Wednesday, June 14, 2023

“It’s Time To Call It A Day” 🎶

Isn’t it just politics in another arena? Because that’s the only way they know to cover it. And give up show business? A criminal complaint or indictment is not required to prove the charges alleged; just give enough evidence to show the allegations are well grounded.  Under Brady the prosecution has to turn over to the defendant all exculpatory information. But the prosecution is never required to provide all the evidence it has, even at trial. The evidence alleged in the indictment is usually understood by the defense to be the tip of the iceberg. Where it isn’t, the prosecution is probably in deep, deep trouble, having given the game away in the first filing.

And calling Trump a “pack rat” is more objective than calling him a “rat.” Discuss.
Yeah, it’s not working. This is, IOW, the quality of reasoning that Biden is a doddering old man drooling in his oatmeal, and yet he also outmaneuvered the House GOP and buffaloed McCarthy & Co.

Hang on I want to chase this thread down:
The DOJ arguably has evidence (through Corcoran) that Trump said the documents were his. His because he’s a baby and wants everything to be his? Or his because they have value? I tend towards the former explanation, but it doesn’t rule out the latter. Both and a little bit of neither, probably. He knows the value of things, and what he wants is his because he wants it.

Either way, it’s still not a defense.
And this sounds familiar, too: Is Trump winning by playing this as reality TeeVee?
First of all, and not to begrudge the power of public relations (a career I spent nearly 20 years in), a PR strategy isn’t a legal strategy. The bizarre arguments outside the courthouse made by Alina Habba, Trump’s lawyer and seemingly chief Miami mouthpiece, wouldn’t fly in an actual courtroom. And for all of Trump’s bluster, veteran prosecutor Andrew Weissmann told Lawrence O'Donnell that Trump's Bedminster, New Jersey speech was a “straight-out confession” and confirmed that what Trump says on the campaign trail can be admissible in court.
This is a good point, too:
Second of all, quantity of public engagement doesn’t equal quality. Nor does it win elections. If it did, Trump would still be president. He dominated the media coverage back in 2020, to the point that prominent Democrats were wringing their hands about Joe Biden’s so-called pandemic basement strategy. 
Indeed, my former White House colleagues see it differently. From their perspective, Biden won in part because he didn’t dive into the fray of the PR war in 2020. And their bet is that the American people are still smarter than that. The president’s own view is that one of the core promises he made in 2020 was that he would respect and protect the independence of the Justice Department. In keeping with that promise, his team is basically forbidden from commenting on the criminal indictment. (That’s no easy feat, as Biden’s joke about notes at a State Department event Tuesday made clear.) 
There is some recent polling to suggest Team Biden’s bet on the public is right. A recent ABC News poll showed 61% of Americans found the charges either very or somewhat serious. And a recent CBS News poll found 69% of voters thought his hoarding of documents about military plans and nuclear systems was a national security risk.
I’ll adopt the apocalyptic language I criticize to say: if Team Biden’s bet isn’t right, the American experiment is well over. And it isn’t.
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