Trump's trial is sort of boring and I hope we get a conviction, but I'm feeling very nihilistic about the effect of a conviction.
It does seem to have taken a long time and wandered off into a lot of rather irrelevant-looking water. Still, no one has tried to murder a juror yet.
Lawyers from relevant polities: do they need a unanimous verdict to convict? To find not guilty? What happens if the jury can't agree?
I am so far from being a lawyer from relevant politics, but I thought yes, it has to be unanimous or else it's a hung jury.
Unanimity is almost everywhere/always needed in criminal cases, not necessarily in criminal cases.
That's for either verdict. If the jury can't agree despite all efforts, it's usually a mistrial and they get to go again if the prosecution wants. We've pretended for 150+ years that that doesn't violate double jeopardy.
Don't worry, we're pretending far worse things.
That's the most likely end, then. Hung jury due to a Trumpist or intimidated holdout, mistrial, prosecution dithers for two months and then regretfully announces that it is now too late to go for another trial because they don't want to prejudice the election or something.
I'm actually finding Texas much more stressful than I used to. It's gotten noticeably worse since 2018-2019ish. Like not exactly timed with the onset of Trump, but with DeSantis's race to be the most awful, plus abortion, plus a few particularly insane donors that have taken over the RNC here, plus Paxton, plus immigrant vitriol... it feels like a worse era.
6: Or some sort of lukewarm hedging where there's a conviction on lesser charges that allow for some spin and face-saving, and acquittal on the more black-and-white charges.
8: reported by the NY Times as "TRUMP ACQUITTED!"
Speaking of which the Hunter Biden trial coming up is fucked in multiple ways. Just a massive political smear job. Weiss read the winds on what it took to stay viable* in R politics/"legal" circles and adjusted accordingly. Many witnesses irrelevant to the narrow charge brought against HB. ongoing disgrace.
*See also Robert Hur; although by "exonerating" at all he probably effed himself.
The media overcorrection on the Hunter Biden "laptop" has been a sight to behold in general. So much BS. and so many knock-ons like impeachment craziness etc.
Heard Peter Baker challenged by Josh Marshall on a podcast re: on the nature and breadth of the Biden impeachment coverage and credulous coverage of Comer flights of fancy and his defense was that in a debate Biden had said Trump's family were the ones getting money from China without acknowledging that HB had done same. So yeah, that makes Comer's BS worth in depth coverage. Note that 1) it is not clear how much JB knew of HB's stuff at the time (he probably did re defensive briefings?), and 2) answer arguably in the context of while JB was in office. But a minor baddie from Joe Biden weighed against hours of pure malignant BS. The discourse and "elites" have truly lost their fucking minds and my read of history is that nothing good comes from that.
My quibble on the election coverage is so many articles insisting that Dems and Biden should be PANICKING!!! ZOMG!!! Since that is always the best response to being behind in a close race. Sure there are very valid policy and approach concerns but the tone is always "Dems are ignoring at their peril." Every Dem I know is terrified.
I hate everybody and everything. Am home now and out of my (extremely permeable) bubble so am marginally more disturbed by all of this. Trial is a "fun" distraction for those willing to delve into the legal minutiae. Nothing more.
8: IANAL but I believe all of the charges are equivalent (one charge per document falsified). There might be some nitpicking about his signature on this or that check but there aren't any "lesser" charges to compromise on.
I guess "guilty but it's a misdemeanor" could be that but I don't know if that's an option at this point.
"I love this plan! I'm excited to be part of it!"
I just read some coverage of the jury instructions and I'm still unclear on 15.2. Is the verdict (for each charge) in two parts ("Did he falsify the record? Did he do so in furtherance of another crime?") or one ("Did he falsify a record in the furtherance of another crime?"). The former would allow the possibility of conviction on a misdemeanor.
I do think the election law and tax law violations are pretty clear and it helps that the jurors don't have to agree on which other crime they think should count. IMHO if he skates it will be because some dope actually believes that he didn't specifically ask Cohen to make the payment or understand what the checks were for.
"News" comment 1 of 2: does anyone here happen to have any reflections on the 30-year anniversary of the end of apartheid? I've been seeing articles go by.
"News" comment 2 of 2: from Julia Ioffe's newsletter.
Russia continues to push westward, not just outside of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, but along the entire (very long) front. Every day brings news of another village captured by the Russian army, as well as deadly missile strikes on Kharkiv. Most of them seem to be deliberately targeting unmistakably civilian infrastructure. One double-tap strike last week killed 11 people, including a woman who was seven months pregnant, at a lakeside resort. Another, over the weekend, killed at least 18 people, including a 12-year-old girl, at a home improvement store. Hard to imagine the military value in bombing a Home Depot on a Saturday afternoon.
That's definitely not much less depressing than Rafah, if at all, but there might be more to say?
15.2: Spent some frustrating time looking for the answer to that but found nothing definitive. I *think* it will be felony or nothing based on what I found but not 100% sure. The statue of limitations would have run out on the misdemeanor so prosecutors could not bring those charges, but apparently Trump had option to wave statue of limitations and try to plead to that.
