Donald Trump: Classic or Dud?

his lawyers might try to make some kind of nonsensical constitutional argument just to see if the SCOTUS will take the bait. they will throw whatever they can dream up into the mix, if only to delay and obfuscate the simple clarity of Trump being a convicted felon. since Trump doesn't have to spend his own money for it, he'll be happy to pay as much a necessary to keep stirring the pot.

yeah its all about making noise, when people talk about him being a felon they want the next thought to be "but maybe the trial wasn't fair", they do this shit every time something unequivocally bad happens

I see no grounds where SCOTUS would take this up, except that a couple of them 'owe him a favor'

Constitutional considerations are secondary. The Supreme Court will take up whatever bullshit appeal they come up with not for Trump but because it will allow them to make the Republican Party not the ones who nominated a convicted felon for President.

he could totally raise some federal questions but he has to work the system and appeal

https://www.salon.com/2024/06/01/ive-never-seen-that-legal-scholars-say-has-opening-to-turn-to-for-help/

Alito & Thomas would likely sign on to hear any flimsy constitutional argument Trump's lawyers might gin up, but I don't have enough imagination to think of what grounds they could base their case on.

The Supreme Court has increasingly been making law by issuing emergency rulings using the shadow docket.

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/supreme-court-shadow-docket

History is weird:

This process, incidentally, gave rise to one of the Court’s more bizarre stories, when in 1970 two lawyers hiked six miles into the woods to request that Justice William O. Douglas temporarily restrain Portland, Oregon policemen from using violent tactics to quell protests. Douglas held an impromptu oral argument and left his decision on a tree stump: application denied. Supreme Court rules now require that all shadow docket applications be submitted to the clerk’s office.

yah that was my next post--didn't post, but he could figure out some federal angle and get them to rule on it. I don't think he has 5 to overturn it though.

i think the messaging has been bad on it. it wasn't hush money==it was paying someone off to influence an election

take from it what you will.. via The Guardian:

The figures were even starker among “double haters” – voters who equally dislike Trump and President Joe Biden – 65% of whom supported the verdict, with two-thirds saying the former president should end his campaign. Pollsters predict the cohort could be a critical component of the swing voter constituency they believe will determine the outcome in November.

(editorial note: it should really be spelled 'haterz')

i think the messaging has been bad on it. it wasn't hush money==it was paying someone off to influence an election

idk I think "hush money to a porn star" does more to degrade the guy than election malfeasance. It resonates more deeply. Not that it was news, but the trial put a big spotlight on it all over again.

Otm

okay cool cool

Speaker Johnson went so far as to say, “This will be overturned guys, there’s no question about it.” (It would be extraordinarily bizarre for the Supreme Court to somehow overturn a criminal conviction under state law outside of the appeals process in New York courts.)

This year is managing to be easily more stressful than anticipated in varying ways, well done

It's not so much bizarre as so underused that it would be tragically unfair to use it in this criminal case, and not the reams of more deserving convictions.

Sad that the entire doctrine of habeas corpus appeals (such as stay of execution of death penalty sentences for faulty prosecutions) and collateral attacks in federal court on state court convictions has been so gutted and ignored for so long by the Supreme Court's refusal to vacate clearly unconstitutional state court convictions that there's a perception that this collateral review process is now regarded as bizarre rather than pitifully underused.

xp

as I see it, the caveat is outside of the appeals process in New York.. his team have not yet filed an appeal in NY courts but he wants SCOTUS to jump in do him a solid

SCOTUS is not going to jump in

xp I don't know what that all means felicity. As an interested but ordinary citizen I thought the concept of a conspiracy to falsify business records and skirt tax laws to conceal an attempt at election interference was a pretty compelling concept

I think we agree that Trump's criminal conviction was totally just and fair.

What I was commenting on is that normally a convicted criminal in the state court system has to exhaust the state court appeals process before applying for relief in the federal courts, under a collateral attack, which could be the lead to Supreme Court review, which is discretionary.

Then, my post about the shadow docket was to highlight that conversative justices have used the shadow docket as a workaround to shape the law in nefarious ways, a procedure that is less known because it doesn't follow the typical process of full briefing and arguments.

What I last commented on was what I perceived as as erosion in actually using the collateral attack in federal courts on wrongful state court convictions (to be clear, the Trump conviction is not wrongful) to such an extent that people may have forgotten that this was a thing that used to be done, and often on a large scale.

