TPM Reader NB responds to my post on Trump coverage …
I have to say, this piece made me uncharacteristically angry, and I’m still trying to put my finger on precisely why—especially since I agree with you about the basic remedy. Yes, the media’s job is neither to hide behind endless euphemism or analysis-as-apologia, nor to engage in deplatforming, but first and foremost to inform. Leave the excuse-making to partisans or to the audience’s own shocked internal But Surely!’s.
In a devastating setback to Donald Trump’s business “empire,” a state judge in New York has ruled that Trump, his two adult sons, and many of his companies engaged in persistent, long-term fraudulent business practices and set in motion the unwinding and dissolution of some of Trump’s core business interests.
While the ruling in the civil case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James was a huge win for her and a colossal reversal for Trump, it is not the end of the story. It may only be a midpoint. There remain other unresolved issues in the case, which is set for trial next week, and it could linger on appeal for years. I would caution against expecting to see a fire sale of Trump properties any time soon.
Still, the judge agreed with the attorney general that Trump spent years wildly inflating the value of his properties, and he did so in a tone that was dismissive, sarcastic, and derisive. He called Trump’s various legal arguments “pure sophistry,” “erroneous,” “rehashed,” “untenable,” “patently false,” “fatally flawed,” “simply untrue,” “completely irrelevant,” “egregious,” “indefensible,” and “borderline frivolous.”
The most telling passage from the ruling:
The judge sanctioned four of Trump’s attorneys, including Christopher Kise, $7,500 apiece for “engaging in repetitive, frivolous motion practice.” Kise called the ruling “outrageous.”
Perhaps most significantly though, the judge ordered the cancellation of business certificates for some Trump entities, which would render them unable to do business in the state, and will name an independent receiver to manage the dissolution of the Trump entities.
More On Trump’s Big Fraud
If you detect a hint of caution in my approach to the ruling, it’s because it’s not immediately clear how this will play out or what the immediate ramifications are. A sampling of some of the coverage:
WSJ: “The cancellation of the business certificates also was a centerpiece request in the attorney general’s case, a remedy that could cripple the Trump Organization’s ability to operate in New York.”
WaPo: “The decision orders the parties to suggest candidates for receivers who will oversee the dissolution of the various entities that make up the Trump Organization’s corporate structure — a ruling that appears to mean the collapse of its operations in New York.”
NYT: “The order will not dissolve Mr. Trump’s company itself, which is a collection of hundreds of entities, but the decision could nonetheless have a sweeping impact on the company’s New York operations. If Justice Engoron’s decision is not reversed by an appeals court, it could shut down an entity that employs hundreds of people working for him in New York, effectively crushing the company.”
AP: “Engoron’s ruling, days before the start of a non-jury trial in James’ lawsuit, is the strongest repudiation yet of Trump’s carefully coiffed image as a wealthy and shrewd real estate mogul turned political powerhouse.”
NYT: “By effectively branding him a cheat, the decision in the civil proceeding by Justice Arthur F. Engoron undermined Mr. Trump’s relentlessly promoted narrative of himself as a master of the business world, the persona that he used to enmesh himself in the fabric of popular culture and that eventually gave him the stature and resources to reach the White House.”
Fani Willis Faces Threats
While prosecuting several high profile cases, including Trump’s RICO case, Atlanta District Attorney Fani Willis says she and her family have received threats and been doxxed:
Willis said she, her daughters, her father and even her ex-husband had have their private information posted online. Some of those posts included racial slurs while others suggested violence.
SCOOP!
TPM’s Kate Riga was the first to report that this week’s craven ruling from the Fifth Circuit in the Biden social media case was actually a “clerical error,” leading to a unusual withdrawal of its order and a flurry of new orders trying to clean up the mess, all of which bounced up to the attention of the Supreme Court because it is currently considering a stay in the case.
Disaster Averted In Alabama Case
Voting rights advocates and court watchers were on pins and needles to see if the Supreme Court would let Alabama get away with ignoring the court’s ruling against it earlier this year and trying to ram through a redistricting map that discriminates against Black voters. The court held firm.
