Lori Keesey, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center A long-standing mystery among marine biologists is why otherwise healthy whales, dolphins, and porpoises - collectively known as cetaceans - end up getting stranded along coastal areas worldwide. Could severe solar storms, which affect Earth's magnetic fields, be confusing their internal compasses and causing them to lose their way?…
Legal experts appeared somewhat pleased during the first half of the Supreme Court’s historic hearing on Donald Trump’s claim he has “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution because he was the President of the United States, as the justice appeared unwilling to accept that claim, but were stunned later when the right-wing justices questioned the U.S. Dept. of Justice’s attorney. Many experts are suggesting the ex-president may have won at least a part of the day, and some are expressing concern about the future of American democracy.
“Former President Trump seems likely to win at least a partial victory from the Supreme Court in his effort to avoid prosecution for his role in Jan. 6,” Axios reports. “A definitive ruling against Trump — a clear rejection of his theory of immunity that would allow his Jan. 6 trial to promptly resume — seemed to be the least likely outcome.”
The most likely outcome “might be for the high court to punt, perhaps kicking the case back to lower courts for more nuanced hearings. That would still be a victory for Trump, who has sought first and foremost to delay a trial in the Jan. 6 case until after Inauguration Day in 2025.”
Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern, who covers the courts and the law, noted: “This did NOT go very well [for Special Counsel] Jack Smith’s team. Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh think Trump’s Jan. 6 prosecution is unconstitutional. Maybe Gorsuch too. Roberts is skeptical of the charges. Barrett is more amenable to Smith but still wants some immunity.”
READ MORE: Justices Slam Trump Lawyer: ‘Why Is It the President Would Not Be Required to Follow the Law?’
Civil rights attorney and Tufts University professor Matthew Segal, responding to Stern’s remarks, commented: “If this is true, and if Trump becomes president again, there is likely no limit to the harm he’d be willing to cause — to the country, and to specific individuals — under the aegis of this immunity.”
Noted foreign policy, national security and political affairs analyst and commentator David Rothkopf observed: “Feels like the court is leaning toward creating new immunity protections for a president. It’s amazing. We’re watching the Constitution be rewritten in front of our eyes in real time.”
“Frog in boiling water alert,” warned Ian Bassin, a former Associate White House Counsel under President Barack Obama. “Who could have imagined 8 years ago that in the Trump era the Supreme Court would be considering whether a president should be above the law for assassinating opponents or ordering a military coup and that *at least* four justices might agree.”
NYU professor of law Melissa Murray responded to Bassin: “We are normalizing authoritarianism.”
Trump’s attorney, John Sauer, argued before the Supreme Court justices that if Trump had a political rival assassinated, he could only be prosecuted if he had first been impeach by the U.S. House of Representatives then convicted by the U.S. Senate.
During oral arguments Thursday, MSNBC host Chris Hayes commented on social media, “Something that drives me a little insane, I’ll admit, is that Trump’s OWN LAWYERS at his impeachment told the Senators to vote not to convict him BECAUSE he could be prosecuted if it came to that. Now they’re arguing that the only way he could be prosecuted is if they convicted.”
READ MORE: Biden Campaign Hammers Trump Over Infamous COVID Comment
Attorney and former FBI agent Asha Rangappa warned, “It’s worth highlighting that Trump’s lawyers are setting up another argument for a second Trump presidency: Criminal laws don’t apply to the President unless they specifically say so…this lays the groundwork for saying (in the future) he can’t be impeached for conduct he can’t be prosecuted for.”
But NYU and Harvard professor of law Ryan Goodman shared a different perspective.
“Due to Trump attorney’s concessions in Supreme Court oral argument, there’s now a very clear path for DOJ’s case to go forward. It’d be a travesty for Justices to delay matters further. Justice Amy Coney Barrett got Trump attorney to concede core allegations are private acts.”
