Below is my column in the Hill on the recent decision in Georgia and the “odor of mendacity” rising out of various courtrooms across the country. It is the smell of not just selective prosecution but political bias in our legal system. It is becoming harder to deny the existence of a two-track system of justice in the country as commentators and even a few courts raise concerns over the role of politics in prosecutions.
Here is the column:
The removal of lead special prosecutor Nathan Wade from Donald Trump’s prosecution had the feel of a Southern Gothic.
Fulton County, Ga. District Attorney Fani Willis had described Wade as “a Southern gentleman. Me, not so much.” For weeks, the public has been enthralled by accounts of Wade’s illicit affair with Willis. Then there was the roughly three-quarters of a million dollars paid to Wade before he was booted from the case this week.
Channeling Tennessee Williams in his play “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” Judge Scott McAfee wrote that, after their testimony, there remained “an odor of mendacity.”
That odor was particularly strong after the hearings indicated that Wade may have committed perjury in his earlier divorce case, and that both Willis and Wade were credibly accused of lying on the stand about when their relationship began.
They are prosecuting defendants in the Trump case accused of the same underlying conduct, including 19 individual counts of false statements, false filings or perjury.
Yet, that distinct odor noted by Judge McAfee goes beyond the sordid affairs of Willis and Wade.
For many citizens, mendacity, or dishonesty, is wafting from various courtrooms around the country. The odor is becoming intolerable for many Americans as selective prosecution is being raised in a wide array of cases.
The problem is that courts have made it virtually impossible to use this claim to dismiss counts. Yet there is a disturbing level of merit to some of these underlying objections.
For years, conservatives have objected that there is a two-tier system of justice in this country. I have long resisted such claims, but it has become increasingly difficult to deny the obvious selective prosecution in a variety of recent cases and opinions.
I have long stated that the charges against Trump over documents at Mar-a-Lago are strong and based on established precedent. However, the recent decision of Special Counsel Robert Hur not to bring criminal charges against President Joe Biden has undermined even that case.
Hur described four decades of Biden serially violating laws governing classified documents. The evidence included Biden telling a third party that he had classified material in his house and actually reading from a classified document to his non-cleared ghostwriter. There is evidence of an effort to destroy evidence and later an effort of the White House to change the report. There is also Biden’s repeated denial of any knowledge or memory of the documents found in nine locations where he worked or lived.
Hur ultimately had to justify the lack of charges based on a belief that he could not secure a conviction from a D.C. jury with an elderly defendant with diminished mental faculties.
Although Special Counsel Jack Smith could still proceed on obstruction counts, his prosecution of Trump for the retention and mishandling of national security documents is absurdly in conflict with the treatment Biden is receiving.
In New York, the legislature changed the statute of limitations to allow Trump to be sued while New York Attorney General Letitia James effectively ran on a pledge of selectively prosecuting him. She never specified any particular crime, just promising to bag Trump.
Ultimately, James used a law in an unprecedented way to secure an absurd penalty of roughly half a billion dollars, even though no one lost a dime because of the Trump loans.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has also come up with an unprecedented way of using a state law to effectively prosecute Trump for a federal offense that the Justice Department has already rejected.
The same odor has been lingering in the Hunter Biden cases. The Justice Department had reached a ridiculous plea agreement with Hunter Biden that would have allowed for no jail time and a sweeping immunity agreement that would have protected him from all of his other alleged crimes.
As the plea agreement fell apart in court, the prosecutor admitted that he had never seen a defendant given such a deal over his long career. This came after the Justice Department had allowed the statute of limitations to run out on major felonies and scuttled efforts to conduct searches and interviews. Even after that embarrassing hearing, the Justice Department was still trying to preserve the agreement.
It is not just the Trump and Biden cases where there is a stench of selective prosecution. Consider a few other recent cases.
In California, U.S. District Court Judge Cormac J. Carney issued an opinion that found such evidence of selective prosecution against conservative groups. In considering a far-right group, Carney noted that the Justice Department has had sharply different approaches based on the political views of the defendants. Antifa and other leftist groups often see charges dropped, whereas federal prosecutors seek draconian sentences against conservative defendants.
“Such selective prosecution leaves the troubling impression that the government believes speech on the left more deserving of protection than speech on the right. The government remains free to prosecute those, like Defendants, who allegedly use violence to suppress First Amendment rights. But it cannot ignore others, equally culpable, because Defendants’ speech and beliefs are more offensive. The Constitution forbids such selective prosecution,” Carney noted.
That treatment was equally glaring when federal prosecutors convicted an Antifa supporter who took an ax to the door of Sen. John Hoeven’s office in Fargo. He was given no jail time, and the FBI even returned his ax.
He later mocked the government by posting on social media “Look what the FBI were kind enough to give back to me!”
Likewise, this week, former U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins was disbarred after being found to have lied to investigators about leaking material to the press for political purposes. Rollins had allegedly made a clear and knowingly false statement to federal investigators, but the Justice Department just shrugged it off and refused to indict.
FBI Director James Comey received similar gentle treatment after removing FBI material and arranging for information to be leaked to the media. Meanwhile, defendants such as Trump’s National Security Adviser Michael Flynn were pursued relentlessly for making false statements to investigators under Comey’s watch.
These and other cases have fulfilled Trump’s narrative about a politically weaponized legal system. The fact is that many in cities like New York are thrilled by selective prosecution and biased sentencing decisions directed at locally unpopular figures.
The rest of us are left in courtrooms, from Georgia to Washington to New York, asking the same question of Tennessee Williams’ “Big Daddy” Pollitt: “What’s that smell in this room? …Didn’t you notice a powerful and obnoxious odor of mendacity in this room? There ain’t nothin’ more powerful than the odor of mendacity.”
Jonathan Turley is the J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro professor of Public Interest Law at the George Washington University Law School.
The mendacity is mostly Trump’s.
