Judge Mark Scarsi Refuses Accommodations That Trump’s Judges Have Granted
While the judges in former President Trump’s federal prosecutions have been issuing reasonable (in Tanya Chutkan’s case) and unreasonable (in Aileen Cannon’s case) extensions in pretrial deadlines, the judge in Hunter Biden’s Los Angeles case seems intent on keeping a politically damaging trial scheduled for the middle of campaign season, June 20.
Last week, Abbe Lowell requested two accommodations in the pretrial schedule in Los Angeles: first, that he be permitted to hold off filing the four (actually, three) filings fully briefed before Judge Maryellen Noreika that he will also file in Los Angeles: a motion to dismiss based on immunity under the diversion agreement, a selective and vindictive prosecution claim, and a claim that David Weiss was improperly appointed. Lowell also mentioned the constitutional challenge to the gun charge, but that won’t be filed in Los Angeles. At the initial appearance, Lowell said instead there would be one based on “the actions of the IRS agents that were involved.”
Here’s an updated version of my Howard Johnsons-colored table showing how all these cases interrelate, including the filings we should expect in both federal cases; I’ve put an updated version of the eight cases Lowell is juggling below (and have started tracking them here).
Lowell did not mention the as-yet unfiled motion to suppress the laptop he said he’d file in Delaware on January 30. I’ll come back to that.
In addition, Lowell requested a 3-week extension on the initial filing deadline, from February 20 to March 12, for the motions that will be unique to Los Angeles; he did not mention a filing about the IRS agents, but did mention motions on the Statute of Limitations (presumably affecting just the 2016 tax year), venue (possibly affecting both the 2016 and 2017 year), and multiplicity. To justify that, he cited a death in the family of one of the lawyers working on these filings, as well as several other deadlines pending:
- Responses to motions to dismiss in the Garrett Ziegler and Rudy Giuliani lawsuits at the end of the month
- A February 22 hearing in the John Paul Mac Isaac suit and Hunter’s countersuit
- Hunter’s February 28 impeachment deposition in the House
Judge Scarsi denied the motion with no comment.
To be sure, I’m not remotely surprised Scarsi denied Lowell’s motion to hold off on the identical motions already filed in Delaware.
At the initial appearance on January 11, Scarsi raised those filings himself.
[T]he Court has gone through and actually read what’s been filed so far in Delaware. So the Court wanted to come up to speed on the issues [at] play here. And so, we’ve got — at least we’re up to speed in what’s been filed so far.
The parties have spent, it looks like, a lot of time, or will spend time briefing issues in Delaware. And I think that should help us expedite matters here, because it wouldn’t surprise me if some of the same issues raised in Delaware are raised in this Court. In fact, the Court anticipates that happening.
Scarsi even ordered the parties to cut the 70-page filings submitted before Judge Noreika down to something like 20, double his normal limit of 10 pages (the parties have yet to file a stipulation showing that’s what they’ve agreed on).
[T]he parties know from reading the Court’s standing order, the Court’s standing order in criminal contemplates that the page limitations on motions is 10 pages. Motions and oppositions, and replies not necessary.
Now the Court is willing to grant the parties a little leeway here, to exceed the page limits, you know, contemplating doubling them, at most.
Scarsi even recognized that the diversion filing might trigger an interlocutory appeal, because he warned Lowell that the precedent (which he named) governing interlocutory appeals in the Ninth Circuit is fairly limited and directed him to address that issue in his initial filing.
At the time, Lowell knew the briefing deadline before Judge Noreika, and so could have requested to hold those three identical motions at that point.
Plus, it’s not the case that the motions will be identical. The diversion filing in Los Angeles will and always would have been mostly a place-holder; if Noreika rules against Hunter regarding the diversion agreement, then there would be no basis to make the same claim in Los Angeles absent an interlocutory appeal in Delaware. It’s only if she rules for Hunter that Lowell’s claim that the immunity in the gun diversion extends to the tax case would come into play.
The selective and vindictive prosecution filing in Los Angeles will have to swap the comparators showing how no non-violent person in recovery from addiction has been charged with the same gun charges in Delaware with comparators showing that no one who has paid their taxes, much less someone who — Abbe Lowell claims but has not yet shown proof — overstated their income has been criminally charged, with a mention of Roger Stone’s more lenient treatment as well. Lowell mentioned the two tax laws criminally prohibiting the kind of pressure that Trump exercised in Hunter’s case only in passing; they would seem to be far more central here. And given the fact that the US Attorney for Los Angeles, Martin Estrada, was among those threatened as a result of the political pressure on this case, it would seem useful for Lowell to raise the threats elicited by those demanding this prosecution.