So jury could certainly find that they falsified but not connect it to underlying crime which 1) Not sure of we even find that out, and 2) I think that would be not guilty--or hung if just some found that.
18 just hoping we won't have to wait another 30 years for it to end elsewhere
19 More countries, including the UK and Sweden, are now allowing weapons they donate to be directed at targets behind Russian lines, which is good. Not the US yet as far as I know. Lithuanians are placing advisors in UA, and DE is stationing some troops in the Baltics. I saw a report that China will send not just consumer goods but also heavy weapons. I haven't kept up about supplies of defensive missiles.
China is still arming the Russians, no?
I guess not directly, but helping Russia build weapons.
I saw a report that China will send not just consumer goods but also heavy weapons.
Holy shit, really? I had not been keeping up with this development.
21: Israel just killed some civilians in Syria, according to reports. It's not going to be 30 years. Honestly tough to focus on domestic politics in 2024.
24. Machine tools and consumables for the machine tools are key. Russian production uses German machinery and consumables (chucks, bearings and the like; Kamil Galeev is pretty good for describing this: https://x.com/kamilkazani/status/1537127879519215617?lang=en), switching to Chinese is not that easy and there are rumors of quality problems-- I'd expect that Chinese commercial producers concentrate on price, then quality. Chinese PLA partners maybe more motivated to consider failure rate, no idea who they give the Russians access to. German and Austrian exports of these to Kazakhstan have increased very sharply.
18- Going to visit Robben Island this summer so maybe I'll have more of an opinion later.
You didn't mention the complete ridiculousness that is the Alito marriage but it's just the continuing expansion of Trumpism. You can make statements with laughably obvious lies as long as it's in support of your political team. NYT on the documentary (text message and calls to police) contradiction of Alito regarding the date of the disagreement: "There were some differences (of facts)".
Any particular reason for the trip? This is the first week of summer for kids in Elke's district, so all of "this summer" feels like "in a few days" to me. I need to take the car in for a tune-up "this summer." It's started giving me "Service Airbag" messages, which is a bit ominous: I don't especially want the airbag to blow up while I'm driving.
I once managed to total a car without setting off the airbags. I don't remember if the car I hit had it's airbags go off.
Ukraine is going better than some are saying, is my feeling, although I admit I get excited by stories like this one, which talks about a new donation of AWACS planes to the Ukrainian air force: https://www.twz.com/news-features/ukraine-getting-swedish-airborne-early-warning-radar-planes-is-a-big-deal.
I hope they can keep them safe. The picture generally is that Ukraine is (slowly) being equipped with a very real air force, while the area in which it'll operate is being attritted of enemy radars, etc.
If this all works, and as a consequence enough JDAMs etc go in, there must come a point at which attrition of the Russian army on the ground becomes unsupportable even for them. Or short of that we discover some new variant of a stalemate.
As always, maximum discredit to the Russian leadership for choosing the grimmest path of those available.
And when you think about it, the idea that the equivalent of one of the smaller European / NATO air forces - which is what the Ukrainian air force is being built into - could hold its own almost singlehandedly against the RuAF ... is striking. Someone seems to think it's possible or they wouldn't attempt it?
I have been riveted by the trial, but I accidentally have personal or professional connections with multiple participants, so that makes it much more fun to follow.
28- We've seen a lot of Europe so trying something different. Two weeks in South Africa, two weeks in parts of Scandinavia we haven't visited. A couple days in Estonia so I hope Russia holds off with the things like GPS jamming of commercial flights.
32: are you willing to summarize which parts have been most interesting?
Well, the bits that I've been focusing on have been the personal connection bits, so not fascinating if you're not me.
30 agreed; Ioffe's portrayal of inexorable Russian advance all along the front is badly at odds with reality. Sporadic bombing of civilian targets is pointless, and, as you say, this summer finally will see some proper improvement to the Ukrainain air force.
does anyone here happen to have any reflections on the 30-year anniversary of the end of apartheid?
It is very well timed that this is also the first election since then in which the ANC is not likely to get a majority. The Economist had a good roundup earlier this month - https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2024/05/02/how-south-africa-has-changed-30-years-after-apartheid
The IMF looks at the economic side https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2020/01/29/na012820six-charts-on-south-africas-persistent-and-multi-faceted-inequality
South Africa now is richer than in 1994, but far more unequal, with far higher unemployment. Its income per capita, adjusted for inflation, has barely moved in the last fifteen years. The gradual recession of the AIDS pandemic has done a lot of good for public health (despite the best efforts of that idiot Mbeki to help it spread).
What's interesting, and rather at odds with what you'd get from the news coverage, is that corruption perceptions are not great, but low compared to the rest of the last thirty years - https://tradingeconomics.com/south-africa/corruption-index
I think this is probably because there are at least three different things that we class as "corruption", and SA has more of one than of the other two. There's facilitation corruption: government officials asking for an unofficial fee to do their jobs. There's extortion: government officials using the power of their office to exact payments under threat. And there's peculation: government officials simply stealing from official budgets. (Bit of a blurred line between all three, I admit, but you see the distinction.)
