In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

The big news yesterday was Fani Willis's acknowledgement of a "personal" relationship with her special prosecutor Nathan Wade , but that was just a limited hangout meant to minimize what was already generally and correctly assumed. I decided to bring myself up to date on the whole range of other motions, lawsuits, subpoenas, and allegations against Willis in the wake of the initial complaint by defense attorney Ashleigh Merchant on behalf of Trump codefendant Mike Roman. Quite a lot has emerged in just a three-week period. The original Roman motion to disqualify Willis was filed on January 8 with Judge Scott McAfee, who is presiding over the Fulton County RICO trial. All the other actions have cascaded from this motion. On January 12, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) sent a letter to Nathan Wade, an associate of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, demanding documents and information about the coordination of the Fulton...

Via the Washington Post, Former president Donald Trump’s March 4 trial date on charges of plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 election has been dropped from the public calendar of the federal court in Washington, a sign of what has long been anticipated — that his claim of presidential immunity from criminal prosecution would delay his trial while it remains on appeal. . . . As of at least Thursday, the March 4 trial date was dropped from a date-searchable calendar on the public website of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. It was not immediately clear when it was removed. An internal master court trial calendar distributed Jan. 26 showed Trump’s trial date, suggesting the change was recent, according to a federal official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an internal document. Chutkan also has acknowledged that Trump’s March trial was off. On Jan. 24, for example, Chutkan scheduled a new trial for April 2, when Trump’s projected si...

Last Saturday, I noted that Trump had effectively killed the Langford Republican border compromise. Since then, Langford and others have blamed "intetrnet rumors" for destroying the plan's prospects : Lankford said, “Right now these internet rumors is all the people are running on. It would be absolutely absurd for me to agree to 5,000 people a day. This bill focuses on getting us to zero illegal crossings a day. There’s no amnesty. It increases the number of border patrol agents, increases asylum officers. It increases detention beds so we can quickly detain and then deport individuals. It ends catch and release. It focuses on additional deportation flights out. It changes our asylum process so that people get a fast asylum screening at a higher standard, and then get returned back to their home country. This is not about letting 5,000 people in a day. This is the most misunderstood section of this proposal.” The problem is that Langford won't release any spec...

Yesterday's post on the FBI and ATF investigations of the January 6 pipe bombs was based primarily on testimony before the House Judiciary Committee from last summer. Since then, new allegations about those investigations have emerged. As of yesterday's post, the official story was that notwithstanding the FBI's huge investigative resources, three years of searching for the bomber have come up empty, while it seems as if the person who discovered the bomb the next day was never seriously considered as a suspect, despite this being a basic investigative principle. Via the Daily Wire this past Monday : A former FBI agent said that the Bureau quickly believed that it tied the person who planted pipe bombs at the Democrat National Committee and the Republican National Committee to a particular Metro fare card and license plate, but did not allow him to interview the person of interest and pulled his team off of the lead. . . . Kyle Seraphin, who led FBI surveillanc...

Yessterday I mentioned in passing the curious case, one of several from January 6, of two pipe bombs that were planted outside the Democrat and Republican national headquarters respectively. The FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms haven't been fully forthcoming over this case, and among other things, the perp or perps have never been idenified . "People surmise and suspect that, 'oh, there's all this video all over the country, all over D.C.' It's not true," Steven D'Antuono, the former head of the FBI Washington Field Office, testified before the House Judiciary Committee on June 7, 2023. . . . "We did every check, every lab test, every data. We ran this through systems back and forth, up and down, sideways, all over the place," he testified about the search for the suspect. The bombs did not detonate, however, the FBI noted that the suspect placed them in "residential and commercial areas in Capitol Hill just bloc...

A CNN op-ed from Julian Zelizer , a Princeton history professor, from last Friday asks some productive questions about Trump's so-far highly successful 2024 candidacy: Following Trump’s strong showing in the New Hampshire primary, which has effectively knocked his final opponent — former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley — out of the race, some of his critics continue to search for slivers of good news. They point to the fact that despite “almost” being an incumbent, he didn’t receive a share of the vote on par with what previous incumbents have encountered in primary contests. Incumbents usually bring to the table unequaled name recognition, fund-raising capacity and the benefit of looking presidential as they run for reelection. Trump has most of this, with his supporters holding on to the memory of him in the Oval Office, and with many of his backers believing he literally won the presidency in 2020, yet Haley pulled a decent part of the electorate away from him. The ambiguity of ...

Remember this ? A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit heard oral arguments Jan. 9 on Trump's broad claim of presidential immunity in the federal election interference case brought by special counsel Jack Smith[.] This in turn happened because Trump's lawers filed an appeal to the DC Circuit on the basis that a US president is immune from prosecution for official acts while in office. Smith filed a plea with the US Supreme Court asking it to rule immediately on the issue, but the court declined to hear the case before the appeals court ruled. This was generally felt to be a threat to Smith's schedule to begin Trump's January 6 trial on March 4 , the day before the Super Tuesday primaries: The ruling is a scheduling win for Trump and his lawyers, who have sought repeatedly to delay the criminal cases against him as he campaigns to reclaim the White House in 2024. It averts a swift ruling from the nation’s highest co...