Great news Benson. Viagra may be a treatment option for Alzheimer’s Disease. This could be a twofer: for your limp arguments and stiffening of your flaccid thinking
😉
For those interested this is an authentic scientific study:
Sildenafil as a Candidate Drug for Alzheimer’s Disease: Real-World Patient Data Observation and Mechanistic Observations from Patient-Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell-Derived Neurons
We found that sildenafil treatment reduced tau hyperphosphorylation (pTau181 and pTau205) in a dose-dependent manner in both familial and sporadic AD patient iPSC-derived neurons. RNA-sequencing data analysis of sildenafil-treated AD patient iPSC-derived neurons reveals that sildenafil specifically target AD related genes and pathobiological pathways, mechanistically supporting the beneficial effect of sildenafil in AD. Conclusions:These real-world patient data validation and mechanistic observations from patient iPSC-derived neurons further suggested that sildenafil is a potential repurposable drug for AD. Yet, randomized clinical trials are warranted to validate the causal treatment effects of sildenafil in AD.
Gohel D, et al. Sildenafil as a Candidate Drug for Alzheimer’s Disease: Real-World Patient Data Observation and Mechanistic Observations from Patient-Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell-Derived Neurons. J Alzheimers Dis. 2024 Mar 1. doi: 10.3233/JAD-231391.
Estovir, I stick to the Civility Code. Please do the same, as a good Catholic should; tch, tch.
ESTOVIR It is a generic for Viagra usually.
surely you jest in light of the lying sack of sh*t that is currently occupying the white house. If he isn’t lying, then he just can’t remember where he is or what to lie about. Pathetic pile of misfiring synapses and you would probably vote for him again because you have been so indoctrinated, so conditioned, so well manipulated that you think you have no choice – just open your eyes and inspect the history of the dem party since Woodrow Wilson (that is an easy starting point) and just take note of what they have become – and if you think that those moves are great – I would suggest that your need find a different nation to live in.
Is this the guy you’re talking about?
I didn’t realize just how mentally incapacitated this TFS can make one…I am so sorry…please seek help, it is available at no cost for those on the dole.
David, Trump tells the truth. That’s why he’s so hated. People can’t hear it so they call him crazy or persecute him if they are in a position to do so.
Kansas Elder, that is so obviously wrong that the only thing I can suggest is that you visit a mental health professional.
Speak for yourself. YOUR president and his ex-boss fundamentally transformed America into a country that is heading for communism, and you are one of their useless idiots.
So, what are we going to do? Just complain? Democrats don’t care about complaints, because they have control of all three letter agencies. They are in charge of the very system that should hold them accountable.
So what is the response that will effect actual change, and hold bad actors accountable?
We complain about the politicization far left of the entire education system, from kindergarten to medical school, to the point that it’s become unsafe for Jewish and conservative students on most college campuses. But nothing changes.
We complain about the politicization far left of the public broadcasting system, paid for with taxpayer dollars that amounts to free Democrat advertising, but nothing changes.
We complain about Google search engines serving the Democrat Party, and most of the media becoming Democrat PR. Nothing changes.
We complain about the weaponization of the justice system, and 3 letter agencies, against prominent Republicans, but nothing changes.
Democrats urged on the riots that tore this nation apart for a year, bombed federal buildings, burned a police precinct to the ground, and seized entire city blocks. Trump told his followers to peacefully let their voices be heard, otherwise known as exercising the First Amendment, and he’s in court. Every Democrat has called every election they lost stolen, but Trump is in court for sincerely believing that the 2020 election was rigged. Nearly every day, we discuss how the government colludes with private enterprise like the media, social media, and Hollywood, to harm Republicans and help Democrats, but calling the system rigged is de facto illegal for Republicans. Biden stole classified documents and kept them in his garage, read them to his ghostwriter, and sent them to his Chinese-funded think tank at the Penn-Biden Center, and gets away with it. Trump had the right to declassify documents as President, coordinated with the FBI on how to store them, and quarreled via his lawyers with the National Archives on what he had to turn over, and he’s in court. NY Democrat real estate moguls estimate property values on a daily basis, and banks either agree or disagree, yet Democrat activists in NY would strip him of half a billion dollars for doing the same.
We are a banana republic, in a single party state. Democrat claims to represent democracy are ludicrous.
Karen: you don’t speak for most Americans, so stop referring to “we”. Democrats did NOT “urge on riots” that happened, if you recall, after the brutal murder of George Floyd. And, please stop trying to make the case that Trump told his fans to be “peaceful”–his words were “fight like hell or you’re not going to have a country any more.” How do you “peacefully”…”fight like hell”? You consistently choose to ignore: 1. pre Jan 6th planning meetings at the war room at the Willard Hotel–rented the day after Election Day, attended by the following: John Eastman, Roger Stone, Rudy Giuliani, Michael Flynn, Steve Bannon, Joe Oltmann, Bernard Kerik, Boris Epshtyn and Christina Bobb, members of far-right militia groups, among others. And, there was another “war room” at the Trump International Hotel; there are multiple posts on like with photographic proof; these meetings were for the purpose of planning how to circumvent Biden’s win, how to stir up Trump’s fans into believing the lie that he lost due to fraud, and how to try to stop Pence from certifying Biden’s victory; 2. reconnaisance missions by the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers–to plot on the best way to distract the Capitol Police at one potential point of entry to make another point accessible; this was testified to by a British journalist who was embedded with the Proud Boys; 3. cache of weapons stored in a hotel room in Virginia, waiting for Trump’s “call to arms”; 4. Bear spray, guns and other makeshift weapons, like flagpoles, used by Trump fans to force their way into the Capitol; 5. far-right militia groups arriving in helmets and flak vests–why would you need weapons, helmets and flak vests for a “peaceful protest”–and WHAT were they “protesting”? They weren’t “protesting”–they had planned to and were intending to break into the Capitol to try to stop Pence from accepting the certified votes. The plot included a plan to submit falsified Electoral College documents and to use both tactics to get Congress to claim they couldn’t determine the winner–thinking that Congress would throw the question to state legislatures that would award Trump the presidency, even though he lost. This planned break-in was coordinated and planned by Trump and those listed above, among others. AND, it was this plot to circumvent the will of the American people that is getting Trump hauled into Court–not the First Amendment. This conduct cannot be allowed to stand unchallenged.
