Donald Trump will not be able to use "presidential immunity" as a defense in a defamation case brought by writer E. Jean Carroll after he claimed that he did not rape her.
A three-judge panel on the Second US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled to uphold a federal judge's previous decision against Trump. The court found that Trump had waived his presidential immunity, and rejected his attempts to assert it as a defense now.
"[R]ecognizing presidential immunity as waivable reinforces, not undermines, the separation of powers and the President's decision making authority by affording the President an opportunity to litigate if he so chooses. Accordingly, we hold that presidential immunity is waivable," Judge José Cabranes wrote.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) agreed to hear the appeal of a January 6 defendant. The implications could impact former President Donald Trump's pending criminal trial.
SCOTUS granted several writs of certiorari Wednesday, in which it agrees to take up cases heard in federal appellate courts. The last writ granted on Wednesday was in the case of Fischer, Joseph W. v. United States, which involves a participant in the deadly U.S. Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.
The underlying question of the case was whether Fischer "corruptly" acted to obstruct official proceedings in attacking police officers guarding the US Capitol. One of the charges in Fischer's initial indictment was obstruction of an official proceeding, which NBC News reports is also one of the charges the former president is facing.
The U.S. District Court ruled in favor of Fischer in the case, and the Department of Justice appealed. Following the DOJ's appeal, a U.S. Court of Appeals panel overturned the lower court's decision and ruled Fischer did, in fact, act corruptly to disrupt proceedings.
Now the question will go before SCOTUS, and its decision will almost certainly impact Trump's own case.
"Fischer allegedly belonged to the mob that forced Congress to stop its certification process. On January 6, 2021, he encouraged rioters to 'charge' and 'hold the line,' had a 'physical encounter' with at least one law enforcement officer, and participated in pushing the police," U.S. Circuit Judge Florence Pan wrote.
"Before January 6, he allegedly sent text messages to acquaintances, stating: 'If Trump don’t get in we better get to war'; 'Take democratic [C]ongress to the gallows. . . . Can’t vote if they can’t breathe . . . lol'; and 'I might need you to post my bail. . . . It might get violent. . . . They should storm the capital [sic] and drag all the democrates [sic] into the street and have a mob trial.'"
In describing SCOTUS' decision to take up the Fischer case, Politico legal correspondent Kyle Cheney tweeted that the heart of the case "is whether those who breached the Capitol 'corruptly' obstructed Congress' proceedings on Jan. 6 — and how to define 'corruptly.' Depending on how SCOTUS rules, Cheney wrote that the Court "could derail hundreds of Jan. 6 felony prosecutions — and could also deal a blow to special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of former President Donald Trump."
The obstruction of an official proceeding charge carries a maximum federal prison sentence of 20 years. Smith has also charged Trump with conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding and conspiracy against rights.
Donald Trump blew off settlement rumors circulating around his $250 million fraud case in an all-caps social media rant Wednesday.
Trump again bemoaned the pre-trial summary judgment from New York City civil court judge Arthur Engoron that found the former president liable for defrauding Trump Organization lenders and investors.
"HE RULED THAT I WAS A FRAUD BEFORE HE EVEN SAW THE CASE, THEN TRIED TO GET ME TO SETTLE,” Trump wrote. “A TOTAL HIT JOB.”
His message on Truth Social arrived on the final day of testimony in a marathon case that pitted Trump and his two sons against the legal team of New York Attorney General Letitia James, who accuses them of inflating asset values to defraud lenders and investors.
As is made plain in the all-caps screed, Trump denies wrongdoing.
Engoron has been frequently targeted by Trump, who contends the case is politically motivated by biased New York officials, yet he appeared sentimental in court Wednesday, ABC News reports.
"In a strange way, I am going to miss this trial," Engoron reportedly said. "It has been an experience."
An army of internet trolls is going to war for former President Donald Trump with the latest artificial intelligence tools, reportedThe New York Times on Wednesday — and many of their top targets are women and minorities.
"Cheered on by Mr. Trump, the group traffics freely in misinformation, artificial intelligence and digital forgeries known as deepfakes. Its memes are riddled with racist stereotypes, demeaning tropes about L.G.B.T.Q. people and broad scatological humor," reported Ken Bensinger.
