A Legal Round-Up (05.22.24)

The Trump trial, a floated ban on contraception, Nazi ads, false flags and Trump allies arraigned in Arizona

There’s a lot of Trumpy news today, so let’s do a legal round-up!

Will Trump soon be a man of conviction?

The defense rested in Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial on Tuesday. Many legal experts agree that the defense failed to successfully explain much of the circumstantial evidence or present any reasonable counternarrative, other than to attempt to discredit Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels. 

On this score, the defense’s own star witness, Robert Costello, was fairly much a disaster, first for having been admonished by the judge for misbehavior, then for providing testimony that confirmed Michael Cohen’s account of why he didn’t trust Costello—and that Trump world uses mob boss tactics. 

The state cross-examined Costello using his own emails, one of which showed how manipulative he was to Cohen—a person he claimed was his client. Costello stated to a colleague, for example, that they needed to get “Cohen on the right page without giving him the appearance that we are following the instructions from Giuliani or the president.” So… they really were following the boss’s instructions?

The defense committed an error putting Costello on the stand as the last witness the jury will hear from. Trump of course did not testify, despite having boasted he would. “I’m testifying! I tell the Truth!” Trump had declared earlier. While the jury will be instructed to make no inferences from Trump not taking the stand, the court of public opinion has no such restrictions.

Jury instructions are expected from Judge Merchan on Thursday, with closing arguments next Tuesday, before the jury gets the case.

Fred Trump should have used a condom

In an interview given to KDKA News in Pittsburgh, and in a moment that might serve as key background to “How did this happen?” in The Handmaid’s Tale, Trump was asked whether he supported any restrictions on a person’s right to use contraception. His answer alarmed reproductive rights advocates, and really should concern anyone who values personal autonomy:

“We’re looking at that, and I’m going to have a policy on that very shortly, and I think it’s something that you’ll find interesting,” Trump said. “I think it’s a smart decision. But we’ll be releasing it very soon.”

When reports of his statement emerged, he backpedaled furiously. He put out an ALL CAPS statement on his Truth Social platform:

“I HAVE NEVER, AND WILL NEVER ADVOCATE IMPOSING RESTRICTIONS ON BIRTH CONTROL” 

The problem is, he just did. And promising not to advocate for something, hollow as that promise is, is not the same as allowing restrictions to go into place or signing a bill into law.

He also called the allegation a “Democrat fabricated lie” even though the video clearly has him saying these exact words.

During the interview, Trump was asked if that meant he would support states banning certain forms of birth control, including the morning-after pill. Trump evaded answering directly, claiming instead that he would be releasing more details “within a week or so.”

“Things really do have a lot to do with the states, and some states are going to have different policy than others,” Trump said.

His campaign tried to spin away the statement, saying Trump had misspoken. But the Biden Campaign was quick to denounce his words.

“It’s not enough for Trump that women’s lives are being put at risk, doctors are being threatened with jail time, and extreme bans are being enacted with no exceptions for rape or incest,” a campaign spokeswoman said in a statement. “He wants to rip away our freedom to access birth control too.”

If he walks like a Nazi, talks like a Nazi, and acts like Nazi…

As if one big “he didn’t mean it” moment weren’t enough, Trump also posted a frightening ad on Tuesday on his social media platform touting his re-election. In the ad, which remained up for nearly a day even after criticism erupted, in the faded headlines in the background Trump heralds the “Creation Of A Unified Reich.”

When news of the Nazi reference emerged, Trump once again backpedaled, claiming again he didn’t mean it. Instead, he blamed a campaign “staffer” who used a “template” to create the ad.

So, two questions.

First, even taking his “explanation” at face value, which we should never do, what kind of people does the Trump Campaign have on staff that the default “template” would contain words like “Unified Reich”?! At least when Ron DeSantis’s doomed campaign posted Nazi imagery in a video, the “staffer” who created the ad was fired for it.

Second, we shouldn’t give Trump any benefit of the doubt at this point. He has a long and well-documented history of echoing Nazi rhetoric, including saying immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of America and that his political opponents are “vermin.” What’s a little “Unified Reich” talk among fiends?

