Last night, Trump’s lawyers asked Florida-based Trump appointee Judge Aileen Cannon for an indefinite postponement of the documents trial. Their rationale underscores exactly why Trump is running again — to avoid accountability. (NYT gift link here)
“This extraordinary case presents a serious challenge to both the fact and perception of our American democracy,” wrote the lawyers, Chris M. Kise and Todd Blanche for Mr. Trump, and Stanley Woodward Jr. and Sasha Dadan for Mr. Nauta.
“The court now presides over a prosecution advanced by the administration of a sitting president against his chief political rival, himself a leading candidate for the presidency of the United States,” they wrote. “Therefore, a measured consideration and timeline that allows for a careful and complete review of the procedures that led to this indictment and the unprecedented legal issues presented herein best serves the interests of the defendants and the public…”
The article says judges’ rulings on trial schedules aren’t usually reviewable. But if Cannon goes rogue to protect Trump as she did in an earlier phase of the investigation, Smith’s prosecutors could conceivably challenge a scheduling decision by appealing to the 11th Circuit.
Also from the filing — Trump and Nauta are too busy to be criminal defendants in a trial!
“President Trump is running for president of the United States and is currently the likely Republican Party nominee,” they wrote. “This undertaking requires a tremendous amount of time and energy, and that effort will continue until the election on Nov. 5, 2024.”
“Mr. Nauta’s job requires him to accompany President Trump during most campaign trips around the country,” they continued. “This schedule makes trial preparation with both of the defendants challenging. Such preparation requires significant planning and time.”
My understanding is the two are being tried together. Would it be possible for Cannon to rule that Trump can have a postponement since he’s currently his party’s leading candidate for the nomination but that Nauta’s trial can proceed since Trump could simply hire another flunky to hold his baggy-ass coat and schlep boxes around? I have no idea how that works.
My guess is Trump would be against separate trials since he’s afraid Nauta might flip. But if that sort of ruling is possible, it might be a way for Cannon to shield Trump from timely accountability while preserving the appearance of evenhandedness by allowing the Nauta trial to move forward. We’ll see.
In other news, Cannon is proceeding as if the trial will be held in Ft. Pierce, where she’s based. That could change due to logistics for such a large scale circus. But if the trial is held in Ft. Pierce, prosecutors will have more MAGA cultists in the jury pool. Ft. Pierce itself is purple-ish, IIRC, but the surrounding counties are about as Trumpy as my part of Florida.
That said, I do thinkTrump voters could be persuaded to convict if the prosecution proves its case. I’ve been a juror and have always been impressed by how seriously random citizens take their civic duty. But MAGA cultists are another story; they don’t give a shit about American democracy.
Feel free to speculate herein or talk about whatever — open thread!
Baud
If DeSantis had any courage, he’d file a brief challenging this rationale.
Craig
Do you think Trump’s folks could have appointed Cannon to that bench as a backstop to prosecution? Feeling conspiratorial today.
Baud
I don’t recall if this was a Balloon Juice creation
But it seems to have gone semi-viral on Mastodon.
Chief Oshkosh
@Craig: Uh…yes? That and they’re pretty much guaranteed that she would rule entirely on the side of rich conservatives on every issue, no matter how ludicrous the position taken.
Ruckus
@Chief Oshkosh:
Yep.
Nail hit.
Baud
I suppose the risk for Trump is that, if he gets his delay but loses the primary or the election, the jury pool is more likely to convict him than if the trial is held soon, since he would then be a useless loser in the eyes of the MAGA.
Maxim
One good thing about this request: it should force Cannon to demonstrate fairly early on in the process which way she’s going to lean. If she bends over backwards to shield Trump, it will give Jack Smith and his team more ammunition to challenge her hearing the case at all.
If the speculation here a few weeks ago is correct, on the other hand, about Cannon taking her orders not from MAGAland but from the Federalist Society, then we should get a ruling that the trial will proceed without any special delays.
Salty Sam
I believe that came from our own Suzanne… at least, that’s the first time I came across that gem.
rikyrah
@Maxim:
UH HUH
UH HUH
rikyrah
Brian Allen (@allenanalysis) tweeted at 10:18 AM on Tue, Jul 11, 2023:![]()
![]()
![]()
AP News is perceived as the sole bastion of independent journalism that remains available to us.