This is all second-hand and feel free to correct me, but my impression is that South Africa has a bit of facilitation corruption, which is the least harmful - in fact it may be that a lot of South Africans don't actually think of this as corruption at all. It has a lot of high-profile peculation, famously Jacob Zuma, but less now than when he was in office. And it doesn't have much extortion by the standards of similar countries, which is the really harmful one.
Life expectancy is only just back to apartheid levels - the AIDS pandemic was catastrophic. https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/ZAF/south-africa/life-expectancy
The depressing thought comes to mind that part of the improvement in the 1990s and 2000s in income was no doubt the end of sanctions and general export-driven economic growth - I wonder how much of it was, like late mediaeval England, the fact that so much of the workforce had died in a plague that the survivors could demand much higher wages?
A friend is in South Africa at the moment covering the election for the BBC (he's an editor/producer for radio news) so I'll pick his brains when he gets back. He says that the on the ground local South African journalists and technical teams are excellent, and that they generally get very high quality reporting and information out of them.
37
I think this is probably because there are at least three different things that we class as "corruption", and SA has more of one than of the other two. There's facilitation corruption: government officials asking for an unofficial fee to do their jobs. There's extortion: government officials using the power of their office to exact payments under threat. And there's peculation: government officials simply stealing from official budgets.
In DC people complain all the time about corruption in local government, but they mostly seem to be thinking of cronyism. When you include it to that list, it's obviously not as bad as those three.
That Corruption Perceptions Index is weird. High numbers are bad, right? Or does it just correlate with wealth? I ask because the US, the UK, France, Germany, and Australia have numbers between 60 and 80, whereas the first country I found around South Africa's 41 was India, at 38.
High is good.
Denmark 90
Finland 87
New Zealand 85
41: Making that comparison was a lot harder than it had to be, and I still got it wrong. I'm torn between "in my defense, I haven't had my coffee yet" and "oh come on, it's right in the name, of course high is bad! That index is badly named!"
41: I should have included cronyism under peculation - you are essentially stealing from the official budget, in the form of large salaries for your mates. Of course, a lot of the time one reason that your cronies want those jobs is that they provide, as well as or instead of a large salary, opportunities for facilitation corruption or extortion. (This is why it's such a desirable job to be a Pakistani traffic policeman even though the salary is dismal.)
The CPI includes both a rank and a score. High scores are good, low ranks are good. SA is ranked 83rd out of 180 (mediocre) and scores 41 out of 100, which is average-ish for Africa.
It does look like CPI correlates with wealth, just eyeballing the data, which shouldn't really be surprising - corruption is bad for the economy!
Correlation of 0.7529 between PPP GDP per capita and CPI score. So, yes.
Bombshell story from the Guardian the other day about how Mossad spied on and threatened the former chief prosecutor of the ICC to keep her from investigating human rights abuses in the Occupied Territories. Apparently Haaretz had the story back in 2022 but that beacon of democracy used emergency powers to quash it.
Should have added they spied on and threatened her family too
Russia is, as ever, responding to a foreign policy crisis by "doing some antisemitism and spreading it round the place", a policy which has worked out well for the previous Russian governments who tried it exactly zero times.
High is good
The cop who did D.A.R.E. was kind of an asshole arguing against that.
Currently enjoying the detail that the Trump jury is very interested in the judge's 'rain metaphor' explanation of circumstantial evidence / what may be reasonably inferred from proven facts.
There is something about the Trump trial that's not clear to me though; can anyone explain? It seems as though the false business records charge becomes a 'felony' charge through the falsification being in connection with another crime. One candidate for that other crime is violation of a NY state election law which forbids promotion of a candidate through unlawful means, specifically the business records falsification. But then it looks to me as though the two charges rest on each other, and that seems odd. Shouldn't they need to stand independently? Or is my reading completely off?
Wouldn't the "unlawful means" here be undisclosed in-kind contributions?
51, 52: Drum has the answer here. Three possible crimes, and the jury doesn't have to agree on which of the three it was.
Soviet Bus Stops is, oddly enough, on topic, and also worth your time. Just wish it were longer.
51: The two charges do interact complicatedly, but not, I think, in a way that makes it improper. First, falsification of business records is at least a misdemeanor regardless of connection with any other crime -- all you have to prove is the falsification to establish that the defendant has done something unlawful. Second, promoting a candidate through unlawful means is a crime: Trump used falsification of business records, which is a standalone crime even if only a misdemeanor, to promote his candidacy -- Trump therefore committed the election-law crime regardless of what level of falsification he committed. Finally, we go back to the falsification and ask whether it's misdemeanor or felony falsification: because the falsification was to conceal the election law crime, it's felony level.
