Friends in Court Places ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️🌻

The Supremes:  In all likelihood, with the help of his trusty SCOTUS Justices, Trump notched another victory yesterday.  While the Court hasn’t yet issued a ruling in the presidential immunity case, and probably won’t until the end of June, the conservative members of the Court with the possible exception of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, made it clear that they think that presidents, particularly those named Donald Trump, should be allowed to get away with some criminal activity while in office.  Moreover, they seem likely to direct the lower court, in this case the one overseen by Washington DC District Judge Tanya Chutkan, to parse through Trump’s “alleged” crimes to determine which of them can be prosecuted. That approach feeds into Trump’s hands since the litigation about what constitutes as a qualifying illegal action will more than likely stall his federal trials until well after the November election and, even worse, if Trump wins the election, it will allow him to direct “his” Justice Department to halt the federal cases against him.  Remember those lower court rulings that said that presidents aren’t kings, forget about all that.  Apparently, this SCOTUS kind of thinks they are.  We should have seen this coming but hope springs eternal so a boatload of legal pundits, former defense experts and various and sundry former cabinet members some of whom witnessed Trump’s criminality firsthand and therefore know what an unfettered Trump is capable of doing, missed it.

Hush Already: In New York, National Enquirer guy David Pecker was back on the stand yesterday testifying some more in Trump’s election interference/hush money case.  The outlines of his testimony aren’t surprising, but some of his added embellishments are revealing.  For example, Pecker knew that paying Trump’s accusers in the run up to the election wasn’t okay.  He first learned that from his lawyers when he helped squash some stories about Arnold Schwarzenegger back when Arnold was running for Governor of California. Additionally, part of his reluctance to pay Stormy Daniels directly from his coffers had to do with his concern that Walmart, his biggest distributor, would be offended by her being a porn star.  That reluctance combined with Trump’s failure to reimburse him for the money he’d advanced Playmate/girlfriend Karen McDougal and the NYC doorman who’d alleged that Trump had fathered an out of wedlock child, led Pecker to insist that Trump cough up the Stormy money which led to the Michael Cohen payment/reimbursement scheme. Pecker who appears to continue to value his friendship, or what’s left of his friendship with Trump, also testified that in the run up to the election Trump’s chief concern was keeping the stories of his dalliances away from voters, that protecting wife three Melania was not his focus. Pecker also implicated Hope Hicks and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump’s one time press secretary who is now the Governor of Arkansas in some cover-up activities.  On cross examination, Trump’s lawyers picked up a few inconsistencies about dates in Pecker’s recollections and brought out that he frequently squashed stories for other luminaries but did little to tarnish the essence of Pecker’s testimony.  Curiously, though Trump continues to violate his gag order, particularly going after Michael Cohen who hasn’t yet testified, he only has nice things to say about Pecker, likely because Pecker has a few more, less than flattering Trump related stories hidden away in his memory bank or a safe in a bank. As to Trump’s gag order violations, presiding Judge Merchan still hasn’t announced any penalties, but has scheduled another hearing for next week.  For their part, Alvin Bragg’s prosecutors have added a few more of Trump’s violations to a growing list.

Abortion, Plus:  Earlier this week SCOTUS heard arguments in another abortion case, this one involving the impact of Idaho’s strict abortion ban on patients seeking emergency care.  The issue is whether a 40-year-old federal law that requires hospitals receiving federal funds, which because of Medicaid, is essentially all hospitals, to provide life- saving care to people who present themselves at emergency rooms pre-empts Idaho’s strict ban on abortions if the life-saving emergency care needed by any of those pregnant women involves an emergency abortion.  it’s Idaho’s position that an uninsured poor person in the throes of a heart attack would get treated but a woman hemorrhaging from a lethal pregnancy, not so much.  Naturally, a number of the same “conservative” Justices who think presidents named Trump can act like Kings are “uncomfortable” with the federal government mandating care for dying pregnant women particularly if providing the desperately needed care would get in the way of Idaho’s criminalization of abortion.  Elsewhere on the abortion front, Arizona’s state House, voted again on repealing the 1864 law that outlawed all abortions.  This time, with the help of three Republicans who flipped their vote to join all of the state house’s Democrats the repeal bill passed.  It is expected to be voted on in the Arizona state senate next week.  One of the Republicans who flipped to support the repeal has been stripped of his committee assignments by House Republican leadership as punishment for his vote. Assuming the repeal bill passes in the state Senate, Arizona will go back to the previous 15-week ban that provides no exceptions for rape or incest, at least until November when a more liberal “Roe” like abortion law is likely to be on the ballot.  Elsewhere in Arizona, taking a page from Georgia, a grand jury has indicted eleven fake electors and seven more Trump allies including former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Rudy Guiliani. John Eastman, Boris Epshteyn, Jenna Ellis, and Christina Bobb for trying to upturn the results of the 2020 election.  Trump was named as an unindicted co-conspirator because though he’s knee deep in the Arizona mess, unlike in Georgia, at least so far there’s no tape of him asking anyone to find 11,000 votes.  Christina Bobb was recently appointed to serve as the RNC’s election integrity lawyer.  Boris was last seen sitting in on Trump’s NY trial.   

Fog:  Sadly, Democratic New Jersey Congressman Donald Payne who’d been in a coma following a heart attack died earlier this week. He was running unopposed in the upcoming June primary so it will be left to party leaders to decide who runs in his place in November and it will be up to NJ Governor Murphy to decide whether or not to schedule a special election to fill his reliably Democratic seat through the end of the year. By a vote of 4 to 3, a New York Appeals Court overturned accused serial sexual abuser Harvey Weinstein’s rape conviction ordering a new trial.  The court ruled that testimony of “prior bad acts” witnesses should not have been allowed because “it was unnecessary to establish defendant’s intent and served only to establish defendant’s propensity to commit the crimes charged.” #WTF. In far better news, at least for E Jean Caroll, yesterday a federal judge rejected Trump’s request to strike the $83.3 million in damages he was ordered to pay her. Trump, of course, is expected to appeal that decision to a higher court which partially explains why his legal bills continue to skyrocket.  According to the Daily Beast’s Roger Sollenberger who earlier this year broke the story about CPAC Matt Schlapp sexually assaulting and then settling with a male Republican staffer, about $8 million of Trump’s legal bills have been surreptitiously paid through a mysterious third-party consulting firm, masking their true recipients.  That likely violates federal law, so maybe some more legal bills to come?   Here at home, many university campuses remain in disarray, mired in Gaza protests some of which are more hate fests than protests. The University of Southern California has cancelled its main stage graduation ceremony but somehow or other Columbia University still plans on going ahead with theirs.  Overseas, Hamas continues to refuse to release its hostages absent a ceasefire agreement that they won’t agree to or even abide by but at least the parents of American/Israeli citizen Hersh Golberg-Polin have seen a Hamas video that provides evidence that their injured son who lost an arm on October 7 is still alive. No comfort for the rest of the grieving families but some, albeit not enough, for Hersh’s family.

#BringThemAllHomeNow