Why Not Here?

Former RoK President Yoon Suk Yeol has been sentenced to life in prison for his attempted insurrection in South Korea.

This needs to happen here.

A South Korean court has sentenced the former president Yoon Suk Yeol to life imprisonment with labour over his failed martial law declaration in December 2024, finding him guilty of leading an insurrection and making him the first elected head of state in the country’s democratic era to receive the maximum custodial sentence.

The Seoul central district court found that Yoon’s declaration of martial law on 3 December 2024 constituted insurrection, carried out with the intent to disrupt the constitutional order.

Judge Jee Kui-youn said the purpose was “to send troops to the national assembly to blockade the assembly hall and arrest key figures, including the assembly speaker and party leaders, thereby preventing lawmakers from gathering to deliberate or vote”.

In sentencing Yoon on Thursday, the court pointed to his lack of apology throughout the proceedings, his unjustified refusal to attend hearings, and the massive social costs his actions inflicted on South Korean society.

………

In a historical digression, the judge traced the history of insurrection law and cited the 1649 execution of England’s Charles I, who led troops into parliament, to establish that even heads of state can commit insurrection by attacking the legislature.

………

Under South Korean law, the charge of leading an insurrection carries three possible penalties: death, life imprisonment with labour, or life imprisonment without labour.

Prosecutors had sought the death penalty, arguing that Yoon committed “a grave destruction of constitutional order” by mobilising troops to surround parliament and attempting to arrest political opponents during the six-hour crisis.

Not a fan of the death penalty, but I do approve that he got hard labor.

27 Years

In countries where the courts are not slavishly devoted to insurrectionists, Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro was convicted of an attempted military coup and plotting the murder of his successor.  He was sentenced to 27 years in prison.

Gee, if only we had the rule of law in the United States:

Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro was found guilty Thursday of attempting a military coup to stay in power after his 2022 election loss, a plot that included plans to assassinate President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and was sentenced to more than 27 years in prison in a case that has roiled this young democracy and strained its relations with President Donald Trump.

The 4-1 ruling by a panel of five justices of Brazil’s Supreme Court made Bolsonaro the first former president convicted of trying to undermine Latin America’s largest democracy. Advocates for accountability hoped the verdict would prove a turning point for a nation that has suffered more than a dozen coup attempts but historically has opted for political conciliation rather than prosecution. Trump, a Bolsonaro ally and friend, had imposed tariffs on Brazilian imports and sanctions on justices to pressure them to drop the case. 

Here's hoping that the conviction and the sentence sticks. 

Republican Family Values

The Republicans in Congress want to investigate the January 6 Committee. 

The basic goal is to harass people who told the truth.

There is a speed bump in the path though, it turns out that a number of members of Congress were sexting former Trump Aide and January 6 Committee witness Cassidy Hutchinson.

What a sleazy group of hypocrites:

An aide to House Speaker Mike Johnson advised Republican colleagues against subpoenaing former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson as part of their investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack in an effort to prevent the release of sexually explicit texts that lawmakers sent her, according to written correspondence reviewed by The Washington Post and a person familiar with the effort.

The aide intervened last June, citing concerns that a subpoena could expose the texts, according to the correspondence and the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly about private conversations. Johnson revived the investigation this week as part of an effort by President Donald Trump and his allies to seek retribution against perceived political enemies, including those who investigated his role in the Capitol attack.

 ………

The Post reviewed documentation reflecting the speaker’s office’s concern ahead of the June meeting between him and Loudermilk that corroborated the account of the person familiar with the effort to prevent the texts’ release, but has not seen the purported sexually explicit messages. Nor has The Post identified who sent them or determined whether Hutchinson responded.

In a statement provided in response to an inquiry from The Post, Hutchinson’s lawyer, Bill Jordan, did not address the existence of texts and said his client has cooperated voluntarily with the investigation. He also criticized the interim report Loudermilk issued in December, which accused Cheney of “secretly communicating with Hutchinson without Hutchinson’s attorney’s knowledge.”

I'm completely unsurprised by this revelation.

Pass the Popcorn

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit has ruled that Jack Smith's special prosecutor report can be publicly released, reversing the completely incoherent ruling from Trump's concierge judge Aileen Cannon prohibiting the release of the report.

The injunction stands for another 3 days, which is enough time to appeal to the Supreme Court, but I expect it to come out in a few days:

A federal appeals court on Thursday said that it would not block the Justice Department from releasing a report by the special counsel Jack Smith about the two now-closed investigations he conducted into President-elect Donald J. Trump.

