Category Archives: legal news

crime news, legal news

Four for four for Trump

Well … it looks like the Donald J. Trump indictment parade has reached its end, or maybe there’s more to see down the road.

Fulton County (Ga.) District Attorney Fani Willis has delivered yet another gut punch to the ex-POTUS, indicting him and 19 co-conspirators on 10 counts of conspiring to defraud the government and overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

This fourth criminal indictment against the 45th POTUS presents a most interesting turn of events, don’t you think?

Those who are indicted and then convicted in a state-run criminal trial cannot be pardoned by a future POTUS; Georgia law prohibits it. Willis’s announcement is thorough and comprehensive and it includes several individuals who worked with Trump (allegedly) to overturn the results of the election; special counsel Jack Smith chose to limit his indictments to just Trump, seeking to ensure a speedy trial.

What just blows my noggin to bits is Trump’s announcement that on Monday he is going to provide proof that the 2020 election was rigged. Really! That’s what he said. Why wait, dude? Give us the goods now, man!

Well, he won’t prove anything. Why? Because experts on these matters have concluded already there was no fraud in the election, which means Trump is blowing this all out of his overfed a**.

Meanwhile, the criminal defendant who once served as POTUS continues to defy U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan’s warning against popping off. She said Trump’s continuing challenge could force her to schedule the trial on the D.C. indictment handed down even earlier.

Donald Trump’s in a heap of trouble. He knows it. He is acting like the desperate criminal I believe he always has been.

legal news

Judge is in charge … period!

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan today told the entire world just who is in charge of Donald J. Trump’s life.

For starters, it is not Donald J. Trump. That role now falls on a jurist who was selected randomly to preside over a trial involving charges that the former POTUS conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Chutkan reportedly doesn’t suffer fools at all, let alone lightly. She delivered a ruling today that is both fair and it tells the criminal defendant, Trump, that he needs to cease hiding behind a “free speech” argument in his defense. He is free to say the 2020 election was rigged, she said, but he is not free to issue veiled threats against the prosecutors, jurors or the judge.

Chutkan told Trump that free speech is not “absolute” and that criminal defendants — such as Trump — have limits on statements they can make.

Thus, we have just received a sterling civic lesson on how an individual who prides himself on being “in charge” of all he sees, who once boasted that “I, alone” can fix the nation’s ailments, is now beholden to a federal judge.

Therein lies the wisdom of the founders who created a federal judiciary that has the authority to keep anyone — even a former president — on a short rhetorical leash.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, legal news

Conviction = condemnation

One almost can predict with metaphysical certitude what will happen if a federal jury convicts Donald J. Trump on any of the charges being brought before them.

The MAGA mob of morons will condemn the jury. It will blast the presiding judge to smithereens. It will cast doubt on the integrity of the federal judiciary. It will demonize the Justice Department, starting with the attorney general and the special counsel.

None of will — or at least it shouldn’t — have any material effect on the outcome. We still would have a former POTUS standing as a convicted felon facing years in prison.

I won’t wager which of the charges holds the most potential for conviction. My opinion on all of that changes with the direction of the wind.

Oh … and then we have the two state trials that Trump is likely to face. He’s got the one in New York City and quite likely one in Fulton County, Ga. Both of those prosecutions are being led by Black district attorneys, which of course feeds into Trump’s racist wheelhouse. We damn sure can look forward to hearing Trump bloviate on the racial component of those actions.

Now, of course none of this will matter if he’s acquitted, if he walks away cleanly, if the feds and the states cannot persuade juries to convict beyond a reasonable doubt of Trump’s guilt in his effort to steal the 2020 presidential election and of his hiding of classified documents taken from the White House. Then we have the hush money payment he made illegally to the adult film star to keep her quiet about a tryst the two of them had … but which Trump denies ever occurred.

We are heading for a major storm. Let’s all hold on.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, legal news

All this legal trouble makes me dizzy

Allow me this admission … which is that I am having a bit of difficulty keeping straight all the legal battles awaiting the immediate past president of the United States.

He has three indictments sitting in front of him: two from the federal government he once pledged to protect and another from a New York district attorney.

A fourth indictment from the Fulton County (Ga.) DA appears imminent. They all appear to be serious to the max. If he gets convicted on all the charges, Donald J. Trump could spend the rest of his life in prison. Given his advanced age, it well might be that even a partial conviction could imprison Trump for the duration.

What is most astonishing as I watch this drama unfold is witnessing how Trump no longer is in control of his own future; control rests with three judges who are presiding over the various trials awaiting the former POTUS.

