Which Judge Will Trump Push Too Far?

Top: Georgia law, bottom, what Trump posted

Read blog story on one page and see Disquis comment section which is on the bottom of the page by clicking here.

You know who Judge Tanya Chutkan is. Judge Scott McAfee (left above) is a name you probably aren't familiar with. He's set to be the judge in the Georgia case. You will soon be hearing a lot about him. 

Here's an article from CNN who explains who he is.

Amanda Marcotte writes in Salon:

"Teflon Don" is a collective fiction — it's time to tell the story of Trump in jail

Trump still believes he's untouchable, and so do his dangerous followers. It's time for consequences that count

She writes that:

...the conventional wisdom is echoed in former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani's comments to Salon: "Is a judge actually going to jail Donald Trump in the middle of a presidential campaign? Probably not."

To which I say: Why not? Trump is a human being, approximately speaking, with a physical body that would fit quite nicely inside a jail cell. The only reason Trump is perceived as invincible is because he's managed to hex almost everyone into believing that he'll get away with everything, every single time. All we need to do to change that is to stop believing in the collective fiction of Trump's impunity. It's not a law of physics. Donald Trump can go to jail. The only thing that's required is the will to make it happen.

While many of us have been wondering what it will take for Judge Chutkan to decide that Trump has gone far enough for her to incarcerate him for polluting the jury pool or intimidating witnesses. Remember that she instructed Trump not to make “even arguably ambiguous statements” about the case “if they can be reasonably interpreted to intimidate witnesses or to prejudice potential jurors.”

To paraphrase  this old saying, there's a new judge in town.

Whether it will continue to be Judge McAfee or federal judge in Georgia, Trump is already breaking the Georgia law against witness intimidation (see above). 

I don't care which judge orders Trump to be incarcerated pending trial. Who knows, they both may do it thus leaving the question to be answered only whether he goes to jail in Washington, DC or in Georgia.

In some ways I'd like it to be in Washington because this is the city where he once played at being the emperor. There are federal prisons in the area but they are pretty far away (see map) so I assume that he could be held at the DC jail:

This is the jail where Trump and the other Georgia defendants will be booked.

This is the jail in Atlanta:

It appears likely that Trump's being booked at the Rice Street jail will be televised and be must see TV for many of us.

It is likely that Jack Smith's federal case will be tried before the Georgia case.  If he's in jail in Atlanta an arrangement will have to be made to house him in Washington. I am sure Georgia officials will be able to figure out how to do this.

We've all seen Trump boarding Air Force One or his Trump airplane. What I'd like to see is Trump having to boarding one of these to fly from Atlanta to Washington:

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Nixon was brought down by tapes. It could happen to Trump

 By Hal Brown

The original Nixon White House tape recorder is shown in an undated handout photo. (National Archives via AP)

One word stood out in this Salon article:

Judge orders Trump lawyer to reveal evidence in “criminal scheme” — and there may be tapes: report

Judge rules Trump duped his own lawyers in Mar-a-Lago case, orders attorney to testify and turn over transcriptions

Howell also ordered Corcoran to turn over records related to what she described as Trump's alleged "criminal scheme," according to the report. The report also revealed that Corcoran may have recorded his discussions with Trump, noting that the records include "handwritten notes, invoices and transcriptions of personal audio recordings."

Corcoran is the Trump lawyer that has been order to testify and turn over documents.

Here's more from Salon:

Former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman said the evidence "could be absolutely dynamite."

"It appears that Corcoran took notes & maybe RECORDED Trump, his client (sense a pattern of mistrust by Trump lawyers?)," Litman tweeted. "If doc or taped evid shows Trump knows the subpoena is false, that is killer."

Note that the word "recorded" is in all caps.

Here's another article:

Prosecutors have said they have reason to believe efforts were made to "obstruct" their investigation. 

They want to ask Corcoran about an alleged call he had with Trump on June 24, 2022, around the time investigators were seeking to secure documents at Trump's home and video surveillance tapes of Mar-a-Lago, CBS News reported.

"Those could be very incriminating phone calls by themselves," Cunningham said. "If that material is handed over, that could be by itself enough to indict [Trump], quite possibly enough to send him to prison."

