Trump Demands Emergency Appendix Surgery
Today was the deadline Judge Chutkan set for Trump to object to any of the specific redactions Jack Smith had proposed in the appendix to his motion on immunity.
MINUTE ORDER as to DONALD J. TRUMP: The Clerk of the Court is directed to file on the public docket the Government’s “Motion for Leave to File Unredacted Motion Under Seal, and to File Redacted Motion on Public Docket,” ECF No. 245. It is hereby ORDERED that Defendant shall file under seal any objections to the proposed redactions in the Government’s Motion for Immunity Determinations by 12:00 PM on October 1, 2024, and shall file under seal any objections to the proposed redactions in the Appendix to that Motion by 5:00 PM on October 10, 2024. Signed by Judge Tanya S. Chutkan on 9/27/2024. (zcll)
Rather than object, Trump filed another whining complaint about the election. Predictably, he cited the ill-informed rants of Elie Honig and Jack Goldsmith.
There should be no further disclosures at this time of the so-called “evidence” that the Special Counsel’s Office has unlawfully cherry-picked and mischaracterized—during early voting in the 2024 Presidential election—in connection with an improper Presidential immunity filing that has no basis in criminal procedure or judicial precedent. President Trump maintains his objections, see ECF No. 248, based on overt and inappropriate election interference, violations of longstanding DOJ policy, the Office’s previous safety-related representations in this District and the Southern District of Florida, grand jury secrecy, and the influence on potential witnesses and jurors of prejudicial pretrial publicity—which predictably followed from the filing of the redacted “Motion for Immunity Determinations.”2
2 See, e.g., Ellie Honig, Jack Smith’s October Cheap Shot, N.Y. Magazine (Oct. 3, 2024), https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/jack-smith-october-surprise-donald-trump.html; see also Jack Goldsmith, Jack Smith Owes Us an Explanation, N.Y. Times (Oct. 9, 2024), https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/09/opinion/jack-smith-trump-biden.html.
Given that she again got no specific objections to the redactions Jack Smith opposed, Judge Chutkan approved the posting of the appendix (which must be about 1500 pages).
Defendant has now filed an opposition objecting to unsealing any part of the Appendix. ECF No. 259. As in his previous filing, he identifies no specific substantive objections to particular proposed redactions. Instead, Defendant “maintains his objections” to any “further disclosures at this time” for the same reasons he opposed unsealing the Motion, and he requests that “[i]f the Court decides to release additional information relating to the Office’s filing, in the Appendix or otherwise, . . . that the Court stay that determination for a reasonable period of time so that [he] can evaluate litigation options relating to the decision.” Id. at 1–2. For the same reasons set forth in its decision with respect to the Motion, ECF No. 251, the court determines that the Government’s proposed redactions to the Appendix are appropriate, and that Defendant’s blanket objections to further unsealing are without merit. As the court has stated previously, “Defendant’s concern with the political consequences of these proceedings” is not a cognizable legal prejudice. Id. at 4–5.
Accordingly, the Government’s Motion for Leave to File to Unredacted Motion Under Seal, and to File Redacted Motion on Public Docket, ECF No. 246, is GRANTED with respect to the Government’s proposed redacted version of the Appendix to the Government’s Motion for Immunity Determinations.
But she gave Trump a week to — as he described — “evaluate litigation options.”
The court will grant Defendant’s request for a stay so that he can “evaluate litigation options,” ECF No. 259 at 2, and hereby STAYS this decision for seven days.
I await the opinion of smart lawyers. But Judge Chutkan seems to be engaged in a bit of judicial rope-a-dope. The most obvious legal option Trump has is an Emergency Temporary Restraining Order against posting the appendix, but he has just foregone two opportunities to make specific objections. He would face an even bigger problem if he tried to get a writ of mandamus against Judge Chutkan, partly because he did have alternative recourse (specific objections) and partly because she’s literally doing what SCOTUS told her to do.
We shall see. For the moment, though, Trump seems poised to draw more attention to what was largely a restatement of what we already knew.
“This court is not concerned with the electoral schedule.”
–Judge Chutkan
Cry harder, Tiny. Go read your $3 Chinese bible.
