Comrade Trump

[falafel]

lol. I really dont think so. I don't try cases in such rarefied air as the guys we are talking about, but for us regular down-in-the-mud types that is really not that unusual and certainly is not way out of line, at least not on the transcript. Maybe you heard audio or have video, which could make a difference, I guess. But if you have a cranky judge, and by all accounts I have seen this guy is one, that sort of stuff happens all the time.

A judge basically calling a prosecutor a cry-baby seems over the line to me.

[old_gregg]

A judge basically calling a prosecutor a cry-baby seems over the line to me.

totally commonplace in those rough and tumble blue collar courts creek punches his time card at

[creekster]

totally commonplace in those rough and tumble blue collar courts creek punches his time card at

Exactly. And, tbh, if his little feelings were hurt and he was tearing up, then he deserved it.

[creekster]

A judge basically calling a prosecutor a cry-baby seems over the line to me.

I am surprised you find that going too far, given what I have experienced in Vegas courts, which are full of wacky judges, IMO. I had one trial in front of a stocky woman judge whose name I can't recall and she was all over the place. At some point during the trial I think she threatened every attorney (and one client), at least once, with either jail or physical harm or both. OTOH, I also had a 6 month trial in Vegas that was in front of a judge who was obsequious and pleasant all the time, although her rulings were very one-sided.

"Over the line" isn't a judge being snarky outside the presence of the jury (if the judge said this in front of the jury it would absolutely be improper). That sort of snarkiness is just not uncommon with a cranky judge. The line is more easily crossed, in my mind, when the judge acts arbitrarily or capriciously with respect to evidentiary or other procedures. Once, when I was doing public defender work, a judge cut me off from cross-examining a cop on things he did not note in his police report which, as I am sure all the lawyers here know, is a very common c-x tactic. It was totally improper but a very difficult appellate issue and, for a misdemeanor case, not something that would ever be likely to get serious review. Now that, to me, was way over the line. (it was resolved when the entire public defenders office informed the court administrator at lunch they would immediately and permanently adopt a department policy to paper that judge unless he reversed his position, which he did within an hour.)

Also, my crack about rarefied air was not snark nor inaccurate. Cases like Manafort's, which are heavily scrutinized in the media and where there are teams of lawyers on both sides, are extremely different from the sort of case I typically try. They are handled very differently by judges, I believe, because they know their every step will be immediately reviewed by the press.

[Uncle Ted]

What office does she hold now or is she running for? I keep forgetting.

But if you haven't found that dirt yet maybe there wasn't any and the Russians were just running a scam.

So let me get this straight... the dems are all upset because the Drumpf campaign got scammed by the Russians? How much did they lose on this Russian dirt-on-hillary scam exactly? Was it as much as the dems lost on the BS Steele dossier that was created by an unsuitable source?

[frank ryan]

Devin Nunes (aka Uncle Ted's House of Representatives spirit animal) was caught on tape talking about the need to protect Trump from Mueller. He's one of the main reasons the House Intelligence investigation turned into some counter investigation into the FBI, and failed to call a lot of important witnesses etc.

GOP Rep. Devin Nunes was secretly recorded telling supporters that the Republicans have to keep control of the House to protect President Trump in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, according to a report.

“If [Attorney General Jeff] Sessions won’t unrecuse and Mueller won’t clear the president, we’re the only ones,” Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said at a private fundraiser July 30, NBC News reported Wednesday.

“Which is really the danger. … I mean we have to keep all these seats,” he continued. “We have to keep the majority. If we do not keep the majority, all of this goes away.”

Nunes was recorded while speaking at a closed-door event for Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Calif.) in Spokane, Wash.

It was released by the progressive group Fuse Washington and aired on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.”

Nunes’ spokesman called the congressman’s comments “sensible ideas,” The Hill reported.

The California Republican, a Trump ally who worked on his transition team, has been highly critical of the FBI investigation into the president and claims it was launched by biased agents out to get Trump.

During the fundraiser, Nunes also said conservative Republicans decided to table the idea of impeaching Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who’s overseeing the Mueller probe, because it could endanger the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

Nunes said, “It’s a bit complicated” because “we only have so many months left, right?”

“So if we actually vote to impeach, okay, what that does is that triggers the Senate then has to take it up,” Nunes told the supporters. “Do you want them to drop everything and not confirm the Supreme Court justice, the new Supreme Court justice?”

He went on to say he supports Rosenstein’s impeachment, but “the question is the timing of it right before the election.”