Even the Special Counsel challenge could be tweaked given Weiss’ admission to Congress that he has never been subject to the kind of oversight from political appointees that Morrison v. Olson requires. Weiss was already functioning as a Special Counsel before demanding appointment as such, presumably to get the opportunity to write another political hit piece targeting a Biden man (or men).
I’m not even that surprised that Scarsi refused to budge on the schedule. At the initial appearance he not only warned that he likes to move quickly,
Again, if we’re going to move this case either forward or expeditiously, and efficiently — and that’s what this Court likes to do. We like to move things along, because I think it’s better for all the parties and we don’t have things linger.
But Scarsi also suggested that because he set a schedule first, Judge Noreika should now have to accommodate his schedule.
So what I’m going to do is, I’ll go ahead and issue an order with those dates. That will hopefully prevent conflict with Delaware, because this order will be in place and the Court in Delaware will likely be aware of it.
So Lowell was on notice of all of that.
There’s one thing Lowell wasn’t on notice of on January 11, and his request for a delay may be about something other than the motions to dismiss.
Delaware Superior Court Judge Robert Robinson only set the February 22 hearing in the John Paul Mac Isaac lawsuit and Hunter’s counterclaim on February 1 at 8:52 AM. Per Lowell’s declaration and email record, 38 minutes after Robinson set that hearing, Lowell first reached out to prosecutors about this delay (in their dickish fashion, they blew him off for six days).
If Robinson were to rule in Hunter’s favor — if he were to rule that, under Delaware law, JPMI didn’t own Hunter’s laptop when he first offered it up to the FBI on either October 9 (JPMI’s version) or October 16, 2019 (FBI’s), less than a year after someone who may or may not be Hunter Biden dropped it off, if he were to rule that JPMI violated his own promise to protect Hunter Biden’s data, not least by snooping through Hunter’s data well before even he, JPMI, claimed his intake form gave him ownership of the laptop — then it might have fairly dramatic impact on any motion to suppress the laptop.
That’s true, not least, because (if you can believe JPMI and it’s not clear you can), after JPMI sent a hard drive with the data across state lines to his father, the FBI told his father that, “You may be in possession of something that you don’t own.” After which JPMI and his father sent that same data across even more state lines, including to Congress and Rudy Giuliani. And yet rather than opening a criminal investigation into JPMI for interstate trafficking of the potentially stolen data of the former Vice President’s son, David Weiss instead decided to build an entire case around that data.
Worse still, JPMI’s public claims about what he saw in the data are obviously false: of particular note, there are no known emails substantiating his claims that the laptop showed, “information about Ihor Kolomoyskyi and Mykola Zlochevsky, and their involvement in using Hunter and Devon to protect the billions they embezzled from the IMF.” The crime of which JPMI told the FBI they’d find evidence on the laptop was entirely made up — and made up to create a video that might serve Trump’s impeachment defense.
Lowell’s motion to compel — submitted in Delaware two days before that hearing was set — describes receiving “The Mac Shop files.” It doesn’t describe receiving the initial FBI legal review that concluded JPMI and his father likely didn’t own that laptop or data. It doesn’t describe receiving the 302s documenting the FBI’s interactions with JPMI (302s that were also not shown to case agents who might have to testify at trial). If warnings that JPMI didn’t own this data really exist, and if prosecutors are withholding it to cover up real problems with their reliance on the laptop, it would be fairly important evidence.
A favorable Delaware ruling would likely have more impact on the Los Angeles case than anything but a ruling in favor of Hunter’s diversion argument in Delaware, because it would show that David Weiss chose to use poison fruit to investigate Hunter Biden rather than pursue a case of interstate data theft. The SDNY case against those who stole Ashley Biden’s diary and a thumb drive with tax records and photographs on it and trafficked them across state lines shows that such things can be prosecuted.
At the initial hearing, Scarsi told Lowell that the, “February 20th date is for motions that you know now that you intend to bring.” When Lowell said he’d file a motion to suppress the laptop and everything else in Delaware, he pointed to several other things — such as reliance on witness testimony from a Los Angeles grand jury post-indictment and the filing for the warrant itself post-indictment — to get as a basis to suppress. Lowell still hasn’t mentioned a motion to suppress the laptop to Scarsi. He’s likely now trying to determine whether he can and should wait on a ruling from Robinson before he files such a suppression motion to Scarsi, who has promised to rule expeditiously.