In a brief and unsigned order, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, rejected an emergency request from Mr. Trump’s legal team to stop the report from coming out.

………

Both sections of Mr. Smith’s two-volume report remain for the moment under an injunction put in place this week by a lower-court judge in Florida that is temporarily blocking their release.

The Justice Department has already said that it intends to hold off on releasing the volume that concerns the case in Florida in which Mr. Trump was accused of mishandling classified documents after he left office.

They are holding off on that one, which I would argue would be the more interesting report, because there are still court cases against other defendants.

But the department has said that it wants to release the other volume, which details Mr. Smith’s decisions in the case he filed in Washington accusing Mr. Trump of seeking to overturn the 2020 election.

In its order on Thursday night, the appeals court left the injunction in place but said that the Justice Department could take further action seeking to appeal it. Still, the injunction, which was issued by Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who oversaw the classified documents case, is scheduled to last only another three days.

Well, I guess historians will find this interesting.

Ecch (Tweet) of the Day

Breaking: Sources have confirmed that Juan Guaidó has declared himself interim President of South Korea. 🇰🇷🇻🇪 pic.twitter.com/kB5sSDXRuP

— Alan MacLeod (@AlanRMacLeod) December 3, 2024

The revolution will be memed endlessly.

I Have No Clue What is Going On

I have no clue as to what exactly drove  Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol's declaration of martial law, but it's pretty clear massive protests and a unanimous vote against this action by the National Assembly is why he backed down.

Given that President Yoon's administration has been hamstrung by corruption and incompetence, and that his popularity is approaching that of a case of jock itch, my guess is that this was a political calculus.

No clue as to where everything goes from here, but given that the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) has announced a general strike until Yoon steps down. 

Additionally, the opposition in the National Assembly has announced the beginning of impeachment proceedings against the President.

I'm not sure how likely that would be to pass, but the opposition holds a significant majority in the chamber.

My guess would be ……… F%$# that ……… I do not know enough to make a guess.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯  

This was Inevitable

Special Prosecutor Jack Smith has had the charges against Donald Trump dismissed.

This was inevitable once Harris lost.  (I think that Harris lost more than Trump won)

The dismissal was without prejudice, so it could be refiled, but it won't be.

Trump skates again.

Donald Trump has gotten away with causing a violent attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, as part of scheme to overturn the 2020 election, hiding top secret documents from the federal government, and other alleged crimes.

Special counsel Jack Smith on Monday made official what Trump’s election victory made clear, moving to dismiss the election interference case in which Trump was charged with promoting conspiracies to defraud the United States, obstruct an official government proceeding, and deprive Americans of their civil rights through his attempts to stop Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s victory. Smith said he was dropping the case due to a Justice Department policy that bars prosecuting a sitting president.

“The Government’s position on the merits of the defendant’s prosecution has not changed,” Smith said in the filing.

The motion leaves Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis’ prosecution of Trump and various former aides as the only standing criminal case related to Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election. Willis has vowed to continue that prosecution. But with her case mired in appeals proceedings related to Willis’ past romantic relationship with the prosecutor she picked to run it, her odds of securing a conviction of the president-elect appear dismal.

F%$# Merrick Garland and his timidity.

Good

Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, along with over 30 co-conspirators have been indicted for their attempted coup attempt.

I wish that I lived in a first world country where just could be administered like this:

The Brazilian Federal Police formally indicted former president Jair Bolsonaro on Thursday of attempting to orchestrate a coup d’état, according to an official statement. The retired far-right military officer is alleged to have sought to subvert the election results and block leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva from returning to power.

Bolsonaro, who governed Brazil from 2019 to 2022, is among 37 individuals charged, including two retired generals who served as ministers in his administration. The police report has already been submitted to the Supreme Court, and precautionary measures have been issued, including a ban on international travel, which led to the confiscation of Bolsonaro’s passport months ago.

………

The police’s formal indictment must now be evaluated by the Supreme Court. Bolsonaro was disqualified months ago by the Supreme Court from running for office until 2030. That ruling convicted him of abuse of power, citing his use of the presidential platform to systematically undermine confidence in the security of the country’s voting system.