Reps. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), members of the House Freedom Caucus, introduced a resolution last month to impeach Rosenstein.

https://nypost.com/2018/08/09/nunes-...rce=reddit.com

[BlueK]

I don't know what Trump is so worried about. His base is all he cares about and they won't give a flying flip over anything the Mueller probe publishes, no matter how bad it is.

[falafel]

I am surprised you find that going too far, given what I have experienced in Vegas courts, which are full of wacky judges, IMO. I had one trial in front of a stocky woman judge whose name I can't recall and she was all over the place. At some point during the trial I think she threatened every attorney (and one client), at least once, with either jail or physical harm or both. OTOH, I also had a 6 month trial in Vegas that was in front of a judge who was obsequious and pleasant all the time, although her rulings were very one-sided.

"Over the line" isn't a judge being snarky outside the presence of the jury (if the judge said this in front of the jury it would absolutely be improper). That sort of snarkiness is just not uncommon with a cranky judge. The line is more easily crossed, in my mind, when the judge acts arbitrarily or capriciously with respect to evidentiary or other procedures. Once, when I was doing public defender work, a judge cut me off from cross-examining a cop on things he did not note in his police report which, as I am sure all the lawyers here know, is a very common c-x tactic. It was totally improper but a very difficult appellate issue and, for a misdemeanor case, not something that would ever be likely to get serious review. Now that, to me, was way over the line. (it was resolved when the entire public defenders office informed the court administrator at lunch they would immediately and permanently adopt a department policy to paper that judge unless he reversed his position, which he did within an hour.)

Also, my crack about rarefied air was not snark nor inaccurate. Cases like Manafort's, which are heavily scrutinized in the media and where there are teams of lawyers on both sides, are extremely different from the sort of case I typically try. They are handled very differently by judges, I believe, because they know their every step will be immediately reviewed by the press.

Late response to this, but I think that personal marks like "are you going to cry now," insinuating that the lawyer is being a baby, is just plain outside of the realm of common decency. Just because you are a judge and you are "cranky" doesn't give you license to insult your colleagues. I'm sorry that you have been so badly treated in your career that you think this is normal or acceptable.

[Topper]

Late response to this, but I think that personal marks like "are you going to cry now," insinuating that the lawyer is being a baby, is just plain outside of the realm of common decency. Just because you are a judge and you are "cranky" doesn't give you license to insult your colleagues. I'm sorry that you have been so badly treated in your career that you think this is normal or acceptable.

I don't know how many trials Creekster's had in Vegas, but given the limited number of cases I've had in California, about three, I could also speak about whacky judges in California, or even on the 9th Circuit.

Now, I'm not stating we have the most erudite, or most polite set of judges, but I'm doubtful Nevada or Vegas are worse than any place else. Outsiders usually get home-towned wherever you are, that's why you associate local counsel.

We have several judges who seem to think they are smarter than counsel and therefore show their disrespect to counsel, trying to embarrass them or to smack them down. Not much judicial demeanor there.

[creekster]

Late response to this, but I think that personal marks like "are you going to cry now," insinuating that the lawyer is being a baby, is just plain outside of the realm of common decency. Just because you are a judge and you are "cranky" doesn't give you license to insult your colleagues. I'm sorry that you have been so badly treated in your career that you think this is normal or acceptable.

Outside the bounds of common decency? Snowflakes, indeed. I read the actual transcript of that exchange (which was outside the jury's presence) and it just doesn't strike me as that bad or even unusual. And, honestly, if you cant take that from a judge then you probably shouldn't be a litigator who handles trials. Sometimes you need to push very hard on a judge and judges can get pissed off. As you may have seen in the news, in subsequent days the trial judge admitted he had acted improperly before the jury and gave an instruction to that effect. This did not involve the "are you crying?" exchange.

BTW, Nevada is no worse than California. The worst judge I have ever seen is a guy in the Northern District of CA. Its just the nature of trials. People get excited when the stakes are high.

[frank ryan]

With the Manafort Convictions and Cohen Plea, President Trump Has Been Implicated in a Criminal Conspiracy

The President of the United States is now, formally, implicated in a criminal conspiracy to mislead the American public in order to influence an election. Were he not President, Donald Trump himself would almost certainly be facing charges. This news came in what must be considered the most damaging single hour of a deeply troubled Presidency.

