Stormy With a Chance of a Trump Eruption ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️🌻

Trump Trial:  Stormy Daniels testified yesterday and will return to the witness stand again tomorrow after the usual Wednesday court recess.  While Stormy’s testimony was both headline grabbing and “lurid,” Monday’s testimony by members of the Trump Organization’s accounting department shouldn’t be ignored because it gets to the heart of the alleged crime, that Trump knowingly made and then falsely accounted for hush money payments to hide his encounters with Stormy from the public during the immediate run up to the 2016 election.  During their Monday testimony, Trump’s former controller, Jeffrey McConney, and accounts payable supervisor, Deborah Tarasoff, walked jurors through the company’s records, detailing how the stream of repayments to Trump’s then fixer Michael Cohen who had advanced the $130,000 hush payoff to Stormy Daniels were grossed up to a total amount of $420,000 to cover Cohen’s estimated income taxes, to compensate him for another out of pocket advance he’d made, and to pay him a small bonus. As prosecutors had mentioned during their opening remarks, there’s a paper trail that details the “back of the envelope calculation” that was used to gin up the $420,000 figure.  The reimbursement was made to Cohen over time through a series of checks, drawn mostly from Trump’s personal account.  McConney testified that those checks were express mailed to Trump at the White House for his signature and that financial micromanager Trump who had a habit of refusing to sign checks when he thought a bill shouldn’t be paid, willingly signed the rather large checks to Michael Cohen, an indication that he’d signed off on the scheme.  Neither McConney nor Tarasoff had any direct conversations with Trump about the Stormy checks but that wasn’t unusual as they didn’t normally interact directly with him.  McConney, like Trump, Don Jr, Eric, and the currently incarcerated Allen Weisselberg, was found guilty of business fraud in the civil case prosecuted by NY AG Tish James’ office.  Though McConney’s legal bills are being paid by the Trump Organization, he no longer works for the company and has been banned from running the finances of any New York company going forward.   

TMI:  Turning to Stormy, her testimony was both weirdly funny and very icky, especially for those who think that a germ obsessed 60-plus-year-old man having unprotected sex with a 26-year-old porn star he’d just met at a golf outing where she was meeting and greeting golfers at a hole sponsored by an adult film company while the wife he just married is at home caring for their newborn son is icky.  Question to golfers, is it common for porn purveyors to sponsor golf holes at outings? The weirdly funny part is that Trump had his bodyguard, Keith Schiller, serve as his go between and that Stormy whose name we know via earlier testimony is still in Trump’s phone rolodex has Keith’s number listed as “Keith Trump” in hers.  Also, when she finally agreed to meet Trump for dinner, he met her dressed in silk pajamas, an indication that well done steak, slathered in ketchup, and served up with copious Diet Cokes was the last thing on his mind. She recounts that at her direction he changed into a suit, but then surprised her again when he changed into his underwear after which the aforementioned sex took place.  Though the sex was a one-time thing, it’s not for lack of trying on his part as she testified that Trump hit her up a few more times during subsequent meetings, which took place mostly because he dangled a Celebrity Apprentice appearance before her as a lure, a follow on to his pre-sex suggestion that sex with him could help her out of her “trailer park” life. Neither Judge Juan Merchan nor Trump’s defense lawyers were all that pleased with Stormy’s depiction of their sexual encounter which both found unnecessarily detailed.  The Judge warned her and prosecutors that she should tone it down and defense counsel tried to get the Judge to call a mistrial.  He didn’t buy it in part because he felt that the defense should have objected more during her testimony.  That said, her testimony will likely haunt prosecutors if Trump is found guilty because it will provide some fodder for the inevitable appeal. It’s reported that prosecutors have asked Stormy to tone it down, but getting her to do so, like getting Trump to stop acting contemptuously, and reining in the soon to testify Michael Cohen ain’t easy.  As to contempt, Trump has another strike against him and Judge Merchan has warned that next time could be the charm that gets him some jail time, something that NYC Mayor Adams says he’d be happy to facilitate.  Will Trump really go to jail? Probably not while the case is ongoing because that would give his lawyers an opportunity to pursue a case stalling appeal.  However, maybe the Judge could get away with forcing him to cool his heels without his trusty, tweety bird phone in the Manhattan Detention Center during court breaks.  On the subject of delays, it should surprise no one to learn that Judge Eileen “loose” Cannon has delayed the Mar a Lago purloined documents indefinitely.  Neither should we be surprised to learn that Trump has scheduled an out of state rally for the evening of son Barron’s high school graduation, that’s the graduation that he whined about missing and for which an accommodating Judge Merchan agreed to schedule a court holiday.  While it’s logistically feasible that Trump will be able to make it to both the graduation and his rally, doing so will mean that attending a celebratory dinner with son Barron, to the extent either he or his mom Melania care, is now off the table.        

Primarily Yours:  Indiana held a bunch of primaries yesterday.  Trump won his, but Nikki Haley who is no longer running, garnered 22% of the vote.  Joe Biden who had no competitors in his primary garnered 100% of the Democratic vote.  Haley has been remarkably silent of late but Georgia’s former Lieutenant Governor not so much.  The 49-year-old Republican who served as Georgia’s Lt Governor from 2019 to 2023 announced that despite being a lifelong Republican, something he noted Trump isn’t, he won’t be voting for the “criminal defendant without a moral compass” but will be voting for Biden, the “decent person” because though he disagrees with Biden on a lot of policy, decency matters. It’s not clear if Duncan’s announcement which has already subjected him to lots of hate will lead other Republicans of conscience to follow but he’s definitely provided them with an opening.  Nikki Haley and Chris Christie are you listening?

Fog:  Hamas claims to have agreed to a ceasefire, the problem is that they appear to have edited the ceasefire proposal that Israel thought was on the table.  One item of dispute has to do with the hostage release with Hamas leaving an opening to return dead bodies instead of living breathing people.  The length of the ceasefire, or at least the length of the ceasefire on paper, is also in dispute.   Worth a reminder, while Israel isn’t blameless, the last ceasefire was broken by Hamas.  In any case, while a deal remains possible, Hamas seems to be playing for time, effectively winning a public relations war, and trying to get the US to put a halt to Israel’s Rafah action which is intended to destroy its last stronghold. Playing for time is a thing right now, President Biden seems to be doing a little bit of that too, pausing a shipment to Israel of some really big bombs to put pressure on Israel’s Rafah plans.  That may be more optics for the pro-Palestinian/anti-Israel peanut gallery than anything else since Israel says it has plenty on hand.  At the same time, Biden continues to speak out forcefully against the “ferocious surge” in anti-Semitism on college campuses and around the globe.  Yesterday at a Holocaust remembrance event he noted that on “October 7 Hamas brought to life that hatred.”  He also renewed his declarations of unwavering support for Israel in its war against Hamas even if he’d like it to cool its jets in Rafah and for Netanyahu to go the way of the Edsel.  Sadly, still no hostage release.    

#BringThemAllHomeNow