The special grand jury whose investigation served as the progenitor of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ later RICO indictments for 2020 election interference recommended charges against three Republican Senators – none of which were ultimately brought.
Continue reading “Special Grand Jury Recommended Charges Against Sens. Graham, Perdue, Loeffler”Peter Navarro’s Play For A Trump Pardon Shows How Broken Things Really Are
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Navarro Convicted Of Contempt Of Congress
In the movie version, Peter Navarro would be the nervous, talkative, disrespected schlump who the audience enjoys seeing getting his comeuppance. Think: Wayne Knight’s character in Jurassic Park. Donald Trump has swallowed Peter Navarro alive.
I’ve not seen a stupider white-collar criminal than Navarro. He refused to comply with the Jan. 6 committee’s subpoena. He couldn’t get Trump to assert executive privilege on his behalf. He went to trial with no defenses. He put on no witnesses. The jury deliberated for about four hours before convicting him on both counts of contempt of Congress. He’s due to be sentenced in January.
But I’m not here to dunk on Navarro. It’s too easy. It feels unkind. I can’t quite muster sympathy because he’s done it to himself. But there are larger forces at play here. Let’s talk about those.
Navarro is aiming for a double bank shot: 1) Trump wins election in 2024; and 2) Trump pardons him. It’s a risky bet, on both counts. In Trump we trust. Good luck with that.
Navarro is not alone. A host of Jan. 6 defendants, Trump sycophants and assorted hangers-on are banking on Trump winning and granting them pardons. It’s an “issue” in the GOP presidential primary insofar as candidates are preening over who would do the most to pardon Trump-era wrongdoers.
And so it sets up a presidential election that on top everything else places the pardon power front and center and puts at stake the liberty of a legion of insurrectionists, bad actors, and future threats to the Republic.
But in the meantime, it sets up an extraordinary dynamic in the criminal justice system, with defendants working the angles, not on the legal merits or to gain some procedural advantage, but to best position themselves for a pardon at some point down the road. It’s led to abject behavior by defendants at sentencing followed immediately by recantations in public (see the next item below).
You can understand the strained logic of hoping Trump will eventually rescue them with presidential pardons. He abused the hell out of pardons in his first term, including for his own self-protection, so the precedent is established. Roger Stone and Paul Manafort, please come forward.
But there’s not a precedent that I can recall for criminal courts to be a mere way station on the way to a presidential pardon or for judges to be props in a public spectacle to win the benevolence of a wannabe strongman seeking a return to power.
It’s another perhaps subtler way (but not that subtle!) in which Trump is a sustained attack on the rule of law. And there’s no obvious structural answer for what to do about it. The practical answer is make sure he doesn’t win in 2024.
One Big Con Job
We keep seeing it with the Jan. 6 defendants, especially the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers: Putting on a good show of crocodile tears for the judge at sentencing then turning right around and waving a defiant fist in public.
Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio is no exception:
The Day Ahead
Expect the public release of the special grand jury report that’s been kept under seal in Georgia.
Fani Willis Likes To Dunk On Morons
- TPM: Fani Willis Responds To Jim Jordan’s Demands With List Of Things He Could Be Doing With His Time Instead
- Politico: Willis dismantles false Trump electors’ claims about Hawaii precedent
Something Is Up 👀
The Jan. 6 grand jury that Special Counsel Jack Smith is using was spotted back at work Thursday at the federal courthouse in DC.
Trump Dithering In Georgia Case
Another weird filing yesterday by Donald Trump in the RICO case in Georgia, alerting the judge that Trump may seek removal of his case to federal court.
There’s no procedural reason to provide such a notice of possible intent, and I’m not clear on exactly what the strategy is, except perhaps to reinforce the judge’s overall impression that there are a lot of procedural wrinkles ahead that would make a quick trial next month of all 19 defendants exceedingly difficult.
As for why Trump hasn’t sought removal yet, he has 30 days after arraignment to seek removal, as the filing explicitly noted. So it appears that as part of his delay strategy, Trump is happy to let that clock keep ticking down. No rush. It also gives him a chance to see how the federal judge considering removal rules in Mark Meadows’ case. And there remains the possibility that if Meadows succeeds, the cases against all the defendants may get shifted to federal court.
Latest On The Disqualification Clause
Kate Riga talked to Senate Democrats yesterday about using the Disqualification Clause in the 14th Amendment to keep Trump off the 2024 ballot.
Hmmm …
Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) denies that he was involved in any kind of scheme to supplant then-Vice President Mike Pence and preside over the Jan. 6 certification of the Electoral College vote.
What The Post-Dobbs World Looks Like
A new report by the respected Guttmacher Institute portrays a post-Dobbs world of women fleeing across state borders to obtain abortion services.
5th Circuit Sides With Abbott On Buoy Barrier
The reactionary appeals court quickly put on hold a lower court ruling that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s border buoy barrier in the Rio Grande was illegal while it considers his appeal.
Maui One Month After The Conflagration
The FBI is working through a list of more than 380 people who remain missing and unaccounted for after the Lahaina fire.
No Need To Worry. It’s All Fine.
