May 7, 2023

Sunday, May 7, 2023. Annette’s News Roundup.

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Fani Willis, DA in Fulton County, GA, is busy.

Most Fake Trump Electors Have Taken Immunity Deals in Georgia Case.

Prosecutors are nearing charging decisions after investigating whether former President Donald J. Trump and his allies illegally meddled in Georgia’s 2020 election.

Fani T. Willis, center, the Fulton County district attorney, in Atlanta in 2022.

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More than half of the bogus Georgia electors who were convened in December 2020 to try to keep former President Donald J. Trump in power have taken immunity deals in the investigation into election interference there, according to a court filing on Friday and people with knowledge of the inquiry.

In addition, Craig A. Gillen, the former deputy independent counsel in the 1980s-era Iran Contra scandal, has been hired to represent a fake elector who could still face criminal charges, David Shafer, the head of the Georgia Republican Party. Mr. Gillen specializes in cases involving racketeering, which is among the charges being weighed by Fani T. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Ga.

Ms. Willis’s office has spent more than two years investigating whether the former president and his allies illegally meddled in the 2020 election in Georgia, which Mr. Trump narrowly lost to President Biden. A special grand jury that heard evidence in the case for roughly seven months recommended more than a dozen people for indictments, and its forewoman strongly hinted in an interview with The New York Times in February that Mr. Trump was among them.

Ultimately, it will be up to Ms. Willis to decide which charges to seek before a regular grand jury, which she has said she will do after a new jury is seated in mid-July. Her case is focused in part on a plan to create the slate of electors pledged to Mr. Trump in the weeks after the 2020 election despite Mr. Biden’s victory in Georgia. (New York Times).

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Some familiar names emerge as revelations about Clarence Thomas corruption deepen.

Judicial activist [Leonard Leo, now co-chair of the Federalisr Society] directed fees to Clarence Thomas’s wife, urged ‘no mention of Ginni.’

Leonard Leo, [at that time Vice President of the Right Wing Legal Activist Group, the Federalist Society], told [then] GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway [later to become Trump’s campaign manager in 2016 and then Trump Senior Consultant during his time in the White House] to bill nonprofit, then use money to pay spouse of Supreme Court justice.

Conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo arranged for the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to be paid tens of thousands of dollars for consulting work just over a decade ago, specifying that her name be left off billing paperwork, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post.


In January 2012, Leo instructed the GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway to bill a nonprofit group he advises and use that money to pay Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the documents show. The same year, the nonprofit, the Judicial Education Project, filed a brief to the Supreme Court in a landmark voting rights case.


Leo, a key figure in a network of nonprofits that has worked to support the nominations of conservative judges, told Conway that he wanted her to “give” Ginni Thomas “another $25K,” the documents show. He emphasized that the paperwork should have “No mention of Ginni, of course.”

Conway’s firm, the Polling Company, sent the Judicial Education Project a $25,000 bill that day. Per Leo’s instructions, it listed the purpose as “Supplement for Constitution Polling and Opinion Consulting,” the documents show.


In all, according to the documents, the Polling Company paid Thomas’s firm, Liberty Consulting, $80,000 between June 2011 and June 2012, and it expected to pay $20,000 more before the end of 2012. The documents reviewed by The Post do not indicate the precise nature of any work Thomas did for the Judicial Education Project or the Polling Company.


The arrangement reveals that Leo, a longtime Federalist Society leader and friend of the Thomases, has functioned not only as an ideological ally of Clarence Thomas’s but also has worked to provide financial remuneration to his family. And it shows Leo arranging for the money to be drawn from a nonprofit that soon would have an interest before the court.

In response to questions from The Post, Leo issued a statement defending the Thomases. “It is no secret that Ginni Thomas has a long history of working on issues within the conservative movement, and part of that work has involved gauging public attitudes and sentiment. The work she did here did not involve anything connected with either the Court’s business or with other legal issues,” he wrote. “As an advisor to JEP I have long been supportive of its opinion research relating to limited government, and The Polling Company, along with Ginni Thomas’s help, has been an invaluable resource for gauging public attitudes.