In particular, they go after women who are rivals or critics of Trump — for example, "In one video, the former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley’s face is pasted on the body of a nearly naked woman, who kicks a man with the face of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida in the groin.
"Another depicts Casey DeSantis, the governor’s wife, as a porn star. Women with ties to Mr. DeSantis are often shown with red knees, suggesting they have performed a sex act."
Racist tropes are also peppered throughout the group's work — for instance, after Trump was indicted on racketeering charges in Georgia by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is Black, "Several team members produced a music video targeting" her, reported Bensinger.
"A Kanye West parody, it used artificial intelligence to mimic Mr. Trump’s voice rapping lyrics that were peppered with racist dog whistles."
The group has also played an outsized role in the online mockery of DeSantis, who has been relentlessly targeted by their memes. They claim credit for helping to take the rumor DeSantis wears lifts in his boots mainstream.
The leader of the group, which calls itself Trump's "Online War Machine," is a Georgia-based podcaster and life coach named Brenden Dilley. And while they operate independently of the Trump campaign, several close Trump allies and officials, including Donald Trump Jr., and campaign officials Steven Cheung and Dan Scavino, routinely share their content.
Dilley says that in addition, he has been showered with gifts from Trump, including dozens of signed MAGA hats, which can routinely resell for thousands of dollars, and a large number of VIP tickets to Trump's rally in Hialeah, Florida.
Prosecutors in Michigan will present their case Wednesday against 15 state Republicans charged for acting as false electors for former President Donald Trump during the 2020 election, WXYZ reported.
The charges against the accused false electors were announced by Attorney General Dana Nessel's office back in July, and all pleaded not guilty except one, James Renner, who had all criminal charges against him dropped in October thanks to a cooperation deal.
Each defendant faces eight criminal charges, which include multiple counts of forgery. Those charged still insist they did nothing illegal.
The defendants are made up of "former and current party officials, party activists and officeholders, including a mayor and township clerk," WXYZ's report stated.
Former President Donald Trump is claiming that because he was still president in late 2020 and early 2021, he
enjoys "immunity" from prosecution in special counsel Jack Smith's election interference case. That "immunity," Trump claims, renders the case invalid.
Smith considers Trump's immunity-from-prosecution argument in the case ludicrous, and
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan has agreed. In a December 1 ruling, Chutkan stressed that the office of the presidency "does not confer a lifelong get-out-of-jail-free pass."
Trump has appealed Chutkan's ruling, and Smith is
asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the matter as soon as a possible.
In a
Tuesday, December 12 broadcast, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell pointed out that one of the High Court's justices, Trump appointee Brett Kavanaugh, has already expressed his views on the immunity-from-prosecution question.
O'Donnell told viewers, "At least one member of the Supreme Court has already agreed, in writing, with Judge Chutkan's ruling. And what makes this an especially crushing setback to Donald Trump's hopes in the Supreme Court is that the member of the Court who fully agrees with Judge Chutkan is one of the three justices appointed by Donald Trump. That means there are likely tonight at least four votes against Donald Trump on the Supreme Court, with only one more vote needed to crush the Trump appeal."
The MSNBC host
went on to say that "the breaking news of the night is actually 25 years ago" — meaning that Kavanaugh ruled on the immunity-from-prosecution subject in 1998.
"In July 1998,"
O'Donnell explained, "Brett Kavanaugh wrote a 38-page article for the Georgetown Law Journal, complete with 167 footnotes. The title of what is now the most important thing Brett Kavanagh ever wrote before becoming a Supreme Court justice is 'The President and the Independent Counsel.'"
Kavanaugh, in 1998, wrote, "Congress should establish that the President can be indicted only after he leaves office voluntarily or is impeached by the House of Representatives and convicted and removed by the Senate."
Trump left office on January 20, 2021, when Joe Biden was sworn in as president.
O'Donnell told viewers, "Page 16 of Brett Kavanaugh's article removes all doubt about what Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh actually thinks."
In an interview with Substacker Aaron Rupar released on Wednesday, political scientist Brian Klaas pulled back the curtain on how former President Donald Trump's latest rhetoric is poisoning American politics — and how the press is barely even paying attention to it anymore.
