Rudy G Tries Dodging $148M Defamation Judgment With Bankruptcy

Posted on by David Kurtz

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

‘No Pot Of Gold At The End Of The Rainbow’

With fewer than $10 million in assets and more than $150 million in liabilities, Rudy Giuliani is in a world of hurt. He was a prime candidate for bankruptcy, but the fight is just beginning over what effect the bankruptcy will have, especially on his single biggest liability: the $148 million defamation judgment won against him by Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss.

In a series of developments last week, Freeman and Moss tried to get the bankruptcy court to limit Giuliani’s ability to fight the judgment. Giuliani wants the bankruptcy stay (which freezes the debtor’s affairs in place) lifted so that he can continue to challenge their judgment in court. Not fair, argued Freeman and Moss. Lifting the stay as to Giuliani would let him use the Chapter 11 filing as a sword to defeat their claim while hiding behind the shield it provides to prevent them from collecting on their judgment against him.

Giuliani’s creditors attended the first court hearing in the bankruptcy case Friday, where the judge mostly granted Giuliani’s request to continue to fight the defamation judgment:

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Sean Lane on Friday agreed to Giuliani’s request to seek a new trial or to ask that the damages be reduced. Lane, however, stopped short of granting Giuliani permission to seek a full appeal. Lane stressed that the district court should have much discretion in deciding how to handle or whether to grant the request.

The key question right now is how the trial judge will exercise that discretion. It’s a complicated interplay of bankruptcy law and federal civil procedure, which I won’t bore you with and which doesn’t really speak to the larger issues around the 2020 election interference or the attack on the rule of law.

As for Giuliani’s ability to ever pay even a fraction of the judgment, his lawyer says his income at present comes from radio and podcast hosting, with his law license suspended, and he has no significant assets. “There’s no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow,” Giuliani’s attorney told the bankruptcy court.

No Smoking Gun In Georgia Prosecutor’s Divorce File

Two developments in sideshow to the Georgia RICO case:

  • The judge overseeing the divorce case of special prosecutor Nathan Wade paused the deposition of Atlanta District Attorney Fani Willis sought by Wade’s wife.
  • The judge also unsealed the divorce case, but there was nothing in the record that substantiated the claims by a Trump co-defendant in the RICO case that Wade and Willis were/are engaged in a romantic relationship.

I’m struggling to make myself care about this side angle to the RICO case, but until we get an official response from Willis in a court filing and the evidentiary hearing is held next month in front of the judge in the RICO case, we’re stuck having to deal with this.

MAGA World Flips Out Over E. Jean Carroll Trial Delay

COVID forced the postponement of the E. Jean Carroll defamation trial against Donald Trump yesterday, and even though Trump’s own lawyer requested the delay, his supporters widely freaked out over alleged “election interference” because it meant the trial would resume on the day of the New Hampshire primary. By the end of the day, however, the judge punctured that balloon by delaying the trial until tomorrow.

The 2024 GOP Presidential Primary May End Today

The campaign wrapped up in fitting fashion:

  • Fake Joe Biden robocall tells New Hampshire Democrats not to vote today.
  • Nikki Haley won all six votes in Dixville Notch.
  • Trump closed his New Hampshire campaign sounding a lot like his own lawyers.

Polls close at 8 p.m. ET. Join the TPM team for live coverage.

[Sponsored] An Inside Story Of The Democratic Party At A Moment Of Great Peril

The Truce, from journalists Hunter Walker (of Talking Points Memo) and Luppe B. Luppen, explores the major fault lines that define Democratic politics today and asks big questions about the future of the party. An engrossing page-turner, The Truce grapples with the dangers that threaten American democracy and the complicated cast of characters who are trying to save it.

Buy the book

2024 Ephemera

  • Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff, Katie Porter and Barbara Lee, and Republican former baseball star Steve Garvey faced off in a California Senate debate last night. Porter has the night’s best line.
  • Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes is frustrated with the Biden DOJ for failing to respond to a wave of threats against election workers and officials with sufficient urgency.
  • Politico: “A whole swath of GOP voters appears firmly committed to not voting for Trump in November.”

SCOTUS Sides With Feds On Abbott Border Stunt

By a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court lifted a lower court injunction that was preventing the federal government from removing barbed wire from the Rio Grande, placed there by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), who is on a jihad to politicize the border by asserting state control over it.

Alternate headline: Four Justices Refuse To Recognize Federal Control Of The Border!

Good Read

Steve Vladeck has lots of smart things to say about Chevron, democratic accountability, and the unitary executive.

