Per NBC, Herschel Walker conceded a few minutes ago — current tally, Warnock 51.2%, Walker 48.8%.
Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., claimed victory in a speech to supporters here after NBC News projected his victory over Herschel Walker.
“Thank you Georgia!” he said. “I want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart, and to God be the glory.”
“And after a hard-fought campaign — or should I say campaigns — it is my honor to utter the four most powerful words ever spoken in a democracy: The people have spoken.”…
Warnock paid tribute to his mother, Verlene Warnock.
“She grew up in the 1950s in Waycross, Georgia, picking somebody else’s cotton and somebody else’s tobacco,” he said. “But tonight she helped pick her youngest son to be a United States senator.”
So we can afford to celebrate that… and to take note of another Tuesday victory for truth, justice & the American way:
BREAKING: Trump Organization found guilty of all charges by jury in a 15-year tax fraud scheme that prosecutors said was orchestrated by top executives at the company. https://t.co/Z1RbMKbnag
— NBC News (@NBCNews) December 6, 2022
Trump Organization: GUILTY, 17 counts. (Video: MSNBC) pic.twitter.com/Df5iIzFXLV
— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) December 6, 2022
Today's guilty verdict against the Trump Organization shows that we will hold individuals and organizations accountable when they violate our laws to line their pockets.
I commend @ManhattanDA for this big victory, and I am proud of the role that my office played in securing it.
— NY AG James (@NewYorkStateAG) December 6, 2022
This is a significant verdict—the Trump Organization is found guilty of serious felony fraud charges.
This will give even more leverage to New York Attorney General Tish James in her civil suit, which seeks extraordinary remedies that would cripple the company. https://t.co/aSlrJAIq3c
— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) December 6, 2022
Breaking news: Former president Donald Trump’s namesake company was convicted of tax crimes committed by two of its longtime executives after a Manhattan trial that gave jurors a peek at some of the inner workings of the Trump Organization’s finances. https://t.co/JjcmaUxCm1
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) December 6, 2022
… The real estate, hospitality and golf resort operation headquartered at Trump Tower on Fifth Ave. faces the possibility of a $1.6 million fine. New York Supreme Court jurors began their deliberations mid-day on Monday.
The company was charged with scheme to defraud, conspiracy, criminal tax fraud and falsifying business records.
Prosecutors built the case largely around longtime Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg, who pleaded guilty in August to 15 counts including tax fraud, conspiracy and grand larceny. He was promised a steeply reduced sentence of five months in jail in exchange for testifying against the company. He had faced up to 15 years in prison.
McConney, who admitted in his testimony to committing crimes, was granted immunity under New York law because he was called by prosecutors as a grand jury witness in the case.
In his testimony, Weisselberg detailed how he and the company’s comptroller, Jeffrey McConney, schemed to cheat state and federal tax authorities over a 15-year period beginning in 2005. Weisselberg used the company to cover major personal expenses like rent for a luxury apartment on the Hudson River, Mercedes Benz leases for himself and his wife and private school tuition for his grandchildren…
Prosecutors argued the conduct of Weisselberg and McConney made the company criminally liable. Two Trump Organization entities — the Trump Corporation and the Trump Payroll Corp. — were on trial. Both were found guilty on all charges.
Lawyers for the entities argued that Weisselberg had no intent to help the company — only himself — and that prosecutors did not successfully prove there was corporate liability. Prosecutors argued the company saved on their Medicare tax responsibility and benefitted in other ways from the scheme.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s office also argued at the close of the case that Trump had personal knowledge of the tax cheating carried out by his executives. At one point in his summation, Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass pointed to a document that had been initialed by Trump and called it “explicit” proof of his knowing that his executives were tinkering with expenses to reduce their tax liabilities.
Trump has not been charged with wrongdoing. In a recent social media post, he denied having knowledge of the crimes Weisselberg and McConney committed.
Add tax fraud to the long list of Trump’s accomplishments.
— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) December 6, 2022
It took one day of deliberating for the jury to find the Trump Organization guilty on all charges. How long? ONE day.