I was trying to explain this in another context, and what I ended up saying is that it's not circular, it's helical: the argument loops back on itself, but each step is independently supported.
55: Sounds like the kinds of buildings imagined by Dr. Seuss: impractical in another context, but the law is a context of its own, and not literally impossible.
55: yes, can follow. Maybe it's even a hermeneutic spiral!
Fingers crossed that the jury does not get stuck on this. Perhaps with help of the latitude highlighted in 52 & 53.
55 and the Drum post are very clear - thanks.
So let me get this right: to convict him of a felony, the jury needs to agree:
a) that he did at least one of the misdemeanors from Drum's list: falsifying business documents, FECA breach, tax fraud - they don't all have to think it's the same thing;
*and*
b) that he did it in order to get elected.
There are 34 counts because there are 34 different documents that could be misdemeanors under a).
It's conceivable, therefore, that the jury could decide that he's guilty of doing something wrong with regard to one of the documents - and they could all disagree on what it is, just as long as they all agree that it's something - but that he did it for some other reason, to save his wife embarrassment, say. In that case he's only guilty of a misdemeanor.
No, wait, that wouldn't be right because he wouldn't have a unanimous guilty verdict for any particular misdemeanor. You can't say "four of the jury think you committed tax fraud and the other eight reckon you falsified documents, so we'll average the two crimes up and sentence you for fraudification"?
59: No, there are 34 business records he falsified, so the question is if the motivation was one of those three other crimes for any of them (of which one, confusingly, is falsification of other business records than the 34), and if it was for any of the 34 then that's a felony.
So if on count 1, which is to say document 1, they agree it was falsified (a misdemeanor on its own), and half the jury think the intent was tax fraud and the other half think the intent was election fraud, that's unanimity for a felony on that count.
51, 55: LB's been following it closely and I haven't, so I'm probably wrong, but that's not quite how I understood the jury instructions, which on pages 32-33 and 45-46 suggest that for the jurors to rely on false business records as the "unlawful means" element of the NY election law violation that
these records were falsified to conceal or commit, it would have to be about different false business records (and the instructions enumerate four such sets of other records for the jury to consider--two sets of Cohen bank records; an invoice that is not the invoice in Count 1; and Cohen's 1099 form).
Or to break it down differently: for the falsification of the 34 business records at issue to be a first degree offense, they have to have been falsified with an intent to commit/aid/conceal another crime. The other crime here is the NY state election law that makes it a crime to conspire to promote/prevent someone's candidacy through "unlawful means". And there are three potential "unlawful means" the jury can consider here: violation of federal election law; violation of local/state/federal tax law; or falsification of different business records. None of those pathways loop back on the charged business records being the unlawful means by which Trump conspired to violate NY election law.
60: I was puzzled about this initially, but turns out there's very clear precedent that yes, you can. The jury has to unanimously conclude that the 34 records were falsified to commit/aid/conceal the violation of NY election law, but they don't have to unanimously agree on how the "unlawful means" element of that election law violation is satisfied. (Whether that precedent is correct or not, who knows, but unless/until higher courts go a different way, it's controlling.)
Yes, that's how I see it as well. All 34 charges are for business records falsification 'in the first degree' (assume this is the 'felony' bit). In addition to satisfying themselves that the falsification took place, the jury only has to agree that some further crime (from the menu provided by prosecutors, or maybe even beyond it?) was conspired over (and not necessarily even committed).
It seems odd but not particularly unjust to me outside the precedential framework: the precise action that constitutes the crime being convicted on is agreed, the level of seriousness is agreed. The only thing disagreed on is what made it seriousness, and in this case that's overdetermined.
Having now actually scanned the judge's jury instructions, the 'menu' only contains the one further crime: the New York election law that forbids promotion of a candidate by unlawful means. The range of unlawful means the jury can consider is specified as well.
This stuff really does need to be provided to the jury in writing, as people have been saying.
61-65 remind me of the excellent AP Herbert spoof of a HoL judgement in which all five judges, in turn, say "the law is clear..." and proceed to explain, in clear and convincing detail, why they disagree with the previous judge. (The fifth and final one to speak says "the law is clear" and then dies of a heart attack, leaving the decision tied, two-all.)
A bit of complexity never hurt the professionalisation of any pursuit, let's say.
62.1: That is right, now that I actually read the jury instructions, and I'm wrong: the charge is even less circular than I thought it was.
54: There's a second volume!
https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/09/08/soviet-bus-stops-volume-ii-by-christopher-herwig/
I've even been to the stop that's on the cover. But like a sensible person -- unusual for me -- I was there in the summertime.
Thoughts about volume 1:
https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/03/20/soviet-bus-stops-by-christopher-herwig/
It seems fortuitous that two people here know of it.
This should be good. Might allow myself a further beer. Decent chance he'll have an outburst! Or an aneurysm!
Another half hour needed to fill out the relevant forms.
Despite speculation I guess the jurors aren't hung. Ladeez.
We got Brood X back in 2021, which was pretty intense. I interesting that Chicago is a different brood. Looks like Brood X mostly respects the Illinois border.
