US federal government is not allowed to inspect Michigan's electronic voter registration list
>open court opinion
>judge has a star wars name
>nothing but tortured and retarded reasoning
Color me surprised.
This ruling seems to be a bit technical on the claim issue. I don't have time for a full deep dive, but it also feels very much like the 2020 election rulings, where the judges constructed impossible Catch-22 requirements for the lawsuits. "You didn't make a HAVA breach claim so you can't request data to check HAVA breaches"? Really?
Its very circular, but its clear that this judge was searching for an excuse to rule a certain way, not to actually follow the law.
In addition, the jury did not need to be in agreement of what the underlying law that was attempted to be broken was as long as all of them believed it was some felony that he labeled the expenses as attorney's fees in furtherance of. So for example, half the jury could believe it was to fraudulently pay less tax while half the jury could believe it was related to the voting law or even some other state felony not specified to my understanding and that would be sufficient for the conviction.
It didn't help that Bragg and the judge decided to completely ignore the Supreme Court and their guidance on presidential immunity.
There may be a way, theoretically, to thread the needle and somehow charge a President for a set of criminal actions that started before his Presidency and continued into it.
(Hard to say, because the issue is so legally convoluted because the Supremes were trying to deal with the sheer idiot levels involved.) I use the word theoretically with optimism, because even imagining the most brilliant legal mind presented with the clearest set of legal facts, would likely decide to simply
not pursue any post-election charges just to avoid the issue as cleanly as possible. Why walk blindfolded into a yard full of rakes when you can just....not do that?
Instead of doing that, Bragg decided that he was going to charge for all the checks cut
while Trump was in office. A risky move, but potentially salvageable if he just refused to touch anything close to the White House or the actual Presidency. The only problem is that
at every stage he used White House material to make the case move forward. He brought official White House communications and depositions from staff to the Grand Jury just to get the indictments. At trial he called as witnesses more White House personnel to grill them about conversations in the White House during the Trump Presidential term. All kinds of testimony, documents, and other evidence that is absolutely verboten (by the Supreme's Opinion) is woven into the fabric of this entire case from start to present.
On top of that, the judge in the case was so eager to railroad Trump that he also ignored and actively downplayed the potential issues. At every step of the way, Trump's legal team was filing their objections and making the very reasonable request to delay proceedings until they had guidance from the Supreme Court. Not only did the judge deny these requests, he went so far as to scold the lawyers for making the objections - as if they were frivolous. The judge could have just put everything on hold until a framework was defined, but he barreled on through regardless.
Thats without getting into the other issues mentioned, like the judicial alchemy needed to transcend the statute of limitations, transform misdemeanors into felonies and make invisible predicate criminal acts. Every Trump case is a disgusting display of corruption and horribly corrisive to the notion of justice.
Basically, it was a complete farce, a District Attorney deciding to make a crime out of whole cloth where the alleged victims even told her they had no issue with any aspect of the dealings and there was no fraud in actual fact.
The fact that the appeals court struck the fine but not the conviction or reasoning is a severe problem. The majority of the appeal court decided that the AG can just put their nose into
any business deal and if she can find two mistakes or one mistake entered twice put both companies through the ringer, cost them millions in attorney fees alone and then potentially levy another couple hundred million in penalties.
Not even a mistake, just if the AG disagrees with completely subjective evaluations, actually, without needing to present any justification. No showing of intent to defraud or deceive is required, either, its strict liability. Also, the AG can even do this to deals years in the past, beyond the statute of limitations, because fuck you.
Between the Trump fraud case and the new commie mayor its wonder money is leaving New York, right?