A 15-year concerted conspiracy to defraud. Led by a guy who insurrected, wants to overturn the Constitution, and says he's running for President.— Duty To Warn 🔉 (@duty2warn) December 6, 2022
Anyway just watch for the flood of posts talking about how New York juries are too, um, "urban" to be fair to Trump. That's more or less what they're saying about D.C. juries.
— Popehat (@Popehat) December 6, 2022
(Urban Dictionary definition of ‘the word‘. ‘Peekaboo‘ may have been a New York localism — I can remember my old man mocking an acquaintance for using it, as a heinously outdated too-cute-by-half circumlocution, back in the mid-1960s.)
Trump Organization just found guilty on all counts of tax fraud, 17 in total
The halls of Mar-a-Lago will be dripping red with ketchup tonight, can’t wait for the truth social post claiming he doesn’t even know who the IRS is pic.twitter.com/ufBJcTE52D
— Caitlin of County Kerry (@lynn_of_cait) December 6, 2022
Criminal tax attorneys – what’s the prospect of federal tax charges against the Trump Org?
Or is complex financial crime now just a state thing?https://t.co/rTJsP9LmhD
— @[email protected] (@petestrzok) December 6, 2022
Or Hunter Biden for that matter. https://t.co/X566SG9dds
— Janet Johnson (@JJohnsonLaw) December 6, 2022
danielx
Ketchup futures going through the roof.
Alison Rose
Anything that makes TFG mad makes me happy.
Jerzy Russian
Lock him up!
mvr
This and election in Georgia is gratifying. And yet I’m still in a mood.
So I guess I should just say thanks to all the jackals who did stuff to help Warnock cross the finish line to a full term and recognize that progress is slow and that slow progress is still progress.
kalakal
Why this is good news for Heinz
YY_Sima Qian
Hurray for the Warnock win! But… an obviously unstable Herschel Walker getting 49% of the vote in Georgia…
eclare
@kalakal: Hahaha….
Carlo Graziani
OK, Legal Jackaldom. Please explain this one to me.
I really don’t understand the value of a criminal conviction of a limited liability corporation — I think this is the correct legal term for this entity, but whatever actual legal knowledge you add is all there is here. So what? Does the Trump Organization now get measured for a collective orange jumpsuit? I mean, why is this criminal case more consequential than a civil case that could be brought against the organization, and why are individuals shielded from from charges of misconduct?
I really have trouble seeing what the big deal is here. The fine amounts to accounting noise. No defendant is remotely inconvenienced. And yet every prosecutor at the state and county level is performing a sack dance. What’s going on?
Mike in NC
Not a good day for world’s biggest sore loser Trump.
West of the Rockies
@Carlo Graziani:
it does seem weird that Weiselberg goes away for 100 days and the head criminal doesn’t face any meaningful consequences.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@YY_Sima Qian:
It’s the power of political polarization and negative partisanship, I guess
eclare
@Carlo Graziani:
I am curious to see what happens with potential state charges since the companies have been convicted federally. Some states are much harsher with penalties than the feds, I suspect NYS may be one of them.
bbleh
@Carlo Graziani: @West of the Rockies: IANAL, but from comments I’ve seen, the more important consequences for the corporation are that they’ll have a MUCH harder time getting credit from banks or investors, or really getting anyone to trust them. (Now, there is the whole Russia angle, which may mitigate that substantially or entirely, but it applies at least to normal corporations.) As to Weisselberg, he pleaded guilty, but he got a substantial reduction in sentence (he faced up to 15 years) because he testified against the corporation. (Whether the overall outcome served “the interests of justice” is perhaps an open question, but that’s how it shook out.) And as to Trump, with Weisselberg refusing to testify against him personally, they apparently decided there just wasn’t enough evidence to charge him.
Also, if it helps, the criminal case was something of a sideshow. The big case is the civil case by the NY AG against the Trump Org, which is still ongoing (and not going well for the defendant).
prostratedragon
@Carlo Graziani:
@eclare: Not sure now where I heard or saw it, but it’s been said that some things that came out in this trial can now be cited as facts in other cases, such as Trump’s knowledge of the tax schemes. The NYSAG case against the organization is one that could benefit from this. AG James is thought to want the corporate death penalty for Trump Org in this one. The same also thought that the man himself could now be subject to the kinds of charges where his knowledge has to be proven.