Argh, wrong thread.
I haven't been in this much suspense about a verdict since the OJ trial.
"The jury is coming out to deliver its verdict."
I'd assume guilty/not guilty on the first would mean guilty on all? Hard to split?
On the first ten counts, and counting.
But is it a felony?
Guilty on all. What happens now? Appeals?
Wow. I'm happy and honestly surprised the verdict was that fast.
New York knows from getting business fraud convictions and how to handle when their witnesses are understandably shady.
Damn, I'm in a meeting so I couldn't start whooping. But wow. What a birthday present.
I feel like going drinking tonight.
90: Have 34 in honor of the day and the news that's in it?
Maybe 1 whiskey and six beers to celebrate his biggest fail. I can walk home after that.
Happy birthday, Minivet! Happy Trump Conviction Day, everyone!
Someone need to go check the flag at Alito's house.
He's just standing in the yard giving the Nazi salute.
Good way to end the day. Good work, New York.
Silicon Valley bank whiner David Sacks has thougts:
There is now only one issue in this election: whether the American people will stand for the USA becoming a Banana Republic
I'm going for J Crew.
Guilty on the first count, via twitter.
I've been a way from that site, are twitter polls now legally binding?
96: Look, he was driven to it. Economically anxious.
The average U.S. president has .74 felony convictions.
Which, I'm guessing, means they now passed Congress.
I'm drinking Brooklyn Lager because I don't know any beers from Manhattan.
Now I'm drinking Jameson because I like drinking Jameson. Andy Richter says Costco Irish Whiskey is just as good, but that's not allowed in Pennsylvania.
Does Trump's lawyer suck? Usually if someone faces 34 counts, they win on at least one.
I mean, obviously Trump's lawyer sucks. But was the 34 and 0 count because Trump's lawyer sucks.
I appreciate this reaction today: https://www.everythingishorrible.net/p/when-people-stand-up-to-trump-they
Bill Pruitt and those jurors put a target on their own heads because they felt that holding Trump accountable--even in a limited way, even for a day--was important. That's not foolish or naïve. It's admirable. And anyone who thinks democracy is worth fighting for, and fascism is worth fighting against, should say as much.
There was a skeet about how standing up to Trump was done by ordinary people (mostly meaning voters as it was from before the trial) and criticized by elites of various stripes.
Thanks Doug! I'm tempted to break my rule on paper books. You may appreciate the film too. It includes footage shot over a maybe 20-year span, and of course shows you some stuff beyond the bus stops.
Because of the gorgeous people, landscapes, and livestock of the region.
Kevin Drum thinks he won't get jail time. My guess is he will, but less than a year (probably far less).
I'd like to see a bill removing Secret Service protection for persons in penal custody. (That could pass through reconciliation, I think?) The idea that they'd move heaven and Earth to provide a detail for this SOB in state prison is absurd.
I think 34 months would be reasonable.
112: But what does that have to do with public transit?
I'm beginning to doubt your commitment to sparkling nations. Or something.
98: oh, yikes, no. 97 to thr conviction news.
110: You're welcome! And I think art books are good to have on paper.
And thanks for the tip about the film! I doesn't look like they've shown it in Germany yet...
Also Biden has finally agreed to allow Ukraine to use US-supplied weapons to hit military targets in (some bits of) Russia. Just a good day all round.
My commitment to sparkling nations, and indeed sparkling in general, remains as steadfast as ever.
Kevin Drum thinks he won't get jail time. My guess is he will, but less than a year (probably far less).
Do you mean he will get sentenced to jail time in July, or he will actually spend time in jail? The latter is less likely. I'm thinking about appeals here.
Wonderful news to wake up to, I can't wait for sentencing. You just know he's going to talk himself into having to do real time.
122: Spending all that time going after Marchan and his daughter isn't going to help.
We have to elect the guy who led supporters in chants of "lock her up" lest we become a banana republic. These people apparently don't even see what dopes they are.
124: If Connnnor Friedersdorf were capable of seeing what a dope he was, he would have demonstrated it at some point in the last fifteen years.
I really want that classified documents case to go to trial and am super pissed about how that one has been handled.
part of the improvement in the 1990s and 2000s in income was no doubt the end of sanctions and general export-driven economic growth
And a substantial peace dividend, and perhaps unions being able to negotiate better terms.
I wonder how much of it was, like late mediaeval England, the fact that so much of the workforce had died in a plague that the survivors could demand much higher wages?
Interesting question, but I expect the effect is essentially nil. SA has both a massive oversupply of unskilled labor and an undersupply of skilled labor (blue-collar as well white; not sure about pink). Maybe AIDS deaths had some effects in some skilled sectors,* but on the whole, no; the country had ~25-40%** unemployment throughout the period.
*If anywhere, I would look at the mines first; but one would have to dig well below headline wage rates, because union negotiations.
