Bragg To Trump: STFU!
Manhattan DA asks judge to protect jurors, restrict Trump's 'extrajudicial statements.'
Mark your calendars, March 25 is coming!
That’s the day MOST PERSECUTED MAN IN HISTORY Donald J. Trump has to post bond or pay out for being such a losing loser in the New York state business fraud case that proved he’s a fraudy fraud, and also the day jury selection is due to begin in his criminal porn-star-hush-money case, aka 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, aka “INJUSTICE BASED ON THE NOW ANCIENT ‘NO AFFAIR’ STORY OF STORMY ‘HORSEFACE’ DANIALS!!!” [sic]
PREVIOUSLY!
Preparing for kickoff, both sides have been filing filings, with Trump lawyer Todd Blanche trying to exclude Trump’s “grab ‘em by the pussy” Access Hollywood tape, as well as testimony from Stormy Daniels, Karen MacDougal, and poor Michael Cohen, who allegedly ponied up $130k of his own money to buy off Stormy, had a tough time getting it back from Trump, and went to prison for his efforts. Why not exclude all the testimony? Why not just forget all of this ever happened? If you don’t ask, you can’t get!
Now Team Bragg has asked the judge to shield the jury’s info, and restrict Trump’s “extrajudicial comments” on the case, aka his tendency to smear, threaten and harass anyone and their children and housepets related to his cases. Yep, it’s the old Trump gag-order song and dance again.
Extrajudicial comments, why, him? In case anyone has forgotten, Bragg and co. have helpfully prepared a phone-book-sized compendium of the past years of Trump’s deranged and rambling threats to DA Bragg himself, as well as other courts, judges, law enforcement, judges’ families, and jurors (though many of those pages are single-pagers of his ‘Truth’ sharts). He is a Tasmanian devil cartoon, argablarghablarghing a path of destruction in all caps at any and every perceived enemy who crosses his path, until someone can lure him back into a crate with a song or booby trap.
Will he get a gag order? Will he violate it immediately? Will Judge Juan Merchan finally be the one to lock him up? Yes, probably, and doubtful, though we aren’t Dionne Warwick so we can’t predict everything.
Anyway, you’re used to Trump’s threats, but this filing treats you to a whole garbage bag full.
He called the Special Counsel a “thug”; a “deranged lunatic” and “psycho”; and a “sick and deranged sleazebag.” […] He attacked the Special Counsel’s wife and his sister-in-law. [...] And he attacked a potential witness in the case, former Attorney General William Barr, calling him a “Gutless Pig” and a “disgruntled former employee,” who is “lazy,” and “weak & totally ineffective.”
The firehose of threats Bragg’s office has already gotten before trial even starts are in here, along with “Liddle” Mike Pence, Mark Meadows, Fani Willis getting doxxed, “SleazeBag Lawyer” Michael Cohen, Ruby Freeman, and the more recent attacks on Judge Engoron’s clerk, his wife, and his daughter:
A New York court security official attested in a sworn affirmation that defendant’s public attacks on Justice Engoron and his law clerk had “resulted in hundreds of threatening and harassing voicemail messages” that, when transcribed, spanned “over 275 single spaced pages.”
The tome of threats also serves as a compendium of the judiciary’s earlier failures to protect Trump jurors. Remember when the grand jurors in Fulton County had their names released because no one in the DA’s office moved to restrict it, so their addresses and photos were on right-wing websites within minutes? Not great!
Or the more innocent days of United States v. Stone? Geriatric bad boy Roger Jason Stone Jr., that is. Stone and his Nixon tramp stamp have popped up somewhere in every Republican presidential campaign since Dirty Dick’s, though he resigned as a consultant from Bob Dole’s campaign and got more into lobbying with his fellow wife-swapper Paul Manafort after The Enquirer uncovered his personal ad in a DC swinger’s magazine, which read, “Hot, insatiable lady and her handsome body builder husband, experienced swingers, seek similar couples or exceptional muscular well-hung single men.” He describes himself as “try-sexual, I’ll try anything!” Guess Bob Dole was a bit of a prude.
And so now Stone and The Enquirer are together again, at least in spirit for this case. The “newspaper” allegedly caught and killed the MacDougal and Daniels tell-alls on Trump’s behalf, because it did not want your inquiring mind to want to know! David Pecker is a loathsome man, but he’s got one juicy vault.
Anyway, Stone’s 2019 case was in a lot of ways the dry run for Trump’s trials, with Stone going balls-out with all the threats to the judge, argablarghablarghing and limit-testing that Trump enjoys pulling today. Stone worked on Trump’s 2016 campaign, and you may recall was on trial in DC for being one of the witches in the RUSSIA WITCH HUNT. He was convicted of seven charges: obstruction of a congressional investigation, five counts of making false statements to Congress, and one for tampering with a witness, after he got busted serving as an intermediary between WikiLeaks and the Russian hacker who stole Hillary Clinton’s buttery emails and John Podesta’s risotto recipe. But the real show was on Stone’s Instagram, where he simply would not shut the fuck up, amassing followers as he posted pictures of federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson with crosshairs behind her, while ranting and raving:
Through legal trickery Deep State hitman Robert Mueller has guaranteed that my upcoming show trial is before Judge Amy Berman Jackson , an Obama appointed Judge who dismissed the Benghazi charges again [sic] Hillary Clinton and incarcerated Paul Manafort prior to his conviction for any crime. #fixisin Help me fight for my life at @StoneDefenseFund.com
Back then it was the craziest shit we’d ever seen, and Judge ABJ eventually went as far as to ban Stone from using social media entirely. Stone was convicted, but that was not the end! Two jurors were naive enough that they publicly identified themselves, and immediately they were harassed and menaced with phone calls, mail, and threats by Alex Jones and Trump himself, who Tweeted and ranted in speeches:
There has rarely been a juror so tainted as the forewoman in the Roger Stone case. Look at her background. She never revealed her hatred of ‘Trump’ and Stone. She was totally biased, as is the judge. Roger wasn’t even working on my campaign. Miscarriage of justice, sad to watch!
But Stone never really left his campaign, did he? Trump commuted his 40-day sentence days before he was supposed to start serving it, and on December 23, 2020, pardoned him completely, just in time for him to pop up again at the Willard Hotel on January 6. They may have their disagreements, what with Stone raging about Trump’s “abortionist daughter” after it became clear Stone wasn’t going to get that second pardon he was asking for, but how long can he stay mad? They’re peas in a pod.
Judge Merchan has yet to rule on Trump and the prosecution’s requests, but we’ll keep you posted!
Trump is already getting special treatment from the justice system. What other defendant, indicted for mishandling classified information and thereby a flight risk, who keeps violating every judicial order he is subject to, would be allowed out on bail?
Just fucking bring the hammer. Don't worry--the republic will survive, if not thrive.
Needs a gag order forthwith. But folks steel yourself for disappointment, because President Klan Robe is the figurehead of a massive Christian nationalist movement that is willing to excuse all of this man's horrors. And in America that gets you *wide* deference. Keep this in mind, knowing you still have to vote him and his enablers down in November.
No court case will save us or make redundant this necessary work. Even if President Klan Robe shuffles off this mortal coil, his replacement will be rallied behind and we still have to defeat them.