'Special Treatment'? Politico Legal Editor Claims Legal System Is Too Nice to Trump

If anybody has any doubt about the extreme liberal bias of Politico, an article they published on Friday should resolve that matter. Their legal editor, James Romoser, attempted to portray the legal system as being too nice to Donald Trump.  The diatribe was headlined: "How Donald Trump Gets Special Treatment in the Legal System." ...He lies about his cases. He vilifies the judges overseeing them — and then vilifies their wives and daughters, too. ...As Trump prepares to begin his first criminal trial on Monday in New York, the tolerance of his tirades is perhaps the most glaring sign of the judicial system’s Trump exceptionalism. But it’s far from the only example. Over the past year, in ways large and small, in criminal cases and civil ones, Trump has consistently been given more freedom and more privileges than virtually any other defendant in his shoes. Romoser's fraud kicked into high gear when he invoked the name of New York Attorney General Tish James who campaigned for her office on a blatant platform of going after Trump: "New York Attorney General Tish James won a $454 million civil judgment against him for perpetrating years of corporate fraud." Although James told Rachel Maddow she had no vendetta against Trump, her own words prove her to be a flat-out liar. Something that the venomous Romoser avoided since it completely undermines his ridiculous premise about Trump somehow getting special treatment from the legal system: It is hard to believe this is being allowed in the United States… she has been waiting for this moment her entire life. pic.twitter.com/3w3lLgN8WO — Eric Trump (@EricTrump) November 6, 2023 So far gone is Romoser's hatred of Trump that he even expressed outrage at the appeals court which lowered his bond set by Judge Arthur Engoron in the New York (victimless) civil fraud case from nearly a half billion dollars to $175 million. But after Trump complained to a New York appeals court, a panel of judges intervened with an unexpected 11th-hour reprieve, issuing a terse, unexplained order that sharply reduced the bond amount that Trump had to post while he appeals the verdict. The decision ensured that Trump wouldn’t have to start selling off assets and that James couldn’t start seizing them. Although Romoser went on to whine about Trump using his Fulton County, Georgia mugshot as a "fundraising tool" he carefully avoided any mention of the district attorney in that case, Fani Willis, currently under investigation for corruption. Ironically, although the subtitle of one of the sections in the Romoser diatribe was "A fusillade of vitriol," he launched into "a fusillade of of vitriol" against any judge who displayed any sense of fairness in the midst of the politically weaponized lawfare launched against him. A few examples: ...Cannon’s deference to Trump has carried over into the post-indictment phase of the case. She has raised the eyebrows of plenty of legal experts — and stoked the frustrations of prosecutors — by issuing confusing rulings on some pretrial matters while leaving others unresolved for long stretches. Most significantly, her plodding pace has cast a pall of uncertainty over the trial schedule — another delay that benefits Trump. ...But with Cannon, some experts detect a more sinister motive: If Trump is elected, many believe she would be on his short list for a Supreme Court appointment. Despite all the media hype, the Bragg case is so weak that even the fairly liberal Vox mocked it as dubious in "The dubious legal theory at the heart of the Trump indictment, explained." ...Bragg built his case on an exceedingly uncertain legal theory. Even if Trump did the things he’s accused of, it’s not clear Bragg can legally charge Trump for them, at least under the felony version of New York’s false records law. ...The felony statute requires Bragg to prove that Trump falsified records to cover up a crime. Bragg has evidence that Trump acted to cover up a federal crime, but it is not clear that Bragg is allowed to point to a federal crime in order to charge Trump under the New York state law. ...There’s also one more twist here. The statute of limitations for the felony version of the false records crime is five years, while the statute of limitations for the misdemeanor version is only two years. Trump’s final payment to Cohen occurred in December 2017, which was more than five years ago.

