As you know, there’s been chatter about whether President Biden should pardon Donald Trump. Of course, before that there was a lot of discussion about whether Trump should be indicted at all. (Jack Goldsmith is still discussing it.) In both cases, the reasoning, such as it is, has been about bringing the country together, avoiding national divisions or sparking a pattern of tit-for-tat presidential prosecutions. It’s also possible the same underlying question could come up again.
There are some who think there’s a non-trivial chance that at some point perhaps early next year Trump will seek a plea deal. I really can’t imagine that happening. But some people whose common sense and judgment I put a lot of stock in do. Their reasoning isn’t bad. If you put all these cases together Trump is highly likely to be spending the rest of his his life in prison. Staying out of jail requires winning the 2024 election. He might get lucky in one venue. He might get a hung jury. He might beat some of the charges. But even batting .500 likely gets a de facto life term. And Trump, for all his bluster, is deeply risk averse. That’s where the plea deal idea comes in. Again, I think this is unlikely. But if it does we will come back to the same question, how much punishment is required? Either for justice, equality under the law or deterrence. Can he bow out of the race, admit to some offenses and get off with a comparatively light global sentence? What would justify that?
My reason for writing this post today is that I think this way of looking at the question gets the calculus wrong. The news David covers today, of Trump spending the weekend attacking DC district Judge Tanya Chutkan, explains why. This entire range of cases Trump faces, indeed Trump’s whole decade-long smash and grab run through American public life, is about one thing: who is bigger? The American republic, the state, or Donald Trump?
This article first appeared at ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
It was a multibillion-dollar strike, so stealthy and precise that the only visible sign was a notice that suddenly vanished from a government website.
After U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan made explicit Friday that she will do whatever is necessary to protect the integrity of the proceedings in the Jan. 6 case of U.S. v. Trump, the former president resumed his public attacks on her and her proceedings.
In posts and reposts on his Truth Social platform, Trump impugned Chutkan, her motives, and the proceedings against him. Not surprising or unprecedented to anyone who has paid even a smidge of attention to Trump’s history of acting out in legal matters, but no less damaging or destructive or corrosive to the rule of law.
The latest attack last night:
An earlier repost by Trump from the weekend:
What will be done about it? What can be done about it?
Judge Chutkan can haul him into court and read him the riot act, she can impose further restrictions on his out-of-court statements, and she can ultimately hold him in contempt, even remand him into custody pending trial.
I don’t expect dramatic action from Chutkan immediately for reasons that mostly make sense in this particular moment: she might not want to escalate this fight too quickly but rather leave herself room to ramp up down the road when it might really be needed, she doesn’t want to get bogged down in First Amendment fights over a gag order, she doesn’t want to feed Trump’s narrative of this all being a personal attack on him.
But Trump’s ability to spend 77 years on this planet without being held to real account is largely because each new person he encounters attempts to give him the benefit of the doubt, or to play the long game with him, or makes a transactional calculation to just grin and bear it in order to get what they need out of the interaction.
So we see in this latest round of boundary-setting followed immediately by Trump’s boundary-pushing the pattern that has played out over and over for decades. He can no more break that pattern – which has been marvelously successful for him – than he can stop breathing.
Now, whatever calculation Chutkan makes here and now regarding these statement, I have the sense from reading the accounts of Friday’s hearing that she knows the pattern. She’s no fool. She won’t be played. But she will pick her spots. Is this her spot? I don’t know. But I’ll be watching to see if:
Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team brings these posts to her attention formally;
Chutkan sua sponte raises them before the next scheduled hearing in the case; or
Chutkan waits until the case comes before her again in a scheduled hearing later this month.
Or she may decide to keep her powder dry. But I suspect she and Trump are on a collision course that can’t be avoided indefinitely.
This Is The Week In Georgia
All signals are pointing to a state grand jury indictment tomorrow (Tuesday) in Atlanta District Attorney Fani Willis’ long-running investigation of Trump’s interference in her state’s 2020 election. Here’s a good rundown on why we expect indictments tomorrow:
The Fulton County DA is set to bring charges related to her 2020 election probe.
