealing a document or object.

De Oliveira was also charged with lying to the FBI in a January interview in which he allegedly denied seeing boxes being moved or helping move boxes...

You can read the full indictment here (pdf).

If you're counting, that makes 41 charges in this case, total.

We are still hopeful the Special Counsel will indict the Malignant Loser this week or soon on his January 6 insurrection.  One thing is clear, though, if it hasn't been already:  Jack Smith means business.

(Photo:  just the tip of the iceberg/ AP)

Trump Judge Gets Another Bite At The Apple

Tomorrow's pretrial conference for the Malignant Loser's classified documents case should give a good indication of whether Federal District Judge Aileen "Boom" Cannon has learned her lesson about tilting the scales of justice for the Malignant Loser who appointed her to the bench. The Malignant Loser's legal team is already saying that they want the trial postponed until after the 2024 election, which would potentially allow for its dismissal should the gates of hell open and he be elected. Of course, he announced for President three months after the search warrant was executed on his Merde o'Lardo estate on August 8 of last year, showing clearly that his Presidential bid is primarily to shield himself from legal jeopardy, as was his insurrection attempt in January 2021. The Associated Press lays out the situation in this morning's edition:

"A pretrial conference Tuesday to discuss procedures for handling classified information will represent the first courtroom arguments in the case before U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon since Trump was indicted five weeks ago. The arguments could provide insight into how Cannon intends to preside over the case while she also confronts the unresolved question of how to schedule Trump’s trial as he campaigns for president.

Those issues would be closely watched in any trial involving a former president. But Cannon could face additional scrutiny in light of a much-dissected ruling she issued last year that granted the Trump team’s request for a special master to conduct an independent review of the reams of classified records removed by the FBI from his Mar-a-Lago estate. A three-judge federal appeals panel reversed her order, rebuking Cannon for a ruling it said she lacked the legal authority to make in the first place."  (our emphasis)

The article quotes several attorneys as being hopeful that Cannon will comport herself fairly, and not in the way she did last year when her designation of a "special master" to review the documents that the Malignant Loser had illegally taken to Florida was struck down in a sharply-worded decision by the 11 Circuit Court of Appeals. Others like Florida state attorney for Palm Beach County Dave Aronberg think that if Cannon does go along with the Malignant Loser's request for a postponement, the 11th Circuit will again reverse her and may even remove her from the case.

We'll see if Cannon is more concerned about her reputation and legacy, or appeasing the cult leader of her party.

(photos: the Malignant Loser and his appointee Cannon)