Trump keeps saying that trying to overturn a legal election and obstruct the peaceful transfer of power was part of his official duties as president. But that’s not what his lawyers said after the election as you can see by that Supreme Court filing above.
Politico reports that he’s now saying that the election was “long over” and he was acting in his capacity as president:
In the months after the 2020 election, Donald Trump leaned on his campaign to launch ad blitzes and legal challenges to the results, insisting to his supporters that the election was “ a long way from over.” He even told state and federal courts he was suing in his capacity as a political candidate.
Now, in a bid to derail criminal charges, he’s saying the opposite. At least six times in the past two weeks, Trump has declared that the election was “ long over” by the time he began pushing state officials and then-Vice President Mike Pence to overturn his defeat.
It’s a new piece of rhetoric that’s meant to bolster Trump’s assertion of “presidential immunity” from his criminal charges for interfering with the transfer of power. He wasn’t a candidate anymore, Trump’s new theory goes, so he must have been doing his job as president to ensure elections are fair.
But there’s a problem: It flies in the face of the legal arguments Trump made three years ago, during his frenetic push to subvert the election results. Even after the votes had been counted and certified, Trump filed lawsuits contesting the results — and he claimed he was doing so not as the outgoing president, but as a candidate.
It’s even what he told the Supreme Court in a Dec. 9, 2020 brief filed by his lawyer at the time, John Eastman. “He seeks to intervene in this matter in his personal capacity as a candidate for reelection,” Eastman wrote.
The contradiction could cause headaches for Trump and his current lawyers as they now press appellate courts to accept an aggressive immunity theory — a gambit that could hinge on whether Trump’s attempts to overturn Joe Biden’s victory can somehow count as official presidential acts or whether they were nakedly political.
“It certainly has at least some rhetorical force that even Trump has been inconsistent about the role in which he was acting,” said Steve Vladeck, a national security law expert at the University of Texas.
He and other legal experts say that what Trump says on the trail isn’t all that relevant to the legal finding. But I have to assume that filings to the Supreme Court might be.
This piece in Politico by Michael Kruse is a tour de force and I highly recommend reading the whole thing if you have time. This topic is something that’s been discussed a lot but I’ve never seen this put together in quite this way. Trump has been trying to blow up the American system of justice for decades. And now he has a fairly good chance of doing exactly that:
What happened in Room 300 of the New York County Courthouse in lower Manhattan in November had never happened. Not in the preceding almost two and a half centuries of the history of the United States. Donald Trump was on the witness stand. It was not unprecedented in the annals of American jurisprudence just because it was a former president, although that was totally true. It was unprecedented because the power dynamic of the courtroom had been upended — the defendant was not on defense, the most vulnerable person in the room was the most dominant person in the room, and the people nominally in charge could do little about it.
It was unprecedented, too, because over the course of four or so hours Trump savaged the judge, the prosecutor, the attorney general, the case and the trial — savaged the system itself. He called the attorney general “a political hack.” He called the judge “very hostile.” He called the trial “crazy” and the court “a fraud” and the case “a disgrace.” He told the prosecutor he should be “ashamed” of himself. The judge all but pleaded repeatedly with Trump’s attorneys to “control” him. “If you can’t,” the judge said, “I will.” But he didn’t, because he couldn’t, and audible from the city’s streets were the steady sounds of sirens and that felt absolutely apt.
“Are you done?” the prosecutor said.
“Done,” Trump said.
He was nowhere close to done. Trump’s testimony if anything was but a taste. (In fact, he said many of the same things in the same courtroom on Thursday.) This country has never seen and therefore is utterly unprepared for what it’s about to endure in the wrenching weeks and months ahead — active challenges based on post-Civil War constitutional amendments to bar insurrectionists from the ballot; existentially important questions about presidential immunity almost certainly to be decided by a U.S. Supreme Court the citizenry has seldom trusted less; and a candidate running for the White House while facing four separate criminal indictments alleging 91 felonies, among them, of course, charges that he tried to overturn an election he lost and overthrow the democracy he swore to defend. And while many found Trump’s conduct in court in New York shocking, it is in fact for Trump not shocking at all. For Trump, it is less an aberration than an extension, an escalation — a culmination. Trump has never been in precisely this position, and the level of the threat that he faces is inarguably new, but it’s just as true, too, that nobody has been preparing for this as long as he has himself.