It’s not surprising that Scarsi denied Lowell’s request (though it is a telling contrast to the treatment Trump is getting).
But it is also the case that these moving parts really may affect the case before him.
Update: Abbe Lowell has filed a status report in the Delaware case in case Judge Noreika decides she doesn’t want Scarsi to preempt her.
1) Delaware Gun Case (Maryellen Noreika)
September 14: Indictment
October 3: Arraignment
October 12: First Discovery Production (350 pages focused on gun case), including iCloud data and “a copy of data from the defendant’s laptop”
October 13: Motion to Continue
October 19: Order resetting deadlines
November 1: Second Discovery Production (700,000 pages on tax charges — no mention of FARA investigations)
November 15: Hunter subpoena request
December 4: Weiss subpoena response
December 11: Motions due
- Selective and vindictive
- Immunity from Diversion
- Constitutional
- Special Counsel Appointment
- Discovery
December 12: Hunter subpoena reply
January 9: Third Discovery Production (500,000 pages focused on tax case)
January 16: Responses due
- Selective and Vindictive
- Immunity from Diversion
- Constitutional
- Special Counsel Appointment
- Discovery
January 30: Replies due
- Reply, Selective Prosecution
- Reply, Diversion Agreement
- Reply, 2A Constitional
- Reply, SCO Appointment
- Reply, Discovery
January 30: Motion to compel
2) Los Angeles Tax Case (Mark Scarsi)
Hunter was indicted on December 7 and made a combined arraignment/first appearance on January 11. At that hearing, Judge Mark Scarsi set an aggressive (and, from the sounds of things, strict) schedule as follows:
February 20, 2024: Motions due
March 11: Response due
March 18: Replies due
March 27 at 1:00 p.m.: Pretrial motion hearing
April 17: Orders resolving pretrial motions.
June 3 at 1:00 p.m.: Status conference
June 20: Trial
3) House Dick Pic Sniffing (James Comer and Jim Jordan)
November 8: James Comer sends a pre-impeachment vote subpoena
November 28: Lowell accepts Comer’s offer for Hunter to testify publicly
December 6: Comer and Jordan threaten contempt
December 13: Pre-impeachment deposition scheduled; Hunter gives a press conference and states his data has been “stolen” from him
December 13: Impeachment vote authorizing subpoena
January 10: Oversight and Judiciary refer Hunter for contempt
January 12: Lowell invites Comer and Jordan to send another subpoena, now that they have the authority to enforce it
January 14: Jordan and Comer take Lowell up on his invitation
February 28: Deposition
4) IRS Lawsuit (Tim Kelly)
September 18: Privacy Act lawsuit
November 13: DOJ asks for extension to January 16
January 16: DOJ files motion for partial dismissal
January 23: Joint motion to continue
January 30: Original deadline for Hunter response
February 5: Amended complaint
February 9: DOJ asks for delay for response from February 20 to February 27
5) John Paul Mac Isaac’s Suit and Hunter’s Countersuit (Robert Robinson)
Last summer, John Paul Mac Isaac and Hunter both sat for depositions, on May 31 and June 29, respectively.
Last fall, Hunter Biden subpoenaed people like Rudy Giuliani, Robert Costello, Steve Bannon, Yaacov Apelbaum (who made a copy of the contents of the laptop), Tore Maras (who has described adding things to the laptop). In November, Hunter also served a subpoena on Apple.
On January 4, the parties to John Paul Mac Isaac’s suit and countersuit filed to have their pending motions decided by a judge. The media defendants — CNN and Politico — are filing to dismiss. Hunter and JPMI filed competing motions for summary judgment.
And Hunter is filing to quash a bunch of subpoenas, initially 14, to Hunter’s parents, uncle, ex-wife, former business partners, and several people with his father, like Ron Klain and Mike Morell. Though after that, JPMI attempted to subpoena Hunter’s daughters.
Since then, Judge Robinson stayed John Paul Mac Isaac’s subpoenas and scheduled hearings in the Motions to Dismiss (from CNN and Politico) and Motions for Summary Judgement (from Hunter and JPMI) for February 22.