Sounds Absurd: CNN's Elie Honig Underlines Weakness of Alvin Bragg's Case Against Trump

CNN's legal analyst Elie Honig writing in a Cafe Brief newsletter that was reprinted in New York magazine on Friday presented both the pro and anti Trump ways of looking at the Alvin Bragg case that takes place on April 15 in Manhattan. It is obvious which of the two point of view that Honig thinks is most realistic in "Donald Trump’s Trial Is a Rorschach Test." ...The crime is a paperwork offense relating to how Trump and his businesses logged a series of perfectly legal (if unseemly) hush-money payments in their own internal records. The prosecution’s star witness is a convicted perjurer and fraudster who openly spews vitriol at the defendant, often in grotesque terms, essentially for a living. The famously aggressive feds at the Southern District of New York passed on the case years ago, and current Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s predecessor could have indicted before he left office but did not. The charges are either misdemeanors or the lowest-level felonies (depending on how the jury decides the case), and the vast majority of defendants convicted of similar offenses are sentenced to probation and fines, not prison. Having presented the POV favorable to Trump, Honig then presents what appears to be a rather lame way of looking at the trial from someone hostile towards Trump presenting it as a desperate payoff scheme in 2016 to keep his campaign from collapsing: ...To keep his listing campaign from capsizing, Trump and his team paid off porn star Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about an alleged extramarital affair and then labeled those payments “legal expenses.” Already the first American president or former president to face indictment, Trump could soon become the first to sustain a felony conviction, and it’s possible he could lose the 2024 election — and eventually wind up behind bars — as a result. It's not hard to discern which of these viewpoints Honig thinks best reflects reality. This is also reflected in what else he wrote: ...Paying hush money is not a crime. In fact, a hush-money agreement, though seedy, is legally no different from any other contract between private parties. So Trump knowing about the Daniels payoff — and he clearly did — is merely a starting point here and insufficient to prove anything criminal. The charged New York State crime here is falsification of business records. The DA alleges Trump had the hush-money payments fraudulently recorded in his internal books as “legal expenses” (rather than, I don’t know, “hush money to porn star”). If proved, that’s merely a misdemeanor, a low-level crime virtually certain to result in a non-prison sentence. For comparison, under the New York code, falsification of business records has the same technical designation as shoplifting less than $1,000 of goods. ...But it’s not entirely clear whether Trump was involved in the actual logging of those payments in the internal records of his business — remember, that’s the crime. In fact, when Cohen secretly recorded his then-client talking about a hush-money payment to another woman in 2016, Trump seems clueless about the accounting mechanism. ...The received wisdom is that the Manhattan case is the least important, and will be the least impactful, of the four pending Trump indictments. The first part of that proposition is beyond reasonable dispute. One has to wonder if Donald Trump is guilty of so many massive crimes as those who oppose to him allege, why do the cases against him such as the Manhattan case appear to be so incredibly weak and prosecuted by either corrupt or highly biased or flawed officials while being surreptitiously aided by the Biden administration? Hopefully, Elie Honig won't be shunned by his CNN colleagues for his observations about the Manhattan case.

Ailes-Hating Vanity Fair Scribe: EEK, Here Comes 'Terrifyingly Competent' Trump!

