Week four of the first Trump trial

Judge Juan Merchan has found Donald Trump in contempt for violating the gag order in his hush money trial for the 10^th time and said he’ll consider jail time going forward. “Going forward, this court will have to consider a jail sanction,” Merchan said. “Mr. Trump, it’s important you understand, the last thing I want to do is put you in jail. You are the former president of the United States and possibly the next president as well. The magnitude of this decision is not lost on me but at the end of the day I have a job to do.”

Jurors saw handwritten notes penned by former Trump Org. CFO Allen Weisselberg and former Trump Org. controller Jeffrey McConney in January 2017 calculating a payment to Michael Cohen totalling $420,000. Weisselberg’s calculations were handwritten directly on an October 2016 bank statement for Essential Consultants – former Trump layer Michael Cohen’s LLC – including a line item for the $130,000 wire to Stormy Daniels’ then-lawyer Davidson tied to the hush money settlement to the adult film star to cover up an affair.

[Seems everyone is a former….]

During the testimony of Stormy Daniels, she went in detail on what happened between her and Trump which has Merchan to stop her. Trump’s lawyers wanted a mistrial which was denied. During her testimony, Trump was making expletive comments that were loud enough that shortly after Merchan told one of Trump’s lawyers that he could be in contempt.

[A failed attempt by Trump’s lawyers as a mistrial could delay a new trial into next year and if Trump is elected, he is expected to shut down any trials and legal problems he has.]

Merchan has denied the defence’s motion for a mistrial. Merchan says he disagrees with the Trump team’s assertion that Daniels gave a new account in her testimony this week. Before the ruling, Merchan says the jurors have to decide who they believe in the case of the encounter between Donald Trump and Daniels. He notes that the people do not have to prove the encounter happened but because the defense has called her credibility into question, prosecutors have to make an effort to show her story is credible to prove their case.

“The more specificity Ms. Daniels can provide about the encounter, the more the jury can weigh whether the encounter did occur and if so whether they choose to credit Ms. Daniels’ story,” Merchan says.

Omarosa Manigault Newman who was on Trump’s Apprentice TV show and later in his administration mentioned that she and others in Trump’s administration were offered $20,000 a month [!] not to say anything about what goes on in the administration after signing a non-disclosure agreement. She declined.

[Unsure why she isn’t testifying unless something doesn’t add up or something we don’t know of.]

As he can’t say much about the trial, Trump called Merchan “totally corrupt” and “conflicted…. Take a look at his conflict, it’s a disgrace to the city of New York, to the state of New York and to the country.”

[Wouldn’t it be easier if he recorded these same old comments. He can probably add a few seconds to his life by not saying it live.]

Trump has turned sometimes to prepared speeches when he has left the courtroom.

[I guess he doesn’t want to ad lib something at that could get him in trouble.]

Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass confirms Karen McDougal — the model and actress who has said she was also paid to keep quiet about an affair with Trump — will not be called to take the stand.

Trump’s lawyers asked a New York appeals court to rule on their challenge to the gag order limiting what Trump can say about witnesses in the criminal hush money trial. Trump’s legal team filed an order to show cause, which has been sealed. The Manhattan district attorney’s office has opposed the filing, according to the docket.

In another case, Trump’s attorneys have found a new reason to seek to delay the classified documents case: Some of the documents found in boxes at Mar-a-Lago have shifted out of order since FBI agents seized them two years ago. Trump’s attorneys indicated in a filing that the shuffling of documents within boxes in evidence also could be grounds for the case to be tossed. They said they would file a motion to dismiss if the prosecution “cannot prove in a reliable way how it seized and handled the key evidence in the case, which will be a central issue at any trial.” Federal Judge Aileen Cannon paused the deadline the defendants faced this week for certain pretrial disclosures and said there would be a follow up order resetting pretrial deadlines and hearings.

Then Cannon finally blew the whole thing apart. In a ruling outlining a new schedule, Cannon not only moved the Section 5 deadline to June 17 [as Trump’s team had originally sought] but she also pulled the trial start date indefinitely. In part, she wrote, it was because of “the myriad and interconnected pretrial and CIPA issues” — presumably including the CIPA issues that had been left unresolved for a half-year. In the new order, she offered another accommodation for Trump’s team. In an April 22 filing, it argued that the “prosecution team” in this case should include “Agencies And Attorneys That Participated In The Investigation,” including, among others, the White House, National Archives and Secret Service.

[This was supposed to be probably the least complicated of the trials. There are some who are wondering how much of a career Cannon has left.]

When Trump sat with some of the country’s top oil executives at his Mar-a-Lago Club last month, one executive complained about how they continued to face burdensome environmental regulations despite spending $400 million to lobby the Biden administration in the last year. Trump said by giving his campaign $1 billion [you read right] to get him into the White House, he vowed to immediately reverse dozens of Biden’s environmental rules and policies and stop new ones from being enacted.

[Unsure how he will stop new ones from being created when in the House, the GOP has a razor thin majority and no majority in the senate. Unsure if they even can legally donate an accumulated $1 billion.]

Barron Trump, 18 and about to graduate high school, was named as a delegate at large for the GOP national convention in Milwaukee. Barron Trump’s half brothers Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., along with his half sister Tiffany Trump [as Tiffany Boulos], were also nominated, according to a list of 41 delegates at-large released Wednesday by the Republican Party of Florida. Half sister Ivanka Trump was not on the list.

[So Barron only got in. What does that tell you? He’s the sanest or the craziest. You pick!]

President Biden was near Racine, Wis., at the site of the ill-fated Foxconn manufacturing campus that was promised by Trump, to announce Microsoft’s $3.3 billion investment in an AI data center. The investment is expected to create 2,000 permanent jobs and 2,300 temporary union construction jobs, and Microsoft will also invest in workforce training programs in the state.

In 2018, when Foxconn, at Trump’s urging, announced plans to create 13,000 good-paying jobs in Mount Pleasant, Wisc., he celebrated the company’s $10 billion venture outside Racine as the “Eighth Wonder of the World.” But the project accomplished little more than the destruction of 100 local homes and farms. In September 2020, Wisconsin state officials denied the Taiwanese company special tax credits, saying it had abandoned its original commitment, employed fewer than 520 people and spent just $300 million. Local taxpayers were left with a tab of more than $500 million for site preparation.

[I doubt it, but I hope some of those unemployed in Wisconsin will remember this mess Trump made in five months.]

In Trump’s failed social network, Trump says “[Chuck] Schumer’s girlfriend, Alison R. Greenfield, is running this case against me. How disgraceful! This case should be dismissed immediately!!”

[He loves his mistrials and dismissed cases. Next he will find out the bailiff’s great grandfather was a janitor for a Democrat and wants a mistrial.]

Recently, the US Environmental Protection Agency announced new rules that will require coal-fired power plants to either capture nearly all of their climate pollution or shut down by 2039. As well, the G7 group [which includes the US] plan on shutting down coal plants by 2035.

