37 posts from Tuesday, September 12, 2023

BuzzFeed dug up an old quote from Donald Trump, talking about a large-scale terror attack nineteen months before 9/11. In his 2000 book, The America We Deserve, Trump wrote, "I really am convinced we are in danger of the sort of terrorist attacks that will make the bombing of the 1993 Trade Center look like little kids playing with firecrackers." Trump also mentioned the mastermind of the attack, writing, "One day, we're told that a shadowy figure with no fixed address named Osama bin Laden is public enemy number one, and U.S. jet fighters lay waste to his camp in Afghanistan. He escapes back under some rock, and a few news cycles later, it's on to a new enemy and a new crisis." Trump. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, okay, hold on a second. Is this really Trump before 9/11? Have you read this? It's 2000 in his book. Are we making this? Did you make this up, Mika? Nick. I did. Did you make this up? Nick, tell us it's over, right? Because you're wrong about everything. Will you stop? Mika, stop. Got it. I didn't think it's over. What's the range here? Will you stop making money? No, it's cute. I think it's cute. Well, go for it. Really quickly, though. I mean, so Willie, that was? 2000. 2000. In a book he wrote in the year 2000. Well, it was published in 2000. He could have written in 1999 for all of it. Exactly. He might have been a bit more precious. predicted, basically predicted the attacks from us.

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Welcome back, America. We're here with one of the great civil rights criminal defense lawyers of our time, David Shone. He also represented President Trump in one of the impeachment cases. You're familiar with him. David Shone, I want to talk about Judge Chunken for a moment. I've made the case that this setting the date on March 4th violates the Sixth Amendment, effective representation by counsel. There's 12.8 million pages of documents. You have five months to prepare. Even the feds couldn't say that they've ever had a case where five months was enough. And this is a very complex case. You have a lot of questions that are raised for the first time, complexity involving a former president, motions, filings. She also sets the date one day before Super Tuesday, the most important date in the election cycle in the Republican primary. She also jumps the line, jumps in front of the first case that's in Florida with Judge Cannon, who already set her trial date for May. And I'm sure that's created a lot of chaos down there on the other case. My argument, David Shone, is she's doing this. She wants a Democrat jury. She wants at least one conviction on one of the counts. So, Donald Trump is walking around with a scarlet letter. Convicted felons are the likes of Chris Christie and others, as well as Democrats can say, well, he's a convicted felon. What's your take on this? Well, I think we've seen just that sort of thing in some of her words. In other words, the lady doth protest too much, methinks. She has made clear that this is only, this is going to be treated like every other case for every other defendant and she won't cow-tow to election concerns and that sort of thing very defensively. Of course, it's not like any other case. There's a great public interest. The government spoke about a public interest in a speedy trial rather than the defendant's interest in a speedy trial. There's a greater public interest here in the election and the democratic process and letting that democratic process run its course. I had a misdemeanor case in this same district set for eight months in the future, not this kind of schedule. This schedule is outrageous. Nobody could prepare in this timeframe, certainly not these lawyers. It's once more, unfortunately, the political process reaching another branch of government where it has no place. And I earlier read what the code of professional conduct is for judges and this would seem to me to violate it in multiple ways. That's number one. Number two, she says it's like any other case, whether it's athletes or anything else. And yet the Department of Justice for several decades, Democrat and Republican attorneys generals have issued memos in March of election years specifically saying this is not like any other case. You better make sure that when you conduct investigations that you do not interfere with a campaign and they go further. You're not to charge people before a campaign unless you get a sign off by the attorney general of the United States himself. But they give warning after warning after warning that this is different, that you are not supposed to use the criminal justice system to affect an election. Yet we have a prosecutor and a judge who are doing exactly that. No? Yeah. Well, I don't think you got the most recent memo, which was if Trump is involved, ignore all previous memos for every other election. No, you're a hundred percent right. In my view, it violates the fifth and the sixth amendment rights. There's no possible way you hit on the most important one, the effective assistance of counsel, but also due process, all of the fair trial rights, the right to compel witnesses. He can't even sort out who the witnesses would be. They don't know what the exculpatory evidence would be. And the prosecutor said, well, they streamlined things and they've gone through and made it easier. It's not for the prosecutor to decide what evidence the defense finds most important. The defense has to do the painstaking work of going through the evidence. Listen, I've had experience with two members of a couple of members of this Mr. Smith's team. And especially in this DC process, I have right now a sanctions motion going against JP Cooney, the lead fellow in this case, and Molly Gaston in another case in this district, we're awaiting a hearing because of their outrageous government misconduct. And in that case, the judge said he's very concerned about their misconduct and he's concerned that they don't seem to be concerned, but we haven't had the hearing yet. So Trump is a speedy trial on behalf of the government, not on behalf of the defender or the public. Let's make that clear. And you have a matter before one of these judges in the same district and they can't seem to get around to it, right? Right. I've got a case actually with judge Chutkin and another judge in this district, Judge Walton, both of whom I'm sure in another setting of fine judges, but literally I've had a motion to dismiss and those are civil cases, but important cases with claims hanging over my client's head. And then literally I've had motions to dismiss pending for over three years without any action on them. Well, maybe judge Chutkin can put that in the front of her calendar and work that out. I mean, it's been sitting there for three years. Yeah, this is a railroad job. That's all it is. You're in simple.

Transcribed automatically. Expect errors in names and numbers.