Trump’s defenders slink to the occasion Donald Trump will be arraigned in a Washington, D.C. court this afternoon on charges spelled out in the indictment a federal grand jury handed down on Tuesday. He and his defenders will googolplex down on lies and distortions about those charges. First up from his defense team is that Trump is being prosecuted for exercising his First Amendment right to free speech. That is not a legal defense, but a political one for consumption and repetition by his supporters. They will do both. The former president’s alleged crimes are spelled out on the cover page of the grand jury’s indictment: UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. DONALD J. TRUMP, Defendant. And in paragraph four (pg. 2). And at the top of page 3 (COUNT ONE). And at the top of pages 43, 44 and 45 (COUNTS TWO, THREE and FOUR). Chapter and verse.
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“Hand-counting is typically expensive, inaccurate and impractical” NBC News: Some conservatives, including allies of former President Donald Trump, have pushed hand-counting ballots as a way to ensure the accuracy of election results. But Mohave County’s experience punctures that talking point, showing that hand-counting is typically expensive, inaccurate and impractical. In short, hand-counting ballots isn’t as easy as it sounds. Mohave County, home to an estimated 220,000 people in the northwestern corner of Arizona, is one of a handful of U.S. counties that has considered hand-counting ballots, thanks in part to election conspiracy theories that have driven distrust in ballot tabulators. After the 2020 election, the Arizona state Senate authorized a controversial hand-count audit of two races. The audit took months and cost millions, and — by its leadership’s own account in text messages obtained by The Arizona Republic — failed to result in an accurate count. Oh, right. Sure. That’s what the “experts” said, think MAGA conspiracy theorists.
Sadly, he’s been proven right The NY Times used to keep a running tally of his lies but I think it just became too hard after a while, but there is still analysis: Running through the indictment charging former President Donald J. Trump with conspiring to overturn the 2020 election was a consistent theme: He is an inveterate and knowing liar. The indictment laid out how, in the two months after Election Day, Mr. Trump “spread lies” about widespread election fraud even though he “knew that they were false.” Mr. Trump “deliberately disregarded the truth” and relentlessly disseminated them anyway at a “prolific” pace, the indictment continued, “to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election.” Of course, Mr. Trump has never been known for fealty to truth.
This piece in the Bulwark takes a look at the two main defenses that Trump’s lawyers are likely to employ when it comes to a trial. (If it comes to a trial.) I don'[t know if this is correct but it’s interesting.
As one twitter wag quipped: “Less than a year ago reporters were gushing over how ‘savvy’ DeSantis is.” DeSantis just wrapped up a three-day trip to New Hampshire, his first since downsizing his campaign due to financial problems. On the ground, it was clear the challenges he faces here remain significant, even as his chief rival confronts major legal problems. But on paper, Desantis’s path to winning the GOP nomination is clear, said Scott Maltzie, a Republican activist and DeSantis supporter from Concord. “We’ve got to convince the soft Trump voters not to vote for Trump,” he said, after DeSantis spoke in Rochester Monday. “And we’ve got to convince the people currently supporting the others that they have no chance in hell.” […] Throughout his trip to New Hampshire, he appeared bent on demonstrating that no candidate talks tougher.
Here on planet earth it was the opposite The transcript of the testimony earlier this week from Devon Archer has been released and Philip Bump has the details: Soon after Hunter Biden’s former business partner Devon Archer finished testifying before investigators working for the House Oversight Committee, two top House Republicans joined Sean Hannity’s Fox News program in prime time. Archer’s testimony was enormously damaging to President Biden, they suggested, with House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) insisting that Archer’s testimony made the bribery allegation he’d first introduced two months ago “more credible.” That allegation centered on the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, where Hunter Biden and Archer once sat on its board. Archer “said that Hunter Biden was under immense pressure while they both served on the Burisma board to call Washington, D.C., immediately and try to get Shokin fired,” Comer told Hannity. “That’s the Ukrainian prosecutor. And not many days later, Joe Biden traveled to Ukraine” — a trip in which he called for Shokin’s ouster.
CNN has a new poll out showing that almost 70% of Republicans believe that Biden is not a legitimate president. That’s 69% up from 63% for the last year. WTF is wrong with these people??? It’s good to look at the bigger picture, however and recognize that while this does represent tens of millions of our fellow Americans, it’s far from a majority: Overall, 61% of Americans say Biden did legitimately win enough votes to win the presidency, and 38% believe that he did not. Among registered voters who say they cast a ballot for Trump in 2020, 75% say they have doubts about Biden’s legitimacy. That says more about them than it does about Trump.
Trump indicted for efforts to overturn 2020 election “You’re too honest.” Then-President Donald Trump (the Defendant) berated Vice President Mike Pence on a January 1, 2021 phone call for resisting his plan to seek a court ruling stating that “the Vice President had the authority to reject or return votes to the states under the Constitution.” So alleges special counsel Jack Smith’s 45-page indictment (gifted article) of Trump on three conspiracy charges and one for obstruction of an official proceeding. Along with Trump the indictment references six unnamed co-conspirators. Unnamed because they have not yet been charged, several are obvious from details in the indictment, Co-Conspirators 1 through 4 being Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, and Jeffrey Clark. The Washington Post identifies appellate attorney Kenneth Chesebro as Co-Conspirator 5. The sixth is described as a “political consultant” involved in helping implement Trump’s fake electors scheme. The Smith indictment draws heavily on the work of the House January 6 Committee but includes more detail than was public previously.
The twice impeached, thrice indicted former president has been rejected by almost his entire cabinet They worked with him. They know him. They do not want him to be president ever again: Donald Trump may have put them in the most powerful and prestigious jobs many will ever hold, but few who worked in his Cabinet are rushing to endorse him in his bid to return to the White House. NBC News reached out to 44 of the dozens of people who served in Trump’s Cabinet over his term in office. Most declined to comment or ignored the requests. A total of four have said publicly they support his run for re-election. Several have been coy about where they stand, stopping short of endorsing Trump with the GOP primary race underway. Then there are those who outright oppose his bid for the GOP nomination or are adamant that they don’t want him back in power. “I have made clear that I strongly oppose Trump for the nomination and will not endorse Trump,” former Attorney General Bill Barr told NBC News.
How Fox News is taking it: Donald Trump’s third indictment this year—which charged that the former president illegally tried to overturn the 2020 election—was apparently so unremarkable to The Five co-host Greg Gutfeld that the Fox News personality couldn’t help but draw several crude doodles while the news was first announced. He instead claimed that he couldn’t “take seriously” the charges, which accuse Trump of conspiring to defraud the United States, to obstruct an official government proceeding, and to deprive people of their civil rights. Fox News reporter David Spunt, reading from the 45-page indictment, explained the charges to those on The Five. After Katie Pavlich and Jesse Watters weighed in, Dana Perino turned to Gutfeld to see if he had any thoughts on the historic news. “I don’t know. What do you think of my sketches?” replied the Gutfeld! host while showing his drawings to the camera. “Usually when I’m bored, I’ll draw men in hats.