I’ve chronicled legal events related to the probe in neurotic detail for more than a year @lawfare.
I’ll be at the courthouse in the coming days as the case enters a new phase: the indictment🧵👇
Atlanta-area prosecutors investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia are in possession of text messages and emails directly connecting members of Donald Trump’s legal team to the early January 2021 voting system breach in Coffee County, sources tell CNN. …
They have gathered evidence indicating it was a top-down push by Trump’s team to access sensitive voting software, according to people familiar with the situation.
Trump Feeling The Pressure?
For good measure, Trump launched a new attack on Fani Willis, too:
Countdown In Atlanta
The Guardian: ‘He’s going to be very surprised’: Georgia DA Fani Willis prepares to face off with Trump
AP: How Fani Willis oversaw what might be the most sprawling legal case against Donald Trump
MSNBC: Online hysterics suggest Trump now expects indictment in Georgia
NYT: Two Months in Georgia: How Trump Tried to Overturn the Vote
California Cutting Eastman No Slack
Authorities pursuing the disbarment of Trump coup plotter John Eastman are opposing his request to delay the proceedings. He argues that he’s facing potential criminal charges; they argue that that ain’t new news.
Michigan Watch
Your occasional update on the state-level prosecution of Trump’s fake elector scheme in Michigan:
The Messenger: ‘They’re Going to Shoot Someone’: Michigan Republicans Warn of Civil War at Pool Party Fundraiser for Fake Electors
Michigan Advance: Michigan fake electors arraigned in Lansing court
Bridge Michigan: Records: Michigan voting machines exchanged at mall, ‘manipulated’ in hotels
Aileen Cannon Made A Doozy Of An Error
The Daily Beast: Inside One ‘Egregious’ Mistake From Trump’s Florida Judge Aileen Cannon
What Happened In the Hunter Biden Case Exactly?
I can tell you what happened, but I’m still puzzling over exactly how we ended up here:
After the Hunter Biden plea agreement blew up in court, the parties failed to arrive at a resolution in subsequent negotiations.
U.S. Attorney David Weiss, apparently anticipating that he would now have to bring the case against Hunter Biden to trial in a jurisdiction outside of Delaware, asked Attorney General Merrick Garland last Tuesday to confer on him special counsel powers.
On Friday, Garland announced he was acceding to Weiss’ request.
Soon after, Weiss asked the Delaware federal court to cancel the briefing scheduled in the case because there’s no longer a plea agreement.
For his part, Hunter Biden is arguing that there very much was a plea agreement already entered into and binding upon the parties and seems to be making noises about trying to enforce it.
It’s a confused and strange situation, but rest assured that political reporters are seizing on the comfort of false equivalency to compare this to the Trump indictments and tut-tut over the bind this puts Joe Biden in.
Alabama Redistricting Heads Back To Court
A three-federal-judge panel will this week consider Alabama’s latest redistricting map, which rebuffs a Supreme Court order by defiantly drawing a single majority-Black congressional district.
Ammon Bundy Arrested
The far-right provocateur was arrested on an outstanding warrant for contempt of court.
Arkansas Nixes AP African American History
With classes about to start in the new school year, the state of Arkansas reportedly:
won’t award credits for the course for credit any longer;
won’t pay for the cost of students to take the AP test.
“Teachers were reportedly told they could still offer the class, but the state will not recognize it on the same level as other AP courses,” the Arkansas Times reports.
Maui Death Toll Nears 100
TOPSHOT – An aerial image taken on August 10, 2023 shows destroyed homes and buildings burned to the ground in the historic Lahaina in the aftermath of wildfires in western Maui in Lahaina, Hawaii. (Photo by Patrick T. Fallon / AFP) (Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images)
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.
When Utah legislators passed a bill requiring the review and removal of “pornographic or indecent” books in school libraries, they likely did not imagine the law would be used to justify banning the Bible.
