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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 13 days

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 30, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

MAY 01, 2024

This morning, Time magazine published a cover story by Eric Cortellessa about what Trump is planning for a second term. Based on two interviews with Trump and conversations with more than a dozen of his closest advisors, the story lays out Trump’s conviction that he was “too nice” in his first term and that he would not make such a mistake again.

Cortellessa writes that Trump intends to establish “an imperial presidency that would reshape America and its role in the world.”

He plans to use the military to round up, put in camps, and deport more than 11 million people. He is willing to permit Republican-dominated states to monitor pregnancies and prosecute people who violate abortion bans. He will shape the laws by refusing to release funds appropriated by Congress (as he did in 2019 to try to get Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky to smear Hunter Biden). He would like to bring the Department of Justice under his own control, pardoning those convicted of attacking the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and ending the U.S. system of an independent judiciary. In a second Trump presidency, the U.S. might not come to the aid of a European or Asian ally that Trump thinks isn’t paying enough for its own defense. Trump would, Cortelessa wrote, “gut the U.S. civil service, deploy the National Guard to American cities as he sees fit, close the White House pandemic-preparedness office, and staff his Administration with acolytes who back his false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen.”

To that list, former political director of the AFL-CIO Michael Podhorzer added on social media that if Trump wins, “he could replace [Supreme Court justices Clarence] Thomas, [Samuel] Alito, and 40+ federal judges over 75 with young zealots.”

“I ask him, Don’t you see why many Americans see such talk of dictatorship as contrary to our most cherished principles?” Cortellessa wrote. No, Trump said. “‘I think a lot of people like it.”

Time included the full transcripts and a piece fact-checking Trump’s assertions. The transcripts reflect the former president’s scattershot language that makes little logical sense but conveys impressions by repeating key phrases and advancing a narrative of grievance. The fact-checking reveals that narrative is based largely on fantasy.

Trump’s own words prove the truth of what careful observers have been saying about his plans based on their examination of MAGA Republicans’ speeches, interviews, Project 2025, and so on, often to find themselves accused of a liberal bias that makes them exaggerate the dangers of a second Trump presidency.

The idea that truthful reporting based on verifiable evidence is a plot by “liberal media” to undermine conservative values had its start in 1951, when William F. Buckley Jr., fresh out of Yale, published God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of “Academic Freedom.” Fervently opposed to the bipartisan liberal consensus that the federal government should regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, protect civil rights, and promote infrastructure, Buckley was incensed that voters continued to support such a system. He rejected the “superstition” that fact-based public debate would enable people to choose the best option from a wide range of ideas—a tradition based in the Enlightenment—because such debate had encouraged voters to choose the liberal consensus, which he considered socialism. Instead, he called for universities to exclude “bad” ideas like the Keynesian economics on which the liberal consensus was based, and instead promote Christianity and free enterprise.

Buckley soon began to publish his own magazine, the National Review, in which he promised to tell the “violated businessman’s side of the story,” but it was a confidential memorandum written in 1971 by lawyer Lewis M. Powell Jr. for a friend who chaired the education committee of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that insisted the media had a liberal bias that must be balanced with a business perspective.

Warning that “the American economic system is under broad attack,” Powell worried not about “the Communists, New Leftists and other revolutionaries who would destroy the entire system.” They were, he wrote, a small minority. What he worried about were those coming from “perfectly respectable elements of society: from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians.”

Businessmen must “confront this problem as a primary responsibility of corporate management,” he wrote, launching a unified effort to defend American enterprise. Among the many plans Powell suggested for defending corporate America was keeping the media “under constant surveillance” to complain about “criticism of the enterprise system” and demand equal time.

President Richard Nixon appointed Powell to the Supreme Court, and when Nixon was forced to resign for his participation in the scheme to cover up the attempt to bug the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate Hotel before the 1972 election, he claimed he had to leave not because he had committed a crime, but because the “liberal” media had made it impossible for him to do his job. Six years later, Ronald Reagan, who was an early supporter of Buckley’s National Review, claimed the “liberal media” was biased against him when reporters accurately called out his exaggerations and misinformation during his 1980 campaign.

