Oh, I missed that the Supreme Court delayed the Jan 6 trial, so that there's no chance it is finalised before the election.

I guess they knew that he had zero chance of winning that case.

Corruption is a bitch.

Trump's devastating legal news today: It looks like his star witness may have been lying about DA Fani Willis' relationship with her special prosecutor:

https://www.salon.com/2024/02/28/i-have-no-answer-experts-say-trumpworlds-star-witness-sank-their-case-against-fani-willis/

“I do not have knowledge of it starting or when it started,” Terrence Bradley said of Willis' relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade during a Tuesday hearing. “I never witnessed anything. So, you know, it was speculation.” Bradley, a former law partner of Wade, also said he could not recall when he learned about the relationship, confounding claims made by the defense team which said the relationship started after Willis selected Wade to lead the case.

@sargentd: You're going off-topic, mate.

This thread is about Biden's worst offence in office - he's alleged to have eaten an ice cream.

If you don't understand why that's the most important issue in the lead up to the 2024 election, then you haven't been paying enough attention to your regular news sources.

Okay, so after a bizarre interlude, it looks like Trump's criminal trial is about to kick off.

Uhh...this is the one where he is accused of falsifying his business records when his fixer paid hush money to a porn star, so that she wouldn't mention his affairs during the 2016 election. Huh. I totally forgot about all that. It sort of loses its shine after all of the allegations of rape, major business fraud, election rigging, and refusing to hand classified documents back to the Feds.

Anyway, in the lead up to this, Trump also tried to exclude a ton of evidence that makes him look terrible, like any mention of the other affair he had in 2006, or the doorman who claimed Trump got his housekeeper pregnant.

I feel like this one is going to be a wild ride.

I actually have one of these, since I'm a dad who doesn't much couch time these days.

I've got mixed feelings about it. When I first used it the quality was awful, but I tweaked the settings and it's quite good now - especially for turn-based games.

On the other hand, it has no Bluetooth headphone support. In 2024. Even the Switch does that. Ugh.

There's a chance that he will get the money. The RNC chair has just resigned, so that's likely to become his personal piggybank to fund his courtroom antics.

Still, even if he gets the money, I don't see how that helps him. He'll lose the appeals. Maybe, just maybe, if he pushes it up to the Supreme Court he can hope that he has corrupted enough judges to exonerate him, but that's a risky play.

As for Trump's position by the end of the year...I wonder. He's about to face a bunch of serious criminal trials which he will likely lose. He's also showing signs of rapidly diminishing mental health, like how he forgot his wife's name last week. Perhaps, if his rumoured dementia worsens, that might shield him from going to prison.

@Stevo_the_gamer: "The state of NY is using a rarely used statute"

That's a stretch. It's obviously rarely used because it's uncommon for multi-million dollar corporations to get stung for tax fraud...but it's not like some obscure legal curio. It has been used against Exxon and Trump University and other fraudulent organisations in the past for good reason - it is effective at combating fraud.

Trump is trying to pretend this statute has never been used because the court of public opinion is the only court he has any power in. If you read the court pleadings and correspondence, etc., you'll see a very different story - one where Trump loses constantly because he an his team self-incriminates, are incapable of following civil procedure, and offer no real substantive arguments to defend his conduct.

Back on topic, if I'm reading things correctly, Trump only has about a week to come up with $83 million and about a month to come up with half a billion if he wants to appeal the Carroll and NY fraud cases.

I'm genuinely curious to see whether he pays anything. Appealing would probably be a terrible idea given his recent track record, but...I mean, what else can he do to string this along?

*edit* Also, once again, it's wild that any of this is happening. Trump was one of the most powerful people on the planet a few years ago, and now he can't muster up a legal team capable of defending him.

At best, all they seem to do is stall these cases with nonsense arguments - which certainly paints Trump in a terrible light. His handling of these cases makes him look evasive, petty, and completely disrespectful of the legal system.

@mrbojangles25: For more context, Trump is facing criminal charges for his attempts to rig the last election (and other criminal charges). He has lost every court case he has faced recently, so he must realise there's a very real chance of him spending the rest of his life in prison.

His rhetoric has become increasingly hostile towards his prosecutors, the justice system, federal agencies, and the government in general - partly because he needs to fire up his base to put him back in power, and partly because he needs his devotees to ignore the many terrible things that the courts will reveal about his character. It's also the only way he'll avoid the legal consequences of his own actions.

Trump's increasingly extreme rhetoric as his court cases loom is reflected in an increasingly radicalised MAGA base, which is how you end up with governors virtue signalling about secession, and propagandists at Republican events openly calling for the end of democracy.

@horgen: “We didn’t get all the way there on January 6"

So MAGA reps are finally admitting that Jan 6 was an attempt to end democracy.

I didn't have that on my bingo card for 2024. I figured they'd just keep lying about it.