Investigators argue that the coup attempt failed because the conspirators failed to secure the backing of the then-commanders of the Army and Air Force, Generals Marco Antônio Freire Gomes and Carlos de Almeida Baptista. Both generals implicated Bolsonaro in the plot during their testimony as witnesses, as revealed in March.

On January 8, 2023, thousands of Bolsonaro supporters launched a coup attempt in Brasília, storming government buildings just a week after Lula was sworn in for his third, non-consecutive term as president. To date, only the direct participants in the attack have been tried and sentenced. The Supreme Court has handed down heavy sentences to over 200 individuals, but none of those accused of planning or financing the coup attempt has yet faced trial.

The indictment follows revelations by police this week that the coup plotters had plans to assassinate President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, his vice president, Geraldo Alckmin, and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes. Adding to the tension, just last week, a Bolsonaro supporter detonated an explosive device outside the Supreme Court building.

For some reason this sounds strangely familiar.

Pass the Popcorn

We have gotten another dump of Special Prosecutor Jack Smith's election interference case.

While some folks are claiming that this is attempted election interference, I would argue that it is more just an alignment of the facts, and timing of the delays that Trump and his Evil Minions™, including the 6 conservative justices on the Supreme Court.

Between this, and Arnold Palmer's penis (more on that later), this has not been a good week for the Trumpster fire:

U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan on Friday unsealed the appendix of source materials underpinning special counsel Jack Smith’s massive legal filing that detailed the evidence collected against Donald Trump in the federal D.C. election interference case — though the document was heavily redacted and appeared to contain few new revelations.

The unsealed and unredacted portions of the 1,889-page appendix included transcripts of interviews with the legislative committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the Capitol, excerpts from former vice president Mike Pence’s autobiography, a transcript of a Trump White House news briefing after the election in November 2020 and a transcript of a 2023 CNN town hall interview with the former president.

Trump’s legal team had opposed making the materials public so soon, arguing that Chutkan’s releasing them now could appear as though the court was trying to affect the upcoming election. But Chutkan disagreed, saying that withholding the documents could amount to election interference.

Trump's legal team has spent years delaying this.  If they had not, this would have been out while the primaries were still going on.

Tough sh%$ folks.

………

One portion of the appendix that adds new detail is a less-redacted version of a previously released transcript from the House Jan. 6 committee, which indicates Trump was told of the Jan. 6 riot as early as 1:21 p.m. that day.

………

Trump didn’t send a video message telling people to go home until 4:17 p.m. — nearly three hours after his apparent conversation with the valet.

Chutkan had previously unsealed Smith’s detailed 165-page filing, which contained a thorough account of the evidence investigators had gathered with footnotes indicating the source of the materials. It was meant to convince the judge that Trump could still be prosecuted even after the Supreme Court ruled this summer he had broad immunity.

The appendix was far less explosive, but it still underscored Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the election results.

The appendix included dozens of statements by swing-state lawmakers, agencies and officials contradicting allegations of election fraud by Trump and his campaign, along with Pence’s written account of his repeated refusals to go along with Trump’s plan to not accept the outcome. Prosecutors have argued that Trump’s chargeable conduct was in his private capacity as a candidate and not subject to presidential immunity, including his dealings with state officials in the alleged phony elector plot.

Also included in the appendix were transcripts of Trump’s Jan. 2, 2021, call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger where he pressured the state official to “find 11,780 votes” to flip the state’s result and key post-election memos by Trump’s private attorneys concocting a plan to submit fake slates of electors from swing states to throw the election to the GOP-controlled House.

This really isn't anything new, but to the degree that this puts Trump on his back heel, this is a good thing.

Filed Under, "Pass the Popcorn"

The Jack Smith filing has been released in redacted form to the public.

There is a lot to go over, but the short version is that the President has no role in elections, and as such attempts to subvert the election are not an official act.

Also, the filing appears to show that Trump knew that he had lost which eliminates even that potential loophole.

Also, I think that it inevitable that former VP Mike Pence will be a witness in the trial. 

When the special counsel, Jack Smith, charged former President Donald J. Trump last year with plotting to overturn the 2020 election, the federal indictment filed in Washington had only one defendant: Mr. Trump himself, who stood accused of working with a small team of conspirators.

But in a court filing unsealed on Wednesday, Mr. Smith drew on the actions of a much larger group to tell the tale of how Mr. Trump lost the race but sought to stay in the White House.

He populated his brief with a sprawling cast of characters — lawyers, longtime Trump aides, campaign operatives, even some of the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — who all played a supporting role either for or against Mr. Trump’s attempts to cling to power.

