Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2

[Rick Plant]

Rule 43: Trump could go to jail if he refuses to attend trial after Jack Smith indictment



An obscure federal rule could yank Donald Trump off of the campaign trail -- and could land him in custody -- if special counsel Jack Smith indicts him and the ex-president balks at attending the trial proceedings.

In a column for the Daily Beast, Trump biographer David Cay Johnston explained that the former president would not have the option of skipping a federal trial brought by the Department of Justice in the same manner as he has with the E. Jean Carroll rape and defamation trial currently ongoing in Manhattan.

As Johnston notes, a DOJ indictment could force the former president off the campaign trail at a critical junction if his lawyers were unable to get a delay until after the election.

At issue is what is known as is Rule 43 which mandates the accused in felony trials must be in attendance during their trials.

"Under Lewis v. United States, an 1892 Supreme Court decision which formed the basis for Rule 43, Trump would be required to attend every minute of his trial," Johnston wrote before elaborating, "The high court held in Lewis that a 'leading principle that pervades the entire law of criminal procedure' is that once an individual is indicted 'nothing shall be done in the absence of the prisoner… in felonies it is not in the power of the prisoner, either by himself or his counsel, to waive the right to be personally present during the trial.'"

He then added, "That standard applies even if Trump were free on his own recognizance or on bail."

Making matters worse for a recalcitrant Trump, Johnston wrote, "If he [Trump] tried to boycott the trial, he would be arrested and held in custody until the trial ended."

Federal court is not the only place where the former president faces jail time while a trial is ongoing.

"A similar attendance rule applies for criminal trials in New York, where Trump was indicted last month on 34 felony counts connected with hush money paid in 2016 to Stephanie Clifford, better known as the porn star Stormy Daniels. The mandatory attendance rule also applies in Georgia, where Trump is under investigation by Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney," the columnist added.

You can read more here: https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-trumps-legal-jeopardy-will-test-american-democracy



Insider witness could help DOJ determine if Trump hid classified documents



A confidential insider witness who worked for Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago could help the Justice Department as it intensifies its efforts to determine whether the former president sought to conceal sensitive classified documents after the agency issued a subpoena in May 2021 demanding their return, The New York Times reports.

The DOJ has issued a new wave of subpoenas as part of an aggressive effort to understand how Trump stored classified documents he took from the White House and determine who had access to them, how Mar-a-Lago’s camera system works and what the former president told his aides and attorneys about what documents he had and where they were kept, the report said.

Maggie Haberman, Adam Goldman, Alan Feuer, Ben Protess and Michael S. Schmidt write for The Times: “At the heart of the inquiry is whether Mr. Trump sought to hide some documents after the Justice Department issued a subpoena last May demanding their return.”

“The existence of an insider witness, whose identity has not been disclosed, could be a significant step in the investigation, which is being overseen by Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. The witness is said to have provided investigators with a picture of the storage room where the material had been held. Little else is known about what prosecutors might have learned from the witness or when the witness first began to provide information to the prosecutors.”

At least four additional Mar-a-Lago employees and another person with knowledge of Trump’s thinking when he initially returned material to the National Archives have been subpoenaed in recent weeks, according to the report.

“Two people said that nearly everyone who works at Mar-a-Lago has been subpoenaed, and that some who serve in fairly obscure jobs have been asked back by investigators,” the report said.

Read More Below:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/04/us/politics/trump-documents-subpoenas-justice-department.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

[Rick Plant]

Jack Smith isn’t *just now* investigating Trump’s Saudi-funded golf tournaments. The NYT reporting says that the subpoenas issued an unknown amount of time ago. This isn’t a new development. It’s an already in progress thing that we’re just now belatedly learning about.

How long ago did Smith decide to target Trump’s golf dealings with the Saudis? What was he looking for? What has he found? Is this probe into these golf tournaments complete? Are there going to be criminal charges relating to it?

We have no answers to any of these questions yet.