Trump and his allies say he is the victim of the weaponization of the justice system, but the reality is exactly the opposite. For literally more than 50 years, according to thousands of pages of court records and hundreds of interviews with lawyers and legal experts, people who have worked for Trump, against Trump or both, and many of the myriad litigants who’ve been caught in the crossfire, Trump has taught himself how to use and abuse the legal system for his own advantage and aims. Many might view the legal system as a place to try to avoid, or as perhaps a necessary evil, or maybe even as a noble arbiter of equality and fairness.
Not Trump. He spent most of his adult life molding it into an arena in which he could stake claims and hunt leverage. It has not been for him a place of last resort so much as a place of constant quarrel. Conflict in courts is not for him the cost of doing business — it is how he does business. Throughout his vast record of (mostly civil) lawsuits, whether on offense, defense or frequently a mix of the two, Trump has become a sort of layman’s master in the law and lawfare.
It’s bad enough to see a former president and current defendant standing outside the courtroom crudely insulting the judge, the prosecutor and the judges clerk. You see this from defense attorneys sometimes but it’s still jarring even though it’s Trump and he’s just a blatant jackass in all circumstances. But I have to say I was shocked to read that he had acted the same way on the witness stand. Then yesterday he seized the opportunity to do it again. I kept thinking, who the hell does he think he is?
Obviously, he thinks he’s a dictator, even out of office and after January 6th he believes he has an army that will defend him if he’s held accountable. Just this week he threatened “bedlam” if these cases don’t go his way.
Read the whole article if you have time. How in the world did this country sink so low that we ended up with a corrupt miscreant like this?
Here we go again. The House Republicans are running around in circles, unable to agree among themselves about what they were sent to Washington to do and we are once again on the cusp of a government shutdown. No matter who’s in charge or what the circumstances are, they just can’t get anything done. And for some reason they believe this is a winning election year strategy.
The week started out on a hopeful note. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Speaker Mike Johnson and House Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had come to an agreement on a top-line budget number. This seemed to signal that Johnson and his team were serious negotiators who might actually be able to avoid a government shut down. Of course, the framework was already in place from the deal struck last spring between then Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Biden to raise the debt ceiling, but it still spoke well of his successor that he could be practical enough to recognize that he was going to have to negotiate.
The MAGA crazies on the far right had rejected that deal at the time and it was passed with Democratic votes, eventually bringing about McCarthy’s ouster in October when he once again was forced to rely on Democratic votes to pass a temporary funding extension to keep the government open. Johnson had a little honeymoon that allowed him to pass another short term spending bill without being defenestrated by the crazy caucus.
Unfortunately for him and the country, that honeymoon is definitely over. After announcing the top-line spending deal that would have set the levels until September 30th, everyone understood that it was still going to take a lot of work to agree on the details and that would require yet another short term extension. The MAGA hardliners are a hard no on all of it.
Johnson is a hardliner himself so you would think he’d know how this was going to go over. He seems to think that by “listening” and having “thoughtful conversations” he would have enough credibility with the Freedom Caucus that they would go along. He thought he could tell them “I think it’s the best possible deal that conservatives and Republicans could get under these circumstances” and that would be that. Is he living in a dream world?
He must know that they truly believe that if they shut down the government the Democrats will throw up their hands in surrender and give them everything they want. And if they don’t, the Democrats will all be defeated in November because the government will have been shut down for 10 months, the economy will be in ruins and they will be blamed. In their addled minds, it’s a win-win either way.
