Donald Trump: Classic or Dud?

Dry reading but

https://www.manhattanda.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Donald-J.-Trump-Indictment.pdf

Kind of surprising that there isn't more here than falsifying business records.

Don jr posted a photo the judge's daughter during the hearing.

Ugh.

Stay classy, republipeeps

The Statement of Facts is more interesting than the indictment itself. Lays out the whole story, and yeah, it's more than just Stormy Daniels — it's her, Karen McDougal, and a Trump Tower doorman who claimed Trump had another, secret, kid.

!

That secret kid? Shia LaBoeuf

Bragg strikes me as impressively assured in this press conference.

Oh MY FUCKING GOD: MSNBC is showing a split screen of Bragg and Trump's getaway plane.

I'm done.

Already seeing the MAGA headlines now:

OMG he fudged a few ledgers? Everyone does that.

I'm sharing the SOF for my friends instead.

Thanks for the links!

OMG he fudged a few ledgers?

in the commission of another crime... therein lies the felony

Alvin’s been like this since college

The right guy at the right time.

no conspiracy charge some sort of misunderstanding apparently

Get the door yourself, chump

The court officers very much did not hold the door for Trump when he walked past the pool cameras pic.twitter.com/XvSlxjM8Qz

— Peter Stevenson (@PeterStevenson) April 4, 2023

love it

Incoming tweetstorm: "The door thing was big - a thread"

those cops probably have electrical and drywall contractors in the family that were stiffed by Trump & Co. years ago

Nowhere is he despised more than in his own hometown

I tend to think NYC cops are the only ones who have reason to dislike him.

I'm putting together a screenplay about those cops. It practically writes itself

Title THE SNUB

In the criminal justice system, crims committed by people with stupid hairdos are considered especially heinous.

DON DON

ACAB: All Cops Are Bad (At Door Etiquette)

DING (DON)G! Who's Hair? Don't Ding Don During Door Duty Dammit (riveting 6 episode docuseries)

lol @ Trump scowling about having to touch a door for the first time in decades

Jonathan Chait's fetish for being told "Jesus, will you just fuck off?" remains as strong as ever...

I assumed all the extremely fat white cops shown on TV were Proud Boys or Proud Boy adjacent. I doubt those pigs have anything but love for Trump.

ugh, unperson, by renaming your link you tricked me into opening NY Mag, which allows very few free articles, and which I'm not going to pay for, just to read this chud

bringing up the Comey stuff is dumb as shit, nobody had a problem with the email thing getting a thorough investigation, the problem was that he did it with literally 10 days to go, singlehandedly swinging the polls enough to let Trump squeak by. had we all known about the Stormy Daniels thing back then who knows? obviously Trump voters will stomach pretty much anything but a swing of like 0.2% is I think all it would've took.

stormy could have spoken up any time she wanted to.

Always, always, always right-click links and select "Open in incognito browser window". Always.

Ken "Popehat" White is apparently unimpressed with the indictment, he usually has a solid legal read on this stuff

Thus, she was under an NDA, aka DJT's favorite three letter acronym.

Fwiw I’ve heard a lot of legal guys say this investigation was kinda weak, but that he may be fucked on the GA and classified docs ones

To be fair to chait, if some conservative district was bringing similar charges against obama, i’d find it suspicious. It is an odd legal theory to make these felonies. (Obama is not an adulterer, I understand, but if he was).

I'm not sure I agree, the instantaneous analysis of this by 'legal experts' on CNN, MSNBC etc. is what seems really weak, and it looks clear from his press conference that he knows what he's doing and has got a bigger case than they think he does. I don't know how the process works and Bragg didn't lay it all out in the indictments which are bare bones, but he seems to think there is ample evidence there was an ongoing conspiracy to falsify campaign records to influence an election

Whatever the case, it's gonna be a long time before this goes to trial, so I'm going to forget about this by, oh, thursday or friday as will everyone else

lawyers I'm hanging with suggest the same, that these charges should not have been brought, probably, but the looming charges are less easy to dismiss.

The strength of Bragg's case is that it doesn't hinge on a vaguely worded law and he has credible witnesses. The easiest part is that the statements were provably false. Beyond that they believe they can bring credible witnesses who will speak to his knowledge of their falsity, his intent to deceive, his motive for deception, and his knowledge of the illegality of that deception. If they convince a jury these are the simple facts of the case, then the legal requirements of the law would compel a guilty verdict.

It all has to go to trial first, though. That's ages away.

xp yes the federal and georgia charges do not seem like small potatoes to me. with this case i don’t understand how it is different from what john edwards was acquitted of but then again I am not a lawyer, just a humble poster

love this (from the Guardian):

As Trump was in court, pleading not guilty to the charges, his supporters had started to drift away from their protest area. The more buttoned-down supporters – the types who will wear a hat, but can’t be bothered carrying a flag, seemed to leave first, leaving behind an assortment of kooks and weirdos who contributed to a slightly surreal atmosphere.

One woman kept saying the United Nations building, about three miles to the north, was the “Synagogue of Satan”. A man tried, in vain, to get a rather convoluted chant about gender pronouns going.

I don't understand why we give a shit how small fry this indictment is. Goddamn, people: celebrate it! Then get involved.

yeah - salad comes before dinner
this is just the opening course

so if trump went to prison would the secret service have to protect him there

no, he'd have to join a gang of other disgraced financiers out in the yard

lol mookieproof, good question

I don’t think the indictment is ‘an odd legal theory’ or ‘small potatoes’ or that it ‘should not have been brought’, I think that that is just rhetoric we accept from lawyers

and lawyers in my experience are brainwashed by law school and in some sense are the most naive people I've ever met

hence why ever hack SCOTUS justice gets "brilliant" modifying their names.

Have any of his supporters argued that what he did was not illegal? Anyway, it really doesn't matter if it's small or big potatoes. This is our legal system. Godspeed, you big asshole, this is what often happens when you do crimes, you get charged with criminality and get a chance to defend yourself.

Yeah if you don't want to be in criminal court being charged with crimes, maybe don't do so much criming like a crimey criminal all the flippin time.

xp ok but you just posted your lawyer friends were saying charges should not have been brought

I'm not sure that naivety is an accurate descriptor. For a prosecutor, the question about whether to charge always has to include the questions, Can I get a conviction? And will it be sustained on appeal? I think many lawyers, with reason, question whether charging a former president with what is usually a misdemeanor, bootstrapped here into a felony, is a good idea.