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Of the effort to keep Thomas’s name off paperwork, Leo said: “Knowing how disrespectful, malicious and gossipy people can be, I have always tried to protect the privacy of Justice Thomas and Ginni.”

In December 2012, the Judicial Education Project submitted an amicus brief in Shelby County v. Holder, a case challenging a landmark civil rights law aimed at protecting minority voters. The court struck down a formula in the Voting Rights Act that determined which states had to obtain federal clearance before changing their voting rules and procedures. Clarence Thomas was part of the 5-to-4 majority. (Washington Post).

One more thing. Let’s review who Leonard Leo is. Yes, he organized efforts to confirm John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court, and yes, Amy Coney Barrett. Yes, he was instrumental in the renaming of George Mason University's Law School - now the Antonin Scalia Law School.

Leo worked with Mitch McConnell to block President Barack Obama's replacement appointee, Merrick Garland, and first contacted Gorsuch about the possibility of Trump appointing Gorsuch to the seat vacated by Scalia's death.

According to the New York Times, in 2021, a new conservative group, The Marble Freedom Trust, controlled by Leo, “scored” $1.6 billion to finance battles over abortion rights, voting rules and climate change policy.

The source of the money was Barre Seid, an electronics manufacturing mogul, and the donation is among the largest — if not the largest — single contributions ever made to a politically focused nonprofit.

And there is this too. 👇

Harlan Crow and Clarence Thomas Are About to Learn About Gift Taxes.

Gift taxes were probably not a topic discussed on the yacht or around the campfire during the Harlan Crow-subsidized luxury vacations for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, Ginni. But maybe they should have been.

Recent reports indicate that Crow provided Thomas’ grandnephew with tuition to a pricey boarding school in the 1990s. Thomas did not report this gift from Harlan Crow as required on his annual disclosure forms. But that is nothing new. ProPublica had previously reported on multiple luxury vacations provided to Justice Thomas and his wife via Crow’s yacht and jets—including an island-hopping junket in Indonesia that ProPublica valued at $500,000.

That Thomas has made multiple lapses in ethical judgment in not reporting the receipt of such valued largesse from Crow is something for him, SCOTUS, and now Congress to muse over.

But what about Crow’s judgment? Did he file gift tax returns and pay gift taxes on any of the gifts he provided to the Thomas family?

It is a reasonable question to ask, and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) appears to have formally done so, with a reported due date of a response May 8. In lieu of gift taxes, did Crow expense the value of the trips and tuition provided the Thomases on either personal or business income tax returns? Wyden wants to know.

If Crow took business expense deductions for the above referenced “gifts,” then he can’t claim they were gifts. And if that’s the case, he wouldn’t have had to file gift tax returns which—given a potential tax rate of up to 40 percent—would represent a pretty price for the billionaire real estate magnate.

The criteria for what constitutes an untaxed gift that exceeds the limit to avoid paying tax vary by year. For example, the limit was $13,000 per recipient in 2013, but $17,000 in 2023. The Indonesian junket—valued at over $500,000 by ProPublica—would generate gift taxes of approximately $200,000 for Mr. Crow.

Now, if Crow did take business deductions for the value of the luxury vacations provided to the Thomases, he would have opened up another can of worms for himself tax-wise. That’s because Crow has publicly stated he did not discuss any business before the court with Justice Thomas.

If that is true, then it is possible that Crow falsified his income tax returns by expensing the cost of the vacation provided the Thomases. It’s also possible the vacations provided the Thomas family could be viewed as income to Thomas—since he would be viewed as providing value to Crow through business discussions. To be very clear, this is speculative and none of this is proven, but the possibility alone makes it worth investigating.

What seems much more clear-cut is that Justice Thomas doesn’t seem to think he has to report gifts from wealthy businessmen, who also are generous corporate political donors, like Harlan Crow.

“Not reportable” is the phrase used by Thomas’ attorney/friend Mark Paoletta when he tweeted (incorrectly) about how the tuition payment by Crow to the school attended by the grandnephew was not reportable as a gift.

Oh my! (Daily Beast).

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The E. Jean Carroll situation.

First, the full Trump Deposition tape.

The jurors heard Trump’s October deposition. Now you can too. All you have to do is click on the link above. 👆.

My friend, subscriber Rose Gasner, was in the courtroom. She describes a riveted jury.

Michelle Goldberg. E. Jean Carroll Must Be Going Through Hell.

Final arguments on Monday. Can any woman win when she charges a man with rape? Especially this man.

“Prima Facie,” a searing new play on Broadway, is about a high-flying woman whose vitality and confidence is taken from her twice, first when she’s raped by a colleague, Julian, and then when she tries to seek justice. Jodie Comer — Villanelle on the cult TV show “Killing Eve” — plays Tessa, a swaggering self-made British barrister who often defends men accused of sexual assault, before she’s assaulted herself and ends up on the other side of the legal process. The story is schematic and the script, by the end, turns didactic, but Comer’s blazing, magnificent performance elevates the show into greatness. She makes you feel viscerally both Tessa’s extraordinary life force, and the leeching of it.

I kept thinking about “Prima Facie” as I sat in the Manhattan courtroom where E. Jean Carroll is suing Donald Trump for battery and defamation stemming from a rape that she alleges occurred in the mid-1990s. The barrister defending Tessa’s rapist accuses her of making up the attack because of a professional vendetta. He suggests she could have screamed, and uses her fragmented memories to make her seem dishonest or unreliable. “The lived experience of sexual assault is not remembered in a neat, consistent, scientific parcel,” Tessa says. “And because of that, the law often finds the evidence ‘unbelievable.’”

We don’t yet know what the law will find in Carroll’s case. Both sides rested on Thursday — the Trump camp declined to call a single witness — and closing arguments are scheduled for Monday. I am, frankly, a little worried, not because I doubt Carroll and those testifying on her behalf, but because I have no idea what the jury, which consists of six men and three women, will make of the witnesses and their decades-old memories. Whatever happens, the few days I’ve been in court have underlined to me what an ordeal this must be for Carroll and some of the other witnesses, their lives splayed open for public consumption, every seeming inconsistency in their recollections or behavior exploited. No matter how much you hate Trump, this isn’t fun for anyone.

In the story Tacopina is constructing, all these women are acting out of spite. But the miserable process they’re enduring belies this narrative; it’s hard to imagine any of them, let alone all of them, agreeing to submit to public humiliation, and the attendant threats from Trump’s acolytes, just so they can perjure themselves in the vain hope of tarnishing the ex-president’s political career.

“I feel a wave of sadness. Not despair just pure sadness,” Tessa says in “Prima Facie” after testifying against her assailant. “I know the jury won’t find Julian guilty.” She is right; they don’t. “All of this and, and — they didn’t believe me,” she said.

I can scarcely imagine what it would be mean for Carroll, who testified that being raped by Trump disfigured her enviable life, to end up in the same place as Tessa. If I were her, I doubt I’d have the courage to risk it. (Column, New York Times).

E. Jean Carroll’s Quest for Justice and the Carnage of Donald Trump’s Misogyny

by Molly Jong-Fast.

Last week, my friend, 79-year-old writer E. Jean Carroll, began testifying in her civil case against the 45th president of the United States, Donald Trump. She was able to bring these accusations of rape to court because of a new New York state law, the Adult Survivors Act, which gave Carroll a yearlong window to sue despite her case being out of the statute of limitations. Governor Kathy Hochul signed the law in 2022; it’s hard to imagine that Trump’s political ascension and the #MeToo revelations that followed weren’t in some way responsible for this legal sea change. So perhaps it’s fitting that this same law is now being used to attempt to hold Trump accountable.  

The trial, which continues this week, is of course about Carroll, but it also speaks to the state of the feminist movement in America. Trump is no longer in the White House—for now—and for the first time we can look at the carnage of having a president who so openly embraced misogyny. (Vanity Fair).

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Happening in the States.

Republican voters return to the polls for the first time since their 2022 disappointment.

Kentucky. May 16.

The Kentucky gubernatorial primary on May 16 is the first significant Republican primary in any state since the midterms — and the first test of Donald Trump’s sway in the party since face-planting in November.

Voters in ruby-red Kentucky will face the choice of retaining their popular Democratic governor or throwing him out for the candidate aligned with the increasingly dominant party in their state.

This month’s primary will only determine Beshear’s November opponent, not the fate of his governorship.

But the primary marks key demographic and strategic drivers of politics in the state, foreshadowing the dynamics of the looming general election.

Despite the state’s rightward shift, Beshear remains popular.

How popular? According to Morning Consult’s quarterly tracking, Beshear has the highest approval rating of any Democratic governor at 63 percent. He outpaces governors in solidly blue states like Massachusetts, Maryland, Hawaii, California and New York.

Beshear’s sky-high approval rating isn’t an artifact of Morning Consult’s methodology or long field period, either: The January Mason-Dixon poll gave him a similarly high, 61 percent positive job rating.

Republicans have started the process of trying to knock down Beshear’s popularity. An outside group affiliated with the Republican Governors Association began running culture war-tinged TV ads late last month hitting the Democrat for “allow[ing] sex changes for children as young as 8- or 9-years-old.”

So exactly how does Beshear cobble together a winning coalition in a state that’s become so Republican?

It involves a lot of crossover Trump voters.

According to a POLITICO analysis of election results, Trump in 2020 outran then-Gov. Matt Bevin’s 2019 performance in each of Kentucky’s 120 counties. In one rural county, Beshear won it by 20, and the next year Biden lost it by 51. The result is an unheard-of 72-point gap between those two races.

Whoever wins this month’s GOP primary will undoubtedly try to nationalize the race to depress Beshear’s appeal in these solidly red areas — though it’s worth noting that Bevin pursued the same strategy in 2019 and ended up losing. (Politico).

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Yesterday too.

First Lady Jill Biden and her granddaughter, Finn.

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From Britain’s Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, who walked to the Coronation-

How times have changed…

On 3 September 1189, Richard I was crowned King in Westminster Abbey. Jews were barred from attending, but in a spirit of heartfelt goodwill, some Jewish leaders arrived bearing gifts for the new king. They were informed that Jews were not welcome, whereupon Richard’s courtiers stripped and flogged them, and then flung them out of court.

A rumour spread that the King had given an order for all Jews to be attacked. While some Jews escaped, arsonists set fire to many Jewish homes, some Jews were forcibly converted, while others were given sanctuary in the Tower of London. Some thirty innocent Jews were senselessly murdered on the day of the Coronation, including Rabbi Jacob of Orléans, the most senior Rabbi in England at that time.

These tragic events stand in sharp contrast to our experience as Jews in 21st Century Britain.

His Majesty King Charles III has made it clear that he wants representatives of the Jewish community and other minority faith communities to be present for the coronation service. In addition, he has established an unprecedented opportunity, following the service itself, for faith leaders to be incorporated into the formal proceedings. I will be privileged, together with four other senior faith leaders, to greet the King with words of tribute and blessing. At every stage, the Palace has been sensitive to the requirements of halacha (Jewish Law) when considering how best to include us. With this in mind, in accordance with the laws of Shabbat, I will not be using a microphone.

This is in addition to The King and Queen’s gracious invitation to host Valerie and me at St James’ Palace over Shabbat, when we will cherish the extraordinary opportunity to light Shabbat candles, make kiddush, eat our specially catered Shabbat meals, sing zemirot and chant Havdalah within regal surroundings.

We are blessed to have a Monarch who holds a deep, personal conviction that there is great strength in the diversity of our country and who cherishes his warm relationship with British Jews.

In the Book of Ecclesiastes, we are taught that: ‘there is a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to cry and a time to dance with joy’. Nearly a thousand years ago, the Coronation of a Monarch was a time to weep for the Jewish community, but today, thank God, it is a time for great celebration. As we enter this Carolean era, may our country be blessed to know many more moments of such celebration, and may God save the King!

If the Coronation of Britain’s 40th Monarch since 1066 👆 was your thing, I hope you had a good day.

See you tomorrow.

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