6 AND 7) Hacking lawsuits against Garrett Ziegler and Rudy Giuliani (Hernan Vera)
[RECAP Ziegler docket; RECAP Rudy docket]
September 13: Complaint against Ziegler
September 26: Complaint against Rudy and Costello; noticing Ziegler suit as related case
November 15: Ziegler gets 30 day extension
December 1: Costello gets 30 day extension
December 7: After swapping attorneys, Ziegler gets extension to December 21
December 21: Ziegler motion to dismiss and request for judicial notice (heavily reliant on JPMI suit)
January 17: Costello motion to dismiss with Rudy declaration that makes no notice of his fruit and nuts payments relating to Hunter Biden
January 22: Lowell successfully requests to harmonize MTD hearing for both hacking lawsuits
February 8: Rescheduled date for hearing on motion to dismiss
February 22: Rescheduled date for hearing on motion to dismiss
End of February: Response to motions to dismiss due
March 21: Joined date for hearing on motion to dismiss
8) Defamation against Patrick Byrne (Stephen Wilson)
November 8: Complaint
January 16: After swapping attorneys, Byrne asks for 30 day extension
February 6: Rescheduled response date
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Thank you.
Who’s paying Lowell’s legal bills?
How is that germane to this piece?
Who’s paying Mac’s legal bills?
Who’s on first.
What’s on second, and as PeteT0323 alluded to, I don’t know is on third.
Marcy’s post is the comparison of judges and actions in Trump’s and Hunter’s cases.
To me the comparison of who’s paying their legal bills is important as well.
Trump’s bills are being paid by PACs with small donations and some large donors who expect a ROI.
Hunter’s bills, I imagine Hunter but those bills must be huge, not as huge as Trump’s and so there’s no expected ROI?
The payment has nothing to do with the fact that Trump is succeeded at gaming the system and Hunter, in LA at least, will have less success.
I have my suspicions about who is paying Lowell right now. My GUESS is, tho, that ultimately Robert Costello and Patrick Byrne will be paying for this defense, plus whoever backed JPMI.
I love the “ultimately”.
I hope you are right.
I thought the bills were being paid by the same guy that paid his tax bill.
Without knowing Hunter’s current financial situation, I would have to logically assume it is Hunter. Nor is that anybody’s business.
He’s the President’s son, who, as his business partner said under oath, sold the illusion of access to his father for significant income in Ukraine and China. Oh, and his “sugar daddy” Kevin Morris has already loaned a total of $6.5M to Hunter, even though since Morris has started lending him money, Hunter has seemingly had no income to actually pay Morris, except for his “art”. For all those reasons, it’s absolutely our business who’s paying the bills for what is undoubtedly a very expensive defense.
So much for being a private citizen.
Either he’s the son of a vice-president or the president who should have had more government resources preventing foreign adversaries from hacking him, or he’s a private citizen.
Don’t think your history here hasn’t already revealed your disaffection for all things Biden, btw.
Wow. $6.5 million! The sky is falling, except the angst seems a tad one-sided.
That’s pocket change in the world of Trump’s grift. Yet, no Republican asks – or permits others to ask – where the tens of millions Trump has spent on lawyers came from, where it went, or how much Trump’s carrying charges were. Nor did we hear anything from them about the hundreds of millions Trump made off being president. And where was the wailing about Jared Kushner and his $2.0 billion pot of Saudi gold, or what the Saudis received in exchange. Nada. Btw, the HB art thing is a canard.
Republicans will abuse the facts regarding any Biden disclosure, truth be damned. Minimal legal compliance is their best bet.
Was his father in office when he sold that illusion? With all the hot air that Trump was spewing at that time, apparently you are the only one that knew who the President of the United States was in that time frame, which includes foreigners.
In the business world, that’s known as networking and has been going on since before the stone age.
Kenster:
Can you explain how Devon Archer testified Hunter sold the illusion of access to China? When you come here and vomit up talking points, please try to run them through some kind of logical assessment first.
Who’s paying Giuliani’s?
Not trump per Rudy’s bankruptcy filing
I dunno who is paying Lowe’s or Giuliani’s legal bills.
I do know we can help pay some of the cost Dr Wheeler incurs doing this – cannot be found elsewhere journalistic deep dive – work. The link is over there in the upper right hand corner (your right) of the page.
TY in advance.
Excellent reminder.
Done.
Thank for that and my first good chuckle of the day.
We’re all paying for Hur. For the prosecutions. For the IRS agents who breached a requirement of discretion.
^^ this.
(And that’s just the obvious money. Plus what cost, bottom-line accountable or not, of all the damage wrought by this farrago on the fabric of society…?)
I wonder what happened in response to the letter Abbe Lowell submitted to the DOJ on Feb 1, 2023?
This was the request
“The Government Should Investigate the Unauthorized Access, Copying and Dissemination of Mr. Biden’s Personal Information”
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23595947-letter-to-ns-aag-re-request-for-investigation
A companion letter was also submitted-
“to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York. This letter and another being sent today [Feb 1, 2023] to state authorities in Delaware are intended to direct the requests to the offices with appropriate national or local jurisdiction.”
I do not recall any investigation by the DOJ or SDNY or state authorities in Delaware in response to these letters.
Good question. I looked thru the timeline and don’t see it but it matters in the dic sniffing and I think almost everything. Maybe I missed it.
I think SOL on the state charges has run out. Hunter should have filed a complaint as soon as his personal data was plastered all over that tabloid. But since he was still in recovery phase, and his lawyers at the time were recommending he not fight back and that it would all go away. It was almost too late for Lowell (who came on board later) to go after the civil component.
If it’s doable, it would be very helpful if the chart could also indicate the name of the judges and their state. It would be a concise aid to memory.
Also, typo in list of cases, last graf of:
5) JOHN PAUL MAC ISAAC’S SUIT AND COUNTERSUIT
Judge Robinson?
For you! Of course!
Actually a great suggestion.
Thanks for the proofread. I really struggle with these Robert names.
Thanks, Marcy. Love you!
use initial of middle names ?
use district initials ?
Why aren’t you in the New York Times or The Atlantic with this stuff? What you have done over the years here at Empty Wheel is so great. It doesn’t promulgate to the world, not nearly enough. It’s hard to understand. I must not be the only one who thinks about this. It’s frustrating. I don’t mean to criticize how you choose to publish. Maybe the other journalists are silo’d, not from the information, because everyone on the case comes here. You have 325,000 Twitter followers. Other journalists don’t lack the motivation. Maybe it’s because it’s your scoops. A scoop is a kind of claim.
I don’t understand the professional motivation of the big publishers. I think they should have a way to feature your reporting. They should rip you off. I am a really good reader in my job, scientific QC of clinical study reports and protocols, but you kick my ass as a reader. That is the truth, but maybe it’s just that the fact-set goes beyond peoples’ verbal reasoning when the nodal points go past Miller’s Law, or something, so you have to have a disciplined way of keeping track as a reader, like your legally trained readers here.
Maybe this could be solved with a documentary! Maybe a journalistically sound documentary would be watched by millions if Jonathan Frakes hosted it, and all of the dramatic re-enactments are over the top Nixonesque, absurd grotesques like Black Mirror. Is it Fact or Fiction? It Was Facts! Then a few interviews, lists of relevant court documents showing quotes or mentions, an interview or two of fact witnesses. You could look at 1000 headshots and never find Bill Barr. Patton Oswalt looks like Bill Barr! They would make it in Atlanta. If Patton Oswalt is in it all the big actors will want to be in it to party with him during the election at the Claremont.
Is it the scandalous material on Hunter Biden’s Laptop or is Hunter Biden’s Laptop the scandal? It’s a real scandal, but that’s not the one in the News, because what makes a scandal is the organized capital devoted to its social production. The advantage the GOP has built for themselves is an apparatus that . I wouldn’t mind seeing you cash in. Everyone knows you got into this work to do good, so if you wind up rocking it like Barack Obama, it is just because you are one of the most brilliant and hardest working people in the world.
Who’s qualified to be her editor? Especially at those institutions.
It’s a fair question, but everyone needs an excellent editor.
I too am amazed at Dr. Wheeler’s ability to read through so much material, process it, and produce such clear explanations. Her tables and charts are SO good, I get almost giddy when I see them. I’m a technical writer who really appreciates such conciseness.
I worked in technical writing for a number of years. One of my regrets of grad school is they made me teach the glamor teaching assignments instead of Comp — I was hoping I could teach tables charts!
My writing style was pretty byzantine before I took my first college technical writing course, which provided a new set of tools and a fresh outlook. No one should have to follow instructions written in the flowery prose.
I truly pity the teachers and profs that had to read the gaudy, filigreed crap I was cranking out before that wakeup call.
Instruction manuals: one of the few places where Hemingway’s style should still be used.