In 1987, Reagan’s appointees to the Federal Communications Commission abandoned the Fairness Doctrine that required media with a public license to present information honestly and fairly. Within a year, talk radio had gone national, with hosts like Rush Limbaugh electrifying listeners with his attacks on “liberals” and his warning that they were forcing “socialism” on the United States.

By 1996, when Australian-born media mogul Rupert Murdoch started the Fox News Channel (FNC), followers had come to believe that the news that came from a mainstream reporter was likely left-wing propaganda. FNC promised to restore fairness and balance to American political news. At the same time, the complaints of increasingly radicalized Republicans about the “liberal media” pushed mainstream media to wander from fact-based reality to give more and more time to the right-wing narrative. By 2018, “bothsidesing” had entered our vocabulary to mean “the media or public figures giving credence to the other side of a cause, action, or idea to seem fair or only for the sake of argument when the credibility of that side may be unmerited.”

In 2023, FNC had to pay almost $800 million to settle defamation claims made by Dominion Voting Systems after FNC hosts pushed the lie that Dominion machines had changed the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, and it has since tried to retreat from the more egregious parts of its false narrative.

News broke yesterday that Hunter Biden’s lawyer had threatened to sue FNC for “conspiracy and subsequent actions to defame Mr. Biden and paint him in a false light, the unlicensed commercial exploitation of his image, name, and likeness, and the unlawful publication of hacked intimate images of him.” Today, FNC quietly took down from its streaming service its six-part “mock trial” of Hunter Biden, as well as a video promoting the series.

Also today, Judge Juan Merchan, who is presiding over Trump’s criminal trial for election fraud, found Trump in contempt of court for attacking witnesses and jurors. Merchan also fined Trump $1,000 per offense, required him to take down the nine social media posts at the heart of the decision, and warned him that future violations could bring jail time. This afternoon, Trump’s team deleted the social media posts.

For the first time in history, a former U.S. president has been found in contempt of court. We know who he is, and today, Trump himself validated the truth of what observers who deal in facts have been saying about what a second Trump term would mean for the United States.

Reacting to the Time magazine piece, James Singer, the spokesperson for the Biden-Harris campaign, released a statement saying: “Not since the Civil War have freedom and democracy been under assault at home as they are today—because of Donald Trump. Trump is willing to throw away the very idea of America to put himself in power…. Trump is a danger to the Constitution and a threat to democracy.”

Tomorrow, May 1, is “Law Day,” established in 1958 by Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower as a national recognition of the importance of the rule of law. In proclaiming the holiday today, Biden said: “America can and should be a Nation that defends democracy, protects our rights and freedoms, and pioneers a future of possibilities for all Americans. History and common sense show us that this can only come to pass in a democracy, and we must be its keepers.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Eric Cortellessa #Time Magazine #TFG #MAGA extremism #contempt of court #rule of law #history #William F. Buckley Jr.#Heather Cox Richardson #Letters from An American #democracy #election 2024

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dadanime · 2 years

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Also Matt didn’t have sex with she hulk he had sex with Jen and that’s an important distinction considering the past few episodes

#she hulk #daredevil #marvel #contempt of court #yes I did just make up that ship name #it’s not very good I know

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remembertheplunge · 6 months

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Swimming through the shark's teeth

September 7, 1989

Big blow up in court today. Again in judge Barkat’s court. I was a rude bitch.

But, the judge’s behavior in combination with the Da’s was outrageous.

So, I said and did what I needed to.

Then, I was fearful of being held in contempt of court.

Now I’m not—yea—I am.

But, I don’t regret what I did or said.

Every criminal defense attorney must be prepared to be fined or jailed.

We swim through the shark’s teeth daily.

Eventually, we will probably be swallowed.