"In 2017, whenever Trump tweeted anything I got media requests from CNN, MSNBC, the BBC," said Klaas. "I was going on TV all of the time to talk about every single tweet. Some of them were pretty banal and genuinely not that big of a deal. They were just unusual, because he wasn’t the standard politician. Now he’s saying, 'We’re going to purge the vermin,' and he’s talking about going after his political opponents, and the phone doesn’t ring."
This is ultimately the true "canary in the coal mine," Klaas added — the fact that "Trump doesn’t even generate news these days when he says literally the craziest stuff in the last 30 years of American politics. It isn’t even covered."
Notably, Trump still manages to get headlines when he goes far above and beyond — in particular in his recent town hall with Fox News' Sean Hannity, when he said he would be a dictator, but only on "day one" so he could fix the border and drill for more oil.
But Trump still manages to escape an astonishing amount of scrutiny, Klaas added — in particular, citing a report from The Guardian that found that Trump's "vermin" comments received 18 times less coverage than when Hillary Clinton said half of Trump's supporters could be put in a "basket of deplorables."
Ultimately, Klaas said, "The press has failed in covering Trump in two different phases. The first phase was Trump’s rise. In 2015, Trump was a fringe candidate, and at that point it made a lot of sense to not amplify him" — and yet they kept doing this even as Trump commanded larger and larger polling leads. "Now I think we have the exact opposite problem. Trump is so ubiquitous, in terms of how much influence he has on American politics, that the real problem has become that the routine nature of his incendiary and authoritarian rhetoric has meant the press has tuned him out. That has, I think, created the very wrong impression that Trump is becoming more normal when the opposite is happening."
Donald Trump is considering a plan that would allow North Korea to keep its nuclear weapons while relieving some of its economic sanctions, according to a new report.
The former president, if he's re-elected next year, badly wants to reach an agreement with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and would consider allowing the nation to freeze its nuclear program and stop developing new weapons in exchange for lifting some sanctions and offering other forms of aid, three sources briefed on his thinking told Politico.
“He knows he wants a deal,” one source said. “What type of deal? I don’t think he has thought that through.”
Trump's policy in his first term was “complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization," and he even considered dropping a nuclear weapon on North Korea and blaming another country, but he “fell in love" with Kim after multiple personal meetings and have remained on good terms, and his potential second term could present a dramatic shift in long-standing U.S. policy.
"If Trump softens his approach, it could rattle allies like South Korea and Japan and unnerve members of his own party who prefer a tougher approach toward Pyongyang," reported Politico. "It would also open the former president to criticisms of hypocrisy, as he consistently bashed the Obama administration for relieving Iran’s economic woes in exchange for reversing its advance toward a first nuclear weapon. Trump, as president, withdrew the U.S. from the Barack Obama-era Iran nuclear deal."
Those sources said the ex-president might be motivated to avoid lengthy negotiations to persuade Kim to dismantle his nuclear weapons and instead focus on competing with China, but Trump's campaign brusquely disputed their claims.
“These ‘sources’ have no idea what they are talking about and do not speak for President Trump or his campaign,” said campaign spokesman Steven Cheung.
During a Tuesday, December 12 conversation with CNN's Anderson Cooper, former President Richard Nixon White House counsel, Watergate whistleblower and CNN contributor John Dean shared his thoughts on special counsel Jack Smith's current "gambit" in his criminal 2020 election interference case against Donald Trump.
CSmith's current push to get Donald Trump's "claim of immunity in the January 6th case on a fast track to the Supreme Court," Cooper said "could be a decision that ranks among the most consequential for the high court." He added, "Perhaps the closest the court came was in 1974 with US v. Nixon which compelled then-President Nixon to turn over those Watergate tapes."
The CNN host then asked Dean, "John, in terms of potential significance, does any prior Supreme Court case involving the presidency aside from US v. Nixon compare to the immunity ruling that Jack Smith is seeking in the Trump case?"
Cooper said, "I mean, in U.S. v. Nixon the question was whether a president has executive privilege in a subpoena fight, not necessarily immunity from the criminal trial, so is there actual precedent from the Nixon case that could or should apply to the Trump case?"