Needless to say, that is irrational nihilism but that’s who they are. According to the Washington Post, they want Johnson to renege on the funding agreement and go back to the Senate with their new top line number, destroying any credibility he has with the Senate and the White House. The Freedom Caucus must also be given a say in how any funding is allocated which is the Appropriations Committee’s job or a 1% cut across the board. Oh, and they also demand new draconian immigration restrictions before they will agree to any short term spending bill.
After a meeting on Thursday morning between Johnson and the rebels, the members emerged saying that Johnson was with them. Johnson disagreed, telling reporters, he’s made “no commitments” — and that “if you hear otherwise, it’s just simply not true.” Nobody really knows what Johnson is doing. It’s a mess:
House GOP feuds as shutdown looms and speaker in bind
“A massive failure,” MTG says as hardliners push for Johnson to back off deal
Hern is OK with “short-term shutdown”
But many Rs say hard-right making unrealistic demands
The MAGA extremists are talking about ousting him as they did McCarthy.
MAGA Republicans are now floating removing Mike Johnson just barely three months after Kevin McCarthy was ousted: I suspect we will be looking for a new Speaker. That is an option. If we don't like our boss we can remove them pic.twitter.com/vrXu1HaMJp
Don’t tell anyone but with their tiny majority there’s a good chance that if they do this we’ll be looking at a Speaker Hakim Jeffries. Somebody may just crack.
In case you’re wondering why these zealots think this is such a good idea and that it’s going to work for them, look no further than the “intellectual leader” of the MAGA cult, Steve Bannon. Media Matters reported that he has begun an effort to oust Johnson after having successfully led the effort to depose Kevin McCarthy in October. They report that “although Bannon and his guests have been criticizing Johnson since November — just weeks into the new speaker’s tenure — the attacks have escalated in recent days.”
On Thursday he interviewed Russell Vought, one of the new MAGA gurus who is working on all those dystopian plans for Trump’s second term at the MAGA “think tank” Center for Renewing America, who told him “I am one of the biggest critics of Mike Johnson right now. He is bowing to the fear of a government shutdown within his own ranks. I think he should stand up to that fear, like Congresswoman Greene would have him do, but he’s not.”
Vought is said to be very influential in Trump’s inner circle which may explain why Johnson told Hugh Hewitt he was planning to talk to Trump about this situation but Trump has been a little busy. If he’s counting on his support he should probably have a chat with his predecessor who did everything in his power to curry favor with the Dear Leader and it did him no good at all when push came to shove. Trump has always been for a government shutdown.
Perhaps the most ominous part of Vought’s comment is the fact that he extolled the virtues of Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is asserting her power as a MAGA leader. Media Matters reports that she also appeared with Bannon on Thursday and said,
If I was speaker of the House, I’d finish the job in the House. I’d pass the appropriation bills, and then I’d tell Chuck Schumer in the Senate, ‘It’s your job now, buddy. You do your work and then we’ll talk.’ But right now, Mike Johnson is getting rolled in meeting after meeting after meeting.
When he is talking to Jake Sullivan and Chuck Schumer every day and impressed with these four corners meetings, but he’s not talking to me and other important members in our Republican conference at all about any of the negotiations and any of the plans and exactly what we want to see done, he’s failing on the job.”
She certainly sounds like someone who thinks she’s the right woman for the job, doesn’t she? I suspect that there are more than a few Republican House members who would happily vote for Hakim Jeffries over Greene. But you never know. The House Republicans have been infected with MAGA fever and there doesn’t seem to be a cure.
Time will tell if Mike Johnson is able to corral these rebels, keep the government open and hold his seat. But the pressure from the MAGA base, incited by Steve Bannon and others, to blow up the system is going to be relentless. They’ve tasted the power that comes from deposing a leader and they want more. The only thing that will stop them is the loss of their majority. If there is any justice in this world, that will happen next November. Until then, it’s going to be a very turbulent time in the US House of Representatives.
