Attention to the Unseen

The Guardian reports: Donald Trump’s decision to declassify evidence given by a former British spy about the former US president’s alleged links with Russia led to the disappearance of two Russian sources, according to a court document. Christopher Steele, who used to run MI6’s Russia desk, compiled the notorious “Steele dossier” investigating Trump’s connections to Russia. In a witness statement released on Tuesday, Steele said publication of his testimony to the Mueller investigation on the matter, originally classified secret, was…

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CNN reports: US District Judge Tanya Chutkan has put into writing her limited gag order that bars Donald Trump from making public statements about witnesses who might testify against him in the federal election subversion case as well as prosecutors and court staff. Trump’s public statements pose “grave threats to the integrity of these proceedings,” especially those that could be construed as harassment and intimidation, Chutkan said in the order released Tuesday. The written order expands upon what Chutkan articulated…

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Jesse Wegman writes: Most of the concern over the independent presidential campaigns of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West and the No Labels party has focused on the risk that they could draw votes away from President Biden and throw the 2024 election to Donald Trump. That’s understandable, given what happened in 2000 and 2016. But there is another reason to fear these candidacies, and it’s right there in the Constitution: a contingent election decided by the House of Representatives,…

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ProPublica reports: The party guests who arrived on the evening of June 23, 2022, at the Tudor-style mansion on the coast of Maine were a special group in a special place enjoying a special time. The attendees included some two dozen federal and state judges — a gathering that required U.S. marshals with earpieces to stand watch while a Coast Guard boat idled in a nearby cove. Caterers served guests Pol Roger reserve, Winston Churchill’s favorite Champagne, a fitting choice…

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NBC News reports: The judge presiding over the upcoming damages trial against Rudy Giuliani said Friday she will tell jurors that the former Trump lawyer intentionally hid financial documents and other records in defiance of court orders. In a five-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell said the move was necessary given “Giuliani’s continued and flagrant disregard of this Court’s August 30 Order that he produce financial-related documents concerning his personal and his businesses’ past and present assets” and other…

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Forbes reports: Allen Weisselberg, the longtime chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, lied in sworn testimony on Tuesday when questioned about Donald Trump’s penthouse atop Trump Tower. Weisselberg was on the stand as part of a $250 million lawsuit that the New York attorney general is waging against Trump and his associates, including Weisselberg, accusing them of lying about Trump’s net worth to financial institutions. To arrive at inflated figures, the Trump Organization used demonstrably incorrect facts, such as…

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Law & Crime reports: Attorneys for Donald Trump this week argued that the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause does not and cannot apply to a president, or someone running for president, of the United States. “Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment does not prohibit someone from running for office—it prohibits someone from holding office, and even then, only if Congress chooses not to lift the prohibition,” a Monday filing by the ex-president’s lawyers reads. The argument was made in response to…

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Ian Millhiser writes: The Supreme Court’s Republican-appointed majority spent Wednesday morning seemingly hunting for a reason to uphold a South Carolina congressional map that everyone agrees was gerrymandered to benefit the Republican Party. The case is Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP. Under the Supreme Court’s precedents, federal courts are not allowed to hear lawsuits challenging partisan gerrymanders — that is, maps drawn to benefit one political party or the other. But federal courts may hear challenges to racial gerrymanders — maps drawn…

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The Washington Post reports: When Donald Trump needed to value his Trump Tower apartment for homeowner’s insurance in 2010, he personally showed an appraiser around the unit for 15 minutes but ushered him out before the expert could take any measurements. Trump’s company then declared that the 11,000-square-foot unit measured 30,000 square feet, nearly three times its actual size. A few years later, expert appraisers told Trump his 70-story office building at 40 Wall Street in Manhattan, steps from the…

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Aaron Blake writes: Donald Trump’s many legal problems have led to a veritable fire hose of often-mundane, procedural court filings. But occasionally, there’s a nugget that catches your eye. Such was the case Monday, in the government’s latest filing in Trump’s classified documents case. While arguing against the motion by Trump’s lawyers to delay the May 20 trial, special counsel Jack Smith’s lawyers assured they’re ready to go and that such a delay isn’t necessary, unsurprisingly. But they also said…

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Rolling Stone reports: In the weeks leading up to the start of his $250 million civil fraud trial in New York, Donald Trump and his attorneys privately discussed how they believed defeat in this trial was preordained. Their best chance — and it wasn’t much, according to two sources familiar with the matter and another two people briefed on internal deliberations — would be to fight the case on appeal. This belief led to the development of an approach to…

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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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