Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2

[Rick Plant]

Jim Jordan Broke This New York Law With Alvin Bragg Threats: Kirschner



Legal analyst Glenn Kirschner has said that Representative Jim Jordan broke the law in New York state by threatening to investigate Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

Jordan, an Ohio Republican who currently serves as chair of the House Judiciary Committee, vowed in the wake of Donald Trump's historic indictment to investigate Bragg's conduct in bringing criminal charges against the former president, claiming that the district attorney's actions were politically motivated. Pursuant to that goal, Jordan on Thursday issued a subpoena for testimony to former Manhattan prosecutor Mark Pomerantz, who worked on the Trump case before resigning last February.

In response, Bragg's office released a statement decrying Jordan's efforts as "an unprecedented campaign of harassment and intimidation."

"The House GOP continues to attempt to undermine an active investigation and ongoing New York criminal case with an unprecedented campaign of harassment and intimidation," a spokesperson for the Manhattan district attorney's office said Thursday. "Repeated efforts to weaken state and local law enforcement actions are an abuse of power and will not deter us from our duty to uphold the law."

In a Saturday episode of his podcast, Justice Matters, Kirschner argued that Jordan's efforts to investigate Bragg were in violation of a law in New York against "obstructing governmental administration."

"Under our law, a person is guilty of Obstructing Governmental Administration in the Second Degree when that person intentionally...prevents or attempts to prevent a public servant from performing an official function by means of intimidation, physical force or interference," the law cited by Kirshner, a former federal prosecutor, reads.

"That is precisely what Jim Jordan has done and is doing," Kirschner argued. "And that's precisely what district attorney Alvin Bragg put Jim Jordan on notice of."

Kirschner continued, stating that it remains to be seen what Bragg will do in response to Jordan's efforts, adding that he can either let the congressman off the hook or "enforce the laws of New York," and pursue an arrest warrant against the Republican. Over the course of making the argument, Kirschner also noted that Jordan's efforts were in violation of the 10th Amendment, as the federal government cannot interfere with a state-level prosecution.

Kirschner, a notably vocal critic of Trump, previously said that the former president had violated that same law when he made several posts to his social media platform, Truth Social, insulting Bragg and threatening "death and destruction" if he were to be indicted.

As of now, Bragg has made no indication that he is considering obstruction charges for Jordan or Trump.

Newsweek reached out to Jordan's press office for comment.

https://www.newsweek.com/jim-jordan-broke-this-new-york-law-alvin-bragg-threats-kirschner-1793301

[Rick Plant]

Judge in Dominion Defamation Case Warns Fox News Lawyers: ‘Newsworthiness’ Argument Won’t Fly at Trial

The network has indicated that the ”newsworthiness“ of opinions from Trump and his cronies would be a big part of its defense



The Delaware Superior Court judge overseeing Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit warned defendant Fox News on Tuesday that its “newsworthiness” arguments – which had been shaping up to be a major pillar of the network’s case – would be on thin ice as the trial gets underway next week.

Judge Eric Davis made the comments Tuesday during a pre-trial conference including lawyers from both Fox and Dominion. The hearing was not made available for streaming or dial-in, but Washington Post media reporter Eric Wemple was threading highlights from the conference on his Twitter feed:

Davis, a former corporate lawyer known as an affable and unshakably straight-shooting judge, has made headlines with his comments and rulings throughout the pretrial process. At one hearing he pointed the finger at former Fox host Lou Dobbs as a major contributor to the pile of examples Dominion says were defamatory; he also challenged the notion that Fox top brass had “no control” over guests and narratives presented on cable’s most-watched network.

Though it might seem like Davis has only been dealing losses to Fox, he has agreed with them on one major point: That the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, which happened after the alleged defamation, is not relevant, and should not be discussed at any length, in part because it could “prejudice” the jury against the network.

But Davis’ skepticism around the “newsworthiness” argument, which Fox has been repeatedly signaling it would pursue, could be an issue for Fox attorneys. Davis went as far as to say he would “rebuke” attempts to evoke the newsworthiness argument in the presence of jurors. Davis went on a “riff,” Wemple reported, “pointing out that Dominion could quite easily – very easily – exploit Fox News’s newsworthiness defense in cross-examination.”

He suggested that among other things, Dominion lawyers cross-examining Fox witnesses could simply ask them why they didn’t have guests who upheld the integrity of the election – why not Joe Biden himself? “I love this cross … I could have a lot of fun with this case,” Davis said with a chuckle.