On Tuesday morning, it was still possible to believe that Trump’s former campaign chair Paul Manafort might be exonerated and that his longtime attorney Michael Cohen would only face charges for crimes stemming from his taxicab business. Such events would have supported Trump’s effort to portray the Mueller investigation as a “witch hunt” perpetrated by overzealous, partisan prosecutors. By late afternoon, though, Cohen, the President’s long-time adviser, fixer, and, until recently, personal attorney, told a judge that Trump explicitly instructed him to break campaign-finance laws by paying two women not to publicly disclose the affairs they had with Trump. At precisely the same moment, Manafort was learning of his fate: guilty on eight counts of bank and tax fraud, with the jury undecided on ten other counts.

The question can no longer be whether the President and those closest to him broke the law. That is settled. Three of the people closest to Trump as he ran for and won the Presidency have now pleaded guilty or have been convicted of significant federal crimes: Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort, and Michael Flynn. The question now becomes far narrower and, for Trump, more troubling: What is the political impact of a President’s criminal liability being established in a federal court? How will Congress respond? And if Congress does not act, how will voters respond in the midterm elections?

The President spoke to reporters soon after the Manafort and Cohen news. He said that the Manafort guilty verdicts made him feel “very badly,” but they “had nothing to do with Russian collusion.” He then walked away, as reporters shouted questions about the Cohen guilty plea. While his comment was, technically, correct—neither man’s guilt was for crimes involving the Trump campaign colluding with Russia—the President would be unwise to consider the outcome of either case beneficial. Manafort was convicted of crimes he committed while being paid tens of millions for serving the interests of oligarchs and politicians closely allied with the Kremlin. The trial made clear that Manafort was in tremendous financial distress, in hock to some of those same oligarchs, just when he became Trump’s unpaid campaign chair. The trial contained a central but unasked question: What did this desperate man do when he needed money and had only one valuable asset—access to Trump and his campaign? Manafort, who faces decades in prison, is under renewed pressure to coöperate with Mueller’s investigation and to answer that question.

It is the Cohen plea that should be the most alarming, though, to the President, precisely because it has nothing to do with Russia. Instead, it demonstrates a comfort with law-breaking by people at the core of the Trump Organization. Cohen’s guilty plea is part of a long trail of evidence. Last month, a tape recording of Trump speaking with Cohen showed that the President had familiarity and comfort with the idea of using shell companies to disguise payoffs that, we now know, were illegal. This echoed evidence from depositions in a lawsuit filed by the New York Attorney General against the Trump Foundation that suggested deceptive—and almost certainly illegal—practices were standard at the Trump Organization. Cohen admitted in open court that Trump directed him to violate campaign-finance laws. Later in the day, Cohen’s attorney, Lanny Davis, issued a public statement that included these lines: “Today [Cohen] stood up and testified under oath that Donald Trump directed him to commit a crime by making payments to two women for the principal purpose of influencing an election. If those payments were a crime for Michael Cohen, then why wouldn’t they be a crime for Donald Trump?”

The day had a feeling, on one level, of history, of recognizing that one is living through moments that will become central parts of the Trump Presidency. At the same time, the day felt small and shabby, as we learned more details about the crude crimes of those who surround the President. Manafort and Cohen did not commit clever, subtle crimes; they blatantly and crudely lied. They lied to banks to get money; they lied to the I.R.S. In Manafort’s case, he instructed countless support people to lie on his behalf. In Cohen’s case, it was Trump demanding that a subordinate do the lying. The crimes were not unravelled by brilliant detective work. All it took was law-enforcement officials looking.

It is conventional wisdom these days that views of Trump are fixed: those who hate him can’t hate him more and those who love him can’t be budged, and, all the while, Republicans in Congress will do nothing, no matter what he says or does. There is another way of understanding the impact of Tuesday’s news. Trump was widely viewed to be morally challenged, a man comfortable with pushing the limits of legality, before he was elected. Perhaps he did business with some bad characters, maybe he engaged in some light civil fraud. But that fact had been priced into the election and, anyway, we don’t impeach Presidents for things they did before they were in office. The possibility of the Trump campaign colluding with Russia was a separate matter that was worth investigating because it had to do with his election. Keeping these two matters separate—Trump’s private business and possible campaign collusion—has been an obsession of Trump’s, for obvious reasons. His business cannot withstand this level of scrutiny.

https://www.newyorker.com/news-desk/...nal-conspiracy

[Walter Sobchak]

Thank you for sharing frank:

The President spoke to reporters soon after the Manafort and Cohen news. He said that the Manafort guilty verdicts made him feel “very badly,” but they “had nothing to do with Russian collusion.” He then walked away, as reporters shouted questions about the Cohen guilty plea. While his comment was, technically, correct—neither man’s guilt was for crimes involving the Trump campaign colluding with Russia

[Uncle Ted]

Thank you for sharing frank:

The President spoke to reporters soon after the Manafort and Cohen news. He said that the Manafort guilty verdicts made him feel “very badly,” but they “had nothing to do with Russian collusion.” He then walked away, as reporters shouted questions about the Cohen guilty plea. While his comment was, technically, correct—neither man’s guilt was for crimes involving the Trump campaign colluding with Russia.