[If Trump gets in again, he will most likely drop out of both agreements. When he started his reign, one of the earlier things he did was promote filthy coal mining. In 2017, 1,058,000 tons of coal was mined. By the end of 2020 that dropped to 932,623 tons. 871,619 tons in 2022 [the last year of statistics available.]

Trump has secured an additional $1.8 billion worth of shares in Trump Media, according to a regulatory filing recently. Based on the company’s stock hitting certain price benchmarks, Trump was awarded an additional 36 million shares in the company that owns his social media platform Truth Social. That brings his total ownership to more than 114 million shares, which based on Wednesday morning’s stock price, are worth $5.7 billion. Trump only needed the stock to be above $17.50 each for 20 consecutive trading days to secure the new shares.

[I think that was too simple to meet. Stock hovering around $51 as of today.]

List of Trump’s failed businesses

Companies Trump Managed (into Bankruptcy):

01 – Go Trump (travel agency)
02 – Trump Airlines
03 – Trump Mortgage
04 – The New Jersey Generals (Pro Football Team)
05 – Tour De Trump (bicycle race)
06 – Trump Network (nutritional supplements)
07 – Trumped! (syndicated radio spot)
08 – Trump Magazine
09 – Donald J. Trump Eyeglasses
10 – Donald Trump Regency Collection lighting
11 – Select by Trump coffee
12 – Success by Trump (cologne)
13 – Trump Home mattresses and furniture
14 – Trump Ice (bottled water)
15 – Trump Steaks
16 – Trump: The Game
17 – Trump Vodka
18 – Donald J. Trump (Signature Collection of underwear, ties, shirts and suits)
19 – Trump PrivaTest (at-home urine test)
20 – Trump University (an online education scam)
21 – Trump Network (a multi-level marketing scheme)
22 – Trump Foundation (a philanthro-scam)
23 – Taj Mahal Casino Resort Atlantic City casinos (1991, how can you go bankrupt when all the games favor the house and you don’t pay the maintenance bills? Pilfering?)
24 – Trump Castle Hotel & Casino (1992)
25 – Trump Plaza Casino (1992)
26 – Trump Plaza Hotel (1992)
27 – Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts (2004)
28 – Trump Entertainment Resorts (2009)

Week three of the first Trump trial

New York Judge Juan Merchan has ruled Donald Trump violated the gag order nine times [out of 10 with 4 to be determined] for criticizing expected trial witnesses in posts on social media and his campaign page. Trump must pay the $9,000 fine by the end of the week [which he did]. Merchan also threatened incarceration if Trump wilfully violates the gag order again, writing in his ruling, “THEREFORE, Defendant is hereby warned that the Court will not tolerate continued wilful violations of its lawful orders and that if necessary and appropriate under the circumstances, it will impose an incarceratory punishment.”

[The judge, if violating the gag order again, should send him (in my opinion) to jail for contempt one weekend per contempt. So maybe 6 PM Friday until 6 PM on Sunday.]

Trump did not visibly react as the judge was reading his decision in court. After the ruling, Trump removed the seven “offending posts” from his failed social network and the two “offending posts” from his campaign website, as Merchan ordered.

After his day in court, Trump again criticized the gag order placed on him in his hush money criminal trial, calling it “unconstitutional.” Trump reiterated his claim that there’s “no crime” in the case.

He has already made further comments which could be against the gag order which could result in jail time for him.

[$1,000 per violation is the maximum allowed by New York State law. I am wondering if the state will enact a law to increase the fine. It would be cheaper to fine someone than to hold them in jail for up to 30 days which costs the state money and extra in the case of Trump because of additional security.]

The attorney of Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels took the stand at one point this week. At one point, McDougal was looking at a deal with either ABC News [could be ABC Entertainment] or American Media Inc. [the National Inquirer owner] but decided to take the AMI deal because she didn’t want to tell her story in publicly while she would at ABC plus ABC [by law] can’t offer her compensation directly. She in the end took the AMI deal told her story to them and AMI then buried it.

Way back when, Trump said he wanted to testify. His lawyers were probably nervous because he goes off script… always. Now he created a false excuse on why he can’t: the gag order. A gag order has nothing to do with testifying.

“They don’t want me on the campaign trail,” Trump told reporters referring to his court time. And yet, he is able to go on the campaign trail from Friday late afternoon until Sunday night plus there has been usually one day off during each week. On top of that, he hasn’t spent time in the off days solely on the campaign trail.

[I wouldn’t be surprised if he played around of golf.]

Jurors saw a full transcript of the “Access Hollywood” tape, including Trump’s infamous “grab ‘em by the p?ssy” comment, as well as other vulgar language the campaign tried to dismiss as “locker room talk.” They did not, however, hear Trump on the tape, as the judge ruled the video would be prejudicial to the jury.

[Exactly who hasn’t seen some form of that video?]

The idea that Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, made the $130,000 payment on his own to Stormy Daniels “would be out of character for Michael,” former campaign press secretary and White House communications director Hope Hicks testified.

The latest false claims by Trump:

• “New York City is a violent city; it’s become violent with the cashless bail. I’m the only one who has to put up bail.” – Nope.
• “We’re supposed to be in Ohio tomorrow and we’re supposed to be in Florida on the next day.” Trump can’t campaign at all. – Nope. He has the weekends plus usually there is a day off during the week. Ohio was never on any known schedule. He’s in Florida all weekend for a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday and the Miami Grand Prix on Sunday.

Trump wouldn’t dismiss the potential for political violence from his supporters if he isn’t elected in November, suggesting it would depend on the outcome of the presidential race. “I think we’re going to win. And if we don’t win, you know, it depends. It always depends on the fairness of an election.”

[He had already made up his mind before the 2020 election, that the election was rigged. He will do the same later this year if he loses.]

Trump also doubled down on his promise to pardon the hundreds of people sentenced for crimes committed stemming from January 6 Trump Insurrection. Trump has called these individuals “hostages,” though many have pleaded guilty to violent crimes or have been convicted by juries.

He refused to say whether he would veto a federal abortion ban, insisting such a measure was unlikely to happen, despite previously saying he wouldn’t sign a federal abortion ban if he were re-elected and one came to his desk. Trump similarly said he would let states decide if doctors who perform illegal abortions should be punished.

[In other word, he is not ready to make a decision that he will later flip flop on.]

Trump for the first time said that Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich “should be released” after a year of detainment in Russia. Asked why he hadn’t previously called for Gershkovich’s release, Trump said: “I guess because I have so many other things I’m working on.”

[It’s not hard to release something on his failed social network to have Gershkovich released but he has time to criticize the judge and others and supposedly play golf.]

A few weeks back, Trump hosted a golf tournament. The morning after a couple of days playing, the golfers in the tournament [probably no namers] took and look and found Trump’s name at the top of the ranking. Asked how. Supposedly he used a couple of days practice from a few weeks prior and used the results for him in the tournament.

[Aside from no host usually plays in his own tournament and inserting previous results, it is unbelievable that he could be that good to win the tournament when he is known to be a lousy golfer (even after all those days he played golf while supposedly running the country). Either that or all the other golfers are that bad!]

Trump is claiming he will continue what he started in his final year as president [why wait 3+ years?] to “drain the swamp”. He wants to decentralize the government by moving more departments out of the heavily left leaning Washington, DC area.