This Court isn’t. The appelate court might be, and SCOTUS certainly will be.
TRO and Mandamus are normally useful to waste time and piss off the judge. But this isn’t normal. TFG will apply for both, get rejected for both, and come out none-the-worse for it. TFG’s primary legal motivation right now, aside from delay, is to create a thick file for appeal back to SCOTUS that contains as much nonsense and frivolous motions being rejected as possible, to give Roberts et alia an excuse to rule that TFG is immune from prosecution in this case. Roberts wants, and the TFG will generate, an excuse as bad as “Lower courts failed to consider the effect of release of the appendix on the Detroit Tigers’ playoff chances, resulting in prejudice against TFG in Michigan…” as a reason to delay proceedings or dismiss them.
Not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV, but my diagnosis is that Trump needs a flop-sweat-ectomy.
I have been observing that he is in need of a hair plug refresh. The thatching on the roof is getting a bit thin.
He’s changed makeup colors,. and the new one is worse than the old one.
I commented elsewhere that perhaps he has changed his makeup color because he hates being called the orange whatever negative you choose. Elsewhere I have seen unsubstantiated reports that his particular shade of orange has been sold out for months.
Those aren’t hair plugs. According to Michael Wolff, who saw first-hand, it’s Trump’s hair grown out long on the right side of his bald crown so he can layer it over the top and back and glue it in place with hair spray (I will never get this visual out of my head as long as I live).
My close Florida friend, however, just evacuated to Virginia in anticipation of H-Milton, went out and saw The Apprentice in the theater. (Don’t ask me why.)
“Spoiler alert,” she said, proceeding to describe a scene portraying some kind of gruesome scalpectomy performed on DJT’s head, to “get rid of his bald spot,” she explained. For real? I don’t know. If it was, all I can say is what I’ve said all along: Trump’s lies started with his appearance. If his fans knew what he really looks like, they’d mostly go home in shock.
Or an ectoplasmic sweat-flop? Definitely poltergeists in his attic
There’s a lot of crazy shit rattling around in his *attic*…
If you put your ear up to Trump’s, you can hear the ocean.
This time of year, the most likely culprit rattling around in his attic is a squirrel, or several.
Or maybe his brain is rattling around like a “BB” in boxcar. Bing bing bing bing.
“If you put your ear up to Trump’s …”
Now that’s an unpleasant mental image.
Exactly. As long as Trump can find the money to pay lawyers (no problem! And thank you, RNC, plus Trump donors) and lawyers to pay (much less certain, but he hasn’t run out of lawyers yet), he can keep this up for years to come. If the Supremes take offense to Judge Chutkan holding onto immunity decisions until they can all be appealed at once, he’s almost certain to die of old age before his legal journey ends – and that’s just on the 2020 election case.
It’s not good to complain about problems without suggesting solutions. The obvious solutions to suggest would be (1) limiting contributions to political figures and PACs, and (2) raising income taxes on upper incomes until the rich don’t have endless money to contribute to political figures and PACs.
My wife and I volunteer in Texas with folks whose lives have been impacted by incarceration. I suspect that all of the folks we’ve worked with, taken together, have spent less on defense attorneys than Trump has already gone through, and none of his criminal cases have even gone to trial yet.
Thank you and your wife for the work you do.
This happened at SCOTUS THIS week:
The Glossip arguments at SCOTUS were a two-hour reminder of our legal system’s failings When a prosecutor says that someone is on death row based on a lie, a just system would fix that. In our system, the outcome for Richard Glossip is still uncertain. https://www.lawdork.com/p/the-glossip-arguments-at-scotus-were
Chris Geidner 10/9/24
harpie, thank you for this. I read Project 2025 with a focus on two issues, addiction and the death penalty. Addiction, once a hallmark of election rhetoric, was absent aside from declarations about closing the border to fentanyl.
On the death penalty, the document is slightly more specific. And chilling. Its authors want to polish off those on federal death row ASAP. And Trump’s grandstanding about executing “drug dealers” is repeated without any such nuances as who constitutes a drug dealer. Is it a teenage kid who inadvertantly shares a pill laced with the wrong adulterant? We know that in some states it will be. Or the doctor whose patient accidentally overdoses?