#9/7/1989 #journaling #writing #public defender #contempt of court #job frustration

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o-kurwa · 1 year

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Just don't mess with a judge

#contempt of court

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 1 year

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The Justice Department has asked a judge to hold former President Trump’s legal team in contempt for failing to comply with a subpoena demanding the return of all classified records stored at Mar-a-Lago, according to reporting from The Washington Post.

The appeal to a federal judge in sealed court documents comes after the Trump team has still failed to designate a custodian of records and is the latest sign of tension between DOJ and the Trump team just days after another two classified documents were found at a South Florida storage unit housing other Trump records.

A U.S. District Court judge has yet to take action on the request, according to The Post.

The contempt request follows months of efforts to recover classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.

After a May subpoena, the Trump team turned over 38 documents with classified markings, but resisted a request for a sworn statement certifying all classified material had been returned.

Instead, Trump attorney Christina Bobb offered a statement saying the former President’s team had returned all records “based upon the information that has been provided to me.”

After determining that more classified records may be found on the property, the FBI executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, finding another 103 documents with classified markings.

On Wednesday, a separate Washington Post report said at least two additional documents with classified markings had been found at a storage unit in West Palm Beach, Fl.

Representatives for Trump did not immediately respond to request for comment.

The sealed filing before U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell comes after the judge ordered the Trump team to conduct a search for records at other Trump properties.

Holding the legal team in contempt of court could prompt a fine for the legal team until Trump designates a custodian of records, a person who would be responsible for ascertaining to the Justice Department that no classified records remain on Trump property – something his lawyers have been hesitant to do.

Trump’s legal team has resisted the request from DOJ, arguing that they can only reasonably offer that a search of the properties has been conducted in good faith.

#us politics #news #the hill #donald trump #classified intelligence #classified documents #top secret documents #department of justice #contempt of court #ag merrick garland #jack smith #Judge Beryl A. Howell #Christina Bobb #2022

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eaglesnick · 9 months

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“Since when do we have to agree with people to defend them from injustice?” (Lillian Hellman)

‘In a dramatic escalation of tensions over the role of juries in criminal trials, a Crown Court Judge has referred 24 people, including doctors, a priest, an Olympic Gold medallist, a retired Detective Sergeant and a former Government lawyer, to the Attorney General for contempt of court for holding up signs outside court. If prosecuted and convicted the 24 could now face up to 2 years’ imprisonment.’

The signs in question simply stated:

“Jurors have an absolute right to acquit a defendant according to their conscience.”

This message is simply quoting a plaque in the Old Bailey commemorating the historic decision in the Court of Common Pleas that judges “may try to open the eyes of juries, but not lead them by the nose.” This case “established the right of juries to give their verdict according to their convictions”.

So, although there is a plaque within the precincts of the Old Bailey for ALL to read, a judge has deemed it unlawful for the same words to be held up on placards outside the Old Bailey!

Why would a judge feel so strongly about this?

Back in February –March this year, three climate change protestors were given prison sentences. Serves then right, some would say – blocking the roads, causing a nuisance, disrupting ordinary peoples everyday business they deserve to be punished. Maybe, maybe not, but that wasn’t what they were imprisoned for.

They were imprisoned not for protesting, but for refusing to obey the judges ruling that they could not tell the jury WHY they were protesting, The judge refused them the right to explain to the jury that CLIMATE CRISIS was their motivation for protesting. When they ignored his instructions they were imprisoned for contempt of court.

It is a very sad day when a defendant cannot tell a jury the motives behind his or her actions.

It is even more worrying when holding up a sign quoting words on display within the Old Bailey itself also becomes a criminal offence.

I am usually not a great believer in conspiracy theories but you have to wonder why climate crisis protestors are forbidden to explain their motives to a jury when being prosecuted.

