The Omnibus P01135809 Criminal Investigation Thread

Here is a good summary of the news coverage so far.

Oh, and for @Jenee who has never seen or talked to another woman before, the end of this has a woman talking about peckers. I am not sure why you have never heard a woman do this before, but maybe you need to get out and get some friends, or a better class of them.

Fucking prudes are dishonest and annoying.

https://wapo.st/4aOOO1s

Been "tweeting" this from the jump:

Take his weekends.
48 hours confinement every weekend until he comes to heel.
No rallies, no golf. See who blinks first.

change sweet potato to Circus Peanut - everyone hates those.

WHO COULD IT BE?!!!?

Trump's Attorney Argues That Assassination And Creating A Fake Elector Slate "Could Be" Official Acts

https://x.com/klasfeldreports/status/1783528749117366487?s=46&t=iYW3foyqIA6Tn8VWwn3nwQ

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/04/25/supreme-court-trump-immunity-case/

https://bsky.app/profile/tristansnell.bsky.social/post/3kr2ocaubqr2h

I’m sure all those folks who got upset over Obama using a drone to whack a US citizen will be condemning the folks on the court. Any second now. Yup. They’re so angry over such things that they’re not going to wait for this to post before they make their condemnations.

At least 4

Disheartening.

Cold reality is that the continued existence of America in any recognizable form rests altogether on whether we can avoid Trump being president on 1/21/25. The institutions (NY notwithstanding) are not going to save us.

And not just America but the entire world is on the precipice of decades of moral darkness, Europe cannot repel it alone.

https://newrepublic.com/article/181059/luttig-trump-january-6-case

“I’m profoundly disturbed about the apparent direction of the court,” J. Michael Luttig told me. “I now believe that it is unlikely Trump will ever be tried for the crimes he committed in attempting to overturn the 2020 election.”

I called Luttig, a former federal judge with extensive conservative credentials, to solicit his reaction to this week’s Supreme Court hearing over Donald Trump’s demand for absolute immunity from prosecution for any crimes related to his insurrection attempt. On Thursday, Luttig posted a thread critiquing the right-wing justices for their apparent openness to Trump’s arguments—but that thread was legalistic and formal, so I figured Luttig had a lot more to say.

And did he ever. Luttig lacerated the right-wing justices for harboring a “radical vision” of the American presidency, and pronounced himself “gravely” worried that Trump will never face accountability for alleged crimes committed in attempting to destroy U.S. democracy through extensive procedural corruption and the naked incitement of mob violence.


Luttig’s fear that Trump may very well skate centers on the lines of questioning from the court’s right-wing majority about Special Counsel Jack Smith’s ongoing prosecution of Trump. As many observers noted, those justices appeared largely uninterested in the question before them—whether Trump’s alleged crimes related to the insurrection constituted official presidential acts that are immune from prosecution after leaving office.

Instead, the justices dwelled on the supposed future consequences of prosecuting presidents for crimes, and seemed to want to place some limits on that eventuality. That suggests the justices will kick the case back to lower courts to determine whether some definition of official presidential acts must be protected (and whether Trump’s specific acts qualify).

Such a move would almost certainly push Trump’s trial until after the election, and if he wins, he can simply cancel prosecutions of himself. Luttig fears that outcome. But he also worries that even if Trump loses the election, there may well be five Supreme Court votes for siding with Trump’s demand for immunity. Both outcomes would functionally end his prosecution.

“I believe it is now likely either that Trump will get elected and instruct his attorney general to drop the charges, or that the Supreme Court will grant him immunity from prosecution,” Luttig told me.

To be sure, some observers think that in the end, five justices will not grant Trump that immunity. In this scenario, a conservative majority could remand the case to lower courts to define official presidential acts that cannot be prosecuted, even as some combination of five or more justices later rules that Trump’s specific actions are still subject to prosecution.

But Luttig fears that this may be overly optimistic.

Luttig pointed out that even Chief Justice John Roberts seemed to express some sympathy for the general idea that official presidential acts should be immune from prosecution. He also noted that Justice Brett Kavanaugh praised the pardon of Richard Nixon, and that Justice Neil Gorsuch said that if presidents can be prosecuted, they might pardon themselves before leaving office to protect themselves, which Gorsuch suggested might be legitimate.

Take all that together, Luttig said, and it’s not hard to see how five right-wing justices could let Trump off. Some could declare that Trump’s actions related to Jan. 6 (the pressure on his vice president to subvert the electoral count and on the Justice Department to create a fake pretext for that) constitute official acts immune from prosecution. Others might hold that the statutes Trump allegedly violated don’t offer a clear statement that they apply to presidents, Luttig said.

Either way, Trump has already gotten much of what he wants with the all-but-certain delay. And the lines of questioning from the right-wing justices are already deeply alarming, Luttig argued. Justice Samuel Alito, for instance, declared that if presidents must fear prosecution after leaving office, they might prove more prone to resisting the transfer of power, destabilizing the country.

