Clock ticking on payment of Trump’s fines

Serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT), after a string of legal setbacks in court, has had several legal decisions go his way recently. One is that the US Supreme Court agreed to hear his appeal that as president, he had total immunity, and scheduled oral arguments for April 22. The opinion is likely to only come down at the end of the court’s term in June which means that SSAT gets the delay that he has sought. It is clear that SSAT’s strategy is to delay everything as much as possible until after the election, hoping that he wins which would allow him to order his attorney general to shut down all the federal investigations. The US supreme court also overturned the decision by the Colorado supreme court to disqualify him from the state ballot because he violated Section 3 of the 14th Amendment (known as the Insurrection Clause) when he instigated the riot on January 6th, 2021.

But the civil cases that he has already lost must be giving him headaches because he has to cough up real money to appeal those. He is required to put up about 110% of the fines into an escrow account before his appeals can proceed.
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John Oliver on the lack of ethics in the US Supreme Court

After examining the blatant violations of ethical norms by justices Clarence Thomas, Sam Alito, and Neil Gorsuch, Oliver comes up with an idea to coax Thomas to leave the court by appealing to the one thing that seems to drive him: the desire to live like a very wealthy person who likes to drive around in a massive motor home. In public, Thomas talks about how he is battling the elites on behalf of ordinary people while in reality he loves to be the beneficiary of lavish vacations and gift from billionaires while ruling in ways that harm ordinary people. A really sleazy hypocrite.

Oliver offers him a contract where Thomas will be paid $1 million per year for the rest of his life and also get possession of a top-of-the-line motor home costing $2.5 million (that includes a bedroom with a king-size bed, 1 ½ bathrooms, and a full-size refrigerator) if he leaves the court. The offer is time limited in that Thomas has just 30 days from the date of the show (February 18th) to sign the contract. Oliver says that the money will come from him personally and that he has checked with lawyers and that, amazingly, making such an offer is legal.

I do not think that there is any chance that Thomas will accept the offer. Even though he loves to live the high life and would have no scruples about accepting it, like any person without a strong sense of ethics, he may suspect that others are like him and that the offer is not genuine and that if he makes moves towards accepting it, Oliver will unmask him, even though I think Oliver’s offer is genuine.

Don’t blame me, blame the bot!

The increased sophistication of AI systems has enabled an entirely new way of not accepting responsibility for one’s actions. One can say that one was a victim of a malicious AI attack that mimicked you either in video or voice and proving otherwise would be hard.

But there is another kind of excuse that is evidenced in this case.

Canada’s largest airline has been ordered to pay compensation after its chatbot gave a customer inaccurate information, misleading him into buying a full-price ticket.

Air Canada came under further criticism for later attempting to distance itself from the error by claiming that the bot was “responsible for its own actions”.
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In 2022, Jake Moffatt contacted Air Canada to determine which documents were needed to qualify for a bereavement fare, and if refunds could be granted retroactively.

According to Moffat’s screenshot of a conversation with the chatbot, the British Columbia resident was told he could apply for the refund “within 90 days of the date your ticket was issued” by completing an online form.

Moffatt then booked tickets to and from Toronto to attend the funeral of a family member. But when he applied for a refund, Air Canada said bereavement rates did not apply to completed travel and pointed to the bereavement section of the company’s website.

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Parents who abuse children

One never really knows what goes on inside other people’s homes and families. I have lived long enough to learn that families that seem to live serene, if not idyllic, lives can harbor some unpleasant secrets. Because of that, I try not to be too judgmental when I hear that families have troubles because one can never know what stresses people might be experiencing that cause them to behave in ways that are not seen by others.

But the thing that I find hardest to understand is when parents abuse their children. It seems like such a perverse distortion of the basic impulse among mammals to take care of their children until that they can go out alone and make their way in the adult world.

The case of Ruby Franke is striking.in the cruelty to her children on display. She and her business partner Jodi Hildebrandt gave parenting advice on a popular YouTube channel using her children as props. There are many such sites that use children this way, raising concerns that the children’s privacy is being invaded by their parents without their consent.
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SSAT is looking at coughing up real money

Judge Arthur Engoron handed down his judgment in the New York civil fraud trial of serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) brought by New York state attorney general Letitia James alleging that SSAT, his sons Donald Jr. and Eric, and his company indulged in fraudulent business practices. They had already been found guilty of fraud in an earlier trial and this part of the process was to determine the extent of the fraud and what fines, if any, they would pay.

It was hefty.

James had asked for $370 million and Engoron awarded $364 million. Engoron also “barred SSAT and and two other executives from serving as officers or directors of any corporation or entity in New York for three years. His sons, Eric and Donald Trump Jr, were banned for two years.” He is also “ordering the appointment of two court monitors to oversee the business: former judge Barbara Jones, and an independent compliance director to ensure “good financial and accounting practices””.

The judge was scathing in his opinion.
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What kind of immigrants should the US admit?

The issue of the border and migration is a politically charged issue. Republicans have seized upon it as one of the few concrete issues that they think can help them win elections, since their other issues involve culture wars that do not seem to have gained much traction. So desperate are they to keep this issue alive that the speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson, urged on by serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT), has promised to torpedo a bipartisan plan negotiated by Republicans and Democrats in the Senate to deal with the border issue, so that it will not be resolved before the election, even though the plan seems to give hard-line Republicans almost every thing that they had demanded.

Opponents to any attempt to deal with the border issues have exploited the xenophobia that is always lurking in the minds of people to view anything other that harsh exclusionary treatment of those seeking asylum as constituting an ‘open borders’ policy that will destroy the US. This xenophobia is laced with racism since the immigrants they are concerned about stopping are people of color, while SSAT has bemoaned that they are not people from Europe who would no doubt be welcomed into the country.
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Money talks but it can also shut people up

It has been three days since the jury awarded E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million in the defamation suit brought by her against serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) and you may have noticed something strange. It is silence from SSAT. He has not mentioned her by name since the verdict. SSAT’s typical reaction to anything adverse is to fire off a series of angry posts on his social media site at everyone and everything he perceives is against him, and use those attacks to raise money. But not this time. Even many of his most his vociferous allies have gone quiet.

Some of Trump’s critics said they weren’t surprised that many of his defenders chose to keep an arm’s length from the fallout. This wasn’t a case about classified documents, or an effort to keep him off the ballot. The jury’s award came for remarks Trump made about Carroll in response to her rape accusation.

“It’s his one legal case that no Republican gives a damn about because it doesn’t fit with their narrative that the Democrats are using the justice system to prevent him from running for office,” said former Illinois Rep. Joe Walsh — who unsuccessfully challenged Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2020. “Which is bullshit. But this one is just about Trump’s personal behavior. It’s separate.”

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The obsession in the US with executing people

Two days ago, the state of Alabama used nitrogen gas to execute Kenneth Smith by essentially asphyxiating him.

Alabama faced widespread condemnation after the state executed Kenneth Eugene Smith on Thursday evening using nitrogen gas, the first time the method has been used in the United States to kill someone.

Smith’s execution by “nitrogen hypoxia” took around 22 minutes, according to media witnesses, who were led into a viewing room at the William C Holman correctional facility in Atmore shortly before 8pm local time.

Smith was fitted with a face mask. He used sign language to say “I love you” to witnesses in the viewing room, and in his final statement he said: “Tonight, Alabama caused humanity to take a step backward.”

After the nitrogen gas began flowing, Smith convulsed on the gurney for several minutes. The state had previously said the nitrogen gas would cause Smith to lose consciousness in seconds and die within minutes, according to the Associated Press.

“I’ve been to four previous executions and I’ve never seen a condemned inmate thrash in the way that Kenneth Smith reacted to the nitrogen gas,” Lee Hedgepeth, a journalist who witnessed the execution, told the BBC’s Newsday programme.

Jeff Hood, Smith’s spiritual adviser, was in the death chamber when Smith was killed. In a tearful television interview with CNN, he said Smith “popped up on the gurney over and over and over again. He shook the whole gurney.”

“I have never, ever seen anything like that,” he said. “That was torture.”

“I could see the corrections officers that were in there,” he added. “I think they were very surprised that this didn’t go smoother.”

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Trump ordered to pay Carroll $83 million

The jury in the trial took only about two hours to come back with a verdict that said that serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) has to pay her $83 million. It consists of $7.3m in compensatory damages, $11m to repair her reputation, and $65m in punitive damages. He has, of course, said that he will appeal.

The punitive damages are to make SSAT shut up.

Even on Fox News, a rightwing network generally supportive of the former president, John Yoo, a former deputy assistant attorney general, saw nothing but bad news.

“The whole point of these unprecedented damages is to tell Donald Trump to shut up,” Yoo said.“You could think of it this way: every time Donald Trump wants to insult [E] Jean Carroll, he’s gonna have to write a $40m check for each sentence. That’s how bad this is.

“I can’t believe his lawyers haven’t succeeded in just telling him, ‘Campaign for president, run for president, make your accusations about a two-tiered justice system. But leave this alone.’”

It looks like the antics of SSAT inside and outside the courtroom that so irritated the judge did not endear him to the jury either. Neither did the obnoxious behavior of his lawyer Alina Habba who seemed to think that her audience was the MAGA cult instead of the nine people in the jury box.

In a recent interview with some MAGA-friendly person, Habba was asked whether she would like to be pretty or smart. She instantly replied that she would like to be pretty because you can fake being smart. Well, maybe some people can fake being smart, but she is clearly not one of them. For example, on Monday, she told the judge that she was feeling unwell and had been exposed to people with Covid and asked that the proceedings for the next day be canceled. It was duly done. But then on Tuesday evening, she was seen at a victory party in New Hampshire following the primary election. Judges do not like lawyers lying to them and she is lucky that he did not reprimand her for that.

Observers were astounded at the level of her incompetence, down to basic knowledge of courtroom proceedings.

After the verdict, Habba sounded off to the media. She is mad because the judge did not allow her to re-litigate the issue of assault that the first jury had already decided.

Carroll’s lawyer nails her description of Trump

In her closing arguments to the jury yesterday, E. Jean Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan pretty much nailed it in her description of serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) and why the jury should award her hefty damages.

At the end of her closing, Roberta Kaplan urged jurors to hold Trump accountable – and that the only way to make him follow the law and stop defaming Carroll would be a hefty penalty.

“At the first trial between Ms Carroll and Mr Trump … Donald Trump didn’t even bother to show up,” Kaplan said. But at this trial, where the issue is money, Trump decided to attend, she noted.

“What does that mean? It means that the one thing Donald Trump cares about is money,” she said. “While Donald Trump may not care about the law, while he certainly does not care about the truth, he does care about money.

“The question for you as a jury is this: given Donald Trump’s insistence on continuing to defame Ms Carroll and considering his immense wealth, how much will it take to make him stop?

“He thinks the rules that govern everyone else don’t apply to him,” Kaplan added.

“You actually have the opportunity, maybe even the responsibility, to put an end to this right now with this verdict by requiring Donald Trump to pay an amount of money large enough for him – and I repeat, large enough for him – that it will finally make him stop.

“Now is the time to make him pay for it and now is the time to make him pay for it dearly.”

SSAT views money as a measure of a person’s worth which is why he consistently inflates the amount of his own wealth, as was seen in his other trial for fraud that was brought by New York’s attorney general Letitia James. Taking SSAT’s dubious claims of his own ‘immense wealth’ at face value in order to suggest that a large penalty was necessary to deter him in future was a nice touch by Kaplan.