An account in Walter Isaacson’s new biography “Elon Musk” offers new details on the world’s richest man using his control over Starlink to thwart a planned Ukrainian attack on the Russian fleet in Crimea.
To Laugh Or To Cry?
JD Vance makes his case against mask mandates by claiming that kids "need us not to be chicken little about every single respiratory pandemic." pic.twitter.com/CJRT6H1Oqy
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 7, 2023
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Menace in the Backcountry
Could insurrection disqualification spur a new and much bloodier insurrection? From TPM Reader EK …
Continue reading “Menace in the Backcountry”In your recent commentary on this matter, including in the link above, I haven’t seen anything about the very real civil peril that would come with taking Trump off the ballot.
If Trump is actively removed from a ballot(s), whether that’s with the Supreme Court’s blessing or not, how are we not going to have armed rebellion? And I’m not just referring to swing states. I live in Oregon. We’re a blue state. But like many other blue states, the vast majority of our geography is deep red. Do you think that if Oregon’s all D leadership took Trump off the ballot that the Rs here would just load more Let’s Go Brandon! Flags on their trucks, roll some more coal, and call it a day?
A Rejoinder; and Just What Is an Insurrection?
TPM Reader CB responds to JS by arguing that case law and precedent about insurrections in one context doesn’t necessarily settle the question of what counts for the purposes of the 14th amendment’s disqualification clause. As I told CB I partly agree but not entirely. I subscribe to an older of who in our system gets to interpret the constitution. Each branch has a right and a duty to interpret the meaning of the constitution. The courts may get the last word. But it’s not the only word.
Continue reading “A Rejoinder; and Just What Is an Insurrection?”My perspective as a reader/subscriber with over a decade of strategic impact public interest litigation experience:
I couldn’t disagree more with the reader who said “The question is clear to me: would the President have the authority under the *1807* Insurrection Act to federalize troops in this case?”
Does The Constitution Matter?
Here’s a follow up from TPM Reader JS on law and precedent tied to what constitutes an insurrection. (See their earlier post.) I’m basically where they are on this. I want to be crystal clear with everyone that this will not work as a way to prevent Trump’s election. (See my earlier post.) I’m uncomfortable with where this leads us in policy terms. But that’s not a standard we apply to constitutional text. I’m super uncomfortable about the electoral college text too. But we all agree that doesn’t matter.
Continue reading “Does The Constitution Matter?”I would just add that, sure, it’s bad policy to deny a bunch of voters their choice and that’s generally how we read the law in light of provisions of the very same amendment. But it’s also bad policy to let a few judges’ sense of good policy override the clear, plain meaning of the Constitution. That’s not the rule of law. It’s about as clear as it gets here. He swore an oath when he took office and then he fomented an insurrection. Sure, no one has done a fact finding on that yet, but they will in the trials on this matter, won’t they? It doesn’t have to be res judicata from a criminal trial at all.
Fani Willis Responds To Jim Jordan’s Demands With List Of Things He Could Be Doing With His Time Instead
In the wake of Donald Trump’s indictment in Fulton County, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) limply launched an investigation into Fani Willis’ office with a letter that read like it’d been copied and pasted from his last several investigate-the-investigators correspondences.
Continue reading “Fani Willis Responds To Jim Jordan’s Demands With List Of Things He Could Be Doing With His Time Instead”Down Goes Navarro
Trump White House official Peter Navarro found guilty on two counts of contempt of Congress. Sentencing set for Jan. 2024.
A Few Thoughts on the 14th Amendment Thing
As you can see we’re looking closely at the efforts unfolding around the country to bar Donald Trump from appearing on the 2024 ballot because of his role fomenting and leading an insurrection against the United States government. It’s hardly a crazy idea since Trump did plot to overthrow the constitutional order, i.e., the government of the United States and there’s clear language about this in the US constitution. But I’d like to go on the record suggesting people not get too wrapped up in this morsel of anti-Trump activism as a or the thing that’s going to drive the outcome of this election. We are covering it not rooting for it. At the end of the day, this election is going to come down to whether Democrats can sustain an anti-Trump coalition in the electoral college just like they did in 2020. There’s simply no administrative or courtroom shortcut around that necessity. My own view of this whole issue is one of what I would call benign disinterest.
What do I mean by this? Let’s start with the practicalities. The most probable outcome here is that Trump will be removed from the ballot in blue states he had no shot at winning in the first place. (The Supreme Court probably torpedoes that too for reasons we’ll return to in a moment.) In that case, anti-Trump voters will get some emotional satisfaction and Trump supporters will gain a ripe and succulent new grievance. But it won’t change any reality about the outcome of the race.
Continue reading “A Few Thoughts on the 14th Amendment Thing”Senate Democrats Tentatively Warm To Trump Disqualification Arguments
Senate Democrats are approaching the argument that Donald Trump is disqualified from running under the 14th Amendment with caution — but interest.
Continue reading “Senate Democrats Tentatively Warm To Trump Disqualification Arguments”Listen To This: Heads I Win, Tails You Lose
A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate and Josh discuss the Disqualification Clause and the growing trend of Republican legislators refusing to follow orders when it comes to any dismantling of their single party control.
You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.