Either way, he can't pursue federal intervention until going through state appeals, right? Or is there a mechanism to make some kind of federal filing outside of state appeal?

So-called emergency motions, which is why the shadow docket is so contentious.

Second — and this is a more recent change — the justices have begun to issue far more rulings, and more significant rulings, through the shadow docket. Today, the justices grant relief in contentious shadow docket cases twice as often as they did just a few years ago. The surge in issuing this relief has coincided with Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett joining the Court.

Put simply, the Court is making more significant decisions through the shadow docket while having reduced the robustness of the decision-making process.

The Court has used the shadow docket to rule on issues including gerrymandering, pandemic rules, environmental regulation, and (as described above) abortion. Many of its high profile uses of the shadow docket have involved so-called emergency motions, which often seek to suspend or reverse lower court orders while a case is still in progress. This is supposed to be a rare action, limited to situations in which the lower court rulings could cause irreparable harm if allowed to stand. Critics, however, argue that the Supreme Court is granting relief when the applicant has not truly demonstrated irreparable harm, effectively deciding cases at too early a stage in the litigation, and with a lack of transparency and participation from affected parties.

One frequently cited example is Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo, in which the justices struck down New York’s capacity restrictions on religious services due to Covid-19. The Supreme Court’s intervention reversing the lower courts that had allowed the restrictions to stand appeared particularly unusual since the attendance limits were no longer in effect and could not cause harm.

Another example came when the justices reinstated Alabama’s gerrymandered Congressional map after lower courts had ruled that the plan discriminated against Black voters in violation of the Voting Rights Act. The result is that those maps will be in effect for at least the 2022 election. Only two justices in the majority (Kavanaugh and Samuel Alito) provided any reasons for their decision.

Louisiana v. American Rivers was another controversial use of the shadow docket. In its waning days, the Trump administration issued a regulation preventing states from blocking infrastructure projects that could contaminate rivers, lakes, and streams. When a federal judge vacated the Trump rule and restored the states’ powers, the Supreme Court stepped in on behalf of fossil fuel interests, reinstating the administration’s rule without citing evidence or providing an explanation of how the lower court order threatened irreparable harm.

Chief Justice John Roberts, a conservative jurist, raised eyebrows when he joined the Supreme Court’s liberals in dissenting from that ruling. In that dissent, Justice Elena Kagan lamented that the Court had gone “astray,” rendering “the Court’s emergency docket not for emergencies at all.” Rather, the shadow docket had become “only another place for merits determinations — except made without full briefing and argument.”

Using the shadow docket for nonemergency but monumental decisions runs counter to the tenets of transparency and the rule of law. As many legal scholars have observed, the justices’ usual process of waiting for lower courts to establish facts and weigh in on cases, receiving full briefing, holding oral argument, and providing detailed explanations of their orders, is a key source of the Court’s legitimacy.

So, when the justices increasingly render decisions affecting more and more Americans in a manner that precipitously resolves constitutional or statutory questions with little to no reasoning given, they feed the perception that their rulings are predicated on political ideology rather than judicial principles.

A question. If no reasoned opinion is issued with a shadow docket ruling, but merely a finding for one party, how easily can the ruling be cited as precedent in support of lower court rulings, if the lower court case does not clearly follow the facts of the shadow docket ruling?

Depressing, but I think that means it's unclear how much precedential value a shadow docket emergency ruling with no reasoning has for other lower court cases. The ruling would be binding on the case it's in. Hopefully this situation of having a convicted felon as a presumptive party nominee isn't one that reoccurs. Terrible to even have to consider it.

Odds now 50% Trump, 45% Biden, 5% Ozymandias's Squid

forgive me if this is a silly question, but...why can't Willis just...not be on the case? is there no one else capable of doing it? does she have the secret sauce that just has to be on the case? didn't she already massively fuck up once in this case? why not just step down and save a bunch of time?? it's pretty fucking important to try to get a trial in before the election, right?

What I've read is that if Willis takes herself off the case her entire office (Fulton County DA's office) is off the case and the case with its 15 remaining defendants goes to Pete Skandalakis for reassignment as did the charge against Lt. Gov. Burt Jones.

