(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . This week in court, with Donald Trump [1] ['Daily Kos Staff'] Date: 2023-10-27 With major cases underway in New York, Florida, Georgia, and Washington, D.C., keeping track of Donald Trump’s trips through the legal system can be harder than following a season of his Saudi-funded golf league. This week brought flips from major witnesses, Trump’s attorneys trying to get entire cases dismissed, Trump being fined for running his mouth, and a former Trump attorney going from telling others to “cry more” to literally bawling in court. Get out your scorecards. Here’s this week in court, with Donald Trump. New York fraud case: Gag orders, storming out, and a reluctant special guest The New York courtroom of Judge Arthur Engoron has seen most of the action this week as Trump once again appeared in person to fume over being called out for sticking a fraudulent value on his properties. Engoron has already found that Trump committed fraud. The trial going on now is all about what happens to Trump and his tangled network of over 500 shell companies. The most fun of the week likely came from Trump being in the courtroom to glare at his former attorney, Michael Cohen. As expected, Cohen backed up claims that Trump had inflated the value of his companies, saying that the reported values were listed as “whatever” Trump wanted. Trump’s attorneys spent much of their time with Cohen forcing him to recite the crimes involved in his previous conviction while Trump attacked Cohen both on social media and from the courtroom door. At the end of the day on Wednesday, Trump stormed out of the courtroom after Engoron shot down a ludicrous motion to dismiss the whole case. Trump came back on Thursday to a $10,000 fine after he once again broke the gag order prohibiting him from attacking members of the court staff with a statement about the court clerk on Wednesday afternoon. As Hunter reported, despite Trump’s complaints, he’s being allowed to get away with behavior that would land any other defendant in jail. So long as the worst he faces is a minor fine, Trump is going to keep on breaking gag orders, because the hate he stirs up among his supporters nets him a lot more cash than Engoron is taking away. At the end of the week, the trial got the promise of another big-name guest star when Engoron ruled that New York Attorney General Letitia James can call Ivanka Trump to the stand. Now court observers can ponder what Trump’s oldest daughter will admit, how Trump will respond, and whether he’ll head for social media to attack Ivanka over her testimony or make more extremely creepy comments about her body. Flip, flip, flip as Georgia co-defendants line up to testify against Trump The closer Trump’s co-defendants in the Georgia election fraud case come to appearing in court, the more ready they have been to talk. Last week saw delusional former Trump attorney Sidney Powell scramble for the lifeboat, followed swiftly by enthusiastic legal volunteer Kenneth Chesebro. On Monday it was former “elite strike force team” member Jenna Ellis who went from telling Trump’s opponents to cry more to doing some crying of her own. Ellis sniffling her way through a confession that amounted to blaming “lawyers with many more years of experience” was a big comedown for someone who insists on being called “doctor” and who bills herself as a constitutional scholar. This is probably the most humiliating thing to happen to Ellis since she was fired from a job in traffic court, then hired back after a hearing found she was “performing the duties to the best of her ability.” But the big news of the week has to be an ABC News report that former White House chief of staff Mark Meadow flipped. Since then, other sources have confirmed that Meadows has been cooperating with special counsel Jack Smith. Trump followed up the news with brazen witness interference that so far hasn’t earned him so much as the shake of a finger. The big question in Georgia at the moment is simply: Who’s next? It’s probably too late for Rudy Giuliani to offer up what he knows in exchange for any kind of deal. But maybe Trump will go to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and blame it all on Giuliani. After all, it worked for Ellis. Trump tries to blow up D.C. case, but only digs in deeper In the D.C. District Court of Judge Tanya Chutkan, Trump attorneys greeted a deadline with a quartet of motions attempting to just call the whole thing off. Those motions boil down to: Trump believed he won, so anything he did was okay; Smith and his team didn’t explain Trump’s crimes in enough detail, so it doesn’t count; Trump didn’t actually lead his troops into the Capitol on Jan. 6, so nothing that happened that day should be part of the case; and Smith is being mean to Trump personally, so there. None of these motions are likely to get Trump the dismissal he wants. A couple of them are likely to get some severe pushback from Chutkan. But Trump is mostly playing for time, and by issuing a raft of last-minute motions at every opportunity, his attorneys are doing their best to slow-walk an already slow walk toward trial. The classified documents case should be the most active, but … If any case had a genuinely shocking revelation over the past week, it was learning how Trump shared details about American nuclear submarines with Australian Mar-a-Lago member Anthony Pratt. As Hunter rightly points out, this new information puts the case happening in West Palm Beach, Florida, solidly in the realm of espionage, and there is every appearance that Trump traded critical military defense secrets in exchange for direct or indirect payment from Pratt. That includes Pratt's offer to provide Trump with essentially unlimited campaign funds. So what is Judge Aileen Cannon doing about this? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It’s been two weeks since Cannon bothered to hold any kind of hearing or make any announcement on the case, and the last action she took was complaining that prosecutors were “wasting the court’s time” by raising an issue of possible conflict of interest. Just place a long line of “Zzzzzzzs” under activities in Cannon’s courtroom and it will capture the spirit perfectly. How long can Cannon snooze before the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals decides she’s stalled this case enough? Probably long enough to ensure that this case, which was filed first, is the absolute last to face a jury. No camera for you Laura Clawson reports on what might be the best or the worst court news of the week. A federal Advisory Committee on Criminal Rules has determined that Trump’s two federal cases cannot be televised. However, that won’t keep Daily Kos from liveblogging these events, and there is still the chance that Trump will need to spruce up his spray tan for the trial in Fulton County, Georgia. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/27/2202010/-This-week-in-court-with-Donald-Trump?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=top_news_slot_2&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/