Democracy gone Astray: Indictment

Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.

This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Showing posts with label Indictment. Show all posts

Friday, September 06, 2024

Trump Falsely Claims He 'Was Never Indicted' Despite Being Indicted 4 Times

Depending on how you feel about Donald Trump, today was either an embarrassment of riches or just an embarrassment.

The former president was in Derry, New Hampshire, on Monday to hold a rally and to sign up for the New Hampshire presidential primary, The Associated Press reported.

Judge imposes gag order on Donald Trump in D.C. trial

A federal judge has barred Donald Trump from attacking witnesses, prosecutors and court staff involved in his Washington, D.C., criminal case, imposing a gag order that sharply escalates the tension between Trump’s 2024 bid for the presidency and the realities of his status as a criminal defendant.

“First Amendment protections yield to the administration of justice and to the protection of witnesses,” Judge Tanya Chutkan said Monday as she issued the gag order. “His presidential candidacy does not give him carte blanche to vilify … public servants who are simply doing their job.”

Jack Smith Questions Trump Team's Public Comments On Legal Defense

Special counsel Jack Smith is demanding to know whether former President Donald Trump actually plans to argue in court — as he and his legal team have suggested they will — that he was simply following advice from his lawyers when he attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Several lawyers in Trump’s circle, including then-Attorney General William Barr, have already said they told the former president that his attempts to overturn the election were unfounded because there was no evidence of widespread election fraud.

Alex Jones intends to resist efforts by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to compel him to testify in this month’s trial of two Donald Trump co-defendants, his attorney said Tuesday.

Norm Pattis, an attorney for the far-right broadcaster, said Jones has nothing to offer in the trial — and that even if a court were to order him to testify, he would simply plead the Fifth, as he did when subpoenaed to testify to the House Jan. 6 select committee last year.

“We’re not going to help Fani’s fantasy life come true any more than we did that of the J6 committee,” Pattis said.

Georgia prosecutors say a key Trump campaign legal adviser’s memos — which guided efforts to subvert the 2020 election despite former President Donald Trump’s defeat — cannot be shielded by attorney-client privilege because they were about politics, not law.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis argued Tuesday that the memos by Ken Chesebro, one of 18 defendants charged alongside Trump in a sprawling racketeering conspiracy related to the 2020 election, were not about a litigation strategy or legal advice, which would typically be protected by confidentiality rules.

Donald Trump’s New York fraud trial will continue next week after an appeals court rejected the former president’s latest bid to halt proceedings.

Lawyers for Trump had argued that the court should wait for an appeal on a pre-trial ruling before moving forward. The trial started on Monday.

In a ruling last week, New York judge Arthur Engoron found the former president and others working for the Trump Organization guilty of financial fraud. Engoron ordered the dissolution of Trump’s companies in the state, effectively ending his ability to run his real estate business.

Mary Trump Floats 2 Reasons Why Trump Ditched His New York Trial

Mary Trump suggested embarrassment is at the root of Donald Trump’s abrupt departure from his civil fraud trial.

“He showed up in New York voluntarily because he knew how important this fraud trial is not only to his reputation but to the core of his own beliefs about who he is,” the former president’s niece, a psychologist and author, said in her Substack newsletter on Thursday. “He left because he knew nothing he did — the pouting, the angry stares, the media hits — was working.”

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump is asking a federal judge to dismiss criminal charges against him based on his actions leading up to his Jan. 6, 2021, coup attempt because, as president, that coup attempt should be considered part of his presidential duties.

Trump lawyers Todd Blanche and John Lauro, in Thursday’s 52-page filing to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, attempted to minimize Trump’s actions leading up to the violent assault on the Capitol that day and that, regardless, the law allowed Trump to act based on his belief that the election had been stolen from him.

Fulton county prosecutors in Georgia have approached several defendants about plea agreements in the sprawling criminal racketeering case dealing with Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the result of the 2020 election, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported on Tuesday.

Plea agreements are common in such cases accusing defendants of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (Rico) Act, where prosecutors will often try and get individuals at the lower level of a criminal enterprise to “flip” and assist the prosecution in exchange for a lighter sentence or immunity. The district attorney’s office has already reached immunity plea agreements with at least half of the fake set of electors in Georgia.

The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial issued a gag order on Tuesday after the former president made comments about the judge’s clerk.

“Consider this statement a gag order forbidding all parties from posting, emailing or speaking publicly about any of my staff,” the judge, Arthur Engoron, said on Tuesday afternoon. “Personal attacks on members of my court staff are unacceptable, inappropriate and I will not tolerate them in any circumstances.