Congrats To TPM’s Hunter Walker

Today is the release date for The Truce: Progressives, Centrists and the Future of the Democratic Party by Hunter Walker and Luppe B. Luppen. To give you a taste, we’ve published a couple of pieces recently drawn from or related to the book:

Ziegler Cleared Of Rape Charge

Ousted Florida GOP Chair Christian Ziegler won’t face rape charges after police concluded that the sexual encounter with a woman Ziegler and his wife previously had engaged in a ménage à trois was “likely consensual.” But police are recommending Ziegler be charged with felony video voyeurism for recording the encounter without the woman’s knowledge or consent.

What Are We Doing Here?

This week, Alabama is planning to conduct the first U.S. execution using nitrogen hypoxia, on convicted murderer Kenneth Smith, who survived an earlier attempted execution by lethal injection.

High-Level Diplomacy

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Biden Admin Pokes At Upcoming Supreme Court Abortion Fight On Roe Anniversary 

Posted on by Kate Riga

As it does occasionally, especially on significant days, the Biden administration released a slate of measures it’s taking to protect abortion rights on Monday, the 51st anniversary of Roe v. Wade. 

Continue reading “Biden Admin Pokes At Upcoming Supreme Court Abortion Fight On Roe Anniversary “ →

SCOTUS Allows Feds To Remove Wire Along Border, Deferring Showdown With Texas

Posted on by Josh Kovensky

The Supreme Court allowed the Biden administration to cut concertina wire blocking federal agents from accessing parts of the U.S.-Mexico border, overruling an appeals court decision which sided with Texas state authorities in blocking federal access.

Continue reading “SCOTUS Allows Feds To Remove Wire Along Border, Deferring Showdown With Texas” →

The Fall of the House of Dead Bounce Ron

Posted on by Josh Marshall

I wrote a few days ago that Ron DeSantis’s long campaign collapse was likely the most ignominious and vertiginous in the presidential primary era, which dates in stages from the 1960s and early 1970s. Some skeptics pointed to Jeb! in 2016 or Rudy Giuliani in 2008. But on a closer inspection neither flameout measures up to Ron’s. As evidenced by his legendary “Please clap” mix of exhortation and lament, Jeb! had an uncanny degree of self-awareness about the impending collapse of his succession plans that would cheat him of the prize. Giuliani had the political press in his hands. But his attempt to corner the 9/11 market was never enough to overcome his heterodoxy on issues like gay rights or serial-philandering in an earlier version of the Republican Party where those things mattered. His strategy of sitting out the early primaries and waiting until Florida, while a nice foreshadowing of Florida’s future as the home of Trumpism, was always correctly identified as a way to post-date the end of his campaign. Even the 9/11 brand was too long in the tooth by 2007. Joe Biden was able to make him a punch line with his famous one-liner.

The truth though is that DeSantis never had a chance. His humiliation was preordained and basically certain. Professional Republicans were at least a bit soured on Trump after the 2022 election, which seemed to make clear what 2018 and 2020 had strongly suggested: that Trump is an electoral loser. For professional Republicans there’s a bit more to it though. They’re completely down with Trump and Trumpism, as the last seven years have shown clearly enough. But they’re always going to have an eye out to move on. Part of what it means to be a political professional is to have a wandering eye for the new political horse, the new candidate, the new rising star, which is the usual path to professional advancement. More generously, it’s why you get into political work in the first place.

A Republican Party ruled by Donald Trump is one in which true advancement and greatness is always stymied and, to the extent it exists, always subject to his whims.

Continue reading “The Fall of the House of Dead Bounce Ron” →

Trump Isn’t Just Winning The GOP Primary. He’s Consolidating Absolute Power

Posted on by David Kurtz

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

Trump Clears The GOP Field

With Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) bowing out and endorsing Donald Trump, the 45th president has all but cleared the GOP field before the first-in-the-nation New Hampshire primary is even held.

The only other candidate still standing, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R), couldn’t even win the endorsement of home state Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) and her only shot of surviving much past tomorrow is the unlikeliest of outcomes: an outright win in New Hampshire.

After tomorrow comes South Carolina, where Haley trails Trump badly in the polls and where a loss would be so damaging to her political reputation that it might be worth avoiding altogether by dropping out first.

The tired tropes of campaign reporting had already become stale and dated before this cycle, but they’re utterly useless in capturing what is really happening here. Trump is consolidating power within the Republican Party in a way that is unparalleled in U.S. political history.

Trump has the kind of firm grip on the party’s base voters that typically instills respect, even fear, in other elected officials. I would argue it’s to a greater degree than usual, but we can plausibly argue that this dynamic is somewhat familiar, if not normal.

What isn’t normal is the way in which he uses his political popularity to threaten reprisals against his foes inside the party. This didn’t really happen to the same degree in the 2016 cycle because he hadn’t fully consolidated his power until after his surprise win, and in the 2020 cycle, there was no real GOP opposition (with a few notable exceptions) to the re-election of its incumbent president so this dynamic didn’t manifest itself as glaringly as it does now.