Omit needless words! (Thank you, Strunk and White.)
How can I say it shorter, better, smarter? (Thank you, Mr. B, my tenth grade English teacher.)
Strunk & White never read a Nick Adams story; beyond annoying…
The style does not suit contemporary literary tastes. It seems essential for instruction manuals and possible for technical writing.
So my own perhaps amusing story is that as a creative writing/poli-sci major seeking an additional minor in philosophy, I kept near-failing my legal writing courses as an undergrad.
It wasn’t until actual law school-required legal writing that I figured it out.
It is indeed a skill to say lots with less, and to be clear and organized in doing so (unlike this my ramble …).
I love this place!
“Why aren’t you in the New York Times or The Atlantic with this stuff?”
Why would they try to hire somebody who has been kicking their ass for their gross failures for years? Should ask why Marcy needs to continue to kick their butts instead of fixing their journalistic failures.
Einstein’s Theory of Relativity kicked every physicist’s ass, and it was hard for the general public to understand all that math, but scientific institutions have mechanisms for the social production of scientific knowledge. There are institutions for dissemination and review. If those aren’t there, it isn’t science in the way modern people understand it. I think if journalism isn’t affecting things in real time it’s history.
The experience of the 2016 campaign, the Mueller Report, the Durham Report, Hunter Biden Laptop scandal, the the Hur Report, I think a kind of social change has occurred where journalism is longer capable of promulgating the truth. Journalism is being superseded by other forms of cultural production which have taken on its mask. We no longer have the blogs, and Twitter is changing into a mechanism for conditioning and attitude shift on behalf of Elon Musk.
In Orwellian fascism, the production of News begins in triggered real world events such as a riot or the revelation of kompromat like Hillary’s server of Hunter Biden’s Laptop. In the migrant flights, the kids in cages, the drownings in the Rio Grande, we can see the GOP has begun using violent spectacles as news propaganda. Atrocities have an expression dimension. You call a government that makes propaganda like that a terror state, so there is no way Trump can win.
I think Marcy sees her role to be a journalist, not a historian. Her work will get picked over forever by historians. Journalism is political in the moment. If Reagan were found to be negotiating with Iran in real time, the scandal today would still be Billy Carter in Libya. They would have kept that scandal in reserve somewhere in Koch’s organization, as cover until the Reagan campaign was done negotiating, and they would have had a plan for impeaching Jimmy over it.
Tighten up your prose. You’re running far too long to make your points, though I grant you BRUCE F COLE has taken the prize last thread for verbosity.
Thanks, Rayne. I can sense it in myself I’m building towards a mania. I’m going back to reading for a while. I appreciate everyone here a great deal.
I F Stone, Jack Anderson, Sy Hersh, and many others — their glory-day era is past even though we still need them. Many others, hard to recall names, the Alsops?Lippman? Many were literally or figuratively in bed with their subjects.
I think we all know why Marcy is not in those publications and it’s been the case for a very long time and will continue until the USA eschews its generally accepted and traded upon ignorance.
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'” -Isaac Asimov
EmptyWheel does get a shoutout from Digby – beginning and end of the item, a link: https://digbysblog.net/2024/02/10/hurs-hit-job/
Other journalists, they meet their deadlines. With whatever, in on time where shallow tracking what Hur wrote is – – – – easy.
Marcy is also referenced by Kevin Drum @jabberwocking.com in a discussion of the deceptions contained in the Hur Report.
You could have said that with fewer words. The NYT, like the WSJ, has an agenda. The news sometimes fits into. They have anti-agenda, too. Since they are part of the power structure, they rarely confront power with the truth. Marcy doesn’t fit that bill; she excoriates it. If the NYT had to choose between David Brooks and Marcy Wheeler, it would choose Brooks. He nibbles at the right, while always making it feel confident that its status, power, and priorities are preordained. It employs a basket of Brookses.
Brooks nibbles at the right? Hell, he’s rawdogging it with the right behind his trophy wife’s back in his typical Brooks-ian passive-aggressive fashion.
I’d really love to shove one of those overpriced airport cocktails he buys up his cloaca. Maybe then he’d be able to get in touch with reality.
Excuse me, but my most overpriced airport cocktail was a cup of Dunkin’ coffee. Oh, wait…
Let me speak to your trophy wife LOL
Rayne, sometimes, like BMAZ, I think that you might be overly harsh…. But the hammer on Brooks? The cream in my coffee!
