Jury Duty

Pardon the Interruption:  Before heading out to California for some fundraising and a golf outing hosted by Oracle Chair Larry Ellison, Trump did some exercising yesterday, practicing and perfecting his already quite proficient pardoning and commutation skills because who doesn’t think that he will eventually need them to pardon his good buddies Paul Manafort and Roger Stone and maybe even George Papadopoulos and that British lawyer/oligarch son-in-law Alex van der Zwaan?  All in, Trump let eleven people off the hook, including: Rod Blagojevich, the former governor of Illinois who tried to sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat; Bernard Kerik, the Giuliani era NYC police commissioner who, among other felonies, committed tax fraud, spent government money on two lady friends and lied to Congress when being considered to be Bush’s Homeland Security Secretary; Michael Milliken, the former Junk Bond King because who doesn’t need a good friend who can guide you out of bankruptcy; and Edward DeBartolo, Jr, the former owner of the San Francisco 49ers who had gotten into trouble over something to do with a river boat gambling scandal involving Louisiana’s former Governor Edwin Edwards.  Some of the beneficiaries of Trump’s largesse not so coincidentally are donors to his campaign, others like Kerik are besties with members of Trumps inner circle and most notably Blagojevich, who was once on Trump’s Apprentice program, was put away by none other than Trump’s number one enemy former FBI Director Comey and what better way to snub your nose at Comey than to give early release to the subject of one of his most prominent investigations.

The Stone Chronicles:  As to Roger Stone, though we don’t know all the details of what was discussed on yesterday’s call with his judge, Amy Berman Jackson, we do know that his sentencing is still on for Thursday despite his lawyers request to postpone her decision until after she rules on their request for a new trial.  Stone’s lawyers assert that recently revealed anti-Trump views on one of Stone’s jurors Facebook pages proves that she was too biased to be on the jury.  However, since they knew that she was a Democrat, and what Democrat hasn’t expressed some anti-Trump views, it’s unlikely that Judge Jackson will acquiesce to their request, even though Trump has made it clear that he thinks that Stone’s conviction should be thrown out.  Anyway, why does it matter, Stone is unlikely to spend much time in jail given the certainty that he will eventually get that Trump pardon.  On the Department of Justice front, Attorney General Barr doesn’t seem to be enjoying all those calls for him to resign so to make it seem like he’s experiencing severe emotional stress, he leaked to several press outlets that he’s told people in the Trump administration that he’s seriously thinking of resigning even though just about everyone knows that he’s not, he just wants to make it seem as if he’s concerned, a trick he may have learned from Maine’s pearl clutching Senator Susan Collins.  We also learned yesterday that under Barr’s direction the Eastern District of New York is now responsible for overseeing all Ukraine related investigations, that’s notable because it means that authority that previously resided with the more independent Southern District of New York, the place where the investigation into Rudy Giuliani and his cronies, or one time cronies Lev and Igor’s case originated, now falls to a more Trump friendly US Attorney.        

Democrats:  I am off to jury duty this morning so I’ll keep this short.  Bernie Sanders star continues to rise as do concerns that should he be the candidate, down ballot candidates will suffer bigly.  Bloomberg’s star is rising too, but he’s going to take lots of incoming flack during tonight’s debate over disparaging remarks he’s made to women, about transgender people, stop and frisk and his past membership in the Republican party.  For the record Elizabeth Warren used to be a Republican too and Bernie isn’t even a Democrat but whatever. Word is that Bloomberg has been practicing his debating skills, we should find out soon if any of that expensive training has paid off.  

As to Jury Duty, seems kind of pointless these days, with pardons so in fashion.  #Sigh