Trump seeks to sweep away civil service protections that have been in place for more than 140 years. He has said he’d make “every executive branch employee fireable by the president of the United States” at will. It would move as many as 100,000 positions out of Washington. His plans would eliminate or dismantle entire departments. While assailing “faceless bureaucrats,” Trump also has said he would move federal agencies from “the Washington Swamp… to places filled with patriots who love America.”

And of course he wants to especially look at the Department of Justice, FBI, EPA and others.

From Trump’s statement on his campaign website: “I will immediately reissue my 2020 executive order restoring the president’s authority to remove rogue bureaucrats. And I will wield that power very aggressively.” That executive order reclassified many civil service workers, whose jobs are nonpartisan and protected, as political appointees who could be fired at will.

[This could push to hire less qualified people to take over the jobs of federal employees who were fired or left on their own. About the time Trump started his reign, the were quite a few federal employees who left the government and it took a long time to replace them. Departments were short staffed which caused many delays.

In 2019, Trump moved the headquarters of the Bureau of Land Management to Grand Junction, Colorado, and two agencies within the Department of Agriculture [USDA] to Kansas City. The government was claiming that costs will be lower and there will be better employee diversification. The Trump administration said moving the USDA agencies would bring researchers closer to “stakeholders”– that is, farmers.

The USDA said the move to Kansas City would save taxpayers $300 million over 15 years. Including such costs, the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association estimated the move actually cost taxpayers between $83 million and $182 million.

[For the USDA alone, in fact there were less minorities after the movies and the estimated costs that would be save actually was more expensive. In addition, many employees in those departments decided not to move outside of Washington forcing the departments to hire new and untrained employees.]

The National Institute for Food and Agriculture started with 394 when Trump started his reign and were losing 10 to employees each week. When the relocation was announced, there were 270 employees of which only 70 relocated to Kansas City.

Recently, the Office of Personnel Management, which in effect is the human resources department for the federal government, adopted new rules meant to bar career civil service workers from being reclassified as political appointees or other types of at-will workers. Trump’s draining would include the workers being reclassified as political appointees.

In an interview President Biden said he is willing to have at least one debate with Trump. Trump responded with “Everyone knows he doesn’t really mean it, but in case he does, I say, ANYWHERE, ANYTIME, ANYPLACE, an old expression used by Fighters.”

[Why wouldn’t Biden mean it? On the other hand, there is a greater chance of Trump backing out at the last moment. He complained when the moderator had the option of silencing his and Biden’s microphone during the 2020 debates. Trump has also said he wants to testify in his hush money trial but most likely won’t – probably because the prosecution and judge may disallow any of his comments that are known to be untrue.]

The auditor for Trump’s media company was charged with “massive fraud” by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which accused the firm of being a “sham audit mill” whose failures put investors at risk. The auditor, BF Borgers, and its owner, Benjamin Borgers, agreed to a permanent suspension from accounting work and to pay $14 million in civil penalties, federal regulators said. The SEC said its review of the firm’s audits found “deliberate and systemic failures” in more than 1,500 filings from January 2021 through June 2023. That period was before Trump Media & Technology Group went public, suggesting that its filings were not among those investigated as part of the review.

[Anyone surprised about this and fell down, stunned? Nope.]

At the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner, of which Trump never attended in his four years, of course there were jabs made at Trump. Trump responded [as if he watched it but I’m sure he had a lackey who did] that the dinner was basically boring or garbage.

[Do you really think the comedians and guests who appeared during the four years without Trump would of sucked up and gave him kind words? OK maybe right wing nobodies.]

Week two of the first Trump trial

Because of his ongoing trial [and to be continued for a few weeks], this is a quiet week for Donald Trump. He can only complain and tell lies after hours and on the weekends – well officially. But he has a tendency to yak away for a few minutes or so with his greatest hits of lies and whining after the day in court [or maybe during a break].

In Trump’s hush money trial in New York, Trump continues to rack up the gag order violations – currently at least eleven of them. There was a hearing into the gag order violations but no solution.

Outside the court, Trump continues to ramble on how he is a victim and shouldn’t be on trial. Among his claims:

• Michael “Cohen is a lawyer… and he wasn’t very good in a lot of ways in terms of misrepresentation.” Like many of his former employees, he says the same thing about Cohen. If Cohen was so bad, why wasn’t he fired sooner? This would be called mismanagement.
• “He [Cohen] got in trouble for things that had nothing to do with me.” Cohen was charged with and pleaded guilty to eight criminal charges, including two — “causing an unlawful corporate contribution” and “making an excessive campaign contribution” — that directly relate to the hush money case now being litigated in Manhattan criminal court.
• “… another thing that wasn’t even said was, we never even deducted it as a tax deduction.” Well of course you wouldn’t deduct an illegal act from your taxes as an expense.
• “Very importantly, why didn’t the Federal Elections [Commission] do anything? Federal Elections took a total pass on it. They said essentially nothing was done wrong or they would have done something about it.” The Federal Election Commission staff, in a December 2020 report by the general counsel, said it had found “reason to believe” violations of campaign finance law were made “knowingly and wilfully” by the Trump campaign. The report said that Cohen’s $130,000 payment to Daniels was far in excess of the legal limit for individual contributions of $2,700.
• “It’s all about Election Interference. Sad! …. This is done for purposes of hurting the opponent of the worst president in the history of our country.” According to 5 different polls done over the past years, Trump comes in anywhere between a ranking of 41 to last place at 45. President Biden, in the two most recent polls [others prior came before his presidency] ranks him 14 and 19.

An Arizona grand jury indicted seven attorneys or aides affiliated with Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign as well as 11 Arizona Republicans on felony charges related to their alleged efforts to subvert President Biden’s 2020 victory in the state, according to an announcement by the state attorney general. Those indicted include former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, attorneys Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, John Eastman and Christina Bobb, top campaign adviser Boris Epshteyn and former campaign aide Mike Roman. They are accused of allegedly aiding an unsuccessful strategy to award the state’s electoral votes to Trump instead of Biden after the 2020 election. Trump was not charged, but he is described in the indictment as an unindicted co-conspirator.

[Can the bankrupt Giuliani afford a lawyer? You think Trump will do anything to help them somehow? Last I heard, he hasn’t said a word. Why? He doesn’t want to be involved with losers and anyone indicted or is in prison is a loser – except himself.]

A poll from Marist College shows Biden at 51 percent and Trump at 48 percent in a national head-to-head contest. But when you factor in third-party candidates — Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Green Party candidate Jill Stein and independent Cornel West — Biden’s lead goes to five percentage points. An NBC News poll showed a similar dynamic. While Biden trailed by two points head to head (44-46), he led by two points (39-37) when the question included the third-party candidates.

Kennedy is pulling more votes from Trump supports than Biden supporters even though Kennedy is [theoretically] from the left – well his family is. Kennedy’s image among right-leaning voters is vastly superior to his image among left-leaning ones. While Republicans like him 40 percent to 15 percent — a plus-25 split — Democrats dislike him 53-16 — a negative-37 split.