Most of them were not named in the 165-page filing, and were referred to only by numeric monikers, though many of their identities could be divined from details in the brief. And the sheer scope of the crew was evidenced by the fact that the anonymized references started with Person 1 and went all the way to Person 71.

………

Among those characters was Eric Herschmann, a lawyer who had met Mr. Trump through his childhood friend, Jared Kushner, the former president’s son-in-law.

Identified as Person 9 in the brief, Mr. Herschmann started working in the White House as an assistant to the president in August 2020. During the chaotic weeks after Mr. Trump had been defeated, Mr. Herschmann offered what Mr. Smith described as “the unvarnished truth” about the “claims of fraud” that Mr. Trump and his allies were advancing.

……… 

As the brief says, Mr. Herschmann — whose name appears unredacted but slightly misspelled at one point in the document — was aware that two outside consulting firms had looked at and debunked most of the claims. At one point, he warned Mr. Trump that if he brought them into court “they would get slaughtered” because they were “all bullshit.”

………

The brief asserts that Mr. Trump had a conversation with Mr. Bannon a little less than 15 minutes before he called Mr. Pence on Jan. 1.

During that call, Mr. Trump is said in the brief to have told Mr. Pence that if he did not go through with the plans, hundreds of thousands of people were “gonna hate your guts” and were “gonna think you’re stupid.”

First, it's clear, giving Trump's history of stochastic terrorism, that this is an explicit threat.

Second, it makes clear how Pence has to testify.

………

If Mr. Smith’s filing was in many ways a trial brief, setting forth the most detailed picture yet of how Mr. Trump had sought to disrupt the lawful transfer of power, it also had a much more narrow legal purpose: It was sent to the judge in the case, Tanya S. Chutkan, to help her determine how much of the indictment can survive the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling granting Mr. Trump a broad form of immunity for many official acts he took in office.

Which reminds me, we need to start getting serious about reforming the deeply corrupt Supreme Court.

Nice, But I Want Him in an Orange Jumpsuit

Special counsel Jack Smith has issued a superseding indictment for Donald Trump's attempts at insurrection on January 6.

He convened a different grand jury, and presented evidence as restricted by the recent Supreme Court decision. (Grand jury presentations are secret, but it is a reasonable supposition)

They returned the same four felony indictments.

This is not a surprise.  As the old saying goes, "A prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich."

I won't believe that this amounts to anything until Donald Trump is dragged off to prison kicking and screaming. 

Even if Smith gets a conviction, between appeals and the six thoroughly corrupt members of the Supreme Court, I do not think that he will ever spend a day in the slam.

Federal prosecutors on Tuesday issued a pared-down version of an indictment accusing former President Donald J. Trump of plotting to overturn the 2020 election, stripping out some charges and tweaking others to help the case survive the Supreme Court’s recent ruling granting former presidents broad immunity.

The revised indictment, issued in Federal District Court in Washington, represented an attempt by prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, to preserve the bulk of their case against the former president while bringing the allegations into line with the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling that former presidents are immune from criminal prosecution for many official acts taken while in office.

It kept the basic structure of the first indictment, issued nearly 13 months ago, which accused Mr. Trump of intersecting plots to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The thrust of the changes was to remove any discussion from the indictment of any allegations that might be construed as related to Mr. Trump’s official acts as president while also contending that others acts should be interpreted as the conduct of a private candidate for office.

 

Well, This Is Reassuring

Over at The Guardian, Carole Cadwalladr, has a take on Elon Musk's incitement or racist nationalist in the that is worrying.  Specifically, she believes that his actions were a rehearsal for inciting American MAGAts after the November Elections.

Gee, who could imagine an anti-Semitic and racist Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ with a God complex planning a coup.

Just over four years ago, an insurrectionist mob found each other online, descended on Washington, stormed the Capitol and threatened the vice-president with a noose. But that was the good old days. We’re living in a different reality now. One in which the billionaires have been unchained.

Because back in the golden days of 2020, tech platforms, still reeling from a public backlash, had at least to look as if they gave a shit. Twitter employed 4,000-plus people in “trust and safety”, tasked with getting dangerous content off its platform and sniffing out foreign influence operations. Facebook tried to ignore public pressure but eventually banned political ads that sought to “delegitimise voting” and scores of academics and researchers in “election integrity” units worked to identify and flag dangerous disinformation.