Trump is incapable of sincerity because he is a malignant narcissist and chronic, habitual liar. He KNEW he lost: a. because all polls predicted he would lose; b. the country was in turmoil–COVID out of control, daily new records for infections and deaths, economy in a tailspin, with unemployment in double-digits, schools, businesses, restaurants and leisure travel closed down, shortages of computer chips and consumer goods; c. Chris Krebs, Trump’s own hed of cybersecurity, when asked about helping him prove there was fraud, told Trump that 2020 was the most-secure in history. He got fired for telling this truth; d. all of Trump’s election consultants told him that in-person voting would favor him, but mail and absentee ballots would not, and that he shouldn’t get enthused about early returns–he actually tried to stop mail and absentee ballots from getting counted and tried to force Fox to retract calling Arizona for Biden; e. he started claiming fraud even before Election Day, claiming that the only way he could lose would be if the election was stolen–despite all the polls predicting he would lose; he took a victory lap at 2:00 a.m., even before all of the votes were counted. Then the “Stop the Steal” lie tours were done–all to stir up people into believing the Big Lie.
Biden did not STEAL classified documents–Trump did. The difference is intent and how the discovery of the possession of the documents was handled. Biden did not deliberately take documents with the intent to keep them. Trump did–he took them after being told he couldn’t have them. Upon discovery of the documents (all going back years when he was VP) Biden immediately contacted the Archives and turned over the papers. Trump ignored polite requests to return the documents, returned some, lied about returning the rest, moved boxes of documents around to prevent the FBI and his lawyer from finding and returning them, tried to destroy security footage proving boxes were moved around and stored them in unsecure locations. Trump lied about “mentally” declassifying documents–there is a process for both classifying and declassifying documents that involves a paper trail–that does not exist for the documents Trump stole. There was no “Chinese funded” think tank that held Biden’s papers, either.
As to Trump’s NY woes–he lied for years by inflating the values of his assets, so he could borrow more money on better terms than if he had told the truth. For the same time period, he downplayed the value of his assets for tax purposes, which proves that the false valuations on the financial documents were deliberate. The issue is not whether he defaulted on the loans–the issue is intentional misrepresentation that could have resulted in lenders losing–Trump has previously defaulted on loans and took bankruptcy 6 times. He got tagged for the value he gained from his lying. The NY AG is responsible for protecting the integrity of the financial markets that are headquartered in New York.
You have both proven the mutually assured destruction and bipartisan corruption.
“There was no “Chinese funded” think tank that held Biden’s papers, either.”
Please.
Biden’s Penn Center is funding almost entirely by the Chinese Communist Party. Those documents all over the Penn Center and Chinatown were fully accessible to the Chinese and Hunter the bagman too.
Biden stole every single document he had no authority to have in his possession going back for 40 years.
Biden is a criminal who has been selling his political office since the day he got inside to enrich himself and his sick, degenerate crime family. That is a fact.
Biden not only did not have authority to possess the documents, he is on record admitting that he KNEW this. Biden is one of the biggest lying scumbag criminals to ever be installed illegitimately into the Presidency in order to let the leftist/globalists destroy the country while he sits on the beach eating ice cream.
Trump will never concede that he lost the election — because it was stolen. He knows it. They know it. And he will never give them that concession. Nor should he. Biden did not win. It was stolen. That is what happened.
It’s scary how brainwashed the left has made all of you with their constant propaganda and lying. You don’t even know how truly DISinformed you all are.
Here’s what Newsweek’s fact checkers found about Trump’s lie that the Penn Center is funded and controlled by the Chinese:
Unverified.
Evidence shows the University of Pennsylvania has received donations from China. However, the claim that the Penn Biden Center is directly Chinese-funded is somewhat misleading. The Center is paid for by the university, of which funding from donors makes a fraction of total contributions, and donations from China are an even smaller fraction of that. Currently, there is no public evidence that the Penn Biden Center is directly funded by donations from China to the University of Pennsylvania. Therefore, at present, we rate this claim as Unverified.
Oh make no mistake, the Biden Penn Center is flush with Chinese Communist Party funding.
So are the Biden family’s offshore accounts.
So is Harvard, Penn, Yale, all the Poison Ivy’s have no qualms taking tens of millions from the Chinese Communists and Quatar – home of Hammas.
Get a life. Biden has done great. How many troops are in Afghanistan? It wasn’t trump that said enough is enough.
How’s the economy doing after trump failed miserably with his COVID policy that can be summed up in “it will just go away some day”. Give me a break. trump is and was a disaster, Biden is no spring chicken but at least the rest of the western world doesn’t think so bad about us anymore.
Follow your leaders advice, grab em by the pussy because you can.
Sure, Biden has done great. LOL.
“JUST IN – Supreme Court indefinitely blocks Texas from enforcing immigration law. — CNN”
————–
“There is no legal remedy to even slow down the coordinated invasion of our country.
Realize where we are.”
@Oilfield_Rando
————–
Elon Musk
@elonmusk
“We have imported the criminal underworlds of 100 different countries
And the Biden Administration does nothing”
🚨𝗕𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗞𝗜𝗡𝗚 – Federal Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman has determined that illegals have the right to bear arms.
In a recent ruling, Judge Coleman declared that the federal law barring illegal immigrants from possessing guns violated the Second Amendment.
You can’t make this up, they want to strip citizens of their Second Amendment rights and give them to illegals.
These are their new soldiers.
This is Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman’s courtroom number, leave a polite but firm message on what you think of her decision.
(312) 435-6885
How’s the economy doing after trump failed miserably with his COVID policy that can be summed up in “it will just go away some day”.
That is exactly what happened. Like all respiratory viruses, covid burned itself out. The lies came from Fauci that he could “manage” a pandemic. Centuries of history would not be denied
So you know more about how the U of PA funds this project than the University itself? Or, maybe you’re calling them liars? WHAT offshore accounts? Do you have any proof? Or , are you just regurgitating the lies you heard on pro-Trump media?
WaPo called the majority of Trumps 30,000 lies misleading, not outright lies so since this claim is somewhat misleading, it should be considered a lie
There is so much nonsense in this scribe, so much laughable said about the saintly Biden, that I will just comment on your very last sentence. The NY AG is responsible for protecting the integrity of the financial markets that are headquartered in New York. This corrupt AG has succeeded in causing an unprecedented flight from the City and the State of businesses with plans to bring great projects here. O’Leary himself has announced that the plans for a 4 billion dollar power plant planned for UpState NY has been scratched all because of what this corrupt AG has done to one of our most important business leaders who just happened to be a President of the USA. Smart and successful business leaders are wary of starting up here because of what this greedy and highly unethical “lawyer” can do on a whim. But her day is coming.
