342 Comments

I’m convinced there is no shortage of evidence that “the boss” was ignoring the law, the election results, his own lawyers, and centuries of tradition to simply squat in his farty chair and refuse to leave. Refusing to leave is one thing. But ordering people to defy Congress, create fake electors, file lawsuits alleging imaginary fraud, and finally storm the Capitol is an act of insurrection and an attempted coup. He’s guilty, but what’s the punishment? I doubt they jail him. I’m guessing house arrest for 2 years or something insignificant like that. He’ll be permitted to run in 24, because even if convicted of a felony, Congress or SCOTUS will rule it unconstitutional to bar a convicted felon from running, perhaps because he already was potus, or some other specious reasoning. We won’t be rid of him until nature takes its course.

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These Trumpetoons disgust me.

"Forget the election, forget the law, we'll just stay in power as if nothing had happened."

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"But I understand fraud from having been a prosecutor for 10 years, and knew generally what the fraud suit should be if the evidence showed what I thought it showed."

Step one: Establish legal strategy and conclusions

Step two: Find and review evidence.

Somehow I think when you do things in that order you are more likely to find the evidence that you want instead of actual, y'know, evidence.

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But even so they couldn’t find any evidence!

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Dan Scavino, who had been in charge of social media and was then deputy chief of staff. That's a normal progression of job titles if I ever heard one.

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founding

You guys know who else was called "the boss", right? What is the English translation of "Il Duce"?

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The Duke.

It's pretty similar.

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Bruce Springsteen?

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From coup to nuts, he’s just a putz

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Dan Scavino: 'Well, we don't care, and we're not going to leave. The boss is not going to leave under any circumstances. We are just going to stay in power."

Jeff Goldblum's final line from "The Big Chill": "You see, Sarah, Harold, we took a secret vote. We're not leaving. We're never leaving."

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That something that didn't seem right was reality penetrating his brain through the layers of narcissistic delusion time has piled on over the years. Kind of like how your teeth feel funny after a cleaning.

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I don't pretend to understand the Hearsay Rule. However, I did hear that if Dan Scavino is one of the un-indicted co-conspirators, the Hearsay Rule does not apply, because the conversation is between co-conspirators.

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founding

Herschel: “Did I hear my name? Does it mean I won the Senate? What?”

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He can always be indicted. There's still room on that bus.

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Well, that's powerful evidence which needs to come in.

The same legal expert suggested that the DEFENSE had actually leaked the video, hoping to find a way to put a positive spin on it, rather than it being a block-buster at trial.

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"Sincere" belief is not a thing in law, especially criminal law. When people in court talk about "sincere" belief they are typically witnesses in cases where there is an issue about the defendant's sanity. The legal litmus test is usually "reasonable" belief. On that basis, TFG would fail. There was no factual information about election fraud that could form the basis for a reasonable belief that he had won.

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Since when did "sincere belief" become such a (pardon the expression) trump card for excusing illegal activities? I mean, lots of people hold a "sincere belief" that there's a sky fairy who dispenses gifts in answer to also-sincere supplication and while I think that's delusional, it affects me not one whit that they believe it, for it has no consequence. However, if I have a sincere belief that the bank on the corner is using my deposits to further a lizard people one-world government to enslave all non-lizard people and I decide to alleviate said bank of all or most of its deposits at the point of a gun (because that would be crazy, right?), then I'm still guilty of robbing a bank, irrespective of whether anybody else told me that such an act would be illegal.

What am I missing here? Deluded people hold lots of "sincere beliefs." Such beliefs may help determine how we mete out punishment for bad acts, but they do not in themselves erase some level of accountability for those acts.

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For fraud cases specifically, it can be critical to show that someone knew they were lying. Depending on the local law. Trump should not have been in New York when he lied to lenders.

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I'll tell you what you're missing: the hubris of the ultra-privileged white man, who has spent his entire life clapping his hands only to have a score of minions leap to do his bidding - *and the patriarchal society that plays along with that*. tRump fancies himself at the rarified level where what he says, goes. If he, and the oligarchs whose useful idiot he is, decree a thing to be A Thing, then A Thing it is. "It's good to be king".

Now, theoretically, that's not how it works in this country; but there's theory and then there's the old boys network. The Heritage Foundations, the ALECs, the Leonard Leos and Harland Crows who believe it their birthright to dictate which pieces on the chessboard move, where when and how. I don't for a moment believe Cheetohlini was ever at their level, tho I'm certain HE thinks he was/is.

I think some of what's going on here is a fundamental decision as to whether we will continue to let things continue on as they have, with this being an open secret that just doesn't get challenged. Or not.

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Yeah but the defendants can always try hard to convince the judge to give them a pass this time.

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There was a point in time I was fully convinced Trump would need to be tased and sedated to be removed from the White House. This is still a big deal.

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I'm still pissed we didn't get to see him being physically carried out by Federal agents on Jan. 20th.

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What’s the big? PAB was upfront, publicly, that he did not intend to leave the White House. There was a lot of anxiety at the time about how they were going to get him out of there because he had made clear he didn’t intend to leave. He didn’t start packing til the last minute, then just walked out without saying anything to anybody.

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Like, remember how that (I think) GAO lady (Emily something-or-other) was dragging her feet about allowing the Biden transition team in? It was clear she was biding her time on "the Boss's" direction because they all thought they were going to stay in office. Scavino may say, "hey, it was a party, I was drinking and just spouting champagne-colored nonsense," but we all saw what was going on. Lock all them sumbitches up toot suite.

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Right? It was obvious to anyone with two brain cells to rub together. I mean, all of us were openly speculating about scenarios where the Secret Service would drag his ass out.

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I'm sure someone on his staff alerted him to the possible "Secret Service drags your ass out" scenario and maybe he'd been noticing something a little different in the eyes of his detail, especially the one he always made get the Big Macs and he probably thought better of pushing his luck.

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Fun Fact! (which I read on twitter, so it must be true): If you use the advice-of-counsel defense, you lose attorney-client privilege. So all the shit his lawyers were saying to him becomes admissible.

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call me crazy, but didn't he say that sidney wasn't really his attorney at one point?

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I know this has been said many times before, but I am going to say it again. I will say it loudly so the people in the back of the room can also hear it -- ANYONE WHO SUPPORTS DONALD TRUMP DOES NOT SUPPORT THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

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This truth could not be more self-evident. You can call yourself a patriot, hang an American flag from your front porch, and say words like "liberty" and "freedom," but that doesn't make one a patriot. That would involve fealty to the Constitution, as inconvenient for your side as it might sometimes be.

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Onion headline about "Area Man Passionately Defends what he Imagines the Constitution Says"

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"She also said in the video that there were a couple other things she knew that prosecutors would find “relevant,” but couldn’t tell them because of attorney-client privilege."

Sounds like she's setting up a bargaining position.

When somebody says "I know some things but I'm not telling" they are signaling that they will tell for a price.

When you have a secret that you have no intention of sharing, you don't tell people that you have a secret

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She's got nothing.

Nothing she, Rudy or Magic Pillow Man came up with approximated a 'case' for overturning the election.

If anything, whatever she's got to say puts her further in legal trouble. I'd tell her to get to the beach and pick out some nice fine sand to go pound,

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She's already got some sort of deal.

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I'd wager that this coy little stunt is just extra insurance. A way to a better deal if she doesn't LOVE the one she already got.

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