Using the state to kill people does not strike me as “conservative.” But these people are not conservatives in the classical sense. They are radical reactionaries trying to hoover up as much power as they can before the growing majority takes it away from them, probably forever.
Oh FFS!
TY, EW.
Mr. Trump appears to be doing what litigants with a weak case at trial sometimes do, piss off the Court hoping for an appeal-ready mistake or at least an intemperate outburst.
The Court appears to me to be doing what courts do in such circumstances, granting a small stay in the event Mr. Trump plans to submit a real brief. As EW’s post points out, the Court has kind of put Mr. Trump in a box by giving him every opportunity. It also looks good at the appeals court level for the court below to have accommodated the “litigation options” evaluation time request (and many others).
Seems like Trump has also foregone establishing reasons for an appellate court to issue an Emergency TRO. And he can’t use reasons in an appellate brief he didn’t raise before Judge Chutkan. That may not stop John Roberts: he likes to invent non-existent rationales for doing things that aren’t even based on them. But it’s likely to lead the DC Circuit to tell Trump he’s made his legal bed, it’s now time for him to sleep in it.
Trump: DC Circuit! Help me!! I’ll be prejudiced if the stuff in that appendix that I didn’t argue should be redacted come out!!
DC Circuit: What is the injury?
Trump: Voters will know I tried to assassinate my VP!!!
~sighs~ If the journalists were doing their job the voters would have known that a couple years ago and a lot of other stuff besides.
True dat. That’s been my problem all along. Sure, Professor Wheeler has laid so much out for the interested to see.
But it’s too complicated. It isn’t that voters don’t or wouldn’t care, but they don’t know how to handle this much.
I have joked that it’s like a Russian novel, you need a list of characters at the front. Only that isn’t a joke.
Trial courts are usually unpersuaded by citations to magazine and newspaper OpEd columns. They have no legal standing, persuasive or otherwise. Judge Chutkan, in particular, is likely to ignore them.
It’s a red flag that Trump’s lawyers got nothing, or refuse to reveal what little they might have, and are wholly dependent on the Supreme Court to pull Trump’s ample ass out of the fire one more time. They might. “It’s not personal Sonny. It’s strictly business.”
But aren’t all of TFG’s “citations to magazine and newspaper OpEd columns (i.e. “the ill-informed rants of Elie Honig and Jack Goldsmith) and “whining complaint about the election” all part of the same cloth?
Marcy points out that “Rather than object, Trump filed another whining complaint about the election.”
So maybe this shite is targeted to “journal listers” and the voters they influence.
No. But when his lawyers do cite to traditional sources for legal arguments, they usually cite sources that do not support their claims, or support the opposite of what they claim.
Trump might be whining to his usual cast of political supporters, but I don’t think he’ll get much traction on this with them. And the only remaining court that might help him is the S.Ct. If he wants to get an Emergency TRO issued inside of a week, he’d have to skip the DC Circuit and go directly to the Supremes.
Thanks for this.
One more.
Try this on:
Trump’s M.O. is to always create a new scheme to bail out his current scheme (“He’s a real schemer”, as Mom would say).
I was thinking that he’s using this opportunity, not to fix his legal case, but rather to fix his election to solve his legal problem. You have convinced me that that is not much of what’s happening here.
OK. But perhaps this is all playing into his POST-election scheme? You know, the one to bailout his failed Election Scheme.
I say this becauseTrump schemes EVERYTHING & EVERYONE, and he’s likely using his lawyers in his third-order scheme, while they think that they are actually lawyering. (I get that the lawyers are scheming to get to the SC schemes, but I don’t believe that is enough scheming for Trump. He can only scheme because nothing he does gets him what he wants.
I’m sorry that this messes with the legal analysis, but I never trusted Trump AT ALL.
This just covers The Court Scheme, how it plays into The Election Scheme, which plays into The Post-Election Scheme. (Marcy’s much better at tracking all of these nested schemes than I am, so I realize that I’ll need to stay tuned for her Analysis, although am relying on your Legal Analysis of what’s going on with this case.)
