Another roundup
Sometimes there’s just too much news to do justice to it all. Thus, another roundup.
(1) Tony Bobulinksi address the House:
EXPLOSIVE: Hunter Biden's former business partner Tony Bobulinski describes the Biden family, says, they are serial liars, criminals. WATCH pic.twitter.com/XMjT0ROY6u
— Simon Ateba (@simonateba) March 20, 2024
Brave man.
(2) Apparently we will finally get to see the Nashville shooter’s manifesto.
(3) If you’re confused by the various court rulings about the Texas law on detaining illegal aliens, reading this LI post but in particular this comment in response to the post should help.
(4) Trump might let Letitia James seize Trump Tower:
As Donald Trump faces a Monday deadline to post a $454 million bond in the civil fraud case against him in New York, insiders said he may be weighing a little-discussed option: Doing nothing.
The ex-president reportedly has been struggling to raise the cash for the bond — either from banks or wealthy friends — with his lawyers claiming on Monday that it was a “practical impossibility.”
While some reports have raised speculation that Trump may “go nuclear” with a Chapter 11 filing to protect his prize real estate assets across Manhattan, experts said bankruptcy would create unwelcome complications as the 2024 election season comes to a head. …
A third possibility, however, is to let the deadline pass, leaving it to New York Attorney General Letitia James to seize Trump’s bank accounts or buildings — including Trump Tower, from which he declared his 2016 presidential run, and which famously includes his personal penthouse.
It’s an option Trump appears to have considered – partly because he believes the chances are good that he could recover the assets on appeal, even if he is forced to take his case to the US Supreme Court, according to friends.
The NY case has great potential to hurt the economy of New York by scaring off real estate investors, and such a taking of real estate assets would only further that perception and that reacion. It also will further the perception of Trump as a victim of injustice – a perception I believe is quite correct.
In the NY court system, Trump can’t appeal unless he posts the money. But if James seizes the assets, I assume that would give him the right of appeal, because it would be the equivalent? If not, I’m pretty sure he still could appeal on an emergency basis to a higher federal court.
(5) Trump is suing ABC and Stephanopoulos for saying he’d been convicted of rape:
“Judges and two separate juries have found him liable for rape and for defaming the victim of that rape. How do you square your endorsement of Donald Trump with the testimony we just saw, ” Stephanopoulos asked during the interview.
But because both defendants are part of the news media, actual malice and/or reckless disregard for the truth must be proved in order to win a judgment. It’s certainly been alleged, but proving it is often very very difficult, which is why the MSM feels free to issue such defamations for political purposes. From the complaint:
“These statements were and remain false, and were made by Defendant Stephanopoulos with actual malice or with a reckless disregard for the truth given that Defendant Stephanopoulos knows that these statements are patently and demonstrably false,” Trump’s attorney, Alejandro Brito, wrote in the 20-page complaint.
I predict that Trump won’t win this case, because of Sullivan and the resultant high burden of proof.
Re: New York taking Trump Tower
“I m-m-m-m-mean w-w-w-whatever you do B-B-B-Br’er Fox, whatever you do, but please, please Br’er Fox, pleeeaaase don’t fling me into that briar patch!”
What in the world will New York do with that asset in this real estate market? And they better keep it up and running and in good condition.
You’re right about not winning: I remember Ariel Sharon’s lawsuit against Time. “Malice” is a tough thing to prove unless there is a series of emails that say, pretty much verbatim, “Let’s MALICIOUSLY and with RECKLESS DISREGARD FOR THE TRUTH, spread this unfounded rumor. That’s a lie. And let’s spread it with a nice thick layer of MALICE. While we recklessly disregard the truth.”
(I also remember Time crowing about how they “won.” Sharon proved they lied, and they knowingly lied, but he couldn’t prove malice. I get stuck on Sunday School lessons: if you lie about someone and you know it’s a lie, by default, you’re being malicious by doing it. But Sunday School is not the Court. Sigh)
“What in the world will New York do with that asset in this real estate market?”
They could always use it to house illegals.
New York has some pretty tenant-friendly laws don’t they? It would be a hoot watching James try to evict her “tenant.”
5) The “interview” where George Stephanopolous maliciously verbally attacked and insulted Nancy Mace is horrendous. I can’t believe Stephanopolous still has a job or an audience. What a petty, tiny little man. Not tiny in stature. Tiny in his humanity. What won’t he say or do for politics, or a buck?
You can see Stephanopolous’ attack here, about 6:00 in: https://youtu.be/cv19QlyPoqI?si=7rhROIfv6c0h4qny although the entire clip is good and stick around to see Megyn Kelly rip into George “Bimbo Eruption” Stephanopolous’ hypocrisy.
A Bad Blue Tweet ( Doug Ross Journal) mentioned the possibility of the NY AG and crime gang will turn Trump properties into Illegal shelters.
They would love to destroy Trump properties with Illegal gangs
Higher burden of proof eh?
Ask Mark Steyn how well that worked out for him.
Ask Judith Curry who was on the receiving end of far worse than Steyn ever said, from the person who claimed he was defamed by Steyn. Higher burden of proof applied there, and she never pursued any complaints against the litigious little toad very likely because she knew she couldn’t win.
Didn’t Westmoreland win his lawsuit against 60 Minutes?
Stephanopolous was one of those kids in high school gym class who all the other kids whipped with rat-tailed towels.
Because he had a 1-inch dick and testicles the size of rabbit pellets.
No and there was reason for it in the worl of sam adams who toted up the vietcong totals before tet
The problem is that “reckless disregard for truth” is standard operating practice for the major media, so if it could be proven it wouldn’t make Steffy different from everyone else in his business.
