If you thought that Smollett case could not get more bizarre, think again. CBS 2 Legal Analyst Irv Miller is reporting that defense attorney Tamara Walker had a sidebar conversation with attorneys from both sides and Cook County Judge James Linn. She reportedly accused Judge Linn of some improper comment and then said that he lunged at her in the courtroom. She was crying during the sidebar. Another Smollett attorney accused Linn of snarling and making faces during the trial. In thirty years of practice as a criminal defense attorney, I have never heard of such allegations in a criminal trial.
The demand for a mistrial was rejected.
In a case where the defendant is accused of manufacturing a bizarre alleged attack, the allegation of a judge lunging at his counsel seems weirdly consistent. There is no indication if there is proof of such threatening act or the alleged faces being made from the bench.
The case itself is a train wreck of a defense. Counsel seems to be throwing out unsubstantiated claims or suggestions in cross examination, including affairs with Smollett. The evidence is overwhelming against Smollett who is alleged to have hired two Nigerian brothers to stage the attack. This allegedly included a “dry run” with the men.
From the outset, the attack was facially unbelievable in many of its details.
The unbelievable elements of the original allegation did not stop the media and many politicians from immediately denouncing the racist attack as a fact. Harris described what happened to Jussie Smollett as an “attempted modern-day lynching.” Nancy Pelosi said it was a “homophobic attack and an affront to our humanity.”
He was given a fawning interview by Robin Roberts of ABC, which ended with her calling his comments “beautiful.”
ROBERTS: It’s been two weeks since that night left actor Jussie Smollett bruised but not broken.
SMOLLETT: I still want to believe, with everything that has happened, that there’s something called justice. Because if I stop believing that, then what was it all for?
ROBERTS: Beautiful, thank you, Jussie.
Whoopi Goldberg was in Theodore Rex, a cinematic masterpiece.
Professor Turley, I look forward to your posts as a breath of reasonableness in an increasingly bizarre world. Sadly, I expect that this will not be the only event falling beyond your experience of the past 30 years. I also find it perplexing that somehow former President Trump’s actions enter into an evaluation of the conduct is Mr. Smollet’s attorney.
That’s right. I began by commenting on the subject of the post, but find myself responding to remarks about Trump. For too many people everything is about Trump or race – the unhealthy preoccupations of the Left.
Sounds like Smollett hired a lawyer who thinks and acts exactly as he does. These people are absolute artists when it comes to masking their aggression, dishonesty, and racist hatred as their opposites.
John says:
“Trial by jury may not be perfect, but it’s the best available option.”
I agree. However, if and when the day arrives that Trump or is Organization is found guilty, Trumpists will reject out-of-hand a guilty verdict just like they refused to accept that Trump lost the election fair and square. Trump will NEVER accept being found guilty, and if you do agree with his lie that he was innocent, you will be branded a traitor, a RINO or accused of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Mark my words. Once you start lying for Trump, there is no turning back. (I’m talking to you, Young). You have to keep on lying.
I have marked your words – and filed them among the scores of other prophets who with utmost confidence set a date certain for the end of the world that then comes and goes. How many times have “seers” such as yourself predicted with Faucian certitude that Trump’s arrest and ultimate downfall would be upon him in a matter of days, or weeks, beginning since before his election and continuing to the present only to be humiliated in the end? One loses count. The reasonable thing to do when one is repeatedly proved wrong concerning a thing would be a reexamination of your underlying assumptions, but people like you are nothing if not reasonable.
Sadly however, the entertainment value of the antics of the hysterical anti-Trump left, which is high, does not begin to mitigate the damage you have done.
BreecePeter says:
“The reasonable thing to do when one is repeatedly proved wrong concerning a thing would be a reexamination of your underlying assumptions, but people like you are nothing if not reasonable.”
The jury is still out on Trump’s downfall, my friend. Trump has been able to forestall- with a bevy of lawyers- his being held accountable under the law, but his day of final judgment is not far off. I do not pretend to be a prophet, but I would be surprised if Trump escapes all civil and criminal culpability for his actions. We shall see who gets the last laugh.
My prediction has been though that Trump will NEVER accept the verdict if found guilty. And Trumpists will back his lie that he is innocent notwithstanding the jury’s decision. And those that turn their back on Trump will be branded traitors, RINO’s or accused of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Do you dispute my prediction or not?
Whoopie Cushion: “Do you dispute my prediction or not?”
+++
I don’t think a Whoopie Cushion really can make a prediction.
On the contrary, that’s all he does The trouble is that he and those like him, most notably in the mainstream media, have never been right, despite the best efforts to achieve the desired outcome.
There is nothing to dispute. Am I to assume you are right before the events that would make you right occur? But this would mean leaving the universe of logic, which I recommend that you at least visit some day.
Consider this. Has there ever been any President of the United States, including Richard Nixon, subjected to a hostile legal scrutiny more intense, more resourceful, more motivated and of longer duration than Donald Trump? Indisputably, the answer is “No”. Do you doubt that the two year long fruitless Mueller probe and its team of down the line Democrat, never Trumper prosecutors lacked the resources or the will to find some crime, any crime, for which he could have been indicted? Moreover, we must also include the sustained and equally fruitless efforts by state prosecutors of the same ilk. I can grant you this, as Lavrenti Beria famously remarked “Show me the man and I will find the crime”. In other words, no person is likely to survive indefinitely the efforts of a determined, powerful and corrupt security/law enforcement apparatus to bring him down. This is your great hope and I am sorry to say your faith in it is not in vain.
BreecePeter asks:
“Am I to assume you are right before the events that would make you right occur?”
Yes, it’s called a *hypothetical question*, you idiot.
You say:
“This is your great hope and I am sorry to say your faith in it is not in vain.”
I hope for law and order. If it makes you feel better, I hope Hunter Biden is thoroughly investigated (maybe he is as we speak) and if there is corruption leading to Joe, impeach the b*stard. No one is above the law. No one.
The Meuller Report indicated that it could not find SUFFICIENT evidence of a criminal conspiracy, and it stated, “If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.”
The Report did NOT exonerate Trump.
So I take it that if Trump or his company or someone in his family is ultimately found guilty, you will say that the prosecution was rigged because:
“Show me the man and I will find the crime.”
(Darren, I use the b-word affectionately as in “lucky b-stard”, but I won’t use it again since it triggers your civility filter unlike “jigabo*s” though I trust you added that racist slur to the banned list. That’s ok, you don’t have to thank for helping keep this place civilized)
I may be an idiot, but I do know the difference between a prediction, which by its nature cannot be right or wrong until the necessary event does or does not occur and a hypothetical question which asks the listener to assume certain conditions or facts before answering the ultimate question. You called it a prediction and correctly so, but now you want to call it something it isn’t because what it is has become problematic. It boils down to this; your prediction has been made so many times on so many different grounds over a period of half a decade only later and in every case revealed as based on incorrect information or deliberate falsehoods that nature itself begs you to get out of the prediction business. Let me put it an other way, if you had said “The Rams have won the Superbowl for the last four years. So, it is with the utmost confidence that I can predict they will win this year’s Superbowl” How many people would believe you?