Maryellen Noreika and Mark Scarsi’s Schrödinger’s Cat How Mark Scarsi Post Hoc Dismantled Abbe Lowell’s Juicy Timeline 
Maryellen Noreika and Mark Scarsi’s Schrödinger’s Cat How Mark Scarsi Post Hoc Dismantled Abbe Lowell’s Juicy Timeline
Judge Scott McAfee has denied Donald Trump’s motion to dismiss the Fulton County indictment on First Amendment grounds. https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24531779/mcafee-order-denying-dismissal-on-first-amendment-grounds.pdf
It is encouraging that the trial court moved quickly on this matter, which was argued last week. I hope that the State promptly moves to nail down a date for jury selection to begin.
Lol. It figures that you are the first comment on this. I hope that this case gets shot into the face of the sun. Just as a response to you.
If you’re going to be a troll, please do it somewhere else.
I find this all very disappointing.
Invective is a poor substitute for legal chops.
Lol, okay John.
“Lol” proclaim the trolls, attempting to convey amusement at those not reaching their own level of intellect and theory. Joy, even- though it be an impossibility, evidenced by the clear need to resort to invectives. This is not funny, humor or joy.
LOL = Schadenfreude
On the surface, what you state is true, but note that bmaz clearly knows exactly who he is responding to. I really don’t know this particular John Herbison but there is an attorney by that name who pops up on internet searches who has a less than stellar record which involves multiple suspensions of his right to practice. If that be he, bmaz’s dismissive tone in response to “legal chops” makes perfect sense. [I see from comments further down that there was a bit more to this heated exchange that got removed by the moderator.]
(NB: I certainly fall into the category of people bmaz has railed against for wishing the Georgia RICO case to succeed because of my political outlook. I see less long term threat to the US from the Georgia case succeeding than I do from the sort of election nullification efforts that happened in the wake of November 2020 and will be attempted again this year.)
As a community member who doesn’t have moderator-level access, do you really have enough information about another commenter’s identity to make any inference about them, when they have ~50 published comments to date, when all you can see is a username, validation of which this site doesn’t require?
Let’s avoid going down this road and focus on the subject and content of the comments.
Point taken.
Great show.
Thanks for starting our weekend with intelligent analysis and wit.
Very good show tonight.
Nicole, your questions were perfect re; Aileen Cannons case and Marcy helped me put some things together. Excellent. Also? Nicole? your djt ‘voice’ had me thinking of Steven Colbert..
I was heartbroken going thru the 1st Impeachment w/Mueller. Then? Jack Smith got called to handle djt and the hype was ‘no one fucks w/Jack, lots of experience and I had hope again justice was going to rule, Q: IS he an excellent Attorney?
Yes. That is exactly why I follow you Marcy on X. You fight for me. I can’t think of those things to say (well, besides MY potty mouth, ha-ha) but I feel the frustration. Your latest @jamescomer tweets have been just delicious. Gosh, I felt relaxed after this visit. Thank you so much. Grateful to you both.
Slightly OT, but could someone repeat how to look at Marcy’s tweets without logging in to Xitter?
I’ve resisted logging in for two years but I really, really miss them.
Thanks in advance.
Do a search for: marcy wheeler twitter
Sorry to say the blue check still shows up in the search results. But not in the actual account.
Thanks, Savage Librarian!
Yah, her discovery of said blue check was appropriate and amusing.
I appreciate Nicole including the periodic sniffs during her voice impression.
I have a hearing problem & find it impossible to understand Marcy on these podcasts. Is there a transcript available for each show? I was unable to locate one but I’m not adept at these things. Thanks for any response.
We do not have transcripts here. I don’t know if Nicole Sandler offers them elsewhere.
However there are many speech-to-text applications which can generate transcripts from YouTube video audio. One free method is Voice Typing in Google Docs — see:
Be sure to turn on closed caption feature to follow the easy instructions.
Yes… there are closed captions enabled on the video. Plus, both Spotify and Apple offer transcripts if you get the podcast through them (the show goes out as a podcast right after the live broadcast). The Spotify link to my show is https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nicolesandler, the Apple link is https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-nicole-sandler-show/id73801366
The Apple podcast cc transcript has been reliable for me in the past.
Thanks David.
I put links into the post. I’ll try to remember them from now on.