One of them, U.S. District Judge Tanya  Chutkan is the most interesting. She is an immigrant from Jamaica appointed to the federal bench by President Obama. Thus, she presents a challenge to Trump; she hails from a “sh**hole country,” as Trump once said and she owes her lifetime job to a man Trump despises. Trump is likely to anger her beyond all measure before this case gets resolved.

Special counsel Jack Smith wants the indictment he obtained regarding the 1/6 assault on our government to be tried quickly. Judge Chutkan holds the key to that matter.

Well, I am sitting out here in the peanut gallery watching and waiting with a good bit of anticipation on what could happen to the most unfit man ever elected to the presidency. I’ll just have to keep my mind clear to stay caught up with what appears to be a whirl of activity for the rest of the current year and into the next one.

I will have to hold on with both hands.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

‘Alternative facts’: greatest nonsense ever uttered?

Kellyanne Conway, the one-time Donald Trump political strategist and White House senior adviser, will go down in history as the author of arguably the greatest nonsensical statement ever uttered.

I mention this because her former sugar daddy is using that statement as a mantra to defend himself against 78 counts of alleged misdeeds that have been filed against him by multiple grand juries.

Conway once infamously told NBC News “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd that falsehoods muttered by her boss were “alternative facts.” Todd was astonished, answering that anything that is not factually based is a “falsehood.”

Conway stood her slippery ground.

Here we are in the present day and “alternative facts” are coming forth in Trump’s defense against allegations that he sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election by hiring fake electors to cast votes for him in states that went for Joe Biden.

Alternative facts do not exist. They are a figment of a political operative’s phony glossary of verbiage. You have facts and you have non-facts … which are lies if the teller of non-facts knows that he or she is saying is false.

In this new age that now accepts lying as normal, alternative facts have become something of an accepted version of what passes for the truth. It is an amazing thing to witness for those of us who used to deal with reporting and commenting on facts.

I did that for nearly 37 years. I knew a lie when I heard it. Never did I consider them to be an alternative to facts. I guess I’m just old school in that regard.

It’s a new day, indeed. I am going to continue to hammer away at falsehoods when I hear them. I will call them what they likely are: lies told those who know what they are saying is false.

I suppose I ought to thank Kellyanne Conway for providing us with such a graphic and descriptive model for the art form that lying has taken in this bizarre time.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

Is a deal possible?

What you are about to read from this blogger isn’t an original thought; it comes from a former Republican governor and one-time GOP presidential candidate.

That said, I want to reveal what he expressed.

Former Ohio Gov. John Kasich has tossed out a possibility that — upon some reflection — isn’t nearly as goofy as some observers might suggest it is. Kasich was careful to stipulate that he isn’t “predicting” this would happen, but believes it remains a distinct possibility.

It is that Trump’s lawyers, who must defend him against multiple indictments on multiple fronts, might want to cut a deal with federal special counsel Jack Smith. Kasich suggests that Trump’s lawyers well might determine that Trump cannot win the classified documents case or the 1/6 insurrection matter.

What does he do? Well, Kasich said it might be that Trump’s legal team could suggest he cuts a deal with prosecutors that would include a guilty plea and his dropping out of the 2024 race for president.

He’s already pleaded not guilty to all the federal indictments, and to the New York indictment over the hush money payment he made to the adult film star. He’s likely to plead not guilty to an indictment that everyone on Earth believes is coming from the Fulton County, Ga., district attorney on another case involving election tampering.

However, criminal defendants have changed their pleas before. The alternative might be serious prison time if he’s convicted, say, of obstruction in the case involving the 1/6 assault on our government.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a one-time U.S. attorney, said recently that prosecutors would rather refuse to bring a case than bring one they cannot win. Jack Smith, therefore, well might have the goods on Trump to all but guarantee a conviction.

It makes me go “hmmm.” Is there an alternative, therefore, to prison for the former president? Looks like it to me.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

Smith ‘fan club’ forms

First things first: I must stipulate that I am not a member of any Jack Smith Fan Club, nor do I intend to join one or form one in my North Texas neighborhood.

That all said, I now shall declare that Jack Smith’s standing among those of us looking for accountability and justice in the conduct of a former POTUS has shot into the stratosphere.

The meme that showed up on my social media feed suggests that there might have been a chance that special counsel Jack Smith might “fear” Donald Trump. Not … a … chance!

The good news about Smith, though, is that he isn’t going to seek affirmation for doing his job. Attorney General Merrick Garland selected Smith to lead this investigation because the AG didn’t want to become entangled in a case involving the current POTUS, Joe Biden, and the man he defeated in the 2020 election.

Smith has done his duty with zero leaks, with little fanfare and with a maximum degree of professionalism. Yet those aspects of the job he has done has elevated the special counsel to hero status. Go figure.