BREAKING
Public colleges and universities have been strategically using visits by Supreme Court justices as occasions to cultivate donations. These institutions have organized… https://t.co/AroCUjJplP
(https://twitter.com/allenanalysis/status/1678785761737359362?t=iSbrafdRi6Q9GJ7-ShmkZw&s=03)
rikyrah
Barbara Lee (@BarbaraLeeForCA) tweeted at 8:59 PM on Mon, Jul 10, 2023:
COVID-19 proved how essential the 340,000 UPS @Teamsters are in keeping our economy moving.
These employees—who make record profits possible—deserve to be compensated accordingly with pay increases and improved benefits. I support their fight for a fair contract and workplace!
(https://twitter.com/BarbaraLeeForCA/status/1678584680428490752?t=GkwR59eT1VCn0glbP4zafQ&s=03)
Amir Khalid
I don’t understand why TFG still insists on titling himself after a position he lost re-election for. It makes him seem a needy and pathetic has-been.
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
It’s convention for people to retain their title after they leave office. Of course, it’s not often that people have the opportunity to use it in the context of criminal defense.
charon
What do you think of when you hear the words “Judge Sirica?”
How about the words “Judge Ito?”
This case is what the words “Judge Cannon” will mean to everyone, and she knows it. I will be very surprised if she does not play this completely straight.
Ruckus
@Baud:
If DeSantis had any courage, he’d file a brief challenging this rationale.
If he had any courage he wouldn’t be little ronnie….
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
It makes him seem a needy and pathetic has-been.
Nail hit perfectly.
LiminalOwl
@Baud: Twitter users have attributed it to (ex-) user auntyamerican, in October 2022.
I join in admiration of the phrasing as well as the sentiment, but I deplore the capitalization. Unless, of course, we’re discussing Newfoundland.
Snarki, child of Loki
@Ruckus:
If Puddin’Boots had any courage, TFG would have long since been ‘gator food.
FastEdD
Jack Smith is doing a fearless job, but when it was assigned to Loose Cannon that was it for the docs case, all over, all FUBARed. I’m not trying to be Chicken Little, and the Orange Fartcloud will be held accountable someday, but … if every decision has to be appealed that takes time, and the election will be over by then. It only takes one MAGA on the jury to throw the whole stolen documents case in the trash.
The J6 case is tougher to prove but the venue will be in a location where it can be decided fairly. And we aren’t near indictments there either. Other countries wonder why the US allows a right wing coup against the government and I do too. I wish this weren’t the case.
Steeplejack
@Salty Sam:
“Dildo of consequences” did not originate here. It has been around the Intertubes for a while. For example (quick Google search), here it is in a Darth Putin tweet from last December
VOR
Yes, but that’s in 2025. He’s trying to prevent consequences today. As someone once said, Trump’s not playing 3-D chess, he’s playing Hungry Hungry Hippos. If he wins the 2024 election then come January 2025 he pardons himself and it all goes away.
Burnspbesq
On first reading, the motion is superficially plausible. But when you think about it for a second, your reaction is something along the lines of “who the fuck does he think he is?”
patrick II
@Craig:
Absolutely.
coin operated
@charon:
I haven’t thought about that shitshow trial in forever…Ito was in way over his head.
I think that ship sailed with the Special Master debacle. If she plays it straight, it’s because she doesn’t want another bench-slap from the 11th Cir.
FastEdD
My optimism that TFG would be convicted for stealing documents lasted less than a day.
VOR
You underestimate the fervor of the cult. Jordan Klepper of the Daily Show keeps going to Trump rallies and finds people claiming Trump is the current, sitting President. TFG’s use of the title is intended to re-inforce that sort of thinking.
Salty Sam
Hmm, I guess I need to get out more…
Anyway
@Amir Khalid:
It’s an American thing, All former bigwigs get addressed as President, Senator etc, I think it’s stupid.
rikyrah
@FastEdD:
That’s why the minute Cannon goes sideways, the charges need to be filed in New Jersey.
Omnes Omnibus
This thread is going to be “fun.” I think I will give it a miss.
FastEdD
@rikyrah: yup!