#uk politics #uk justice #injustice #old bailey #protestors #contempt of court #climate crisis #silencing #fair trials #bias

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cgogs · 2 years

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writing c!sam and finding out i've owned a cat so long i've completely forgotten what it's like to own a dog i caught myself thinking dogs have litter boxes and being like wait. hold on thats not how dogs work

#im writing again today <:] feels good #contempt of court #<- working title of the fic rn #might change but i cant think of anythng better #contempt fic

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gwydionmisha · 2 years

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#Donald Trump #Arthur Engoron #Contempt of Court #New York #News

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originalleftist · 9 days

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Reminder that as we wait for a verdict in the presumptive Republican nominee's first felony trial, he is already a court-proven fraud, r*pist, insurrectionist, and guilty of criminal contempt of court.

Because they're civil suits (except for the contempt of court), not criminal charges, they did not result in prison time. But American judges or juries have found all of those things, and they have not been overturned on appeal as of this date.

#Donald Trump #Criminal #Fraud #R*pist #Insurrectionist #Contempt of Court #Republican Criminals #Vote Blue

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tomorrowusa · 7 days

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Former President Donald Trump has been held in contempt of court and fined $1,000 for violating a gag order aimed at protecting witnesses and jurors in his Manhattan criminal trial. While handing his order down from the bench, New York Judge Juan Merchan issued a blistering warning to Trump that should the violations continue, he will put him in jail — an unprecedented consequence for a former president and presumptive GOP nominee. Merchan said that the maximum $1,000 per violation penalty is "not serving as a deterrent," leaving him to consider jail time as a sanction. He noted that "to take that step would be disruptive to these proceedings." Merchan said he worries about the court officers, Secret Service and various other personnel that would be needed for such a measure, "but at the end of the day, I have a job to do."

youtube

Judge Merchan needs to take the kid gloves off and toss Trump's lame ass in jail if he keeps acting like a dickhead.

There should not be a separate set of rules for billionaires.

#donald trump #trump's legal problems #trump's hush money trial #contempt of court #lock him up!#gag order #juan merchan #the rule of law #jack ohman #election 2024 #vote blue no matter who

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pad-wubbo · 2 months

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"Champ Buddy Buckaroo Matey Blokey Geezer Lad"

Infinite Painter.

A neon full-body sprite redraw of Lyle Hemlock, an antagonist from the Ace Attorney fangame "The Contempt of Court" by "Cardiovore" on court-records.net.

I simply adore the character. He's mysterious, scary, difficult to corner, very funny and almost pitiable.

#digital art #painting #neon #glowing #ace attorney #redraw #contempt of court #lyle hemlock

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 6 days

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

May 7, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

MAY 08, 2024

The past two days of former president Trump’s criminal trial for falsifying business records to hide a $130,000 payment to adult film actress Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, to silence her before the 2016 election have been illuminating in different ways.

Yesterday, witnesses established that the paper trail of payments to Trump fixer Michael Cohen, who forwarded the money to Daniels, had been falsified. That paper trail included invoices, checks, and records. Witnesses also established that Trump micromanaged his finances, making it hard to believe he didn’t know about the scheme.

That scheme looked like this: Former Trump Organization employee Jeffrey McConney said that Trump’s former financial chief Allen Weisselberg, who has gone to jail twice in two years for his participation in Trump’s financial schemes and is there now, told him to send money to Cohen. Cohen had paid Daniels $130,000 from a home equity loan in 2016 to buy her silence about a sexual encounter with Trump. Cohen received 11 checks totaling $420,000 in repayment, including enough money to cover the taxes he would have to pay for claiming the payments as income for legal services, and a bonus.

Nine of those checks came from Trump’s personal bank account. His team sent the checks to him at the White House for his personal signature.

A number of observers have suggested that the evidence presented through documents yesterday was not riveting, but historians would disagree. Exhibit 35 was Cohen’s bank statement, on which Weisselberg had written the numbers to reflect the higher payment necessary to cover Cohen’s tax bill for the money. Exhibit 36 was a sheet of paper on which McConney had recorded in his own hand how the payments to Cohen would work. The sheet of paper had the TRUMP logo on it.

