“The smart play … would have been to say it doesn’t matter whether or not [Trump] had a relationship with Stormy Daniels, because that renders big chunks of the case irrelevant. But character is destiny, and Trump’s character is egotistical and combative” – former federal prosecutor, NY Times 

“Trump Undone by the Truth of his Pecker” – ambiguous Emptywheel headline 

Donald John Trump has been convicted on all counts in People of the State of NY v Trump. The offender was charged with falsifying records to cover up another criminal offence. This could be his usual business practice, but in New York, it’s a felony.

Lawfare listed what prosecutors had to prove in People v Trump, and the Times listed the 34 counts that were proved. 

Further felony charges against Trump remain and are awaiting trial in Georgia state court (election interference), DC federal court (the January 6 election theft attempt) and Florida federal court (Espionage Actviolations), but Trump is already a convicted felon, affecting travel to 38 countries including Australia.

Sadly, Trump won’t do the decent thing: drop out. Running is too lucrative. Since his conviction, fresh millions from sucker supporters have flooded in. “Moron“, after all, is an Americanism.

The trial itself was uncontroversial, except for the unseemly behaviour of the defendant, who ranted before and after his court appearances, accompanied by an entourage of what one cartoonist called “Trump Chumps and Toadies”, i.e, Republican camp followers and vice-presidential aspirants. 

Mob boss: “Benny Eggs” Mangano

Trump may not be an actual mob boss, but he took the precaution of hiring Susan Necheles, a former (unsuccessful) lawyer for the Genovese crime family underboss Venero “Benny Eggs” Mangano. In Trump’s trial, Necheles had the unenviable task of cross-examining Stormy Daniels, and it didn’t go well. 

The Republican groupies who followed Trump into court each day included the former head of Hell’s Angels; a NY criminal gang of yesteryear; the convicted NY City Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik (pardoned by his patron); the crackpot lawyer Alan Dershowitz; the health care plunderer, now Senator, Rick Scott; the theocrat House speaker Mike Johnson; the Trump-convert and Hillbilly Elegyauthor, Senator JD Vance; the fraud-indicted Texas AG Ken Paxton; and the Indian-American vice-presidential wannabe Vivek Ramaswamy. 

There were so many congressional sycophants that it could have cost the Republicans a close vote in the evenly-balanced House.

Speculative clues to the further adventures of NY v Trump may be found in the Spring Exam set by Cornell Law Professor Michael Dorf for his Federal Courts course.

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Sammy Alito’s flagpole – supporting the January 6 insurrection 

“Justice Alito … Rewrites Racial Gerrymandering Standards to Help White Republican States” – Election Law blog headline 

“Justice Sam Alito [is] the Fox News … justice on the US Supreme Court bench … He doesn’t have a legal philosophy beyond counting to five, and he doesn’t write opinions for the ages. He writes for now and, almost always, for Republicans. He … is a politician in robes” – Law Dork 

It’s no longer in dispute: the Supreme Court has gone rogue, rubber-stamping  Republican causes at every opportunity, more here.

In addition, two of the justices, Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas, have shamelessly rejected the statutory ethics requirements that all US judges are meant to follow: 

“Any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” – 28 USC 455

In Alito’s case, there’s another violation: 

“No disrespect should be shown to the flag of the United States of America…The flag should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.” – 4 USC 8. 

In May, the NYT broke the story about the raising of Alito’s distress flag – the upside-down American flag – that occurred while Trump was being impeached in congress for insurrection, and while Justice Alito participated in supreme court cases touching on that event. 

More shocking is the new revelation that the Washington Post knew of this in January 2021 and sat on the story for nearly three and a half years, stumm, not only while Trump was being impeached in 2021 but also this year when Alito was considering Trump v Anderson, the Colorado insurrection-disqualification case and Trump v US, the “presidential impunity” appeal. 

Does Jeff Bezos (the owner of the Post as well as Amazon) feel some need to protect Alito? Has there been any Amazon case before the court? 

There’s a second flag kerfuffle at the Alito beach house in New Jersey. 

Needless to say, Justice Alito has brazenly declined to recuse, blaming his wife, whose behaviour he admits he cannot control, and anyway, she owns the property as well (all of the beach house in NJ) and she is entitled to fly flags any way she likes as an expression of her First Amendment rights – nothing to see here! 

Congressman Jamie Raskin sees a way to force the justices to recuse, under existing federal legislation.

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Alito: high priest of the Supreme Court

Few legal writers allude to the disturbing fact that all six of the court’s rightwing justices grew up Roman Catholic. In the view of some, “Trad Caths” have taken over the court, and Donald Trump’s nominees have doubled their influence. 

What Eric Segall calls a “rule of lawlessness” now prevails on the court, with Justices Thomas and Scalia as “theoretical Leninists“.

There have been many bad decisions since Trump stuffed the supreme court with partisan Republicans. The worst is probably the Bruengunscase, with the dog that didn’t bark, but there are worse decisions coming down.

In the horrible Alexander v SC State Conference of the NAACP, the court manufactureda “get-out-of-jail” card for racial discrimination. Alexander is typical  of lower court decisions by non-partisan courts being reversed when they fail to advance Republican electoral interests. More here on South Carolina’s racial gerrymander.

In Alexander, the supreme court has even changed the rules for appellate review, e.g, redefining what constitutes “clear error” on the part of a lower court, absurdly presuming state legislatures act in good faith, and even requiring that plaintiffs who attack racial gerrymanders produce their own, alternative, legislative maps.

Alito turned precedent on its head by adopting his own dissent from Cooper v Harris(2007); the court thus did all that was necessary to achieve the desired result for SC’s Republican establishment: a bleached district for a safer seat in congress.

Thomas with Stop the Steal Ginni

Scotusblog has more on a decision that accepts the SC legislature’s shameful rebranding of racial gerrymanders as simply “partisan”, knowing that, since the court’s 2019 Rucho v Common Cause decision, partisan gerrymanders are “non-justiciable” (unreviewable). 

Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion was even more appalling, expressing his view that both racial and partisan gerrymanders are acceptable.