The Moar You Know
Trump’s only chance to not do jail time is winning the election. He’s out of other options at this point. He will go to trial, somewhere, he will lose, somewhere, and he will be sentenced to actual jail time, somewhere.
It’s “gonna be wild” for the next year and a half.
And FWIW, I do not think he can win the general.
patrick II
@VOR:
I have read that theoretically he can’t pardon himself, but wonder what difference theory makes if the Attorney General is a Trump appointee.
Anonymous At Work
Jack Smith has more evidence yet to be revealed and I wouldn’t be surprised if they would support independent criminal charges to be brought in New Jersey (Bedminster) and/or DC itself. He’d face challenges to venue but no judge likes looking the fool, so I imagine the presiding judge and appeals’ courts for such places would have to weigh their rulings against Aileen Cannon’s.
If Aileen rules that Trump is “the Kindest, Bravest, Warmest, Most Wonderful Human Being I’ve Ever Known in My Life” and Trump can have whatever motion he wants, it’ll place a ton of pressure on other judges to restore a sense of impartiality via their rulings because no judge would want their own rulings to functionally agree with Aileen’s if they don’t have to.
Burnspbesq
Boy, the Republicans have the damnedest luck with whistleblowers.
And then Comer makes it worse by claiming that the guy was indicted in retaliation for his whistleblowing.
No, you dumbfuck. He was indicted in 2022 (see the docket number on the indictment? It starts with “22.”) The conduct for which he was indicted dates to 2016. It wasn’t unsealed until recently because he fled the United States and couldn’t be found until this year.
And the indictment is a doozy.
https://www.newsweek.com/gal-luft-indictment-biden-whistleblower-charged-1812161
OzarkHillbilly
If it didn’t happen after 2020, it’s not gonna happen after 2024.
StringOnAStick
@FastEdD: If you do podcasts, listen to “Jack” by Andrew McCabe and Allison Gill; you’ll gain a deep understanding of all that’s going on with all the cases Jack Smith is building and it will help assuage your sense of disappointment. If you don’t listen to podcasts, this one alone is why you should start to. I like legal detail and this information has brightened many a day for me, plus it’s made me a better citizen to learn more about how legal processes and procedures work.
I don’t want to wallow in doom; life is too damned short to spend it constantly sure that the worst will always happen. I like a bit of joy and sense of what is right winning out, and even if I end up being completely wrong, at least I had some good days! I also don’t think he’s going to away without at least one charge sticking. The documents case already has 84 witnesses, and that’s the “simple”case!
hells littlest angel
I’d like to get indicted, just to see how far I’d get with the “Your Honor, I would have a hard time fitting a trial into my busy schedule, so let’s put it off until whenever” ploy.
Brachiator
Excellent points. So far, Trump has lost most definitively in the courts.
And yet, the recent clip of the woman challenging Pence on not stopping the election is sobering. MAGA people are delusional and fully plugged into conspiracy theories.
But the crazy thing is that Trump’s public explanations of his innocence are clearly nonsensical and based on outright lies.
He lost the E Jean Carroll civil case. I have a hard time seeing an honest, but sympathetic juror deciding in Trump’s favor.
hells littlest angel
@Anyway: On Fox, they still address a certain unctuous weasel as “Speaker Gingrich,” even though he resigned from that job in disgrace.
Gravenstone
@Amir Khalid: @Baud: It also applies to his delusion that he is the “rightful” president even today.
Mai Naem mobileI
@patrick II: there’s all kinds of stuff we didn’t think TFG could/would do during 2017-2020 and he went right ahead and did it.
BeautifulPlumage
OT question for the hive mind: what are good programs for learning Spanish as an adult? Thanks in advance.
Jeffg166
@Baud: Little D is a gutless wonder.
Jeffro
Can’t prosecute him when he’s running…can’t prosecute him as a president…
…is there a nanosecond of time, some sheer ripple in space, where he CAN be held accountable? Like in the infinite eternity encompassed by the last voter’s finger pushing the button/filling in the oval and the vote being officially tabulated?