Remember when the media mocked Donald Trump for being incompetent? Well, that is now old news. Nowadays a new narrative is developing that Trump is actually very competent and that terrifies many journalists including Gabriel Sherman, a special correspondent at Vanity Fair. Sherman wrote a nasty book about Fox News boss Roger Ailes titled The Loudest Voice in the Room that came out ten years ago. (Trump was mentioned once, very briefly.) He described his terror on Thursday with a piece titled "Inside the Terrifyingly Competent Trump 2024 Campaign." The subtitle of his horror tale even included this terror alert for others, "How worried should you be? Very." If Trump wins back the White House, his increasingly extreme and violent rhetoric is poised to become policy. The New York Times reported Trump plans to order mass roundups of undocumented immigrants and detain them in deportation camps. Trump has promised to direct the Justice Department to prosecute Joe Biden. At a rally in February, Trump said he would encourage Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to any NATO country that doesn’t increase military spending. Veterans of Trump’s first administration are sounding the alarm. “He is the domestic terrorist of the 21st century,” former communications director Anthony Scaramucci has said. Former attorney general Bill Barr testified to the January 6 Committee that Trump was “detached from reality.” GASP! You mean Trump might use lawfare to imprison his political enemies via a politically weaponized DOJ? Who ever heard of such a thing being done in America? Oh, and the sheer shame of actually enforcing immigration laws is absolutely intolerable! And now we come to the real source of poor Sherman's terror: the new Trump loyalists won't leak to the leftist press!  But here’s where a second Trump administration might really distinguish itself. While his 2016 agenda was frequently stymied by infighting and incompetence, available signs point to a second West Wing staffed by loyalists who would actually carry out his policies. The takeover of the Republican National Committee, which Trump recently completed, installing his daughter-in-law Lara as cochair, is a blueprint to keep in mind. “President Trump knows who can deliver and who can’t. The backstabbers who were around in 2016 won’t be in this next White House,” Trump’s senior campaign adviser Jason Miller told me. ...In 2024, Trump’s inner circle is made up of heads-down operatives Susie Wiles, Chris LaCivita, Miller, and James Blair, who don’t play their agendas through the media. “You have experienced people who don’t leak,” longtime Trump confidant Stone said. Trump trusts his senior team to do their jobs. In the past, Trump worked the phone constantly, soliciting advice from a wide circle of friends, family, Manhattan business associates, and media personalities. Trump’s style of pitting staffers against one another created an incentive to leak. “The side whose opinion lost would run to the media,” a 2020 campaign veteran explained. “This time, he’s not talking to randos.” Finally we get an apocalyptic warning from Sherman about competent Trump's supposed threat to democracy: So how extreme could a second Trump administration get? One thing is certain, few of the guardrails that protected American democracy during his first term are still standing. ...Whether through enhanced discipline or legal circumstance, it appears ever more likely that a second Trump administration would be better primed to achieve its goals. Beware! Beware the competent Trump unhindered by the "guardrails that protected American democracy." Maybe he will be so competent that using lawfare via a politicized DOJ won't boomerang on him as has happened to Biden.

'Taking Down Trump' Author Wails on MSNBC After Trump Bond Reduced to $175 Million

Monday was a tough day for liberals. In the wave of wailings over a New York appeals court ruling that reduced Donald Trump's bond from $454 million to $175 million, few were more plaintive than the meltdown emanating from the author of Taking Down Trump. Tristan Snell is a former assistant Attorney General of New York and MSNBC analyst. It was so bad that it seemed as if another type of analyst would be needed to get him over the emotional toll the appeals court decision handed him. Contrast the wailing Snell on MSNBC below to the smug, smirking Snell who back in January was already gloating in anticipation over the financial strain that Judge Arthur Engoron imposed upon Trump in the infamous victimless fraud trial.   MSNBC guest has an on air meltdown over Trump’s bond being reduced. Can you imagine election night if Trump wins? I’m giddy just thinking about how amazing it will be: pic.twitter.com/YbSRY8Xpyl — Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) March 25, 2024 Honestly, this is so infuriating I don’t even know what to do. I don’t even know if I care what the process is that these judges are arriving at. Whatever it is, it’s flawed. I can tell you that much. David put it well. This is a different process for this person. We have decided that he gets his own private court of justice. He has a private plane. He has private clubs that he lives in. He basically has fashioned himself his own private militia to try to take over the Capitol. Now he’s getting his own private system of justice. This is an absolute travesty. His own private system of justice? Snell somehow can't see an entire justice system politically weaponized against Trump with multiple trials in order to use lawfare, rather than the ballot box, to keep him from returning to the White House. Snell followed up his MSNBC meltdown with a flurry of entertaining X (which everybody will forever still call "Twitter") meltdowns:   There’s a good chance that $175 million is still too much for Trump to come up with He probably doesn’t have the cash (despite what he says) — and he’s too much of a credit risk for that big of a bond Watch him ask for more time or for the amount to be lowered even more — Tristan Snell (@TristanSnell) March 25, 2024   We should just build Trump his own courthouse now — a cupcake court. Shaped like a giant orange cupcake. Filled with his own cupcake judges handing down cupcake decisions since His Cupcakeness is apparently already above the law. — Tristan Snell (@TristanSnell) March 25, 2024   BREAKING: NY’s justice system Appellate judges hand Trump a gift, cut bond down to $175 million, give him 10 extra days Imagine a basketball team down by 40 points, and with 1:00 left in the game, refs give the losing team 5 more minutes — and lower the hoop from 10ft to 6ft — Tristan Snell (@TristanSnell) March 25, 2024   Donald Trump has a private jet. Donald Trump lives in private clubs. Donald Trump assembled a private militia to attack the Capitol. Now he gets his own private system of justice — available to him alone. NO ONE ELSE would get the special treatment he gets. NO ONE should. — Tristan Snell (@TristanSnell) March 25, 2024 Perhaps poor Tristan Snell should change the title of his book to "Taken Down By Trump."

