Ruth Marcus is a Fact-Free Concern Troll Who Writes for the Washington Post

 [Wapo, 8/6, Ruth Marcus: 'How Trump will fight back in court; Trump won't stay quiet for long']

The headline is factually wrong ('Trump won't stay quiet for long.'). Trump has never been quiet. This fact has been the dominant news story of the past days, weeks and months. CNN's on-line headline for 8/6 is concordant with this fact. It reads: "Trump and team seek to destroy credibility of his election subversion trial before a date is even set."

In a news analysis, CNN's Stephen Collinson explains:

"Donald Trump and his legal team are escalating efforts to discredit and delay a trial over his alleged attempt to overturn the 2020 election, as his fight to avert criminal convictions becomes ever more indistinguishable from his presidential campaign.

"The former president’s attorney Sunday vowed to petition to relocate the trial from Washington, DC, claiming that a local jury won’t reflects the “characteristics” of the American people. And as prosecutors seek a speedy trial, he warned that his team will seek to run out the process for years in an apparent attempt to move it past the 2024 election.

"Trump demanded the judge set to hear the case recuse herself in a flurry of assaults on the process that may fail legally, but will play into his campaign narrative that he is a victim of political persecution by the Biden administration designed to thwart a White House comeback."

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 The truth of the Jan. 6 indictment (and the classified dox indictment) is that Trump's attorneys know they have no chance of winning a jury trial, in part because Trump has already admitted enough to satisfy the factual and 'consciousness of guilt' components of the prosecution's case. 

"Try him in the press," Richard Nixon said to his minions in the Watergate Oval Office tapes. Nixon was referring to Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. Nixon understood that the best legal strategy is to never let an issue get to trial in the first place. Trump's only strategy is like Nixon's -- to 'try it in the press.' This means a legal strategy of doing anything and everything (including threatening fact witnesses) at each procedural turn of the screw to push back the date of jury selection to never.

Trump can't and won't testify in Court on either case. He would be dissembled within a few minutes by a rookie prosecutor. To win the empathy of even one juror, Trump has to display the courage and conviction of an innocent, unjustly accused man. That requires having the spine to take the stand. But he can't and won't because Trump is a self-admitted serial liar. In the documents case he has already claimed to be doing purely recreational lying (cf. the secret Iran war plan he was waving around at Bedminster, NJ was just a sheaf of news clippings. Even when Trump says he's lying, he's lying.). 

Lying is like eating for Trump. He does it for necessity and for pleasure. Trump enjoys lying to people. He likes knowing that his supporters desperately want to believe his lies. He likes knowing that as a billionaire, his flacks, sycophants, minions and 'body men' must always pretend they believe his lies. ['you speak wise and beautiful truths, Sire ...'] 

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A meta-story emerging from the indictments of Trump is the inability of some (but not all) of the mainstream press to show even basic journalistic competence as fact-presenters. In the WaPo example here, the headline writer ('Trump won't stay quiet for long') is utterly clueless. Did they not even watch the news all weekend?

The Washington Post of 2023 is not that of 1973.  The WaPo then was breaking fresh, original news reporting on Watergate every day and week. Its reporters and columnists were well ahead of the news curve -- not miles behind it.

The WaPo and Ruth Marcus seem afflicted with the syndrome of covering a serious public event as if it were a sports contest. Each season, the Alabama Crimson Tide plays football against some tiny, non-ranked opponent. Because it's obvious Alabama will win by seven touchdowns, the sports reporters previewing the game are forced to fantasize about how the tiny college team 'could win.' 

Ruth Marcus does the same with Trump (this is how Trump 'could' win at trial). It is pure fantasy for pure fantasy's sake. It is like the YouTube videos which ask, "What if the Sun exploded tomorrow?"

If Marcus had listened to Trump attorney John Lauro on Sunday, 8/5, she would have heard John Lauro plainly state his goal is to never go to trial. The CNN story plainly states this:

"And as prosecutors seek a speedy trial, he (Lauro) warned that his team will seek to run out the process for years in an apparent attempt to move it past the 2024 election."