Well stated! 100% correct!
It was my understanding, as a layperson, that Hur’s job was to determine if a crime had been committed, not if a jury would feel sympathetic to the defendant.
Joe Biden had command of his faculties at the time that he willfully took classified information, while serving as Vice President and in the Senate. It does not matter that years later, he suffered from dementia.
Elderly defendants are wheeled into courthouses, with their oxygen tanks and medical staff, to face charges with some regularity, such as aging Nazis facing war crimes.
Their present condition is relevant for sentencing, not their guilt at the time they committed crimes.
People here like Fish, Wally, Dennis gloating that a rich man can’t come up with enough money.
While a majority of their fellow Americans can’t come up with $1,000 if there’s an emergency.
Which one of these seems like a story that could use much more attention than it’s getting?
People like Fish, Wally and Dennis don’t give a tinker’s fart about their fellow Americans who can’t come up with $1000 in an emergency.
Trump’s “fellow Americans” don’t lie to try to borrow more money and at lower interest rates than if they told the truth, and they wouldn’t expect to get away with it if they did. And, if they did get caught, they probably wouldn’t whine about getting a judgment against them based on the the benefit they got from lying, either.
No one lied to borrow money.
Trump literally did what most everyone does – including ordinary people.
If You – Gigi go to a bank to borrow money against your house – the bank is going to ask you “how much do you think your house is worth ?”
That is the starting point of every loan. They use that to establish the maximum you can borrow.
AFTER that a whole long process called “Due Diligence” starts.
That process is the bank confirming to itself that their risk to loan you money is low.
Due Diligence means people get hired to do an appraisal, an environmental assessment, a property condition assessment, a title search, For investment properties rent rolls, and cash flow are checked. A title search is done. Other loans and liens are checked.
All these services are due diligence. They all involve banks hiring independent experts to do these things.
And YOU – the borrower must pay for them. If you get the loan – you pay for them. If you don’t get the loan – you pay for them.
As a separate matter it is litterally impossible to lie about the value of something you own.
Why ? Because value is subjective – all economics is dependent on that.
If I buy a hamburger – two things must be simultaneously true.
I value the hamburger more than the money I pay.
The person selling the hamburger values my money more than the hamburger.
If both of those are not true for every single free exchange ever – then free exchange would not occur.
And the economy would collapse.
A bank does not really care what YOU think your property is worth. At most it is used as a starting point in calculating a loan.
But it is just a start. U;timately the bank is going to use appraiusers to establish what the Market thinks the property is worth.
Regardless there is no objective value to anything ever.
Trump deliberately inflated value of his assets on financial statements he used to borrow money. One glaring example: he tripled the size of his apartment–which is less than 11,000 sq. ft– by claiming it was 33,000 sq ft. For the same time period, he deflated the value of the same assets for taxation purposes, which proves that the misrepresentations were deliberate. Alan Weisselberg said that the misrepresentation of the size of the apartment benefitted Trump to the tune of $200 million. Judge Engoron found the misrepresentations were bad enough to “shock the conscience”. The values Trump claimed were so wildly disproportionate to any comparable properties that it left no doubt that Trump was deliberately committing fraud.
Trump lied on financial statements in order to qualify to borrow more money and at lower interest rates than if he had told the truth. Financial statements are submitted under the penalties for perjury, and if you lie, you can be held to account. The fact that the bank can decide for itself what a fair market value of an asset it is irrelevant to the fact that Trump deliberately lied, and the NY AG is holding him to account for his lies. The rest of what you say is nothing but arguments–and they didn’t fly at the trial and won’t fly on appeal, either. Trump has always had a bad reputation for lying and misrepresenting his alleged wealth.
Every day – sometimes twice a day someone calls me to buy an apartment building that I own.
They ask me what it is worth.
My answer is $500K cash (and rising).
That value is high. Why ? Because I do not want to sell my building. It would be a hassle. I would have to pay capital gains or I would have to reinvest quickly. But $500K is a number that would make that hassle worthwhile.
I am not lying – 500K IS the price you must pay to get me to sell.
It may not be the price you wish to pay.
Value is subjective.
The only correct price for something is what a willing buyer and a willing sellor agree to.
You can not lie about value.
Value is NOT subjective–it is objective assessment, based on several factors, such as comparable properties, features of the property, size of the land, amenities in the house or building, age of the building, improvements, deisrability of the area, schools, stores and restaurants in the area, public transportation and so forth. Your argument is that the value of your property, to you, is $500K, because that’s what you’d want in order to sell. But, if you died and your heirs had to split the property several ways, the probate court would appoint one or more appraisers to determine the fair market value, and they would use standard techniques like those I described to come up with a number. You, indeed, CAN lie about value when you make up numbers like Trump did.
Getting a benefit is literally the engine of prosperity.
The market seizes unless market participants “get a benefit”.
There is no objectively correct answer to who should benefit and by how much.
I can tell you what you will have to pay to buy something from me. I can not tell you what it is worth to you.
Nor can I be responsible for assuring that you benefit
Elon Musk in the eyes of most of us significantly overpaid for Twitter – should the shareholders that sold it to him have to give him money back because they “lied about its value ?”
Of course not.
In the free market – the sellor gets to decide all the conditiions that must be met before they will sell.
The buyer gets to decide all the conditions that must be met before they will buy.
If you agree to exchange – you have agreed to the benefit you get. You are not entitled to more.
I paid too much for the apartment building I bought many years ago.
I benefited less than I should have. But that is MY fault – not the sellors.
They said what they wanted and I agreed to pay it.
Before I did, I checked that it would be an investment that paid off – and it was.
But thge fact that I overpaid – that is MY problem.
If I had told the sellor I was only willing to pay 2/3 of that – they might have agreed.
Or they might have walked away.
You can not lie about a price in a contract negotiation.
DB was entirtely free to walk away. They did not, they got the benefit they are entitled to.
I just bought gas at a gas station – they charged 3.59/gal. An hour later I found another station that only cost $3.49.
Did the first station lie ?
Can I sue them. ?
You – and James and Engoron and all those on the left who rant about lying about value are complete total imbeciles.