THIS IS CRAZY!
Marjorie Taylor Greene is now threatening to remove Speaker Johnson and floats herself as a candidate for Speaker of the House.
How's this and the Hunter Biden drama helping our district?
Donald Trump believes Americans who gave their lives in defense of their country are “suckers” and “losers.” What must he think of his fans who will believe any lie he tells?
Paul Waldman responded to Donald Trump’s Wednesday town hall on Fox News:
Trump has always employed this very simple strategy: Dish out the most preposterous hyperbole and lies, but do it with the utter conviction that only an experienced con artist can muster. It’s what he did as a businessman, what he did when he ran for president in 2016, and what he has done ever since.
Trump’s shtick has worn thin, Waldman believes, but it’s the only one he’s got. Trump went to it again upon leaving a New York City courtroom on Thursday. Trump stood before reporters and lambasted N.Y. Attorney General Letitia James.
Presiding Judge Arthur Engoron (who received a bomb threat at his Long Island home on Thursday) will determine how large of a fine the Trump Organization will pay for committing decades of fraud in New York. Engoron mentioned Bernie Madoff’s case at the end of the day, reported Susanne Craig of the New York Times. Madoff was ordered to pay $170 billion in restitution to his Ponzi fraud victims.
MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle corrected the record on Exxon misinformation Trump has repeated over and over.
Donald Trump claims that Attorney General Letitia James chased Exxon out of New York.
Marc Elias of Democracy Docket tweeted a quote in response to the same Exxon misinformation:
“Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow.” – Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
Here’s how the New York Times deconstructed just one Trump speech in October 2020:
The sad fact is that the GOP and its MAGA base have been conditioned to lap up the lies as a sign of belonging and to repeat them as casually as an evangelical working the drive-thru window might wish you “a blessed day.”
Only “a blessed day” is mighty harmless compared to the flood of conspiracy theories that sadly did not culminate in the sacking of the U.S. Capitol. MAGA Republicans have been conditioned to lie and “to believe the worst, no matter how absurd.”
This was Rep. Clay Higgins (R) of Louisiana in 2020:
This was MAGA influencer (and former @Project_Veritas operative) Laura Loomer attacking Trump challenger Nikki Haley on Thursday night:
PROUD BOYS marching in front of the US Supreme Court along First Street between Maryland Avenue and East Capitol Street, NE, Washington DC on Wednesday morning, 6 January 2021. Photo by Elvert Barnes Photography CC BY-SA 2.0.
“Democrats Propose Bill to Neuter Militias” is how Vice News described it:
Militias who like to spend their weekends training to overthrow the government could find themselves running afoul of federal law, under new legislation being proposed in the House and Senate Thursday that seeks to curtail paramilitary activity.
Washington, DC – Following the anniversary of the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol, Congressman Jamie Raskin (MD-08) and Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) introduced the Preventing Private Paramilitary Activity Act,legislation that wouldcreate a federal prohibition on paramilitary groups through civil and criminal enforcement. The prohibition would hold individuals liable who directly engage in certain types of conduct, including intimidating state and local officials, interfering with government proceedings, pretending to be law enforcement, and violating people’s constitutional rights, while armed and acting as part of a private paramilitary organization.
There are currently no federal laws that address paramilitary activity or protect millions of Americans whose rights are threatened by this type of violent anti-democratic intimidation. Although all 50 states prohibit private paramilitary conduct, these laws are far too often outdated, underenforced, or ignored. Private military organizations pose a threat not only to national security, but they also present a public safety problem that extends beyond any single state; for example, private paramilitary actors like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers traveled across state lines on January 6th.
