Post Office Horizon Scandal: Four suspects identified by police
Post Office Horizon Scandal: Four suspects identified by police Source link
All posts tagged: criminal charges
The Public Has a Right to Trump’s Speedy Trial
Donald Trump is determined to avoid accountability before the general election, and, so far, the U.S. Supreme Court is helping him. Trump has no legal ground whatsoever to delay a ruling in his plea for presidential immunity. The reason Trump has nevertheless sought to slow down the immunity appeals process is obvious: to postpone the trial date, hopefully pushing it into a time when, as president, he would control the Department of Justice and thus could squash the prosecution altogether. The Supreme Court has shamed itself by being a party to this, when the sole issue before the Court is presidential immunity. By contrast, Special Counsel Jack Smith has both law and policy on his side in seeking a prompt determination on immunity and a speedy trial soon thereafter. Yet the Court has ignored all that. David A. Graham: The cases against Trump–a guide The Supreme Court’s lollygagging is reflected in its scheduling the immunity case for a leisurely April 25 hearing. It’s too late to do anything about that now, but the Court has …
Donald Trump’s $355m ruling delivers a near-fatal blow to his ‘fantasy’ world
Former president Donald Trump has always had a pile of litigation trailing behind him. He built his political persona on a narrative of self-made success before he descended his beloved golden escalators to launch his campaign for the presidency, suing and settling his way into office and through decades of “deals” on which he built a brand. But a months-long trial and a devastating ruling against him on 16 February have pierced the long-running story he tells himself and others, one used to boost his national profile and seduce millions of voters. A three-year investigation ended with a crushing verdict dealing more than $355m in penalties against him and his entities, an immense figure that, with interest, explodes to $454m, which will only keep growing every day until it’s paid. The judgment threatens to drain his cash on hand, his ability to keep doing business in his home state, and the future of the company and his real estate portfolio that he has wrapped his fortunes and family into. Judge Arthur Engoron’s ruling also comes …
Biden’s Age Was Always Going to Become a Problem
As an outsider observing the U.S. presidential election, I have been wondering for months when Joe Biden’s age would become a thing. Biden is 81 already—the oldest person ever to occupy the White House—and is seeking another four-year term. He is older than George W. Bush, who stopped being president in 2008, and older than Bill Clinton, who gave up the job in 2000. He is older than the hovercraft, the barcode, and the Breathalyzer. And he looks it: Biden’s likely Republican opponent, Donald Trump, a mere debutant at 77, is possessed with a bronzed, demonic energy that makes him seem vigorously alive, even when his words make no sense. Joe Biden looks like he is turning into a statue of Joe Biden. Already this week, I have seen clips of him confusing current French President Emmanuel Macron with former (and now dead) President François Mitterrand, and read about his claim to have discussed the European response to the January 6 insurrection with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. The latter would have required a Ouija board, …
An American Abroad in Need of the First Amendment
C. J. Hopkins is one of the very few Americans to follow through on the quadrennial promise, sworn by countless millions, to leave the country because they didn’t like the result of a particular general election. You probably haven’t heard of C. J. Hopkins. A playwright, satirist, and self-described “old lefty,” Hopkins, who is now 62, was working in New York’s downtown experimental-theater scene in the early years of the 21st century when he began to “grow sick of the atmosphere” during the run-up to the Iraq War. “I helped organize those big protests before the invasion,” Hopkins told me, and “was active a little bit in the anti-globalization stuff, the anarchists.” Serendipitously, around that time, one of his plays took off in Europe, and in the summer of 2004, he packed his bags for Berlin, thus sparing himself the agony of witnessing George W. Bush’s reelection up close. Having fled his native country for Germany nearly 20 years ago because of what he describes as America’s “really oppressive” climate of opinion, Hopkins now has …
How Trump Gets Away With It