JAFD
Good morning, fellow jackals !
A couple of interesting bits of history, may be of interest
Possible preservation of the ‘Big Bang Antenna’
https://www.nj.com/monmouth/2022/12/nj-town-wants-to-preserve-and-redevelop-its-historic-big-bang-antenna.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=njdotcom_sf&utm_content=nj_twitter_njdotcom
Dealing with an evenly split legislature
https://www.insidernj.com/new-jersey-s-blueprnt-congressional-leadership-havoc/
prostratedragon
@bbleh:
they’ll have a MUCH harder time getting credit from banks or investors, or really getting anyone to trust them
Yeah, that too. Am thinking that the moneylaundering is going to get real obvious now, not that it’s ever been very subtle, and/or the congeries of shells that keeps this thing going gets so tangled up trying to rejoin things that are suddenly separated that it has trouble standing. And Ivanka and Jared might go into hiding.
jonas
@West of the Rockies:
Weiselberg was apparently willing to take the fall on this one and refused to implicate Trump. No idea why. Trump isn’t going to do shit for him now.
jonas
@prostratedragon: That’s right. If he loses the civil case, James can shut down the Trump Org like they shut down the Trump Foundation and Trump University — two other fraudulent operations Trump ran.
Ruckus
@jonas:
It might be possible that SFB will also have a much harder time doing or getting anything done against him because all that does is make him look (and be) guiltier. Also many crooks will look out for themselves if they think the boss is unable to do anything back and in this case it means not taking a major fall for SFB. SFB has placed every news spotlight on his dumb ass by being president. Sure he may have gotten in deep shit without that but having been president and having the concept that his shit doesn’t stink makes him a much softer target for the courts for all the shit he has done and is.
Martin
@West of the Rockies: Michael Cohen has entered the conversation.
Joey Maloney
Someone downstairs in the Warnock victory thread mentioned the Keyes vs Obama contest and that got me thinking. Here’s John Rogers’ original calculations:
I think the exact same factors apply to Warnock vs Walker: Walker was from out of state, so you can eliminate any established political base; both candidates were black, so you can factor out racism; and Walker was plainly, obviously, completely crazy. Batshit crazy. [in this case, literally] Head-trauma crazy.
Walker got 48% of the vote vs Keyes’ 27%. I think we need to re-benchmark the Crazification Factor.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): More like people thinking an election is just the same as Big Time Wrestling.
eclare
@Joey Maloney: Walker was a star running back at UGA who won a national championship and a Heisman. He may live in TX now, but he had a very established base in GA. I have no doubt that his college career helped him immensely.
Redshift
@Carlo Graziani: On Preet Bharara’s podcast, they were saying that a failure to convict on this would mean the state would be unlikely to pursue a case against TFG as an individual. It’s still not a sure thing, but the corporate case is easier to prove, so if they couldn’t get that, it wouldn’t make sense to go for more.
Redshift
@eclare: Plus it’s Georgia and not Illinois. Other Republicans won statewide there. So as entertaining as 27% has been, the real crazification factor is how many Republicans will vote for such an obviously unfit candidate. The answer, now, is nearly all of them, but not all, which is part of what won this election.
eclare
@Redshift: Yes, in a race this close, you only need to peel off a few…
oldster
@Joey Maloney:
You read my mind. I just reread that blog post and came to the same conclusion: the crazification factor is higher now than it was in 2005.
Is it up to 48%? Maybe Walker’s football celebrity shaves some points off. Maybe it’s only 45%, or even 40% if we’re being very optimistic. But it’s still a lot higher.
And that tracks other indices and facts, doesn’t it? Not just the intense negative polarization around party ID, but also the right’s willingness to invoke the doctrine of god’s “flawed vessel” for greater and greater flaws. Instead of saying, “we have a shitty candidate,” they say, “the lord chooses unlikely instruments for his purposes,” and then they vote for the shitty candidate.