Trump’s “greatest hits” of false claims:

• He created the greatest US economy in US history (not by any metric).
• He passed the biggest tax cut in history (it ranks 8th).
• He did more for Black people than any president than Abraham Lincoln (not by any metric).
• He defeated ISIS in four weeks (it took the United States and coalition partners more than two years after he took office).
• He was the first president to impose tariffs on China (China has faced US tariffs since George Washington first enacted them in 1789).
• He increased government revenue even though he cut taxes (false).

New “hits”:

• He claims Biden was declared ‘incompetent’ to stand trial in documents case (false).
• He claims the US under Biden is a third world country where “a political person uses weaponization against his political opponent” (this from a man who already said he’d go after government employees who went against him during his various trials).
• He claims “The prison population all over the world is at the lowest point… because they’re dumping their prisoners into our country.” (false)
  He claims “They’ve let in 15 million people…” have entered the country “and they’re coming from rough places and dangerous places.” (8.5 million tried to enter the country in the 3.5 years under Biden but less than a quarter actually were allowed in).
• He claims “under Biden, we have a three-year inflation rate of almost 50 percent. Under me, you had no inflation.” (very inflated; cumulative inflation during Trump’s presidency was nearly 8 percent; cumulative inflation during Biden’s presidency was nearly 18.5 percent; of course a chunk of that was because of supply change issues and the like after the pandemic).
• He claims “In February alone, nearly 1 million jobs held by native-born Americans disappeared…” (it was more like 500,000).

[I’m shocked he didn’t say he personally invented the vaccine to cure COVID-19 and personally injected all Americans – whether they liked it or not. ]

Days left before Trump’s first trial

Donald Trump said that it would be a “great honor” to be jailed for violating a gag order, marking an escalation in attacks he’s made against New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan and other court officials in a case about to go to trial.

Trump’s lawyers have filed another appeal in the hush money case to challenge the order by the trial Judge Merchan denying him from arguing he has presidential immunity. Trump’s attorneys also are challenging Merchan’s “refusal” to recuse himself from the trial and a previous ruling related to how dockets are made publicly. In a brief two-page notice of petition, Trump’s lawyers alleged the judge exceeded his authority in those rulings and have asked the appeals court to hold a hearing on May 6.

Merchan issued an order denying a motion from Trump’s attorneys to delay the trial due to excessive pretrial publicity. The ruling is hardly a surprise, and the latest in a series of decisions by the court this week rejecting Trump’s 11th-hour attempts to stop his first criminal trial. “The remedy that Defendant seeks is an indefinite adjournment. This is not tenable,” Merchan wrote.

[I believe all the pretrial publicity would be minor if Trump stopped bullying and whining.]

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is pushing back on the latest attempt by Trump and his co-defendants to disqualify her entire office from prosecuting the election subversion case in Georgia. Willis asked the Georgia Court of Appeals to uphold Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee’s initial ruling that allowed her to remain on the criminal case if her top prosecutor, Nathan Wade, resigned.

A New York appeals court with Associate Justice Lizbeth González has denied Trump’s petition to change the venue of his upcoming hush money trial. Trump’s attorneys had urged the court to postpone the trial so it could consider whether to change the venue, arguing that Trump cannot get a fair jury in New York. But González quickly denied the motion to stop the trial after hearing arguments, and there is no further argument on the motion to change the venue. Jury selection cannot proceed next week in a fair manner in New York County, which is Manhattan, based on their research, Trump’s attorney claimed. The trial begins on April 15th.

Earlier this week, Trump’s legal team asked the appeals court to delay the trial so he could challenge a gag order stopping Trump from making statements about witnesses, family members of the judge and prosecutors, and jurors.

[So exactly where they suggest the trial move to? Some area of the country that is heavily Republican? The trial has publicity across the US and at least part of the world.]

Trump asked a New York appeals court for emergency relief to stop the criminal trial from going ahead so he could appeal a lower court’s ruling on presidential immunity on April 25th and have the judge recused from the case. It took Associate Justice Ellen Gesmer just minutes after hearing arguments to reject the interim motion to stay the trial.

Trump said he would testify at his New York criminal hush money trial. “Yeah, I would testify,” Trump said at a news conference at Mar-a-Lago as he continued railing against the charges against him. Trump has been charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records over the reimbursement of hush money payments made before the 2016 election. He has pleaded not guilty.

Trump signed a bill in 2019 that increases fines on criminal robocall violations and cracks down on companies making the calls, as part of a federal push against telephone scammers. Why am I mentioned this? In the first week of April 2024, the RNC co-chair and daughter-in-law to Donald Trump, Lara Trump, sent out a robocall to 145,000 people with a series of laws. “We all know the problems. No photo IDs, unsecured ballot drop boxes, mass mailing of ballots, and voter rolls chock full of deceased people and non-citizens are just a few examples of the massive fraud that took place,” the RNC call said.

[Just 15 days ago, Lara Trump, said the “stolen” election from 2020 “is in the past”. She flip flops just like her father-in-law.]

Trump’s valet, Walt Nauta, repeatedly claims that he believed Trump stored news clippings, hairspray, shampoo, picture frames and other miscellaneous materials in the boxes in the special counsel’s case into the mishandling of classified documents from the Trump White House. Nauta faces several obstruction-related charges in the case.

[Must be a lot of news clippings, hairspray, shampoo, picture frames. So if he claims he knew the contents of the boxes then he knew that he was wrong in claiming that junk.]

Trump has privately said he could end Russia’s war in Ukraine by pressuring Ukraine to give up some territory. Some foreign policy experts said Trump’s idea would reward Russian President Vladimir Putin and condone the violation of internationally recognized borders by force.

[Do you think Ukraine would even allow that to happen? I doubt it. Of course what is to stop Russia from wanting more late? Trump in the end, doesn’t care about Ukraine. He doesn’t care about the lives there. He just wants to please his master, Vlady Putain.]

Cowardly, Trump said that abortion rights should be left to the states, offering his clearest stance yet on one of the most delicate and contentious issues in American politics. He previously suggested a 15 week ban. Trump said he was “proudly the person responsible” for the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. In 1999, Trump called himself “very pro-choice”. Over the past 25 years, he has changed his stance 13 times.

[What did he do with Roe v. Wade? He stacked the Supreme Court with right wing judges.]

Trump credited his about face in 2015 to a child born to his friends who “was going to be aborted. And it wasn’t aborted. And that child today is a total superstar, a great, great child.”

[Of course, Trump has the history of making up stories. So take this story with a grain of salt….]

House conservatives revolted against GOP leadership and defeated a key vote on the floor, the latest blow to Speaker Mike Johnson that comes after Trump called on Republicans to kill a controversial surveillance law known as FISA. 19 Republicans bucked the House GOP leadership and voting with Democrats to sink the procedural vote. Does Trump want to oust Johnson?

[Those 19 Republicans probably include the usual far right Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz and the rest of the wack job squad. Greene has threatened to oust Johnson and with maybe 19 potential Republicans against Johnson, Congress would go through the same mess when Johnson was first elected speaker. If the coup d’état comes soon, it could kill the Republican’s attempt to impeach Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas before the next election.]