Atlantic Magazine Begs Justice Sonia Sotomayor to Retire from Supreme Court

Imagine being not yet seventy years old and being told, not exactly politely, that in the interest of liberalism you have to be put out to pasture. When that message went out to Justice Stephen Breyer in 2021, he was at least over eighty when the leftists told him his time was up on the Supreme Court. With Justice Sonia Sotomayor, despite being over ten years younger than Breyer when he retired, Josh Barro writing for The Atlantic announced that it was time for her to withdraw in the interest of liberalism as you can see in "Sonia Sotomayor Should Retire Now." As you read Barro's plea for Sotomayor to split the Supreme Court scene you can sense his irritation with her for not voluntarily leaving as yet of her own accord as a personal sacrifice for the greater cause of liberalism: Justice Sonia Sotomayor will turn 70 in June. If she retires this year, President Joe Biden will nominate a young and reliably liberal judge to replace her. Republicans do not control the Senate floor and cannot force the seat to be held open like they did when Scalia died. Confirmation of the new justice will be a slam dunk, and liberals will have successfully shored up one of their seats on the Court—playing the kind of defense that is smart and prudent when your only hope of controlling the Court again relies on both the timing of the death or retirement of conservative judges and not losing your grip on the three seats you already hold. But if Sotomayor does not retire this year, we don’t know when she will next be able to retire with a likely liberal replacement. It’s possible that Democrats will retain the presidency and the Senate in this year’s elections, in which case the insurance created by a Sotomayor retirement won’t have been necessary. But if Democrats lose the presidency or the Senate this fall—or both—she’ll need to stay on the bench until the party once again controls them. That could be just a few years, or it could be longer. Democrats have previously had to wait as long as 14 years (1995 to 2009). In other words, if Sotomayor doesn’t retire this year, she’ll be making a bet that she will remain fit to serve until possibly age 78 or even 82 or 84—and she’ll be forcing the whole Democratic Party to make that high-stakes bet with her. Barro justifies his rather impolite desperation by citing his liberal nightmare of a 7-2 court: If Democrats lose the bet, the Court’s 6–3 conservative majority will turn into a 7–2 majority at some point within the next decade. If they win the bet, what do they win? They win the opportunity to read dissents written by Sotomayor instead of some other liberal justice. This is obviously an insane trade. Democrats talk a lot about the importance of the Court and the damage that has been done since it has swung in a more conservative direction, most obviously including the end of constitutional protections for abortion rights. So why aren’t Democrats demanding Sotomayor’s retirement? And now Barro basically tells Sotomayor to get the hell off the court. Some Democrats close to the Biden administration and high-profile lawyers with past White House experience spoke to West Wing Playbook on condition of anonymity about their support for Sotomayor’s retirement. But none would go on the record about it. They worried that publicly calling for the first Latina justice to step down would appear gauche or insensitive. Privately, they say Sotomayor has provided an important liberal voice on the court, even as they concede that it would be smart for the party if she stepped down before the 2024 election. This is incredibly gutless. You’re worried about putting control of the Court completely out of reach for more than a generation, but because she is Latina, you can’t hurry along an official who’s putting your entire policy project at risk? If this is how the Democratic Party operates, it deserves to lose. Yeeesh! It appears that Josh Barro has no problem about appearing to be gauche or insensitive by demanding that Sotomayor resign and any pretense in support of their sacred diversity be ditched in the interests of the greater liberal good.