patrick.net

Two major Democratic clients of the daughter of the judge overseeing Donald Trump’s hush-money trial have raised at least $93 million in campaign donations — and used the case in their solicitation emails — raising renewed concerns that the jurist has a major conflict of interest.

Trump’s attorneys are considering filing another motion demanding Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan recuse himself from the trial set to begin April 15, sources said.

The judge’s daughter, Loren Merchan, is president of Authentic Campaigns, a Chicago-based progressive political consulting firm whose top clients include Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who was the lead prosecutor in Trump’s first impeachment trial, and the Senate Majority PAC, a major party fundraiser.

Biden’s DOJ Drops Decade-Long Case After Defendant Makes Massive Donation To Campaign

NEW YORK, NY — In a devastating blow for the defense, State Judge Juan Merchan has ordered Donald Trump to immediately cease noticing that the only people trying to put him in jail are Democrats.

"Quiet you!" Judge Merchan told Trump in court. "Stop mentioning that everyone in the legal system who is trying to imprison you just so happens to be a member of the Democrat party. It is completely irrelevant."

"All instances of Trump noticing this fact will be met with serious legal consequences, which will be administered by Democrats."

The expanded gag order comes on the heels of an initial order prohibiting Trump from blowing raspberries at members of the press during hearings.

In an expert display of 4D chess, Trump has pivoted to talking directly about the gag order, bringing it up nearly every time he speaks, causing everyone to be reminded of how everyone trying to lock him up are Democrats.

In a new pinned post on Truth Social, Trump said, "The court has ordered me NOT to discuss how everyone trying to put me in jail is a Democrat and I will honor that request ;)"

Though prosecutors have demanded Trump stop exploiting the obvious loophole in his gag order, Judge Merchan was forced to admit that there was "nothing in the rules that says he can't talk about the gag order."

At publishing time, Trump had been hit with a new order requiring him to be fitted with an actual gag.

Anyway, Cohen will testify that twelve days before the 2016 election, while Cohen was representing Trump, Cohen — not Trump — bought non-disclosure agreements from two … er, female performers, who at the time were going around shopping stale but sordid stories of having once grappled with the President ages ago. The alleged ‘Trump Tales’ were mild compared to other political Don Juans like Bill Clinton, Hunter Biden, or even John F. Kennedy, but Cohen will say he thought it could be politically damaging.

So he paid $280,000 for the two NDAs and the rights to the ladies’ stories.

As a lawyer, I must pause here and note that it would be unusual to the point of disbelief for any attorney to advance any significant amount of money for a client in the way Cohen claims. Lawyers aren’t banks.

Then after the election, Trump paid Cohen eleven monthly retainer checks which do not add up to $280,000, but apparently was close enough for District Attorney Bragg, so he and Cohen now claim Trump was really reimbursing the lawyer for the NDA money Cohen had paid to the two “actresses” (and I use that term loosely).

This is the point where Bragg’s case rockets away from Planet Reality. District Attorney Bragg’s criminal indictment complains not about any of the alleged facts I just mentioned. Bragg doesn’t care about Trump’s sex life, his paying to shut up a couple blabbering strippers, or even Trump’s repeated denials of the encounters (even if they happened).

No, Alvin Bragg’s mental toilet water drained down to just this: On the little memo line of the eleven checks he wrote to Mr. Cohen, Trump put something like, “for legal services.” Which apparently in New York is a major felonious event justifying upending the country. Here’s how the Guardian described the legal effect of Trump not writing something like “for reimbursing an NDA” in the memo line instead:

By casting these payments as compensation for legal work, President Trump “made and caused a false entry in the business records of an enterprise”, prosecutors said. Trump did so “with intent to defraud and intent to commit another crime and aid and conceal the commission thereof … ’
Falsifying business records is only a felony if DA Bragg can prove that the “mischaracterization” was intended to facilitate another crime, which is also a felony. The larger crime Bragg is shooting for here, a crime with which he has never charged Trump, is failing to properly report campaign expenses. Bragg’s theory — if you can call it that — is that Trump’s intent — the intent inside his own brain — when he wrote down “for legal expenses” was to make sure the payments were left off his quarterly presidential campaign finance reports.