Dean replied, "You know, there's a little bit of language in what they call the dicta, the sort of just remarks, that indicates that the court then thought a president had criminal exposure. But it's never been spelled out, never been fully addressed, never been fully briefed."
Cooper said, "During Watergate, [Bob] Woodward and [Carl] Bernstein they wrote [in their book, The Final Days], special prosecutor Leon Jaworski's decision to appeal to the supreme court, saying, 'It was risky. Very, very risky. Suppose the justice said no. Suppose it was an angry no. Suppose it was a sarcastic reminder to Jaworski that there was a Court of Appeals for such a reason and that no one receives special treatment. Not the president. And not an arrogant prosecutor.' Do you see any potential down sides to Jack Smith's gambit?"
Dean replied, "I don't. I think he is one step ahead. I think he's got a stronger case than Nixon had, for example, with the tapes. And certainly that Trump has in this case for total immunity."
Cooper then asked, "Given the dispute over immunity, I mean to say nothing of the ongoing dispute over Judge Chutkan's gag order, do you think there's any way in which Trump's federal election subversion trial starts on time in early March?"
Dean said, "It's got a shot now. We'll see what the high court does in taking this on and how long it takes them to deliberate. In the Nixon case they did it from start to finish, Anderson, in 61 days."
Cooper asked, "And given the make-up of the court, how do you think they'd rule if they took the case?"
The former White House counsel said, "Well, that's harder to tell. You know, if conservatives are being true conservatives, they're not going to say that a president — any president — is above the law. So once they take that case on, if they take it on — I think they will — they're going to go the distance and find no immunity for our president."
Some critics of former President Donald Trump have argued that if he wins the 2024 election and returns to the White House in 2025, the United States' system of checks and balances will be robust enough to hold back any authoritarian moves he makes. Conservative Republican New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who has endorsed former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley for president, insists that Trump is "too dumb to be a threat to democracy."
But veteran conservative columnist Mona Charen has a very different viewpoint.
In an article published by The Bulwark on December 13, the former Nancy Reagan speechwriter warns that America's checks and balances may not be strong enough to survive a second Trump term.
Charen explains, "Even the supposedly serious conservatives on the Wall Street Journal editorial board assure readers that 'We think American institutions are strong enough to contain whatever designs Mr. Trump has to abuse presidential power'…. So, the Journal isn't at all concerned that Trump would follow through on plans to instruct the Justice Department to prosecute his opponents; pardon all of the January 6th rioters, fake electors, and others who helped him attempt to steal the 2020 election; withdraw from NATO; impose a 10 percent tariff on all imports; investigate NBC for treason; and shoot shoplifters on sight."
The Never Trump conservative goes on to lay out some reasons why "this complacency is dangerous."
"The truth is that institutions don't uphold themselves," Charen emphasizes. "They require constant reinforcement and reaffirmation. They depend upon individuals who are committed to something other than their own narrow self-interest. Our institutions were not strong before Trump took center stage in American life, and they are even weaker now."
The former Reagan White House speechwriter continues, "The best possible check on the excesses of any political figure is a strong party that exerts pressure to conform to certain standards…. If the Republican Party were not such a shell, it would have shut down Trump's dangerous lies about the stolen election on November 3, 2020…. The institution of the Republican Party cannot be relied upon to check Trump in a second term."
Charen also fears that the military, the courts, the media and organized religion wouldn't discourage Trump's authoritarianism during a second term.
"What about the military?" Charen writes. "For the most part, the military has held steady, affirming that it has no role in domestic politics. But there are a disturbing number of former officers like Michael Flynn and others who are fully paid-up members of the Trump cult…. What about the churches?.... White evangelicals have shown themselves to be among the most susceptible to the lure of a would-be authoritarian…. What about the courts?.... Things will be different if Trump is reelected. He will have learned the importance of putting a toady in the attorney general's office."
A co-defendant of Donald Trump in Georgia suffered a legal loss Tuesday.
MAGA lawyer Jeff Clark, who was recently taken down a notch by a host on MSNBC, found out that the court wasn't going to allow him to skip out on Georgia criminal charges.
A Georgia law professor posted about the filing on Tuesday.