“Patrolling neighborhoods, impeding law enforcement and storming the U.S. Capitol, private paramilitary groups like the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters and the Proud Boys are using political violence to intimidate our people and threaten democratic government and the rule of law,” said Congressman Raskin. “Our legislation makes the obvious but essential clarification that these domestic extremists’ paramilitary operations are in no way protected by our Constitution. I’m grateful to Senator Markey for his partnership on this critical effort to protect the rule of law, deter insurrection and defend our democracy.”
Legislation Overview: This legislation builds on existing state anti-paramilitary laws to create a new prohibition on unauthorized private paramilitary activity, with both civil and criminal enforcement mechanisms. The prohibition does not bar mere association with paramilitary groups; instead, it holds individuals liable if they engage in certain types of conduct while armed and while acting as part of a private paramilitary organization, which is narrowly defined as a group that is organized in a military-style command structure for the purpose of engaging publicly in pseudo-military or law enforcement-style operations. The categories of prohibited conduct address dangerous conduct engaged in by private paramilitaries:
(1) publicly patrolling, drilling, or engaging in deadly paramilitary techniques; (2) interfering with or interrupting government proceedings; (3) interfering with the exercise of someone else’s constitutional rights; (4) falsely assuming the functions of law enforcement and asserting authority over others; and (5) training to engage in such behavior.
The legislation creates different tiers of criminal penalties based on whether violations result in injury or property damage; provides harsher penalties for repeat offenders; and allows for a probationary sentence for first-time offenders. Importantly, it also creates civil remedies by authorizing the Department of Justice to seek injunctive relief against paramilitary activity and by creating a private right of action for individuals harmed by paramilitary activity to seek injunctive relief and/or damages. The legislation also contains clear exceptions for activities such as historic reenactments, state-sanctioned trainings, and veterans’ parades.
Penalties for violating the act ramp up from a year of probation for violators with no prior convictions to fines and 5 years for violations involving bodily injury and fines and life imprisonment for violations involving death.
There’s more: they could forfeit their private aresnals under Section 413 of the Controlled Substances Act:
But wait! There’s even more. Members could face civil penalties:
Any person injured as a result of any violation of section 2742 may bring a civil action, individually or jointly with other aggrieved persons, in an appropriate district court of the United States for preventive relief, including an application for a permanent or temporary injunction, restraining order, or other order, or for damages incurred as a result of any violation of section 2742, including reasonable attorney fees and costs.
One weakness is that for any of Items 1-5 (above) to be a violation, actions have to be taken “while acting as part of or on behalf of a private paramilitary organization and armed with a firearm, explosive or incendiary device, or other dangerous weapon.” In the Jan. 6 insurrection photo at the top, no one is openly displaying weapons as militiamen did in 2020 when they occupied the Michigan state capitol to protest COVID closures. But at least it could deter a repeat of events like that.
In 2022, a federal judge “ordered armed members of a group monitoring ballot drop boxes in Arizona to stay at least 250 feet away from the locations following complaints that people wearing masks and carrying guns were intimidating voters.” Pass the Preventing Private Paramilitary Activity Act and it might not get that far. Unless the U.S. Supreme Court sides with the domestic terrorists and their inevitable freedom challenges.
“If enacted, the PPPA will provide tools necessary to deter and prevent paramilitary efforts to undercut our democratic processes and the free exercise of constitutional rights,” said Mary McCord, Executive Director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at the Georgetown University Law Center.
For militia types who might wear a couple years in jail as a badge of honor, threatening jail may not be as effective as threatening to confiscate their toys.
I usually do animals but I thought this was pretty heartwarming for a cold January night:
JV Last at the Bulwark featured this. It’s about a minor league hockey team, the Hershey Bears, which has a fundraising event in which locals bring stuffed animals for donation. When the team scores its first goal they throw them on to the ice.
Last wrote:
This year, Hershey fans donated almost 74,599 stuffies during the game and you have to see the video to believe it. The rain comes slowly at first and then it picks up. But then it just keeps going, a flood-tide of plush.
Watch and bask in the warmth of people being good.