A defendant charged alongside former President Donald Trump in Georgia has pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. Scott Hall, a Georgia bail bondsman, is the first person to reach a plea deal in the case, in which Trump and 18 others were charged with racketeering conspiracy for their efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Hall, 59, who was involved in a breach of election equipment, pleaded guilty Friday in Atlanta to five counts of conspiring to commit intentional interference with performance of election duties. The plea deal included an agreement to a sentence of five years of probation, a $5,000 fine and a letter of apology to the state.

A Riled Trump Sounds Off Outside The New York Fraud Trial That Accuses Him Of Lying About Wealth

NEW YORK (AP) — Aggrieved and defiant, former President Donald Trump sat through hours of sometimes testy opening statements Monday in a fraud lawsuit that could cost him control of Trump Tower and other prized properties.

“Disgraceful trial,” he declared during a lunch break, after listening to lawyers for New York Attorney General Letitia James excoriate him as a habitual liar. The state’s lawsuit accuses the business-mogul-turned-politician and his company of deceiving banks, insurers and others by misstating his wealth for years in financial statements.

One of the 18 defendants in a Georgia election interference case involving former President Donald Trump pleaded guilty on Friday.

Scott Hall, a bail bondsman, pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor charges for his role in helping Trump attempt to reverse his 2020 presidential election loss in the state. Hall was charged after he breached a Coffee County election office on Jan. 7, 2021.

A New York state judge ruled on Tuesday that former President Donald Trump committed business fraud for several years by falsely inflating the value of his assets to secure better loans from banks and policies from insurance companies.

The ruling comes in a civil case brought against Trump by state Attorney General Letitia James. The attorney general had considered bringing criminal charges relating to the allegations she made against Trump, but ultimately opted not to.

Trump’s business empire could collapse ‘like falling dominoes’ after ruling

Donald Trump’s real estate empire could collapse “like falling dominoes”, experts believe, following a New York judge’s ruling that the former president’s business fortune was built on rampant fraud and blatant lies.

According to Michael Cohen, his former attorney and fixer, Trump is already effectively “out of business” in New York after Judge Arthur Engoron on Tuesday rescinded the licenses of the Trump Organization and other companies owned by Trump and his adult sons, Eric and Don Jr.

NEW YORK — A state judge Tuesday found Donald Trump and his company liable for fraud for inflating his net worth in order to deceive banks and insurers, resolving one of the key claims in a civil fraud lawsuit brought by the New York state attorney general just days before a trial is set to start.

Attorney General Tish James’ office “has submitted conclusive evidence” that the former president and his co-defendants overvalued their assets by between $812 million and $2.2 billion from the years 2014 to 2021, the judge, Arthur Engoron, wrote in a court filing. “Even in the world of high finance, this Court cannot endorse a proposition that finds a misstatement of at least $812 million to be ‘immaterial.’”

Eric Trump seemed a little unhappy with the New York legal system on Tuesday.

Apparently, that’s what happens when a judge decides that your family business has repeatedly committed fraud.

On Tuesday, Judge Arthur Engoron ruled that former President Donald Trump and other members of the Trump Organization consistently overvalued his assets and net worth in order to get better deals from banks, insurers and other businesses.

Donald Trump committed fraud for years while building the real estate empire that catapulted him to fame and the White House, a New York judge ruled on Tuesday in a strongly worded rejection of the former president’s bid to throw out a civil lawsuit against him.

Judge Arthur Engoron found that Trump and executives from his company, including his sons Eric and Donald Jr, routinely and repeatedly deceived banks, insurers and others by massively overvaluing assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork.

NEW YORK (AP) — A judge ruled Tuesday that Donald Trump committed fraud for years while building the real estate empire that catapulted him to fame and the White House, and he ordered some of the former president’s companies removed from his control and dissolved.

Judge Arthur Engoron, ruling in a civil lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, found that Trump and his company deceived banks, insurers and others by massively overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork used in making deals and securing loans.

Special counsel Jack Smith has added a veteran war crimes prosecutor — who served as Smith’s deputy during his stint at the Hague — to his team as it prepares to put former President Donald Trump on trial in Washington and Florida.

Alex Whiting worked alongside Smith for three years, helping prosecute crimes against humanity that occurred in Kosovo in the late 1990s. The Yale-educated attorney also worked as a prosecutor with the International Criminal Court from 2010 to 2013. He has taught law classes at Harvard since 2007 as well, hired as an assistant professor by then-Dean Elena Kagan — now a Supreme Court justice — and rising to a visiting professorship in 2013.

Democracy gone Astray