The word recorded and references to recordings immediately brought to mind the Nixon Oval Office tapes.

Hopefully everyone reading this is old enough to remember what they were or familiar with the history of Watergate. 

The release of the tape, 18 minute gap notwithstanding, led to this:

and eventually to this:

There was one recording of Trump that we know of that could have prevented him from becoming president in the first place. I don't need to reference it because I am not sure how many asterisks I should use in the word that showed how he objectified women. 

Of course nobody uses tapes these digital days, but you get the idea. It is possible that the recording from attorney Corcoran added to the recording Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (which you can lister to here) is a different case end up leading to the beginning of the end for Donald Trump.

One thing is for certain, if he goes down and ends up being given jail time, he won't be leaving Mar-a-Lago on a Marine helicopter (designated as Marine One if the president is onboard). 

The are briefs and there are briefs. One kind may be ominous for Trump.

 By Hal Brown

The other day I wrote about various kinds of blockbusters in 

Another Trump legal jeopardy blockbuster, give me a break (link).

This morning, trying to get a blog written in the 90 minutes before Xfinity shuts off the Internet for an upgrade, I looked at the articles on Raw Story, and found one that I wanted to share once I thought of an illustration to put together which conveyed my thoughts about it. Okay, the two kinds of briefs have nothing to do with each other so it is lame and from an often shared picture of Trump golfing he does at least occasionally seem to wear briefs.

Click above to read article

This story uses the word ominous though it could have easily called the new DOJ brief a "blockbuster".

The word ominous is used twice in the article.

Click above to enlarge image

My computer dictionary defines the word as "giving the impression that something bad or unpleasant is going to happen; threatening; inauspicious."

The thesaurus offers synonyms for the word:

threatening, menacing, baleful, forbidding, sinister, inauspicious, unpropitious, portentous, unfavorable, dire, unpromising; black, dark, wintry, gloomy, ugly.

Back to the word blockbuster. We all know what it means in terms of movies, but may not know that the origin of the word went back to the 1940's:

Click above to enlarge

Mar-a-Lago without Mar-a-Lago, lovely beachfront property.

What's more ominous for Trump than one or more briefs that could bust the entire block that he lives on? 

I am hyperbole adverse when it comes to describing the latest example of a, to use the language the MAGA's hate, caso legal contra Trump.

Even if, and hopefully when, Trump is indicted for a felony which has as its penalty a prison term, I'd hesitate to call this an ominous blockbuster.

I'd prefer not seeing hyperbole at all.  I'd like a straightforward headline that has the words  indicted, convicted, sentenced, and prison in it. 

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Investigation: The mystery of how Trump got Judge Cannon, coincidence or not?

Trump managed to get a Trump loving judge to kiss his royal ass, but was it blind luck?

By Hal Brown

I changed the photo of Trump originally depicted in an image someone else made of him on a mocked-up Time cover (here and below) to make him look decidedly unpresidential. I put him in prison and added Lady Justice on the left and an X'ed out altered image I made of Judge Cannon on the right.

Another of my images: Judge Cannon's reputation among what appears to be the vast majority of legal scholars seems to be in ruins. Does she care? My impression is that she couldn't care less even though she is in dire need of the legal version of a visit to the emergency room.

You need a Daily Beast subscription to read this article on their website where you can see the illustration which shows a rendering of a well-worn paperback mystery titled "The Cannon Clue."

You can read the Daily Beast article without a subscription here on YaHoo.

 RAWSTORY provides a good summary:

The Daily Beast story describes how Trump lawyers may have shopped for a judge they presumed would be not merely friendly but lovingly to kiss the ample Trump royal ass. The crucial would here is "may" since so far there's no proof they did this. Was the fix in? Or did they decide to increase the odds that they'd have Judge Cannon assigned the documents case. We just don't know the answer. This has not stopped speculation.

If you couldn't buy an item you needed in a nearby store in this era of online shopping you might get it from Amazon. But they did have the equivalent of an online store to file their case. They claimed the online mechanism was offline but it turns out it wasn't. This was a lie. So they they hit the streets and traveled some distance from the court where the case normally would have filed to Judge Cannon's courthouse. However, there are nine judges there so there would be no guarantee she'd get the case.