But the point is, we’re just now finding out that Trump’s Saudi-backed golf tournaments have already been part of Jack Smith’s probe for awhile.

Trump may not have known until now that his golf tournaments were under criminal investigation either.

So if you’re concerned that all these “new” avenues of Jack Smith’s probe could lead it to drag on forever before indictment, keep in kind that none of these things are “new.” They already happened, and are largely or entirely done. They’re just newly reported.

We all learned on Wednesday night that Matthew Calamari and his son would be testifying against Trump to the grand jury the next morning.

The Calamaris must have been dragged into this probe *months* ago. And we didn’t know about it until a few hours before the testified.

Think about how many key aspects of this probe are just now belatedly becoming public.

Now think about how many other key aspects of this probe there must be that haven’t become public yet, and won’t until the indictment drops.

Do not assume that someone or something is not a part of this probe, just because you haven’t seen any *reporting* about someone or formatting being a part of this probe.

We didn’t know until *this week* that Calamari and the Saudis were involved in the probe all along.

[Rick Plant]

Special counsel could be nearing charges in Trump probe

Prosecutors in Special Counsel Jack Smith's probe of former President Donald Trump are in their final steps and will soon decide whether to bring charges, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

Smith is investigating Trump's and his allies' attempts to overturn the 2020 election's results as well as Trump's attempt to obstruct a separate probe into the handling of classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago resort.

Testimony by former Vice President Mike Pence, former deputy chief of staff for communications Dan Scavino "appears to point to efforts by Mr. Smith’s team to determine whether a crime was committed and decide whether to file charges in the coming months," according to sources speaking to WSJ.

"The grand-jury activity comes as other prosecutors obtained a victory in the investigation into the Jan. 6 pro-Trump riot at the Capitol, when a jury on Thursday found four leading figures of the Proud Boys, including its former chairman Enrique Tarrio, guilty of seditious conspiracy, the gravest charge brought in connection with the attack," WSJ's report stated.

Read the full report over at The Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-trump-probe-special-counsel-zooms-in-on-possible-criminal-charges-42f60b4

[Rick Plant]

Will Pence testimony bring Trump closer to federal indictment?
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/will-pence-testimony-bring-trump-closer-to-federal-indictment/

[Rick Plant]

Evidence shows fake elector indictment is likely coming: former prosecutor

Evidence from the prosecutors investigating efforts by former president Donald Trump and others to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory in Georgia shows that it's likely only a matter of time until an indictment is filed, a former U.S. Attorney said on Friday.

Alex Wagner of Wagner Tonight asked Barbara McQuade, who served as the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan from 2010 to 2017, about the wording used by Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis' prosecution team. That came after it was announced that 8 of the 16 fake "electors" who convened to declare former President Donald Trump the winner of Georgia in 2020 have accepted an immunity agreement.

Wagner presented a transcript of an exchange between one of Willis' prosecutors and one of the fake electors' defense attorney. Part of the transcript reads., "Either [Elector E] is going to get this immunity, and he's going to answer the question... or we're going to leave. And if we leave, we're ripping up his immunity, agreement, and he can be on the indictment."

"Am I right to focus on this exchange between the prosecutor and one of the defense attorneys where the prosecutor says his name will be on the indictment?" Wagner asked. "Not a potential indictment, but the indictment."
McQuade responds that, "Your reading is fair, Alex. 'The' indictment suggests it's not an if but a when, McQuade said.

"Right now we are kind of sorting out who is going to be a witness and who is going to be a defendant," she added.

McQuade further said that prosecutors "want to go after the bigger fish" in these cases.

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

It's a horror show': Bill Barr slams Trump when asked if his ex-boss is 'fit' for presidency



Former Attorney General Bill Barr slammed Former President Donald Trump when asked by Geraldo Rivera whether Trump is "fit" to be president.

Rivera begins by telling Barr, who previously served in the Trump administration, that he is the most "honest" person in Washington, and that he trusts him. Rivera then asks, "Do you think he is emotionally fit to be President of the United States? Is he fit to be president of the United States?"