I am not making that up; that’s Bragg’s whole case.

Here’s your pretrial quick-reference checklist:

Prosecutors may have indicted many ham sandwiches, but nobody has ever criminally prosecuted a president or former president before, much less a State District Attorney.

Inexperienced DA Alvin Bragg has never prosecuted a campaign finance violation before.

DA Alvin Bragg has never prosecuted a “falsified business records” case before either.

Bragg’s novel legal theory has never been used to convict anyone else before, not in New York or anywhere else.

Bragg never even charged Trump with the campaign reporting violation, just the business records thing.

Bragg stretched the few facts like taffy into thirty four separate criminal counts.

To convict, Bragg must prove Trump’s internal mental intentions beyond a reasonable doubt.

DA Bragg is a grotesque, unqualified, woke, Soros-funded, democrat machine prosecutor who is new to the job and ran on a “Get Trump” platform.

This is Trump’s first … no, second … er, third … oh, nevermind. They’ve sued him a lot. This is the President’s first criminal case of four to go to trial. If it’s not political persecution, then nobody even knows what that is.

All four criminal cases against Trump, including this one, are founded on victimless process crimes.

In this case, Trump's team is expected to argue that the payments were personal expenses and not campaign-related expenses, that any alleged misclassification was unintentional, that the prosecution was politically-motivated, and that Bragg cannot prove the necessary intent to prove concealment of an actual crime as opposed to just an embarrassing but perfectly lawful personal expense that celebrities often encounter.

Fast-forward to the 2020 election. “Joe Biden” manages to charm swing-state voters from his basement hide-out, moves into the puppet-theater known as the White House, and unleashes the dogs of lawfare on former president Trump so as to knock him off the political game-board for once and for all. “JB’s” Attorney General, Merrick Garland, sends Deputy AG Matthew Colangelo to work in DA Alvin Bragg’s office, to construct some kind of case out of the Stormy Daniels / Michael Cohen debris.

The result is an improbable farrago of 34 counts of falsifying business records relating to the Stormy Daniels hush-money payments, converted from misdemeanors to felonies on the theory that the falsifications were intended to conceal other election law crimes, including “influencing the 2016 election.” Each count for which Trump is convicted could result in a prison sentence of up to four years, to be served consecutively, meaning 136 years in jail.

Mr. Trump thus becomes the proverbial ham sandwich that an ambitious DA can convince a grand jury to indict. Now, Mr. Bragg has to persuade a trial jury to convict, in a courtroom presided over by one Judge Juan Merchan, Democratic Party activist and donor, whose daughter, Loren, has raised $93-million in campaign money for Democratic candidates in this November’s election. The Judge has, so far, refused to recuse himself.

Yesterday there was an organized, low-intensity, national domestic terror attack in most major cities. Fox News (and only Fox) ran the story, headlined “Anti-Israel agitators shut down traffic, disrupt cities all across US in demand for Gaza ceasefire.” ...

Blue states are funny. Had these protestors been blocking the sidewalk to an abortion clinic, they would be cooling off in federal prison right now. Weird.

Meanwhile, in Florida, highway-blocking activists were quickly removed and arrested in Tampa and Miami.

Allegedly, these nationwide, infrastructure-related ‘protests’ were organized by people who oppose Israel’s war against Hamas. I can’t say for sure, but having watched lots of video, yesterday’s protestors remarkably resembled the very same people who block roads protesting for climate change or transgender rights or Ukraine or whatever is the current thing.

The Associated Press reported a world-changing story this morning headlined, “Prosecutors to make history with opening statements in hush money case against Trump.” And so, it begins.

Calumnous corporate media is roundly referring to this case as the “hush money” trial, which is confusing almost everybody, since none of the counts pleaded against the President were on account of any kind of payoff. Trump never bribed anybody or “paid off” anybody. In the transactions involved in the case, Trump is ‘accused’ of legally buying — through a lawyer — common law copyrights (story rights) and non-disclosure contracts.

Even if true, both purchases are utterly unremarkable. Similar transactions happen every single day all over the country, if not the entire world.

Cretinous reporters call it “hush money” though, because they are sprinting far afield toward the reason Trump allegedly bought the stories from three women, to “stop them” from selling those stories to the tabloids. But Trump didn’t stop them, or hush them up, he had to pay them. The women could care less who paid them, since their motive was to make money, and they were richly successful.