This is the gist of what the article reports:

When Donald Trump’s legal team filed their court paperwork protesting the Mar-a-Lago raid, a lawyer took the rare step of actually filing the paperwork in person. At a courthouse 44 miles from Mar-a-Lago. And they got a judge to oversee the case that was outside both West Palm Beach—where the raid took place—and the district where they filed," the Daily Beast reporter wrote. "Those incredible coincidences have led lawyers and legal experts to suggest that something may not be above board with how Trump’s team filed their lawsuit."

It turns out that filing such legal briefs are almost never done at a courthouse in person anymore. In almost all jurisdictions they are done electronically. 

The RAWSTORY article concludes:

Lawyers in the area, who didn't want to give their names, also found the method of filing the lawsuit curious.

According to one, "I don’t know anybody who files in person. I didn’t even know you could do that anymore. It looks like this person was trying to select a particular judge,” while another suggested, "People don’t do this anymore. It’s extremely odd. I guess you could do this if you wanted to get a particular judge—or avoid getting a particular judge."

So far there's no irrefutable proof that the fix was in. It may be that the cards were stacked to favor Cannon's being assigned the case. It may be a coincidence. 

This is from The Daily Beast:

• “I think somebody pulled a fast one in the clerk’s office to rotate it to a friendly judge. It doesn’t sound like it was done by the blind filing system,” mused another.
• ...which consists of nine judges. Cannon is in a neighboring division, so she can occasionally get West Palm Beach cases.
• Theoretically, that would give Trump a 1-in-9 chance of getting Cannon on the case.
• However, The Daily Beast analyzed new case assignments in West Palm Beach in the week preceding Trump’s lawsuit and found that Cannon actually got a much higher share, nine of the 29 new complaints—roughly a third of all cases.
• But the system still appears random.
• On Monday, Aug. 22, in West Palm Beach, Cannon got the first case. Trump’s lawsuit was the second of the day in that division, and she got that too.
• A head clerk of federal courts in another state told The Daily Beast that lawyers sometimes time filings as if they’re players at a casino. Sometimes it works.
• “If you play cards and count the cards, I suppose they could say, ‘I’ll hold this here until I see if other judges got assignments.’ But it would be very risky because it’s random,” she said.

 It all may boil down to what you believe:

Perhaps it was just the luck of the draw:

 

I made my illustration after reading the RAWSTORY article and posted it as a comment there among similar illustrations, below, which other readers posted. I altered this Time Magazine image to make my own:

I changed the photo of Trump to make him look decidedly unpresidential. I put him in prison and added Lady Justice on the left and an X'ed out altered image of Judge Cannon on the right.

Other commenters posted these images:

Oh poor Donald, turn that frown upside-down

Oh poor Donald, turn that frown upside-down

By Hal Brown

If it's really getting through to Donald Trump that the predictions coming from the likes of George Conway that he could actually end up in prison then the photo (below) used for the article in RAWSTORY about what Conway said on "Morning Joe" earlier today would be appropriate. 

While I can't manage to muster any empathy for the malignant narcissist, sadist, and bully who has proved willing to do anything to maintain his dictatorial power, perhaps I can at least eke out a smidgen of sympathy for the poor man. Hmmm... is there anything smaller than a smidgen? 

I want Trump to suffer the pangs of anxiety over the legal peril he is in,  but if he had a fleeting moment of angst and if, an if as big as the planet Jupiter, I wanted to cheer him up I'd have to reenforce his delusion of being invulnerable. In that remote or remotest possibility I'd tell him to turn his frown upside-down.

Here's the Rawstory article about what Conway said with my illustrative magic added.

Conway told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that although Trump's inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection was probably the most serious crime Trump has committed it would be a difficult case to prove. He said that the easiest case to prove was his likely violation of the Espionage Act. Conway said:

"That to me is the shortest distance between Donald Trump and an orange jumpsuit is that case. It's so simple. It's like the U.S. attorney trying to bring a big mob case against the Five Families and trying to connect it up to the boss and all of a sudden they get the call from the NYPD saying, hey, the big boss is loading jewelry on a truck at Kennedy Airport, and you know, that's what happened here."