IANAL, but I am a biologist, and I nearly spit my coffee about shoving drinks up his cloaca! Female mammals are the only vertebrates that have discrete openings for the digestive, excretory, and reproductive systems (male mammals have 2) while all other vertebrates dump their goods into a cloaca. Thanks for the LOL so early on Mardi Gras Day!
I was thinking lizard brain at the time I wrote that. LOL
I’m worried that the intellectual property nature of the scoop is making what we learn here also caught and killed here. That’s it.
No one has exclusive rights in the facts or the “scoops.” Is that what you really intended – or something else?!
Within professional journalism a scoop functions as a kind of claim. Another journalist is free to transmit the information as long as they give the original reporting credit. I don’t know anything but it looks like for complicated reasons including Marcy’s status as a ‘blogger’ as well as the complexity of the fact sets she presents which forms the scoop background and context, I think makes the attribution problem so difficult is outweighs the professional benefit. The is a problem without an intentional cause though it is a bad choice people make over and over again for years and years. The effect in publishing isn’t so different than catch and kill, though the journalism appears to need the way it’s produced and presented.
The vagaries of our justice system.
I’m not even going to address the suspiciously sealion-y and only loosely tangential compensation question that kicked off the comments. To address the theme of this article, IANAL, but I have had to be involved in legal action and have had the privilege of jury duty. At the risk of sounding flippant, Judge Scarsi sounds more like what I’m used to hearing and seeing. Sometimes shocking in how little patience with attorneys, even the expectation his calendar is big dog on campus compared to other courtrooms. Reading this without Marcy’s follow up tables would have been a “so what” reaction.
And the answer is SCOTUS. Every judge that rues the day they’ve drawn a Trump trial knows two things. First, that he has the resources to appeal every avenue for all time. Second and related, that all of these appeals could eventually go to a body that’s is 6-3 either directly appointed by him or publicly ruled in favor of the most dystopian interpretation of “speech” the court may ever have heard, with bonus points that one justice in particular is married to a co conspirator. So every single action taken needs to be viewed as something that can and will be used against THEM in a court of law, to borrow a phrase. Uncharacteristic, almost falsely accommodating behavior all around is the result.
I do wonder what incarceration rates for minoritized populations would look like if every judge had a little bit more of that anxiety and a little bit less Scarsi Swagger
EDIT: screwed up where i was supposed to be in reply chain. Hopefully this one is right and the other accidental reply to SL got deleted
here we are. now: entertain us.
[at the very end of this (and all?) posts] [i never knew to look …]
[Moderator’s note: Don’t do this crap here. Just tell readers to look at the links at the bottom of this site rather than re-print them here forcing readers on mobile devices to scroll-scroll-scroll. /~Rayne]
thanks and apologies. i never think of mobiles.
Digby copublished at her site and Salon, “Another Day Another Hit Job
Published by digby on February 9, 2024
When will Democrats understand that they get no points for being nonpartisan?”
https://digbysblog.net/2024/02/09/another-day-another-hit-job/
She begins embedding a video worth the time it takes to watch, relevant to the question of Biden’s mental acuity, which shows up well. We all should aim for that judgment capacity. Then, Digby gets into why do Democrats pick Republican special prosecutors, again and again, don’t they learn?
Just want to highlight that long-form (ish) interview with Biden conducted by John Harwood of ProPublica, 28 September of last year. The interview shows pretty clearly that Biden is still sharp and not at all “in decline.” Biden’s main problem seems to be that he has a lot of thoughts in mind, and he seems to be editing the thoughts as he goes, prior to getting his main point out. That’s evidence of ability, not disability. Worth a look.
That “editing” may be multi-layered, between working around his speech disorder and sorting both past and active means+methods if discussing any topic with sensitive intelligence. It’s like we’ve forgotten this bullshit — cheat sheets written so they could be read from outer space”
source: Here are all the times Trump’s notes and letters have been photographed, Rebecca Morin USA TODAY May 2019
I need to adopt Digby’s shorter-but-deadly style, like she used in her Trump-traitor post. Effective, deadly.
That video was really good, thank you.
Scarzi’s Federalist Society. Sen. Whitehouse, at his site, describes the Federalist Society as a vehicle for powerful interests.
Four of the Supreme Court judges are Federalist Society and 90% of Trump’s appointed appellate judges are.
Members belonging to a club are expected to pay back for inclusion.