It did seem like the previous SC decision indicated that the president pushing the Justice Department to do his bidding was an “official act” that couldn’t be prosecuted. Makes sense that Smith pulled all of that out, although to me that was pretty egregious behavior unrelated to his official job duties.
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Per Scott MacFarlane, CBS news, this happened during court proceedings today in the election interference case.
Defense: Justice Thomas directed us to raise this issue
Judge Chutkan interjects: “He directed you to do it?”
Defense: Well.. he didn’t direct us to
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I would not be surprised at all if Thomas was directly advising the defense, all for a proper fee of course.
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34 count sentencing delayed til after the election.
Looks like Aileen Cannon took lessons from the C. Thomas school of disclosure.
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There’s a new LegalEagle video about Trump’s filing notice that he’s going to sue the DOJ for $100 million. The vast majority of the video talks about how idiotic the suit is and how he could never win it. EXCEPT, if he gets elected, he can just order the DOJ to settle. So he’s already set himself up to grab $100 million if he gets elected.
He could, apparently with no risk, order the DOJ to settle. That doesn’t mean that the DOJ would. Even some of his sycophants might resign first. He might well end up with enough that would get him paid.
you must be new - sure, someone will resign. maybe many. but there is a boot licker in the circle who 100% wants to please him and sign that paper as instructed
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Just when you thought Trump could not further out-grift himself…
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I think that is old news that is new news because it is in a committee report rather than in the NYT.
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Well not that I always stay on top of this stuff, but I didn’t know about the overcharging issue. I knew he was profiting off Secret Service staying in his hotels, but I had up to now assumed that they were paying rack rates.
It’s also hard to remember how many times broke the law in different ways.
Here is a story from a couple years ago, also a committee report, so not sure what is new other than churning this to the top of the news before the election.
https://www.npr.org/2022/10/17/1129491352/trump-hotels-overcharged-secret-service-agents
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Laws are broken around Trump so often that no one does anything anymore. Elon Musk has dropped over $75 million as the sole donor to a super PAC. The super PAC cannot coordinate with the Trump campaign, but is doing much of the door to door work for the campaign and Musk, who is the PAC, has done rallies with Trump and the campaign. Nothing will come of that because it will require the FEC to act. The FEC has received, as of earlier this year, 59 complaints about Trump. The paid, non-partisan staff has recommended further investigation in 29 of those complaints. But for the staff to do those investigations, you need 4 out of 6 votes from a board that is 3 Republicans, 3 Democrats, and the Republicans have said no to all 29 recommended investigations. GOP commissioners have single-handedly blocked FEC action against Trump 29 times - CREW | Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington
The Logan Act bans private citizens from conducting independent foreign policy, yet Trump has met with Putin 7 times recently. Nothing will come of that.
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Similarly Trump’s discussions with Netanyahu
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Guess we can close this thread
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Don’t think of it as an ending to his current legal woes.
Think of it as an opportunity for him to get into more legal hot water.
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Aren’t we going to spend the next 4 years debating which of Trump’s crimes are official acts or not?
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I have faith that in 2029 there will be new classified documents stored in a Mar-a-Lago shower.
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We can use this thread to predict or discuss who Trump will arrest now that he can direct the Justice department to prosecute political enemies as an “official act”.
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