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.]

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.

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.

Pro-Russia and ignoring cases

In this past week, Donald Trump continues to spin things and then ignores the facts that things he has said are already at different courts to be decided or have already been denied.

More than 72 hours after Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s death in an Arctic penal colony, Trump mentioned him by name for the first time in a post on his social media site that focused not on Navalny, but his own legal woes. President Joe Biden and other Western leaders have blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for the 47-year-old’s death, responding with anger and demands for answers. But Trump made no mention of Putin or Navalny’s family in the post that instead cast himself as a victim and continued to paint the US as a nation in decline.

“The sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country. It is a slow, steady progression, with CROOKED, Radical Left Politicians…. WE ARE A NATION IN DECLINE, A FAILING NATION! MAGA2024.” [I removed the usual whining comments from his post.]

Trump’s reference to Navalny’s “sudden death” was notable. Prison officials allegedly told Navalny’s mother when she arrived at the penal colony hat her son had perished from “sudden death syndrome.” The previous time when someone saw him alive, just within 48 hours, he was alive and looked well. At one point Trump compares Navalny’s time persecuted by the Russian regime him being persecuted by the Biden government.

[Navalny death was listed by Russian authorities as natural causes. You just don’t collapse and die from natural causes.]

The Securities and Exchange Commission has approved the merger proposal of Trump’s media start-up with a special purpose acquisition company, a critical step for a long-delayed deal that would make the owner of Trump’s website Truth Social a publicly traded company and unlock $300 million in investor funds. The approval is a victory for Trump, who will hold more than 78 million shares in the post-merger company, a filing shows — a stake that, at current prices, would be worth nearly $4 billion. Trump, who would own between 58 and 69 percent of the company.

[Being worth $4 billion is not the same as selling at that price.]

Trump could be at risk of losing some of his prized properties if he can’t pay his staggering New York civil fraud penalty. With interest, he owes the state nearly $454 million — and the amount is going up $87,502 each day until he pays. New York Attorney General Letitia James said that she will seek to seize some of Trump’s assets if he’s unable to cover the bill from Judge Arthur Engoron’s Feb. 16 ruling. Under state law, he is being charged interest on that amount at an annual rate of 9%. Any appeal requires a 10% bond on the judgment. So to appeal the $355 million ruling, he will need a $70 million bond.

Engoron has denied Trump’s request to delay the judgment for a month. Once the judgment is officially entered, it will start the 30-day clock for Trump to file an appeal. During that period, Trump will need to put up cash or post bond to cover the $355 million and roughly $100 million in interest he was ordered to pay the state.

So with Trump having a big bill to pay, he could use his Super PAC contributions but after spending $50 million in 2023 on legal matters, he has just over $5 million in the piggy bank. He needs money to pay his legal bills but also needs it for his campaign.

So what is he doing? He is selling Trump branded running shoes called “The Never Surrender High-Tops”. They go for $399 each pair. [We will assume it is a pair! You never know!] He is also dishing out perfume and cologne for $99 each. [Did he rip off a perfume or cologne manufacturer? Or maybe just filled up the containers with water and some smelly chemical.] He announced the running shoes at [get this] Sneaker Con in Philadelphia.

Trump urged a Florida judge to dismiss the criminal case charging him with illegally retaining classified documents, claiming in part that presidential immunity protects him from prosecution even as that sweeping argument has so far in failed in federal appeals courts in a separate case. Trump’s lawyers wrote that the classified documents charges turn on his alleged decision to designate the papers as “personal” records under the Presidential Records Act, and argued that he cannot be prosecuted since that was an “official act” made while he was still in the White House.

[Just like with everything else, his lawyers push for something that has already been decided elsewhere. You can’t dis miss a case when the validity in presidential immunity is still in question. And those documents were supposed to be returned to the government in January 2021 but were not and much of it was left unsecured.]

Washington’s federal appeals court in its decision this month was unsparing in its repudiation of Trump’s novel claim that former presidents enjoy absolute immunity for actions that fall within their official job duties. But Trump’s lawyers argued that the appeals court’s decision was wrong, telling US District Judge Aileen Cannon she should not follow the court’s “poorly reasoned decision” in the classified documents case.
[Wow! It was a poorly reasoned decision. OK. So Trump should be off the hook. Not.]

Trump’s lawyers argued that Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appointment of special counsel Smith to investigate Trump was “unlawful” and grounds for dismissing the documents case. They also are attacking the law Trump is accused of violating as “unconstitutionally vague” as applied in his case.

[Might as well just say the case should be dismissed because the floors were not clean or they ran out of cappuccino at a nearby coffee (covfefe!) shop.]

The Supreme Court declined to revisit sanctions levied against two pro-Trump attorneys who filed frivolous lawsuits challenging the outcome of the 2020 election in Michigan. Sidney Powell and Lin Wood filed separate appeals asking the justices to review sanctions imposed by a US district court in 2021. The Supreme Court denied both appeals without offering any comment on the case.

Trump said that he supports women having access to in vitro fertilization in response to the Alabama Supreme Court’s IVF ruling and called on Alabama lawmakers to “act quickly to find an immediate solution” to keep the procedure available in the state.

[I wonder if Trump has enough clout to get Alabama to reverse or modify its position.]

Trump’s campaign has released an ad attacking rival Nikki Haley over her supposed stance on the state’s gasoline tax when she served as governor. But the Trump ad leaves out critical context about Haley’s position on the gas tax, omitting key comments to make her sound like the unequivocal tax-hiker she never was. In her speech, Haley said “Let’s increase the gas tax by 10 cents over the next three years” but the ad failed to include “when coupled with the 30% income tax cut, it still represents one of the largest tax cuts in South Carolina history.”

In a recent survey conducted by a panel of experts specializing in the American presidency, President Biden was ranked the 14th-best president, while his likely 2024 presidential opponent Trump found himself at the very bottom of the list. From 2024 Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey, President Obama is ranked 7th [was 15th last year]. However, a noticeable partisan split emerged in the rankings for Obama and Biden, with Democrat respondents placing them at an average of sixth and 13th, while Republicans ranked them at 15th and 30th, respectively.

In 2021, MyPillow founder Mike Lindell offered $5 million to anyone who could disprove his claim that he had data showing voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Now, he must pay a 64-year-old from Nevada that award, a federal judge ruled. Lindell, a prominent election denier and staunch supporter of Trump, claimed to have data showing Chinese interference in the 2020 race.

Robert Zeidman, a computer forensics expert who voted for Trump twice, did just that, a federal judge in Minnesota determined Wednesday, upholding a previous ruling from a private arbitration panel. Zeidman is owed the $5 million payout plus interest, Judge John Tunheim wrote in his ruling.

Abraham Josephine Riesman, author of the 2023 unauthorized biography of WWE’s Vince McMahon, said a young Trump has been watching McMahon family wrestling since he was a child in the 1950s. Riesman says Trump took his “showmanship” from how the WEE has evolved into not just wrestling. McMahon and his wife are major donors to Trump’s campaign.

[McMahon has faced multiple allegations of sexual misconduct over the years. He remains under federal investigation, and he has not commented publicly on millions of dollars in hush-money payments he reportedly made to several women at WWE. McMahon, who is 78, resigned last month as executive chairman of TKO, pro wrestling’s parent company, after being sued by a former employee who says she was sexually abused and trafficked by McMahon to other men at WWE. I guess fitting. Trump hangs around with Jeffrey Epstein and McMahon.]

18% of Americans believe in the Taylor Swift election conspiracy theory – that is she was secretly involved with the Biden administration to get him re-elected. It jumps to 32% for Republican voters! In comparison 12% think the moon landing was faked and 10% believe the earth is flat.

[Seriously. Why is it that these whack job crazy conspiracy theories seem to comes from the right. It is fitting that some of them are liars (Trump, George Santos, Mike Johnson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, etc.)]

Trump testifies

[He should get use to where he is sitting. He will be seeing that view quite a bit over the next year or so.]

An hour into his testimony in his fraud case in New York, Donald Trump’s commentary on the witness stand in his civil fraud trial has led to multiple admonishments from Judge Arthur Engoron, who has repeatedly told Trump not to make speeches and just answer questions. Trump has paid little attention to the judge’s instructions, continuing to give lengthy asides about the values of his properties, his perceived unfairness of the case, and in general not answering the question asked.

Just like what his sons said, he said “All I did was authorize and tell people to give whatever is necessary for the accountants to do the statements.” However, don’t the accountants work for him. Ultimately he is responsible.

[I’m not going to bother mentioning what Trump has said in his testimony unless something is new because most of it is a subset of his usual ranting.]

Judge Aileen Cannon has decided that, for now, Trump will still have a May 2024 trial before her on charges of mishandling classified documents. The classified records indictment has questions raised – with substantial known witnesses and even audio evidence – about how casually Trump treated national security information after his presidency.

A plumber, a maid, a chauffeur and a woodworker are among Mar-a-Lago staffers and contract workers who federal prosecutors may call to testify against Trump and his two co-defendants at their upcoming criminal trial in Florida. Other likely witnesses also include Trump Secret Service agents, former intelligence officials, as well as people who were in the room with Trump when he was captured on multiple audio recordings referencing a military document about potential plans to bomb Iran, according to the sources. [Well, those four are about to be fired.]

In another rally in Texas of falsehoods “They want to go all electric,” Trump said while criticizing the Biden administration, “even though we don’t have enough electricity to cool down California in the summers. Did you see, they had blackouts all over the place this summer? It was a disaster. The winter’s no good … the whole thing is crazy. ‘Let’s go all electric, but we don’t have enough electric to take care of somebody’s air conditioner in California.’” California Independent System Operator, which manages the power grid for 80% of the state, said they had no outages. The Trump campaign couldn’t show proof where there were outages.

In the November elections, endorsed by Trump but often described as Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell’s protégé, Daniel Cameron’s defeat will stir a lot of finger-pointing within the Republican Party. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was directing his at Trump after the polls closed, calling the result “another loss for Trump.” Trump had endorsed Cameron. Not a good track record for real races [not the ones where his candidate won easily as expected.]