Are you sure that one of those women involved with this doesn't have a Russian ancestor or something? And I bet the name "Cohen" is more of one of those Russian Jewish names. Mueller needs to keep digging (and spending our money), dammit!

[frank ryan]

This is getting really interesting

Cohen's lawyer says he's completely flipped and will give evidence that Trump colluded with Russia

Lanny Davis, the attorney representing Michael Cohen, said on Wednesday that Cohen had knowledge of a conspiracy between President Donald Trump and Russia.

During an MSNBC interview, he also said Cohen was willing to tell the special counsel Robert Mueller about it.

Davis coupled his comments with the launch of a fundraiser he said was meant to help Cohen "tell the truth" about Trump.

Cohen on Tuesday pleaded guilty to committing campaign finance violations and said he did so at the direction of Trump.

Lanny Davis, the attorney representing President Donald Trump's former longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen, said Wednesday that Cohen knew of efforts by Trump to conspire with Russia to rig the 2016 presidential election.

Davis had previously teased that Cohen had "knowledge on certain subjects that should be of interest to the special counsel," but he came right out and suggested a smoking gun on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Wednesday morning.

Cohen pleaded guilty in federal court on Tuesday to multiple charges, including campaign finance violations that he said he committed on the direction of Trump. While discussing the possible implications for Trump, Davis went on to give some details about information he said Cohen had that relate to the special counsel's investigation into Russian election interference.


Specifically, he said Cohen was willing to provide the special counsel Robert Mueller with evidence that Trump worked with Russia to sway the election.

"Michael Cohen knows information that would be of interest to the special counsel regarding both knowledge about a conspiracy to corrupt American democracy by the Russians and the failure to report that knowledge to the FBI," Davis said.

It's unclear whether Mueller's team has approached Cohen for information in the special counsel's investigation. Shortly after Cohen pleaded guilty Tuesday without providing information to federal prosecutors, observers began speculating that he might try to "flip" against Trump and work with Mueller's team so that it might recommend leniency in his sentencing. Trump has denied colluding with Russia to influence the 2016 election.

Davis went on to plug a fundraiser for Cohen, called the Michael Cohen Truth Fund, to help cover Cohen's legal fees. Davis, as Cohen's legal counsel, may ultimately get the funds donated.

"On August 21, Michael Cohen made the decision to take legal responsibility and to continue his commitment to tell the truth," the fundraiser's description says.

August 21, Tuesday, was the day that Cohen told the court that Trump had directed him to break the law. Cohen had previously displayed a fierce loyalty to Trump but has increasingly signaled a willingness to move against him.

"Cohen is going to be telling the truth to whoever asks him," Davis said on MSNBC.

The FBI raided Cohen's home, hotel room, and office in April, seizing more than 4 million documents. As a self-described fixer, Cohen is believed to have helped cover up various undesirable stories about Trump.
After a brief legal skirmish around Cohen's defense over whether attorney-client privilege protected the documents and taped recordings seized by the FBI, a judge ruled that less than 0.2% of the documents would be spared from FBI scrutiny.

A former federal prosecutor previously told Business Insider that such a quick turnaround from the April raid of Cohen's properties to his being formally charged could signal his cooperation.

https://nordic.businessinsider.com/l...rce=reddit.com

[Uncle Ted]

This is getting really interesting

Cohen's lawyer says he's completely flipped and will give evidence that Trump colluded with Russia


https://nordic.businessinsider.com/l...rce=reddit.com

What are we waiting for? We need to arm those tomahawk cruise missiles with nukes and bomb those Russians now! That will teach those red basturds to mess with our elections.

Davis went on to plug a fundraiser for Cohen, called the Michael Cohen Truth Fund, to help cover Cohen's legal fees. Davis, as Cohen's legal counsel, may ultimately get the funds donated.

Screw sending money to Cohen... we need to spend our money on tomahawks, dammit!