Trump and 18 others indicted in Georgia

Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton county Georgia, has released the indictments issued by a grand jury against serial sexual abuser Donald Trump (SSAT). While the indictments had been long expected, I was startled by how wide and sweeping they were. In addition to SSAT, 18 others were indicted on 41 felony counts and Willis said that they would be tried together and were expected to voluntarily turn themselves in by Friday, August 25th at noon. She would like to hold the trial within six months. You can read the indictment here.

The named defendants are: SSAT, Rudolph Giuliani, John Eastman, Mark Meadows, Kenneth Chesebro, Jeffrey Clark, Jenna Ellis, Ray Stallings Smith III, Robert Cheeley, Michael a. Roman, David Shafer, Shawn Still, Stephen Lee, Harrison Floyd, Trevian c. Kutti, Sidney Powell, Cathleen Latham, Scott Hall, and Misty Hampton.

While eight of the names (SSAT, Giuliani, Eastman, Meadows, Chesebro, Clark, Ellis, Powell) are familiar to me, the rest are not. I suspect that they are members of the Georgia GOP. [UPDATE: This article has more on the people indicted.]

Every one of the defendants will be charged with one count of violating Georgia’s RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act that is usually used to go after organizied crime.

The act essentially allows prosecutors to link together different crimes committed by different people and bring criminal charges against a larger criminal enterprise. The law requires prosecutors to show the existence of a criminal enterprise that has committed at least two underlying crimes.

Prosecutors have long used the federal Rico act to go after the mafia. But Georgia’s version is even more expansive than the federal statute. It allows prosecutors in the state to bring racketeering charges if a defendant attempts or solicits a crime, even if they don’t bring charges for those crimes itself.

I expect that SSAT will be seething that he will be tried together with all the rest, including people who are relatively unknown, since he likely sees himself as special even when being charged with crimes. You can expect SSAT to go on a major rant in the coming days.

UPDATE:

This article has more on the people indicted as well as the others who are somehow involved.

This would be obvious to anyone but SSAT

I am, of course, not a lawyer nor am I familiar with how criminal trials are scheduled by courts but I would be surprised if judges feel obliged to schedule them around the convenience of the defendant. Hence the ruling by judge Tanya Chutkan that she will not take into account the serial sex abuser Donald Trump’s (SSAT) political calendar when scheduling his trial that special counsel Jack Smith has requested for January 2, 2024 was to be expected. She also issued restrictions on what he can say about the case.

The federal judge presiding over Donald Trump’s 2020 election subversion case on Friday warned inflammatory remarks from the former president would push her to schedule the trial sooner, saying she would take every step to safeguard the integrity of proceedings and to avoid tainting the potential jury pool.
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Broadly speaking, Chutkan ruled that Trump was free to share “non-sensitive materials” as designated by prosecutors, but narrowed the scope so closely that it could ultimately amount to only a pyrrhic victory. Chutkan also ended up rejecting the majority of Trump’s other requests.

The judge repeatedly emphasized that she would not take into account Trump’s presidential campaign, telling Trump’s lead lawyer John Lauro that the former president’s free speech rights were not absolute and that they came second to the fact that he is now a criminal defendant.

“What the effects of my order are on a political campaign are not going to influence my decision. This is a criminal trial,” Chutkan said. “The defendant’s desire to conduct a campaign, to respond to political opponents, has to yield.”

[Read more…]

Some good news about the Sackler bankruptcy case

The Sackler family are a really odious bunch, making enormous amounts of money by having their company Purdue Pharmaceuticals aggressively push the opioid OxyContin that their company made and providing all manner of inducements to doctors to overprescribe them, resulting in the massive opioid drug addiction problem that exists right now in the US. They then posed as philanthropists, giving money to various institutions and having their names plastered all over various buildings in universities and museums and galleries. I have written about the actions of this disgusting family many, many times.

The law finally caught up with them and they were sued and the company subjected to massive fines. But even then, they exploited the bankruptcy laws to shift the burden to the company after siphoning off money to them personally while not having to admit guilt, and getting total immunity from future lawsuits that will leave their personal fortunes intact. They did this by making sure that their bankruptcy case was heard by a bankruptcy judge who is notorious for letting wealthy people off easily.
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The man who boasts of being a winner keeps losing

After losing his defamation case against E. Jean Carroll after he sexually abused her, serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT), in his usual vindictive manner, turned around and countersued her for defamation because in her post-case interviews, she spoke of being raped by SSAT.

Yesterday the judge overseeing the case threw out SSAT’s case even without letting it go to trial. His opinion is interesting as he explains that although the jury in the defamation case brought by Carroll did not find SSAT guilty of rape, that was because of the narrow way that rape is defined in the New York Penal Code, which is different from the way that is popularly understood.

The judge further added:

Dismissing the counterclaim, a judge in New York, Lewis A Kaplan, said that when Carroll repeated her allegation that Trump raped her, her words were “substantially true”. Kaplan also set out in detail why it may be said that Trump raped Carroll.
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“As the court explained in its recent decision denying Mr Trump’s motion for a new trial on damages and other relief [in the New York case] … based on all of the evidence at trial and the jury’s verdict as a whole, the jury’s finding that Mr Trump ‘sexually abused’ Ms Carroll implicitly determined that he forcibly penetrated her digitally – in other words, that Mr Trump in fact did ‘rape’ Ms Carroll as that term commonly is used and understood in contexts outside of the New York penal law.”

