Legal proceedings: The Mar-a-Lago case; The clobbered prisoner case

The stink at Mar-a-Lago

Court filings in the lawsuits against DJT are sometimes astonishing. The degree of criminality and total lack of concern about breaking laws is jaw-dropping. Really. To show I'm not making this stuff up, I am cutting and pasting directly from a paper filed in a court. 

In the Mar-a-Lago (MaL) document hiding case, one witness known as Trump Employee 4, (Yuscil Taveras) dumped his Trump lawyer, got a real defense attorney, and then immediately retracted a slew of lies he told the D.C. court under oath. Yup, that was perjury. One can reasonably surmise that the Trump attorney, Stanley Woodward, told Taveras to lie to the court. Woodward himself was in a terrible conflict of interest position because he was defending several people accused in the MaL incident. The whole thing is so rotten it blows my mind.

Part of page 1 of court filing in the MaL case

The court filing includes these beyond nuts comments at pages 3-5:

On June 27, 2023, consistent with its responsibility to promptly notify courts of potential conflicts, and given the prospective [perjury] charges Trump Employee 4 faced in the District of Columbia, the Government filed a motion for a conflicts hearing with the Chief Judge of the United States District Court for District of Columbia (Boasberg, C.J.), who presides over grand jury matters in that district. The Government notified this Court on the same day, by sealed notice, of the filing in the District of Columbia. See ECF Nos. 45, 46. Mr. Woodward raised no objection to proceeding in the District of Columbia regarding Trump Employee 4. 

Chief Judge Boasberg made available independent counsel (the First Assistant in the Federal Public Defender’s Office for the District of Columbia) to provide advice to Trump Employee 4 regarding potential conflicts. On July 5, 2023, Trump Employee 4 informed Chief Judge Boasberg that he no longer wished to be represented by Mr. Woodward and that, going forward, he wished to be represented by the First Assistant Federal Defender. Immediately after receiving new counsel, Trump Employee 4 retracted his prior false testimony and provided information that implicated Nauta, De Oliveira, and Trump in efforts to delete security camera footage, as set forth in the superseding indictment.

The Government anticipates calling Trump Employee 4 as a trial witness and expects that he will testify to conduct alleged in the superseding indictment regarding efforts to delete security footage. Trump Employee 4 will very likely face cross-examination about his prior inconsistent statements in his grand jury testimony, which occurred while Mr. Woodward represented him, and which he disavowed immediately after obtaining new counsel.

This is beyond discombobulating. It's positively wackadoodle dipstickery with humbuggery in it. Trump's attorney told his client Taveras to lie under oath to protect Trump while exposing Taveras to slam dunk perjury charges. Assuming he isn't fired by Trump or disbarred and prosecuted for criminal acts before the court, Trump attorney Woodward now gets to grill his former client Taveras to show the world what a liar he is for doing what Woodward told him to do in the first place. What bizarre planet are we on here? It's not Earth, that's for sure. Mind blown. Scotty, beam me up . . . . . 

Ouch, the ceiling fell on my head, I need an aspirin . . .  

klunk, Kev falls down unconscious

I swear, few Americans have any idea of what it is like to be in jail. It can be summarized like this: It sucks hard on good days, but it kills you on bad days. And then you get to face the sometimes equally bizarre law in the process. This fun case is about a prisoner, Kevion Rogers, filing a lawsuit against the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and a couple of it's valiant employees, Jeffrey Jarrett and Jeremy Bridges. 

Page 1 of the court filing

Note the lead counsel, Neal Katyal

Long story short Jarrett sent Rogers into a prison building that was in the process of falling down. Jarrett said he left something in the building and wanted Rogers to go in to get retrieve it for him. Rogers went in and got the item. As he was just about to walk out of the building, the ceiling collapsed on his head. 

Rogers sued and Texas responded by saying the lawsuit is barred by an ancient common-law doctrine called qualified immunity. In other words, even if the defendants Jarrett, Bridges and Texas, did do the dirty to Rogers, they are immune from acts that deprived Rogers of his constitutional rights. In other words, law enforcement in Texas is above the law. Katyal is arguing that the defendants are not protected by qualified immunity. The court filing comments:

Petitioner Kevion Rogers suffered a traumatic brain injury after the ceiling of a jail facility collapsed on his head and jail staff repeatedly refused his pleas for medical help.

On the morning Rogers was injured, he was supervised by respondent Jeffrey Jarrett.

Early that morning, Jarrett entered one of the hog barns and saw that “[t]here was water coming out of the ceiling” and that part of the ceiling was hanging from the area of the leak. Jarrett shut off the water to the barn and removed the still-hanging portions of the ceiling, leaving a hole in the ceiling. Jarrett later directed Rogers to enter the barn to retrieve something.

Rogers complied, and, as he left the barn, part of the ceiling collapsed, striking him in the head and knocking him unconscious. When Rogers regained consciousness, he “stagger[ed]” out of the barn and sought help. [Note: Jarrett valiantly waited outside the barn to maintain proper safety for himself] Covered in insulation, he told Jarrett the ceiling had collapsed on him, that he had blacked out, and that he was “seriously injured.” He told Jarrett that he needed “to go to the infirmary” because “a whole ceiling just fell on me!” Jarrett ignored the request and did not investigate further because he believed Rogers “looked fine.”

Yup, Kev's brain looks just fine to me 

He wants lunch!

 
 Rogers’s condition deteriorated. Other inmates tried to keep him awake as he went “in and out of consciousness.” As his condition worsened, Rogers requested “medical attention” from another prison official, who radioed his supervisor, respondent Jeremy Bridges, for instructions. Because Rogers said that, in addition to wanting medical attention, he wanted to eat lunch, Bridges believed Rogers’s  condition was not  “serious.” Bridges instructed that Rogers be taken to his bunk rather than the infirmary.

By the time Rogers arrived at the dormitory, “he was wheezing, he had mucus draining, his face was bruising, and his eye and head were swelling.” He eventually collapsed, began to “seize violently, began vomiting, and lost consciousness.” Three and a half hours after Rogers first asked to be taken to the infirmary, prison officials finally radioed for medical assistance. Rogers had to be airlifted to a nearby hospital, where he was diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury. 

Rogers sued Jarrett and Bridges in Texas state court under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Rogers alleged that the defendants violated his Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment rights by acting with deliberate indifference to his safety and medical needs. Defendants removed the case to federal court and moved for summary judgment on all claims, asserting qualified immunity.

What fun. The hog barn fell on his head. But it's OK. Not to worry, because Texas has qualified immunity. The good people are protected!