Fair enough. He’s desparate to maintain his image as “center of the road,” and has a lot of right wing listeners, thus he has to (in his mind) minimize the evilness of Trump and those that support him. However, he’s a huge fan of Obama, for whatever that’s worth. He has bought into they “why won’t Harris do more interviews?” bullshit though.
ETA: Upon reflection, I realize this (my comments, not yours) is a huge tangent and encourage we drop this conversation.
Okay–agreed that discussing Smerconish in particular is an unnecessary tangent.
I do believe, though, that GOP attempts to whitewash or deep-six the new filing is relevant to the topic. With just about a month to go before Election Day, they will desperately want to make sure that independents and the undecided don’t consider or give weight to Smith’s revelations about what he has on Trump.
The means they are using (and may use, as they think of new ideas) to discredit the filing seems relevant to the thread. To me the filing looks pretty bulletproof. But maybe I’m missing something.
SCOTUS will invent new bullets.
Or they may abandon all pretense at rendering jurisprudence, and simply say ‘WE WUV HIM U CANT HURT HIM HE CAN DO WHATEVER HE WANTS, NYAH NYAH NYAH!!11!!!’
More like the adage of when you’ve deemed something foolproof the universe come up with a higher grade of fool.
Probably something along the lines of “Generous tips to the SC justices will ensure favorable verdicts”
So long as there is no stated quid pro quo!
Nope! Just a wink and a nod! (and $20 million in negotiable bearer bonds)
SCOTUS comes through.
How extraordinary, that we must make note of rulings that should be foregone conclusions. They are so far off the bubble.
I’m guessing all of his twitter history was lost in the transition to X.
And now Judge Chutkan has agreed to unseal the associated Exhibits to that filing:
Judge agrees to unseal additional filings from Jan. 6 case as Trump signals challenge
Chutkan granted Smith’s motion to post redacted versions of the exhibits, which could include grand jury transcripts, texts and other evidence assembled by prosecutors.
“The court determines that the Government’s proposed redactions to the Appendix are appropriate, and that Defendant’s blanket objections to further unsealing are without merit. As the court has stated previously, ‘Defendant’s concern with the political consequences of these proceedings’ is not a cognizable legal prejudice,’” she wrote.
Ssssssmack!
Wait. ETA:
But Chutkan also agreed to stay her ruling for seven days after an earlier motion from Trump’s legal team asked for additional time {…}
So … we’re paused for a bit.
Well that just puts us one week closer to the election. Near Prime October surprise timing. Enough time for the pundits to digest the findings and get it out, but hopefully not enough time for it to fade from the news.
Smith’s previous filing seemed to fade pretty quickly.
Media summaries that I saw are still largely ignoring the false electors scheme and focusing, instead, on the rampage (of which Trump is largely innocent - except in cheering for it).
I’m not sensing any forthcoming surprises, so far as election days do, except if Trump successfully convinces people that Biden is controlling the weather.
Except in cheering for it? Sorry, but Trump did more than just Cheering.
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-conceding-the-2000-presidential-election
(Al Gore Concession Speech)
December 13, 2000
Good evening.
Just moments ago, I spoke with George W. Bush and congratulated him on becoming the 43rd president of the United States. And I promised him that I wouldn’t call him back this time. I offered to meet with him as soon as possible so that we can start to heal the divisions of the campaign and the contest through which we’ve just passed.
Almost a century and a half ago, Senator Stephen Douglas told Abraham Lincoln, who had just defeated him for the presidency, “Partisan feeling must yield to patriotism. I’m with you, Mr. President, and God bless you.” Well, in that same spirit, I say to President-elect Bush that what remains of partisan rancor must now be put aside, and may God bless his stewardship of this country. Neither he nor I anticipated this long and difficult road. Certainly neither of us wanted it to happen. Yet it came, and now it has ended, resolved, as it must be resolved, through the honored institutions of our democracy.