………

The streets are – for now – quiet. The violence has been crushed. But this is Britain, where extremist political violence is someone carrying a brick and throwing a chair leg. In America, there aren’t just automatic weapons and rights to openly carry firearms, there are actual militias. Regardless of how well Harris is doing in the polls, America is facing a singularly dangerous moment, whoever wins the election.

Because as Trump has already showed us and as Jair Bolsonaro learned, it’s not even necessarily about winning any more. Or even about a single day. The entire period between the result and the inauguration is an anything-can-happen moment not just for America but for the world.

In Britain, the canary has sung. This summer we have witnessed something new and unprecedented. The billionaire owner of a tech platform publicly confronting an elected leader and using his platform to undermine his authority and incite violence. Britain’s 2024 summer riots were Elon Musk’s trial balloon.

Because as Trump has already showed us and as Jair Bolsonaro learned, it’s not even necessarily about winning any more. Or even about a single day. The entire period between the result and the inauguration is an anything-can-happen moment not just for America but for the world.

He got away with it. And if you’re not terrified by both the extraordinary supranational power of that and the potential consequences, you should be. If Musk chooses to “predict” a civil war in the States, what will that look like? If he chooses to contest an election result? If he decides that democracy is over-rated? This isn’t sci-fi. It’s literally three months away.

What he did is a crime in the UK, so perhaps an extradition request would be in order.

Who am I kidding.  Keir Starmer would never approve the prosecution of a billionaire.

 

Bezos' Cat Box Liner

You have doubtless heard the story about Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito's getting his insurrectionist freak flag on, I posted about it here, but did you know that the Washington Post had the story and buried it for more than three years?

What the f%$# is wrong with the editors:

The most interesting story in Sunday's Washington Post was on Page A3 — and 1,221 days late.

• It turns out that The Post's former Supreme Court reporter, Bob Barnes, did a front-yard interview with Justice Samuel Alito on Jan. 20, 2021 — President Biden's inauguration day — about the upside-down American flag that had flown outside the justice's home in Fairfax County, Va.
• The Post decided it wasn't a story, until The New York Times broke the news on May 16 — 3 years, 4 months later.

Why it matters: The flag — which Alito attributed to his wife, Martha-Ann Alito — raised ethics questions that were heightened after The Times reported last week on a second provocative flag flown at an Alito property.

The fact that Martha-Ann Alito is a right wing nutjob is probably not news, but when the spouse of a Supreme Court Justice does this in a scenario where there has been an attempted insurrection two weeks prior, this is, particularly given that by the standard canons of judicial ethics, back to the witch burning judge that Alito is so fond of quoting, this justifies a recusal, and Alito is refusing to do so. (Slso, Alito is lying about the time line, but that's just powdered sugar on the donut)

Maybe You Can Bunk with Peter Navarro

Steve Bannon's conviction for Contempt of Congress has been upheld by the DC Court of Appeals, meaning that he, like former Trump aide Peter Navarro will have to report to jail.

I hope that his experience is unpleasant, though I would urge prison authorities to monitor him carefully for delirium tremens, which can be fatal in extreme cases: (Even in Bannon's case, prison should never be a death sentence)

Steve Bannon, the controversial hard-right strategist who has been influential in the thinking of Donald Trump, has lost his appeal against his conviction for contempt of Congress relating to the investigation into the January 6 insurrection.

A unanimous ruling from a three-judge panel of the District of Columbia circuit court of appeals upheld Bannon’s conviction on Friday. The decision brings him closer to a four-month sentence behind bars meted out to Bannon for having resisted the terms of Congress’s subpoena against him.

Steve Bannon, the controversial hard-right strategist who has been influential in the thinking of Donald Trump, has lost his appeal against his conviction for contempt of Congress relating to the investigation into the January 6 insurrection.

A unanimous ruling from a three-judge panel of the District of Columbia circuit court of appeals upheld Bannon’s conviction on Friday. The decision brings him closer to a four-month sentence behind bars meted out to Bannon for having resisted the terms of Congress’s subpoena against him.

He has one last hope left to avoid a prison term – he could appeal to the full bench of the circuit court. He has seven days to make the move.

Bannon, a former editor of the far-right news outlet Breitbart, was convicted of contempt charges at trial in July 2022, having been charged with two federal counts. He was accused of refusing to appear for a deposition and of refusing to provide documents to the committee in response to a subpoena.