"This is the way I'll answer that, Geraldo," Barr says to laughter in the crowd. He adds, "If you believe in his policies, what he's advertising as his policies, he's the last person who could actually execute them and achieve them."

"He does not have the discipline. He does not have the ability for strategic thinking and linear thinking or setting priorities, or how to get things done in the system," Barr said. "It's a horror show when he's left to his own devices."

"You may want his policies, but Trump will not deliver Trump policies. He will deliver chaos and, if anything, lead to a backlash that will set his policies much further back than they otherwise would be."

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

Trump’s bizarre deposition may have blown his entire case: CNN analyst



Donald Trump made a bizarre statement in his videotaped deposition that may have blown up his entire case, a CNN analyst said Friday.

During his deposition in the civil case over allegations he raped author E. Jean Carroll in a Manhattan dressing room in the 1990s, Trump appeared to lean into his remarks in the explosive Access Hollywood tape that “when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the (expletive).”

In video of Trump's deposition released Friday, Roberta Kaplan, an attorney representing Carroll, is heard asking the former president that for stars if “it’s true, that they can grab women by the (expletive)?”

Trump replies: “Well if you look over the last million years that’s been largely true. Not always, but largely true. Unfortunately or fortunately.”

CNN political analyst Gloria Borger said Friday during an appearance on The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer that Trump’s statement suggests the behavior he described in the Access Hollywood tape is acceptable.

“Well, he excused it, I mean, he effectively said in the Access Hollywood tape, I was just telling the truth, because that's exactly what the truth is, and it kind of reminded me of after Charlottesville when Donald Trump said, ‘Well, you know, there are good people on both sides,’ Borger said.

“Well, there weren't good people on both sides in Charlottesville, and there's no ‘fortunately’ here. There's just an unfortunately, if it's true.”

Borger wasn’t done.

“What is he saying? That it's okay for some people to do this because they're stars. And by the way, I guess you could say that I'm a star too,” she said.

“So it undermined, I think, the entire case here, and I'm not an attorney, but if I were his attorney, I'd be cringing at what Donald Trump just admitted to in this in this deposition, because he kind of said, ‘well, you know, it's what happens and it's not so bad and by the way.’

“I would never, you know…this is all a big hoax, but you know, I'm a star and it's been true for the last million years that stars can do this kind of thing.”

Watch:

Lackluster deposition': former prosecutor says Trump is losing 'credibility' fight with E. Jean Carroll



Former president Donald Trump's "lackluster deposition performance" could help his accuser in a civil rape and defamation case win a "credibility battle" between the two parties, a former United States Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama said on Friday.

Joyce Vance, who served as a U.S. Attorney from 2009 to 2017, was speaking to Joy Reid of The ReidOut on MSNBC Friday when Reid asked whether it will hurt Trump's case to include a deposition in which he misremembers details. Trump's attorneys emphasized their questioning of alleged victim E. Jean Carroll on minute details that she likely wouldn't remember.

"I mean, this is about a credibility battle between two witnesses, one of whom did not come to the courthouse, did not sit in the courtroom during the trial, did not testify. And then gave this really lackluster deposition performance," Vance said. "So if you're E. Jean Carroll's attorney, Roberta Kaplan, you are likely very content to play this deposition and to let the jury see for themselves that this is an individual who has a bad memory when it serves him."

Vance added that it will be "up to the jury" to determine what really happened in this case.

Reid asked Vance if the judge is protecting himself by ensuring Trump still has the opportunity to testify, despite the fact that his lawyers have claimed he will not be presenting testimony on his own behalf.

"This is the judge making every effort to hold Trump accountable. In a civil case, E. Jean Carroll could have subpoenaed Trump to testify," Vance said. "Her lawyers chose not to, I think likely because the deposition testimony is just so startlingly good for them. Trump can voluntarily choose to testify if he wants to. He did not. He relinquished that right, but after he made those comments on the golf course in Ireland, it was almost as though you could."

Watch: