57 Comments

I can’t believe Trump’s lawyers would even be going on TV to say anything. Doesn’t seem like a good idea. He really must be getting to the bottom of the barrel lawyer-wise.

Pence’s notes are going to be a killer. I remember Trump giving one of his lawyers a hard time became he was taking notes. Told him Roy Cohn never took notes or some such.

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Trump's entire plan for life: "Sure you say it doesn't sound like a good idea, but I say it's a good idea, who the hell knows what a good idea is? So it's agreed, we do it, order the casino to fire their most experienced staff and hire our friend from, well he didn't say where he's from, did he, these boys don't dance, just fire them before I fire you!" blah blah blah.

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The irony is that Roy Cohn said if you want to punish your enemies, make them hire a lawyer. Now Trump has to hire an army of lawyers, and they're all on the D list.

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founding

I can't wait for the day when I hear nothing more about this man. Thanks for your perspicacity. i think thats the word.

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Praying for the SPEEDY TRIAL if only to be done with him once and for all!

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founding
Aug 4, 2023·edited Aug 4, 2023

Orange jumpsuit, leg irons and manacles, Florence, CO. And… the perp walk for Mr. Trump…

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founding

Trade his orange skin for an orange jumpsuit since it's his color.

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Aww, come on! You KNOW none of that is ever going to happen! But it's a great fantasy.

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praying for sudden illness, something big that shuts him up.

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On the contrary, I can't wait for the day when the very name "Trump" is ineluctably connected with "convicted on all counts and imprisoned," but I see what you mean, that's a good second option.

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This continues to be a political defense, not a legal one.

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The idea is if you successfully stage the coup, you rewrite the laws and it's all retroactively legal, spoilsport, you're new at this sedition thing, huh?

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Is this the game where the things Trump wants to say to influence possible witnesses come out of someone else’s mouth? Criminal ventriloquism. Is that what this is?

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“Criminal ventriloquism”...Perfect!

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I'm stealing that, but citing you as a possible originator, nice!

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founding

There’s an old joke among lawyers: “If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the facts are against you, argue the law. If both the law and facts are against you, pound the table and shout.” I think what we’re seeing tonight from Lauro is the 2023 equivalent of pounding the table and shouting. A few months down the road, Lauro may regret these interviews, but by then he may have been fired by Trump or he may have quit because Trump would not pay his invoices for legal services rendered.

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Maybe Lauro is thinking he can get a fat payday from The Donald (hah) and also protect himself from being disbarred by admitting, in words Trump won't recognize as the same because he hasn't read it, that his client did everything that is alleged in the indictment. Or Lauro is thinking he'll pull a Greta Van Susteren, and go from participant in the trial of an obviously guilty high-profile defendant to a big bucks easy job being on TV instead of all that hard work of defending clients badly.

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I like lawyer jokes, and in the spirit of one trained in the law, let me beg your kind collegial indulgence to reform that joke: It's "facts against you, pound on the law, law's against you pound on the facts, both against you, you pound on the table!"

Would help if the lawyer could argue like this Pound, too, but avoid his decline from his earlier fire for the very social reforms he had advocated for so successfully!

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roscoe_Pound

Nathan Roscoe Pound (October 27, 1870 – June 30, 1964) was an American legal scholar and educator. He served as dean of the University of Nebraska College of Law from 1903 to 1911 and was dean of Harvard Law School from 1916 to 1936. He was a member of Northwestern University, the University of Chicago Law School and the faculty at UCLA School of Law in the school's early years, from 1949 to 1952.[1] The Journal of Legal Studies has identified Pound as one of the most cited legal scholars of the 20th century.[2] ***** I post the rest out of sequence from Wiki's to emphasize the unfortunate swerve to the right in his later years, after being an influential critic of Lochner v. New York (1905) and the line of cases that descended from it (upholding the "sanctity of contract," with little or no regard for their oppressive, unfair consequences) *****

During Roosevelt's first term, Pound initially supported the New Deal.[13] In 1937, however, Pound turned against the New Deal and the Legal Realism movement altogether after Roosevelt proposed packing the federal courts and bringing independent agencies into the executive branch.[13][15] Other factors contributing to this "lurking conservatism" within Pound included bitter battles with liberals on the Harvard law faculty, the death of his wife, and a sharp exchange with Karl Llewellyn.[16] Pound, however, had for years been an outspoken advocate of these court and administrative reforms that Roosevelt proposed[13] and it was acknowledged that he only became conservative because he saw an opportunity to gain attention after his Harvard colleagues had turned on his ideas of government reform after Roosevelt had proposed them.[13][17] *****

Criminal justice in Cleveland

In 1922 Roscoe Pound and Felix Frankfurter undertook a detailed quantitative study of crime reporting in Cleveland newspapers for the month of January 1919, using column inch counts. They found that in the first half of the month, the total amount of space given over to crime was 925 in., but in the second half, it leapt to 6642 in. This was despite the fact that the number of crimes reported had increased only from 345 to 363. They concluded that although the city's much publicized "crime wave" was largely fictitious and manufactured by the press, the coverage had a very real consequence for the administration of criminal justice.

Because the public believed they were in the middle of a crime epidemic, they demanded an immediate response from the police and the city authorities. The agencies, wishing to retain public support, complied, caring "more to satisfy popular demand than to be observant of the tried process of law." The result was a greatly increased likelihood of miscarriages of justice and sentences more severe than the offenses warranted.[22][23]

Contribution to jurisprudence

Roscoe Pound also made a significant contribution to jurisprudence in the tradition of sociological jurisprudence, which emphasized the importance of social relationships in the development of law and vice versa. His best-known theory consists of conceptualizing law as social engineering. According to Pound, a lawmaker acts as a social engineer by attempting to solve problems in society using law as a tool.[24] Pound argued that laws must be understood by examining the "interests" that they serve. These "interests" might be individual interests, such as the protection of an individual's life or property, or broader social interests. *****

In 1908 he was part of the founding editorial staff of the first comparative law journal in the United States, the Annual Bulletin of the Comparative Law Bureau of the American Bar Association. In 1909, he taught at the University of Chicago Law School.[8] Although it is not often remembered now, Pound was a Roman law scholar. He taught that subject at Nebraska, Northwestern and Harvard.[9] Pound was sufficiently adept at Latin to translate Roman law into English for a sourcebook he used for those classes, and he was said by Professor Joseph Henry Beale to have "brought the spirit of Roman law to Harvard".[10][11] Pound was also the founder of the movement for "sociological jurisprudence", an influential critic of the U.S. Supreme Court's "liberty of contract" (freedom of contract) line of cases, symbolized by Lochner v. New York (1905), and one of the early leaders of the movement for American Legal Realism, which argued for a more pragmatic and public-interested interpretation of law and a focus on how the legal process actually occurred, as opposed to (in his view) the arid legal formalism which prevailed in American jurisprudence at the time. According to Pound, these jurisprudential movements advocated "the adjustment of principles and doctrines to the human conditions they are to govern rather than to assumed first principles".[12] While Pound was dean, law school registration almost doubled, but his standards were so rigorous that one-third of those matriculated did not receive degrees. Among these were many of the great political innovators of the New Deal years.[13] *****

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He’s taking a shot at influencing potential jurors who watch those networks.

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Facts obviously don’t matter. He just spins narrative and hopes his audience buys in. Classic selling of the Brooklyn Bridge With his Fox propaganda machine his followers will believe anything. Wild.

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Thanks, Lucian, for watching Lauro/Ingraham so we didn't have to. As I was reading your quote of what "lawyer" Lauro said, I was seeing the scene in The Hunt for Red October when the loyal Russian submarine captain has fired the torpedo which then acquires his own boat, and his executive office shouts, just before impact, "You've killed *us!*" Yes, as you wrote, this "whole thing just gets better and better." You will serve us even more well-marbled Trumpburger with its big side of crispy schadenfreude, all of it swimming in organic ketchup. But could I please have Mexican (real sugar) Coca-Cola?

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Ditto the thanks to Lucien. I watched Ingraham for a few minutes recently. I can never do that again.

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Hooo boy what a bunch of insanity

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It doesn't really matter but it sounded to me like he said option "D" not "B."

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Agree with both your posts (political defense and this one) And in the end Trump said go with rejecting the electoral votes from the 7states. Pence said so on FNC yesterday in which he (paraphrasing) began with it wasn't limited to a pause. What Pence is saying is consistent w/the Indictment whereas Lauro is as you stated, appealing to the court of public opinion.

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Pence actually took it a step further by saying they wanted him to discount votes or words to that effect. How important do you think it will be for Pence to have dropped out of the race by the time he testifies?

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Pence? Took him circa 900 days to locate his moral compass. A Profile in Cowardice.

Ans: In a roundabout manner. Not sure if Pence has qualified to be on the stage for the first debate. A week or so ago he hadn't. Not being a candidate would enhance his cred in front of a jury. My concern is how he would hold up to cross. Team Trump is bound to play dirty with him. And Pence ain't as squeaky clean as his image. Can't spend 4yrs in that Adm and not have accumulated some dirt.

A wee bit off subject, the prelim investigation needed to begin on the morning of 7Jan, 2021 when memories were fresh and clean. Point being so-called heroes don't wait for others to come to them. While the talking heads marvel that the witnesses will be predominantly Trumpkins they were witnesses long before a single charge was brought.

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founding

In law school, you're encouraged to make whatever argument sticks to the wall, even when the correct answer is: No Comment.

John Lauro must obviously have drunk the Trump Kool-aid because he goes blathering on about legal issues that have already been decided against his client. The judge knows that the defense has no legal arguments that hold water. There's no executive privilege in a coup d'etat, and all statements made by co-conspirators can be used against every other co-conspirator.

Legal advice offered by a co-conspirator is presumptively not reliable.

So much of the Government's case originates with the co-conspirators, verified by government witnesses.

One or more co-conspirators may decide to flip. John Eastman admitted that his scheme was illegal. The rest will rat out Trump.

The best that Lauro can do is try to work out a plea deal, but Trump won't go for it.

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Aug 4, 2023·edited Aug 4, 2023

I was curious about John Laurio’s résumé and was surprised that he was once an assistant U.S. Attorney in NY, a graduate of Georgetown Law School and was editor the Law Journal there. After reading his public remarks about Trump yesterday I predict Trump will fire him very soon.

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More excrement thrown against the wall to confuse and obfuscate the relatively simple case Smith has laid out. Lauro is depending upon jury nullification not deliberation.

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Lauro is another spin doctor and almost as obnoxious as his client. Want to take any bets as to how long it will take for Donald to spew crap out of his mouth that can be used against him?

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haha, Maybe Trump's playing the long game, setting himself up for a mistrial just before the elections.

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The judge can revert to trial rules that prioritize equity above the defense's attempts to sabotage the trial itself, but sure, the defense is desperate enough to risk even that.

It's Trumpland, Jake.

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You should start referring to the defendant as Mr. Trump, I heard this really gets under his skin.

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