None of corporate media’s halfwitted reporters are the least bit concerned whether any of those salacious stories Trump bought were actually true or made-up. Since the ‘Stormy Daniels’ (Stephanie Clifford) story broke years ago, journalists been unable (or unwilling) to confirm Stephanie’s account of the alleged 2006 relationship, and Trump has consistently denied the affair. For whatever it’s worth, Stephanie broke her NDA, and appears to have sold the story to media anyway, collecting handsomely from all parties.

Even though nitwit District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s morbidly obese case includes thirty-four criminal counts, the case is just about whether Trump’s notations on 11 checks written to his lawyer were properly characterized as legal expenses. That is all this criminal prosecution of a former President and current candidate is about. ...

I don’t need to remind you guys, but this historic trial is utterly unprecedented. Woke activists shopped the case to any number of prosecutors, including Bragg, who initially turned it down as being too farfetched. But Bragg later changed his mind, for some reason.

Regardless, America’s Justice System is making history this week. Bad history. Stay tuned.

The lawfare against Donald Trump hits new heights today

New York v Trump is a joke - 34 felonies for what comes down to misclassifying spending in a payment ledger - but the elite media is keeping a straight face. ...

Donald Trump’s first criminal trial officially began today with opening statements in a lower Manhattan courthouse. That dry statement is true, as far as it goes. But it does not begin to capture the miscarriage of justice unfolding before our eyes - or the profound consequences it will have, whatever its outcome.

Yet the elite media has gone along with the charade, just as it did in the insane New York state civil trial of Trump that ended two months ago. Reporters have covered both cases as if they were normal uses of prosecutorial power, rather than explaining what is really happening in them and how bleeding-edge aggressive are the legal theories underlying them.

Trump stands accused of falsifying invoices and business ledgers and sending reimbursement checks to his then-attorney Michael Cohen under the pretext that they were payments for legal services rendered.

Prosecutors say they were no such thing, but were rather reimbursement to Cohen for a $130,000 payment he made on Trump’s behalf to former adult actress Stormy Daniels. Daniels was paid, they say, to keep her from outing Trump ahead of the election in order to conceal their liaison and thereby enhance his election prospects.

In New York state, falsifying business records is a misdemeanor carrying a penalty of up to a year in jail. However, if it can be demonstrated that the reason for the falsification was to commit some other crime, as prosecutors say is the case here, it becomes a felony punishable by up to four years in jail.

That means that prosecutors have two orders of business in their bid to secure a conviction against the former president. First, they must establish the fraudulent nature of the business records which underlie the alleged scheme. Secondly, they must demonstrate that Trump’s intention in falsifying the records was related to the 2016 presidential election. ...

Newly unsealed documents in Donald Trump's classified documents case reveal that the Biden White House colluded with the National Archives (NARA) and the FBI to concoct a case against the former president.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.648652/gov.uscourts.flsd.648652.277.0.pdf

Journalist Julie Kelly has been all over this:

Thanks to order by Judge Cannon, key evidence related to classified docs case is now unredacted.
On the left: What DOJ/Jack Smith wanted to conceal.
On the right: Now we know why. More proof of collaboration btw Biden White House and NARA to concoct a case. pic.twitter.com/YVHVmAfOai
— Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 (@julie_kelly2) April 22, 2024

... The defense has argued that the emails unsealed on Monday indicate communication between NARA officials, the Biden administration, and the DOJ regarding President Trump’s records, alleging coordination in targeting the former president since 2021.

Before the saints come marching in, the human archetypes strut down the avenue in their revealing regalia. Do you know why the archetypal batshit crazy women of the Democratic Party adore “Joe Biden?” I’ll tell you: because he represents perfectly and exactly the “patriarchy” they revile in his floridly comic senescence. “Joe Biden” is the patriarchy disabled, feeble, feckless, impotent, and reduced to inanity. He would be pitiful if the patriarchy itself were not so contemptible. This is exactly how the batshit crazy women want it to look.