If Donald Trump regains the presidency, he will once again become the chief law-enforcement officer of the United States. There may be no American leader less suited to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” as the Constitution directs the president. But that authority comes with the office, including command of the Justice Department and the FBI. We know what Trump would like to do with that power, because he’s said so out loud. He is driven by self-interest and revenge, in that order. He wants to squelch the criminal charges now pending against him, and he wants to redeploy federal prosecutors against his enemies, beginning with President Joe Biden. The important question is how much of that agenda he could actually carry out in a second term. Explore the January/February 2024 Issue Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read. View More Trump tried and failed to cross many lines during his time in the White House. He proposed, for example, that the IRS conduct punitive audits of …
What the 2024 Election Is Really About for Trump Supporters
Twenty‐five years before my first book about Donald Trump was published, I wrote a paperback titled The Right to Bear Arms: The Rise of America’s New Militias. It was written after Timothy McVeigh’s 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, and tracks the emerging anti-government movement that inspired McVeigh to make war on the federal law-enforcement agencies that he, and many other far‐right activists, believed posed a threat both to America and to themselves. On the cover of the book is a photograph of the Branch Davidians’ Waco, Texas, compound engulfed in flames. Federal law enforcement learned that the group was stockpiling weapons and explosives and, after a disastrous siege in early 1993, attempted to storm the compound. With agents closing in, several Branch Davidians set fire to the building, apparently preferring to die rather than be captured by authorities. The body of the cult’s leader, David Koresh, was found with a gunshot to the head. The raid was a colossal failure. To some, though, the debacle represented something far more sinister: a deliberate …
The Threat to Democracy Is Coming From Inside the U.S. House
Representative Jim Jordan may or may not break down the last few Republican holdouts who blocked his election as House speaker yesterday. But the fact that about 90 percent of the House GOP conference voted to place him in the chamber’s top job marks an ominous milestone in the Republican Party’s reconfiguration since Donald Trump’s emergence as its central figure. The preponderant majority of House Republicans backing Jordan is attempting to elevate someone who not only defended former President Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election but participated in them more extensively than any other member of Congress, according to the bipartisan committee that investigated the January 6 insurrection. As former Republican Representative Liz Cheney, who was the vice chair of that committee, said earlier this month: “Jim Jordan knew more about what Donald Trump had planned for January 6 than any other member of the House of Representatives.” Read: Jim Jordan could have a long fight ahead Jordan’s rise, like Trump’s own commanding lead in the 2024 GOP presidential race, provides more evidence …
Judge Tanya Chutkan Imposes a Gag Order on Donald Trump
When Judge Tanya Chutkan of the federal district court for D.C. was assigned the trial of Donald Trump for his attempt to steal the election, according to the journalist Robert Draper, she asked a friend to pray for her. Chutkan’s decision today to impose a gag order on the former president, her most consequential pronouncement in the case so far, shows why she’ll need prayer, if not outright divine wisdom, to navigate the challenge before her. Chutkan faces a series of impossible choices. Her first impossible choice: whether to impose any gag order at all. As she described it in court, the order she granted appears narrower than what prosecutors sought. It prohibits disparaging remarks only of witnesses, prosecutors, and court staff, but allows Trump to continue attacking the Justice Department, President Joe Biden, and others—including Chutkan herself—as long as his comments do not directly bear on the case. Chutkan’s order followed a two-hour hearing in Washington, in which prosecutors argued that Trump’s comments would poison the chance for a fair trail, while the defense …
The Cases Against Trump: A Guide
Not long ago, the idea that a former president—or major-party presidential nominee—would face serious legal jeopardy was nearly unthinkable. Today, merely keeping track of the many cases against Donald Trump requires a law degree, a great deal of attention, or both. In all, Trump faces 91 felony counts across two state courts and two different federal districts, any of which could potentially produce a prison sentence. He’s also dealing with a civil suit in New York that could force drastic changes to his business empire, including closing down its operations in his home state. Meanwhile, he is the leading Republican candidate in the race to become the next president. If the court cases unfold with any reasonable timeliness, he could be in the heat of the campaign trail at the same time that his legal fate is being decided. David A. Graham: The end of Trump Inc. Here’s a summary of the major legal cases against Trump, including key dates, an assessment of the gravity of the charges, and expectations about how they could turn …