I find It puzzling that the SCOTUS has not identified the leak of the decision of Roe vs Wade.
Also, the Secret Service has never identified the person who hid cocaine in the White House.
Lastly, will America continue down this road? It seems apparent that doing so will lead to a more communist regime.
The regime will not harm its own people. The question is, when will men and women of courage decide they’ve had enough and risk their own livelihoods and safety to bring down this evil empire that has usurped power. Evil always makes a strategic error at some point, it overreaches or miscalculates. That will surely happen with the current regime, but when? How long will it take?
How about the Jan 6 bomber?
Turns out the FBI had the guy tracked down within the week, and just buried the info.
JT, hang in there
Jonathan, Jonathan, Jonathan, Jonathan, Jonathan, Jonathan, JONATHAN
Mendacity?
______________
“We just have to win this election because he’s even predicting a blood bath,” Nancy Pelosi.
A Bloodbath of American cars by invaders pushing Sino-Mexican Junks*.
Pelosi says stupid things because America allows stupid people to vote, unlike the severely restricted voters the American Founders entitled.
*Junk (ship) – A junk (Chinese: 船, chuán) is a type of Chinese sailing ship with fully battened sails.
Dennis:
DJT can’t bond out to appeal, well golly gee Dennis, isn’t that what it was designed to do? That and deplete Trump’s resources to support his re-election? Election interference, if Biden is too senile to prosecute he’s too senile to serve, set aside his corruption.
As I’ve always said to the Pollyanish lawyers who tell me “Oh Justice is blind”: Yeah but she must a good sense of smell because she finds the money and the power (as in this case) every time. Any system is only as good as the people who run it, as my father always said. He was dead right and today we have folks with lots of ambition and no ethics. That’s what this is all about. That and a great dose of stupid:
The DAs bringing these cases by legislation subverting Statutes, kangaroo courts and partisan jury pools should and will be held personally accountable for the monies squandered. Seems not too far out now but watching this clown show really pulls the curtain back revealing the corrupt idiots doing their best at creating anarchy. Does anyone believe inside trader Pelosi or Schumer or McConnell gives two shhets about the tax paying American CITIZEN? They’ve broken the bank, the border, the family and the American dream but they have not broken the American. A dear lifetime military officer friend of mine told me, you will know what to do when the time arrives.
Jonathan: Braking news! DJT doesn’t have the money to post a bond in the enforcement of the $464 million judgment by Judge Engoron. That’s right, DJT is broke! In a opening brief before the NY Appellate Division DJT made this admission. That despite diligent efforts it would be “impossible to secure and post a complete bond”…including “countless hours negotiating with one of the largest insurance companies in the world…obtaining an appeal bond in the full amount is not possible under the circumstances presented”.
There you have it folks. After securing a bond from Chubb for the $83.3 judgment in the E. Jean Carroll case, DJT is maxed out. He has nothing left as collateral to secure a bond in the second judgment. No insurance company, not even apparently Chubb, will touch him. He’s a poor risk. He’s a deadbeat!
Despite all his bravado about being one of the richest men in the world and claims by Alina Habba that her client is a billionaire and could easily put up the money for the bonds–the real world has come crashing down around their heads. So now DJT goes hat in hand to the NY Appellate Division and begs for mercy: “Please give me a stay without a bond. If you don’t Letitia James, in about 2 weeks, is going to start going after my buildings, my bank accounts–everything. Don’t let that happen. Give me a break!”
Who thinks the Appellate Division of NY will give DJT a break? I don’t. I would tell DJT this: “Donald, say goodbye to your 30,000 sq. ft. (correction: 10,000 sq. ft.) triplex in Trump Tower. That’s soon going up for sale along with the building! But, hey, there’s always Mar-a-Lago. Right? Don’t count on that either. Well, you can always move in with Eric. I was just wondering. How is Melania taking all of this?”
It is not possible for you to get anything right.
Trump is not “broke” – he is unable to negotiate a bond under impossibly adverse circumstances.
You mistate well known facts. Trump has atleast 400M in cash, but if he committs it, he will be unable to run his businesses.
I know this is foreign to you but multipbillion dollar enterprises require substantial cash on hand
The inability to meet immediate cash needs was the cause for the financial crisis.
Separately Trump has at a bare minimum 1.2Billion dollars in properties that he owns free and clear. And another Billion that have loans against 50% of their value.
The issue is not being “broke”, it is having to by force negotiate a massive loan under deliberately hostile circumstances.
Is the appellate division going to do something – absolutely, otherwise they are in violation of the 5th and eighth amendments.
Not to mention the mess that NY will inflict on itself if it moves forward.
But you go ahead and beleive whatever you want.
What you say are “well known facts” come from a pathological liar–DJT. He CLAIMS he has $400 M in cash, and needs it to “run” his businesses. How long ago was that deposition taken in which he made this claim? Haven’t his businesses made any money in the meantime? Where did you get the idea that owns “free and clear” $1.2 B in properties? If he really did own “free and clear” properties with this much value, he’d have no trouble whatsoever leveraging that equity into an appeal bond to cover about a $500M judgment. Because he can’t get any bonding companies to give him a bond, I am assuming you are once again relying on pro-Trump media and/or Trump for your facts– which just don’t add up. What Trump’s really afraid of is that if he’s forced to sell some properties, potential buyers will know about his financial problems, which will drive down the sale price–and, that’s probably correct–which means that the properties aren’t worth what he says they are. Trump has always lied when it comes to claims about how rich he is and how much his properties are really worth.
And, did it occur to you that the talking heads at Fox all live in NYC?
” He CLAIMS he has $400 M in cash, and needs it to “run” his businesses.”
No that is from independent financial analysts.
There is an awful lot of public information regarding most large businesses.
“How long ago was that deposition taken in which he made this claim?”
I did not say Trump made this claim. Nor did I say it was in a deposition.
Is every single expert on law, or finances, or business or pretty much anything wrong if they disagree with you ?
“Haven’t his businesses made any money in the meantime?”
I am sure they have. They also may have lost some.
We know that the idiot judge Engron put in charge lost millions in the brief time she actually excercised control.
As I have said before successfully managing a multibillion dollar enterprise is NOT easy.
Ordinary people can not do it – or they would be billionaires.
