Is Donald Trump above the law? We may soon find out.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2024
CERTIORARI GRANTED
23-939 TRUMP, DONALD J. V. UNITED STATES (23A745)

     The application for a stay presented to The Chief Justice is referred by him to the Court. The Special Counsel’s request to treat the stay application as a petition for a writ of certiorari is granted, and that petition is granted limited to the following question: Whether and if so to what extent does a former President enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office. Without expressing a view on the merits, this Court directs the Court of Appeals to continue withholding issuance of the mandate until the sending down of the judgment of this Court. The application for a stay is dismissed as moot.

     The case will be set for oral argument during the week of April 22, 2024. Petitioner’s brief on the merits, and any amicus curiae briefs in support or in support of neither party, are to be filed on or before Tuesday, March 19, 2024. Respondent’s brief on the merits, and any amicus curiae briefs in support, are to be filed on or before Monday, April 8, 2024. The reply brief, if any, is to be filed on or before 5 p.m., Monday, April 15, 2024.

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The "question presented"—

"Whether and if so to what extent does a former President enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office?"

The question not at this point explicitly presented in the above, but clearly the one that matters—

"To what extent (if any) do the behaviors, incitements, and directives (express or implied) of now-former President Donald Trump relating to the 2020 Presidential election result dispute which culminated in the January 6th, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol constitute 'official acts'?"

Game on... 

Fundamental to Donald Trump’s argument on this self-serving immunity claim is that whole “chief law enforcement officer of the United States” assertion. In order to fulfill his sacred Article II Outer Perimeter obligation that he “faithfully execute the laws,” it was Officially imperative that he continually reviewed the 2020 election to verify its legitimacy (which, of course, would never be found)..

Never mind his blatant personal conflict of vested interest in the outcome. His constitutionally proper response would have been to appoint a beat-to-Quarters DefCon5 DOJ special counsel and staff (via AG Barr) to independently review the 2020 election results. It continues to irritate the stew out of me that the various national media legal pundits don’t pound on this centrally salient point.

250 days to go until the 2024 U.S. national elections, folks.

ONE VOTE FOR BLANKET INDEMNITY AT THE OUTSET?

DIFFERENT VENUE, SAME FATUOUS IMMUNITY ASSERTION

“Trump’s argument is conclusory. No evidence was presented to support it, and Trump has not explained how hiring and making payments to a personal attorney to handle personal affairs carries out a constitutional duty. Reimbursing Cohen for advancing hush money to Stephanie Clifford cannot be considered the performance of a constitutional duty. Falsifying business records to hide such reimbursement, and to transform the reimbursement into a business expense for Trump and income to Cohen, likewise does not relate to a presidential duty. Trump is not immune from the People’s prosecution in New York Supreme Court. His argument of immunity is not a colorable defense.”—NY State Judge Alvin Hellerstein, Trump pornstar “Stormy Daniels” hush money criminal fraud case.

 Might it help to paraphrase from Justice Roberts’ Feb 28th cert words?

NONE of the behaviors, incitements, and directives (express or implied) of Trump relating to the 2020 Presidential election result dispute which culminated in the January 6th, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol constitute any elements of “presidential duty.” In fact, they were plainly and wholly to the contrary, resulting in destructively violent mayhem, injuries, and deaths—leaving a black civic moral stain glaringly unworthy of the honorable self-governing republic we claim to be.

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January 6th, 2021

 

Never forget.

 

Click (large PDF)

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January 7th, 2021: A Fentanyl Overdose of Insincerity

"It's a small coup, after all..."

 

 

One could be forgiven for wondering whether this was the latest Animatronic Exhibit at Disney World in Orlando.

Reports pertaining to the January 6th Committee investigation indicate that an irritated and rattled Trump had to do multiple, grudging re-takes on this brief 2:41 address to the nation following the previous day's insurrection attack on the Capitol—vicious violence that he had fomented.

It is well beyond obvious that Trump did not write these words. He had to be coerced by staff, under the spectre of the 25th Amendment, to haltingly read them from the teleprompter.

"A republic, if you can keep it."

 

ERRATUM

Such magnanimity.

 

SUSAN B. GLASSER

On Thursday night, the House select committee charged with investigating January 6th concluded a two-month run of blockbuster hearings with a searing, minute-by-minute account of what Trump did—and didn’t do—in the dining room that awful afternoon. The words “dereliction of duty” came up a lot, as did phrases like “stain on our history” and “betrayed his oath of office.” It all added up to a portrait of something that the United States has not seen in its more than two hundred and forty years: a President who abdicated his role as Commander-in-Chief, having unleashed a violent mob of his own making and then chosen to sit by and do nothing as his nation’s Capitol was besieged and overwhelmed by that mob. “President Trump did not fail to act,” Representative Adam Kinzinger, the renegade, anti-Trump Republican from Illinois, who presented much of the evidence on Thursday, said. “He chose not to act.”

Sociopath-in-Chief.

 

LOL. Found on Twitter

CODA

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Lock him UP!

“Book ’im, Dano.”

After seven hearings held by the January 6 committee thus far this summer, doubts as to who is responsible have been resolved. The evidence is now overwhelming that Donald Trump was the driving force behind a massive criminal conspiracy to interfere with the official January 6 congressional proceeding and to defraud the United States of a fair election outcome.