StringOnAStick
@VOR: The Cult will vote for him, but not all R voters are in the Cult. I know of several hard right, long time R voters who have said they will never vote for him again; the trigger for that vow is the national security implications of the documents case. One is my hard right, Bircher father, which shocked me to my core. Since all he watches is FOX, I wonder how he even heard the details of the classified documents story, but he did and he can’t be the only one.
Baud
@BeautifulPlumage:
I’ve been using Duolingo. I haven’t advanced much, but that’s more because of my commitment rather than the app.
Anonymous At Work
@Burnspbesq: “Inconvenient for my personal schedule of voluntary activities” should be, and probably will be, shot down hard, even by Aileen. The “I’ve got 3 other criminal trials in multiple states” argument is where the action will be.
Two arguments, one is BS. The BS argument is that he’ll have too many court hearings to attend. It’s BS because it presumes that he’ll attend multiple days in courts. A decent judge would pin him on it and allow accommodation only based on a sworn declaration that he will attend court hearings in person. I can’t imagine Trump doing so.
The actual argument, and where all the action will focus, is that he needs more time to prepare after reviewing the evidence against him. I think the argument would lose before a neutral judge because the facts of this case are simple and relatively uncontested. The contents of the classified documents do not matter, only that the documents themselves were properly labeled as such. The Presidential Records Act doesn’t apply here either, nor, for most charges, does intent.
So, summary: scheduling will be indicative but the reasons why the scheduling is made will matter. The real meat revolves around how Aileen responds to “I have too many criminal cases against me to prepare.” She’ll face a choice to respond neutrally as Judge Cannon or to continue onwards as Aileen.
Next big hurdle, of course, will be the Motions in Limine based on former Trump attorney Evan Corcoran’s notes and possibly testimony.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
If he loses next year, I’m not sure even his cult members will think he’ll run and win again in 2028.
Citizen Alan
@Craig: She was nominated and confirmed to sit on the bench in the district and Division where the president who nominated her would be domiciled after leaving office. And at a time when he reasonably should have anticipated federal litigation filed against him in the venue where he was so domiciled. I remain completely and utterly shocked at her refusal to refuse herself.
OzarkHillbilly
Somebody can tell me if I am wrong, but isn’t the injunction against doing something that might influence an election just a Justice Dept policy?
If so Cannon will have to rule against trump, unless she wants to get tossed.
New Deal democrat
@Maxim: “One good thing about this request: it should force Cannon to demonstrate fairly early on in the process which way she’s going to lean.”
This is true for both sides. I do not believe Jack Smith is naive. Therefore he already has a playbook drafted and ready to be filed on short notice when the time is ripe, if Cannon behaves as she did with respect to the search of Mar a Lago. In that regard the phrase “give them enough rope to hang themselves” comes to mind.
Jeffro
@The Moar You Know: true, true, true, unfortunately true, and I don’t think he can either.
For the “gonna be wild” part, I hate to jinx it, but I do not see how the GOP survives either nominating trump OR someone other than trump. It’s like Schrodinger’s Nominee: either scenario means a candidate who’s dead to a significant-enough portion of the Republican Party that they can’t possibly win.
(hence their focus on ratfucking the Dems via RFK, etc )
Elizabelle
From NY Times article:
Jack Smith saw this one coming. When I heard the December date (a few weeks ago), I moaned because it seemed so far off. Now, it is brilliant. It’s four months from today. Oodles of time.
Jackals and attorneys: what do you think about a December 11 start date? Could the trial be over before Christmas holidays? Would they have to sequester the jury?
Am wondering if Smith figures the trial will get scheduled after the first of the year, and the trial will be competing with the GOP primaries.
Further, other jurisdictions could go to trial earlier at that point, couldn’t they? When are the Georgia indictments likely to land? Had the AG signalled August? I forget …
Brachiator
@Jeffro:
Wait. Trump is Doctor Who?
Jeffro
on behalf of The Cult – the band, one of my all-time faves – I beg you to use “The trump Cult”
(j/k, I’ll roll with it ;)
VOR
IANAL, but I doubt it has ever been litigated. AFAIK the Constitution does not explicitly state “A President cannot pardon themselves” and anything short of that leaves wiggle room. I’m not willing to bank on a TFG-appointed Attorney General and the current SCOTUS upholding norms.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: I’m not saying they will want another shot at it (they will but I think even they will have to accept some reality, even if it’s as little as possible), just that they will be screaming“trump can never fail! he can only be failed!!!” or “IT”S ALL RIGGED AGAINST HIM!!”