Ruth Marcus has no idea what John Lauro might or could say to any future Jan. 6 jury. This is because John Lauro doesn't know either. Lauro is like a criminal whose entire 'plan' is to not get caught. Once caught, there is no 'plan' because ... the plan was to not get caught. Lather, rinse, repeat.

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U.S. Dept. of Interior Secretary James Watt once said on tape to a convention of Amway distributors: "If you're too tied up in your music or your job to be an Amway distributor, that's fine. After all, we don't want everyone selling Amway ... Someone has to buy it."

Mark Levin's Chagrin: Jack Smith is Not Dumb

Mark Levin (on FOX, 8/4) is very deeply upset that Prosecutor Jack Smith refused to charge Donald Trump with using speech and words to foment an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. Rant here. Levin:

"This indictment, Mr. Barr, is crap! And the reason they didn't bring insurrection, and seditious conspiracy is because there was no insurrection and seditious conspiracy. …"

Levin equates the gravitas of crimes by how juicy their names sound (Sedition !!! Insurrection !!! Blimey!!!). He seems to be watching the Adams Chronicles, taking snuff and waving a quill pen menacingly ('By my steed these scratched words shall alert the delegates at Philadelphia!')

Levin makes a good point; and Prosecutor Jack Smith agrees with him. An insurrection or sedition conviction against Trump would be virtually impossible to win. Unlike the word 'sedition,' the words 'criminal conspiracy' and 'defraud' are deeply embedded in everyday criminal law and in mountain ranges of case law. To use 'insurrection' or 'sedition' as the fundamental basis for a criminal indictment is bad winning strategy. It's like going straight down the steepest, hardest part of the mountain instead of the bunny trail around the corner. It's just a real big gushy loser.

What is reliably prosecutable under the U.S. Code is the commission of specific acts and actions, including the formation and operation of a criminal conspiracy. These are rugged, time-worn legal tangibles. Sedition and insurrection have very little case law behind them and the cases which exist are so scattered over time and context to be unreliable as guidance (pick anyone you want; they all say different things). If a group is blowing up buildings and say they want to overthrow the U.S., you convict them for blowing up the buildings -- not for saying they have a seditious reason for doing so. Maybe they just like blowing up buildings. Who really knows?

UNC Law professor Michael Gerhardt explains:

"The third set of indictments is based on credible evidence of Trump’s conspiring to hinder or undo the final certification of the Electoral College votes in Congress ... The evidence and testimony laid out in the January 6 House select committee’s hearings are not imaginary or false; they plainly support the misconduct charged in the most recent indictment." 

Trump's lawyer-for-the-day, John Lauro, has repeatedly admitted that Trump did try to 'hinder and undo' the electoral vote certification, but offers this Eddie Haskell-ish twist: that Trump merely suggested there be a 10-day 'pause' in the certification of state electors' ballots by Congress on Jan. 6, 2021; and Trump's 'suggestion' was protected 1st Amendment political speech.

Statements by an attorney made on behalf of their client are treated in criminal trials as if the accused said the words themselves. Lauro, in trying to give succor to Trump supporters, has repeatedly admitted the essential facts (and interpretation of those facts) which buttress the indictment. It's as if Lauro admitted his client did rob the bank but did so only because he didn't get his free toaster. 

Lauro makes these disastrous factual admissions because he has no choice. Lauro has to say something to give succor to Trump's base; and on a near-daily basis. He must keep them from abandoning Trump and no longer funding his legal defense. This is a survival-level need. Lauro's fanciful re-spinning of Jan. 6th gives Trump's base the false and self-righteous narrative they crave.

The price of this news-cycle succor is that Lauro, and therefore, defendant Trump, have now repeatedly admitted the essential factual elements of the case before a trial date has even been set. Lauro has done so in a manner which cannot be walked back -- and can be immediately presented by the prosecution to the Court as fresh, credible evidence. Why would Lauro do this?