If you were to point out to them the blasphemy inherent in claiming that god thinks that some ends will justify any means, they still would fall back on invocations of his mysterious ways.
It’s crazy all the way down, and there are more of them than there were in 2005.
Still, great victories in GA election and NY courts.
Origuy
Something is going on in Germany.
oldster
@Origuy:
Germany definitely has a problem with their far-right types, and with their infiltration into the military and police.
But this raid looks like good news on the whole — good to round them up, a bit like we are doing via the J6 prosecutions.
The idea of an EMP ie a nuclear weapon explosion is crazy talk and suggests that the plotters had no realistic plan.
piratedan
@oldster: well for one, we’ve had another 15+ years of Faux, Newsmax and OAN going off the deep end and promoting Q theories that villify Dems as being evil incarnate and each time that reality intrudes on this fantasy, its shunned. They are never accountable, they are never wrong and no matter any other factual input or context they are in perpetual self-fulfilling prophesy mode.
things have changed, we’ve had an attempted coup, the media continually casts it in the light of semi-legitimate political discourse and still provide a platform for these disingenuous fucks to keep misinforming the public.
There is plenty of room for disagreement in regards to solving the problems that we’re faced with today, but these asshats thinking that women having control over their own bodies and the right to decide to carry a birth to term is the one that MUST be dealt with now in the midst of rising Fascism, climate change and global pandemics just show how completely out of touch these people are.
mrmoshpotato
Wait. The Soviet shitpile mobster conmanbaby is also a tax cheat?
Whocouldafuckingknowed!
sab
@oldster: RWNJs in American policing is a huge problem. High level police I know say it is a problem. The young troops back from Iraq and Afghanistan are used to treating their cities like an occupation, and they answer to no one , least of all their superiors.
I know some high level police who had thought troops into cops was a good idea, and they acknowledge that in actual practice it has been an unmitigated disaster, for the police and for their cities. Thugs all around.
oatler
Just saw Colbert’s monolog on YT. “The Polls are still open but we’re predicting that Herschel Walker…DOES NOT BELONG IN CONGRESS!”
Ruckus
@sab:
The turning police into, and yes I’m going to use the word, the gestapo, or at least gestapo light, has been going on for 30-40 yrs in American policing. I have a HS friend who did 30 yrs as a CHP officer and told me after he retired that he only stayed on for his last 10 yrs for the retirement benefits. That policing in the US was/has changed, some of it might be the advent of more guns and guns that can do a lot of damage, assault weapon style – AR15 replicas and so on but that police departments themselves changed. And it’s made policing worse. Police paranoia, right wing paranoia, conservative politicians have become worse than they used to be, the advent of 24 hr news that has to fill up every non commercial minute of every day, conservative losses from advancing human rights, churches have lost attendance, etc. Life has changed from 40-50 yrs ago and has changed farther and faster than ever in history. If you doubt this look at what a number of conservative states are doing, look what the USSC has done with abortion – 50 yrs of law thrown out, not for more human rights, for less. It’s a giantic step backwards. And a step for far more conservatism. And it wasn’t done for human rights, it was done to remove them, an attempt to destroy human rights. It wasn’t decision for anything positive, it was a frontal assault on advancement as a humane society.
And that’s what conservatism is today, a frontal assault on advancement as a humane society. It’s just a less violent assault than Russia is doing to Ukraine. But make no mistake it is an assault.
Frank Wilhoit
@Carlo Graziani: If unaccountability is symbolic, then accountability is also symbolic. The role of symbolism is admittedly excessive, and one may deem it a consistent source of grave harm, but rolling that back would be a different kind of effort entirely.
Burnspbesq
@Carlo Graziani:
I was actually a tax litigator for a while, a long time ago. The biggest potential follow-on effect is the possibility that the defendants will be collaterally estopped from denying fraud in a subsequent IRS civil audit. Because the Trump Organiztion is (presumably) a pass through entity, that will hit the family directly in the pocketbook, and fraud holds the statute of limitations open indefinitely.