Trump’s campaign announced that a recent dinner in Palm Beach would raise at least $50.5 million. The money would be split between Trump’s campaign, the Republican National Committee and others. Each of the 100 guests at the dinner will shell out a minimum of $250,000 and a maximum of about $824,600 each [who got to sit at Trump’s table].

[So these wealthy 100 people don’t seem to mind on backing a narcissist womanizer who was the leader of the Trump Insurrection of January 6th.]

Immigrants arriving today “are people coming in from prisons and jails. They’re coming in from just unbelievable places and countries, countries that are a disaster,” he said, according to the attendee at that fundraiser. He would prefer “Nice countries, you know like Denmark, Switzerland? Do we have any people coming in from Denmark? How about Switzerland? How about Norway?”

During Trump’s 4 year reign, there were 14 cabinet secretary turnovers. In about 3.5 years, President Biden has had 2. In fact, if you add up the Presidents Clinton, G.W. Bush, Obama and Biden years combined, there were still less turnovers than Trump.

Unsure if it is because of Trump, but at least 21 House Republicans will vacate their seat by the next election.

Former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg, who admitted to testifying falsely in Trump’s civil fraud case, was sentenced to five months in jail on perjury charges. Weisselberg was charged with five counts of perjury, but under a deal with prosecutors, he agreed to plead guilty to two felony counts relating to testimony he gave during a 2020 deposition with the attorney general’s office. Weisselberg also admitted to testifying falsely at the civil fraud trial last fall but that is not among the charges to which he pleaded guilty.

In a recent poll, the number of Republicans who agree that there was fraud in the 2020 elections and there was no Russian interference have increased since the elections. Not surprisingly but Republicans overwhelmingly believe all the lies from Trump – anywhere between 37% and 87% – depending on the lie. Democrats are at the other side of the scale with the US funds the majority of the budget for NATO at 26%. Independents tend to be about 10-15% higher. Republicans also don’t seem to care as much if the president is ethical [perfect for Trump] and compassionate [also Trump].

Still another crazy week in Trumpland

Donald Trump posted a $175 million bond to prevent New York authorities from seizing his assets, including properties such as Trump Tower, pending appeal of a civil fraud judgment against him of nearly a half-billion dollars. Trump posting of the bond was necessary to keep New York Attorney General Letitia James from initiating legal steps to take over his properties. The bond arrangement was made with Knight Specialty Insurance Company, according to a court document. About 30 surety companies he consulted with would not accept his real estate as collateral, only liquid assets.

[The CEO of Knight Specialty Insurance Company is also a large investor in Internet bank named Axos. Axos’ CEO and top investors have strong financial ties to the GOP. Axos loan Trump $100 million previously. Not surprising with the 30 companies. Between going bankrupt 4 times and inflating the worth of those properties he owned, it’s no surprise he wasn’t popular with them.]

If he does not win his appeal, Trump will still owe more than $450 million from a civil court judgment after James won the fraud case against him, alleging he deceived lenders and insurance companies by inflating his net worth by up to $2.2 billion annually from 2011 to 2021. Trump’s tab is growing by about $100,000 per day because interest will continue to accrue until the appeal ends.

Trump attacked Judge Juan Merchan for issuing the gag order – and he went after the judge’s daughter for her liberal political work, exploiting the ambiguous language in the order that didn’t explicitly forbid discussion of Merchan’s family. It didn’t take long for Merchan pushed back, expanding the gag order to cover his family – though the judge remains fair game for Trump – and attempting to limit Trump’s vitriol two weeks before the trial is set to begin.

[It should be standard practice that when you have Trump as a defendant, a gag order should be issued to cover the judge, court personnel and their families. The Republicans and their propaganda backers are saying that since the judge’s daughter works as a Democrat “activists”, she will influence her father’s decision. She did post something a while back saying Trump should be in prison. But that could be the same thoughts of most left leaning voters. Does Trump want a right leaning judge with a right leaning family who want no prison time for Trump?]

Then Merchan denied his motion to delay its start until after the US Supreme Court rules on Trump’s presidential immunity claim, calling it untimely and noting Trump’s lawyers had months to file a motion over the issue.

The prosecutor, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, in Trump’s upcoming hush money trial has asked Judge Merchan to clarify whether a gag order issued for Trump recently bars him from publicly attacking the judge’s adult daughter — and to expand the order if it doesn’t.

Trump’s lawyers said Merchan’s gag order does not apply to comments about the judge’s family members and Trump’s recent posts had not violated the order and repeatedly argued that any limitation on his speech is a clear violation of his First Amendment rights and his rights as a presidential candidate.

[It would basically be open season any judge and his/her family if someone like Trump can constantly lie, harass and abuse the judge and his family. What judge would want to be a judge knowing him/her as well as the family could be threatened?]

A criminal case that was once viewed as the most open-and-shut prosecution against Trump has been mired in delay, unresolved logistical questions and fringe legal arguments that appear to have hijacked US District Judge Aileen Cannon’s attention. Special counsel Jack Smith said Cannon had asked for briefs that were premised on a “fundamentally flawed” understanding of the case that had “no basis in law or fact.”

In a 2022 lawsuit Trump brought attacking the FBI’s documents investigation, Cannon granted an extraordinary Trump request for a third-party review of the FBI’s 2022 search of his Mar-a-Lago resort for the classified documents. A conservative appeals court repeatedly reversed her rulings in the lawsuit, scolding her for giving Trump special treatment no other private citizen would receive, and shut down the review. Cannon’s rulings in the 2022 lawsuit were so outside the bounds that people rightly became suspicious of her motives.

[Cannon was appointed by Trump in 2020 and it shows that she is inexperienced. The probability of having the trial begin before the election is fading. On top of that, if Trump does win the election, he will shut down this and any other open cases against him.]

Observers were shocked when Cannon summoned the parties to Florida to present their theories on the validity of the charges.

[A judge generally doesn’t do that. She is judging 32 of the 91 charges against Trump.]

Judge Cannon will not dismiss the classified documents charges against Trump, who argued that he had the authority to take classified or sensitive documents with him after he left the White House. The short order from Judge Cannon leaves open the possibility that Trump could still use the argument to defend himself at trial.

[Well, at least she did something that is mostly right.]

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee upheld the criminal indictment against Trump in Georgia, rejecting the argument that Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election were protected under the First Amendment. “The defense has not presented, nor is the Court able to find, any authority that the speech and conduct alleged is protected political speech,” Judge McAfee wrote in his order.

[Unsure how Trump could ask for a dismissal when he clearly asked for an exact number of votes to be found that would declare him barely the winner.]

Lawyers for several defendants in the Georgia criminal case against Trump and others have been weighing whether to press for a gag order against Atlanta-area prosecutor Fani Willis, especially if efforts to disqualify her fail. Willis has continued to speak publicly about the case. A gag order against one of Trump’s biggest foes could score political points and help him and his co-defendants in the short term. But it could also backfire by undercutting their efforts to have Willis disqualified from the case, or by inspiring efforts to seek a gag order against Trump and other defendants who have publicly criticized Willis.