Do you wonder why “progressive” (i.e. batshit crazy) elite class women seem so unperturbed about the conspicuous number of rapes committed by “newcomers,” as they style illegal border-jumpers these days, who are by an overwhelming percentage “military-age men”? Because, having functionally transformed the ranks of American men into eunuchs, they relish the arrival of so many wild and lustful fellows on the scene, as long as post the imagined bodice-ripping exploits they can be dominated and domesticated — turned into so many swimming pool cleaners and busboys to be ordered around.

Of course, much of that archetypal psychodrama is only played out in the batshit crazy mind of batshit crazy women; for the sake of decorum it is never acted-out. The lurid, shameful fantasies are instead displaced onto Donald Trump, the archetypal “Big Daddy” who so insolently evaded the castration shears of Hillary Clinton — with the help of Russian arch-rapist “Putin” — and keeps on coming at the batshit-crazy women like Jason Voorhees, the psycho-killer in the Friday the 13th horror series (Qu’est-ce que c’est, ladies?)

Proof of Mr. Trump’s rapey-ness has been finally and formally declared in the E. Jean Carroll defamation trial. It’s certified, you see, though the trial itself was a joke of performative pretense. All you really need is a cast of characters, including the judge, Lewis Kaplan, who are sufficiently deranged and degenerate to carry out the performance.

New York State Attorney General Letitia James was up next to attempt the financial castration of Mr. Trump with an artfully concocted civil case that magically transformed a normal real estate transaction into a victimless fraud (say, what?), prompting the Rumpelstiltskin-like Judge Arthur Engoron to declare an unprecedented cash penalty of $354-million, designed to enable the confiscation and forced sale of Mr. Trump’s buildings.

That hasn’t quite worked yet, and may never work, given how appeals courts up to SCOTUS might view the malicious prosecution based on Ms. James’s repeated campaign promise to. . . pin something on Trump. Batshit crazy “progressives” have managed to not notice how inconsistent with American legal precedent this case was — because they held all the levers of power in New York State: governorship, legislature, and AG’s office, and their power to do whatever they liked was all that mattered.

For the moment Judge Juan Merchan presides over Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s fake case of 34 clerical misdemeanors (past the statute of limitations on them), repurposed as felonies committed for the intention of breaking some federal election law (unspecified). Last time I checked, county courts have no jurisdiction over federal law, most particularly unspecified federal law, which is to say no law at all. The question nobody has asked or answered is: what is the flaw in our system of jurisprudence that allows such an insane and preposterous case to play out so harmfully? I can only suppose that this is what happens when ethics and moral codes are brutally excised from the larger culture that law is but one part of.

It is the way of Homo sapiens that moral codes derive generally from the supervision of fathers in the upbringing of human young and, later on, as children develop into adults, these codes are archetypally re-enacted and enforced by men in the greater social matrix. Why? Because it requires a strong sense of boundaries. Boundaries are the essence of the “patriarchy.” Remove men from the scene, or castrate them politically, and you are sure to end up with a problem knowing right from wrong. We’re apparently subject now to the misrule of women with boundary problems who, for one reason or another, rebelled against Daddy and never got over it. It’s a peculiar irony — so far unexplicated by the hierophants of social theory — that the more affluent and successful Daddy was, the more he was hated for it by his female offspring.

The result of all that is the Democratic Party of our time as run by the batshit crazy women, fearful of sex and its consequence (babies), paradoxically subject to biological promptings and unable to find suitable mates among the men they’ve turned into eunuchs of one sort or another; resentful of the dull managerial jobs that have replaced the anathematized “jobs” of motherhood; filled with rage and revenge fantasies which, because of their boundary problems, have now extended to willing the destruction of our country. It’s an uninviting view of what’s happened to us, but there it is, like so much meat on the table.

The newfangled, 21st-century, two-tiered, weaponized lawfare against President Trump metastasized again yesterday into the another criminal prosecution against Trump-supporting lawyers, which this time doesn’t include or even need the former president. Phoenix local affiliate ABC-15 ran the story yesterday headlined, “11 Arizona Republicans, 7 others indicted in 2020 Trump 'fake electors' scheme.”

It’s eighteen more Republican political indictments. Short-sighted, oxygen-deprived maskaholic liberals unable to imagine how these lawfare tactics could ever be used against them expressed ecstasy over the news...