“It’s rare to see folks put the key to a criminal conspiracy in writing,” legal analyst Joyce White Vance wrote in Civil Discourse, “but here it is. It’s great evidence for the prosecution.”

Today, Daniels took the stand, where she testified about how she had met Trump, he had invited her to dinner but greeted her in silk or satin pajamas, then went on to describe their sexual encounter. The testimony was damaging enough that Trump’s lawyers asked for a mistrial, which Judge Juan Merchan denied, noting that the lawyers had not objected to much of the testimony and must assume at least some responsibility for that.

The case is not about sex but about business records. But it is hugely significant that the story Daniels told today is the one Trump was determined that voters would not hear before the 2016 election, especially after the “grab ‘em by the p*ssy” statement in the Access Hollywood tape, which was released in early October 2016. While his base appears to be cemented to him now, in 2016 he appeared to think that the story of him having sex with an adult film star while his wife had a four-month old baby at home could cost him dearly at the ballot box.

The other election-related cases involving Trump indict him for his determination to cling to power after voters had turned him out in 2020. This case, from before he took office, illuminates that his willingness to manipulate election processes was always part of his approach to politics.

Joyce White Vance is right that it’s rare to see folks put a criminal conspiracy in writing, but it is not unheard of. In our own history, the big ranchers in Johnson County, Wyoming, organized as the Wyoming Stock Growers’ Association, decided in 1892 to clear out the smaller cattlemen pushing their animals onto the federal land and the railroad land the ranchers considered their own. They hired 50 gunmen in Texas to kill their competitors, and they gave them a written list of the men they wanted dead.

The gunmen killed four of the smaller cattlemen after cornering them in a cabin, but outraged settlers surrounded the gunmen and threatened to hang them all. Local law enforcement sided with the small cattlemen, and the Wyoming Stock Grower’s Association appealed to the governor for help in restoring order. The governor, in turn, appealed to President Benjamin Harrison, who sent troops to rescue the stock growers’ men from the angry settlers and lawmen. The expense of keeping the stock growers’ men imprisoned nearly broke the state.

Witnesses became mum, and the cases against the Texas gunmen fell apart. The stock growers had first intimidated and then killed those who tried to challenge their monopoly on the Wyoming cattle industry. Then, thwarted by local lawmen, they called in the federal government, and those stock growers involved in the Johnson County War actually got away with murder.

This evening, Judge Aileen Cannon vacated the May 20, 2024, trial date for the criminal case of Trump’s retention of classified documents and declined to set a new date. With so many remaining issues unresolved, she wrote, it would be “imprudent” to set a new trial date.

This is the case in which the U.S. government accuses Trump of retaining hundreds of classified documents that compromised the work of the Central Intelligence Agency, which provides intelligence on foreign countries and global issues; the Department of Defense, which provides military forces to ensure national security; the National Security Agency, which collects intelligence from communications and information systems; the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, which provides intelligence from imagery; the National Reconnaissance Office, which operates satellites and reconnaissance systems; the Department of Energy, which manages nuclear weapons; and the Department of State, including the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, which provides intelligence to U.S. diplomats.

These are the documents the Federal Bureau of Investigation later recovered from Mar-a-Lago, where they were stored in public spaces, including a bathroom, after Trump first retained them, then denied he had them, and then tried to hide them.

The U.S. government charges that “[t]he classified documents TRUMP stored in his boxes included information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries; United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack. The unauthorized disclosure of these classified documents could put at risk the national security of the United States, foreign relations, the safety of the United States military, and human sources and the continued viability of sensitive intelligence collection methods.”

Today, Trump's trial for his retention of these classified documents is indefinitely postponed.

Trump appointed Cannon to the bench, and the Senate confirmed her after he lost the 2020 presidential election. She has seemed to be in no hurry to bring the case to trial before the 2024 election, a case that, if he is reelected, Trump will almost certainly quash.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #Stormy Daniels #Trump legal jeopardy #classified documents #hush money #election tampering #history #Michael Cohen #contempt of court

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