Your point about ‘nested schemes’ is very intelligent and to the point. He’d prefer that nobody hear him say “I want the goblins* to take Mike Pence away right now,” but he also needs to have legal filings which complain about ‘election cheating’ so he can try for a coup.
* As in the movie “Labyrinth,” with David Bowie as the goblin king. Your kids and grandkids will love it if they haven’t seen it already.
Thanks for this.
My kids are too old for a movie with me, and my grandaughter, too young. Funnily, I played a board game with her over the weekend and my daughter leans over to whisper in my ear “Dad, let her win, we always do.” I answered back: “Not this time, baby.”. My grandaughter was a good sport about it, awarding me with her favorite hair ribbon, for the Win.
I LOVE David Bowie (The Man Who Fell to Earth).
Donnie (and his tame lawyers) keep filing the same motion, over and over, with variations in text, hoping for a different result.
Isn’t this the classical definition of insanity?
He does get Headlines with it, and repetition is key to effective Propoganda.
He’s throwing to the sidelines – just takin’ time off the clock so he can hopefully pardon himself.
I can’t believe what I’m witnessing. Thanks to you all.
It must bother the attorneys among you to observe these ongoing shenanigans.
My family and friends include lots of lawyers, so I’m guessing that they must find these things upsetting.
There are loopholes in every field which allow corruption, so I guess that it must be in the design (and not a bug, as they say).
That’s a great analogy!
So Trump has seven days to file an appeal. If he submits it on or around October 17th and the judge takes a week to read it/rule upon it, that brings us to… after October 20th, anyway, and well within the window of an October surprise. This is very poor strategy, because any news organization that decides they’ve made enough profit from the ‘cover the election as a horserace’ strategy can go big with the ‘shocking revelations’ strategy just before the elections.
Trump may have played the delay game to exactly the kind of bitter end he was trying to avoid.
It is my understanding he will need a stay from the appeals court within 7 days or the documents get released.
Whichever way you read it… not good news.
TO argue it’s an emergency he’ll have to file before that.
I’m not sure the specific date he files matters. This could end up in the ‘October Surprise’ date-range by any number of routes. Or it might not. I’m just saying that the timing on Trump’s attempt to delay is risky.
My suspicion is that Trump doesn’t currently have an ‘October Surprise’ lined up for Harris – I’m seeing too much panic from his camp to believe he’s got something he thinks can hurt her. (That doesn’t mean an October Surprise won’t happen, just that Trump won’t provide it.) I do suspect she’s got something, maybe multiple somethings, lined up for him – he and Vance have too much hanging out there not to be vulnerable.
(My fantasy is that Usha Vance files for divorce a couple days before Halloween – I can’t believe being married to that man is anything but horrific!)
She is like Melanoma. She is along for the ride, one way or another, maybe thinks she will be the First Lady sooner than later. Learning all about the grift meanwhile. She has lived a separate life before, maybe still does. Maybe thinks the greasy wheels for a Supreme Court appointment will come. Lots of options.
For those who, like me, have watched far too much of Lawfare’s “Trials and Tribulations”, this is very reminiscent of Quinta Jurecic’s “black hole” metaphor. Trump almost seems to be aiming to bring his own misdeeds right to the top of the news agenda at the worst possible time for his own election prospects.
Going back to dannyboy’s post about ‘schemes within schemes’ I think you might be on-target here, in that what seems mistimed to us right now won’t be mistimed if Trump wins the election, at which point he can say ‘you knew exactly who I was when you elected me.’
Trump should stop sourcing his submission drafts from the team that writes his Truth Socials.
Amazing work again, Marcy. It was almost like you were previewing Donald Trump’s filing this week when you posted specifically about Mr. Honig’s and Goldsmith’s errors.
Amazing stuff. I saw the Youtube video with attorney Litman. The sound was not that good for me, but I may try it again. But since I follow the blog, it wasn’t new to me.
Thanks.
Over at Kos, there’s a post quoting Mueller She Wrote:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/10/10/2276063/-For-Trump-freedom-means-getting-away-with-stuff-He-admits-Ellipse-speech-was-private-conduct
https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1844533360854696101?
Where he’s trying to use 1A for his Ellipse speech, and they’re pointing out that it doesn’t protect official actions.