He was sentenced later that year to four months in prison. The punishment was put on hold after Bannon appealed.

Bannon’s lawyers claimed in the appeal that he had not ignored the committee’s subpoena, but was following the advice of his lawyer and acting out of concern that he might violate executive privilege objections raised by Trump.

I really hope that his time in the slam is profoundly unpleasant.

Cue Inspector Renault

I'm shocked! Shocked, I tell you! To find Bolsonaro was trying to stage a coup!

Investigators in Brazil have discovered that Jair Bolsonaro and his associates planned a coup to depose incoming President da Silva.

What I am wondering is how aware elements of the US state security apparatus were of these efforts, and how much support they offered.

We already know that the CIA was intimately involved in the Lava Jato (Car Wash) investigation that had da Silva imprisoned and removed from the ballot for a time, so the question is not if, but how much the US state security apparatus was involved.

My guess is that this is something that will not come out in Brazilian investigations:

Former President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil oversaw a broad conspiracy to hold on to power regardless of the results of the 2022 election, including personally editing a proposed order to arrest a Supreme Court justice, according to accusations unveiled on Thursday by the Brazilian federal police.

Mr. Bolsonaro and dozens of top aides, ministers and military leaders worked together to undermine the Brazilian public’s faith in the election and set the stage for a potential coup, the federal police said.

Their efforts included spreading disinformation about voter fraud, drafting legal arguments for new elections, recruiting military personnel to support a coup, surveilling judges and encouraging and guiding protesters who eventually raided government buildings, police said.

………

Mr. Bolsonaro was ordered to hand over his passport, to remain in the country, and to have no contact with any other people under investigation.

This is what happens when the chief law enforcement official is not named Merrick Garland.

Greetings from the Great State of Maryland

Where it appears that the standards of due diligence for appointing someone to the Maryland State Board of Elections does not involve checking to see if they were ever involved in an attempt to overthrow the government of the United States of America.

I would kind of understand this happening in Alabama, or Mississippi, or Texas, or our neighbor to the south Virginia, but the Free State was on the side of the union during the Civil War.

Step up your game, nimrods:

A Republican member of the Maryland State Board of Elections resigned from his post Thursday after being charged with participating in breaching the U.S. Capitol amid rioting on Jan. 6, 2021.

Carlos Ayala was arrested on multiple charges on Tuesday, according to federal court records. His resignation was official on Thursday, according to a statement from Michael G. Summers, chairman of the elections board.

………

Ayala could not be reached for comment. His attorney, Jim Trusty, declined to comment. Trusty previously represented former President Donald J. Trump in one of his court cases.

………

Federal prosecutors charged Ayala in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., with the felony charge of civil disorder as well as multiple misdemeanors in connection with the pro-Donald Trump mob that overran the Capitol as lawmakers were certifying the results of the 2020 election.

Prosecutors allege that Ayala, wearing a hooded American flag sweatshirt, is seen on footage from the day climbing over police barricades and reaching the Upper West Terrace of the Capitol building.

………

She [Maryland Republican Party Chairwoman Nicole Bues Harris] added that Ayala resigned to ensure that the 2024 election in Maryland is not “muddled with distraction.”

………

The good-government watchdog group Common Cause Maryland said Ayala’s arrest should be a wake-up call for state officials, who should consider changing the process for appointing members to the elections board.

“It is sickening to think that Ayala was making decisions about our elections after allegedly participating in the attempted insurrection,” Morgan Drayton, Common Cause policy manager, said in a statement.

The fact that he got caught does not mean that the system worked.

As Randall Munroe has noted under similar circumstances, this should never have happened at all.

Mixed Emotions on This

The Colorado Supreme Court has excluded Donald Trump from the primary ballot on the basis of the 14th Amendment insurrection clause.

The MAGAt butt-hurt over this is exquisite.  I will use their tears to season my soup for decades to come.

On the other hand, Trump has not yet actually been convicted of a crime related to insurrection, (Yet) and the potential for abuse of this ruling, and I shudder at the prospect of someone like delusional U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk having similar authority.

I do think that this complicates matters for the right-wing hacks on the Supreme Court though, because they now have to rule on both the Colorado case, while ruling in an expedited manner on Special Prosecutor Jack Smith's challenge to Donald Trump's claims of complete immunity for everything forever.

It jams up the Supreme Court 's conservatives something fierce which is an unalloyed good.