In one of Trump’s ever growing number of lies, after a 25 year old woman was killed by a migrant, Trump said “She lit up that room, and I’ve heard that from so many people…. I spoke to some of her family.” Except the family said he never spoke to them.

[Shocked? I’m not.]

“What the hell was Biden thinking when he declared Easter Sunday to be Trans Visibility Day?” Trump said, suggesting that the declaration showed “total disrespect to Christians.”

[Trans Visibility Day has always been May 31st. It just so happens that Easter was early this year. He said nothing about National Crayon Day.]

In the federal election interference case, Judge Tanya Chutkan previously also heard – and rejected – the argument that Trump’s actions should be considered protected political speech.

“Sending eight emails and texts a day that promise an artificial match, threaten to take away your GOP membership, or call you a traitor if you don’t donate doesn’t build a long-term relationship with donors,” said a Republican fundraiser.

[Spam, abuse, and threats all rolled into one.]

Trump said recently if he does not win November’s presidential election it will mean the likely end of American democracy.

[More like if he wins….]

Just a couple weeks after saying there will be a “bloodbath” if he doesn’t win the election in November, Trump repeated his call as well as repeatedly calling illegal immigrants “animals” and claiming they bring in disease and violence. After the first time he mentioned bloodbath, his campaign after claimed the word was intended for the auto industry.

[If you believe that I have a nice piece of land to sell you on Pluto.]

Some Trump cronies are thinking of pushing Nebraska to change their electoral vote. Nebraska and Maine are the only two states where their House representatives are not an all or nothing but by district. MAGA people think that they have a better change of getting the Nebraska state House of Representatives [note that they don’t have a senate] to switch to all or nothing before the elections and before the state House session ends.

The reason for the push to change? If the states won by Biden stays the same except Nevada and New Mexico, Biden would be ahead by 2 House representatives. If Nebraska went all to Trump [instead of one district that would go to Biden], it would be an even 269 representatives for each. In a tie, each state would then have one vote to cast and there are more Trump states than Biden states.

[Another dumb way to break a “tie breaker”. Just as bad as the NHL tiebreaker by having a shoot-out.]

At least six Republicans want to change the name of Washington Dulles International Airport to Donald J. Trump International Airport.

“Donald Trump is facing 91 felony charges,” Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly, whose district includes part of Dulles, said in a statement. “If Republicans want to name something after him, I’d suggest they find a federal prison.”

[Or maybe Rikers Island? Dulles is considered as one of the worst airports in the world. It is old and antiquated.]

Trump’s DJT stock on NASDAQ lost over $4 billion in worth at one point in its first week of trading. In about ten days the stock was half the price of the highest price [almost $80 on March 26].

Trump has filed a lawsuit against two of the company’s co-founders, both former contestants on “The Apprentice.” Trump Media’s lawsuit accuses them of “mismanagement,” saying they “failed spectacularly at every turn” and “made a series of reckless and wasteful decisions.”

[And why wait so long to release this lawsuit? Unlike the morons who he hires in his cabinet who later on say things he doesn’t like, he can’t sue them. But he can sue the two co-founders.]

A Florida venture capitalist and his brother moved toward potential guilty pleas in an insider trading case connected to the merger that took Donald Trump’s social media company public. A third man was also involved in the insider trading. They pleaded innocent from the 2021 case but could change their pleas. Prosecutors are seeking the forfeiture of a bank account, the yacht and three Yamaha Jet Skis that were tendered to the vessel by one of the three men.

Trump has previously called immigrants “animals” and blamed migrants for “coming into our country with contagious diseases.” He warned of “illegal alien criminals crawling through your windows and ransacking your drawers,” where they “loot the jewellery.” When migrants aren’t busy doing that, they’re fixing to “obliterate Medicare and Social Security” and fill schools with “new migrant students who don’t speak a word of English.”

Regarding Trump [and the various conspiracy nuts] regarding that immigrants are causing higher crime, homicide and violent crime, after rising during the pandemic, have dropped for two straight years and are lower than during Trump’s final year in office. There is scant evidence that immigrants — legal or undocumented — commit more than their share of crime, and a lot of evidence that migrants are more law-abiding.

Former Trump adviser Peter Navarro asked the Supreme Court to take another look at his request to avoid prison, filing a long-shot request on Tuesday that the high court rarely grants. This after serving so far 15 days of his four month vacation. He’s in prison for his contempt of Congress conviction.

[He wants out early maybe because he was a bad boy and his TV privileges were reduced. ]

Trump still takes claim for killing Roe vs Wade but all he did was load the supreme court with right wing justices unless he ordered them to kill Roe vs Wade.

Trump also takes at least partial credit from the various states who have reduced or banned abortions.

Former Republican leaning contributor, George Conway, donated over $900,000 to Biden’s campaign and will headline a fundraiser for Biden.

Still more legal fun in Trumpland

A New York court handed Donald Trump a lifeline as time ran out for Trump to secure a bond covering the $454 million loss for his recent fraud case. A panel of appellate court judges gave Trump 10 days to secure a far smaller $175 million bond just hours before New York’s attorney general could legally begin the long, slow process of seizing his assets. The reduction in the bond amount does not reduce the total $454 million fine Trump will ultimately be expected to pay if an appeals court upholds the judgment. Rather, a bond works as assurance that Trump will pay the fine’s full amount if his appeal is unsuccessful.

Along with the fine, Trump also faces a ban from running any company based in New York and obtaining loans from any banks in the state for the next three years. The appellate judges agreed to halt both bans as the court decides on the appeal. A court-appointed monitor, who has been overseeing the Trump Organization’s financial reporting over the last few years, is expected to continue oversight of the company for another three years as part of the judgment.

[Effectively, almost no major banks can obtain a loan because just about any bank in New York are head quartered there or generally the US primary branch.]

Trump’s lawyers have said it’s impossible for him to do that for the original amount. They said underwriters wanted 120 per cent of the judgment and wouldn’t accept real estate as collateral. That would mean tying up over $557 million in cash, stocks and other liquid assets, and Trump’s company needs some left over to run the business, his attorneys have said.

New York Judge Juan M. Merchan, has scheduled an April 15 trial date for Trump in what will be the first criminal case involving an ex-president, involving allegations that he falsified business records during the 2016 presidential campaign. Merchan made the ruling, but not before scolding Trump’s lawyers as he weighed when to reschedule the trial, after a last-minute document dump caused a postponement of the original date. Merchan had bristled at what he suggested were baseless defence claims of “prosecutorial misconduct.” “Why did you wait until two months before trial? Why didn’t you do it in June or July [2023]?” Merchan asked a Trump lawyer.

Merchan has imposed a gag order on Trump, limiting him from making statements about potential witnesses in the criminal trial relating to hush money payments scheduled to begin next month. Merchan also said that Trump can’t make statements about attorneys, court staff or the family members of prosecutors or lawyers intended to interfere with the case. Trump is also barred from making statements about any potential or actual juror.