I thought I had heard it all but I’d never heard this before today. It’s from 2015:
As JV Last pointed out in the Bulwark a couple of days ago, this is what Trump means when he says he “negotiates.”
Trump simply demands what he wants, over and over, in different venues, and offers nothing in return except that if you give him what he wants, he’ll let you have peace. For a time.
It’s the tactic of a spoiled child. Which is what he is. And he has another spoiled bully-boy tactic that works for him very well: “I know you are but what am I.” It’s a maddening form of gas lighting that he’s deployed forever but uses pretty adroitly in his political life, mainly because the media just throws up its hands and retreats to “both sides” coverage because it’s easier.
But here’s Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan in the NY Times today actually talking about this tactic:
[A]dvisers say he believes the court appearances dramatize what is fast becoming a central theme of his campaign: that President Biden — who is describing the likely Republican nominee as a peril to the country — is the true threat to American democracy.
Mr. Trump’s claim is the most outlandish and baseless version of a tactic he has used throughout his life in business and politics. Whenever he is accused of something — no matter what that something is — he responds by accusing his opponent of that exact thing. The idea is less to argue that Mr. Trump is clean than to suggest that everyone else is dirty.
It is an impulse more than a strategy. But in Mr. Trump’s campaigns, that impulse has sometimes aligned with his political interests. By this way of thinking, the more cynical voters become, the more likely they are to throw their hands in the air, declare, “They’re all the same” and start comparing the two candidates on issues the campaign sees as favorable to Mr. Trump, like the economy and immigration.
His flattening moral relativism has undergirded his approach to nearly every facet of American public life, including democracy.
[…]
Now, Mr. Trump is repurposing his favored tool to neutralize what many see as his worst offense in public life and greatest political vulnerability in the 2024 campaign: his efforts, after he lost the 2020 election, to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power and remain in office.
Now he’s doing “I know you are but what am I” on Biden:
And his campaign apparatus has kicked into gear along with him, as he baselessly claims Mr. Biden is stage-managing the investigations and legal action against him. Mr. Trump’s advisers have coined a slogan: “Biden Against Democracy.” The acronym: BAD.
Steve Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former chief strategist, said he thought his onetime client was on to something. Mr. Trump is now fighting Mr. Biden over an issue that many Republican consultants and elected officials had hoped he would avoid. They had good reason, given that candidates promoting election denial and conspiracy theories about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol cost their party winnable races in the 2022 midterm elections.
Mr. Bannon sees it differently.
“If you can fight Biden almost to a draw on this, which I think you can, it’s over,” Mr. Bannon said in an interview, referring to the imperiling of American democracy. “He’s got nothing else he can pitch. This is his main thing.”
Mr. Bannon added, “If Biden wants to fight there, about democracy and all this kind of ephemeral stuff, Trump will go there in a second.”
It does make some MAGA sense in that Trump has been saying the electoral system is rigged since 2016, even after he won. That’s just taken as a given by Republicans. In fact, “voter fraud” has been a rallying cry for decades, long before Trump came along. Just last night Nikki Haley fatuously proclaimed that all ballots should be counted and the election decided onj election night, which is one of the stupidest ideas Trump has ever had.
So now, he’s saying that it’s Biden who’s attacking democracy. But he’s emphasizing the alleged “weaponization” of the Justice Department against him, which is not something that most Americans are buying into. Unfortunately, the “democracy” thing has worked to some extent, at least up until now:
Voter attitudes related to Mr. Biden have shifted as Mr. Trump has tried to suggest that efforts to hold Mr. Trump accountable for his actions are a threat to democracy. In an October 2022 New York Times/Siena College poll, among voters who said democracy was under threat, 45 percent saw Mr. Trump as a major threat to democracy, compared with 38 percent who said the same about Mr. Biden. The gap was even wider among independent voters, who were 14 percentage points more likely to see Mr. Trump as such a threat.