They will never turn on him.
Martin
I have to assume Smith would strongly oppose separate trials because Walts presence makes it a lot harder to just give Trump a slap on the wrist for this stuff. Walt pulls Trump down to mere mortal status to the judge and jury when they are in the courtroom together.
I think we also have to assume all manner of signals have already been sent to judge Cannon regarding the sympathies of various higher courts to any shenanigans that she might pull. Given that the courts have not been sympathetic to Trump on these matters, does she really want to carry the entire historical burden on this one?
Citizen Alan
@Brachiator: Trump wouldn’t even make a good Master. At best, Trump is the Meddling Monk.
Brachiator
@Jeffro:
I hope the Republicans are discredited for decades.
RFK barely registers for Beltway reporters. He’s going nowhere.
I think the third party movement will melt away this election cycle, just as it did in 2020.
Martin
@VOR: It has not been litigated. No way the supreme court allows that through. A president with the support of just ⅓ of the senate would be a king.
Brachiator
OT:
Stock up on your streaming material. Things may get bumpy.
Suzanne
@Salty Sam: I don’t think that was me!
stinger
@BeautifulPlumage: Duolingo is free. It offers very short lessons — 5-10 minutes each, depending on how fast you work through them. There are “levels” and “prizes” and other things that are geared toward children but are easy to ignore. If you are starting from scratch or a small base of knowledge of the language, it should serve as a useful introduction or basic refresher. Duolingo uses repetition, with little to no explanation of grammar, conjugation, idioms, irregular verbs, etc. At some point, you may decide you need a more traditional, instructor-led learning situation.
I haven’t used other online methods but have read that, free or otherwise, they work much the same as Duolingo.
Ken
Maybe the one from the Mirror, Mirror universe.
Yutsano
In other news…
Someone else is having a bad day.
Burnspbesq
@Anonymous At Work:
What’s your take on whether Trump’s counsel will attack the sufficiency of the warrant? That’s the five-run home run, but it seems to me like the longest of long shots, i.e., the determination of probable cause seems bulletproof.
catclub
@VOR:
Yeah, they could rule he cannot pardon himself, but so much time has elapsed fighting THAT, that the statute of limitations has run out. Sorry.
scav
A) Um, forbidding the administration of a sitting president from putting on trial or investigating his chief political rivals is going to put a massive spike into any future republican administrations chief hobby and raison d’être — not that it’d be obeyed by them à la deficits only matter under Democratic control. Likewise;
B) Trump can be held accountable in the exact same millisecond where it is neither too early or late after a mass shooting to discuss gun control.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
I listen to a lot of Harry Litman and Ben Meiselas on YouTube, and they both have a pretty good track record of predicting how these things will go. I think it was Litman who says he thinks Cannon will end up postponing to 1st quarter 2024 but no farther. And also that more and bigger indictments are about to drop.
catclub
@Martin:
I see it the other way. Those six would allow it. They want a GOP king. The alternative is rule of law. Some written by democrats.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Hey, does anyone track what’s going on with Alex Jones? Last I heard, he was swearing that the plaintiffs in his billion-dollar lawsuit were never going to see a penny, but I also heard people saying that there’s a whole industry devoted to collecting judgments from lawsuits, that they’re very used to people trying to hide assets and he couldn’t prevent them from getting their money.
Which is it?
Elizabelle
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Sounds reasonable to me.
Early first quarter. Right after the holidays/New Year.
Wapiti
@Burnspbesq: So this guy, Luft, is a co-director at The Institute for the Analysis of Global Security. Charity Navigator gives it 1 of 4 stars. Maybe so press person can figure out who’s paying for that guy.
Matt McIrvin
@Maxim: Well, as I said at the time, if Cannon really wants to spring Trump by fiat with no possibility of appeal, her best strategy is to act like a completely normal non-MAGA judge and expedite the trial until the moment a jury is empaneled, then move to acquit after jeopardy has attached. So her behavior up to that point would provide no indication of how she’s leaning.
The thing is, this would require an unusual combination of MAGA loyalty, strategic acumen and ability to defer gratification that I am not sure she has.