The evidence is clearer and more robust than we as former federal prosecutors—two of us as Department of Justice officials in Republican administrations—thought possible before the hearings began. Trump was not just a willing beneficiary of a complex plot in which others played most of the primary roles. While in office, he himself was the principal actor in nearly all of its phases, personally executing key parts of most of its elements and aware of or involved in its worst features, including the use of violence on Capitol Hill. Most remarkably, he did so over vehement objections raised at every turn, even by his sycophantic and loyal handpicked team. This was Trump’s project all along.

Everyone knew before the hearings began that we were dealing with perhaps the gravest imaginable offense against the nation short of secession—a serious nationwide effort pursued at multiple levels to overturn the unambiguous outcome of a national election. We all knew as well that efforts were and are unfolding nationwide to change laws and undermine electoral processes with the specific objective of succeeding at the same project in 2024 and after. But each hearing has sharpened our understanding that Donald Trump himself is the one who made it happen…

About the authors: Donald Ayer served as United States attorney and principal deputy solicitor general in the Reagan administration and as deputy attorney general under George H. W. Bush. Stuart M. Gerson served as assistant attorney general for the Civil Division of the Department of Justice from 1989 to 1993 and as acting attorney General in 1993. He is a member of the firm at Epstein Becker Green. Dennis Aftergut is a former federal prosecutor and former Chief Assistant City Attorney in San Francisco, currently Of Counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy.

Read all of it. Please.

"For the past 18 months, and presently, Trump himself and his supporters have been engaged in concerted efforts across the country to prepare for a similar, but better-planned, effort to overcome the minority status of Trump’s support and put him back in the White House."

Indeed. Acute danger remains.

 

UPDATES:

 

Click above title for 69 PDF pages of principled conservative evidentiary whup-ass.
Read all of it. Please.

We are political conservatives who have spent most of our adult lives working to support the Constitution and the conservative principles upon which it is based: limited government, liberty, equality of opportunity, freedom of religion, a strong national defense, and the rule of law.

We have become deeply troubled by efforts to overturn or discredit the results of the 2020 Presidential Election. There is no principle of our Republic more fundamental than the right of the People to elect our leaders and for their votes to be counted accurately. Efforts to thwart the People’s choice are deeply undemocratic and unpatriotic. Claims that an election was stolen, or that the outcome resulted from fraud, are deadly serious and should be made only on the basis of real and powerful evidence. If the American people lose trust that our elections are free and fair, we will lose our democracy...

We therefore have undertaken an examination of every claim of fraud and miscount put forward by former President Trump and his advocates, and now put the results of those investigations before the American people, and especially before fellow conservatives who may be uncertain about what and whom to believe. Our conclusion is unequivocal: Joe Biden was the choice of a majority of the Electors, who themselves were the choice of the majority of voters in their states. Biden’s victory is easily explained by a political landscape that was much different in 2020 than it was when President Trump narrowly won the presidency in 2016. President Trump waged his campaign for re-election during a devastating worldwide pandemic that caused a severe downturn in the global economy. This, coupled with an electorate that included a small but statistically significant number willing to vote for other Republican candidates on the ballot but not for President Trump, are the reasons his campaign fell short, not a fraudulent election.

Donald Trump and his supporters have failed to present evidence of fraud or inaccurate results significant enough to invalidate the results of the 2020 Presidential Election. We do not claim that election administration is perfect. Election fraud is a real thing; there are prosecutions in almost every election year, and no doubt some election fraud goes undetected. Nor do we disparage attempts to reduce fraud. States should continue to do what they can do to eliminate opportunities for election fraud and to punish it when it occurs. But there is absolutely no evidence of fraud in the 2020 Presidential Election on the magnitude necessary to shift the result in any state, let alone the nation as a whole. In fact, there was no fraud that changed the outcome in even a single precinct. It is wrong, and bad for our country, for people to propagate baseless claims that President Biden’s election was not legitimate…
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"As part of his post-election attempts to retain the presidency, Donald Trump and his supporters filed 64 cases containing 187 counts in the six key battleground states, in addition to utilizing some of the recount and contest procedures available to them under state law. The former president maintains to this day that the 2020 election was stolen and the results fraudulent.

This Report takes a hard look at the very serious charges made by Trump and his supporters. The consequences of a president and a major party candidate making such charges are monumental…"
 

 

June 16th:
Judge J. Michael Luttig on the Trump coup attempt

 

UPDATE

 

There are disconcerting, credible reports asserting that, according to the DHS Inspector General's Office, the U.S. Secret Service deleted certain Agents' text messages and mobile phone comms records pertaining to Jan 5th and 6th, 2021 activities. The January 6th Committee is reported to have issued subpoenas for information relevant to this. Historically, Secret Service compliance has been spotty at best—ostensibly owing to OpSec concerns. This bears watching.

"Former impeachment lawyer and White House ethics czar Norm Eisen speculated whether there were Secret Service agents who are part of Donald Trump's plot to overthrow the government."

"Secret Service’s January 6 text messages story has shifted several times, panel is told"

 

OPINION SHIFTING

CODA

 

Ok, couldn't resist. This is funny.

 

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#TrumpDependenceDay

Where are things headed?

 

apropos, the tactical "Independent State Legislatures Doctrine." Unsuccessful—this time.

 

CRUZIN' TIMELINE

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UPDATE: NEW READINGS

 

 Finished the Jason Stanley book. Well into "Truth Decay."

Two more:

Dr. Linden's book is a totally compelling read. Finished it in one day. I'm just starting the Graeber / Wengrow book. I sure miss the late David Graeber.

And, two more in progress.

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