The former president has managed to get Republicans in Congress to knuckle under to his threats. Not so with Jack Smith, who in reality has no more cause to stand firm against Trump than the sycophants who kowtow to Trump within the GOP House caucus.

Yes, I get that House GOP members face the prospect of losing their seats in primary elections. But they take oaths to defend the Constitution, not to march in lockstep behind a cult leader.

Jack Smith took a similar oath when he took on the role of special counsel. His loyalty to his oath, therefore, has given him an exalted status only because he is doing the job he signed on to do.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, legal news

Strike three … Trump!

Now we know what we have suspected all along, which is that special counsel Jack Smith has indicted Donald Trump on four counts of conspiracy to mount a coup to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

To think that Trump has bellowed since losing to President Biden that the election was “rigged,” that it is illegitimate.

Smith made monumental political history today. Is this reason to cheer? To high-five each other? To applaud the legal team that has assembled these incredibly detailed charges against a former president?

No. It is a time for serious reflection and for hoping the criminal justice system works its will.

I am not cheering tonight. I am trying to digest what has come forth.

Smith’s indictment reportedly is detailed. It is meticulous. It is historic in a way that many of us are having difficulty measuring. Trump is the first former POTUS ever indicted by the Justice Department. The indictment handed down today by a grand jury alleges that the former POTUS sought to overturn a free and fair election.

What in the name of democracy is up with that?

Jack Smith made it clear once again today that Trump is entitled to the presumption of innocence, but said he intends to press for a “speedy trial.”

Trump continues to tell us he did nothing wrong on Jan. 6, 2021. If so, then let this individual mount his defense and seek to persuade a jury that he should be acquitted. Does an innocent man seek to delay the proceeding? No, yet Trump is almost certain to obstruct the progress of this prosecution.

What now? The nation is about to enter a historic chapter in its long and glorious story. Donald Trump stands indicted on allegations that he sought to overturn an election he lost. It was a fair and legal determination by American voters … and one of the counts of the latest indictment alleges that Trump sought to deny voters that sacred right.

This is no time to cheer and slap the backs of our friends and political allies. It is a time to take seriously what a duly constituted grand jury has determined, that a one-time president of the United States committed a criminal act against the very government he took an oath to “defend and protect.”

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

Clock ticks on Trump

The clock continues to tick on Donald J. Trump, giving me some reason to hope that justice is finally — finally! — going to catch up with this twice-impeached, twice-indicted politician.

Special counsel Jack Smith reportedly has advised Trump’s legal eagles that yet another set of indictments is coming. These will deal with the insurrection that I believe the ex-POTUS incited on 1/6.

Then a trial will commence. My hope is that the D.C. federal judge who will preside over this trial won’t waste time, will set a relatively prompt trial date and that a jury will convict Trump of doing what I believe we all witnessed on that horrible day.

Just as a reminder: The Constitution stipulates in clear and precise language that anyone who commits an insurrection shall not be eligible to seek public office.

My plea, therefore, to the special counsel? Time’s a wastin’, Jack Smith. Let’s get busy.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

Judge hits ‘stand-up double’ with trial ruling

OK, it wasn’t a home run or even a triple, but the judge who is presiding over the classified documents pilfering by Donald J. Trump has issued a ruling that is giving me a glimmer of hope that we can get a trial without bias.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, nominated by Donald J. Trump to the federal bench in the final weeks of his term as POTUS, has set a May 20 trial date in Fort Pierce, Fla., on the indictment alleging that Trump broke the law by squirreling away classified documents in his Florida mansion.

Special counsel Jack Smith’s team of federal prosecutor’s wanted to stage the trial in December; Trump’s team wanted an indefinite delay. Cannon split the difference — more or less — by setting the May date. Frankly, it appears to favor Smith’s side of the argument.

The New York trial in which Trump was indicted for the hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels will have concluded. Trump might get convicted of violating state law in spending campaign money keep Daniels quiet about a tryst she says occurred, but which Trump denies … go figure on that one!

The Republican Party presidential primary season will be all but over when Cannon commences the documents trial. Trump remains the favorite for the GOP nomination.

If it concludes prior to the start of the GOP convention, and Trump is convicted of federal felonies (which many observers believe is a probability), then delegates get to decide whether they want to nominate a convicted felon for POTUS.

The ex-POTUS’s legal difficulties are mounting seemingly by the hour, which makes me wonder — and I am serious about this — whether he’ll be able to continue to mount a political campaign while seeking to keep his sorry backside out of prison.

I get that Cannon should have recused herself from this trial, given her conflict of interest in being nominated by the criminal defendant in this case. She hasn’t. She likely won’t.

So, we are left then to hope she does right by the judicial system she serves. It looks to me as if setting the trial date is a step toward correctness.

Johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com