Colorado’s top court ruled on Tuesday that former President Donald J. Trump is disqualified from holding office again because he engaged in insurrection with his actions leading up to the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol, an explosive ruling that is likely to put the basic contours of the 2024 election in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Colorado Supreme Court was the first in the nation to find that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment — which disqualifies people who engage in insurrection against the Constitution after taking an oath to support it — applies to Mr. Trump, an argument that his opponents have been making around the country.

The ruling directs the Colorado secretary of state to exclude Mr. Trump’s name from the state’s Republican primary ballot. It does not address the general election.

“We do not reach these conclusions lightly,” a four-justice majority wrote, with three justices dissenting. “We are mindful of the magnitude and weight of the questions now before us. We are likewise mindful of our solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favor, and without being swayed by public reaction to the decisions that the law mandates we reach.”

Mr. Trump’s campaign said immediately that it would appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Colorado justices anticipated that likelihood by putting their ruling on hold at least until Jan. 4; if Mr. Trump appeals before then, the hold will continue until the Supreme Court rules. And while Tuesday’s ruling applies only to one state, it could all but force the nation’s highest court to decide the question for all 50.

I do not think that there is any way that the Supreme Court can not rule on this and retain any credibility, and, absent a conviction for insurrectionist acts, I think that it is EXTREMELY likely that they will overturn the Colorado Supreme Court decision.

But if they do, and then they write Trump a get out of jail free card for the insurrection investigation, I think that we will start seeing a significant portion of the populace invoking Andrew Jackson's, "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it."

This is not a good thing.  Andrew Jackson was doing this in service of ethnic cleansing, but we are definitely getting to that poing.

Busy Day

First, now former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis has pled guilty and agreed to testify in the Georgia election prosecution, and Trump chief Mark Meadows has been granted immunity and agreed to testify in the Washington, DC insurrection case.

I am beginning to think that Trump will actually face trial and be found guilty.

Jenna Ellis, a pro-Trump lawyer who amplified former President Donald J. Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud as part of what she called a legal “elite strike force team,” pleaded guilty on Tuesday as part of a deal with prosecutors in Georgia.

Addressing a judge in an Atlanta courtroom, she tearfully expressed regret for taking part in efforts to keep Mr. Trump in power after he lost the 2020 election.

To the degree these tears are sincere, she is crying for herself, not the rule of law. 

Ms. Ellis, 38, pleaded guilty to a charge of aiding and abetting false statements and writings, a felony. She is the fourth defendant to plead guilty in the Georgia case, which charged Mr. Trump and 18 others with conspiring to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Mr. Trump’s favor.

Ms. Ellis agreed to be sentenced to five years of probation, pay $5,000 in restitution and perform 100 hours of community service. She has already written an apology letter to the citizens of Georgia, and she agreed to cooperate fully with prosecutors as the case progresses.

Yeah, she is crying because as a felon, she will be disbarred.

As to Meadows:

Donald Trump’s former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows testified to a federal grand jury about efforts by the former president to overturn the 2020 election results pursuant to a court order that granted him limited immunity from prosecution, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The immunity – a powerful tool that forces witnesses to testify on the promise that they will not be charged on their statements or information derived from their statements – came after a legal battle in March with special counsel prosecutors, who had subpoenaed Meadows.

Trump’s lawyers attempted to block Meadows’ testimony partially on executive privilege grounds. However, the chief US district judge overseeing the grand jury ruled that executive privilege was inapplicable and compelled Meadows to appear before the grand jury in Washington, the people said.

Meadows appears to have then asserted his fifth amendment right against self-incrimination at his appearance. At some point, Howell granted a request from prosecutors to give Meadows limited-use immunity, the people familiar with the matter said.

That Meadows testified pursuant to a court order suggests prosecutors in the office of special counsel Jack Smith were determined to learn what information he declined to initially provide because of self-incrimination concerns – but it does not mean he became a cooperator.

So I'm not sure what he is saying, but in juxtaposition with Ellis, I'm pretty sure that Trump is sh%$ting his Depends right now.

And the Rats Begin to Leave the Sinking Ship

We are now seeing guilty pleas and agreements to testify against other defendants.

Specifically we have seen lawyers Sidney "Kraken" Powell and Kenneth Chesebro (Cheese and Kraken?) pleading guilty and agreeing to cooperate with Fulton County DA Fani Willis.