Miss Bianca
@FastEdD: Time to trot out the “You’re pre-disappointed. What a surprise” meme again, I guess (hat tip to Omnes Ominbus for that one).
KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager))
@Jeffro: (hence their focus on ratfucking the Dems via RFK, etc )
Yup. This exactly. Even Bannon knows Trump can’t win (and never could). The only way for a Repub to win is to cheat.
Soprano2
@Martin: Well, there is no tradition of presidents pardoning themselves for crimes, so under the doctrine this court is currently using it would not be constitutional.
Soprano2
@Brachiator: Maybe that’ll get it all settled. I’m really missing Colbert!!!
Matt McIrvin
@Ken: You know, when Doctor Who did that plot in the serial Inferno, the Doctor encountered an evil UNIT with an evil Brigadier but not an evil Doctor. I guess he hadn’t shown up in that timeline.
Miss Bianca
@hells littlest angel:
LOL! Yeah, right?!?
I mean, I know Trump’s lawyers have to do their paltry best by their client, but that particular gambit takes a level of chutzpah that I personally don’t think I could muster with a straight face.
Jeffro
@scav:
there’s a LOT that needs to happen in that millisecond, is all I’m sayin’…
Sister Golden Bear
@FastEdD: Smith filed the docs case using Classified Information Procedures Act, which allows immediate appeals to the appellate court, and a requires a speedy ruling on the appeal (lawyer jackals please correct me if I’m wrong).
So if Judge Loose Cannon tries to put her thumb on the scales via rulings, Smith can quickly appeal, and potentially ask for the case to be assigned to a different judge if she oversteps too often, or shows that she’s not competent to deal with a CIPA case. I’m told that CIPA law is a complex specialty, which not many judges outside of DC are fully familiar with.
On the whole Smith has been extremely astute in gaming things out and taking actions to keep things moving, e.g. he promised to get security clearances for Trump’s and Nutra’s lawyers in record time, preemptively agreeing to moving the trial date to December (heading off motions to delay the start date — which would’ve moved the trial start to roughly the same time).
Alison Rose
@stinger: Yeah, Duolingo is not very useful for anyone who wants to actually be able to converse in a second language, especially with a native speaker of said language. It doesn’t actually teach you how to speak [X], it just teaches you how to say certain phrases and sentences in [X], many of which are not phrases or sentences you’ll like every find yourself saying.
KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager))
@VOR: It doesn’t matter if pardoning himself is legal; if Trump is President, who’s going to stop him? Seriously, who? What are they going to do, take him to court? Ask Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett to stop him?
I’m not a pessimist; I think there’s a good chance of conviction, if not on all of the so-called Mar a Lago charges, then on the coming superseding indictment charges. I think there’s a possibility Judge Cannon won’t be terrible, and if she is, the prosecution has a plan for that. I think there’s a good chance Trump can’t win, even with the cheating he has planned (and you know he has foreign government-aided cheating planned).
But if he does manage to get elected? Katie bar the door. Pardoning himself will just be the first of his unconstitutional acts.
scav
@Jeffro: No arguments there.
Plus, it’s been abundantly clear what EdD is fast at for a good while.
Jackie
@Brachiator: The FL grand jury indicted TIFG. I’m sure there were plenty of MAGA jurors in that group.
Just sayin’.
Amir Khalid
@Baud:
I think TFG is best referred to as “the needy and pathetic has-been President Donald Trump”.
KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager))
The problem with this strategy is that DOJ has already telegraphed that they have many more, possibly more serious, charges ready to drop, perhaps in another jurisdiction. So acquitting him on this case won’t really help him much, and would seriously, permanently besmirch her reputation.
kindness
Your Honor, I intend to be the leading candidate for President in 2052. With that in mind we request that any trial for me be postponed till after that election.
sdhays
@VOR: As long as the Nixon pardon stands, there’s really no limit on the pardon power. I suppose, maybe, you can’t pardon someone for something in the future, but with Nixon, Ford just said “Nixon is pardoned for any federal crime he may or may not have committed in between these dates”, which is just ridiculous. Why wouldn’t a President be able to pardon themselves?