JoyceH
@Joey Maloney:
You left out a significant factor. Football. In the south, that probably gets you 15-20%. But what really strikes me about the Walker candidacy is what it says about Trump. Despite his carefully cultivated image as a big glittering NYC International Business Mogul, Trump is actually a very provincial little man. He picked Walker not just for his football prowess. He picked him because he knew him personally. Walker played for Trump’s team, he did Celebrity Apprentice. Trump’s instinct is always to go with someone he already knows personally. That’s how son’s wedding planner winds up with a high level government job. It’s the sort of staffing that doesn’t work for even a medium-sized business, much less a federal government, for anything bigger really than a rinky-dink little mom and pop shop like the Trump Org.
danielx
@Joey Maloney:
It’s Georgia, not Illinois. Handicap feature alowed.
NotMax
@danielx
Fifty shades of cray-cray.
//
raven
Man, Herschel played football at Georgia???? Who knew?
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@oldster:
According to Sky News, the plot was thick with Russians, and included Bundeswehr retirees and reservists of high rank.
It also promised to be a bloodbath.
I won’t express openly here what should happen to Vladimir Putin – I have other avenues for that sort of expression – but y’all can guess…
raven
MomSense
@Joey Maloney:
This is what I’ve been saying. This race will give us the new crazification factor.
raven
@Joey Maloney:
“so you can factor out racism”
Baloney, Herschel is the perfect “house I*)(U)”. If you don’t think racism was instrumental in this race you are dreaming.
Gvg
@Joey Maloney: Walker was a very famous football player who won the Heisman trophy while playing for the University of Georgia. He may have lived out of state recently but his fame and popularity were not out of state so no, especially in the football crazy south, he had a significant advantage among non politically aware voters.
prostratedragon
@sab: (Probably dead thread I know, but) I’ll bet they were ingnoring even military people who tried to tell them that it was a bad idea. A former nco with extra training in Vietnam pointed out the exact thing you said: people here have to have their rights respected, and unfortunately the infantry is not mentally prepared to go along with that. “You don’t want us to do what we do over here. Or you shouldn’t.”
WaterGirl
@Joey Maloney: Walker is technically from TX, therefore out of state, but wasn’t he a hot-shit football player in GA? That makes him a GA home boy, no matter where he lives now.
So that undermines the case you are making
edit: Or what eclare said at #23.
edit 2: declare and a zillion other people.
WaterGirl
@raven: This tweet from Anne Laurie’s Warnock thread sums it up perfectly:
Ken
And John McCain was a POW!
Yutsano
@sab:
That’s a REALLY broad brush you’re painting with there…
terraformer
no we can all watch the clearly obvious and expected Lindsey, Cruz, et al.
drop Walker like a fumbled football
“Walker? Never heard of him” will be the collective response going forward
Paul in KY
@Joey Maloney: Walker was an in-state UGA All-American. That helped him a whole lot. As he is about (or more) crazy than Keyes was.
Paul in KY
@raven: I watched a game at UK where he ran all over us. This in 1981 or thereabouts.
KenK
@eclare: that is the correct take.
KenK
@raven: yep
Ivan X
@YY_Sima Qian: 4 in 10 of my fellow citizen voters, minimum, appear to have no difficulty voting for candidates so completely beyond the realm of decency, good faith, competency, and belief in democracy itself.
I wouldn’t exactly say I’ve made peace with this realization, but I have worked mightily to simply accept it as the facts on the ground l, so I am not shocked or disappointed later, and to remind myself that every vote counts and we have to fight. I don’t see this changing unless there’s some fundamental change in the influence of partisan media and social media.
The guardrails aren’t gone, but they are thin. Such is life in the USA today. Maybe in a generation things will be different, but right now, it’s real ugly. It would be one thing if the other side were reasonable people with differing ideas but the same fundamental love of America and desire for the well being of its citizenry. But as we all know that ain’t true, if it ever was.
TL;dr: the crazification factor is no longer 27%. It’s more like 40%, and, maybe after this election, we can call it 49%.
Miss Bianca
@WaterGirl: Nailed it, that Twitterer did.