Trump attended a pre-trial hearing, where Merchan swiftly rejected the motion seeking sanctions against the district attorney’s office, setting the trial date for April 15. Afterwards, Trump went to his 40 Wall Street building nearby, speaking to reporters to attack the case against him, Merchan and one of the prosecutors on Bragg’s staff who previously worked for the Justice Department, Matthew Colangelo. Then on his social network platform, Trump continued attacking Colangelo, baselessly claiming that the prosecutor was sent to the district attorney’s office to go after Trump as Attorney General Merrick Garland’s “right hand.”

Trump complained that the gag order issued was “illegal, un-American, unConstitutional.” He said that Merchan, a veteran Manhattan jurist, was “wrongfully attempting to deprive me of my First Amendment Right to speak out against the Weaponization of Law Enforcement” by Democratic rivals.

Trump claimed that Merchan’s daughter, Loren Merchan, whose firm has worked on campaigns for President Joe Biden and other Democrats, had recently posted a photo on social media depicting her “obvious goal” of seeing him jailed. In a statement, a spokesperson for New York’s state court system said that claim was false and that the social media account Trump was referencing no longer belongs to Loren Merchan. It appears to have been taken over by someone else after she deleted it about a year ago.

Trump is officially selling a patriotic copy of the Christian Bible for $60 themed to Lee Greenwood’s famous song, “God Bless the USA.” “As we lead into Good Friday and Easter, I encourage you to get a copy of the God Bless The USA Bible,” Trump said. Inside, it has the words to “God Bless the USA” and the text of The Declaration of Independence, the Pledge of Allegiance and other historic American documents. Promotional material for the Bible shows Trump alongside Greenwood. Various clergy didn’t take long to object to the use of the Bible.

It is also quite expensive for a copy of the Bible. The FAQ section of the “God Bless America” Bible website clarifies that no proceeds from the sales of the Bible will go towards Trump’s presidential campaign. The FAQ goes on to say Trump’s name, likeness and image are under “paid license from CIC Ventures LLC which is linked to Trump.” However, there is no mention of whether any proceeds could be put toward his personal legal troubles. However, there has been no word on where the profits are going to.

[Trump is not a religious man. He rarely attended church – except maybe when someone well known died.]

Jeff Yass, the billionaire Wall Street financier and Republican mega donor who is a major investor in the parent company of TikTok, was also the biggest institutional shareholder of the shell company that recently merged with Trump’s social media company.

[Now we know why Trump wasn’t to keep TikTok around.]

The Trump campaign said they will have their own super event in Florida on April 6th where they claim they will raise $33 million. This is to out-do the star studded even on March 28th for President Biden that also included Presidents Obama and Clinton which raised an estimated $26 million.

[The campaign already know how much? Sounds like a Russian election where you know that the true leader has won before the election day.]

Trump’s presidential campaign has established titles for the various levels of donations his new joint fundraising operation with national and state Republican Party committees is seeking – as Trump races to find campaign cash for the general election. The levels are:

• “Ultra MAGA” and is designated for individuals who donate $814,600.
• “Team Trump 2024” for those who donate $250,000.
• “Team America First” for $100,000 contributions.
• “Club 47” at $50,000.
• “MAGA 24” at the $24,000 level.

It seems, Trump also has to pay money in the UK. A London appellate justice refused Trump’s request to appeal the dismissal of his case against retired British spy Christopher Steele’s company over his controversial 2016 dossier. Trump had sought permission to appeal Judge Karen Steyn’s February judgment that Trump’s data privacy case — which argued that Steele harmed his reputation by peddling “egregiously inaccurate” claims about his Russian ties — lacked merit and should be thrown out. Steyn also ordered Trump to pay £300,000 [about $513,000] in legal fees to Steele’s company, Orbis Business Intelligence, which Trump requested to be stayed.

Former Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel called the January 6, 2021 [a.k.a. The Trump Insurrection], attack on the US Capitol “unacceptable” after years of deflecting on the issue. She said that the Capitol riot “doesn’t represent our country. It certainly does not represent my party…. We should not be attacking the Capitol; we should not be having violence,”. Asked why she didn’t offer such condemnation as RNC chairwoman, McDaniel responded, “When you’re the RNC chair, you kind of take one for the whole team. Right now, I get to be a little bit more myself.”

[A coincidence that she said something after been tossed to the curbed from a coup headed by Trump?]

McDaniel, right after her ouster at the RNC, got a $300,000 a year job at NBC News but other [real] journalists and anchors started a revolt and McDaniel has lost her job.

[Part of the backlash stemmed from her supporting Trump’s 2020 denial and then taking a $300,000 a year contract when staff is being cut across various NBC divisions. As well, even though she was the head of the RNC, she wasn’t friendly with the more moderate Republicans like Mitt Romney and Nikki Haley.]

Sen. Lisa Murkowski won’t rule out bolting from the GOP. She was one of seven Republicans who voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial amid the aftermath of January 6, 2021, is done with the former president and said she “absolutely” would not vote for him. “I wish that as Republicans, we had … a nominee that I could get behind… I certainly can’t get behind Donald Trump.” Asked if she would become an independent, Murkowski said: “Oh, I think I’m very independent minded… I just regret that our party is seemingly becoming a party of Donald Trump.”

A California judge recommended that conservative attorney John Eastman be disbarred in the state over his role in developing a legal strategy to help Trump stay in power after his 2020 election loss.

Melania Trump sponsored her mother to immigrate to the United States through a family-based process that Trump aggressively sought to end, according to federal immigration records. The records detail for the first time the full path that the former first lady’s mother, Amalija Knavs, followed from Slovenia to the United States — and how the Trump administration’s policies would have made that far more difficult for others.

Melania Trump used a legal pathway that her husband and his top advisers had repeatedly disparaged as “chain migration,” the right of US citizens to bring their parents to the United States. During his presidency, Trump endorsed a bill called the Raise Act that would have limited priority sponsorship to the spouses and minor children of US citizens, taking parents off the fast-track list.

Did you know that Melania Trump arrived in the United States from Slovenia in 1996 for modelling work and obtained a green card around 2001 based on her “extraordinary ability” as a model.

[Ability?]

GOP blame the Democrats for the bridge collapse

Not long after the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore collapsed when a barge went into it….

When Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg visited the bridge collapse area Rep. Jeff Van Drew [R-N.J.] suggested without evidence that the visit was politically motivated and that Buttigieg was preoccupied with diversity policies.

Utah state Rep. Phil Lyman [R] shared another account’s post online that attacked Port of Baltimore Commissioner Karenthia Barber, a Black woman whose biography says she owns a consulting practice that takes on work related to DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] saying “this is what happens when you have Governors who prioritize diversity over the well-being and security of citizens.” Hung Cao, a Republican candidate in Virginia, said similar comments.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene [R-Ga.], a far-right member of Congress who has promoted baseless and debunked claims, took to Twitter to question whether the collision was “an intentional [terrorism] attack.”

Sen. Rick Scott [R-Fla.] attempted to connect the incident to broader questions about “the potential for wrongdoing or the potential for foul play given the wide-open border.”

Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union blamed it on the coronavirus lockdown.