The National Security Angle To The Menendez Case
CERNOBBIO, ITALY – SEPTEMBER 01: Robert “Bob” Menendez Senator for the state of New Jersey and his wife Nadine Mendez attend the 49th Edition Of ‘Cernobbio Forum’ Hosted By The European House-Ambrosetti on September 01, 2023 in Cernobbio, Italy. (Photo by Pier Marco Tacca/Getty Images)
I love a good old-fashioned public corruption case, but the latest prosecution of Bob Menendez just doesn’t quite fit into that bucket. It’s a foreign influence and counterintelligence case at heart, which is an important contributing factor in Democratic senators abandoning him en masse:
The FBI is running a parallel counterintelligence investigation into the Menendez matter, NBC News reported. A reminder that counterintel investigations, even effective ones, are often defensive in nature and don’t necessarily yield criminal charges.
GOP Shutdown Watch
The Senate on a bipartisan basis is preparing to put the squeeze on House Speaker Kevin McCarthy by passing a stopgap funding bill to keep the government open, but there’s no real indication it will work. All signs point to a government shutdown this weekend, and one that could potentially last quite a while.
Trump Is Not The GOP’s Only Problem
Why did @SenTuberville vote against the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs?
“I heard some things he talked about, about race and things that he wanted to mix into the military," he told @BloombergTV. "Our military is not an equal opportunity employer." pic.twitter.com/avFStO79Af
The second GOP presidential debate – sans Trump – is tonight on the hallowed ground of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California.
This may be the last debate for some of the GOP also-rans in primary race unlike almost any other given Trump’s dominating position and the party’s lurch toward radicalism.
AP: Qatar Airways executive says invasive gynecological examinations of passengers won’t be repeated
Tour De Trump*
I know many of you like to visit New York City during the holiday season and in case you make it to lower Manhattan this year I made this map I hope you will find helpful pic.twitter.com/xootKkTOBv
It’s rare for Donald Trump to follow anyone’s lead but his own, especially the lead of his only half-serious contender Ron DeSantis, but the former president has jumped on the shutdown bandwagon, perhaps convinced of its effectiveness as a campaign strategy.
In today’s Morning Memo, David notes that Donald Trump’s latest ravings have been so extreme as to manage to break through, at least partly, the wall of mainstream media indifference. Trump pledges to take Comcast (owner of MSNBC) off the air for “treason” if he’s returned to office and suggests that retiring Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley should be executed. Milley, who retires at the end of the month, gave a lengthy (and, for Trump, unflattering) interview to Atlantic Monthly editor Jeff Goldberg. So that’s what Milley’s execution is about. This is the moment we live in in the history of the American republic, a man who talks like a character out of a dystopian novel about the end of America is the choice of about half of Americans to be the next President.
The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals this morning abruptly withdrew Monday’s order giving red states a chance for an even bigger win in a case that has blocked much of the Biden administration from flagging misinformation on social media sites.
The 5th Circuit’s Clerk of Court told TPM that the original order was a “clerical error.”
In last night’s piece, I noted that while Bob Menendez’s D.C. dam was mostly holding, the story was dramatically different in New Jersey where virtually everyone in the state party establishment had already called on him to resign. Just in the last couple hours the D.C. dam appears to be giving way. Sens. Warren and Rosen and, most importantly, his New Jersey colleague Cory Booker have now each called on Menendez to step down. I’d be surprised if half his senate colleagues hadn’t followed suit by the end of the day.
Democratic New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker joined a growing list of his Senate colleagues in calling on Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) to resign from office after he was indicted on federal bribery and corruption charges last week.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected Alabama’s stay request, the first sign that it will not be blithely compliant with state officials’ attempts to undo the high Court’s June ruling knocking down its maps.
Amid the gold bars, Mercedez-Benz, and meat-related allegations, it’s easy to miss a central charge in the indictment of Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ): it’s about foreign influence.
In the same way that the United States is not immune from the ravages of political violence, it has no special ability to put the toothpaste of political violence back in the tube once it’s unleashed.
Make no mistake: It has been unleashed.
“Trump’s real, enduring legacy is his successful introduction of violence, the threat of violence, and targeted harassment into the dynamics of our political system, as if they were all just a natural extension of democratic disagreement,” Juliette Kayyem rightly observed in The Atlantic this summer.
