Categories
announcements open thread trump

Donald Trump indictment party and open thread

It’s a sad day in Trumpland as our former grifter-in-chief has been hit with another barrage of indictments, these dealing with Jan. 6.

Anyway, I thought you all would appreciate a thread to talk about the indictments and whatever else catches your fancy.

Oh, and a quick note from me: I’ve been taking a break from posting to clear my head and take care of some things. I should be back and posting normally soon.

Follow me on Mastodon.

Send tips to dfutrelle at gmail dot com.

We Hunted the Mammoth relies on support from you, its readers, to survive. So please donate here if you can, or at David-Futrelle-1 on Venmo.

42 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
AJ Butterwick
1 year ago

I am still astounded that he got elected when the worst sections of the internet were calling him God Emperor. I was there when David was posting story after story and that it never made it to the rest of the world feels like criminal negligence on the part of the, and I hate saying it this way given the history, main stream media. How did thy not point out that every racist and misogynist organization on the planet was on the Orange Turd’s side?

Sorry to bring up old stuff. But that’s where this whole thing started and it pisses me off all over again.

But also? Thank you David, for pissing me off in the first place. I needed it and it helped me dump some people I thought were OK, but ended up being perfectly fine with his shit.

GSS ex-noob
GSS ex-noob
1 year ago

Yay! Open thread.

When I inquired the other day, I almost added “… or for the next round of indictments” and now I wish I had.

@Elaine, how’s it going?

Gijoel
Gijoel
1 year ago

How long till his next indictment? We should start a betting pool.

occasional reader
occasional reader
1 year ago

Hello.

Have a healthy break, David.

For Trump, if he is convicted, does that make him ineligible ?

Have a nice day.

Snowberry
Snowberry
1 year ago

@Occasional Reader:

Ineligible to run for public office? No, it’s been done before.

Ineligible to serve as president if he wins? Maybe. It’s not clear how that would work. The few people who ran for an office from prison weren’t serving long sentences. They also didn’t win. If somehow Trump wins while serving multiple sentences totaling centuries, that’s going to cause issues, to say the least. If the courts decide that he can’t actually do his duties as president from confinement* and he can’t leave confinement*, then theoretically it would fall to the House of Representatives to vote someone in. It doesn’t automatically go to the Speaker of the House if no one was ever sworn in as President. In practice this might not get resolved soon enough and he’d get sworn in anyway, in which case it would result in his running mate becoming president. Who probably won’t be Pence this time around.

*I’m using “confinement” here and not “prison” because it’s always possible he’d get house arrest or something stupid like that.

I’m kind of hoping that he gets the Republican nomination and then dies (in a normal manner for older people, not by assassination) long before the general election, and before picking his running mate. That will throw the Republican party into chaos, and possibly cause a lot of his prospective voters to stay home, which would benefit the Democrats downballot. Also that the FBI takes care of the MAGAs who get too riled by this, before they can do much damage. Hey, I can dream, can’t I?

Jono
Jono
1 year ago

I heard that the indictments include one that he spread misinformation that was directly responsible for the January 6 riots.

milotha
milotha
1 year ago

I’ll celebrate when he’s hauled off to jail, where he rightfully belongs.

Makroth
Makroth
1 year ago

This is nice and all, but is there any chance of him going to jail? Any chance of him not being above the law this time? Any at all?

LondonKdS
LondonKdS
1 year ago

Unrelated note: Nicholas Alahverdian aka Rossi is another step closer to being extradited from Scotland to the USA. (I say Scotland rather than the UK as Scotland has its own distinct legal system)

Last edited 1 year ago by LondonKdS
Carstonio
Carstonio
1 year ago

Still a little confused as to why his previous indictments included advance warnings to his lawyers and him arriving voluntarily for arraignments, as if he weren’t a flight risk. Couldn’t DOJ order the Secret Service to stand down and then raid Mar-a-Lago or Bedminster and arrest him?

Dave
Dave
1 year ago

@How long till his next indictment? We should start a betting pool.

Likely two weeks. Georgia is scheduled to release the results of their own grand jury investigation mid-August.

griffon8
griffon8
1 year ago

@Carstonio: It’s so he can have no claim of being treated unfairly. As far as I’m concerned, if he takes the opportunity to flee the country, that’s a win. He can’t run for president from Russia, let alone take office from there. He might escape conviction that way, but he would never escape losing.

Jenora Feuer
Jenora Feuer
1 year ago

@occasional reader, Snowberry:
My understanding is that in general there is nothing preventing someone convicted of a crime from running for or even winning public office. However there are some specific crimes (including some of the ones Trump is charged with) which include being barred from public office as part of the standard punishment.

@Makroth:
I’d say there’s a decent chance. The current Special Counsel Smith is someone who has investigated war crimes and worked in the Public Integrity section of the U.S. DOJ previously. Everything I’ve been hearing says he is very much an ‘i’s dotted and t’s crossed’ sort of person who wouldn’t have even brought up charges if he didn’t think there was more than enough evidence to prosecute.