"He's caught red-handed. Basically what he's done, refusing to give the documents back upon request is sufficient under the Espionage Act, and he's done that, and then you have the aggravating facts about how the volume of documents and the lying and how long it's dragged on. I don't know how they don't bring the case."

George Conway has been a thorn in Trump's side as his profile has increased as much as his girth since he became a Trump turncoat. He's penned OpEds and has been a frequent guest on MSNBC.

I can't find any recent articles about whether Trump still watches Morning Joe, however in 2017 it was clear that he did. This is from:

Trump Tweets Disgustingly Sexist Attack Against 'Morning Joe' Host

The president said Mika Brzezinski "was bleeding badly from a face-lift."

President Donald Trump attacked Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski Thursday morning, insulting Brzezinski’s physical appearance in two unmistakably sexist tweets.

I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don't watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 29, 2017

...to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year's Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 29, 2017

Brzezinski appeared to respond to the president’s tweets with an image of a Cheerios box that says “Made For Little Hands.”

My sense is that while Trump, the inveterate television watcher, luxuriates in being praised on Fox News shows even he may not be able to resist checking in with "Morning Joe" to see what his nemeses are saying about him. 

He knows that if he blasts out a Truth Social post about anything said about him on "Morning Joe" or any other MSNBC show, he'll only give them publicity so I think he'll be able to restrain his impulses since there isn't a damn thing he can do to shut them up.suits as his 

Trump may avoid the wardrobe change into an orange jumpsuit, but if he's paying attention to what's happening in New York he may have to think twice about buying expensive new suits when can't squeeze into a girdle anymore:

Illustration by Wren McDonald for The New Yorker

New York AG asks judge to bar Trump from moving assets to new company he formed amid fraud lawsuit 

and

If Elon Muck buys Twitter, what with it's much larger audience than Truth Social has, I expect we'll see more impulsive tweets especially in the early morning when Trump may be groggy and not be able to sensibly resist engaging in a Twitter war with Joe and Mika. Assuming Trump come back to Twitter this will be fun to follow. 

Here's a comment on this story from Ben Kalom:

Most of us would not wish him the Demolition Man one-liner I often quote to folks in jest, "Be Well, John Spartan!"

"I want Trump to suffer the pangs of anxiety over the legal peril he is in, ..."

Naw. a snarky "Naw!" I want his frown to become a perma-frown, like permafrost. I want his risorius muscles to atrophy to the point he cannot chew food properly, and a bolus migrates across the epiglottus into his cephalic tracheal opening and permanently obstructs it.

I want more than the pangs of anxiety.

I literally want the Big Mac attack to attack him.

I want his "Glorious, magnificent, stupendous, spektak-a-lur" bulls**t to end as a one liner obit, "Choked on a fried chicken bone..."

The only way this cult of personality ends is ...

The people need their human sacrifice. They need their blood lust sated.

Find him a bunker, let him join his "hero" Adolph in ending this sickness...

Then, maybe, just maybe, we can all recover... just a little bit... before we have to deal with the next anointed one...

The Conway interview has already made it into this Salon article:

While some legal experts believe that there is evidence to charge Trump with obstruction, conservative attorney George Conway predicted that the "shortest distance between Donald Trump and an orange jumpsuit" is a case showing that he violated the Espionage Act.

 "He's caught red-handed," Conway told MSNBC. "Basically what he's done, refusing to give the documents back upon request is sufficient under the Espionage Act, and he's done that, and then you have the aggravating facts about how the volume of documents and the lying and how long it's dragged on. I don't know how they don't bring the case."

Viral video showed organizers cutting open the fish to reveal a total of 10 weights, each weighing either 8 or 12 ounces.

As Fisher yelled, "We got weights in fish!" the angry crowd booed the men, who were immediately disqualified.

On Tuesday, authorities seized a boat and trailer belonging to Comisnky that was used during the tournament.

If convicted, the pair could face a year in prison and a $2,500 fine on each of the felony counts.

The men are not expected to be arraigned until later this month, and it was not immediately clear whether they had retained an attorney.

 

Moment of Zen (click to enlarge):