Last Week’s Developments in Republic Killing Lawfare

Today, March 18, 2024, Donald Trump’s lawyers will make their final appellate argument against having to post a full $463.9 million dollar bond in order to appeal the absurd judgement against Trump authored by New York Judge Arthur Engoron and New York “Get Trump” Attorney General Leticia James. That judgement was obtained by a ludicrous application of New York Executive Law, finding that Trump had overvalued his properties on loan applications to New York banks for his real estate empire. There was no fraud proved, just a difference of opinion about valuing property in New York and Florida’s volatile real estate market. At trial, the banks testified that the loans were paid timely and in full, that, as is usual, they performed their own due diligence concerning Trump’s credit worthiness, and that they would be happy to have Trump back as a customer. Thus, there were also no victims. If the court rules that Trump must pay the full bond, he has until March 25th to post it. Trump has already posted an $91.6 million bond to appeal the multi-million-dollar defamation verdict awarded to E. Jean Carroll in her lawfare scams. 

Trump’s criminal case in New York, involving alleged hush money payments to Stormy Daniels to prevent her from exposing an alleged one-night stand decades ago, was scheduled to start on March 25^th. It will now be postponed for at least a month. The case depends on the testimony of convicted perjurer and tax cheat Michael Cohen, who was convicted by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York of an FEC violation with respect to the extorted payments to Daniels. The Southern District feds just provided their file on the Cohen case to Trump’s legal team. It involves over 100,000 pages of potentially exculpatory evidence. All the lawfare henchmen are upset that the Southern District feds finally met their legal obligations.

In Florida, Judge Aileen Cannon held an all-day hearing on Thursday, March 14^th, with respect to Donald Trump’s motions to dismiss Special Counsel Jack Smith’s phony mishandling of classified documents/Espionage Act case.

The hearing was preceded on Tuesday, March 15th, by Special Counsel Robert Hur’s testimony to Congress concerning Joe Biden’s retention of classified documents over decades. Biden’s case of sticky fingers dates back to his Senate days with many in Washington still wondering how he managed to purloin documents out of Congressional classified SCIFs. Hur told Congress that Biden willfully retained classified documents, disclosed them to his ghostwriter, and that his ghostwriter erased tapes of his conversations with Biden about the documents shortly after Hur’s appointment. But, he testified, he could not convict Biden before a D.C. jury who would sympathize with his senility among other factors. Hur did not charge the ghostwriter with obstruction of justice.

The transcripts of Hur’s interviews with Biden were also released and were beyond damning concerning Biden’s diminished mental capacities. At one point he wandered completely off topic to tell the prosecutor a story about an oil refinery worker losing his penis in an accident.

Judge Cannon denied, without prejudice, President Trump’s due process challenge to the unconstitutionality of the Espionage Act. She said it could be raised again, closer to trial and jury instructions. She withheld judgement on his defense that the Presidential Records Act governed his actions and that he was entitled under that statute to declassify and keep the documents at issue. Court observers said, however, that she seems ready to deny this motion. Judge Cannon specifically noted, however, the selective and unprecedented nature of Trump’s prosecution throughout the hearing. It was clear that Hur’s leniency toward Biden on practically identical facts was a significant factor. Trump’s selective prosecution motion thus seems very much in play although rotten federal precedent makes it very difficult to prevail on this motion, even in clear cases such as Trump’s. Judge Cannon has not set a new trial date.

In Georgia, Judge Scott McAfee said disgraced Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis can remain on the RICO election interference case against Trump if her boyfriend, special prosecutor Nathan Wade departs. Wade promptly resigned.

The nationally televised hearings concerning Willis’ relationship to Wade and their romantic affair at taxpayer expense have destroyed whatever legitimacy this case ever had. Many compared the exposed tawdry character of the two prosecutors as something akin to a low brow Jerry Springer episode. When defendants in the case filed a motion to dismiss the case based on the conflict-of-interest present in the relationship, Willis went to a famed Atlanta Black church to claim that the motion and the lawyers who filed it were “racist,” a direct ethics violation. The hearings exposed both Wade and Willis lying about when their affair started and Wade lying about the affair in his divorce proceedings.

While McAfee did not dismiss the case based on his finding of “an appearance of impropriety” he dismissed, three major counts involving Donald Trump, earlier in the week. He resorted to Tennessee Williams in a vain attempt to describe the bizarre proceedings before him. While his face throughout the proceedings betrayed a desire to transform himself into something like Judge Judy, he ended up noting that the proceedings betrayed “an odor of mendacity.” That is highbrow, of course, for stinking lies. Professor Jonathan Turley picked up on this theme in his comment on the case and the general selective applications of the law to Donald Trump. 

Finally, Representative Barry Loudermilk continues to find systematic coverups and suppressions of exculpatory evidence in the staged January 6^th Congressional Committee hearings. The latest involves deliberate suppressions of testimony regarding President Trump’s efforts to secure the Capitol by deployment of the National Guard. These efforts, of course, undermine the entire fabricated January 6^th insurrection narrative.