In last year’s Supreme Court ruling on Presidential Immunity, the Court held that private communications from the President would be presumed to be privileged and could not be used as evidence unless other facts could be presented that would indicate that such privilege was not warranted.
However, with WSJ case that Trump is bringing against Murdock, I wonder how that is supposed to work. The defendants are supposed to be able to review documents, communications, etc…, from the plaintiff to search for evidence of liability on behalf of the plaintiff or lack of liability on their own behalf. Now, I am not going to speculate as to what such documents and/or communications may contain, but if the defense is going to have to hold a mini-tiral to determine if such evidence is legal (for each piece of evidence) that’s going to put the defendants at a significant disadvantage due to having to meet legal hurdles the plaintiff’s don’t.
This just seems to me like a systemic inequity built into a system that should be designed to eliminate such inequities. Of course, in the absence of the immunity ruling, this inequity doesn’t exist. But as it is, if the President (as an individual) brings a civil (or criminal) case against someone, the inherent unfairness towards the defendant is (should be) too much to be ignored.
I’m guessing in a sane world, such a situation wouldn’t exist, as our institutions are designed to keep such inequities from being exploited. But, since it appears that our institutions are destined for the dumpster (along with the Constitution and the Rule of Law), this really isn’t a sane world, anymore.
Given that the particular letter at the center of this is from 2003, it is difficult to see how Felon-ONE could invoke executive privilege with respect to any materials that might support its authenticity, unless Felon-ONE thinks he can somehow extend executive privilege retroactively to 1946.
He claims that he did not write the letter, which is reasonable, as it was typewritten – but many of us send birthday greetings that were written by someone else, such as birthday cards. If WSJ has a copy of the original or can obtain it, they might have some means of authenticating it, in which case they prevail.
But Felon-ONE is not well known for prevailing in legal actions. He mostly just wears down the other guy until they run out of money.
Counterpoint - if he drives his fans away from Fox, while simultaneously spinning up his OWN media empire (using other people’s money of course) he might consider that a win. At this point, he’s not going to be elected again I’d expect: either he’ll create an “emergency” to stop an election and stay in power, drop dead, or otherwise avoid a public election. He doesn’t NEED Fox anymore, and he doesn’t care if they support Republicans other than himself.
In fact, I’d expect a little gloating from him that he MADE Fox what it is (in his mind), that they betrayed him, and he gets to burn it to the ground, like the chumps they are (again in his mind).
As I recall, Machiavelli observed that every government is a democracy, even if it is autocratic. It is simply not possible to rule over people without their consent, and if you make the people’s lives miserable enough, through action, incompetence or both, eventually even your army will not be able to keep you in power. Felon-ONE does need the support of FauxNews, just to maintain a façade of legitimacy, because, if he loses that, the spinning blades will get fertilized in rather short order.
Under the Federal Rules of Evidence, a document more than 20 years old is considered authenticated as long as it’s “regular on its face with no signs of obvious alterations” and “found in a place of natural custody, or in a place where it would be expected to be found.”
We can disagree, nothing wrong with that. And I even agree (and mentioned) that he’ll need some unified propaganda source to keep everyone on message and to prevent them from seeing “fake news” that might lead them to question. But it doesn’t need to be Fox, because if he creates/takes over an alternate, he’ll likely be able to get enough of his people to stay in his disinformation-sphere to keep things going.
There’s also the sunk cost fallacy that is deeeeeeply entrenched in his followers. See our Leopards thread, where many formerly-faced individuals still believe, after loosing jobs, homes, savings and even family members to the actions of the administration keep thinking that it’s just a mistake, or the “bad” members of Trump’s staff doing wrong or making mistakes that Trump would never do.
Lastly, while it’s important for there to be some legitimacy, the SCOTUS and Legislative branches are providing tons of it. And the people at the top of the military have been purged of anyone that have any real loyalty to the Constitution or their own troops - only loyalty to Trump is needed. Given the hard and soft power that represents, he’ll be able to keep power as long as he continues to hold sway of his loyal and unified base, even if it’s a minority.
Heck, if he wanted, he could do as I mentioned in another thread and nationalize Twitter under any number of pretexts, which would give him complete control of a large communication base, and do a buyout or other legitimate take over of something like OANN (such as offering to only give THEM interviews or insider info) and sideline Fox with minimal losses, while engaging in a propaganda/lawfare battle against Fox until they sue for peace.
I’m not saying this will happen, but I think it’s quite plausible.