Personally, I think a President who is in prison should be deemed incapacitated and therefore the VP is acting President until the President is released or pardoned, but apparently that’s not obvious to the legal system of the United States of America.
FelonyGovt
@BeautifulPlumage: Late to the thread, and I don’t know if it’s been mentioned, but I like Clozemaster, www.closemaster.com in addition to Duolingo. Also free, although like Dueling there is a paid option.
FelonyGovt
@Alison Rose: I finished the Duolingo French course, and then saw that they had added new lessons, several of which teach more colloquial and slang language such as I hear on French TV shows
But agreed, it doesn’t really get you speaking or conversing.
Ken
@kindness: We need a movie, or limited TV series, where the serial killer taunts the police with notes about his future presidential run.
arrieve
@BeautifulPlumage: I’m using Duolingo. I realized I needed to know some Spanish now that I’m teaching English to immigrants who are almost all Spanish speakers. Any self-directed program that doesn’t have unscripted interaction is only going to get you so far, so the amount of Spanish I was able to produce during my trip to Peru last month wasn’t impressive. On the other hand, I know a lot more Spanish than I did when I started. And it’s very easy–each lesson is about five minutes and you do it from your phone. My streak is now 624 days.
I do hate the ads, but can’t bring myself to pay a monthly fee for the ad-free version.
Maxim
@Wapiti: Israel is paying for that guy.
PAM Dirac
@coin operated:
I still think the odds are that she is a Federalist Society hack rather than a MAGA hack. Last time this came up I looked up the 3 11th circuit judges that slapped her down: all Federalist Society. Since then there have been prominent FS people (Bill Barr, Koch PACs) that have made it pretty clear it is time to dump drumpf. I also think she is smart enough to realize that support of the FS will be far more useful and reliable for her career than drumpf.
Kathleen
@Ken: Or a Rethuglican President who is a serial killer wannabe who just taunts people.
Anonymous At Work
@Burnspbesq: Sorry, work and all that. Unclear but I wouldn’t count on it. My view, without having all of the evidence, is that the Feds have enough to sustain the warrant. I think the surveillance footage showing Nauta moving the boxes was turned over voluntarily as part of the initial request (and Corcoran’s/Bobb’s affidavit), so there’s nothing to contest there.
That said, Trump may do it simply to add to the superficial delay and to give him something to complain about if it is denied. It’d be a bad strategy. Either he wins, and Aileen writes a very confusing and confused opinion, then Jack Smith appeals, wins teh appeal, and has more reason to get Aileen DQ’d, OR Trump loses, whines about Aileen being very unfair, and pisses off his best shot at escaping conviction.
Craig
@Jeffro: The Southern Trump Cult?
NotMax
Late to the thread but pushing it back a few days* – a move in which the DOJ concurred – is on its own not indicative of anything procedurally irregular nor baldly partisan.
*as opposed to the ridiculous time frame Nauta’s lawyer requested
Anyway
@BeautifulPlumage:
Move to Bogota for ten weeks and take immersion classes?
(I would love to do that …)
Ken
Oh lordy, have they schismed already? Should we expect an Orthodox Trump Cult, a Trump Cult of England, a Latter-Day Trump Cult….
FastEdD
@Sister Golden Bear: I agree-Jack Smith has been quite astute and I am pleased with his performance.
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
@Baud: I think that’s a WaterGirl original.
H-Bob
@Alison Rose: “many of which are not phrases or sentences you’ll like every find yourself saying.”
Like “my hovercraft is full of eels”?
The Lodger
@Kathleen: What, Ted Cruz AGAIN?
Jim Appleton
@Burnspbesq:
Not a lawyer, but one clear rebuttal is, “the crimes alleged and overwhelmingly upheld in bombproof (and continuing) admissions, let alone evidence, argue the public’s interest requires prompt disposition of this coup-prone treason weasel. “
Captain C
@charon:
The Dancing Itos.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@H-Bob: can you direct me to the railway station?
Paul in KY
@Anyway: It’s like the former ‘Duchess of York’, who divorced Randy Andy. She technically lost the Dukedom, but ‘socially’ is still referred to as the ‘Duchess of York’.
Paul in KY
@Jeffro: Mr. Astley and the boys thanks you for that request.