Millionaires can not do it – or they would be billionaires.
“Where did you get the idea that owns “free and clear” $1.2 B in properties?”
Again this is all both public reported and in publicly available business records.
Your the only one disputing it.
Forbes as an example has been assessing the wealth of billionaires for most of my lifetime.
Are you saying they do not know what they are doing ? That it is all made up ?
Or that they only get Trump wrong.
Personally I am surprised that he has $400M in cash – that seems like alot of cash for a business his scale.
But I do not know his cashflow needs.
What I do know is that the impact of a decision like this wil not only be bad for Trump, it will be bad for those who work for him, bad for buisinesses that depend on Trump’s businesses, and bad for NY and NYC and Bad for business in general in NY.
I keep constantly harping on the fact that this is all about FREE CHOICE.
There is NO FRAUD – DB chjose to extend loans to Trump – they were free to refuse.
Trump chose to ask for those loans – he was free to walk away.
I have repeated over and over, Fraud requires a lie, a duty, and actual harm. A duty means that something such as a CONTRACT allows you to rely on the alleged lie. If Gigi tells me that the DJIA is going to crash tomorow and I short the DJIA big time and lose my shirt – that is MY problem – You lied, but you owed me no duty.
In this case there is no actual lie – because value is subjective.
There is no duty.
and there is no harm.
But free choice goes beyond this.
Investors are free to invest elsewhere. Investors do not care in the sense of labels whether a state is run by democrats or republicans.
But they do care about whether the policies are good or bad. And they absolutely care about their risk. These decisions increase risk.
When you increase risk – then only high return investments get funded 0 you get less investment.
You already should know well that higher taxes drive people out. States like NY and CA that deliver more value overall CAN get away with slightly higher taxes – because there is extra value in CA and NY. But there is a limit to that.
There is a mass movement in Tech to TX. That should terrify you, because much of TX is really a pretty crappy place to live – expecially compared to CA. We are also seeing people – businesses, etc move to Florida, which is not as unattractive as TX. But is still not CA, which mostly is pleasant year round.
Regardless, people can CHOOSE. And the behavior of govenrment effects the choices that people make.
I would also note that though people in the US are extraordinarily moble compared to the rest of the world – the wealthier you are the more moble you are. Bad government hurts the poor more than the rich – the Rich can move easily.
” If he really did own “free and clear” properties with this much value, he’d have no trouble whatsoever leveraging that equity into an appeal bond to cover about a $500M judgment.”
False – These decisions pose a major problem for Trump – no one wants to be in court with Trump facing James and Engoron.
James and Engoron have made it clear that they are going to micromanage any financial relations that Trump is involved in.
Investors are not going to loan Trump money for the same reason they are leaving NY – the risk created by James and Engoron.
I would note that there likely are places Trump can get money quite easily – The mideast as an example.
But Trump is running for president, and in addition to all other factors he can not even create the appearance that some foreign entity has leverage over him. Those of you on the left have falsely claimed that even when it was not true.
Finnally – it is virtually impossible – no matter who you are to get a secured loan especially against property in less than 45 days.
“Because he can’t get any bonding companies to give him a bond”
There are a whole host of factors here – Trump needs cash to run his businesses – I do not know the exact amounts. What I do know is that whatever cash he has on hand – that is probably necescary and he really can not tap it. That is just the norms of business.
You have have an incredibly profitable business – if you artificially create a cashflow problem – you can be bankrupt quickly.
A substantial portion of business bankruptices are cashflow issues not actually being in the red or being insolvent or not being profitable.
Next – despite what James and Engoron pretend – borrowing – especially secured borrowing is incredibly complicated and time consuming. It is likely you have no clue all the work other people went through to give you a mortgage.
And Unlike Engoron’s and James stupid claims – those people payed very little attention to anything you claimed.
If you have ever gotten a mortgage – do you think the bank relied on your valuation of your property or did they have a private appraisor value it ?
Do you think the bank relied on what you said your income was – or do you think they asked for tax returns or other income verification ? If you are a business – they want books – probably AUDITED books.
Do you think they checked your credit ?
Do you think that they verified all other borrowing that you have done – or did they just trust what you said ?
James’s theory of business, law, reality is completely Bogus – Engoron knows that, James knows that – they do not care.
No one is going to voluntarily get themselves involved in that.
“I am assuming you are once again relying on pro-Trump media and/or Trump for your facts”
You constantly assume wrong.
To a very large extent I am relying on my own DECADES of knowlege of business and finance.
One of the busineses I own is a Due Diligence business – Banks hire me to assess properties such as those of Trump’s.
I have done several hundred high value properties. Including BatteryPlace and JW Marriot Park Ave in Manhattan.
When I talk about the ways businesses operate – it is because I have operated many businesses. I have started businesses, I have financially managed businesses. Nowhere near the scale of Trump. But I know far more about business than a 96- W2 employee.
i also rely on publicly available information.
“which just don’t add up.”
What does not add up – is pretty much anything you or those of you on the left have ever argued.
You are all unbeleivably ignorant of the real world.
You are sure that you are right – even though you not only do not have a clue what you are talking about – but you do not even have a clue how much you don’t know.
“What Trump’s really afraid of is that if he’s forced to sell some properties,”
Grow a brain – you can’t sell a property in the time frame that Trump has been forced into.
Nothing is litterally impossible. But absent a buyer like the Saudi’s who can plop down several billions of dollars in cash with no mortgages no title searches, no due dilligence – it just can not be done.
That has NEVER been an option in the time frame Engoron provided.
“potential buyers will know about his financial problems”
Correct – Engorn and James ARE Trump’s financial problem – they are the BIG RISK, and why no one will touch him.
“which will drive down the sale price”
Again a property sale is not possible – so you are off in never never land.
That said your argument -= just as you have framed is DESTROYS the entire case against Trump.
you have correctly noted that if someone is faced with a fire sale – that the price will drop.
VALUE IS SUBJECTIVE – it is NOT possible to establish an objective value to anything.
It is therefore not possible for any valuation to be fraudulent.
Going the oposite direction – can you KNOW what a Van Gogh will sell for at auction – of course you can’t.
Value is subjective is the core to all modern economics. You can not make economics actually work without understanding that.
In fact you can not make an economy work if value is not subjective.