**Depending on who one counts.
Thabo Mbeki isn't an idiot. He's a very smart man who committed to some idiotic beliefs -- all the more damning for him and all the more warning for us; both in general, and on the nature of ANC creatures in particular: often smarter than they look. That goes also for Zuma and Malema.
I agree with various above that Ukraine isn't as dire as lk's excerpt appears to paint it, but I'm also not as sanguine as some others. It's a brute attritional war and the Russians have the numbers. We know from innumerable cases, perhaps most relevantly from late WWI, that armies can go from determined defence to total collapse very quickly.
TBC, I don't think that's about to happen in Ukraine, but I think we would all do well to keep the possibility in mind. (And not just in mind for the Ukrainian defence today, but hopefully for the Russian defence a year or three in future.)
The trickle of permissions-to-strike-in-Russia is interesting. In about 40 years' time I'm sure there'll be a fascinating book on all the back channels and backbiting.
121: I don't think there's any chance he goes into custody this year, but the nominal sentence, pending appeal, will include some amount of jail time. Being completely unrepentant is a factor sentencing.
There's also some chatter that Russia is trying to depopulate Kharkhiv with long-range strikes. IDK how true that is, but it would be an interesting variation on a very old theme.
There's a widespread trope in reporting on SA* which says or implies that major corruption started under Zuma. It didn't. It worsened under him, but started before him and continues after. Zuma, after all, was elected president by the ANC, and the ANC membership voted for him after he had been found in court to be generally corrupt.
*Which no-one in this thread is guilty of, but one will see it if reading casually, and it annoys me.
Thabo Mbeki isn't an idiot. He's a very smart man who committed to some idiotic beliefs
I mean, that is quite a good definition of being an idiot, though. If you hold idiotic beliefs on an incredibly important topic, commit to them, don't challenge them, and act on them, you're an idiot. That is what idiots do, and their IQ scores are really irrelevant. Luigi Cadorna had a dazzling academic record, and also was an idiot.
Second 132.
We know from innumerable cases, perhaps most relevantly from late WWI, that armies can go from determined defence to total collapse very quickly.
Yeah. That applies to both sides, though.
It's a brute attritional war and the Russians have the numbers.
They also had the numbers in WW1. They outnumbered the Central Powers on the eastern front by almost 2:1 in infantry in 1917, just before they totally collapsed.
Tooze's newsletter had a nice precis of a Le Monde article about current electronic warfare realities at the front line. Lots of improvised equipment, the report there is that Western tech is overdesigned and not relevant. Really hoping for them to win.
The NYT found a write with enough impacted feces to call Trump's conviction "a moment of national trauma."
The WaPo went even more into the pits of the rust belt travelogue genre: instead of a diner, they went to "the Trump Shoppe, a strip mall headquarters for local Republicans that doubles as a gift shop" and picked out a freak who voluntarily spends multiple days of his life there.
135: Looks like this was a headline, so blame it on an editor not a writer, most likely.
I'm not going to read the article, just assume the phrase is in it.
I'm seeing "turmoil" not "trauma" which seems supportable.
Preaching to the converted here, but the complete worthlessness of career pundits and the editors who give them space... I'll just leave that as a sentence fragment. But maybe if there were more words worth reading in easy-to-find places, the kids would have an easier time putting pro-China TikTok into some kind of context.
I will say that I like what I read from German Lopez and Julie Turkewitz in the NYT.
When I looked online it was "turmoil" on the main page and "trauma" when you clicked through.
Now main page has : At a Moment of National Trauma, Biden Feels Compelled to Stay on the Sidelines and still "trauma" if you click.
It's a Peter Baker job, and he seems to attract poor headlines--witness his Barr letter report headlined: A Cloud Over Trump's Presidency Is Lifted.
The whole premise of the fucking analysis is weird--as if this some how analogous to other actual trauma/turmoil events in almost any fucking way.
Go ahead write about Biden's various reasons for staying silent (but which are pretty obvious) but don't act like it's exceptional in any way. Christ President's commenting on any aspect of a criminal trial is fraught--especially with an almost certain appeal. In the article David Axelrod says otherwise but he's in my "do the opposite file."
"I don't understand how one convicted felon could get so many votes, while his opponent who has a son with a criminal record and is not on any ballot or in any government position could get so few!"
Trump is literally neurodivergent and a senior.
Oh, here's something glorious I hadn't seen before.
Trump is required to report to the New York City Department of Probation for an interview about his background, his mental health and the circumstances of his case that will be used to help compile a presentencing report
I wonder if he has to take a real cognitive test.
person woman man camera tv, take two
146: I read that the interview is totally unpleasant and requires self-control. :D
Question for the commentariat: is this summary of the strong and weak points of the decision to prosecute, reasonable? https://www.vox.com/politics/353111/trump-trial-verdict-criticisms-wrongly-convicted
I don't know nothing about nothing here, but that summary didn't seem implausible. The various Trump apologists have, imo, such low credibility, I'd never give any meaningful weight to their contentions. The NY Court of Appeals will resolve the various legal issues, now that the jury has found the facts.