NYU professor of history Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an expert scholar on authoritarians, fascism, and democracy concluded, “Folks, whatever the Court does, having this case heard and the idea of having immunity for a military coup taken seriously by being debated is a big victory in the information war that MAGA and allies wage alongside legal battles. Authoritarians specialize in normalizing extreme ideas and and involves giving them a respected platform.”
The Nation’s justice correspondent Elie Mystal offered up a prediction: “Court doesn’t come back till May 9th which will be a decision day. But I think they won’t decide *this* case until July 3rd for max delay. And that decision will be 5-4 to remand the case back to DC, for additional delay.”
Watch the video above or at this link.
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Well, we’re now a few days into Donald Trump’s election fraud trial in New York City, and we are already learning a lot. Unfortunately, none of it is very surprising.
For instance, it looks like our media has settled into calling it a “hush money” trial, even if it most assuredly is a helluva lot more than that.
In raw, legal terms, Trump is charged with violating New York Election Law, which prohibits conspiracies to promote a candidate’s election through unlawful means, and/or concealing a crime by falsifying business records.
Thus, fraud.
But hushhhh money … flows from the lips like a whisper. I mean, who cares if this was actually Ground Zero for Trump’s attempt to hide a gruesome chapter of his ugly life from the public to advance his noxious political career by knowingly and illegally using campaign money to do it.
Hush money … Lovely.
Actually … I did learn one thing that surprised me: Did you know that if the America-attacking, racist degenerate were to go actually be sent to jail for continuing to violate the gag order that has been imposed on him in this trial, the Secret Service WE PAY FOR will go along with him?
Great, eh?
So while the rest of the crooks like Trump’s Chief Financial Officer Alan Weisselberg are serving hard time in New York’s notorious Rikers Island prison, Trump would have enough armed guards protecting him to start a war.
No worries, none of that is going to happen, but it does kind of change what it would look like for the lifetime crook if he ever did end up where he most certainly belongs — I mean, besides hell.
As this trial has unfolded, it has taken absolutely no time at all to have it confirmed that the two-timing, rancid fascist can’t control his bowels. Anybody who has followed Trump literally and/or figuratively over the course of his foul life knows that his terrible odor is his wilting calling card. It has followed him around like a brown, odious fog for decades.
Picture Charlie Brown’s Pigpen without any of the charm.
The gruesome man’s diet consists of inhaling fast-food pollutants, and will be the thing that most assuredly brings it all to an end for him, just not fast enough for anybody hankering for a super-sized portion of justice served extra cold.
Basically, the fact that Trump is completely full of shit has been confirmed yet again.
We have also learned to absolutely nobody’s surprise that this overflowing sack of orange dirt has little-to-no energy, and is prone to doze off at any moment. If nothing else this should quiet the blabber we continually hear that both candidates for the presidency of the United States are basically the same old men.
While the fat, orange guy snores in court, the tall, trim guy fills each and every day with herculean efforts to save the world from itself, while bench-pressing our ridiculous bureaucracy into action by turning the key and revving up programs that are good for all Americans.
Seriously, Biden never stops working on behalf of the American public. He does take a break to attend church each week, which the phony Christians who support the farting cheater hold their noses and cover their eyes to avoid acknowledging at all costs.
The study in contrast has never been greater, but don’t hold your breath while the press goes out of its way to tell us they are the same old guys with different ideas for our country.
It also took no time at all to introduce Trump’s Pecker.
No, not that one, David Pecker, the one-time CEO of American Media Inc., who became wildly rich by carpet-bombing the world with tabloid trash, most infamously from the National Enquirer.
These two dirt balls were fast friends, of course, which I see is being reported as a “mutually beneficial relationship.” Hitler and Goebbels also had a “mutually beneficial relationship.”
Pecker essentially agreed to be Trump’s PR man during his candidacy, because Trump always coveted a Pecker that actually worked for him ...
Pecker agreed to stuff his tabloids with positive, made-up news about Trump, while destroying his opponents with anything he could get his dirty hands on. Most important, they would be keeping a close eye out for any negative stories about the traitor trash. Those are the stories they would “catch and kill” so that nobody would ever see them.