As if the Michigan, Georgia, and Nevada prosecutions weren’t already enough, yesterday Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) indicted seven attorneys and aides who worked on Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign, plus 11 local Arizona Republicans on felony charges for fraud and forgery (and conspiring to do those things).

“I will not allow American democracy to be undermined,” the corpselike Mayes bravely announced on Twitter yesterday afternoon.




... So in Arizona (along with several other states where cheating was rampant), the GOP hastily assembled an alternative slate of Republican electors, so they would be ready to go in case one of the legal challenges succeeded. But DA Mayes disbelieves the electors were actually waiting for the legal green light.

DA Mayes accused the defendants of a switcheroo — trying to trick, or defraud, the Congress into mistaking the Republican alternate electors for the proper ones, and trying to trick Congress into thinking the official electors nominated by the Secretary of State were the fakes instead. ...

It’s getting risky for lawyers to represent conservatives in elections. Since 2020, I’ve litigated five local election-related cases representing conservative candidates (not the Trump election; it was after that). In three cases I won, I was personally sued for bringing or winning the case. I am blessed to work in Florida and ultimately prevailed in all three lawsuits. But in one case, where my unlikely co-defendant is Governor DeSantis, we had to win all the way up through the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Now the democrats are seeking an appeal at the Supreme Court.

Toting the numbers, I’ve been sued personally as the lawyer by democrats in three elections cases out of five. I can’t deny it makes me think harder about taking any future elections cases. It’s like a bad BOGO; buy one election case, and get one expensive civil lawsuit for free.

It’s a problem. Every good lawyer who might consider taking a case later this year must carefully consider the risk of eventually becoming a criminal defendant under some warped DA’s thinly-sliced legal theory, not to mention the possibility of being fired from your firm, disbarred, and blacklisted.

Which is exactly what happened to Trump lawyer John Eastman, one of the 18 new Arizona defendants, and one of the Fulton County (Fani Willis) defendants. John was recently recommended for disbarment in California. He was forced to resign from his professorship at Chapman Law School, and his visiting professorship at the University of Colorado. He’s been de-banked twice, and is described by other lawyers as existing in “a state of felonious infamy.”

So far, the spring rioting has mostly been fun for the rioters. Unlike the J-6-21 “paraders,” locked up in the putrid DC jail for years pending trial, the Hamas frolickers are at near-zilch risk of any serious consequences. Few will even be suspended from school. They are doing exactly what the schools trained them up for: destroying Western Civ, one acanthus leaf at a time. According to the shadowy stage-managers behind “Joe Biden,” this will save our democracy.

That and stuffing Donald Trump in jail for the rest of his natural life. Alas, the lawfare cases cooked up toward that end appear defective to a spectacular degree. It really says something about the true authors of these beauties brought by Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, Fani Willis, and Jack Smith. I speak of the behind-the-scene blob lawfare ninjas Norm Eisen, Andrew Weissmann, Matt Colangelo, and Mary McCord, who wrote the scripts for all four of this year’s big elephant trap cases against the former president. You have to wonder how that bunch made it through their law boards. The current extravaganza in Manhattan that centers on alleged book-keeping errors in furtherance of an unstated federal offense is due to go on a few more weeks. The howling errors of both the prosecution and Judge Juan Merchan are so extravagant that the proceeding looks like it was cribbed from the pages of Lewis Carroll.

Yet, there is near unanimous sentiment that the Trump-deranged New Yawk jury will convict, no matter how much more idiotic the case turns out to be.

"This is a Frankenstein case," Turley said. "They took a dead misdemeanor, they attached it to a dead alleged federal felony and zapped it back into life. Many of us are just amazed to watch this actually walk into court because it's not a recognizable crime that any of us have seen."

Correct. Obvious. I’m unable to analyze dipshittery. We just have wave after wave of sub-moronic performance theater, the point of which is to distract and demoralize. The Supreme Court just faked a long and serious debate over the existence of presidential immunity, while all of the justices are shielded from legal consequences over their handling of the case because of judicial immunity. Why pretend to honor that?