Now we know why neither of them waived their right to a speedy trial, they were planning to flip.

First the "Kraken":

Former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, charged alongside the former president for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election results in the state of Georgia, has pleaded guilty as part of a cooperation agreement with prosecutors just days before her trial was scheduled to start.

The conversion of Powell into a cooperating witness marks a major victory for the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, given Powell’s involvement in some of Trump’s most brazen schemes to reverse Trump’s election defeat – which she could now testify about.


Powell pleaded guilty to six misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to commit interference with election duties. She was sentenced to six years’ probation, a $6,000 fine, $2,700 in restitution to the state, and is required to turn over documents and testify truthfully in her co-defendants’ trials. 

………

The most far-reaching consequence of Powell taking the plea deal could be her agreement to testify in future trials, given her proximity to Trump in the final weeks of his presidency and her close involvement in various schemes to reverse Trump’s election defeat.

Among other episodes, Powell was a key player in a contentious December 2020 meeting at the White House, where Trump named Powell a special counsel to investigate supposed election fraud, after she pitched a plan to suspend normal laws and use military force to seize voting machines.

And then the "Cheese":

Just before Christmas 2020, as President Donald J. Trump was running out of options to stave off losing the election, Kenneth Chesebro wrote an email to a group of other lawyers who were thinking of filing a last-ditch lawsuit to reverse Mr. Trump’s defeat.

The odds of winning the suit did not look good, Mr. Chesebro wrote, pegging them at only “1 percent.” But even though their efforts were unlikely to prevail in court, Mr. Chesebro suggested that Mr. Trump continue to push his baseless claims of fraud.

“The relevant analysis,” Mr. Chesebro argued, according to emails reviewed by The New York Times, “is political.”

On Friday, Mr. Chesebro pleaded guilty to a single felony count of conspiring to file false documents in Georgia and agreed to cooperate with the local prosecutors who have charged Mr. Trump and 17 others in a sprawling racketeering indictment accusing them of tampering with the election in the state.

………

But Mr. Chesebro’s deal could present a more serious threat to Mr. Trump than the others given that he pleaded guilty to a conspiracy count that involved both the former president and some of his closest allies.

Mr. Chesebro also maintained an extensive correspondence with other pro-Trump lawyers charged in the case and played a central role in one of Mr. Trump’s chief plans to stay in office: a scheme to create slates of pro-Trump electors in states like Georgia, which Mr. Trump had actually lost.

………

If Mr. Chesebro were to testify that Mr. Trump’s lawsuits challenging his loss were not designed to win, but merely as ploys to sow doubt about the election, it could cut against Mr. Trump’s possible plan to use a so-called advice of counsel defense. That strategy involves blaming one’s lawyers for giving bad advice.

I'm still not optimistic that Donald Trump will ever see the inside of a prison cell, but I am less pessimistic.

Interesting

The Supreme Court just told Trump lawyer John Eastman that they would not reverse the ruling that had him turning over his emails to the January 6 committee.

This is not a surprise.  His actions were clearly in support of a crime, which pierces privilege.

It is also why he is being disbarred in California.

What is interesting though is that Clarence Thomas recused himself from the case.

I am stunned.

The optimist in me thinks that Thomas is watching his step because his ethical lapses have been revealed by Pro Publica.

The pessimist in me thinks that Thomas is watching his step ONLY because his ethical lapses have been revealed by Pro Publica.

Given Eastman's close ties to the Thomases, particularly Ginni, and the evidence collected by the J6 committee and possibly Jack Smith put him in a bad position.

The Supreme Court, minus a recused Clarence Thomas, has turned down a bid by attorney John Eastman to erase court rulings that described him as a linchpin in former President Donald Trump’s bid to subvert the 2020 election.

The high court’s decision Monday essentially enshrines rulings by a federal district judge in California that found Eastman’s emails contained evidence of a likely crime related to Trump’s efforts.

Thomas did not specify a reason for stepping aside from the ruling, but several of the emails, contained in a particularly sensitive batch that was inadvertently made public during a legal fight between Eastman and congressional investigators, showed top Trump advisers describing Thomas as their likeliest ally in an effort to get the Supreme Court to legitimize Trump’s efforts. Eastman also formerly clerked for Thomas and has had some contacts in recent years with his wife, conservative activist Ginni Thomas.

Notwithstanding their protestations about not discussing their respective businesses, I'm pretty sure that Ginni was heavily involved in this decision.