The next case brought by Carroll against SSAT goes to trial on January 15th, 2024.

Trial in the federal case is scheduled for 15 January, close to the start of the Republican primary as well as other court cases in which Trump is embroiled.

Roberta Kaplan, Carroll’s lawyer, said she was pleased with Judge Kaplan’s decision, and predicted the January trial “shouldn’t take very long to complete”.

Alina Habba, a lawyer for Trump, said: “We strongly disagree with the flawed decision and will be filing an appeal shortly.”

SSAT has had an unbroken streak of legal losses. When SSAT promised his followers that they would get tired of winning, he probably did not intend it to be ‘wins’ like this.

How the mighty have fallen

Serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) Trump is that curious creature, an insecure narcissist. As a narcissist, he has an inflated view of himself, but because he is insecure, he needs to have his self-image constantly reinforced by others. That works for him when he is in a bubble of sycophants and adoring cult followers but that bubble gets pricked when he steps out into the real world.

Such was the case when he arrived for his arraignment in a courthouse in Washington DC on Thursday to be subjected to the little indignities that most of us would barely notice, as this article describes.

The shock of blond-grey hair was familiar. So was the blue suit, white shirt and red tie. So was the conspicuously assertive tug of the suit jacket.

But the Donald Trump who walked into courtroom 22 on Thursday was a Trump that the public never sees – meek, shrunken, stripped of bravado and any sense of control. And, quite possibly, scared.
[Read more…]

The next Trump indictment drops

Special Counsel Jack Smith issued his second indictment of serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) yesterday alleging four counts: conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights. You can read the 45-page document here. It makes for gripping reading.

Here is a clip of Smith’s brief statement lasting less than three minutes when announcing the indictment. He did not take any questions.

The document also alleges six unnamed co-conspirators but from the descriptions of their behavior, it should not be that hard to figure out who they are, and five have already been identified in media reports as Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, John Eastman, Ken Chesebro as well as the former US justice department official Jeff Clark. It is not clear if they will be indicted separately, but it is likely that they will at some point since they were very active in supporting SSAT’s absurd claims that he won the 2020 election and formed essential components of the conspiracy. Smith said in his statement that investigations into other people are continuing.
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A bizarre reason for allowing groping

A judge in Italy has issued what can only be described as bizarre reasoning in acquitting a school caretaker of groping a 17-year old student. There was no doubt about what the groper had done. The attacker did not deny it.

The case involves a 17-year-old student at a Rome high school.

She described walking up a staircase to class with a friend, when she felt her trousers fall down, a hand touching her buttocks and grabbing her underwear.
[Read more…]

Targeting legacy admissions

The US Supreme Court has struck down the use of race as a factor in considering applications for all colleges and universities in the US. This was not entirely unexpected given the court”s ideological leanings, but it was disappointing nonetheless.

But when it comes to elite educational institutions, there is one very large group of people who have been getting preferential treatment in admissions but the legitimacy of which has not been subject to legal review and that is the preference given to so-called “legacy admissions” (applicants whose families have attended that school) and children of wealthy donors, all of whom are able to gain admission with lower academic performances. Preferences are also given to students who have athletic or other extra-curricular success. And the overwhelming majority of such people are white, making this, in effect, affirmative action for white people.

But those preferences are now coming under greater scrutiny.
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Justice Alito and the Wall Street Journal

While much of liberal ire with some of the decisions of the US Supreme.Court has focused on justice Clarence Thomas’s opinions, I have long felt that justice Samuel Alito is the most reactionary member of the court, the one most likely to offer tortured reasoning to justify what seems like pre-ordained conclusions based on his extremely conservative ideology.

Both Thomas and Alito have been the targets of investigative reports by ProPublica about the gifts and lavish vacations that they have been given, including travel on private jets, by wealthy individuals who, directly or indirectly, have had cases before the court. They did not disclose these trips and the private jet travel in their financial disclosure forms.

In the case of Alito, though, he went one step further than Thomas. As is customary with good journalistic outfits, prior to publishing their story, ProPublica informed Alito that they were preparing a story and sent him a list of questions to make sure they were being fair and accurate. What was unusual was that Alito used that to publish a ‘prebuttal’ in the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal the day before the ProPublica piece even appeared.
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What’s next in SSAT’s legal travails

Serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) was arraigned yesterday in Miami and pleaded not guilty on all counts. His valet Waltine Nauta was present but did not have a local attorney and so did not enter a plea and will do so June 27. While SSAT sat and scowled during the proceedings, Nauta apparently looked confused. No tentative date was set for SSAT’s trial, maybe because his codefendant Nauta could not enter a plea.

In federal criminal cases, the defendant has a right to a speedy trial within 70 days of entering a plea. But the defendant can waive that right and the trial can be much later. It is expected that SSAT and his lawyers will try and drag this out as long as they can with all manner of procedural motions so that it does not occur before the elections. If SSAT wins the presidency, he can order the justice department to drop the case and even pardon himself. This would be an incredible misuse of presidential power but when has that stopped SSAT? While his devoted supporters keep saying that the justice department has been weaponized against him and that what is happening to him is making the US look like a banana republic, it has always been the case that SSAT is the one who had made a mockery of many of the institutions that constitute a functioning democracy.
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