Thanks PJ! Here she is on ThreadReader:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1844533360854696101.html
8:19 PM · Oct 10, 2024
I wouldn’t say that Judge Chutkan is engaged in judicial rope-a-dope with Trump. It’s more that she’s giving Trump rope with which to hang himself/his claims, and he keeps coming back and saying “Can I have some more?”
This.
Back in July, Trump celebrated his immunity victory at SCOTUS as if that was “game over,” but now he is learning that when SCOTUS chose not to dismiss the charges against him but instead sent it all back to Judge Chutkan and ordered her to sort out what was and was not immune, she was going to do exactly that.
The fact that she’s doing what SCOTUS told her to do will make a mockery of any appeal based on an out-of-control judge. The fact that Trump failed to offer any substantive objections when she gave him not one but two separate opportunities to do so will kill any appeal based on lack of due process.
Trump was too busy dancing in July to realize that he was still in the frying pan.
Trump has many problems. This one seems to be that his team is not doing any lawyering. They are politicking, to district and appeals courts that aren’t having what he’s having. All Trump has left is a Hail, Mary, to the very Catholic Supreme Court’s radical majority.
“Trump celebrated his immunity victory” and “Trump was too busy dancing in July to realize that he was still in the frying pan.”
Trump always claims EXONERATION (see: Russia Probe, NYC case, etc.)
He is bullshitting.
Off-topic, but awesome:
A clip from CNN of former President Obama, speaking at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania for Harris.
Obama lays into Trump for making up lies about hurricane relief efforts. I don’t remember anything like this in my lifetime — that a former President would need to criticize the behavior of another former President so publically and directly. Obama says what a lot of people must be feeling about Trump. The whole clip is amazing.
Obama’s entire remarks at that rally, can be watched on the youtube stream from PBS NewsHour.
Thank you for the information. Watched his speech on T.V. It was good to watch him. The speech had some great lines. Made me laugh.
Here is hoping Harris and Company win the election. Some of us north of the border really don’t want Trump to be elected again. What comes out of Trumps mouth is truly scary. The Judge certainly is handling the case well. Its nice to see her keep the whole thing on track.
FWIW
Jack Goldsmith makes an appearance on the Lawfare podcast
https://www.youtube.com/live/VCwV3Wd9IYc
In this portion
[32:44 -48:00]
He deals with DoJ norms etc
And ties himself in knots with various bits of sophistry about confusion in the DoJ regarding The Justice Manual, the Election Sensitivities Memoranda and in regard to competing statements within the IG Horowitz 2018 Report as to the articulation of the norms and the rules involved.
And “To many people in this country DoJ appears to be violating the rule, I am not saying that they are, but they appear to be because the rule is not clear because there are different versions of it”
[Facepalm !!!]
And then ultimately and remarkably he does not take issue with Chutkan’s stance, viz
“The judge made clear that it is utterly irrelevant to her, and it’s not binding on her”
But “DoJ has been very coy about not responding to Trump’s claims about the Manual mostly though a little bit about the 60 day rule , and the Judge said I am not bound by it, it’s not my problem” Adding “I didn’t read about it, I heard about it “ [FacePalm x2!!!!] “So I don’t see why DoJ should do anything about it unless they want to. But I hope they do” [FacePalm x3 !!!!!]
He then goes back to arguing in circles with himself.
This performance is deeply unimpressive, simply at the level of marshalling his arguments.
I’ve been nudging him pretty aggressively.
I hope that DOJ has an opportunity to say what I have: It’s already public that Smith consulted with other parts of DOJ. Heck, it’d be fun if they said, “we told Jack Smith there were actions he couldn’t take.”
Good on you for needling him.
I too hope they have an opportunity to make that point.
I must say if I was the SC I’d be tempted to package that video clip into a footnote to that point so the court/courts can see and hear Goldsmith chew on his own arguments
Would that be something along the lines of: “Jack Smith has done only the prosecutorial steps DoJ has approved for this period before the election. Stand back and stand by for further steps from the Special Counsel after November 5. It’ll be wild!” : )
Or even, “We specifically prohibited certain steps in advance of the election.”