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.
Confederate monuments burst into public consciousness in 2015 when a shooting at a historically Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, instigated the first broad calls for their removal. The shooter intended to start a race war and had posed with Confederate imagery in photos posted online.
A group of House Democrats led by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) called on Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate Justice Clarence Thomas for failing to report lavish gifts in a Friday afternoon letter.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan issued a protective order on Friday related to the massive trove of discovery materials Donald Trump and his legal team are expected to receive — as soon as Friday — from the government as part of special counsel Jack Smith’s Jan. 6 criminal case.
Truth Social, the social media company owned by Donald Trump, tipped off the FBI to threats Craig Robertson was making against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg back in March, NBC News reported, citing a senior law enforcement official. FBI agents shot and killed Robertson Wednesday while they were serving a warrant at his home in Provo, Utah.
Just a short note about a relatively minor topic. But with new Trump indictments almost certainly coming next week in Fulton County (Atlanta), Georgia, I wanted to return to a simple point. Remember the call in which then-President Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and demanded he find him 11,780 more votes and threatened him with prosecution if he didn’t. That call alone should be more than enough to send Trump to prison for years. In its own way it’s worse than almost everything else noted in the federal indictments. It is so stunning that I’m writing this post just to step us back and refocus our attention on just how stunning it is.
A forthcoming paper by two conservative constitutional scholars is breathing new life into the Insurrection Clause of the 14th Amendment, which is designed to disqualify from office, including the presidency, anyone who violated their oath to the Constitution and “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”
A Jan. 6 rioter has already been barred for life from holding public office by the state of New Mexico, but what about Trump?
In their new paper, William Baude of the University of Chicago and Michael Stokes Paulsen of the University of St. Thomas – both of whom are originalists and Federalist Society members – conclude that the Insurrection Clause applies to Trump:
In our view, on the basis of the public record, former President Donald J. Trump is constitutionally disqualified from again being President (or holding any other covered office) because of his role in the attempted overthrow of the 2020 election and the events leading to the January 6 attack.
The authors focus on Trump’s conduct in the run-up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol as well as his shocking dereliction of duty while the attack was ongoing:
This culpable inaction—failing to intervene to stop an insurrection in progress, declining to act to arrest a violent uprising, despite having both the capacity and responsibility to intervene—is another crucial part of Trump’s responsibility for the January 6 insurrection.
As the NYT’s Adam Liptak observes, this is merely a law review article, but it does provide the legal and intellectual framework for any effort to disqualify Trump. Theirs is a withering analysis:
The bottom line is that Donald Trump both “engaged in” “insurrection or rebellion” and gave “aid or comfort” to others engaging in such conduct, within the original meaning of those terms as employed in Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment. If the public record is accurate, the case is not even close. He is no longer eligible to the office of Presidency, or any other state or federal office covered by the Constitution. All who are committed to the Constitution should take note and say so.
I should note that authors don’t limit their analysis to Trump, noting that a host of pro-insurrection officeholders would succumb to the Insurrection Clause’s disqualification standard:
We think that if these constitutional duties are taken seriously, there is a list of candidates and officials who must face judgment under Section Three. Former president Donald Trump is at the top of that list, but he is not the end of it.
I’m deeply interested in this legal angle, so if you see any new developments, please shoot me an email. In general, I agree with those who say the criminal justice system can’t save us from Trump, only defeating him at the ballot box will drive a stake through the heart of his movement. But the Constitution has already spoken on this very issue, and preserving the rule of law doesn’t just mean criminal prosecution. More to come on this.
Big Day In Jan. 6 Case Against Trump
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan will hold her first hearing in the Jan. 6 prosecution of President Trump this morning at 10 a.m. ET.
At issue is a rather routine and unremarkable matter that Trump is trying to turn into A THING. All Special Counsel Jack Smith wants is a protective order before he hands over discovery to Trump. Expect Chutkan to make quick work of that issue.