The past few days have reinforced how unhinged Trump has continued to become and how political violence is the core of his message and for many his central appeal. Since Friday, Trump has:
Threatened retaliation against one of the country’s largest media companies for “Country Threatening Treason“;
Urged Republicans in Congress to shut down the government, as “the last chance to defund these political prosecutions against me and other Patriots,” and later ominously said: “It’s time Republicans learned how to fight!” against “the Radical Left Marxists, Fascists and Thugs – THE DEMOCRATS.”
The Trump of today is not the same as the Trump of 2019 or even the Trump of Jan. 6. He is cornered, under indictment, facing the deprivation of his liberty if convicted – and winning the presidency is his only way out. He will stop at nothing, do anything, and tear down everything to protect himself.
I don’t usually find myself pointing you to Nick Catoggio, but he had a thoughtful post on these developments:
Strive to resist numbness. Because despite all the blather about Biden and Trump being the two most known “known quantities” in politics, we actually don’t know how dangerous and destabilizing Trump might prove to be as his mind bends under the strain of an election and four indictments. Or whether it’ll break entirely once he’s back in power and surrounded by the most obsequious fascist toadies he can find.
Esper Shreds Trump’s False Attack On Milley
Esper: The accusation that Milley called the Chinese on his own is simply wrong. I reached out to my Chinese counterpart in mid October 2020… I directed Milley to reach out to his counterpart… pic.twitter.com/PcCMYgzMhT
After weeks of delay, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has finally scheduled a Garcia hearing in the Mar-a-Lago case to address the conflicts of interest of defense counsel. But she did so in a way that renews concerns about her experience, competence, and diligence:
Cannon set the hearing for Oct. 12, meaning an additional delay of 2 1/2 weeks plus whatever time she needs after that to issue a ruling. Not having the witnesses or standby counsel present at the hearing risks further delays if she later decides she does need their participation.
Cannon denied Special Counsel Jack Smith’s request for the witnesses who have conflicted counsel to appear for the hearing.
Cannon denied Special Counsel Jack Smith’s request to have standby counsel available for defendants with conflicted counsel to confer.
Big picture is these are routine matters that are usually handled expeditiously, and they’re not here. More granularly, Cannon seems grudging and resistant to even routine moves by the special counsel’s team. (For a deeper dive, read Joyce Vance.)
In this instance, the prosecutor is trying to protect his case and the court’s resources from an attack on the verdict later by one of the defendants on the grounds that they had insufficient legal representation under the Sixth Amendment, so how she handles it is important even if it is, or should be, routine.
Trump Lawyers Are Legal Filings
Donald Trump responded formally to Special Counsel Jack Smith’s request for a limited gag order on him in the Jan. 6 case, and it’s remarkable to watch his attorneys using legal filings to launder Trump’s attacks on the Biden administration, the Justice Department, prosecutors, and others. These aren’t legal arguments; they’re political invective.
The new filing:
indulges Trump by referring to him as “President”;
accuses the “Biden administration” of charging Trump, instead of the Justice Department;
adopts and advocates for Trump’s bogus contention that the charges are a political vendetta against him by Biden himself and that the gag order is merely a way of muzzling Biden’s chief opponent in the midst of the election.
Lawyers owe Trump a vigorous defense. They don’t owe him participating in his misinformation campaign, delegitimizing the court, or propounding wild-ass conspiracy theories.
A Closer Look At Judge Tanya Chutkan
Politico’s Kyle Cheney sat in on the first Jan. 6 trial that U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan has presided over since she was assigned the Trump case in DC.
Hunter Biden Sues Rudy Giuliani
Hunter Biden has filed a lawsuit in federal court in Los Angeles today against Rudy Giuliani, former Giuliani attorney Robert Costello, and various Giuliani companies over the alleged hacking of his electronic devices. Biden alleges that they violated the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the California Computer Data Access and Fraud Act, and state law prohibiting unfair and unlawful business activities. (I should note that Costello is currently suing Giuliani for more more than $1 million in unpaid attorney fees.)
Menendez Refuses To Resign
Under indictment a second time for public corruption, but this time with a national security twist to the charges, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) held a press conference in which he rebuffed calls for his resignation and boldly declared that the $480,000 in cash found in his home was his emergency fund. At least one fellow Democratic senator was bemused:
