The legal woes of Trump’s cronies mount up

The indictments by Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis against serial sex abuser Donald trump (SSAT) and eighteen others over their efforts to overturn the election results continues to have fallouts. Last month I wrote about grumbling by some of the other defendants as to why SSAT’s PACs are not paying their legal fees since they were acting in his interest and sometimes on his instructions. I said that this might portend that they might seek to defect from SSAT in an effort to reach favorable plea deals.

It appears that Jenna Ellis, one of the ‘gaggle of crackpot lawyers’ surrounding SSAT and enabling his fruitless efforts and was one of those complainers, is turning on him

Jenna Ellis – the Donald Trump lawyer who like the former president faces criminal charges regarding attempted election subversion in his defeat by Joe Biden in 2020 – says she will not vote for him in the future because he is a “malignant narcissist” who cannot admit mistakes.

“I simply can’t support him for elected office again,” Ellis said. “Why I have chosen to distance is because of that frankly malignant narcissistic tendency to simply say that he’s never done anything wrong.”
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“Why I have chosen to distance is because of that, frankly, malignant narcissistic tendency to simply say that he’s never done anything wrong.

“And the total idolatry that I’m seeing from some of the supporters that are unwilling to put the constitution and the country and the conservative principles above their love for a star is really troubling.

“And I think that we do need to, as Americans and as conservatives and particularly as Christians, take this very seriously and understand where are we putting our vote.”

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Oil companies sued by California for lying about climate change

The state of California has joined several other states and municipalities in suing five major oil companies, charging that they had known for a long time from their internal science that the burning of fossil fuels was harming the environment and driving climate change but lying about it to the public.

California is suing five of the largest oil and gas companies in the world, alleging that they engaged in a “decades-long campaign of deception” about climate change and the risks posed by fossil fuels that has forced the state to spend tens of billions of dollars to address environmental-related damages.

State Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta filed the lawsuit Friday in San Francisco County Superior Court alleging that Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, BP and the American Petroleum Institute have known since the 1950s that the burning of fossil fuels would warm the planet but instead of alerting the public about the dangers posed to the environment they chose to deny or downplay the effects.

“Oil and gas companies have privately known the truth for decades — that the burning of fossil fuels leads to climate change,” Bonta said in a statement, “but have fed us lies and mistruths to further their record breaking profits at the expense of our environment. Enough is enough.”

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False labeling in foods

A lot of thought goes into how food is marketed to people, using the packaging to try to entice them to think that it may be tastier or healthier or more environmentally friendly or otherwise better than it really is. Most of us tend to be at least somewhat skeptical about these claims and not take them at face value and as long as the products are not downright harmful, are willing to overlook the exaggerations snd even outright lies that are told us.

Not Spencer Sheehan, a lawyer in New York state, who has taken upon himself to carefully examine the products that are sold in stores and, if he finds that they have been shading the truth, to sue them. The New Yorker magazine of September 11 has a long piece about his efforts.
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Trump’s obsession over the classified documents is even weirder than I thought

I have mentioned before that I just did not get serial sex abuser Donald Trump’s (SSAT) weird obsession with holding on to the classified documents that ultimately led to his indictment. I can (sort of) understand that he took some with him during his chaotic final days before he left the White. House. But why was he so obsessed with holding on to them even after he was told that he had to return them? What value could they possibly have for him?

But clearly he wanted them very badly, to the extent that he even defied his own lawyer’s advice to hand them over. His lawyer Evan Corcoran warned him that of he did not do so voluntarily, the FBI would get a search warrant from a judge for Mar-a-Lago, and that is precisely what happened. But of course, then SSAT expressed outrage at this utterly predictable outcome.
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Proud Boys leader gets 22 years in prison

Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the so-called ‘western chauvinist’ movement known as the Proud Boys, was sentenced to 22 years in prison for his role in the January 6th riot. Earlier in May, Tarrio and of his three lieutenants had been convicted of charges including seditious conspiracy. Readers may remember that the Proud Boys had their moment of fame when in one of the debates between Joe Biden and serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSA) in 2020, the latter was asked to disassociate himself from the white nationalist and racist groups who were supporting him.

“I’m willing to do anything. I want to see peace,” Trump said. “What do you want to call them? Give me a name.”

“Proud Boys,” Democrat Joe Biden chimed in, referencing a far-right extremist group that has shown up at protests in the Pacific Northwest. The male-only group of neo-fascists describes themselves as “western chauvinists,” and they have been known to incite street violence.

“Proud Boys, stand back and stand by,” Trump said.

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True and false remorse

Yesterday, two major figures in the extreme right wing white nationalist Proud Boys movement that played a major role in the attacks on Congress on January 6th 2021 were sentenced to lengthy prison terms, after having been found guilty earlier.

A leader of the far-right Proud Boys has been sentenced to 17 years in prison, one of the longest terms yet handed out over the US Capitol riot.

US Army veteran Joe Biggs, 38, was an instigator of the storming of Congress on 6 January 2021, prosecutors said.

The former Infowars correspondent was convicted of seditious conspiracy and other charges in May.
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The sentence, handed down by US District Judge Timothy Kelly, is below both federal sentencing guidelines and the 33 years sought by prosecutors.

Another Proud Boys member, Zachary Rehl, was sentenced on Thursday to 15 years, also on a charge of seditious conspiracy.

Rehl, a former US Marine and leader of the Philadelphia branch of the Proud Boys, was seen on video spraying a chemical irritant at officers outside the Capitol during the riot.

Biggs was convicted of a slew of charges in May, including seditious conspiracy, intimidation or threats to prevent officials from discharging their duties and interference with law enforcement during civil disorder.
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Another prominent participant in the riot, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, was sentenced to 18 years in prison in May.

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Giuliani really is a crackpot lawyer

During the efforts by serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) to overturn the results of the last election, three lawyers stood out for the absurdity of their efforts: Rudy Giuliani, Sydney Powell, and John Eastman, part of what Mike Pence memorably labeled as a ‘gaggle of crackpot lawyers’. If we ever needed any further evidence that Giuliani is truly an outstanding member of that exclusive club, we now have a ruling against him by a federal judge.

You may recall how Giuliani in public forums claimed that how two Georgia election workers Wandrea ‘Shaye’ Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman had illegally manipulated thousands of votes and were seen surreptitiously “passing around USB ports like they were vials of heroin or cocaine.” (He presumably meant USB drives, not ports.) They are actually passing ginger mints to each other. As a result, the two women suffered severe harassment and death threats from the MAGA cultists.
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When thieves fall out, the prosecution wins

One of the tactics that prosecutors use against defendants is to try and pressure lpeople to testify against their bosses. If that fails, then they charge them with offenses and use that to pressure them to turn against one another in exchange for a favorable plea deal. This works particularly well against low-level people who may not have the resources to pay for expensive attorney and for whom the prospect of any jail time would be alarming. They may well wonder why they should take the fall for doing the bidding of others.

The Georgia case with its 18 defendants in addition to serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) provides plenty of opportunities for such negotiations and it looks like the process the process has already started.
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The violence to come

As serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) becomes increasingly embroiled in legal troubles, he is lashing out more and more at the prosecutors who have brought indictments against him, the witnesses who have testified or will testify in the cases, and the judges overseeing the cases. It is therefore not surprising that some of his cult followers will see his rants as a call to take up arms on his behalf, such as this woman.

A Texas woman has been arrested and charged with threatening to kill the federal judge overseeing the criminal case against the former US president Donald Trump in Washington DC, and a member of Congress.

Abigail Jo Shry of Alvin, Texas, called the federal courthouse in Washington DC and left the threatening message, using a racist term for the US district judge Tanya Chutkan, on 5 August, court records allege. Investigators traced her phone number and she later admitted to making the threatening call, according to a criminal complaint.

In the call, Shry told told the judge, who is overseeing the election conspiracy case against Trump: “You are in our sights, we want to kill you,” according to the documents. Prosecutors allege Shry also said: “If Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you.” She also threatened to kill Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat representative running for mayor of Houston, according to court documents.

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Georgia on his mind?

Keeping score of all the criminal charges against serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) is not easy because there are so many of them. As of now, he has been indicted in four different jurisdictions (Washington DC, Manhattan, Miami, and Atlanta) by three different prosecutors (Jack Smith, Alvin Bragg, and Fani Willis) for a total of 91 criminal counts. SSAT has managed to evade consequences for his actions for all his life, mainly by lying, not putting down anything is writing, using verbal commands to get other people to do his bidding, and then buying their silence or threatening them.

But it seems unlikely that SSAT can sweep the board and be acquitted on all the 91 charges and he faces the real threat of going to prison. His best bet is to try and win back the presidency. If he does so, he can use the presidential pardon process to try to pardon himself. Whether he can do so is an untested issue and will surely be challenged in the courts. But even if it is found that he can, that can only be done for the federal offenses that have been brought by Smith. What he is more likely to do if he becomes president is to order his attorney general to drop the federal cases and you can be sure that he will only appoint an AG who will agree in advance to do that. That and any self-pardon should be impeachable offenses but the unprincipled Republicans in congress will do no such thing.
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