In a functioning country with adversarial politics, a dozen border county DAs would bullshit-indict Joe Biden this week for aiding and abetting human trafficking, and announce that they’ll wait to handcuff and perp walk him until 12:01 on January 20 as he leaves the White House, at which point the courts would instantly and miraculously rediscover presidential immunity. No one actually believes that no form of presidential immunity exists, but Orange Man Bad, so we’re going to pretend for a while. I decline.

Yet, there is near unanimous sentiment that the Trump-deranged New Yawk jury will convict, no matter how much more idiotic the case turns out to be.

No matter who you are or what you look like, our laws apply equally to all, or so they are supposed to. However, our “justice is blind” system has now splintered off into two different levels of justice: one for you and me, and the other for the “political elites” as some call them. Not sure what I’m talking about? No worries, I’ve got a few examples for you to make my point here.

Who can forget Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, during the height of the COVID19 frenzy dining out at a restaurant, with a large group of friends, without a mask on!? Actually, not one of his dinnermates donned a mask! That’s right. None of them felt the need to follow the rules whilst they hung out with the tyrant that was trampling on law-abiding citizens’ rights. ...

Any penalties suffered by Newsom? A fine, or a figurative public lashing, or loss of his job? Nope. All good.

How about this? Remember when then Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, also during the height of COVID19, went to the hair salon to have her hair done whilst everyone else was forbidden from having “indoor personal care services” provided… and she was walking around the place without a mask on?! Of course, she accused the salon of setting her up and demanded they issue an apology. Seriously, lady? Not 100% sure, but I’m guessing she’s still waiting for it.

Any consequences for good ole’ Nancy (who has been in Congress since 1985) breaking the rules? Nope. All good there, too.

I suppose these elites would love to deny their I’m-so-entitled instances ever took place. Unfortunately for them, their surveillance state society they work so hard to promote, worked against them in those instances. They were both caught on video, or in still photos. Busted. ...

This story happened just last week, when the District Attorney for the Western New York county of Monroe, defied law enforcement when the officer tried to apprehend her for speeding (20 miles over the speed limit) in a residential area. The DA, Sandra Doorley, who’s held that office since 2011, was not only disrespectful to the officer who was trying to enforce the law, she didn’t even pull over despite his lights and siren, and instead ignored him and drove all the way home and then pulled into her garage! The encounter was recorded on the officer’s body camera. You can watch the 26-minute video here, but I point out some of the key moments below.

The District Attorney berates the police officer multiple times, at one point calling him an “asshole” and telling him “This is ridiculous. Just go away.” At another point, when he reiterates that he stopped her for doing 55mph in a 35mph zone, she responds with, “Then just write the fu*#ing ticket.”

During the encounter, she calls the town’s police chief and asks him to call off his police officer, “Can you please tell him to leave me alone?”

Not stopping for a police officer who is legally pulling you over is an arrestable offense, as you can hear the officer say to his supervisor who also arrived on the scene. In the end, the officer let her off easy, and only gave her a speeding ticket. ...

Doorley: Sorry, I didn't wanna pull over ... I just didn't. I just figured I'd pull into my driveway. And I called (Webster Chief of Police) Dennis (Kohlmeier) and I said, "That's me that they're trying to stop." So, that's end of story.

Officer: Well, you should know better, right?

Doorley: I was speeding, I know that.

Officer: Okay, so why didn't you just stop like you're supposed to?

Doorley: Because I didn't feel like stopping on Phillips Rd.

Officer: That's not your choice! You know that!

Doorley: Well, I made it my choice.

Officer: Now you made it a bigger deal than it needed to be!

Doorley: It's a really bigger deal. And when people started coming it's a much bigger deal!

Offier: Well, you caused that, Sandra. What do you want us to do? Not do our job because it's you?

Doorley: No! It's fine. Just write me a ticket. I was just saying I was not gonna stop on Phillips Rd. at 5:30.

Officer: Okay, well, you just broke another law because of that. Right? You should know better.

Doorley: Just write me a ticket...

Officer: That's not a traffic ticket. That's an arrestable offense, Sandra. You know this! Why did you not pull over? You made this a bigger deal than it needed to be. And you knew why you were getting stopped, clearly.

Doorley: Clearly hahahaha!

In the end, the officer let her off easy, and only gave her a speeding ticket.