The simplest explanation is that Lauro knows that once jury selection begins, the case is over. Lauro knows they have no chance at trial. As such, there is no real wounding by now admitting the essential facts of the indictment (ie., that Trump did want the certification to stop and did try to stop the certification) in order to give immediate succor to Trump's base. It's a trade-off. Lauro's admissions are so disastrous at any future trial that the only rational conclusion one can draw is that he doesn't care. Lauro knows if this case ever gets to a jury, he has lost.

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 "If the facts are not on your side, argue the law. If the law is not on your side, argue the facts. When neither the law nor the facts are on your side, pound the table" -- Michael Gerhardt. He is the Burton Craige Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of North Carolina School of Law. He is the author of several books, including the forthcoming “The Law of Presidential Impeachment.”

Trump's Defense is Really an Insanity Defense

Trump's stated defense will require the Jury find that:

Because the Defendant was mentally incapable of understanding and accepting that Joseph Biden, Jr. won the 2020 Unjted States presidential election, the State's burden of proving consciousness of guilt cannot be met beyond a reasonable doubt.

Without directly saying so, Trump's stated legal defense asserts that he was insane from November 1, 2020 to Jan. 6, 2021. He was insane within the legal meaning of a person who cannot see or understand a set of facts in the way that a reasonable, rational person would see and understand the same facts.

 That this strategy is itself insane misses the BIG point, which is:

Trump's only viable legal strategy is to avoid any trial by any Jury ever. Speculation about what Trump's lawyers will 'say' to a future Jury is meaningless. Once a jury is seated -- it's over.

This is why before a sycophantic interviewer, John Lauro et al. freely mix and conflate contradictory threads:

1. The 2020 election was stolen (Trump was correct on the facts).

2. The 2020 election wasn't stolen (Trump was wrong on the facts). However, Trump was so emotionally committed to the notion of a stolen election that he was not conscious that what he was doing was wrong. 

3. The character of  the 2020 election is irrelevant because everything Trump did and said is absolutely protected by the First Amendment as political speech.

What makes this case so maddening to analyze is that you keep forgetting that there IS no strategy for what to present to a Jury. The only possible survival strategy for Trump is to do anything and everything to kick the proceeding as far out as possible -- at each procedural moment. 

But you can't simply announce to the World that this is your actual legal strategy. You can't file a procedural motion which plainly states its only salutory purpose is to delay and complicate the proceeding as much as possible. There has to be a pretext, a fig leaf, some perfunctory daubing of lipstick on the pig. Enter John Lauro. Lather, rinse, repeat.

The end.

Maine's Tumbledown Mt. is on a Road to Ruin

 Yeah, why should you repair a public road if there's no 'taxpayers' on it?

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Access to the Tumbledown Mountain trails has been hampered by flooding, and state and county officials have entered talks to see who foots the repair bill.

By Emmett Gartner 

The Maine Monitor

July 30, 2023

 

After a torrent of late June rain, the road to the popular Tumbledown Mountain hiking trails has taken on the rough look of a mountain trail.

Water washed out the pavement on the road’s edges and exposed chunks of loose rock. In one section, the center buckled and cracked, and land around the road’s culverts slipped into the brook they feed.

Though remedial repairs have already been made to this 2.5-mile stretch of Byron Road in central Franklin County, county officials and the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands are grappling with a $70,000 to $100,000 question of who will pay for the rest.

The initial repairs have made the road navigable, but county officials said they would soon put up signs warning travelers of the damage and corresponding risk.

Both parties were hesitant about that prospect during a July 25 meeting between county officials and Tim Post, the western regional land manager for the Bureau of Parks and Lands.

The road is owned by the county but has no county residents alongside it, Commissioner Bob Carlton said during the meeting, and most of the land abutting it is owned by the state, disincentivizing the county from footing the entire bill.

“From our standpoint, it just doesn’t make a lot of sense to … spend a lot of money on a road that has no taxpayers on it,” Carlton said.

Further complicating the issue, according to County Administrator Amy Bernard, is the road was already in bad shape before the flooding hit. Bernard said the culverts were undersized and the road itself was too wide, stretching from brook to brook in the valley.