Updates – Freedom of the Press, Indictments

Humor of the day: In special counsel Jack Smith’s date for the trial regarding his attempts to overturn the 2020 election, the DOJ proposed a trial date of January 2, 2024. The legal team for Deposed Donald Trump (DDT) wants it to be in April 2026—27 months later, and 32 months from now. DDT’s lawyers claim one of them must sit down and read every page beginning to end rather than have a team electronically search the materials.

Interesting thought for the day from Jonathan Last: DDT could “surrender” himself for the Fulton County (GA) indictment on August 23, swallowing all the media from the first GOP presidential candidates’ debate unless he decides to attend.

Update: Much to the dismay of perpetrators of a raid on the small Marion County Record, the First Amendment violating freedom of the press has received extensive international notice. The seizure of all computers, cellphones, hard drive, server, and other items from the newspaper by the entire five-person police force following an illegal warrant inspired by an irritated local restaurant owner didn’t stop the weekly edition from being published. Despite the loss of all their materials, the staff worked all night to get out the Wednesday’s edition on computers put together from discards. (Editor Eric Meyer holds up the latest newspaper edition in the raided offices with the headline “Seized … But Not Silenced.”)

Owner and publisher Eric Meyer, whose 98-year-old mother died soon after the raid on her house, addressed the importance of not allowing the travesty to “stand.” A judge signed the search warrant under the pretense that the police chief believed a newspaper reporter committed identity theft and unlawful use of a computer. Katherine Jacobsen, program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, is unaware of any other police raid on a U.S. newsroom. The county attorney said he would ask the district court to release affidavits supporting the warrants and concluded that “insufficient evidence exists” for the search and seizure, and the police returned the items that it took. The newspaper’s circulation of 4,000 has grown by another 2,000 from as far away ten states outside Kansas as well as Germany. 

The Kansas Bureau of Investigation (KBI) is reviewing the case, and the attorney will decide whether to “charge for any offense.” The newspaper employed a forensic expert to determine if law enforcement accessed or reviewed any of their records. Meyer said he believes the police raided the newspaper because it was investigating why the police chief left his previous post as an officer in Kansas City (MO). Two seized items were a computer tower and cellphone belong to a reporter looking into the chief’s background who wasn’t part of checking on the business owner’s background.

Kansas AG Kris Kobach, who oversees the KBI, said he can’t understand the KBI’s role to include “an evaluation of constitutional claims about the raid.” Kobach is known for his voter suppression tactics. In 2021, the state AG’s office agreed to pay $1.9 million in fees and expenses for a five-year legal battle over an unconstitutional restriction on voter registrations. In 2018, a judge held Kobach in contempt of court for his embarrassing performance in a 2018 trial; she recommended Kobach take a remedial law class and found no evidence to support Kobach’s claims of widespread voter fraud.

Update: After MAGA supporters published personal information about Georgia grand jury members voting to indict DDT and 18 of his allies for allegedly overturning the 2020 presidential election, the grand jurors face online violent threats and racist comments. These statements were on both far-right platforms and Elon Musk’s X, formerly Twitter. Xers also posted grand jurors’ social media profiles and professional websites.

In other threats, a Houston (TX) woman has been charged with threatening Judge Tanya Chutkan for her part in Smith’s Washington trial against DDT. The Texas woman left a voice email for Chutkan on August 5, promising to “kill anyone who went after former President Trump.” She allegedly added:

“You are in our sights, we want to kill you. Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you, so tread lightly, b****. You will be targeted personally, publicly, your family, all of it.”

The woman also used the N-word and addressed the judge as a “stupid slave.” Chutkan was born in Jamaica. In addition, the woman “made a direct threat to kill” Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), all Washington Democrats, and all members of the LGBTQ+ community.

The top GOP candidate for the 2024 presidential election by the numbers.

