Judges have ruled against Trump hundreds of times. The first time Comey was indicted, judge Cameron McGowan Currie dismissed the indictment on the grounds that interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan had been illegally appointed. The Supreme Court ruled against him on tariffs. When he ruled against Trump’s executive order banning birthright citizenship, just Judge John Coughenour said the order was “blatantly unconstitutional.”
Every time this happens, Trump calls the judges or justices lunatics, evil, stupid, radical leftists, and more. In some cases there have been death threats against the judges whom Trump calls out. This has not stopped judges from ruling against him.
Maybe the law firm Maurene Comey is now working for has a friends and family discount.
Would a former FBI director be an attractive hire for a major law firm? Would a deal like “we’ll handle your case if you come work here afterwards” be ethical?
It won’t surprise me if this BS case ends up boosting sales of t-shirts and other itemsbranded with the 86 47 phrase. It’s already emblazoned on a ton of things available on Amazon and other online retailers. This action is just going to make it more popular.
Protests, Pride Parades and other events that attract anti-MAGA folks will most likely see an increase in the popularity of such items. They can’t lock up millions that easily.
It hasn’t stopped the rulings that you know of. I don’t think you can prove that it hasn’t stopped other rulings. That is, when a judge rules in his favour, how do you know that it’s not because they were afraid of the consequences of ruling against him?
I won’t be surprised to see the case dismissed. But I think a directed verdict to prevent jury deliberation would unleash a big additional level of MAGA anger.
Directed jury trial verdicts are so rare that it’s all highly speculative.
Now that is a real task for the FBI to investigate that doesn’t involve a murdered rapper, rehashing the 2016 and 2020 elections, or protecting the US hockey team in Italy.
Being a judge is not an entirely safe job and I expect most of them are reasonably brave. The probability of a judge getting into a situation where a Comey directed innocent verdict is legally indicated is so unlikely that maybe I shouldn’t have speculated.
There’s also the case of the South Carolina judge’s house burning down under suspicious circumstances. The exact cause is undetermined, and it’s still under investigation, as far as I know, but she had been criticized by the trump administration and was getting death threats for several weeks before the fire, so it’s awful fishy.
We all know that there are lots of perfectly legal things we could post about Trump, but which would make us a target for the crazy MAGA freaks. Comey may very well have just had second thoughts about wanting to deal with that kind of mess. How many other people have already had to move and/or hire private security because of being targeted by the MAGA masses?
The leak case sounds like it would be filed in a good venue for Comey (either Northern Virginia or Southern New York). But miscarriages of justices happen, and the more cases, the more chances of that.
Both the earlier lying to Congress case and this Seashell case and whatever else they get past a grand jury are really about having some predicate to go fishing to try and get “evidence” to criminalize anyone who took part in investigating Trump/Russia/“election fraud”.
Whatever info gets obtained feeds into the “Grand Conspiracy” case DOJ is trying to do in Florida in Judge Cannon’s court:
Its proponents allege a plot against Trump that somehow manages to connect Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and James Comey to Joe Biden, Merrick Garland, and Jack Smith. The supposed scheme with which these people are all allegedly involved manages to span three separate presidential elections and tie together matters as obviously distinct as Russian interference in the 2016 election and the classified documents search at Mar-a-Lago.
So this seashell case is obviously dumb, but the case within the case is for Comey to limit discovery. I’m sure DOJ will want access to phones/accounts/emails and the rest for reasons. Just like they wanted in the lying to Congress case.
Late: The “classified” leak above and in lying to Congress case being the memos Comey sent to his lawyers memorializing his conversations after Comey spoke with Trump. Ya know, documenting potential crimes of the President.
It’s incredibly weak; so weak that Lindsay Halligan, of all people, declined to prosecute this in her discretion. Even she was smart enough to realize how pathetic it was. It suggests that they are desperate to pin anything on Comey, or at least will scrape the bottom of the barrel to harass him for something extremely frivolous.
She also points out that when Kash Patel talked about what happened in the room with the grand jury, he was breaking the law. The law zealously protects the secrecy of grand juries, and it takes a court order before anyone from the government can talk about privileged information in an indictment. Needless to say, there was no such court order, and Patel was ignorantly and/or uncaringly violating the law when crowing about this indictment during a press conference. This gives the defense an opportunity to request a whole series of motions in response, including a claim of vindictive prosecution. It cracks the door and allows for discovery, where the defense might be able to dig up all kinds of stuff in regards to the prosecution’s shenanigans. This could backfire big time.
As to the consequences of all this… As Dye points out, Comey seems unbothered, as it’s just a repeat of the same thing he has been going through for years in regards to malicious prosecution. But she also reinforces what others have said in this thread; this case does matter, because it results in a great deal of financial harm and stress for Comey, it wastes a lot of taxpayer money and valuable resources that could have gone toward real crimes, and it further damages the DOJ’s reputation. So it’s not just a nothingburger when looked at from that perspective.
The other thing that’s messed up is that as terrible as Patel is doing, and how badly he seems to have screwed up here, just the fact that he’s going after one of Trump’s enemies is probably enough to let him keep his job just a bit longer, even as the scandals and other embarrassment against him continues to pile up in the public eye.
(By the way, I love the Dora the Explorer theme returned to multiple times in the video.)
Are any of the experts certain the prosecution will fail familiar with the GOP-appointed judge assigned to the case and/or with New Bern North Carolina petit juries?
I just did a web search to see whether the Eastern District of North Carolina grand jury which voted to indict was unanimous. That fact seems not to have leaked. Maybe I should draw no conclusion. But it means none of the grand jurors were sufficiently outraged to call the a reporter.
I’m not saying Comey is headed to the hoosegow. I just do not think the process is as predictable as everyone else seems to think.
Arrest us all. I dare you,” said Davis, an Air Force veteran who wears his 8647 hat proudly around his predominantly conservative neighborhood. “I am done staying quiet. I’ve got a family, I’ve got kids, and I’m watching this country get dragged through chaos while people are going to sit down and shut up. And I am not doing that, and millions of other people aren’t doing it, either.”
Davis’ is just one of hundreds of 8647 products for sale online, ranging from T-shirts and hats to stickers and mugs, available across major e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and Etsy. While Davis, who is a no-party-affiliated candidate, sells his merch for $29.99, similar listings online range in price and style — including a “classic vintage 80s” version for $17.99.
Because you don’t know much about the judge or whether the grand jury was unanimous in their indictment? That’s where your doubts come from?
(The fact that she was a Bush appointee, not a Trump appointee, should at the very least suggest that she might act like a real judge and not a clown in a black robe like Aileen Cannon did. And the fact that she looks to have actual experience.)