We should probably put a sidebar widget to make them accessible.
Thanks, Nicole. Much appreciated. I think I’d opened the YouTube in my Incognito window and the captions weren’t available.
I have to admit — after reading all Marcy’s posts about Trump’s claim to convert classified documents including national defense information to personal records, and now listening twice to this episode of Emptywheel Friday with Nicole Sandler — I don’t understand why Team Trump (mostly Trump and non-lawyer Tom Fitton) think that claiming Trump converted presidential records is a defense. Keyword here is converted.
I can’t help wonder if someone else wasn’t really trying to hint that Trump should have been charged with 18 USC 641 – Public money, property or records which has a much smaller penalty compared to 18 USC 793 – Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information as the latter penalty includes property seizure.
But then there’s 18 USC 2314 – Transportation of stolen goods, securities, moneys, fraudulent State tax stamps, or articles used in counterfeiting which might also apply to converted property or records. I dunno.
And, yet, you deleted yet another comment of mine. About Herbison, which you might remember warning me about repeatedly. Guess it is all good now, eh?
Your comment, just like this 12:51 p.m. one, was intended to be inflammatory and not a serious effort to contribute to discussion. I should delete your 12:51 as well but I think it’s important for the community here to understand when some comments are binned — yours or others, and there are others — it’s because the comment wasn’t published in a good faith effort to contribute to conversation here.
As I’ve told you before, if you’re going to publish comments complaining about moderation and comments which are off topic, they will be deleted. You have been given far more grace about this than other commenters who complain about moderation here, but there’s a limit to this grace as you’ve already cluttered up this thread with your complaints against commenters and moderation alike.
There’s an opinion that made that really hard to apply, including against Schulte.
Ugh. More re-reading homework. Once again I wish I had your holographic memory with matrix processing capacity. I didn’t think of Schulte because he couldn’t have claimed any authority or powers as president.
Interesting. I think 793(e) is still a better fit to the events leading to the search (and 793(e) “has to be” filed in SFD). I don’t see why they couldn’t, at some point, indict him for 641 in DC now that he’s publicly claiming he converted document ownership.
Maybe this is too much Batman chess* but anyone else suspecting the point of filing in SDFL was to expose a corrupt judge (they had a 3 in 4 chance of her being assigned).
* https://youtu.be/sp2Y2czovkE?si=-1XowPRtDB4Twm0G?t=33
That’s like testing a weapon by pointing it at your own head. Never a good idea or smart move.
Makes sense. Okay, so it really is the fact that Trump’s the refusal to return documents occurred in SDFL so that’s where that particular charge 793)e) should have been filed.
So point it at someone else’s head.
Of course if I did it, I’d lose supporters.
It is highly doubtful that the indictment was expected to be assigned to Judge Aileen Cannon. She is one of 17 district judges (with one vacancy) in the Southern District of Florida. There are 13 senior judges as well. The case was filed in the West Palm Beach division; Judge Cannon sits in the Fort Pierce division.
Despite all that, given the case loads and the weighting in the “random” assignment algorithm, it put about a 75% probability of Cannon being assigned to the case. I assume DOJ the stats skills to apply to publicly-available data to come up with this estimate as well.
Yes. Do not listen to Herbison.
You mean in a district whose internal rules assign cases geographically – they’re tried in the home or in an adjacent division, unless the chief judge intervenes – as well as at random? The former would seem to occasionally gut the intent of the latter. At a minimum, it increases the odds that Cannon would get the case, as she did the 2022.
To surmise that DOJ filed the case in Florida in order to expose a judge as corrupt, as Mr. Snyder speculated, is quite a stretch. The greater likelihood is that filing the indictment there was intended to deprive Donald Trump of any opportunity to cavil about venue being improper if filed in another federal district.
It is arguable pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3237(a) that the § 793(e) offense was begun in D.C. and completed in Florida, but why unnecessarily inject an additional issue into the jury trial? The gravamen of the offense is retention and failure to deliver the documents.
Trump will always cavil: it’s a defining characteristic of his lawfare.
If the statute provides that jurisdiction exists in any district in which a criminal act was committed, regardless of where it commenced or was completed, why indict in so unfriendly a venue for the prosecution?
Donald Trump has no defense on the merits in the prosecution for espionage/obstruction/false statements. An argument that venue does not lie outside of the Southern District of Florida, however, is at least arguable. That would be an additional obstacle that the government’s proof would need to overcome (albeit by a preponderance of evidence).
