Trump Sexual Abuse Verdict Upheld

 

A federal appeals court has issued a written opinion upholding Trump's defamation verdict which found him liable for the sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll:

"We conclude that Mr. Trump has not demonstrated that the district court erred in any of the challenged rulings,” the 2nd Circuit said. “Further, he has not carried his burden to show that any claimed error or combination of claimed errors affected his substantial rights as required to warrant a new trial.”

There is something about this case that fascinates me: the first defamation case found him liable with a $5 million dollar verdict. The second, at which he briefly testified, awarded an additional $83.3 million in damages. Something about Trump was very unsympathetic to a jury. 

I Love the Smell of Discovery in the Morning

 

Comer’s new talking point is that the reason his impeachment investigation is stalled is because there’s *too much evidence* 😆 pic.twitter.com/MOi09SmVka

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 30, 2024

It smells like burning whatever Comer's fucked-up old "evidence" is. And yes, I am saying "fucked up old evidence. " And Comer should know by now, it doesn't actually go anywhere. If there was too much evidence, why haven't we seen an orderly, not-debunked, probative trail of information that connects the dots from Hunter Biden doing....aw Jesus, any damn thing....and his dad somehow benefitting and quid pro quoing the fuck out of it? 

Hunter Biden, despite being depicted as unqualified for various positions he's worked in by Republicans as if he's a nepo-baby, is a lawyer. He's a good lawyer with really good lawyers. He's suing Fox News for defaming him over exactly the bullshit that the House GOP has being trying to impeach his father over. And I say "Bravo!" because here's the fun thing--Fox News seems to do the same thing for Trump the National Enquirer did--bury negative shit about Trump, and fluff absolute bullshit to denigrate his opponents. That's what happened with their Dominion and Smartmatic voter fraud lies--and until the Biden story became obvious toxic waste, that's what they were peddling to an audience well-conditioned (by them!) to believe in Democrat fuckery and excuse any obvious GOP lies. 

How shitty, busted and past its sell-by date is the Biden impeachment story? Um, Rudy Giuliani, who needs an intervention and seems to have no one in his life who is considerate enough to make it happen, is making it very clear SOMEONE should just "lean on" Zelenskyy again.  

Does the RNC Situation Look Bad?

 

Here's a fun thing we learned today--the RNC seems to have an agreement with the TrumpWorld Powers That Be to the effect that Trump legal fees get paid first, and then I guess the RNC biscuits just get whatever gravy slops over the plate. That's just beautiful. To put it in perspective, Save America PAC, the slush fund out of which Trump's legal fees are getting paid, has a burn rate that is way crazy--$230K a day on legal fees. And in the meanwhile, Trump's struggle-campaign can't afford campaign stops in probably not-crucial states like (checks notes) Arizona. (Was that a big deal in 2020? Let me think back....)

To put this all further in perspective, Nikki Haley, though out of the race, has more cash on hand as of the end of February than the RNC did. She didn't have the same issues with raising money or overspending because her campaign as a challenge to Trump in part rested on being a choice, without annihilating him via negative campaigning. 

You'd think this might make Haley a great option for VP, yes? After Trump decided she's a birdbrain and she decided he's probably senile, I kind of doubt it. She didn't endorse and I don't think it's likely he'll ask--but what if--?

TWGB: Where Did it Go?

 

So, it looks like Trump is broke. He got Chubb to do his E. Jean Carroll thing, but they'll be fucked if they are standing his fraud trial bond. His lawyers say he can't get that bond, and no shit. This man had debts before he even ran for president. He has big loans from all kinds of people. And he barely owns any properties at all in full or outright. This is actually a pretty old story--Trump never has been worth what Trump says he is.  Trump's value has been about Trump's word--and we know what his word is worth now. 

Even after the NY AG seizes his properties, he may still owe. That's where we are. Because I don't know for sure that he put anything up for collateral for the Chubb bond for the Carroll case, but probably? And what isn't encumbered? 