Skandalakis was sued by a group of lawyers for taking over a year and a half to make the decision to reassign the Jones prosecution due to its complexity. Skandalakis decided to take over the prosecution of Jones himself. Now Skandalakis is being sued by the same group of lawyers seeking to have him disqualified due to his alleged conflict of interest.

So there's no guarantee that Willis recusing herself and her office would speed up the trial date.

idk I think "hush money to a porn star" does more to degrade the guy than election malfeasance. It resonates more deeply. Not that it was news, but the trial put a big spotlight on it all over again.

it certainly does degrade him more, but. . . so what? still think the larger and more damaging point is he tried to shut people up to influence an election. that should be front and center in the messaging. he tried to influence the first election by paying people off. tried to literally steal the second one. we don't have a press or a political party in this country astute enough to explain that. literally don't care what he does in his private time, he's a gross pig, so what. he's a gross pig who tried to subvert democracy

thanks felicity. oof

the target audience (ie people who haven’t decided who to vote for) will be more responsive to “hush money porn star” than “dishonest business records” xp

based on the conversations I've had about this over the last week it seems like a lot of people don't even know if he's still eligible to run for office after this, feels pretty unlikely that those folks will wind up voting for him

Pretty lackluster corrupt deep state conspiracy if it can't even keep a convicted felon off the ballot

People should be responsive to what a horrible president he was and person he is.

You would hope

If only

the target audience (ie people who haven’t decided who to vote for) will be more responsive to “hush money porn star” than “dishonest business records” xp

This is kind of what I mean--I'll shut up after this, but it's *not* just dishonest business records, he tried to influence an election, big big big difference

He also threatened to withhold aid from Ukraine to get dirt on his election opponent. No one even talks about that anymore.

He also publicly encouraged Russia to hack Hillary Clinton's email

the thing is in politics everyone gets smeared, I mean Obama was the anti-Christ, then it was Hillary, now it's Biden, even if you're a low-info voter you know how the game is played. so I think in some sense the constant crowing about Trump is just politics as usual, actually getting convicted I think actually does make people see he is as bad as they said he was, doesn't really matter if they understand the intracacies of the case or not

Yeah in politics everything is "unprecedented" and "beyond the pale" no matter what it is, wolf has been cried far too many times, there are no gradations to anything anymore, so maybe this actually cuts through as something different who knows

the georgia trial will be underway before the election. not enough time for a conviction before november, but i think the coverage of the trial will be worse for him than this new york case given the details of what went down in 2020.

granted these aren't the folks aren't exactly the type to swing an election but I do think there's something to making support for Trump a less and less tenable position to take in public, I feel like I already see it with yard signs/bumper stickers/MAGA hats not being out like they were at this time in 2020

to the extent I understand the "undecided voter", they do think both candidates are horrible but the dictator shit really does scare them, again this probably came off as hyperbole in 2016 and even 2020 but now I think it's starting to land

the georgia trial will be underway before the election. not enough time for a conviction before november, but i think the coverage of the trial will be worse for him than this new york case given the details of what went down in 2020.

― treeship., Tuesday, June 4, 2024 9:29 AM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

where are you seeing this? pretty major if so

october i thought

oh never mind. trump will have an appeal hearing then. that sucks.

just the idea of someone being "on the fence" about voting for Trump or not....*seinfeld voice* "who ARE these people..???"

people who "do their own research"

i think people get confused by right wing disinfo without realizing that is what it is. there is a lot of stuff floating around about joe biden's daughter's diary. things like that.

"Yeah in politics everything is "unprecedented" and "beyond the pale"

i've said it before and i'll say it again. all bets are off with Trump because he's not a real person! he was a joke/protest vote and he was more surprised than anyone that he won and everything after is what happens when a bad joke doesn't go away. he is the asterisk of american politics. not that what he is doing is a joke. its insanely reckless and dangerous and god only knows what's going to happen if he loses. but you can't treat him like a normal adult. so of course the word "unprecedented" is used every day because nobody acts like him. who would act like him? it feels unreal. what he does. and says. but its his world now in this country. so frightening.

i'm just glad that they didn't kill ted koppel and eat him!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KzVSDphNv0

Is the diary thing really disinfo? I think it's more just something Dems prefer not to discuss.

so does this work for everyone? I'm thinking of starting a life of crime too.

https://www.wnct.com/news/politics/ap-trump-raises-141-million-in-may-bolstered-by-guilty-verdict/