I’ve heard that Clarence Thomas would like to get his hands on Sullivan for a reset. I have no legal background so I have no idea if this case would lend itself to give him (and 4 others) the opportunity of overturning or modifying Sullivan.
Any legal minds know if this is possible?
I am in favor of bringing back dueling.
Rufus T. Firefly, thanks for the link to Megan Kelly. I’d forgotten how slimy a creature he was.
Regarding the Texas detention of illegal aliens: Now, there it is. In a single concise comment, some guy has nailed the essentials of where this Supreme Court issue presently stands, and also illustrates the gaming of the system being undertaken to hamstring the efforts. Isn’t that amazing? What scores of journalists are incapable of describing in pages and columns, some guy in the internet world just casually puts it all together.
Modern journalism is beneath disgrace.
It is said that the Federal government once seized a house of prostitution for unpaid taxes, tried to run it…and lost money.
Given that precedent, does it seem likely that the **New York** government could operate Trump Tower successfully?
Neo said, “In the NY court system, Trump can’t appeal unless he posts the money.”
I’m not sure this is right. (I should be sure, because I worked in the NYS appellate court system for many years — but I don’t recall anything quite like this coming up before.) I’ve been trying to read Article 55 of the NYS CPLR — the sections of NY law that govern civil appeals — and as far as I can tell, Trump CAN appeal without a bond.
What he can’t do without a bond is get a stay of enforcement until the appeal is decided. The sections of the CPLR that govern how to take an appeal (mainly CPLR 5501 through 5515) don’t mention appeal bonds at all. The section that discusses them is CPLR 5519, and it doesn’t say anything about whether a party can appeal at all — it just spells out various ways to get a stay of enforcement pending the appeal, including bonds (called undertakings in the CPLR.) Without a bond, there’s no stay, so the opposing party can go ahead and start enforcing the judgment while the appeal is still in process.
All of these CPLR sections are linked here, if anybody wants to check my work — and please do!
So I believe that if he can’t get a bond or an exemption from the bond, Trump could choose to play chicken with Letitia James and basically dare her to take his property while his appeal winds through the courts.
The thing is that a civil appeal like Trump’s is categorized in NY as an “appeal as of right” to the Appellate Division (the first level of NY’s two appellate courts.) His appeal falls into the category of appeals the Appellate Division must hear, as long as he complies with all the procedural requirements — and there are plenty of them, apart from bonds.
But will an appeal succeed in the end? I’d like to think that the Appellate Division would do the right thing, but I’m not sure whether it would. I don’t know enough about the First Department (there are four Departments in the State, and the First covers cases out of Manhattan) to guess how partisan it is. The upstate Third and Fourth Departments have a good mix of Democratic and Republican judges and aren’t usually particularly partisan either way. But there’s a good bet that most of the First Department judges are Democrats.
And if the Appellate Division rules against Trump, he probably doesn’t have an appeal as of right to the state’s top court, the Court of Appeals. I haven’t looked closely at the Court’s rules, but in most cases the Court of Appeals can decide what appeals to take — and I could imagine it ducking this hot potato of a case. The Court of Appeals hasn’t historically been an extremely partisan court; it has had a good reputation for fairness and integrity. But I’m not sure that can be relied on now. It’s a majority Democrat court (six out of seven, I believe, though I may have lost track) and many of the Democratic judges are well over to the left. A couple of years ago the Court split 4-3 over a decision in a gerrymandering case that badly hurt the NY Democratic party. A huge outcry ensued, both inside and outside the Court, and in the aftermath, the Chief Justice, Janet DiFiore, a strong Democrat and highly-regarded judge, resigned. (She didn’t specifically say that the gerrymandering decision was the reason, but it sure looked that way.) After that experience, it doesn’t seem likely to me that the remaining Democratic judges would touch anything as radioactive as the Trump appeal.
And I don’t know if there’s an emergency route to the Federal courts. In most cases, state-law civil appeals are matters for the state courts, and federal courts have no jurisdiction.
In case you can’t tell, I’m feeling a bit pessimistic.
My first comment in days. I’ve been locked out for some reason, but I changed my nom de internet and it seemed to work.
The Trump real estate case in New York is a dagger aimed at the right to own private property backed by courts. This is a fundamental building block of our economic system. Without it, who will want to risk building anything if it can be seized by unscrupulous lawyers using the law to tear down all you have built? It’s what happens in dictatorships/autocracies/kleptocrracies/theocracies/etc.
That the people aren’t in the streets with pitchforks and torches is emblematic of how little our economic system is understood today.
The thing about the Trump case is that it was the result of a summary judgement. He didn’t even get to present any kind of defense before it went into damages phase.
A question to which I do not know the answer. If James seizes Trump owned real estate in settlement of the fine does she not endanger the premise of her own case if she values the seized assets at any rate other than the ridiculously low valuations she posited?
Hard to follow the innards of the case. We’re there any third-party valuations entered ad evidence, or was it all the prosecution’s arbitrary numbers?
No they didnt even comp the properties properly it is theft with a pen
10 to 1 the FBI drags their a$$es in releasing the manifesto.
As a corollary to the corruption of the Fani Willis case, Miranda Devine pointed this out a couple of days ago.
https://nypost.com/2024/03/17/opinion/an-irish-society-an-unpaid-loan-and-the-hypocrisy-of-letitia-james/
First there is the story of the building, and the loan that was solicited from Mr. Doyle, by the Society Board and Mr. Cahill, to stave off closing it.
Here, there actually was fraud and a victim.