Cannon getting this case on the wheel in SDFL has moved things along swimmingly, compared to the slow slog of dealing with a possible but unpersuasive jurisdictional argument in DC. What a relief.
It is hardly a “slow slog of dealing with a possible but unpersuasive jurisdictional argument”. Venue is a matter which the government must prove at trial by a preponderance of evidence. A single juror who is unpersuaded that the offenses occurred in D.C. could prevent the jury from reaching a verdict, which would result in a mistrial.
Agreed.
The determination of proper venue would have taken a couple years to settle.
And since most of the alleged criminal conduct charged so far by Smith occurred at Mar-a-Lago, it would have been difficult for Smith to successfully argue the proper venue was DC.
In addition, since Trump arrived at Mar-a-Lago with many of the documents at about 11:25AM on 1/20/2021, he could argue that he was still president until 12:01PM that day and, therefore, legally possessed the documents he brought with him to Mar-a-Lago. Such an argument would also
favor the Southern District of Florida being the proper venue.
This proposition ignores
1 s1 20th Amendment
Section 1
The terms of the President and the Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin.
2 The executive vesting clause
3 the element of the offence
739e is
willfully
retains the same
and fails to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive
[cf 793 d equivalent element
willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it •on demand• to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it; ]
At noon President Biden and other Government Employees were entitled to receive the Government documents containing NDI and other property of US of which now citizen Trump was no longer entitled to possession and control.
His actions in removing the property had the inevitable consequence of depriving those entitled to such possession and control at the time and in the place they were entitled to it.
And such entitlement does not depend on it being asserted or a demand made for the property
Furthermore
Up until noon 1/20/21 the positive duty on Trump identified by the combination of constitutional and statutory provisions above, are also subject to the constitutional requirement and positive duty contained within the Take Care Clause.
Following Marcy’s bringing up “microchip” during the show, I revisited her (excellent) analysis of microchip’s testimony of March 23rd 2023 (https://www.emptywheel.net/2023/04/12/i-wanted-to-infect-everything-the-curiously-expert-pathologies-of-fbi-informant-microchip/).
Was it ever determined how microchip financed his $500/month expenses? (Bankruptcy suggests he might have self-funded, but then how far are MAGAts willing to go in their hatred of all that is lib?).
Hashtag hijacking could be done to greater lasting damage than microchip managed (while savvy, he was a bit heavy-handed).
I suppose I can moderate my concerns somewhat in knowing that The Social Media Site That Used To Be Called Twitter has had a shrinking audience.
According to Baked Alaska’s 2017 book, Microchip was a deep state actor with deep pocketed beneficiaries who designed the Great Meme War to end with Trump falling just short of victory. Hillary would then become president and whatever entity backed Microchip would then be that much more informed about quantify and exploiting memetic warfare. They could also then ride the pro Trump movement.
But, the hero, Baked Alaska, ignored the directives and created the memes that put Trump over the threshold. That caused Microchip to go after Baked Alaska in a dramatic death chase.
That’s his claim, which I have not seen any commentary about, from either side.
Here is a comment: I have seen and watched
Gioinet live in court. Put zero faith in his garbage.
Why do you think it credible that a propagandist would write about a plot that supposedly failed, when writing after it failed?
I make no claims about his credibility, that is an assumption that you made. I like to look at narratives and see how they square up with other information.