Free exchange does not occur unless BOTH parties think they are better off after than before the deal.
Any concept of objective value makes that impossible. Objective value is zero sum.
If the lender is better off after a deal – then the borrower must be worse – so no one would borrow.
“and, that’s probably correct–which means that the properties aren’t worth what he says they are. ”
The properties are worth what a willing buyer and a willing sellor agree to.
That is the ONLY value of anything. A sellor can ask any value they want.
A buyer can offer any amount they want.
But an exchange requires them to agree – and the value they agree on is the only true value, and it is only true for that moment.
You can not make an economy work if that is not true.
“Trump has always lied when it comes to claims about how rich he is and how much his properties are really worth.”
So What ? I will bet you have no idea what YOU are worth. And that if I asked you – you would probably given me an answer that is wrong.
Trump and anyone else is free to claim they are worth however much they wish to.
Your not even entitled to know if they are telling the truth or if they even know what the truth is.
Am I entitled to know what you are worth ?
Are you entitled to know what I am worth ?
You are free to demand that Trump tell you what he is worth or you will not vote for him.
But if he does not answer or you do not like the answer – the only recorse you have is your vote.
And Trump does not care – because your not voting for him no matter what.
“And, did it occur to you that the talking heads at Fox all live in NYC?”
While I am aware of that – it is completely irrelevant.
Millions of people live in NYC – though hundreds of thousands less than in 2019.
Dennis is a proud recipient of the Order of Mendacity. With clusters.
DM – Trump is a multi-billionaire. Forbes estimate as of 4 days ago is that his net worth is 2.6B.
I would separately note that James can not get at assets outside of NY easily and thoe in NYC are acctually leveraged.
Regardless,
Whether you or she like it or not – she can not just confiscate the property.
There will be an appeal whether you like it or not.
All or most of this judgement will be tossed.
This will happen – because in the event that I prove wrong – New York will be the HUGE loser.
Investors are allready fleaing NY.
Gov. Hoschuls stupid claim this was Trump unique – not only did not reassure investors, but scared them further and provided even more damning basis for appeal.
Why is this Trump unique ?
as pretty much everyone with any involvement in realestate knows – The conduct James called fraud is the NORM for all real estate transactions.
If as Hoschul claims this is Trump unique than it is unconstitutional.
You may not target a person.
I know that is hard for you left wing nuts to grasp.
But the rule of law requires that government enforce laws blindly.
When it targets a specific person – Government is lawless.
Which BTW is the theme of Turley’s article – though you seem to miss that.
Just to be clear – outside of frothing left wing nuts – no one cares about this.
If in some form you are correct – and you have succeeded in destroying Trump – which is highly unlikely – you will have concurrently amplified the damage you have done to yourself and to New York.
I have little expectation that James is going to be taking posession of anything, but should she actually do so – I will be celebrating the mess that Lefties make of their own World.
You Think Trump is bankrupt. But he could walk away from his holdings in NY.
That is not what will happen.
I will bet you that the NY appelate courts are going to make a huge accommodation.
The risk to NY is too great otherwise.
But you beleive what you want.
That’s right, DJT is broke!
you are a drooling retard.
Rich people cannot come up with 25% of their gross assets in cash.
normal people cant do it.
Rich people are rich because they leverage their assets to fund other revenue producing enterprises.
But since you are so proud of your ignorance, you see no constitutional violations here. Demanding huge sums of money to access the legal system? You believe that the way our courts should operate?
Your a disgusting piece of human debris.
If Trump didn’t want to be paying out $490 million he shouldn’t have committed fraud in the people of NY. He’s a billionaire, a billionaire who loves to stiff vendors and brag about his net worth. Insurance companies won’t lend him anything because he’s high risk. Just like anyone else.
He can still try to sell MAL for $1.5 billion to the Saudis. Or he could ask the Saudis for a “little” loan.
he shouldn’t have committed fraud in the people of NY
Fraud on the people of NY? Just shows how divorced from reality your little world is. What “people of NY” did he defraud? Can you name a victim? All the banks that lent him money knew exactly what his collateral was worth, and willingly lent him the money to make a profit (the only reason corporations enter contracts), which they did – they made exactly the profit they expected to. So . . . tell me again which “people of NY” got defrauded? Name a single victm.
Oldman, Anonymous lives in a sardine can and can’t rub two bits together. That sardine can palace is the best of anonymous. Right now, he is demonstrating that he knows nothing about finances. He would be better advised if he took his knowledge from his dead sardine roommate.
His dead sardine roommate . . . would that be fishwings?
million he shouldn’t have committed fraud in the people of NY
Seriously get some help with reading for content.
Are you going to condone the Government pricing defendants out of access to the justice system?
You are as disgusting as DM. You are burning down the whole system because you disagree with their politics,
Mar-A-Lago is in Florida. While it is not impossible for James to reach assest out of state – it is extremely difficult and she will face hostile courts. Further Trump has sufficient assets in NYC to cover the judgement.
I doubt that Trump will walk away.
I doubt that the courts will let James confiscate assests in NYC.
But I could be wrong – that could happen – and the BIG loser would be New York.
The courts are not going to stop this nonsense because they like Trump.
They are not going to do so because the conduct of lower courts is lawless and unconstitutional.
They are going to do so out of self preservation.
So, Chris Wray returned Antifa Activist Thomas “Tas” Alexander Starks’s Axe after he destroyed federal property in North Dakota and the U.S. Attorney’s Office recommended downward departure and that Starks could receive probation instead of the recommended guideline sentence of 10-16 months in prison. You mean like the sentences of all of the J6 people who walked around the Capitol taking selfies with Capitol Police Officers ? The Biden Administration is PROUD of their double standard of justice in today’s Amerika Jonathan. It’s how they are “saving democracy”.
Here’s a classic example of the “odor of mendacity,” complete with actual sound effects:
This is not LAW in Georgia; this is a jurisprudential clown show.
Judge Scott McAfee should be ripped out of that seat along with Fani Willis, Nate Wade et al. for political “lawfare,” usurpation of power, abuse of power, and corruption.
Courts cogitate far too much; courts must stop “making it up” as they go along and follow the law.
It is incumbent now upon the judicial branch and Supreme Court to prosecute the bad actors in this case and similar cases throughout the nation.