Dominion is asking for $1.6 billion in damages for what it says are defamatory statements about its voting machines in multiple reports, guest segments and host commentary. Fox has maintained it was merely reporting the news, and has dug in its heels on what could be a landmark First Amendment case.

Jury selection was expected to begin later this week, with opening arguments beginning next Monday in Delaware.

https://www.thewrap.com/judge-dominion-defamation-fox-news-newsworthiness-argument/

[Rick Plant]

Alvin Bragg sues Jim Jordan in effort to block Republicans from interfering in Trump criminal case

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is suing House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) in a move to block House Republicans from interfering in his criminal case against former President Donald Trump, The New York Times reported.

According to The Times' report, the suit is an "extraordinary" move that "accuses Mr. Jordan of a ‘brazen and unconstitutional attack’ on the prosecution of Mr. Trump and a ‘transparent campaign to intimidate and attack’ the district attorney.”

Bragg accuses Jordan of partaking in “a transparent campaign to intimidate and attack District Attorney Bragg, making demands for confidential documents and testimony from the District Attorney himself as well as his current and former employees and officials."

Jordan announced on Monday that his committee plans to hold a "field hearing" in New York City on April 17, which will accuse Bragg of being too focused on the prosecution of Trump at the expense of focusing on Manhattan's crime rate.

Read the full report over at The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/11/nyregion/bragg-lawsuit-jim-jordan-trump-indictment.html


Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg Sues Jim Jordan to Block Meddling in Trump Case

“A retaliatory political circus.”



Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has filed a lawsuit against Congressman Jim Jordan, telling the Ohio Republican to back off the DA’s case against Donald Trump.

Even before a New York grand jury officially indicted Trump, Jordan and other top House Republicans were threatening Bragg with an investigation of their own, apparently aimed at helping defend the former president.

Bragg’s lawsuit, filed Tuesday in federal court, asks a judge to block a subpoena that Jordan issued to attorney Mark Pomerantz, who left Bragg’s office last year. Bragg also wants the judge to prohibit Jordan from continuing to “harass” the Manhattan prosecutor’s office.

Back on March 20—well before Bragg’s grand jury indicted Trump on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records—Jordan, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, and two other Republicans sent Bragg a letter accusing him of leading a politically motivated investigation into Trump. The Republicans demanded that Bragg provide Congress with details of his probe. Jordan argued that Bragg’s interest in prosecuting Trump—”while adopting progressive criminal justice policies that allow career ‘criminals [to] run[ ] the streets’ of Manhattan—requires congressional scrutiny about how public safety funds appropriated by Congress are implemented by local law-enforcement agencies.”

Last week, Jordan also subpoenaed Pomerantz, a longtime white collar crime prosecutor who Bragg’s predecessor, Cy Vance Jr., had brought into the DA’s office to help investigate any potential Trump-related crimes. Pomerantz quit after Bragg took over, citing frustrations with Bragg’s initial unwillingness to pursue criminal charges against Trump. Pomerantz later wrote a book about his decision and his belief that Trump has committed numerous crimes.

Jordan has also taken to both television and Twitter to attack Bragg.

In a Fox News interview, Jordan even threatened to subpoena Bragg himself and warned that if Bragg resisted, “everything is on the table.”

Bragg and Jordan have continued to trade jabs—Jordan has said he wants to hold a Judiciary Committee hearing in Manhattan to highlight what he believes are high crime rates, while a Bragg aide countered that cities in Jordan’s home state had higher crime rates.

Bragg’s lawsuit is an escalation in the back-and-forth, however, with the request that a federal judge force Jordan to drop his subpoena of Pomerantz. In the complaint, Bragg points out that he’s a local prosecutor and that Congress has no power to interfere with local criminal investigations. What Jordan and his GOP colleagues are really doing, Bragg says in the suit, is trying to create “a retaliatory political circus designed to undermine the rule of law and New York’s police power.”

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/04/manhattan-da-alvin-bragg-jim-jordan-trump/

[Rick Plant]

Donnie is toxic!

Dropping like a rock': Bad news for Trump as he plummets into 'fringe candidate' territory



"Morning Joe" co-host Joe Scarborough dropped bad news on Donald Trump on Tuesday morning by pointing out that new polls show he has little chance of winning re-election even if he does survive the Republican Party primaries.

Responding to a new poll that shows the former president's approval ratings plummeting into the 20s after his indictment in a Manhattan courtroom, co-host Wille Geist chimed in to say the former president is now getting the kind of numbers normally associated with "fringe candidates."

