The second Trump indictment drops

Serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) has now been indicted on criminal charges for the second time. The first time was a few months ago in Manhattan on state charges related to his paying hush money to porn stars. This time it is on federal charges in Florida relating to his withholding of classified documents after he left the presidency. He is expected to turn himself in in a Miami federal courthouse on Tuesday where the indictment will be unsealed and he will be formally charged. SSAT’s lawyer has said there are seven criminal counts including violations of the Espionage Act, obstruction of justice and conspiracy. He will of course plead not guilty but by all accounts the case against him this time is stronger than the earlier one.

The main danger for SSAT in this case is the charge that he willfully withheld classified documents even when asked for them, thus triggering prosecution under the Espionage Act, which is pretty serious. If he had readily handed them over when they were found (as Mike Pence and Joe Biden did), then he would likely not have been charged. There is evidence that he knew that he had classified documents in his possession and yet did not hand them over when asked to do so. For some reason that I still cannot fathom, SSAT wanted to keep these documents even after leaving office. SSAT’s motivations are mostly grifting and narcissism but it is not clear where those fit in in this case.
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The other defamation case by E. Jean Carroll

A jury found that serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) guilty of sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll decades ago and said that he should pay her $2 million in damages for the assault and another $3 million in damages for defaming her. The very next day, SSAT appeared at a live event that was broadcast by CNN in front of a specially chosen friendly crowd where he proceeded once again to say the same things about Carroll that the jury had said constituted defamation.

Carroll and her attorney Roberta Kaplan then filed an amended suit against SSAT asking this time for punitive damages. When juries award damages in a civil suit, then assign a monetary value for the actual damage suffered by the claimant and can also add punitive damages which are meant to punish the defendant and discourage such behavior in the future. In the Carroll case, they did not award punitive damages and SSAT’s actions immediately after suggested that he was not at all remorseful by being rebuked.
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Uganda’s harsh new attack on LGBTQ+ rights

The president of that nation has signed into law tough new measures aimed against the LGBTQ community.

Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni signed one of the world’s toughest anti-LGBTQ laws, including the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality”, drawing Western condemnation and risking sanctions from aid donors.

Same-sex relations were already illegal in Uganda, as in more than 30 African countries, but the new law goes further.

It stipulates capital punishment for “serial offenders” against the law and transmission of a terminal illness like HIV/AIDS through gay sex. It also decrees a 20-year sentence for “promoting” homosexuality.
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A presidency photo of Museveni showed him signing the law with a golden pen at his desk. The 78-year-old has called homosexuality a “deviation from normal” and urged lawmakers to resist “imperialist” pressure.

A local organisation, Human Rights Awareness and Promotion Forum, and 10 other individuals later filed a complaint against the law at the constitutional court, one of the petitioners, Busingye Kabumba, told Reuters.

Museveni had sent the original bill passed in March back, asking parliament to tone down some provisions. But his ultimate approval was not seen as in doubt in a conservative country where anti-LGBTQ attitudes have hardened in recent years, in part due to campaigning by Western evangelical church groups.

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Texas attorney general impeached and suspended from office

Ken Paxton has been one of the most right wing and belligerent of Trump’s supporters, advancing all manner of propositions of the MAGA agenda including legal challenges to the results of the 2020 election which was, of course, thrown out. He also seems to be very arrogant and corrupt, with 10 years of investigations and charges pending, so much so that we had that rare event, where Republicans filed 20 articles of impeachment against a fellow Republican and then the body voted in favor, requiring him to be suspended from office, pending a trial by the Texas senate.

Many articles such as this one were irritatingly short of details. They said that the vote in favor of impeachment 121-23 and that the senate needs a two thirds majority to convict him and that his wife is a member of that body but gave no further breakdowns, requiring me to search for them.
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The complex story of Jessica Watkins

On Friday, US district judge Amit Mehta handed down two more sentences to Oath Keepers for their role in the January 6th, 2021 events, following the 18 year sentence given earlier to its leader Stewart Rhodes. One of those sentenced was army veteran Jessica Watkins, a transgender woman, who was given eight years and six months in prison.

The name Jessica Watkins was familiar to me because I had long been aware of Watkins’s role in the events. Micah Loewinger, a reporter for On The Media, and Hampton Stall, the founder of MilitiaWatch, had been tracking the activities of the Oath Keepers and monitoring the walkie-talkie app Zello that was used for militia recruiting and organizing. They listened in as the riot was unfolding. As far back as in January 13, 2021, just a week after the riot, Loewinger and Stall reported how she figured prominently in the conversations of the mob that day, issuing instructions to others on what to do.

The Zello user who described breaking into the Capitol building appears to be Jessica Watkins, a 38-year-old bartender from Ohio, who admitted to participating in the insurrection. Watkins told the Ohio Capital Journal she was the leader of a local militia called the Ohio State Regular and a member of the national Oath Keepers militia.
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“We have a good group: 30 to 40 of us. We’re sticking together and sticking to the plan,” the female voice is heard saying on Zello as they were walking toward the Capitol. “The police are doing nothing. They’re not even trying to stop us.”

The Ohio Capital Journal also identified Watkins as one of a line of Oath Keepers pushing their way through the crowd on the steps of the Capitol toward the east entrance of the building. She can be seen toward the back of the line in livestream footage taken at the deadly event wearing battle rattle. Moments later a stream of pro-Trump insurrectionists poured inside.

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What we can learn from the E. Jean Carroll trial

This American Life had a segment about how, back in 2020, Carroll recorded as series of interviews with women who had accused convicted sex offender Donald Trump (CSODT) of sexual assault or harassment. They played her interview with Jessica Leeds who had also testified at the trial.

In cases like Carroll’s, much depends on how credible each side is but that is hard to gauge based on the written word. I have never seen or heard Carroll live and of course I did not see the trial so could not judge how the jury might have perceived them. But when I listed to this 16-minute discussion between the two women, I could understand why the jury seemed to have no difficulty whatsoever in finding them to be credible.

Rebecca Traister discussed with On The Media host Brooke Gladstone about what the trial and verdict of CSODT tells us. She says that it shows how long it takes for movements such as #MeToo to gain ground and that when we take the longer view, we see how significant the result was and what an important victory it was not just for Carroll. She says that we make a mistake by taking short-term setbacks as definitive.

The 20 minute interview can be heard here.

Let’s not forget that other serial liar …

While much media coverage has naturally focused on convicted sex offender Donald Trump, yesterday federal prosecutors criminally charged congressman George Santos. He turned himself in at a federal courthouse in Manhattan this morning and was arrested.

The congressman was probably treated the same as any other criminal defendant, a person familiar with the matter said. That would involve the congressman being fingerprinted and getting his mugshot taken, and sitting for a preliminary interview before being arraigned.
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The US justice department unsealed a 13-count indictment: seven counts of wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, one count of theft of public money and two counts of making false statements in reports to the House of Representatives.

Santos faces a maximum sentence of 20 years on the top count, the US attorney’s office for the eastern district of New York said. He will not have to relinquish his congressional seat, though members sentenced to at least two years cannot vote or be on committees.

“The allegations in the indictment charge Santos with relying on repeated dishonesty and deception to ascend to the halls of Congress and enrich himself,” the US attorney Breon Peace said in a statement.

The indictment outlined three alleged fraudulent schemes, starting with a political contributions scheme in which Santos and an unnamed Queens-based consultant are alleged to have induced donors to give money to Santos’s company, which he is alleged to have spent on luxury designer goods and to pay debts.

The second alleged scheme involved unemployment benefits fraud during the Covid pandemic, when Santos applied for government assistance though he was employed and receiving a $120,000 salary from an investment firm in Florida.

The third alleged scheme involved Santos misleading the House about his financial situation, overstating a source of income without disclosing his salary in May 2020, during his first, unsuccessful run for Congress, then making false statements in September 2022 during his victorious run.

The false information prosecutors say Santos included in his second financial disclosure appears particularly notable because of the significant amounts of money at stake and the bizarre circumstances in which they were recorded.

Prosecutors alleged that Santos certified that he earned a $750,000 salary and between $1m and $5m in dividends from his company, the Devolder Organization, and claimed to have $100,000 to $250,000 in a checking account and between $1m and $5m in a savings account – none of which was true.

All in all, this has been a bad week for liars and sex abusers. And it’s only Wednesday.

What next for convicted sex offender Donald Trump?

I must admit I was surprised at how quickly the jury came to its verdict that Donald Trump had sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll and defamed her by accusing her of perpetrating a hoax. I had predicted that he might get off simply because he was an ex-president and am glad to have been proven wrong. The fact that they took less than three hours to bring in their verdict means that they had no doubts or major disagreements about their decision on the actual charges. Most of their time was likely spent on deciding what the size of the financial penalties should be.

This case shows that convicted sex offender Trump’s constant lying has finally caught up with him. In cases like this where there is no physical evidence and adjudication depends on which side the jury finds more credible, the indisputable fact that convicted sex offender Trump has not only boasted of sexually assaulting women but also lies shamelessly had to have swung the jury in Carroll’s favor.

Convicted sex offender Trump will of course appeal, if only because he has to, to try and save face. It will be interesting to see on what grounds he will appeal. The strategy to do so on the basis that he was denied the chance to testify got torpedoed when the judge allowed him to apply at the last minute to testify but he failed to do so. His lawyers may try to argue that the judge made biased decisions against them. They may also try to argue that some kinds of evidence (such as the infamous Access Hollywood tape) should not have been allowed. They may also object to the fact that women who were not part of the case were allowed to testify about convicted sex offender Trump assaulting them in order to show a pattern of behavior by him.
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Trump found guilty of sexual assault and defamation

After a very short deliberation of less than three hours, the jury found Donald Trump guilty of sexual assault and defamation but not guilty of rape of E. Jean Carroll.

A New York jury has found that Donald Trump sexually abused the advice columnist E Jean Carroll in a New York department store 27 years ago.

The verdict for the first time legally brands a former US president as a sexual predator. But as it is the result of a civil and not criminal case, the only legal sanction Trump will face is financial.

The jury awarded Carroll more than $2 million on the charge of assault and about $3 million on the defamation charge.

Trump issues yet another lie

After jury deliberations began in the battery and defamation charges brought against him by E. Jean Carroll, Trump brazenly lied yet again, saying via his social media:

Waiting for a jury decision on a False Accusation where I, despite being a current political candidate and leading all others in both parties, am not allowed to speak or defend myself, even as hard nosed reporters scream questions about this case at me. In the meantime, the other side has a book falsely accusing me of Rape, & is working with the press. I will therefore not speak until after the trial, but will appeal the Unconstitutional silencing of me, as a candidate, no matter the outcome! (My bolding-MS]

This is a flat-out lie. No one was stopping him from testifying. As I posted earlier today, Trump’s strategy all along was to avoid testifying to avoid being cross-examined, wait until it was too late to testify in person by getting on the witness list, say at the last minute that he wanted to testify while expecting to be denied, and then claim that he was not allowed because the judge was biased against him and use that as a basis for appeal.

The judge checkmated him by giving him a window of time to apply to testify, which he did not use. But he now goes ahead anyway and says that he was denied the chance to speak.

This ploy might work with his devoted supporters but an appeals court will summarily reject that argument should he be found guilty.

The possible verdicts that the jury can return, as told to them by the judge:

The jury can return one of several verdicts.

It can find that Trump raped Carroll, who was in the front row of the court on Tuesday. Alternatively, if it does not believe the evidence proves rape, it can find he is responsible for sexual abuse, meaning forcible sexual contact without consent.

If the jurors do not believe either of those findings are applicable, then they can return a verdict of forcible touching, or they can clear Trump. If they find Trump is responsible for sexual abuse in any form, the jurors will also have to assess damages.

It appears that I was mistaken when I said earlier that a civil case requires just a 5/6th majority which in a jury of nine people would require eight to bring in a verdict of guilty. That seems to apply only in New York state courts. It seems that because this is in a federal court, the verdict must be unanimous, which improves Trump’s chances.