150: I also know less than nothing about nothing but did glance through the article. I think it is an area where there is much ongoing bad faith argumentation that it interferes with my ability to think clearly about valid concerns. Which I believe there are as covered in the piece. Clearly not a simple case, but the Honigs of the world are I believe way overstating its novelty and problems.
A thing I am absolutely sure of is that various attempted ratfuckings by Bill Barr have been way undercovered in the context of this case.
- Where are you, Pooh Bear?
- I have no plans to call on you, Christopher Robin. The world's more interesting with you in it. So you take care now to extend me the same courtesy.
-- Silly old Bear. You know I can't make that promise.
-- I do wish we could chat longer but... it's eleven o'clock. Just about time for a little something.
- Pooh Bear? Pooh Bear?
(dial tone)
Not a lawyer but the "election interference isn't fraud" and "federal crimes can't be state felony upgrades" arguments seem pretty toothless to me. I wasn't aware of the statute of limitations issue previously and that seems trickier... To JP's point about ratfucking, though, part of the reason this case wasn't brought earlier is because the DOJ asked the state to back off, dicked around with it and decided not to bring the charge. Between the DOJ and House Democrats, the president de facto has immunity from clear violations of federal law, so long as they're not sensational enough to demand impeachment.
154 And impeachment is pretty much guaranteed not to work, especially on an elected official or anyone else with political significance.
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The Heebieville cemetery peacock died. :(
There's one a street over that I see occasionally, but I follow a local artist on IG who photographed and painted the former often, so I have a closer parasocial relationship to it.
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We just had a very tense Ticket to Ride game and everyone is mad at me.
135: a moment of national trauma.
I am a hothead who often (over)reacts emotionally to political stuff. But this is one that I thought was bad, but the more I thought about it last night, it became more rage-inducingly insane. Especially after I related it in person to several people. It just belies a whole fucked up underlying worldview, or editorial choice world, or something. I will probably write something up on the insane Joseph Kahn interview with Ben Smith==the headlines probably reflect Klein as much as the writer. (And Carolyn Ryan--longtime acknowledged HRC hater is managing editor now).
And now the article seems to have disappeared--or more seems to have morphed into a Peter Baker piece about Biden actually saying something about it. Anyway, cannot find it on their site (there are other paper's "reprints" such as the Seattle Times still up).
And then they come up with this gem of a headline: Trump Verdict Confirms How Far the Former Master of New York Has Fallen, But now titled: New York, Once Trump's Playground, Is Now the Scene of His Indignities
Former Master of New York!!! Read it and weep.
151: It's apparently directly untrue that Bragg "ran for district attorney on a promise to indict Donald Trump"; he was in fact quite cautious about making that sort of statement, instead saying that unlike Cy Vance he would hold the powerful accountable.
160 followup: e.g. here's Josh Marshall yelling about how it's a lie, presumably in the (going to be forlorn) hopes that Democrats jump on this before it becomes journalistic conventional wisdom.
161: Well Susan Collins and Elie Honig said it so it must be true...
Honig seems to be on a contrarian Nate Silverish trajectory. See where he ends up.
163: I saw someone on Bluesky (can't find it now!) commenting that one of the reasons so many media outlets got it wrong is that their reports' contact lists are full with high-prestige federal litigators and they'd have done better talking to a couple somewhat scuzzy state defense attorneys.
161: Saw that by Marshall, but I also have a memory of rooting for Bragg because he was going to prosecute Trump.
I can't remember what I said here rather than on Twitter, but I was touting Bragg as the best from back when he was a candidate for DA. Is there any chance you were rooting on the basis of my recommendation rather than from an unmediated sense of his public statements?
I wonder if to some extent some people are conflating his campaign with Letitia James who was quite upfront about wanting to bring Trump to task.
167: Quite possible! But the only thing that I cared about, regarding Bragg, was whether he would pick up the ball that Vance dropped. I remember being convinced that he would -- and I do remember that you thought Bragg was the right person for the DA job.
Anyway, Marshall links this piece from Byron York, and this statement from Susan Collins.
Marshall takes issue with the statement that Bragg "campaigned on a promise to prosecute Donald Trump." And ok, fair enough. Bragg didn't explicitly make that promise.
Here is a bit of the relevant NYT story:
Mr. Bragg, at a Democratic candidate forum in December, cited that lawsuit as one reason he was qualified to oversee the district attorney's Trump investigation.
"I have investigated Trump and his children and held them accountable for their misconduct with the Trump Foundation," Mr. Bragg said. "I know how to follow the facts and hold people in power accountable."
Mr. Bragg acknowledged that Mr. Trump could seek to make an issue of his history if he wins. Asked how he would contend with accusations of bias from the former president, Mr. Bragg said he had been attentive to what he had said publicly -- and what he had not said.
"It is a fact that I have sued Trump more than a hundred times," Mr. Bragg said. "I can't change that fact, nor would I. That was important work. That's separate from anything that the D.A.'s office may be looking at now."