Also, while the judge on the stolen documents case (Aileen Cannon) is a Trump appointee and has been rebuked for giving overly friendly rulings to him before, the judge on this case (Tanya Chutkan) is also the judge who ruled that the Jan. 6th committee could access call logs, and who already sentenced several of the lower-level people involved in the riots. And while she’s apparently been one of the less openly anti-Trump judges in D.C., that’s not saying much and she’s made it pretty clear that her attitude is ‘this cannot be allowed to happen again’.

Both judges were randomly selected, and while I’m not saying either of them is going to allow any personal biases to affect their decisions… certainly there’s existing evidence that Judge Chutkan is definitely not going to be looking for loopholes for Trump and his co-conspirators.

Victorious Parasol
Victorious Parasol
1 year ago

What a week it’s turning out to be.

I’m dealing with some major job stressors, but right now they’re down to “well, maybe you’ll only be out of work for a month.” More on that later. For now, let justice roll down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream. And if Trump is found guilty by a jury of fellow citizens, let the mills of justice grind him to powder.

GSS ex-noob
GSS ex-noob
1 year ago

@Vicky P: Hope all goes better than you expected, or at least no worse.

At best, he’ll be going to Club Fed, easy time. But I think we’d all like to see him in Gen Pop. He’s a mass murderer from Covid along with being a traitor, put him in gen pop for life and haul him to the Hague.

Failing that, let him go to his puppetmaster Vlad and stay there, with his passport canceled and assets seized as sanctions.

Or as @Snowberry said, finally stroke out from his decades of uppers. Quicker and easier for all, including him.

Alan Robertshaw
Alan Robertshaw
1 year ago

@ Vicky P

Oh, I hope things pick up for you.

@ thread

Mike Pence has just made some interesting comments. Seems nearly getting lynched has finally caught up with him.

The indictment makes moderately interesting reading. Might be a bit over charged maybe; although that seems to be a thing with some US prosecutors. Might be a bit of a risk of a Tu Coque defence though. Expect to see the 2000 election brought up.

If they can keep the trial in DC though they may be in with a chance. So I suspect we’ll see a motion to transfer the case to FL.

I doubt TFG will ever see the inside of a gaol though. If he can get some half decent lawyers (ideally not ones who end up being co-conspirators on an indictment) then they should be more than capable of dragging this out for a few years, especially with appeals. And Trump is 77 and believes exercise is bad for you. So, tick tock…

Jenora Feuer
Jenora Feuer
1 year ago

@GSS ex-noob:
Well, letting him be carted off to the Hague is pretty much guaranteed not to happen, because the U.S. would never want to allow any precedent that Americans could possibly be tried in the International Criminal Court, no matter how heinous the crime in question.

And frankly, if anybody made a list of American Presidents who should be tried at the ICC for genocide or war crimes, Trump wouldn’t be at the top of the list anyway; as horrible as some of the things he did were, most of them were done within the U.S. And while he could be charged with mistreatment of refugees, I suspect that nobody’s really going to want to start pointing fingers with that one because most of Europe is guilty of that one to one degree or another as well.

But yeah, Clarence Darrow’s line about “I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.” definitely applies.

Victorious Parasol
Victorious Parasol
1 year ago

Thanks, y’all.

Short version: My current contract is expiring end of September, but I might get hired back in October/November.

Long version
So there’s the company I work for (they contract out geeks to various companies) and there’s the company I work at (major healthcare corp, and I won’t name it). Company A (that I work for) was contracted by Company B (that I work at) for years to supply geeks as needed.

Company B has now decided that they don’t want to get geeks from Company A any more. Instead, they’re going to be doing business with Company C. In fact, a number of my teammates who worked directly for Company B were “rebadged” recently – they were released from Company B and hired by Company C to do the same work that they’ve been doing for years.

According to my employer (Company A), they haven’t officially been told that Company B wants to do the same for us. “Us” in this case is my teammate T and I, who both work for Company A. T’s been there a bit longer than I have, and he’s annoyed by the whole mess.

My manager has told me off the record that they very very very much want to keep me around and as far as she knows, the worst case scenario is that I’ll be out of work for a month while I transition to Company C, which basically means “we let your current contract expire, then invite you to apply for the same job, no interview necessary, but I lose accrued benefits, but it sounds like it would be for more money. I can’t say I’d mind being off work for a month as long as there really IS a new job at the end.

But hey, at least I’m not facing multiple federal indictments.

Alan Robertshaw
Alan Robertshaw
1 year ago

@ Vicky P

but I lose accrued benefits

We have a thing here called TUPE (“Transfer of undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations”). That basically means that, if you take over a business or transfer one to someone else, the workers are treated as is they’ve always been on the same job with the same employer. So they keep all their time served benefits.

But what you describe sounds like how people here get around that. Let contracts expire etc but then re-hire. New employees don’t have the same rights of course and from a business perspective are less of a financial risk.