The singular American failure is the judicial branch, with emphasis on the Supreme Court.
Courts must void all acts contrary to the clear meaning and intent of the Constitution and statutory law.
Courts must be prosecuted for “legislating from the bench” and “making it up as they go along.”
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
“…courts…must…declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void.”
“…men…do…what their powers do not authorize, [and] what they forbid.”
“[A] limited Constitution … can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing … To deny this would be to affirm … that men acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.”
– Alexander Hamilton
With the utter mockery of the judicious system in NYC, Trump having to come up with a HALF BILLION just to appeal a verdict where NO ONE, no bank, lost a penny, I WILL NEVER INVEST IN NYC AGAIN. And I will make damn sure my heirs do not either. WE HAVE A DUAL SYSTEM OF JUSTICE, selective justice, is by every definition, communism. If we had a Republican Party that wasn’t mostly afraid of their own shadow this crap would not happen. A dark dark maybe unrecoverable day for a country my dad was proud to serve in uniform. NYC I promise you won’t see our money. We’ll obey all the laws. We’ll never threaten anyone. But we’ll also be praying against you.
Who’s the fascist, again? Joey so funny, haha hehe. The filthy corrupt Biden actually told this joke —->
“At Gridiron, Biden sends a thank-you kiss to all his party’s lawfare warriors:
‘The other day, a defeated-looking man came up to me and said, ‘I’m being crushed by debt. I’m completely wiped out.’ I said, ‘Sorry, Donald, I can’t help you.”
@ByronYork
@Anonymous
I sure wish the anonymous posters would us a name so we could differentiate. Yep.
And Donnie can’t post his $464M bond for his appeal of his NYS fraud verdict. Rumor has it the Trump Tower will be renamed E.Jean Carroll Tower! Hahaha
A so-called billionaire can’t pay his bail, and his moron MAGA cult is sending him money.
Those of you on the left do not seem to grasp that you have put yourselves into a lose lose situation.
Please, Please keep behaving like the $hits that you are.
It was a sham trial, by a biased judge.
You celebrate a perversion and gross miscarriage of justice by leeches and parasites entirely bereft of evidence and having exceeded any and all rationality and statutes of limitations.
That makes you the very same type of parasitic leech—one who promotes the “dictatorship of the unaccomplished failed hired help.”
The Ten Commandments address those virtues (sarc) by stating: Thou Shalt Not Covet and Thou Shalt Not Steal.
The 80-year-old hag amassed a whopping two million-dollar (the price of a house in CA) estate over nearly a century, so she allies with the Deep Deep State to covet, lie, cheat, and steal “legally.”
What the —- have actual Americans allowed the America of the Founders under the Constitution of the Framers to become?
She’ll probably she was raped there too.
MSNBC’s @BeschlossDC: “A major party candidate is saying, ‘You elect me, there’s going to be dictatorship, bloodbath, violence, retribution against my political enemies that equals what we’ve seen in Germany & Italy & other places.”
Uh, no Beschloss, that is what we are seeing in Biden’s America, right now, today.
You can see all of that from Moscow?
Fishstick, did you read the part where he said, “that is what we are seeing in Biden’s America, right now, today.”
I get it, you are a product of leftist public education where you cannot read, write or do math, but you sure can change your sex based on the day of the week!
Yikes-yours were apparently Fish.
How dare Mr Bechloss MISREPRESENT what was said. He knew the context about the auto industry and STILL HE CHOSE TO SLANDER and misstate! Congratulations Mr Bechloss you are the latest one to reveal your Ananias or Sapphira bias in Trump years.
Is there anyone that actually buys this nonsense from the left anymore ?
Mendacity, or lying or deceitfulness, covers a wide range for the Democrats. I think it was evident in the Prof. LeFriecq piece the other day, vis a vis the white power structure. Mendacity also overwhelms the senses in the gender-affirming Dr. Mengele stuff, ad the whole Voter ID suppresses minority rights argument. But race-baiting seems to be the biggest are of gross mendacity. I saw this today, as a link in a story about South Africa’s water problems. It concerns Jackson, Mississippi, and their ongoing water problems:
““And we all know why,” Roberts, the activist, said. “Nobody wants to invest in Jackson because of who runs Jackson and who lives in Jackson. Because white folks don’t dominate here anymore. They just want to keep on letting stuff break until we break and go away. That’s what it feels like.”
With a population that’s 82% African American, Jackson is the single Blackest large city in the nation. Roughly 1-in-4 residents live in poverty, and in some west and south Jackson communities, the hardest hit by water outages, the average household pulls an income of $25,000 and as low as $15,000 in some pockets.
The capital city has lost roughly 40,000 residents since the population peaked at about 200,000 in 1980, after an initial wave of white residents left to avoid putting their children in integrated schools. Half of the decline occurred in the last two decades as more middle-class Black families moved, and the city’s white population continued to drop from 52% in 1980 to 28% in 2000 to 17% in 2019, according to U.S. Census data.
As the customer base declines, the system might clean and pump out less water, but the same infrastructure remains under the surface of Jackson’s 111 square miles, an area geographically larger than Seattle, Baltimore or Cincinnati. Parts of Jackson’s 1,500 miles of water mains are over 100 years old.”
https://mississippitoday.org/2021/03/24/why-jacksons-water-system-is-broken/
++++
Notice that it was not just the white middle class that left Jackson, but also the black middle class people. Yet, in that same article we find:
““These would be hard problems, but we could solve them if it wasn’t for racism.”
Manuel Teodoro, an associate professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison’s La Follette School of Public Affairs and Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies”
++++
That’s mendacity at work. Blaming racism for white people and black people both, fleeing from the city. The problems that the poor black people cause are preventable. And flight from those areas did not have to occur, and could be reversed, if the areas became safer, and more normalized. Currently, Jackson is one of the least safe cities in the country. As it is, Jackson can not afford to fix the water problems with the overwhelming number of impoverished people there. It is a shame. Jackson used to be a nice city. I remember partying there one night, in the 1990s. But lying about the root cause of the more wealthy people moving out, or the root cause of the problem, won’t fix anything. This is a problem coming to a large city near you, and smaller cities too, like East St. Louis.
Checks and balances are as true as the integrity of the individual. Today, party politics trumps individual integrity.