Now we can say that Bragg wasn't promising to indict Trump, and that is clearly true -- Bragg was careful not to do that, apparently to the point of telling the reporter that he was being careful not to say that out loud.
But this is the sort of excuse people make for Trump himself. "He didn't tell people to invade the Capitol." And that, too, is technically true.
But if you put the statements of Trump and Bragg in any kind of context, their intent was clear. Bragg promised accountability for a known criminal. How else, beyond criminal charges, does a DA hold criminals accountable?
I think "promised" is a load-bearing word here. Bragg clearly ran as someone who wasn't at all reluctant to prosecute Trump if he could make it stick: he wasn't shy about that. But he wasn't committing to do it regardless of the merits, which is what "promised" implies and why "promised" makes Bragg sound unethical. The technical distinction is a real, meaningful, distinction.
Has Honig been around for a while? I've seen references to him that suggest people have heard of him or that his opinion matters in some way, but I have no idea who that is or why I should find out beyond asking a question deep in the comments of an obscure blog.
I read those statements by Bragg as "I'm not going to give Trump special treatment. If the suits merit going forward, I'm not going to stop them." If anything is implicit in that statement, it's that certain other people, possibly predecessors in the same job, haven't follow the merits of certain cases when they stopped pursuing them.
173: For several reasons, I think Bragg's predecessor, Cy Vance, is worthless. And while this is paranoid, I think the Trump prosecution Vance set in motion at the very end of his tenure was a setup to let Trump off the hook and put the blame for failure on Bragg. That whole kerfuffle where Bragg told Vance's holdover Trump prosecution team that the case they were putting together wasn't solid enough to bring to trial, and they quit noisily over it rather than continuing to work the case? That looked very bad to me.
Trump promised to prosecute Clinton. He couldn't get the career people to do it, but no one who has ever supported the guy in any way has any business at all acting like Bragg has breached some kind of sacred principle here.
In 2022, saying "I'm going to prosecute Trump if he's demonstrably a criminal" is the same thing as "I'm going to prosecute Trump." Bragg, quite appropriately, was careful not to acknowledge that -- so he made no inappropriate "promise."
But that leaves aside Trump's obvious guilt, which underlies the argument made by Collins and York. They don't try to argue that Trump is innocent, just that Bragg made it clear he intended to act on Trump's guilt.
To procedural liberals like Josh Marshall, this is an offensive accusation that requires an apology. To people like me, it's all kind of "meh."
There was a time when Bragg appeared to be dithering on the subject of bringing charges. (Here's Special Assistant District Attorney Special Assistant District Attorney Mark Pomerantz's resignation letter.) My recollection is that this caused me to wonder if I had been misled about Bragg's intentions -- if Bragg was, in effect, breaking a campaign promise.
Here's a quote from that letter:
His financial statements were false, and he has a long history of fabricating information relating to his personal finances and lying about his assets to banks, the national media, counterparties, and many others, including the American people. The team that has been investigating Mr. Trump harbors no doubt about whether he committed crimes -- he did.
I don't suppose we actually disagree on the facts here, and any disagreement on interpretation is pretty tiny. I just found Marshall's dudgeon to be exaggerated.
176 before reading 174. I don't suppose Pomerantz himself is in a position to admit to error here (and I myself am not convinced he was wrong). But I wonder if he or his like-minded colleagues have changed their minds with the benefit of hindsight.
You should, for obvious reasons, be convinced he was wrong that Bragg was not going to successfully prosecute Trump on the basis of his disagreement with Pomerantz. I suppose it's possible that Pomerantz had the case in the bag and Bragg was just being overly cautious, but he demonstrably wasn't requiring an unachievable level of rigor before going forward.
And boy, rereading Pomerantz's letter is enough to make me super mad all over again. I may be overly easily outraged, I am a strong Bragg partisan, but that's an enthusiastic attempt to throw Bragg all the way under the bus as a do-nothing, in a way that looks very unjustified in retrospect.
If Bragg ran on prosecuting Trump, and won, that just shows that prosecuting Trump is the will of the people.
178-179: Then I guess you won't be buying his book.
Someone made a police procedural with Jean Reno and Jill Hennessy and I wasn't informed.
Not as much cleavage as Crossing Jordan, but she's a sister in this.
172: Honig
He was an AUSA in SDNY for a number of years where he made a rep for prosecuting mobsters, and then a state office in New Jersey I think. Since about the start of Trump's presidency he has been a legal analyst and I think n is now CNN's senior guy and maybe has a podcast (or is on them a lot). So similar in background to a number of TV legal eagles, and always sort of a an abrasive one who was often critical of prosecutors tactics. Recently he seems to be taking more strident contrarian positions; he has written several books, including Untouchable: How Powerful People Get Away with It. and many of his recent positions seem to be in effect endorsing those methods (at least to non-even-handed critic like myself).
The internet is pointing out that Trump's sentencing is scheduled for 7/11. Convenience store marketing has a golden opportunity.