Picking jurors for the DJT trial

Various sources are reporting about the seven people seated so far as jurors on DJT’s election fraud/hush money trial. The New York Law Journal reports:

Seven jurors have been sworn in to serve on the Manhattan criminal case of Donald Trump—including two lawyers—after Trump’s legal team sought unvarnished opinions about their client.

Most responses could be categorized as reluctant, if not unresponsive, to the broad question.

“I have political views as to the Trump presidency,” said the man who is now Juror No. 7, as well as a civil litigator at Hunton Andrews Kurth. He previously worked at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher.

“I don’t know the man and I don’t have opinions about him personally,” he added. “I have political views, I’m happy to answer that question, but I’m not sure that I know anyone’s character.”

Many eventual panelists and dismissed potential jurors expressed similar sentiments—that they did not hold opinions or would be able to contextualize them insofar as they held those opinions.

Not a single juror or prospective juror said anything negative about Trump. Under questioning, the Manhattanites expressed that all that matters in a criminal case is the facts—and whether they’re proven.

[Trump attorney] Todd Blanche asked Juror No. 7 if he would be able to put aside his feelings about being a lawyer and consider the testimony of a disbarred attorney—meaning Cohen—in an unbiased way.

“Yeah, I am a litigator and I take that responsibility seriously,” he responded.

That makes me very uneasy. It is hard to believe that there are many people who know something more about DJT than just his name but have no opinion of him personally. That strikes me as especially true for Juror 7, who is a litigator. Litigators see all of the aspects of human beings, including when they are under serious stress and threat in lawsuits.

At this point, I hope that these people have been picked because juror screening at this point has found a few people who actually feel the way they say they feel. But as the New York Law Journal writes, some of the responses of potential jurors feels reluctant, or unresponsive and thus evasive. If there is evasion going on here, it could cut for or against DJT.

Reporting by Slate raises a different concern about the jury, namely putting them in danger for their lives by doxxing them:

Several jurors were eliminated after Trump attorney Todd Blanche confronted them with old Facebook posts that either intimated distaste for Trump or outright said as much. Most of these jurors were eliminated via peremptory challenge by the Trump legal team, though a few were eliminated for cause—including one who had posted on Facebook “get him out and lock him up” about Trump in response to the former president’s Muslim travel ban.

The jurors that remained are a diverse group. It may have been impossible to see their faces from the overflow room where I (and most of the press corps) watched jury selection, but we still learned a whole lot about these men and women who will sit in judgment of a former president in the first such criminal trial in U.S. history.

Here is a quick primer on the jurors, who are anonymous.

Juror No. 1, foreperson

Juror No. 1 was also selected as the foreperson, meaning he will preside over jury deliberations and act as the communicator with the court. He gave some of the most anodyne answers to the 42-part questionnaire and direct voir dire. According to pool descriptions, Juror No. 1 showed up to court on Monday in a black T-shirt and carrying a black backpack. He is from Ireland but now lives in West Harlem. Juror No. 1 is married, with no kids, and said he gets his news from the New York Times, the Daily Mail, Fox News, and MSNBC. (The first and fourth responses may be why the prosecution was OK with having him on the jury; the second and third answers may be why the defense was.) During individual voir dire, Juror No. 1 was brief and to the point. When asked what he knew or thought of some of the other Trump criminal cases, Juror No. 1 replied, “I’ve heard of some of them, yeah.” When asked if he had an opinion of them, he said, “None at all.” This might have been what landed this juror the foreperson job.

Juror No. 2

Juror No. 2 is a native New Yorker and oncology nurse at Memorial Sloan Kettering, who lives on the Upper East Side with her fiancé and dog. She gets her news from the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Google. When asked if she would accept evidence and give it due weight even if it comes from witnesses with questionable backgrounds—such as a tabloid publisher, a former adult film star, and a lawyer like Michael Cohen who has changed his story—she responded: “I’m going to say no. I’m going to listen to all the facts. Whatever outside influences there are, they’re not going to influence me here.” When asked by Blanche as to whether she had any opinions of President Trump, she responded, “I don’t really have one especially, in this court room. I think he should be treated as anyone else and nobody is above the law.” When pressed on that question, she did not give an answer about Trump but said “I’m here for my civic duty and not let anything persuade me either way.”