I certainly take his story with a grain of salt. But a couple of factors to consider
1) We now know that Microchip was speaking to FBI at least as early as December 2018 (a), shortly after a time when control over Qanon was being taken over and Microchip had a role either directly or as a cover story, not to mention a similar role in the release of Qanon the prior year (b). And that Microchip had an extremely fast learning curve, mastering memetic Warfare on Twitter very quickly (c )
a: Microchip witness testimony
b: Q Into The Storm documentary
c: https://www.emptywheel.net/2023/04/12/i-wanted-to-infect-everything-the-curiously-expert-pathologies-of-fbi-informant-microchip/
2) We also know that an associate of Peter Thiel wrote a NATO paper “It’s Time to Embrace Memetic Warfare” Winter 2015-2016.(d) Thiel and the associate, Jeff Giesea, attended an event that kicked out Gionet from an alt-right celebration at the inauguration due to antisemitism.(e) Thiel is now known to have been an informant (f) and has further historical connections with the alt-right & white nationalists (g), national security government contracts (h), and secretly bankrolling activity in the information warfare space (i)
d: Google it
e: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeploraBall
f: https://www.businessinsider.com/peter-thiel-fbi-informant-charles-johnson-johnathan-buma-chs-genius-2023-10
g: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/heres-how-breitbart-and-milo-smuggled-white-nationalism, https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2021/03/18/white-nationalist-who-met-peter-thiel-admired-terroristic-literature, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/clearview-ai-facial-recognition-alt-right_n_5e7d028bc5b6cb08a92a5c48?6p8
h: https://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/08/14/agent-of-intelligence-how-a-deviant-philosopher-built-palantir-a-cia-funded-data-mining-juggernaut/
i: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/05/how-peter-thiel-was-unmasked-as-hulk-hogans-secret-backer.html
You make no claims for brevity. Try breaking up comments and nesting them. People already know how to use a search engine. Skip the run-on references.
Why cite to a source, if you don’t find it credible, unless there’s something especially ludicrous to critique, like anything written by David Brooks?
I resemble… etc.
earlofhuntington, you made me laugh out loud. First, you’re like zscoreUSA none of this has any credibility but a propagandist’s self-aggradizing book! The fact that he’s a primary source doesn’t matter even if you’re directly following up on something Marcy brought up. And zscoreUSA says, well, here’s where you can learn more, and earlofhuntington is like, we can all Google! That tickles me.
The 2017 book was written after being PNG from his community and that may impact the willingness to gossip and spill beans.
As far as being a self aggrandizing propagandist, some people may find value in looking at the anatomy of deceitful propaganda. At one point Earl commented to me that an enjoyable feature of this site is to read between the lines.
LOL. Your “self-aggradizing” comment suggests … inattention.
I never suggest using giggle. It’s an invasive search engine, whose parent company has tentacles in nearly every site on the Internet. There are less invasive alternatives.
I objected to a run-on string of citations that offered no context or explanation of their point or credibility. It could be done by cutting and pasting the urls from the first page of a search without having read them, and adds no value.
Primary sources are often fonts of mis- and disinformation, especially when coming from today’s Republican Party. Donald Trump might be a primary source, but sentient beings would not give much weight to the accuracy or truthfulness of “his” recollections.
Thank you, Earl for your clarifications and suggestions. Always edifying to a reader like me, NAL etc.
There is immense knowledge and understanding to someone when you can see them in live court. I did with Gionet. He is better and more restrained than you might think. But was still awful, and that despite the fact his attorney really was not particularly good.
That’s an interesting anecdote and experience to be able to observe live in person.
It was after that that Microchip tipped Baked off to the investigation, I think.
What is the source for that?
Oh, from Microchip testimony
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23772700-230322-us-v-douglass-mackey-trial-public#document/p114/a2240078
Linked in this article
https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/01/15/the-non-visible-networks-behind-the-more-visible-networks-of-fascism/
Cannon is like a first-round pick who never made it out of the minors — or as David Goodnough notes from Shakespeare. — .
His promises, as he then was, mighty.
But his performance, as he is now, nothing.
King Henry VIII, IV.ii
and please change his to her.
A full house for just a shoot around for the Women’s Final Four. Much less the greatness of last night. The kind of weekend for women’s sports that was once celebrated, bye all on this blog. Now ignored completely. In memory of Bob Schacht, I object.
I was waiting for a Trash talk column so that I could comment on the game. That was an aMAZing game between UConn and Iowa. So intense! Despite all the injuries on the UConn team, they made it close. So close. It also didn’t hurt that the game helped my bracket.
For all the crazy diamonds…Shine on!
https://youtu.be/CiXNIjGX1hY
bmaz, are you not posting trash talks anymore? The NCAA women’s basketball has been so cool, it even came to my (not much into sports) attention
Sadly no, else I would have been all over it. I watched much of the women’s tournament, including most of Iowa, UConn and South Carolina. It was spectacular and, frankly, far more interesting than anything on the men’s side.
One of our early good friends, and commenters, Bob Schacht, turned me on to the beauty of the women’s game and how it was turning out to be more watchable than the men’s. Sadly, Bob is no longer with us, but man was he right. Wish he could have seen the last weeks of the women’s tournament, he would have loved it.