What will be interesting is the tone she sets, the level of nonsense she’s prepared to tolerate, and whether she engages with any of the out-of-court attacks on the justice system by Trump and his legal team.
Trump Jan. 6 Case Tidbits
Special Counsel Jack Smith is seeking a Jan. 2 trial date for the Jan. 6 case against Trump, meaning it would happen before the Mar-a-Lago and hush money trials. Trump has yet to weigh in. I wouldn’t expect much movement on setting a trial date until a hearing in the case scheduled for late August.
Special Counsel Jack Smith is initiating CIPA procedures in the Jan. 6 case, too. But unlike the Mar-a-Lago prosecution, where classified information is central to the case, Smith says the classified information involved in discovery in the Jan. 6 case is a “small amount” and “minimal.”
The Big Cheese
Two new insightful accounts of Ken Chesebro, who makes a cameo as “Co-conspirator 5” in the Jan. 6 indictment of Trump:
TPM’s Josh Kovensky, who spoke at length with Chesbro last year and to my knowledge remains the only reporter to have done so, reflects on those interviews and the emerging picture of Chesbro’s role.
Jeffrey Toobin, who traveled in the same Larry Tribe-centric circle as Chesbro at Harvard, asks what the heck happened to him.
Trump Delay Watch
Another day, another delay in an arraignment in the Mar-a-Lago case. They’ll try again next week.
Was Merrick Garland’s Approach Correct All Along?
Jay Kuo with a thoughtful and extensive analysis of the Justice Department’s approach to prosecuting Trump for the election overturn conspiracy:
It comes down to how Garland and the Justice Department carefully and methodically laid a legal pathway for charges against Trump to land, rather than get thrown out of court or held in doubt till the end, where they might be far more vulnerable on appeal. Let me walk us through my thinking on this. And I’ll try not to sound like an apologist for prosecutorial delay!
Worth a read for the diehards (hi, nice to have you here!)
DC Has No Fucks Left To Give About Trump
WaPo: Trump insults D.C. to get his trial moved. The city rolls its eyes.
New financial reports show that the former president’s various political committees and the super PAC backing him have used roughly 30 cents of every dollar spent so far this year on legal-related costs. The total amounts to more than $27 million in legal fees and other investigation-related bills in the first six months of 2023, according to a New York Times analysis of federal records.
Trump Seems Fine
He is equal parts unhinged & terrified. A whirlwind of idiocy and lunacy all day every day. pic.twitter.com/zporbM9vJI
Today’s posts by Trump. It seems at this point that he’s begging to be locked up, hoping to unleash violence and pour money into his coffers. None of it based on fact. All of it preying on fear, disinformation, anger and the feeling that your government is out to get you. pic.twitter.com/KTR3VdSsuP
The 5th Circuit appellate panel seemed already in the tank for the hare-brained conspiracy theorizing about the Biden administration simply being in touch with social media companies about disinformation.
Taking Them Down One At A Time
White supremacist charged with threatening jurors on Pittsburgh synagogue shooter trial.
Hate To See It
TPM’s Kate Riga: It’s Suddenly Dawning On Republicans That They Have A Major Abortion Problem
‘Like Fatter Tony Soprano’
Trump campaign senior advisor Boris Epshteyn leaves Trump Tower in New York on November 14, 2016.
US President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to move aggressively on a conservative agenda in filling Supreme Court vacancies, cracking down on immigration and cutting taxes, but also sought to reassure worried Americans they have nothing to fear from his presidency. / AFP / KENA BETANCUR (Photo credit should read KENA BETANCUR/AFP via Getty Images)
Trump consigliere Boris Epshteyn has been accused of groping two sisters at a nightclub in Scottsdale called Bottled Blonde.
Police body cam footage captured the women complaining to officers shortly after the incident. Asked to describe Epshteyn, the older sister offered this all-timer: “Fat, ugly, like drooping face. White Ralph Lauren Polo,” she said. “Like fatter Tony Soprano.”