Trump never conceded, remains an unpatriotic git, and then dishonored the institution of our democracy. Then, almost every day, told others the big lie of the stolen election, leading to the deaths of at least 3 people and severely injuring many policemen on January 6th 2021.
Trump is not really a Republican, even in the dictionary sense.
I agree that, by doing so, he effectively joined in with the rampage and that he’s criminally complicit with it. But, from the vantage of his adherents, that’s a positive. To people who think that the political system is corrupt, resisting it is a positive.
Trying to usurp the Constitution, destroy people’s right to vote, etc. That’s something that people will care about, outside of NY.
At this point, it’s too late for the media to change, probably.
But, you left out the best part (IMO).
To fully understand, you have to look at the actual filings.
From Trump’s motion to prevent unsealing of the Appendix to Jack Smith’s redacted presidential immunity motion (the Exhibits):
If the Court decides to release additional information relating to the Office’s filing, in the Appendix or otherwise, President Trump respectfully requests that the Court stay that determination for a reasonable period of time so that President Trump can evaluate litigation options relating to the decision.
Now, from Judge Chutkan’s order on Trump’s motion, she states, quoting the above passage:
Instead, Defendant “maintains his objections” to any “further disclosures at this time” for the same reasons he opposed unsealing the Motion, and he requests that “[i]f the Court decides to release additional information relating to the Office’s filing, in the Appendix or otherwise, … that the Court stay that determination for a reasonable period of time so that [he] can evaluate litigation options relating to the decision.”
Note that Chutkan removes references to “President Trump” from her order, replacing the first reference with simply “Defendant” and eliding the second one with [he].
But, I did smile at her encouraging the Defendant to “evaluate litigation options” by granting a seven day stay to her decision. I suspect the request for additional time to evaluate litigation options was a not-so-veiled threat which got the result one might expect from threatening a Federal Judge.
So, next week we’ll see if Trump makes a motion to the Appeals Circuit. It would be interesting if he made an unusual move and tried to take it directly to SCOTUS, trying to argue that it will end up there anyway. That’s been tried before (in this case, as a matter of fact), but it didn’t turn out well. Based on the manner the previous try was handled, if the Supremes decided to take this one on a rush basis might be “problematic”.
I’m at a loss at what he will appeal. I mean, that’s never stopped him before but it’s pretty blatant here.
Jack offered his versions of redactions in the appendix. Trump had a chance to object to those redactions, but did nothing except file a brief to complain about the timing of all this - nothing about the redactions. I think you have to put something about redactions before the trial Judge to be able to complain about it on appeal, but maybe I’m missing something. If he appeals re: the timing prior to elections, assuming he can, then that’s just not a real thing - it’s an internal DOJ norm that Jack didn’t even violate.
So, to answer your quote, there’s two ways this goes: (1) yes he’ll appeal and the SC will invent a rule for Trump about timing; or (2) no appeal or type of TRO relief, or if so, this all gets shut down pretty quick since it doesn’t appear proper. He’s kind of making it worse with the timing pushing it closer to just prior to election. It could have all been over by now.
Watching MSNBC tonight, and Lawrence O’Donnell is making the case that, following his Univision “town hall”, TFG made Jack Smith’s job a ton easier by the use of just one word : “We”.
“Nothing done wrong at all,” Trump said.
"There were no guns down there. We didn’t have guns. The others had guns, but we didn’t have guns.
“And when I say we, these are people that walked down - this was a tiny percentage of the overall which nobody sees and nobody, nobody shows. But that was a day of love.”
2000 pages! good heavens!
most are totally redacted.
CNN
—
Special counsel Jack Smith on Friday released a massive trove of redacted documents in his 2020 election subversion criminal case against former President Donald Trump.
The redacted appendices filed on the public docket in the case are related to Smith’s expansive filing from earlier this month that laid out his fullest picture yet of the case against Trump and Smith’s belief that his actions around the 2020 election should not be shielded by presidential immunity.
The files are expected to include an array of materials, including grand jury transcripts and notes from FBI interviews conducted during the yearslong investigation.
most of the news on on air right now… hoping to find the document soon.