There was a story they bought and killed from Trump’s doorman about a love child Trump allegedly fathered, and another from Playboy model, Karen McDougal, who had an alleged 10-month affair with the orange pervert during a time period that overlapped with his collision with the adult film star, Stormy Daniels, and the pregnancy of his third wife, Melania.
Pecker paid a whopping $150,000 to McDougal to keep that one quiet.
When asked why he spent all this money on behalf of his morally busted friend, Pecker told the court “because of the potential embarrassments it would have to the campaign and Mr. Trump.”
Forget all the good he could have done for America by simply acting with just the minimum amount of decency.
We learned again that Pecker worked most closely with Trump’s low-grade lawyer and “fixer,” Michael Cohen, to make sure their polluted stream kept oozing through the money-washing sewer system of the Republican National Committee.
Cohen’s a completely reprehensible guy, who did atrocious things while faithfully serving Trump for 12 years before serving three years in prison for the honor. Trump, of course, hung the stiff out to dry, by saying he barely knew him, which is what boss-thugs are allowed to get away with in America.
Now Cohen is out for revenge, and by the looks of it, is doing everything in his power to make sure he doesn't get it, by barfing all over social media during this trial.
These two guys can never shut up and deserve each other, which is why at the minimum Trump deserves exactly what his pathetic fixer got.
I just don’t see that happening.
I have pretty much given up all hope that Trump will see the inside of a jail cell before the election, and maybe at all. That coincided with the long, quiet months following the appointment of the pathetic Merrick Garland to Attorney General.
If attacking our country on national TV, doing nothing about it for three hours, and trying to throw out America’s vote to overturn an election couldn’t get a rise out of our country’s most powerful law enforcement office, than nothing would.
The guy literally had to be led around by the nose by a high-powered congressional committee to show any interest in picking up Trump’s horrible scent, which we’ve already established stinks to high heaven.
I loathe that man with everything that is inside me, but he has successfully further lowered my expectations of America’s painfully laughable “justice” system.
So I say we all just gather ‘round, pour a cocktail, and enjoy the stinking man’s daily humiliation for however long this trial lasts. There won’t be many surprises, only confirmation of what a disgusting, sub-human piece of garbage he has always been.
That's most likely the best we're going to get until the poison that another clown, Ronald McDonald, has been serving The McDonald finally takes him away for good ...
D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. Follow @EarlofEnough and on his website.
Donald Trump may have successfully delayed his federal election subversion case to avoid a pre-election trial, but the judge in that case has a "silver lining" option that would still allow Special Counsel Jack Smith to present evidence to the American public, according to a former federal prosecutor.
MSNBC legal analyst Joyce Vance posted about Trump's Supreme Court hearing on his claim for presidential immunity on her Substack on Thursday. Toward the end of that write-up, Vance provides an option for Judge Chutkan to continue despite indefinite delays.
"We don’t know for certain where Chief Justice Roberts is and how he will vote," the ex-prosecutor wrote after trying to read the SCOTUS tea leaves. "But if this comes to a decision that some conduct does get immunity and the trial judge must make those rulings, there is one possible silver lining. Judge Chutkan could hold an evidentiary hearing on remand to facilitate her decision."
ALSO READ: ‘Fraudulent’: Trump tormentor Lincoln Project loses big money in cybertheft scheme
Vance goes on to say exactly what such a hearing could bring.
"That would mean briefs and even live testimony where the government would get to lay out all of its evidence against Trump. It’s not a full trial followed by a jury verdict. But if this case isn’t going to trial, it would be one way of getting more information about Donald Trump’s conduct out for public consumption," she said. "The House January 6 committee hearings gripped the nation. The Special Counsel, with access to the powers of an investigative grand jury and the possibility of more cooperating witnesses, especially from other charged cases, would have an even larger story to tell."
Former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann also raised the potential silver lining option live when appearing on MSNBC late Thursday evening.
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