"Judge McAfee DENIES Jeff Clark’s motion to dismiss the charges against him for lack of jurisdiction, citing Georgia’s long-arm criminal statute that applies extraterritorially and broad jurisdiction conferred by law to the superior court," Anthony Michael Kreis said. "He rejects the claim as meritless."
MSNBC legal analyst Katie Phang also posted about the legal development.
The "best part," according to Phang, is that "Judge McAfee finds Clark’s arguments to lack any 'persuasive precedent' and to be 'creative.'"
"You don’t want a judge to say you’re being 'creative lol," Phang wrote on social media Tuesday. "You want a judge to just grant your motion to dismiss."
A fan asked Phang what "personal jurisdiction meant," and this was her reply:
"So 'personal jurisdiction' is the idea that a court has to have the power & ability to bring you into its jurisdiction to be able to make decisions that will affect you."
Citizen Trump can't pretend to be president. And therefore he's wide open for prosecution.
That's the thinking by former Solicitor General Neal Katyal who appeared on MSNBC's "Alex Wagner Tonight" on Tuesday night.
He talked about the implications involved in regard to Special Counsel Jack Smith hopscotching former President Donald Trump's stall tactics and the appeals process with a direct petition to the Supreme Court to rule on his "presidential immunity" claims in the 2020 election subversion case.
Katyal doesn't buy Trump's attempt to claim that he's not only immune, but infallible.
He paraphrased the legal position as flat out dim, noting that the "extraordinary thing that Trump is trying to argue, which is that he can murder someone and get away with it."
He can't, according to Katyal. And becoming leader of the free world doesn't come with infinite exoneration.
"That being president gets him a get-out-of-jail free card," he sarcastically noted.
But Katyal believes that in this case, Trump "didn't quite... get away with it."
He found it incredibly odd that the former president, who's running again to win the GOP nomination, continues beating the drum that he is essentially untouchable as a "sitting president" and therefore "he can't be investigated." And yet his own attorney, according to Katyal, is also saying that they aren't fighting for "permanent immunity" — only to keep the hands off Trump (assuming he wins the presidency in 2024) until his second term elapses.
"Jack Smith is prosecuting him as a former president," Katyal contends. "I know Trump still thinks he's president, but he's not in the reality-based world."
And he then offered his prediction: and it would be that the Supreme Court will likely rule against the 45th president.
"The Supreme Court is gonna say, 'How can it be that a former president has absolute immunity? That's just not American.'"
Donald Trump's niece on Tuesday denounced former President Donald Trump's recent fundraising effort to sell fans a piece of his suit he wore in his Georgia mugshot, describing it as an attempt to sell "the suit off his back."
Mary Trump has long been a critic of her uncle, former President Trump. On Tuesday, she attacked the erstwhile president after he announced a plan to sell his fans "a piece of the suit" he "wore for [his 2023 Atlanta] 'Mugshot Photo."
“It was a great suit, believe me, a really good suit," Trump remarked in a video announcing the sale. "It’s all cut up, and you’re gonna get a piece of it.”
Mary Trump, a psychologist, said earlier in the day that she believed Republicans face a "day of reckoning" coming with the next election. After that, Mary Trump took to social media to attack the former president's attempt at fundraising.
"I swear I thought it was a joke when I heard he was hawking pieces of the suit he wore (allegedly) for his mugshot photo," Trump's relative wrote. "It gets even worse for him: Donald has to face the fact that the cat is out of the bag."
"Not only do the courts know the Trump Organization inflated his assets and he lied about his wealth, the public knows it too," Mary Trump continued. "Why is Donald selling the clothes off his back? Maybe it’s because he can’t afford his ever-mounting legal bills."
To purchase a piece of the suit, individuals have to buy 47 digital trading cards featuring an illustration of Trump. Buyers will then receive a piece of the suit or tie that Trump wore when he was arrested in 2023.
Described as “priceless,” a piece of the suit can allegedly be had for $4,699.53. Business Insider, however, notes that if a piece of the suit or tie are unavailable, buyers may have to settle for an NFT.
In a subsequent post on Substack, Mary Trump said it was a "new low" for the ex-president.
"I know Donald. He has no shame and is equally comfortable putting his name of buildings, steaks, and fake universities," Mary Trump wrote. "But this is a new low even for him – and it reeks of desperation."