But here's my naïve question for you all, my readers, in all seriousness, if Trump has been overstating his property valuations to get favorable loan terms, and evading taxes on his business wherever he could, and engaging in various frauds, like Trump University and his slush fund charity and so on, and money laundering and the like--where does his money go that he can't find a half billion in liquidity? Is it a thing where the money is gone and he's just a whole shitting inept businessman who frauded his face off and still ended up in a hole? Or did he invest elsewhere (offshore, you could say) where the money is available to him and he isn't letting other motherfuckers get hold of it? 

Do you think if he graciously lets us see his tax returns for the last couple of years like a responsible presidential candidate, we'll even know? 

Trump Is Enjoying His Primary Win in a Normal Way

Trump: You can’t let people get away with bullshit. And when I watched her in the fancy dress that probably wasn’t so fancy pic.twitter.com/OFvJwbNLq2

— Acyn (@Acyn) January 24, 2024

Was it a little too close? I think it's funny that Trump had to trash, of all things, Nikki Haley's clothes. MEOW! How catty! He also threatened her a little bit, saying:  

Addressing a crowded hotel ballroom in Nashua, he gave Haley a dark warning: “Just a little note to Nikki. She’s not going to win. But if she did, she would be under investigation by those people in 15 minutes, and I could tell you five reasons why already.

“Not big reasons, little stuff that she doesn’t want to talk about, that she will be under investigation within minutes, and so would Ron [DeSantis] have been, but he decided to get out.”

"By those people"--hm? And he could tell you five reasons why! Is he saying he has some dirt on his former UN Ambassador that just might get loose? The skulking little extortionist, Trump!  He's clearly a bit bothered, don't you think?

For her part, she says she's staying in until Super Tuesday, which means going through a likely more depressing loss in her home state of South Carolina--but I think I can see why she's taking the gamble. Trump isn't inevitable, and he might even know it. He's showing clear signs of accelerating wear, and who will be left?  He's threatening her, when like an out-of-control manbaby he can't seem to stop going on rants about E. Jean Carroll--in the midst of his defamation trial? The man is a demented liar!

The trick is--after depicting him as demented liar (which was, let's be honest, always a fair description of Trump), coming back around to endorse him in the event he keeps winning without a major blow-up will be...fraught. 

In other news, President Biden won NH via write-in vote and didn't campaign there at all, at all. 

The Price of Lying

 

Rudy Giuliani has been court-ordered to pay $148 million to Ruby Freeman and Wandreya Moss in their defamation case against him. He was the only witness on his behalf and there are two important points to make:

He lied about them and admitted it. 

He provided no proof of any kind that backed up the stories he spread about them, and actually withheld requested discovery documentation. 

These women were threatened and their lives were severely disrupted by the lies Giuliani told. A quick perusal of rightwing social media features a lot of "whataboutism": "But what about what these women did?" Because they don't get the point:

The women didn't do anything. They were counting ballots--of course you move them. They want to believe Giuliani's lies and so, the lie persists for them. THAT's what's worth $148 million. Once their reputations were destroyed by a lie, there is no getting things back to how they were before. 

Because Giuliani is reprehensible, he wants to claim he was shafted by the court: 

Giuliani was unrepentant after the ruling, telling reporters outside the courthouse, “The absurdity of the number underscores the absurdity of the entire proceeding,” and adding falsely that “I have not been allowed to offer one single piece of evidence in defense, of which I have a lot.”

Of course, that's untrue: he was sanctioned for NOT TURNING OVER anything. He always had shit. And if he felt like the court was not letting him be "heard" he could turn his troves of information over to the media. Which he has had plenty of time to do.  And can't. Nothing's stopping him but the lack of information that supports him in any way.