That’s preposterous, as The New Republic’s Michael Tomasky noted, since there’s never been a bar on post-presidential prosecution throughout U.S. history, yet the only president to aggressively resist that transfer is Donald Trump himself. What’s more, as Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern point out at Slate, the notion also seems to suggest, absurdly, that giving presidents free rein to commit crimes in office, including attempting to destroy democracy at its very foundations, is essential to maintaining democratic stability.

One might add that when the justices ruled that Trump’s insurrection does not disqualify him from the ballot, they told us that this, too, was necessary to avoid national destabilization. Mysteriously enough, a key ingredient for achieving political stability always seems to involve not holding Trump accountable.

“The conservative justices’ argument for immunity assumes that Jack Smith’s prosecution of Trump is politically corrupt and seeks a rule that would prevent future presidents from corruptly prosecuting their predecessors,” Luttig said.

“But such a rule would license all future presidents to commit crimes against the United States while in office with impunity,” Luttig concluded. “Which is exactly what Trump is arguing he’s entitled to do.”

Kav's bullshit is particularly galling given he worked for Ken Starr's Clinton investigation.

Weird. In 2009, Kavanaugh wrote a law review article specifically contemplating criminal prosecutions for Presidents after they leave office, and noting that this possibility provides a check on a “bad-behaving or law-breaking” President. I guess he just changed his mind for some reason after the whole Clinton matter.

Team Trump Is Ready to Lose the Supreme Court Immunity Case. They’re Celebrating

Ad blocker-blocker; summarize.

I'm too cynical to think that it'll happen, but wouldn't it be something if Biff's last-minute Supreme Court addition is the one that clears the way for his trial?


Can Justice Amy Coney Barrett Rescue This?
Yesterday’s SCOTUS oral argument was a disheartening and scary glimpse into an autocratic future. But there still might be a narrow path forward to trial before the election.

UBlock Origin and Stop the Madness running on Firefox are what you need. In short, their plan was to try and delay the criminal trial until after the election, and SCOTUS not only has ensured that it'll happen that way, but that it'll take even longer for the criminal trial to start than what they were expecting.

Conway has made the point that if they kick it back to Chutkin, at the very least she can hold extensive meticulous hearing about his behavior in a fair attempt to discern what can be tried and that will litter the whole rest of the year with high profile news about his offenses.

Then there's this:
Jack Smith must now make 'strategic choice' on Trump case with 'major consequences': column - Alternet.org

The writer suggests that Smith follow Trump's lawyers identification of what was a private act, as opposed to an official act, and withdraw (without prejudice one assumes) the latter so that the former can go immediately (apart from her 90 day thing) to trial without further appeal.

My thoroughly uneducated view - she should hold something like 2 days of arguments about what is clearly outside the bounds of any theoretical immunity (again, per Trump's own lawyers) and say (whatever the correct legal terms) "I'll hold these other charges in abeyance for now, but these will go to trial in 90 days" and do it. SCOTUS is unlikely to dictate HOW she sorts them out or how long she should take. So if you really want to go to trial, push it like this.

Not that Conway's concept is without value.

I have some confidence in Jack that is is dedicated to the conviction, and seems to be working real hard to get it done. The problem is not his. The problem was it was handed to him a year too late because the dems were screwing around and now he might have an impossible task.

The great part about all of this is that if this all gets fucked, the people who played games are going to be the ones who suffer for it. The rest of us will have to clean up the mess that is made, but there is a good chance Trump throws Biden and company in prison as a reward for their allowing him to run out the clock. It really is not my ass on the line anymore because I no longer consider the dem party my future.

If he gets in charge again he will spend his time tearing up the dem party. That party is just a flag. It stands for nothing, and no idea belongs to it.

Given Chutkin’s initial immunity ruling, I’d be surprised if she didn’t rule that all, or almost all of it was private conduct. That won’t be appealable on an interlocutory basis.

Former President Donald Trump has been held in contempt of the court and fined $9,000 for violating a gag order aimed at protecting witnesses and jurors in his Manhattan criminal trial.

https://www.npr.org/2024/04/30/1244294199/trump-gag-order-hush-money-trial

And at least according to someone on the internet:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/do...trial-hush-money-case-live-updates-rcna149906

For a guy who has a reputation for pounding Diet Cokes as much as he does, he certainly doesn't seem to let that get in the way of a good nap.

That's probably why he allegedly wears Depends and constantly smells like shit. Aspartame is nasty. Makes me poo.

Guy's got a way with words. But so does Biden. We need more sassy Biden on Twitter.

Trump has gray eyes.

Although, sometimes gray is rounded to blue because apparently some people can't handle the existence of more than three different eye colors, but he's still a liar.

Although, I am a person who has hazel eyes but says I have green eyes because that sounds cooler.

The above two points make me both a liar and a hypocrite, and none of you can do anything about that.