I really hope all this works out for you though. And you deserve a rest. I can see how the opportunity for that might be worth more than the money.

Something related
A couple of years ago a friend got involved in a well-being at the Bar initiative. Burn out and mental breakdowns are a bit of an occupational hazard for us. Not least because we are all actually self employed. Even though some of us operate from chambers, they are just unincorporated associations of barristers who agree to share facilities and running costs. There can be quite a collegiate atmosphere (although the lockdown and new ways of working have really afforded that) but it’s more ‘let’s go to the pub’ than pastoral care.

So anyway, we tagged along to the first meeting. A quite senior barrister said that every day he just wanted to be hit by a car on the way to court. “Not fatally! Just enough to maybe put me in a coma for a bit and then a week or so in hospital.” Just so he could have an excuse for some time off.

The response though was “Well yeah, but we all feel like that.”

Of course, the idea is that maybe we don’t have to.

One of the reasons I love law twitter is it’s just everyone sharing their nervous breakdowns. It doesn’t address the root causes. They may be unassailable. But it’s nice to know we’re all in the same boat.

I have to have monthly injections in my eye. I really enjoy that though. I’ve arranged for them to be at the hospital in Penzance rather than here. So it’s a nice day out. But the best thing is, people are squeamish about such things. So when you give details about why you’ll be unavailable that day they tend not to question it.

But its funny, I can say about people “I’d rather stick needles in my eyes.” and it’s literally true.

epitome of incomprehensibility

Not Trump-related, but I saw the Barbie movie yesterday! Yay for ticket-discount Tuesdays.

So, confession: it wasn’t my favourite – it seemed a bit scattered, like not all the narrative threads went somewhere. Also, I’m nostalgic and I think Toy Story did better with a similar theme.

But it also had lots of fun parts as well as unexpectedly profound conversations, e.g. about how women have to deal with multiple and contradictory expectations. And some of the things I questioned about “Barbieland” can be explained by the conceit. At first I was thinking, “It’s not super feminist that almost all the women seem to have the same style and bubbly/feminine personality, even if there’s some diversity in size and ethnicity.” But then, they’re all representations of a doll, so…I dunno.

Oh yes, and all the women in Barbieland are named Barbie and all the men named Ken. (Except for Ken’s buddy Alan – there’s only one of him.) But it’s definitely not “misandry” by any stretch of the imagination…

Some spoiler-y things
…For one thing, at the end, Ken finds out that he can be an individual without either being Barbie’s accessory or being stereotypically masculine. In general I really liked the ending: Barbie’s original creator shows up and talks to her, and then Main Barbie decides she wants to be human, saying something about wanting to make meaning, stories, etc., not just being the thing made.

occasional reader
occasional reader
1 year ago

Hello.

> Snowberry, Jenora Feuer
Thank you for your informations ! It is about the same in France, except that if you are sentenced for something, this can be assorted with a period of ineligibility. Oh, and there is also the case of being stripped of your nationality (you then can not candidate for political spot where french nationality is mandatory, such as president).

Have a nice day.

Victorious Parasol
Victorious Parasol
1 year ago

@Alan

Legal Twitter sounds a lot like Medical Twitter. Though with Medical Twitter, people also share stories of farmers coming to the ER.

What follows is a humorous example of something that happens a LOT in rural medicine:

Alan Robertshaw
Alan Robertshaw
1 year ago

@ Vicky P

Heh, that is so relatable.

I’m terrible for going “It’ll be right”. My truck sometimes fixes herself though so I imagine people can.

I once did ignore what I thought was a minor injury; until I was cleaning the scab and my finger suddenly went in up to the 2nd knuckle. So I did go to A&E. I got an overdose of antibiotics, a lecture on fistulas, and a bollocking. “You could have lost that leg!” I pointed out that it was hardly the Napoleonoc Wars. But the doctor said that if you ignore modern medicine it might as well be.

I think I was assuming that medicine works by cultural osmosis.

Doubles Trini Roti
Doubles Trini Roti
1 year ago

Paul Elam interviewed by the Manosphere’s biggest female grifter, Pearl

GSS ex-noob
GSS ex-noob
1 year ago

@Vicky P: I hope it works out like your manager thinks. A month’s vacation sounds lovely.

I love that doctor’s videos every time I see them.

@Alan: I tend to ignore things too. Not to the point of approaching gangrene! I once had a fever, chills, sore throat, cough, aches, nose, etc. but thought “eh, I’m in my early 20s, no biggie”. Till I realized I couldn’t follow the plot of the sitcom that was on, and the Mr. took my temp and it was about 105. Off to ER. There weren’t flu meds back then and I also had pleurisy. I do not skip flu shots now.

I walked on a broken leg for a week or so; much medical consternation at the x-rays, and the next morning I was in surgery to put a small plate in and get a cast. I can still feel the plate and screws under my skin even though the scar’s gone. It did get me out of an unpleasant scheduled thing that month.