Citing the awful poll numbers, co-host Mika Brzezinski said of Trump, "Republican senators want him to stay away from the races in 2024 following losses by his hand-picked candidates during the last cycle. If his legal issues don't take him off the ballot, maybe his poll numbers will; a new survey shows he is losing support rapidly, dropping like a rock."

"His favorability ratings have never been great, nor the job approval ratings, but if you look at the favorability ratings, when we sit here talking about all the things he is doing and wondering why it doesn't seem to catch up to him, he now has a favorability rating that's collapsed down to 25 percent," host Scarborough interjected. "Actually lost more percentage points post-indictment."

"It is all bad news for him, especially the fact that only one in four Americans now have a favorable impression of him," he continued with Geist adding, "25 percent -- you're dipping into being a fringe political candidate. 25 percent is a terrible number if you're trying to win a general election again."

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

The 4 criminal investigations into Donald Trump, explained

Trump has already been indicted once. More indictments could be coming

https://www.vox.com/politics/2023/4/4/23664866/donald-trump-indictment-alvin-bragg-jack-smith-stormy-daniels-new-york-georgia

[Rick Plant]

'Stephen Miller might not just be a witness but a target': Conservative says of Trump's 'Rasputin'



Donald Trump's former top aide Stephen Miller appeared before the federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., investigating the Jan. 6 attack.

Discussing the matter, MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace explained that she has stacks of tapes of Miller appearing on Fox News and talking about the plot to overturn the election. In one Dec. 14, 2020 appearance, Wallace said that Miller was stressing Jan. 20 being the only thing written in stone. He claimed that there was more than enough time to certify Trump as the winner.

"As we speak," Miller told Fox & Friends in 2020, "an alternate slate of electors in the states is going to vote, and we'll send those results up to Congress."

"I mean, he's got a mountain of publicly facing criminal exposure on all four of the criminal counts," said Wallace. "If Jack Smith decides to create the architecture of the conspiracy, the chief co-conspirator to Donald Trump is Stephen Miller."

Conservative commentator Charlie Sykes noted that it was a key point he, too, was going to make.

"In a conspiracy, you need more than one person, and who is at the center of all of this? Who is writing the speeches?" asked Sykes. "We're speculating here. Stephen Miller might not simply have been a witness, he may end up being a target here because if there was a conspiracy, he was a co-conspirator. He is the Rasputin of the Trump administration. He is the whisperer."

"You can see all of the ways he was part of this plot to overturn the election, and more specifically, part of the plot to obstruct the official proceeding of U.S. Congress. So, he's right there at the center. So, it's very interesting that he would be here at this stage of the investigation and would testify personally."

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

'I'd feel queasy': Former prosecutor says Fox News headed for 'full-blown journalistic and legal disaster'



Fox News faces jury selection this week in the landmark $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems, which alleges the network maliciously spread lies about the electoral process and about the security and legitimacy of Dominion's election equipment.

The network maintains it has not engaged in defamation. But given the publicly available evidence, they will have an unusually hard time defending their case, argued former federal prosecutor Elie Honig on CNN Tuesday.

"We've already seen so many of these damaging texts and emails from Fox executives and hosts in the case, in which they acknowledge that the nonsense they were putting on their air and putting guests on their air sharing, they knew to be false," said anchor Jake Tapper. "If you were a Fox attorney defending Fox, how would you feel going into jury selection this week about your case?"

"I'd feel queasy, Jake," said Honig. "I would not want to be in the position of defending Fox here. I think they're headed for a full-blown journalistic and legal disaster. It is very difficult to successfully sue a media outlet for defamation in this country. What you have to prove is what we call 'actual malice,' meaning the statements were false, and the defendant made those statements knowingly or with reckless disregard of the truth. Now, that's a very high bar. But here, we have Fox's own texts in black and white, where they call the election fraud claims, and I quote, 'nuts,' 'insane,' 'BS,' and so you contrast that with the things that Fox said on air, and I think Fox is in a very difficult position here."

"The judge granted partial summary judgment to Dominion in this case," said Tapper. "What does that mean? How significant is it?"

"Well, that's a big win for Dominion, because the judge has now ruled as a matter of law," said Honig. "In fact, these statements about election fraud were false. That's not even going to the jury, so the judge will tell the jury, I instruct you, jury, these statements were false, your only job is to decide that actual malice question. Did fox know or were they reckless? And so, with that ruling, Dominion's really halfway to where they need to get."

Watch below: