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One can only hope!

Very interesting lawsuit filed in Michigan. Somebody is suing the Secretary of State to forbid her putting Trump's name on the ballot because of his 14th Amendment violation. This is a Writ of Mandamus, and Trump is not a party to it! It's between the suit filer and the SS. Trump can try intervening, but his position is much less solid than the similar suit in Florida where he is a named defendant. Apparently, the brief is extremely well written, and quotes a very respected conservative judge (member of the Federalist Society) who many conservative members of the Supreme Court either clerked for, or clerked for a judge that clerked for him. "Mention his name, and ears all perk up at the Supreme Court." Here is a YouTube video about it:



This one, as well as many other articles saying Trump is already disqualified, are coming from the right! So much for Trump's claim Biden is out to get him. Popok points out that the 14th Amendment says "No person shall be..." with no mention of a court conviction or legislation. It does specify exactly how that disqualification can be lifted, and it's not by court order or a law being passed. This bolsters these constitutional scholars claim that it is self-actuating.

All of the grand jury witnesses testifying against Trump are Republican. But to hear Rwing media tell it, it's ol' Joe and corrupt Democrats going after the poor orange victim...Trump.

I think the legal niceties and intricacies of the various indictments are fascinating. I've read most of almost all of them. I think they bracket the behavior nicely - encompassing actions before, during, and after the Trump residency - and are both laser-focused (the DC/Florida indictments) and broad (the Georgia indictment).

91 separate felony counts.

There is, in my humble opinion, almost no chance that Trump will beat all of these charges, and the minimum sentence he will receive is 5 years. Whether he will ever serve that time is an indictment of the system, rather than a comment on the merit of the charges.

We know his passport was taken because he couldn't go to Scotland for a recent PGA golf tournament at his own golf course. He had to "stay" in the U.S.

The poor criminal thing...

I think his opportunity to flee is very nearly closed to him. Jack Smith just filed a brief with Judge Chutkan saying that Trump continues to contaminate the jury pool every day, despite being warned explicitly against that by the judge. If she throws him into pre-trial detention, then his flight chances are zero. I don't think revocation of bail is appealable, either.

I should point out the obvious .... jury nullification. It appears from Fulton Co Special Grand Jury Report, there was one juror who consistently voted not to indict anyone.

Jury nullification is real and will be a consideration when Trump goes to trial.

Jury nullification is not important in Grand Juries because they need a simple majority to indict. So prosecutors are not so worried about it. They might do a more thorough investigation of potential jurors for a trial jury. And jury nullification just leads to a mistrial, unless the nullifier can convince everybody else to vote Not Guilty. I'm sure Fani Willis would just retry the case, and do it very quickly.

Fani had an interesting brief on federal removal today: She pointed out the whole reason for it is so state prosecution can't interfere with federal employees trying to do their job. The actual statute does not mention "former employees" because state prosecution of former federal employees CAN'T interfere with their job, because they no longer have any federal job duties to perform! She said Congress writes laws with specific wording, and when they leave something out, it is because they meant to leave it out. Now that is a very originalist viewpoint!

This woman is amazing. Her briefs are very convincing. I particularly like it when she uses a defendant's own words against them. Very hard to impeach the source.

That's much like Kevin McCarthy saying he will begin an impeachment investigation against Biden without a whole House vote. But Trump's Office of Legal Counsel said back when Nancy started one of the Trump impeachments, that an impeachment investigation can only be started after a whole House vote. That opinion is still binding on the agencies Kevin would like to subpoena! Talk about "hoist with his own petard".

Which, contrary to common opinion, has nothing to do with being hung with your own rope. It's actually a quote from Hamlet, about a bomb maker blowing himself up.

ahhh ... You misinterpreted my jury nullification note. There was one juror on the special grand jury who consistently voted not to indict i.e. essentially what a juror would do in a trial nullification. The point was since we see it happening in a grand jury, we should expect it at trial. Your second point is correct, it only means there is a mistrial and should the prosecuting attorney or DA office decide they could pursue in another trial, which begs the question, how many mistrials could Trump get before a DA's office decides it could never get a conviction ?

Hopefully infinitely many.