Delicious as it would be to own the MAGAtardz immediately, care needs to be taken especially now. The complaints are a bit of a trap.
Unfortunately, had there been consultations which resulted in certain actions not being taken YET, (and I assume and believe there were) any direct confirmation that such was the case ( necessarily implying “Wait and see what’s coming down the pike to hit Trump when the election is over” ) would be an end run around the norm/policy (which ex hypothesi they have striven carefully to observe)
The most they should do IMHO is refer to the relevant paragraphs in the existing filings in an anodyne way without further comment.
Dann gurl, if he checks in for surgry, it’ll be yur fault for reckless headlining.
My first thought was “of course TFG will stage a medical emergency to slip out of the grasp of Lady Justice, and we’ll be stuck with President JD.”
And then I saw what you did there.
If TFG’s recent incoherent rants continue to be sanitized by journo-Listerine into English, the October Surprise will happen after many people have already voted.
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I know it’s petty of me, but I find the footnote attribution to “Ellie Honig”, rather than _Elie_ Honig, entertaining.
Unless the Supreme Court manufactures some new rights for Trump (something we can’t rule out, because they’ve done it before), there are no “litigation options” to evaluate here. The DOJ standards don’t have the force of law, but even if they did, what Smith is doing doesn’t violate them. He is not announcing or bringing anything new. He is just modifying his case based on the immunity decision by the Supremes and other developments in the case.
Nor is there any right, under the Sixth Amendment or any other part of the Constitution, to be free from court filings which describe the evidence against you. Prosecutors at both the state and federal level routinely discuss in detail the testimony and documents supporting their charges in motion papers. Your rights to challenge that evidence, with rare exceptions, are courtroom rights.
In the legal world as we’ve always understood it, there is flatly no right to an immediate appeal for this. My guess is that Trump will bluster about how Judge Chutkan is in the tank for the prosecution, say some unrelated outrageous thing to distract everyone, and wait for the news cycle to move on.
And that will be it – unless the Supreme Court magically discovers more previously unknown Trump rights in the Constitution.
Please correct me if I am wrong: A candidate for the Presidency doesn’t become President, even if he has won an election, until January 21, 2025. So even if Trump won, could still be tried after the election and lose his case in Court? The effect of this on the electorate could be huge.
I see scenarios of possible Amendment 25 action from Vance, or, a resignation, after a Pardon by himself, of Trump to seek treatment for declining health, eg., dementia. With
Trump, anything outlandish is possible for dramatic effect.
Of course, please disregard these imaginings as phantisizing by an artist. I am not a lawyer, but if I needed one, I would hire Peterr. I would hope for innocence by way of
either insanity or dementia, both possible due to old age(84) and, of course, because all artists are insane.
Trump’s team wants a Hail Mary from SCOTUS but Trump himself wants to win the daily news cycle, good or bad.
His ignorant proclamations and past misdeeds are just an opportunity to keep Kamala Harris out of the news. No news is bad news. Name recognition, the devil we know, is his strategy.
This is Trump’s set up of election interference by the DoJ — violating its own policy of not filing things within 60 days of an election that might influence it. Fire up the base for Election Day and after.
Shishkabob! I missed the previous article, so I will post my response here.
Shishkabob! I missed the previous article, so I will post my response here.
I just spent the weekend in Philly and would love to let people know how cool it was to see Independence Hall.
I had a cool exchange with a gorgeous black woman coming out of our hotel. She bid my husband and I a good morning, and I told her how cool it was to see Indepenence Hall. I said,” It’s amazing to think our country was born in that little room, Our Nation was born with men drinking and arguing politics.” Her response was priceless, “I know it’s weird to think things have not changed that much.”
It was way cool to come from the Burgh to Philly and have so much fun and relatability to locals.
My brother the lawyer was there, adding to the fun bmaz. He answered the Magna Carta question our guide posed.
My understanding of the Magna Carta, “No one is above The Law.” So I say TO OUR SUPREMEES, “kings and Presidents included,”
We then had lunch in the building my brother had worked. The Curtis building. I got a gorgeous pic of my nephew and his partner in front of “the fountain.” Wow, what good men can accomplish.”
I miss RBG! Ladies, thy will be done. Hat tip to alito.
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