DDT’s former political advisor Roger Stone dictated the rationale behind undermining the Electoral College voting certification on November 5, 2020, shortly before the announcement of the 2020 election outcome. In a video, Stone stated that “the final decision as to who the state legislatures authorize the send to the electoral college is a decision made solely by the legislature.” It is the premise that the Supreme Court rejected in Moore v. Harper.

Stone also publicly suggested DDT should consider declaring “martial law” if he doesn’t win the election and seize ballots and file legal challenges in contested states. In 2019, Stone was found guilty of witness tampering and lying to Congress, but DDT pardoned him days before Stone’s 40-month prison sentence was to begin so that Stone could help him in his reelection campaign.

Evidently, the indictments are frightening DDT: he followed his legal team’s advice to call off his Monday “press conference” where he plans to give proof of election fraud in Georgia. Thus far two presidential candidates, Ron DeSantis and Mike Pence, agree with the state’s governor, Brian Kemp, that “the 2020 election in Georgia was not stolen.” DDT used the excuse that his lawyers wanted to put his proof “in formal Legal Filings,” making the “News Conference … no longer necessary.”

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, who ruled that Elon Musk must turn over DDT’s Twitter information, became very impatient with his refusal for months. Musk also fought the nondisclosure order specifically to keep DDT from knowing about the order, leading Howell to ask the outside counsel for Musk:

“Is it because the CEO wants to cozy up with the former president, and that’s why you’re here?”

Prosecutors kept DDT from knowing about the search warrant before it could be executed so that he wouldn’t destroy the information or notify witnesses.

Hypocrisy is the name of the game surrounding the four DDT indictments.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) joined Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) in demanding that people be allowed to determine DDT’s fate at the ballot box. That happened in 2020, voters preferred Joe Biden, and DDT led MAGA allies in rejecting reality. That’s the reason for the indictments.

Another GOP argument complains about “weaponization” of DDT and how outrageous that a presidential candidate would accuse an opponent of illegal behavior. Consider DDT’s constant guidance in “Lock her up,” regarding his opponent Hillary Clinton in 2016. Republicans then claimed that DDT didn’t pursue prosecution of Clinton; they didn’t because of no evidence. DDT also continued to use the chant throughout his time in the White House and returned to it since he lost in 2020. Before the 2020 election, he called for her incarceration and lobbied his AG Bill Barr to prosecute her, afraid that she would be running for president again.

DDT’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani is furious about his indictment, claiming that the use of the RICO act is completely wrong. As a federal prosecutor, he invoked the act many times for both Mafia gangs and Wall Street inside traders in the mid-1980s. The federal RICO Act was passed in 1970 to cover “predicate crimes,” acts stitched together as evidence of a corrupt organization—basically conspiracy. Giuliani and his team were the first prosecutors to systematically use the act in a major felony case; 11 Mafia figures from all “five families” were convicted of extortion, labor racketeering, and murder for hire in 1985 and sentence to 70 to 100 years in prison. Yet almost three decades later he joined DDT to participate in the same activities.

In 2016, he called Clinton a criminal who should be put in jail. He said that the Clintons “started as crooks” in Arkansas. He added that “the national security case against her is so strong that I’ve convicted people based on ten percent” of the case against her. Giuliani accused her of running to stay out of prison. “You can’t put a criminal in the White House,” he said. At the 2016 GOP convention, he said when talking about Clinton:

 “The RICO statute – I was the first one to use the racketeering statute for public corruption.”

RNC chair Ronna McDaniel said that DDT will sign the party’s loyalty pledge if he decides to participate in the debate on August 23. She said that he had signed it to get on the South Carolina ballot. The pledge requires that the candidates support the GOP presidential nominee. DDT signed one in 2016 but then reneged it. He now says he won’t sign the pledge but hasn’t said whether he will debate.  

Reclusive Melania Trump is spending the summer in New York City while her husband, DDT, is at his golf club at Bedminster (NJ), an hour away, in between his court appearances. Sources say that DDT’s legal issues are “another problem for her husband, not for her.” (Left: Melania Trump with her son Barron.)