But Mr. Trump’s rhetoric seems to have already altered public opinion, even before the campaign deployed his new slogan. In another more recent survey, 57 percent of Americans said Mr. Trump’s re-election would pose a threat to democracy, and 53 percent said the same of Mr. Biden, according to an August 2023 poll by the Public Religion Research Institute. Among independent voters, nearly identical shares thought either candidate would be a threat to democracy.
The repetition that Mr. Trump has used consistently in his public speeches is a core part of his approach.
“If people think he’s inconsistent on message, he ain’t inconsistent on this message,” Mr. Bannon said of Mr. Trump’s effort to brand Mr. Biden as the real threat to democracy. “Go back and just look at how he pounds it. Wash, rinse, repeat. Wash, rinse, repeat. It’s very powerful.”
Obama adviser David Axelrod told the Times that once the people see Trump in and out of courtrooms facing justice for his crimes, people will feel differently. I hope he’s right. I will say that unless the mainstream media stops this high minded refusal to allow their audience to see how nuts he is, I’m not sure anyone will really understand the depth of his depravity.
Lieberman, chair of No Labels, brushed off previous comments from Christie denouncing the group’s push for a bipartisan third-party ticket.
“Look, earlier in the year when he was asked about No Labels, he basically said it was not an effort that had any chance of succeeding, but maybe the world will look different to him now,” Lieberman said in a SiriusXM interview with Michael Smerconish. “And I’d like to reach out to him and see if he, Gov. Christie, is at all interested in being on a bipartisan No Labels Unity ticket this year. He could be a very strong candidate.”
Lieberman said Christie “might well be” No Labels “material,” referring to the anti-Trump former governor as “refreshingly independent.”
“That’s the kind of candidate No Labels is looking for,” he said.
When asked about No Labels in July, Christie called its effort “a fool’ s errand.”
“I’m not in this for showtime. I’m not in this for making a point,” he said. “I’m in this to get elected President of the United States, and there are only two people who will get elected President of the United States: the Republican nominee for president and the Democratic nominee for president.”
Christie is an egomaniac so I won’t be surprised if he goes back on his word and joins up. There are plenty of reports that he’s been talking to them. He is, after all, a Republican. And he is without a home and has no political future so maybe he can sabotage the country. It’s one way to stay relevant I guess.
It appears that they’re going ahead with this outrageous nonsense. Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan quit the board, apparently so that he could be put on the ticket. Why so many people feel that this is the moment to make a political point even if it results in Trump winning, I will never understand. Why now?
Lisa Rubin wrote this thread about Trump’s final word this morning:
Chris Kise asks for permission to have Trump speak. Engoron, “Do you promise to just comment on the facts and the law?” Trump starts talking immediately without agreeing.
“This was a political witch hunt; we should receive damages for what they have taken our company through. They have no documents—they have nothing!” The only thing they have, Trump concedes, is the triplex, which was a mistake.
“I am not sure the dollar amount would have been that far off, if you want to know!” But Trump continues, “I am an innocent man. I have been politically persecuted. . . . This statute is vicious.”
“What has happened here is a fraud on ME. . . . The amount of taxes I have paid over this period is close to $300 million. They don’t want me here anymore. I have a problem; they want to make sure I don’t run again.”
Trump goes on — without any interruption from Engoron or her team — and attacks James, accusing her of election interference. “You have your own agenda,” Trump angrily says to Engoron. “You can’t listen for more than one minute!”
Engoron pleads with Kise, “Mr. Kise, please control your client.” Trump nonetheless accuses James of going after him for her political gain, including an allegedly “failed” run for Governor, at which point Engoron shuts it down.
But it’s too late. Everything Trump wanted to say was said. And now, having said it, he has left the courtroom after insisting James should pay him for the havoc she’s wreaked on his company.
He does what he wants. The man is a total degenerate who has been convinced by his lifetime of flagrantly flouting the law that there are no limits on his behavior. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if he actually shot someone on 5th Avenue at this point.
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