Attention to the Unseen

Norman L. Eisen and Joshua Kolb write: On Thursday, Donald Trump’s legal team filed a long-awaited motion to dismiss the special counsel’s 2020 election interference charges on presidential immunity grounds. We anticipated that Trump would mount this defense even before the charges officially dropped in a model prosecution memo on the case earlier this summer and published an extended takedown of the arguments. Now that the motion is here and we can judge the substance, it is still likely to…

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  Former Forbes reporter Jonathan Greenberg: “I think another shoe is going to drop very soon, which is, in the order today, they ordered him to disclose secret equity partners in any of the interests in his New York properties. Now, I’ve been theorizing for years now, to editors and to other journalists that Trump has these investors — that his piece of the equity is not really his piece; that he has loaned it out. We will see what…

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The New York Times reports: No one close to Mr. Giuliani, 79, has suggested that drinking could excuse or explain away his present legal and personal disrepair. He arrived for a mug shot in Georgia in August not over rowdy nightlife behavior or reckless cable interviews but for allegedly abusing the laws he defended aggressively as a federal prosecutor, subverting the democracy of a nation that once lionized him. Yet to almost anyone in proximity, friends say, Mr. Giuliani’s drinking…

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Politico reports: Judicial activist Leonard Leo is not cooperating with an investigation by Washington D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb for potentially misusing nonprofit tax laws for personal enrichment, his attorney confirmed. David Rivkin, Leo’s attorney, said in a statement to POLITICO that Schwalb has “no legal authority to conduct any investigatory steps or take any enforcement measures” because Leo’s multi-billion-dollar aligned nonprofits — which poured millions into campaigning for the nominations of conservative Supreme Court justices and advocating before them…

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The New York Times reports: Former President Donald J. Trump had a lot to say on the first day of the fraud trial against him and his company. Speaking to reporters at a Manhattan courthouse on Monday, he dismissed the judge as a “rogue” justice and said he did not “think the people of this country are going to stand for it.” And he focused on the official who filed the lawsuit against him, New York’s attorney general, Letitia James….

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Ian Millhiser writes: Imagine that the Supreme Court of the United States spent an entire morning debating whether penguins are the primary cause of colon cancer or whether John F. Kennedy was assassinated by aliens from the planet Venus. That’s more or less the quality of arguments that former Trump Solicitor General Noel Francisco presented to the Court on Tuesday, as part of a quizzical effort to convince the justices to declare an entire federal agency unconstitutional. The good news…

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  Politico reports: Donald Trump came face-to-face in a Manhattan court Monday with the attorney general who is suing him for massive business fraud and the judge who last week revoked his business licenses, as the former president attended the first day of a $250 million civil trial. A scowl on his face as he entered the courtroom, Trump showed up to see opening statements in the trial. New York Attorney General Tish James alleges that Trump, his adult sons,…

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The Daily Beast reports: [A] plea agreement puts [Scott] Hall [the former Fulton County Republican poll watcher and bail bondsman] on probation for five years in exchange for a guilty plea on the five misdemeanors. He will also pay a $5,000 fine, issue a letter of apology to Georgia voters, serve 200 hours of community service, and agree to avoid activities related to polling or administering elections. Perhaps most crucially for his 19 co-defendants, he also agreed to testify truthfully…

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Politico reports: Special counsel Jack Smith’s office argued Friday that Donald Trump’s recent attacks on Gen. Mark Milley and one of their own newly appointed prosecutors bolster their case to put a gag order on the former president ahead of his trial in Washington, D.C. In a 22-page filing, senior assistant special counsel Molly Gaston said prosecutors rejected Trump’s claims that their proposed gag order was an attempt to silence him on the campaign trail. Rather, she said, it was…

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Reuters reports: Donald Trump’s political operation has helped pay the legal expenses of more than a dozen people contacted by prosecutors investigating the former president, tying up millions of dollars that otherwise could be used for his 2024 White House bid. Reuters has identified 13 potential witnesses or co-defendants who were represented by law firms that received payments from a political group run by Trump, based on interviews and a review of court records and campaign finance disclosures. The payments…

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David Cay Johnston writes: Donald Trump is no longer in business. Worse, the self-proclaimed multibillionaire may soon be personally bankrupt as a result, stripped of just about everything because for years he engaged in calculated bank fraud and insurance fraud by inflating the value of his properties, a judge ruled Tuesday. His gaudy Trump Tower apartment, his golf courses, his Boeing 757 jet and even Mar-a-Lago could all be disposed of by a court-appointed monitor, leaving Trump with not much…

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NBC News reports: The FBI is investigating whether Egypt’s intelligence services might have been involved in the alleged bribery scheme described in the indictment of Sen. Bob Menendez and his wife, sources familiar with the matter told NBC News. The counterintelligence investigation is in addition to the federal corruption case that accuses Menendez, D-N.J., of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes, the sources said. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Menendez helped oversee billions of dollars…

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The Associated Press reports: A judge ruled Tuesday that Donald Trump committed fraud for years while building the real estate empire that catapulted him to fame and the White House. Judge Arthur Engoron, ruling in a civil lawsuit brought by New York’s attorney general, found that the former president and his company deceived banks, insurers and others by massively overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork used in making deals and securing financing. Engoron ordered that some…

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Politico reports: Donald Trump’s lawyers said Monday that a gag order proposed by prosecutors would unconstitutionally silence him during key months of the 2024 presidential campaign, urging a federal judge in Washington, D.C. to reject the proposed limits. In a 25-page filing that mirrored some of Trump’s own heated political rhetoric, Trump’s attorneys said the former president’s attacks on potential witnesses, special counsel Jack Smith and even U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan herself are protected by the First Amendment…

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