But it’s more than defeating Republican elected who opposed him by, for example, voting to impeach him. Through a combination of personal threats, promises to abuse the powers of his office if re-elected, and using his rhetoric to unleash elements of the unhinged MAGA mob, Trump isn’t just flexing his popularity, but using it to intimidate, cow, and eliminate internal GOP opposition.

The indignities visited upon his foes, their willingness to endorse him after he attacks their families, the reluctance to attack him directly are all manifestations of Republican office-seekers operating under not just political but personal threat, not just jeopardizing one’s political career but one’s personal safety and the well-being of loved ones.

Two small anecdotes from last week that capture the Trump dynamic. Rep. Bob Good (R-VA) represents a deeply conservative southwest Virginia district. Trump country through and through. But Good has been a DeSantis supporter, and as Josh Marshall noted, that prompted this screed from Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita, “Bob Good won’t be electable when we get done with him.” This was true even though Good promised to endorse Trump if and when DeSantis lost. (Good was true to word, hastily issuing his Trump endorsement minutes after DeSantis dropped out yesterday.)

Contrast the Good treatment, with this anecdote from the alternate universe of normal American politics. When former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) ended his long-shot, never-had-a-chance presidential campaign last week, the Democratic National Committee sent out a snarky statement about it. It was a little tone deaf and needlessly brutal, but it wasn’t that big of a deal. Still, the Biden White House kicked into overdrive to denounce the DNC over the lack of graciousness, going so far as to have chief of staff Jeff Zients call and personally apologize to Hutchinson.

The contrast between the politics of Trump and Biden is not new news! But the contrast in this instance is striking and highlights yet again that what Trump offers to so many of his supporters is the thrill of threatened violence, the frisson of wiping away one’s opponents, the chance for vicarious transgressiveness. It’s a dangerous cocktail of swagger and situational violence.

It’s understandable to take some pleasure in watching Trump destroy the Republican Party. But don’t lose sight of the fact that he wants to do to America what he’s doing to the GOP.

One Last Awkward Smile For The Road

The fact that Ron DeSantis used a fake Churchill quote as he bowed out is just gravy:

The Headlines, Y’all

Miami Herald: “DeSantis Backs Down”

NYT: “Implosion Complete, DeSantis Falls in Line Behind Trump”

Michelle Cottle: “Ron DeSantis Made Smiling Look Hard”

Proud Moment

I thought TPM had cornered the market of the use of the word “feral,” so imagine my surprise, delight, and slight defensiveness when I see this Politico headline: “Trump’s feral close to the New Hampshire primary.”

2024 Ephemera

  • WaPo/Monmouth poll of New Hampshire GOP primary (conducted before Ron DeSantis suspended his campaign): Trump, 52%; Haley, 34%; DeSantis, 8%.
  • NYT: Trump Says He Will Retire ‘DeSanctimonious’ After DeSantis Endorses Him
  • Under federal court order to do so, the Louisiana Legislature has redrawn its congressional district map with a second majority-Black district, giving Democrats a likely pickup opportunity.

Carroll Is Still Whacking Trump Like A Piñata

The second trial of E. Jean Carroll’s defamation claims continues today, with the specter of whether Trump himself will testify looming over the proceedings (I’d be quite surprised if he did). But more importantly, Carroll told the judge over the weekend that she will be introducing new evidence of Trump continuing to defame her while the trial is underway.

Trump Miscellany

  • Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows is appealing the court ruling that postponed any decision on whether Donald Trump can be removed from the ballot under the Disqualification Clause until after the Supreme Court rules in the Colorado case.
  • Bank records filed in the divorce case of Georgia special prosecutor Nathan Wade show he paid for trips with Atlanta District Attorney Fani Willis to San Francisco, Miami and Aruba.
  • The DC Circuit Court of Appeals still hasn’t yet issued its ruling in Trump’s presidential immunity case. Look for that decision to be issued at any time. Meanwhile, the clock keeps ticking on the trial date for Trump’s Jan. 6 trial, and Trump keeps suggesting darkly what he will do with immunity in a second presidency:

The Cynicism Runs Deeper Than The Rio Grande

As Ukraine and Israel aid, cobbled together with tough-on-immigrant border proposals, take center stage this week on the Hill, a good reminder from Obama White House aide Dan Pfeiffer:

Some commentary suggests that Johnson keeps moving the goalpost to prevent his caucus from having to vote on Ukraine aid, which is vehemently opposed by MAGA Republicans but enthusiastically supported by the Republican establishment and more moderate GOPers. With Johnson in perpetual danger of being McCarthy-ed, I am sure avoiding a tough vote is a factor. However, I think Johnson and the Republicans have another more nefarious reason — they want a crisis at the border to help them in the election.

Mike Johnson Is On The Clock

Politico: “A growing number of House Republicans are increasingly frustrated with Johnson’s leadership and whispering about whether he can hang on to his role after 2024 — if he even makes it that far.”

Is Dobbs Today’s Version Of The Kansas-Nebraska Act?

On the anniversary of Roe, Heather Cox Richardson on how opposition to abortion became a mainstay of the Republican Party platform (ed. note: back when it had a platform).

‘It’s Nice To Have a Strongman Running Your Country’

Good Lord, what more warning signs do you need:

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The Inside Story Of Barack Obama’s 2024 Campaign Calculations

Posted on by Hunter Walker

Barack Obama is worried about America in 2024. 

This is an “all hands on deck moment,” a source close to former President Obama told TPM, describing his thinking. “He’s going to do everything he can to help Democrats win up and down the ballot. And obviously no race is more consequential than President Biden’s reelection.”

Continue reading “The Inside Story Of Barack Obama’s 2024 Campaign Calculations” →

Why Did Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 Have A Sealed-Off Emergency Exit In The First Place? The Answer Comes Down To Money

Posted on by John Light

This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.

The aviation industry is still in shock from a near disaster on Jan. 5, 2024, in which a 60-pound “door plug” blew out from a nearly new Boeing 737 MAX 9 in flight at 16,000 feet, leaving a gaping hole in the fuselage.

Continue reading “Why Did Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 Have A Sealed-Off Emergency Exit In The First Place? The Answer Comes Down To Money” →

Pay Attention To This

Posted on by Josh Marshall

You’ve likely seen there’s now a dispute over what was said in President Biden’s and Prime Minister Netanyahu latest phone call. Unnamed senior administration officials say Netanyahu made clear he’s not necessarily opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state, despite having categorically ruled it out a day before. After those comments from the White House Netanyahu’s office put out a new statement insisting he said no such thing.

This is quite significant but not because of the specifics of what was said or potential support for a two-state solution. Opposition to a Palestinian state is the most consistent and defining element of Netanyahu’s career in politics going back four decades. Given what a schemer he is, though, I think it’s likely he did say some version of this in the call with Biden. But the real issue here is that saying this publicly is something the White House knew would immediately cause Netanyahu trouble with members of his coalition. He would have to respond and deny it. This is best seen as the White House signaling its done with Netanyahu or at least moving toward a more adversarial stance toward his government.

I’m not saying we’re in the process of some big dramatic break. But the consequences of doing this were and are obvious. So best seen in that context.

DeSantis Super PAC Is Breaking New Ground—And, Allegedly, Campaign Finance Law

Posted on by John Light

This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.

Never Back Down, the Ron DeSantis super PAC, played an outsized role in the Iowa caucuses campaign of the Florida governor. Its impact on the results, in which DeSantis came in second to former President Donald Trump, will likely remain an open question.

But one thing is sure: It mocked the already weak regulatory framework governing money in campaigns.

A PAC, or political action committee, is a group that is formed to support a candidate by raising and spending money on various activities; it is not supposed to coordinate with the candidate it supports, nor should it be controlled by that candidate.

Super PACs have been a force in caucus politics since 2012. That year featured the first nomination cycle after the U.S. Supreme Court in the Citizens United decision opened the floodgates for unregulated contributions and spending by outside groups. The only limits currently imposed are that super PACs can’t contribute directly to federal candidates’ campaign funds, and they can’t coordinate with campaigns. Since 2012, super PACs have spent freely on advertising, dominating broadcast airwaves in 2016 and 2020.

In the 2024 Iowa caucuses campaign, the DeSantis-backing super PAC staked out some new territory by largely funding the candidate’s ground game, recruiting and training organizers in Iowa and sending them out early to engage Iowa Republicans face-to-face.

But the new territory didn’t stop there. Never Back Down appeared to disregard that ban on coordination with the campaign. Super PACs and campaigns have developed methods to allow them to coordinate while preserving the image of independence. Yet, strangely, Never Back Down and the campaign seemed determined to make their coordination transparent.

The super PAC boldly posted online its memo laying out a proposed strategy for the candidate before the first GOP debate in August. The intent was never perfectly clear, but it succeeded in sending advice to the campaign.

Never Back Down appears to have helped pay for the candidate’s air travel, according to The Washington Post.

The super PAC has recruited donors to contribute directly to the campaign. It sponsored candidate events where it picked up the food tab for registered attendees. The candidate arrived on the bus with the can’t-miss “Never Back Down” slogan plastered on the side. And the super PAC touted that the candidate’s wife went door to door with Never Back Down canvassers.

In December 2023, the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan campaign finance watchdog group, filed a complaint to the Federal Election Commission, charging that the campaign and the super PAC engaged “in an illegal coordination scheme.” A DeSantis spokesman called the charges “baseless.”

This might not be the biggest story to come out of Iowa. But it sends a notable and disturbing message to federal candidates, Democratic and Republican: Don’t let the law stand in your way.

The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.