IL tried to respond to you Holding Steady, but yet another innocuous comment response has been moderated. There were no trigger words in it.
You are misinforming community members about the site’s operations. You do not know what the trigger words are wrt the auto-moderation list. Furthermore, there are triggers in WordPress below what moderators/administrators set.
Once again, you are attacking moderation here in a way you would not have tolerated as a moderator.
Lol. Sure Jan.
I got turned onto it by hearing about Caitlin Clark and really enjoyed watching a few games with my ardent sports fan friends, we call ourselves the brew crew, haha.
Anyway, it’s a trash talk I could have gotten into!
OT but amusing as hell – the epicenter of the East coast earthquake was about 6 miles from the golf club owned by the Orange Florida Man.
Ivanka and her grave come up – hilarity ensues. There are pictures, may have to scroll down. My inner Luddite despises technology:
https://newrepublic.com/post/180493/new-york-earthquake-epicenter-trump
MTG says the earthquake is a sign from God. Does this mean she thinks it was a warning shot at Trump?
It was caused by something escaping from its crypt.
Ivana is the dead one. Javanka is still grifting.
Admittedly I’m a Timothy Snyder fan-girl of his Twenty Lessons on Fighting Tyranny from the Twentieth Century.
5. Remember professional ethics. When political leaders set a negative example, professional commitments to just practice become important. It is hard to subvert a rule-of-law state without lawyers, or to hold show trials without judges. Authoritarians need obedient civil servants, and concentration camp directors seek businessmen interested in cheap labor.
Whether you believe this is OTT or not, there’s good advice in it.
The Truth Social post in which Trump allegedly mentioned making Cannon a supreme Court Justice was fake. I haven’t listened to the full podcast but I don’t think this was mentioned.
Thanks Parapello. I didn’t realize it was a fake faketweet. I’m not on “truth” social. I guess I should have figured it out since there wasn’t a greater outcry about it. I’ll correct myself on today’s show and again on Friday when Marcy’s back. I appreciate the correction!
Among all the faults of Knight Specialty’s $175 million bond for Trump in the NYAG’s case is that its language, on page three, only says that the Trump defendant-appellants will pay. It omits any express statement that Knight Specialty will pay.
Given the context of this submission, that characterization is not likely to hold, but it would be appealed to the Court of Appeals, resulting in delay. Justice Engoron will avoid that scenario by tossing this bond after his forthcoming hearing, and give Trump a very short time within which to provide a new, compliant one; to pay a full cash bond paid to the court; or refuse to stay enforcement.
Don Hankey has repeatedly said Trump fully collaterized this bond with all cash. No marketable securities or liens on real estate. If so, another bonding company would provide a bond. But however it works out, Engoron is certain to tell Trump his time is up: put up or face enforcement.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-dollar175-million-bond-is-even-shadier-than-it-looks
All of that is an understatement.
After reading this site for more than a couple of years, I can say I learned from the best.
So Trump was charged with fraud and garbage financial statements and civilly fined and penalized for these offenses in February.
Then he and Knight present a potentially garbage bond that they felt there’s no way the Appellate Court and NYAG were going to review after his fraud conviction?
And that after telling Appellate Court that it was impossible to bond the full amount of the appeal judgement while Knight was supposedly ready to bond the full amount of the appeal judgement before the appeal judgement amount was lowered.
If the bond is found to be garbage which they presented as legit, can any of this reach a level of criminality, like lets say perjury?
SteveBev mentioned in a previous thread that Knight Specialty completed and signed the undertaking, under penalty of perjury, claiming about themselves:
“meeting the requirements to transact business and issue this undertaking in the State of New York”
Except it turns out they aren’t licensed to issue bonds in NY. So that might be interesting if it comes up in the April 22 hearing.
Yes, there are a multitude of potential problems here.
Heh, yet another completely innocuous comment bogusly moderated.
[Moderator’s note: all of your whining about this site is off topic. Stay on topic. /~Rayne]
When it comes up at the hearing.
New Impression question:
All of the discussion of Cannon procedure et al. focusses on precedent, i.e. caselaw. I haven’t seen any mention of a case of new impression. Can the Cannon court’s tilt prompt an 11th Circuit ruling of new impression? Yes, no, explain.