April 26, 2024

Friday, April 26, 2024. Annette’s News Roundup.

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Joe is always busy.

White House declines Mike Johnson’s demand to call in the National Guard for college protesters

The White House on Thursday rejected Speaker Mike Johnson’s call to send the National Guard to quell pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University, insisting that it’s up to state governors to first request such a move.

“That is something that is under the governors,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters aboard Air Force One. “That is something for the governors to decide.” (Politico)

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Trump. Trump. Trump. Law cases yesterday.

Trump was denied a new E. Jean Carroll trial.

E. Jean Carroll (center) and her attorneys Shawn Crowley (left) and Roberta Kaplan (right).

Donald Trump will not get a new trial in his case against E. Jean Carroll, after federal Judge Lewis Kaplan on Thursday denied the former president's request.

From Roberta Kaplan, E. Jean Carroll’s lawyer.

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What happened at the Supreme Court yesterday on Trump’s claim of absolute immunity.

Reactions to the Supreme Court’s Oral Arguments yesterday range from voices of doom expecting the Court to support most of Trump’s claims to Neal Katyal on Lawrence O’Donnell saying he hears 4 justices on each side (Amy Coney Barrett joining the 3 liberal justices) with the possibility that Justice Roberts may yet join them. .. leading to 5-4 vote against Trump.

And Joyce Vance (on with Katie Phang last night) reminded us not to be too gloomy about what we heard yesterday - sometimes the Court’s final verdict bears no resemblance to the oral arguments.

The Associated Press summary 👇 splits this baby while giving us hope that the Jack Smith case will be allowed to continue.

Supreme Court seems skeptical of Trump’s claim of absolutely immunity but decision’s timing is unclear.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday appeared likely to reject former President Donald Trump’s claim of absolute immunity from prosecution over election interference, but several justices signaled reservations about the charges that could cause a lengthy delay, possibly beyond November’s election.

A majority of the justices did not appear to embrace the claim of absolute immunity that would stop special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of Trump on charges he conspired to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden. But in arguments lasting more than 2 1/2 hours in the court’s first consideration of criminal charges against a former president, several conservative justices indicated they could limit when former presidents might be prosecuted, suggesting that the case might have to be sent back to lower courts before any trial could begin.

Justice Samuel Alito said that “whatever we decide is going to apply to all future presidents.”

The timing of the Supreme Court’s decision could be as important as the outcome. Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, has been pushing to delay the trial until after the election, and the later the justices issue their decision, the more likely he is to succeed. If Trump regains the presidency, he could order the Justice Department to dismiss the case or, as two justices suggested, pardon himself if convicted.

Since conservatives on the court gained a supermajority with the confirmation of three Trump appointees, they have cast aside decades-old precedent on abortion and affirmation action. Now Trump is asking them to rule that one of the fundamental tenets of the American system of government — that no person is above the law --should be rejected as well, at least as it applies to him.

The active questioning of all nine justices left the strong impression that the court was not headed for the sort of speedy, consensus decision that would allow a trial to begin quickly.

Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, two of Trump’s three high court appointees, and Alito said their concern was not the case against Trump, but rather the effect of their ruling on future presidencies.

Each time Justice Department lawyer Michael Dreeben sought to focus on Trump’s actions, these justices jumped in. “This case has huge implications for the presidency, for the future of the presidency, for the future of the country,” Kavanaugh said. The court is writing a decision “for the ages,” Gorsuch said.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the other Trump appointee, seemed less open to arguments advanced by Trump lawyer D. John Sauer, searching for a way a trial could take place.

Smith’s team is asking for a speedy resolution. The court typically issues its last opinions by the end of June, about four months before the election. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who would preside over the trial, said pre-trial issues could take up to three months.

The court has moved very quickly in prior cases involving presidential power, deciding the Watergate tapes case against President Richard Nixon just 16 days after arguments. Earlier this year, it took the justices less than a month to rule unanimously that states couldn’t kick Trump off the ballot.

Trump, the first former president charged with crimes, had said he wanted to be at the Supreme Court on Thursday. Instead, he was in a courtroom in New York, where he is standing trial on charges that he falsified business records to keep damaging information from voters when he directed hush money payments to a former porn star to keep quiet her claims that they had a sexual encounter.

Sauer argued that former presidents are entitled to absolute immunity for their official acts. Otherwise, he said, politically motivated prosecutions of former occupants of the Oval Office would become routine and presidents couldn’t function as the commander in chief if they had to worry about criminal charges.

Lower courts have rejected those arguments, including a unanimous three-judge panel on an appeals court in Washington, D.C.

Several justices drilled down on trying to come up with a definition of what constituted an official act, and whether charges based on one should be thrown out.

Justice Elena Kagan at one pointed wondered whether a former president could escape prosecution even if he ordered a coup or sold nuclear secrets. Sauer said prosecutions might not be allowed if those were determined to be official acts.

“That sure sounds bad, doesn’t it?” Kagan asked.

Chief Justice John Roberts conjured up a president being indicted for receiving a bribe in exchange for an ambassadorial appointment. How could the indictment go forward if prosecutors had to remove the official act, the appointment? “That’s like a one-legged stool, right?” Roberts asked.

The election interference conspiracy case brought by Smith in Washington is just one of four criminal cases confronting Trump. Smith was in the courtroom Thursday, seated at the table for lawyers taking part in the case.

Smith’s team says the men who wrote Constitution never intended for presidents to be above the law and that, in any event, the acts Trump is charged with — including participating in a scheme to enlist fake electors in battleground states won by Biden — aren’t in any way part of a president’s official duties. Dreeben said that even if some of the acts are considered part of the president’s powers, like talking to Justice Department officials, they still should be kept in the indictment.

Trump’s conversations with then-Vice President Mike Pence, urging him to reject some electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021, might also fall under official acts.

Barrett asked Dreeben whether Smith’s team could “just proceed based on the private conduct and drop the official conduct.” Dreeben said that might be possible, especially if prosecutors could, for example, use the conversations with Justice Department officials and Pence to make their case.

Nearly four years ago, all nine justices rejected Trump’s claim of absolute immunity from a district attorney’s subpoena for his financial records. That case played out during Trump’s presidency and involved a criminal investigation, but no charges.

Justice Clarence Thomas, who would have prevented the enforcement of the subpoena because of Trump’s responsibilities as president, still rejected Trump’s claim of absolute immunity and pointed to the text of the Constitution and how it was understood by the people who ratified it.

“The text of the Constitution … does not afford the President absolute immunity,” Thomas wrote in 2020.

Commentators had speculated about why the court took up the case in the first place.

Phillip Bobbitt, a constitutional scholar at Columbia University’s law school, said he worries about the delay, but sees value in a decision that amounts to “a definitive expression by the Supreme Court that we are a government of laws and not of men.”

The court also may be more concerned with how its decision could affect future presidencies, Harvard law school professor Jack Goldsmith wrote on the Lawfare blog.

But Kermit Roosevelt, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said the court never should have taken the case because an ideologically diverse panel of the federal appeals court in Washington adequately addressed the issues.

“If it was going to take the case, it should have proceeded faster, because now, it will most likely prevent the trial from being completed before the election,” Roosevelt said. “Even Richard Nixon said that the American people deserve to know whether their president is a crook. The Supreme Court seems to disagree.”

The court has several options for deciding the case, though something between a complete win for Trump or prosecutors seemed most likely.

The court might spell out when former presidents are shielded from prosecution. It could then either declare that Trump’s alleged conduct easily crossed the line or return the case to Chutkan so she can decide whether Trump should have to stand trial. (Associated Press).

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The Election Interference Case in New York went on, though all eyes were on SCOTUS.

5 big takeaways from Day 7 of Trump's hush money trial.

Former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker concluded his direct examination in former President Donald Trump's criminal hush money trial after lifting the veil on his publication's "catch-and-kill" deal with Trump -- after which an attorney for the former president began cross-examination by framing that same arrangement as nothing more than "standard operating procedure" in the world of tabloids.

The day featured the first testimony about then-Trump attorney Michael Cohen's payment to Stormy Daniels -- the transaction at the heart of the district attorney's case -- and brought to life Pecker's interactions with Trump after he secured the presidency.

Pecker returns to the stand Friday morning to continue cross-examination, while Judge Juan Merchan has also scheduled a hearing for next Wednesday on several additional alleged violations of the limited gag order Trump is under.

Pecker returns to the stand Friday morning to continue cross-examination, while Judge Juan Merchan has also scheduled a hearing for next Wednesday on several additional alleged violations of the limited gag order Trump is under.

Here are five big takeaways from Day 7 of the trial.

Pecker described the Karen McDougal arrangement

Pecker testified that after he learned Playboy model Karen McDougal was trying to sell a story about an alleged year-long relationship she had with Trump, Michael Cohen instructed Pecker to purchase her story and suggested that Trump would compensate the company for the cost.

Pecker said that he purchased the exclusive rights to McDougal's story for $150,000 so it wouldn't "embarrass Mr. Trump or embarrass or hurt the campaign."

"Were you aware that expenditures by corporations made for the purpose of influencing an election made in coordination with or at the request of a candidate or campaign were unlawful?" prosecutor Josh Steinglass asked Pecker.

Pecker said he was aware and confirmed that the Enquirer's parent company, AMI, never reported the payment to the Federal Election Commission.

Trump kept tabs on hush payments after the election

Pecker described how Trump, after securing the presidency, kept tabs on the women Pecker and Cohen had paid off in exchange for their silence.

Describing two Trump Tower meetings during the transition period, a visit to the Oval Office, and at least two angry phone calls from Trump, Pecker detailed Trump's concern with keeping them quiet.

"He (Trump) asked me how Karen [McDougal] was doing -- how's 'our girl' doing. I said, she's writing her articles, she's quiet, things are going fine," Pecker testified.

When McDougal and Daniels went on television in 2018, Pecker said he fielded two calls from Trump, describing him as "very aggravated" about how the women were able to skirt the contracts they'd brokered.

Pecker helped broker the Stormy Daniels deal

Pecker explained his role in brokering Michael Cohen's infamous $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels -- the transaction underpinning the 34 felony charges Trump now faces.

Pecker recalled receiving a frantic phone call while out to dinner with his wife in 2016 -- it was his editor at the National Enquirer calling with an offer to purchase Daniels' story.

Pecker explained his reluctance to engage in another "catch-and-kill" deal on Trump's behalf, but he instructed his editor to give Michael Cohen the chance to take the story "off the market," which Cohen did -- out of his own pocket.

Cohen later complained to Pecker that he was worried he wouldn't be reimbursed by Trump or get a bonus, and asked Pecker to ask Trump to help him secure both.

The defense called it 'standard operating procedure'

Trump attorney Emil Bove, cross-examining Pecker, sought to frame the "catch-and-kill" arrangement as nothing more than "standard operating procedure" in the tabloid industry.

Pecker said that his company only published about half the stories they purchased, and that Pecker began giving Trump a heads-up about negative stories nearly two decades before Trump launched his presidential bid.

"Seventeen years of providing President Trump with a heads up about potentially negative publicity?" Bove asked him.

"That's correct," Pecker said.(ABC News)

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Barbie embraces diversity and women athletes.

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