I am surprised a Republican didn’t outright blame the Democrats for the bridge collapse citing bad construction – even though the bridge was built in the 1970s – even though president Nixon was president when they first started to build the bridge.

Can Trump pay his big bill?

Donald Trump doesn’t have the cash he needs to stop the state of New York from potentially seizing his assets. He’s asking the court — an institution he’s shown little but contempt for — for a bit of mercy. In a court filing, Trump’s lawyers laid out the stark economic reality facing the leading Republican candidate for president. His team spent “countless hours” negotiating with some 30 entities that could finance the roughly half-a-billion-dollar bond he’s on the hook for. But none would take the deal.

If Trump doesn’t pony up the $500 million or so he needs to set aside, pending his appeal of last month’s order against him for ill-gotten gains on his properties, Judge Arthur Engoron says the judgment may be enforced, and New York Attorney General Letitia James can start seizing Trump’s properties and selling them to pay down what he owes.

The New York attorney general’s office has filed judgments in Westchester County, the first indication that the state is preparing to try to seize Trump’s golf course and private estate north of Manhattan, known as Seven Springs. State lawyers entered the judgments with the clerk’s office in Westchester County on March 6, just one week after Judge Arthur Engoron made official his $464 million decision against Trump, his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, and the Trump Organization.

The judgment is already entered in New York city where Trump’s properties including Trump Tower, his penthouse at Trump Tower, 40 Wall Street, his hotel abutting Central Park, and numerous apartment buildings are located.

Trump invoked a dual loyalty trope by claiming Jews who vote for Democrats hate Israel. “Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion,” Trump said in an interview with Sebastian Gorka, a former Trump administration official, on Gorka’s web show. “They hate everything about Israel, and they should be ashamed of themselves, because Israel will be destroyed,” Trump continued, going on to discuss Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The remarks echoed a trope that American Jews have split loyalties to the U.S. and Israel.

[He is aiming at the Jewish population because 70% of voters in the 2020 elections voted for President Biden. Notice that he hasn’t gone after other minorities like this – although he hasn’t gone after Muslims in a little while.]

[And to add to the craziness….]

“President Trump is right — the Democrat Party has turned into a full-blown anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist cabal,” Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.

[She really has been drinking the Kool-Aid after losing her election in the House elections in 2022 and before that working as an intern for Fox.]

Trump warned hat if he were to lose the 2024 election, it would be a “bloodbath” for the US auto industry and the country. “We’re going to put a 100% tariff on every single car that comes across the line, and you’re not going to be able to sell those guys if I get elected,” Trump said during a rally in Ohio. “Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole – that’s gonna be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country. That’ll be the least of it.”

[So Trump is getting desperate? Threatening an industry? Where would he threaten next? Does he think other countries won’t do the same on American made goods?]

On the morning of January 6, 2021, in a last-ditch bid to overturn his election loss, Trump told then-Vice President Mike Pence that his decision to uphold his constitutional duty and certify the results later that day would be “a political career killer,” according to an unnamed witness who overheard part of the call.

Trump came a step closer to reaping a major windfall from his social media firm after investors in a blank-check acquisition company approved a tie-up currently worth about $5.7 billion. The deal values Trump’s majority stake in the company that holds his app Truth Social at about $3.3 billion. The windfall could prove vital as Trump grapples with the financial fallout of a string of legal cases against him.

[However, while Trump will have that stake, it will be quite a while before he actually has it all.]

It is a bit bad when Nikki Haley, who is not a candidate for the Republican party anymore, garnered 108,000 votes [18%] in the Arizona primary. No response from the Trump campaign.

Trump is expected to enlist Paul Manafort, the former campaign manager he pardoned, as a campaign adviser later this year.

[No one will be shocked if he hires others who have been convicted and I’m sure some who never were in politics.]

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. refused to delay prison time for Peter Navarro, a former senior aide to Trump, as he appeals his conviction for refusing to testify before Congress about his involvement in efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Roberts, who oversees emergency requests from the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, said he saw no basis to disagree with an appeals court ruling that Navarro must serve time while his appeal is underway. Navarro was sentenced in January to four months after a jury convicted him on two counts of contempt of Congress.

Trump suffered arguably his worst loss[es] in any criminal matter recently when, in his New York trial for alleged falsification of business records, Judge Juan M. Merchan ruled against him in virtually all of his motions to exclude evidence.

US District Judge Aileen M. Cannon ordered the defense lawyers and the prosecutors in the case to file submissions outlining proposed jury instructions based on two scenarios, each of which badly misstates the law and facts of the case, according to legal experts. She has given the sides two weeks to craft jury instructions around competing interpretations of the Presidential Records Act, often referred to as the PRA. While the law says presidential records belong to the public and are to be turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration at the end of a presidency, Trump’s lawyers have argued the PRA gave Trump the right to keep classified materials as his personal property.

Trump filed yet another lawsuit against the news media, accusing ABC News and George Stephanopoulos of defamation over assertions the anchor made in a combative interview. In an interview on “This Week,” Stephanopoulos pressed Republican Rep. Nancy Mace, a rape survivor, over her continued support of Trump after a jury found he sexually abused writer E. Jean Carroll in 1996, awarding her $88 million for battery and defamation. Stephanopoulos asserted multiple times in the interview with Mace that Trump had “raped” Carroll. “You endorsed Donald Trump for president. Judges and two separate juries have found him liable for rape and for defaming the victim of that rape. How do you square your endorsement of Donald Trump with the testimony that we just saw?” Stephanopoulos asked Mace. The South Carolina Republican defended her support of the former president, arguing that the jury decision was merely in a civil case.

According to February 2024 statistics, Truth Social has so far had 8.9 million sign-ups, of which Trump has 6.7 million followers. X, by comparison, has more than half a billion monthly users, according to Elon Musk.

A pro-Trump lawyer, Stefanie Lambert, who tried to overturn the 2020 election was arrested after a court hearing about her recent leak of internal emails belonging to Dominion Voting Systems. There was an existing arrest warrant for Lambert stemming from her failure to appear at recent court hearings in her separate criminal case in Michigan, where she was charged with conspiring to seize voting machines after the 2020 election.

The Wealthiness of Trump

Remember when Donald Trump said he was worth $10 billion net, then other high amounts?

As expected, all lies.

At one point, he was estimated to have $400 million in liquid assets. I guess not.

According to one expert, if he sold seven New York City area properties at “fire sale values”, he would have enough to pay his $464 million bill and have a bit left to pay his lawyers. 🙂

Over the years he has pissed off so many potential loaners with lawsuits and bad deals that they don’t want to touch him. [I wonder what his credit rating is.]

The Trump Organization’s payment history shows it pays an average of 26 days beyond terms (DBT), compared to the national average of 12 DBT.

There is even talk he could even declare bankruptcy. Not new to him as he has been bankrupt 4 times previously. As a presidential candidate, going bankrupt wouldn’t look good.

Finally, where are the MAGA donors? They don’t mind supposedly voting for him but won’t support him. Maybe because their donations may end up being used to pay his legal bills and not to get him elected.