Sometimes It's Better to Remain Silent

 

Rudy chickened out of testifying. Rudy claimed he was going to prove Ruby Freeman & Shaye Moss stole the GA election. He put on no defense. Here is Rudy when trial started:

“When I testify, you will get the whole story & it will be definitively clear that what I said was true.” pic.twitter.com/semCA8sKrs

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) December 14, 2023

Rudy Giuliani certainly promised that he was going to tell the whole story and prove he was right; on Monday he was still reiterating the exact same lies that he had no basis for. But at some point, he realized he was completely unsympathetic and needed to shut his damn mouth. Probably when the election workers he defamed explained how he ruined their lives over a lie. Definitely when his lawyers hammered home to him his fat mouth was screwing himself. He was already in thin ice with the court for not turning over information and being a no-show last week. (About the latter, sadly, my first thought was someone needs to do a wellness check...the man is not healthy and it shows.)

So, he did what his sometime boss, Donald Trump, did himself on Monday--he kept his mouth shut. The plaintiffs had been through enough and Giuliani's bank accounts were going to be going through more than enough.

Epps

 

Ray Epps is suing Fox News for lying about him being a fed who instigated the Capitol riot because that isn't what happened at all, even if some people, even apparently some US congresspeople, seem to think this was definitely a thing. 

Is the FBI protecting Ray Epps? pic.twitter.com/t0YPNbkEs7

— Congressman Troy E. Nehls (@RepTroyNehls) July 12, 2023

(Mah gawd Texas--why do you have to do "shitkicker" so hard?)

But he was just a very committed Trump guy who has a family and is a real flesh and blood conservative, who, for whatever reason, Fox News and especially Tucker Carlson, decided to make into a scapegoat. He wasn't any different than any other person doing 1/6 stuff on 1/6, and there Fox News was, pretending he was somehow extra culpable for the melee (when didn't Fox News go really hard to pretend the machines were a problem and spread conspiracy theories about the 2020 election? Basically, being more culpable than anyone but maybe Trump campaign people for what went down, based on utter bullshit? As th Dominion suit shows and the Smartmatic suit also will?)

Fox News and believers in Fox News propaganda like the representative I bothered to name have caused this guy real harm. I don't share his political views, but I don't have to in order to understand that what he has experienced is appalling. He might be culpable for his actions that day--but not responsible for anyone else's.

Trump on the other hand, and his little minions like Rudy Giuliani...they have a lot to answer for. And I hope the discovery in this case sets a lot of people straight about the wrong ideas they have absorbed. 

TWGB: It's Him. He's the Problem.

 

The thing with Trump is, he doesn't ever stop his dumb mouth. Even though his lawyers probably told him this already, the Judge in the civil defamation/sexual assault trial against Trump needed to comment on Trump's social media commentary. What Trump was trying, and always is about, is making his case to the public. He seems to believe that if you're a really popular guy, maybe the rules don't matter. If you are a star, you get away with things. 

And in Trump's world, he is a supernova. His gravity bends time and space. Why wouldn't his continued invective against the woman who accused him be fine and dandy?

Um, because this is a defamation case, and that shit right there was more defamation? This is where I say a little prayer for all the people who still think Trump is smart and want him to be president, because if you see him do that shit, and still think he is smart--my god. The daily life you lead. The struggles you face. The afterschool special that is you. The entire cautionary tale of your mislead existence. How you don't drown in the pouring rain with your whole mouth agape mystifies me, but go on doing you, I guess. 

Anyway, Alvin Bragg might try to gag his mouth separately and for all the same reasons. Lawyers always remind their clients they can shut the hell up and help their case. Trump has that right but fails to demonstrate the ability. 

Anyway, his issues with respect to his legal woes have a lot to do with him--I suspect it was his choice that Tacopina is the guy he wanted to question E. Jean Carroll. The big dude who looks like a mob enforcer. Not one of his lady attorneys. So this big dude is asking a slight older woman why she didn't scream in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room. When so many of us women would entirely understand why. The irony that the exact trauma you would want to be saved from is the exact highly degrading position you don't want to be seen in. The shock of being moved on and the adult-think responsibility of thinking this is the thing you, and you alone, have to save yourself from. 

Settled, But Not Over

 

Of course, I gasped with a bit of disappointment when we were just about to hear the opening arguments in the Dominion defamation case against Fox News, and then the delay...and then the news of a settlement. I know, $787,500,000 is not chump change, and Fox News definitely settled because they did not want the trial to go on but, but...

The dragging! Where was the great, beautiful Fox News dragging? I wanted to see Fox News hosting hoisting themselves on their own petard. Where's the spectacle? Where's the schadenfreude? 

It was, perhaps, never to be in this case. Here are the details: 

Dominion's legal team pursued a "to the pain" strategy, intending to inflict maximum discomfort for Fox and its proprietors in order to secure as big a payout and as public an apology from Fox News as possible. For Fox and its controlling owners, Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, it was worth the cost to pay for the spectacle to go away. 

For Fox, what evidence dribbled out in court hearings and court documents piled embarrassment upon embarrassment upon disgrace: 

Fox News chief executive Suzanne Scott warned her colleagues against running fact-checking segments by the network's own reporters debunking lies about election fraud, even as it gave such bogus claims acres of prime real estate.

The payout was a business decision between businesspeople, not a retribution against Fox News by the Avenging Spirit of Informed Democracy.  The thing that pisses me off isn't that they settled for a Very Interesting Sum, but that Fox News wasn't expected to make things right with respects to broadcasting the truth, on their own airwaves, in various timeslots, to correct the false impression they had created. 

And yet, the SOB thing about the Fox model, and right-wing media in general, is even the correction would be seen as something being "forced down their throats" by the liberal establishment, because this is the exact kind of fuckery they did on the brains of their loyal watchers. Faith, as in the belief in things unseen, and the ability to unhear what they never wanted to know. The Fox News watchers know what they want to believe and expect Fox to give it to them.

I really feel like only an exquisite dragging of the liars and jackasses who read "news" for Fox would have really done the necessary business.

Dominion says they will go on to make suit against other malefactors, and well, good luck to them. Maybe they will financially ruin some smaller outfit than Fox (OAN? Newsmax?) but undoing a lie is like trying to get toothpaste back in the tube. 

Now, Smartmatic says they are going to finish the job. I love that for them, and us, and Fox, if that's true. I still say Fox is in trouble--because I can't convince myself the bubble has yet been created that can't eventually be pierced, and I think the docs that Fox was hiding with respect to Rupert Murdoch must be very not great for them to have been hidden. 

But perhaps I should by now know to keep my hopes lower in the stratosphere. 

UPDATE: I find it interesting that investors are concerned that the business model has some real liabilities regarding coming onto contact with the truth. 

"CRYSTAL Clear"

 

The word that Fox News lost their bid to have the defamation case against them summarily dismissed is lovely enough, but the real story, IMHO, is that the judge determined that they lied their faces off:

Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis handed Dominion a major win, too, when he agreed that the challenged statements are false. 

The ruling spares the voting machine company from having to litigate baseless conspiracy theories about its role in the 2020 election during the upcoming trial against Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corp. 

“The evidence developed in this civil proceeding demonstrates that is CRYSTAL clear that none of the Statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true,” Davis wrote in his 81-page ruling, emphasizing the word "crystal" in his ruling.

Only the "why"--whether the lies constituted actual malice, is being litigated at trial. And to that end, Dominion would like to have the cast of on-air (and off-air) talent take the stands to explain themselves.  That sounds not just entertaining to me (don't you think?) but far more informative than actually watching Fox News has ever been. 

And the Smartmatic suit is still waiting in the wings. 

Sometimes Mules Kick

After the trouble that Regnery went to to try and sue-proof Dinesh D'Souza's stupid Trump-fluffing conspiracy-wank over the 2020 elections, it turns out that he is going to get sued for the stupidity of naming names in his dumb movie. There's a lot of fraud to confront in the old conservative movement (slaps hood of conservative movement-mobile); you can fit so much malign intent in here. I kind of figured this might happen.

D'Souza is operating in an alternative fact reality disconnected from the idea that "the libs" that he means to own are actual people with agency, livelihoods, families, etc. He struggles to be a relevant meme-producer now that actual relevance (having peaked in his youth as a Reagan employee forty years ago) has mostly passed him by, and he dropped all credibility in the Obama years when a POC of color in office broke his brain and he thought he had to defend colonialism. 

It has to hurt when your grip on utility is owning libs and you don't even have the credit to rent libs by the day. When your multiple Twitter threads always cast doubt on your anti-socialist bona fides with the caveat that you enjoy being publicly owned. Does it hurt to be a formerly philandering felon falling while fellating Trump by fomenting fraudulence for funds, also feloniously? 

I myself could not say, because I could never imagine trying to pin a case of voter fraud on people who cast mail-in ballots at a box near to them because they just happened to be near that site when it was probably near a school or strip mall or other place they regularly habituated because it was in their neighborhood and they live and shop and do errands and take their kids places around there. That people are generally around and about a spot they live near isn't a case of fraud. It's how living in a neighborhood works. The cell phone geolocation thing is dumb and bad and D'Souza should feel bad.

But he won't until he is sued for a lot of money, and I hope other people join in, because, hey--this is America. And while I don't think the defamation suit will fix the little red wagons of the people who believe the Big Lie about voter fraud (any more than a suit against True the Vote and the obvious federal case needed there would), maybe it would discourage the next Big Liar. 

And sometime that much itself feels like a win. 

TWGB: Trump the Loser

 

This previously unseen footage shows Congressional leaders—both Republicans and Democrats—as they were taken to a secure location during the January riot.

Everyone involved was actively working to address the violence. All of them did what President Trump refused to do. pic.twitter.com/fcF4zBLGWm

— January 6th Committee (@January6thCmte) October 13, 2022

The violence on 1/6/2021 was premeditated, serious, and was addressed by Congressional leadership while they were under siege and working to ensure that the business of state--the confirmation of the legitimate vote, was continued. This leadership included Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who indeed tried to get the National Guard of nearby states to respond to the affray. 

(I am pointing this out because people who were actually there later had the stones to imply that she--who would be every bit the target of such a mob, was the one responsible for rejecting the assistance of the National Guard. They knew better and they lied to protect their little gutless loser President.) 

That mob was inspired by Donald J. Trump, who made up his mind before the election that he would just declare victory and lie his ass off about the results. Why? Vanity? Spite? Fear of his house of bottom-dealt cards falling in?

A little bit of all of the above?  This was a man who spent his entire presidency surrounded by scandals of his own making that he dearly wanted to blame others for. Like the Russian collusion mess. The one he seems to be using as an excuse/pretext for his stolen documents problem right now (which is unresolved in that he may still have documents not yet turned over and is being investigated under the Espionage Act).  (Also too, he's already in deep because he seems to gone out of his way to obstruct justice multiple times on this one, so, he knows they are not his docs and he is too dumb and bad to just give the game up.)

I know, right? We're back to "Russia, Russia, Russia"--oh, honey, we have never left. After all, the first impeachment in part was about trying to get Ukraine to investigate whether Ukraine, not Russia, actually interfered in the 2016 election to set things up to look like he was really colluding with Russia, which is pretty rich and barkingly mad on its face given the state of things. And this is the kind of bullshit line of inquiry DOJ's John Durham is, groaningly, doggedly, pursuing to this day.  (It's not going great and it was never going to. It's a conspiracy theory ginned up to pave over the obvious and already documented truth covered by several volumes of a Senate Intelligence committee.)