Trump is signaling exactly what he intends to signal to his rabid, far-right followers. They can’t wait for the day when he returns to office and creates the First American Reich.

A false flag to justify later political violence

One of the pre-conditions to any fascist seizure of power is the acceptance by a sizable percentage of the electorate of the need for, and justification of, political violence. A time-honored strategy for would-be dictators is to create “false flags” to enrage and radicalize the populace, or at least enough of it to take control of government.

That’s why Trump’s latest ploy, though utterly absurd, is so dangerous. Trump and his allies claimed, without evidence, that the federal authorities intended to assassinate him while conducting the search of Mar-a-Lago. Their “evidence” for this? Language in the warrant that authorized the use of deadly force in the event the search was resisted. Trump, who was not at Mar-a-Lago on the day of the FBI search, wrote on Truth Social that he’d seen reports “that Crooked Joe Biden’s DOJ, in their Illegal and UnConstitutional Raid of Mar-a-Lago, AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE.”

His far-right allies seized upon this to claim that the federal authorities had sought to take Trump out by assassination. Wrote Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Q-Moscow) on the X Platform:

The Biden DOJ and FBI were planning to assassinate Pres Trump and gave the green light.

Does everyone get it yet???!!!!

What are Republicans going to do about it?

Rep. Paul Gosar (F-AZ) weighed in, too, with this dangerous lie:

Biden ordered the hit on Trump at Mar-a-Lago.

Never mind that the language concerning use of deadly force is standard in warrants and is part of existing DOJ policy. Deadly force is justified when the “subject of such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury to the Agent or other persons.” That simply wasn’t the case at Mar-a-Lago. Dude wasn’t even home. Some assassination attempt!

MAGA extremists want their followers to believe that Trump was the subject of an attempted hit by the current president in order to justify their own political violence and usurpation of the rule of law later. So the lie continues.

Ironically, under Trump’s own claims of absolute presidential immunity, Biden could have actually ordered this hit with no consequences whatsoever.

Like the desert missed the arraigned

Finally, and like a welcome rain shower across the hot desert Southwest, several key Trump allies, including attorneys John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani, Boris Epshteyn and Christina Bobb, were arraigned in Arizona yesterday on election-related state charges. A key cooperating witness appears to be Kenneth Chesebro, the architect of the fake elector scheme, who was the first to throw his fellow defendants under the bus.

A few fun facts to know about this. Rudy Giuliani was finally served with the indictment at the conclusion of his 80th birthday bash in Palm Beach Florida. Giuliani had evaded process servers for weeks and even taunted the Arizona AG on social media for having very little time remaining to serve him with the papers. 

Welp.

Second, Trump attorney Christina Bobb—famous for certifying to federal authorities that Trump’s team had conducted a diligent search for classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and none remained to their knowledge—is now charged with election-related fraud in connection with the fake elector scheme in Arizona. In an ironic, oh-so-2024 twist, Bobb is currently the new senior counsel for the Republican National Committee’s Election Integrity unit. Here’s her mug shot, by the way:

Some readers have asked why it took over three years since the fake elector scheme was executed in Arizona for charges to be filed against these defendants. It’s important to remember that the new Attorney General for Arizona, Kris Mayes, won her election in November of 2022, and did so by just 280 votes out of the 2.5 million votes cast, a reminder that every vote really, really counts. She took office in January of 2023, so it has only been 16 months from her assuming her role and this arraignment.

Others have asked why Trump is only named as an unindicted co-conspirator, and not a defendant. First, such individuals can be added as defendants later if the evidence warrants it. Second, keeping Trump out of the case now will allow it to move forward more quickly, without the specter of motions to dismiss based on “presidential immunity” or motions to quash based on “executive privilege” filed by Trump’s well-financed legal team.

Nothing precludes Mayes from indicting Donald Trump later, especially if other defendants cooperate now to point the finger at him.

Any bets on who caves first?