Juror No. 7

Juror No. 7 lives on the Upper East Side and is originally from North Carolina. He is a Big Law civil litigator at Hunton Andrews Kurth who previously worked at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. According to the pool report, he presents as “white—tanned—and in his late middle age.” He is balding with close-cropped hair and wears glasses. He reads the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, New York Post, and Washington Post and listens to WNYC and the podcasts SmartLess and Car Talk. When asked if his expertise as a lawyer would influence his ability to serve as a juror in this case—basically whether or not he’d override the judge’s rulings about the law with his own feelings about them—he responded that he’d “follow the judge’s instructions.” “I’m a civil litigator which means I know virtually nothing about criminal law,” he conceded. As for his opinion of Trump, Juror No. 7 said, “I don’t know the man and I don’t have any particular opinions about him personally.” He liked some of Trump’s policies and didn’t like others. “I certainly follow the news, I am certainly aware that there are other lawsuits out there,” Juror No. 7 said. “I’m not sure I really know anything about his character.”

At least some of those jurors will probably not remain anonymous for long given the amount of detail about them that is being reported. For example, law firms usually show photos of their attorneys. Once those names get out, those jurors and their families will be in real danger from enraged MAGA freaks with guns.

This is going to be an interesting lawsuit. I hope nobody gets killed along the bumpy road to justice.

Important history behind the current DJT hush money lawsuit

The bottom line: Trump and his justice department corrupted and subverted the federal hush money lawsuit. They obstructed justice. This case should have been tried long ago in federal court, not years later in New York state court.

Summary & commentary: The DoJ asked NY state prosecutors to not proceed against Trump while they could charge him in federal court. Later NY state and the rest of the world found out that the DoJ had been corrupted. Then, the NY state prosecution started. Once again, Trump managed to escape justice. And Merrick Garland refused to do anything about it. Bill Barr should have been prosecuted for obstruction of justice. But again, Garland apparently does nothing to fix the vast damage that Trump and Barr did to the DoJ. At this point, Garland should be prosecuted for felony obstruction of justice to protect Trump and his authoritarian DoJ thugs.

Two experts opine on the strength of the case (paywalled link):

Interviewer: Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, claims that Trump falsely recorded the hush money payments as “legal expenses.” Falsifying business records is ordinarily only a misdemeanor, but the D.A. is claiming that Trump falsified records with the intent to commit other crimes or conceal other crimes, including state and federal campaign finance violations, state tax crimes and the falsification of other business records. If he falsified business records to aid in the commission of these other crimes, then Trump could be guilty of a felony.

When the case was filed, legal analysts from across the political spectrum voiced concern about the case, mainly on legal grounds. I have expressed my own doubts about the case. Now that the trial is underway, what’s your assessment of the case today?

Expert 1: We know a lot more now about the D.A.’s theory of the case than we did before. There was a lot of speculation about whether the predicate crime — the one Trump was promoting by falsifying records — was going to be federal or state, and whether it was going to be campaign-finance related or election-interference related. Now the prosecutors have shown their hand, and their lead theory is going to be that Trump meant to interfere unlawfully with an election by concealing information that the voters might have considered. A case tends to look stronger after the prosecution picks a theory and commits to it. The evidence of deliberate falsification of records is going to be very strong.  

New York criminal practitioners seem fairly unanimous that a first-time offender convicted of something like this is extremely unlikely to do jail time. Add in his age and health, and it’s even more unlikely. The ridiculous truth is that to spend jail time in New York you’ve got to be a teenager accused of swiping a backpack or something.

Expert 2: I agree, the falsification of business records seems rock-solid based on the documentary evidence.

The question for the jurors will be Trump’s knowledge and intent. I expect some of the evidence of Trump’s knowledge and intent will come from witnesses with varying degrees of credibility, but other evidence will come from emails and text messages, including those that will corroborate witnesses with credibility issues, like Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and “fixer.” The picture that the prosecutors will paint for the jury, based on the judge’s pretrial rulings, will give the jurors plenty of evidence of motive: to prevent information damaging to candidate Trump from becoming public just weeks before the 2016 election. It’s a very winnable case for the D.A.

The Advanced Bonewits’ Cult Danger Evaluation Frame, V 2.7

Over at a neopagan site, a way to evaluate the danger of a group, tribe or cult is described. The higher the score on 18 traits, the more dangerous the group. It would be fun to try it on the Republican Party. The site comments: 

The ABCDEF is founded upon both modern psychological theories about mental health and personal growth, and my many years of participant observation and historical research into minority belief systems. Those who believe that relativism and anarchy are as dangerous to mental health as absolutism and authoritarianism, could (I suppose) count groups with total scores nearing either extreme (high or low) as being equally hazardous. As far as dangers to physical well-being are concerned, however, both historical records and current events clearly indicate the direction in which the greatest threats lie. This is especially so since the low-scoring groups usually seem to have survival and growth rates so small that they seldom develop the abilities to commit large scale atrocities even had they the philosophical or political inclinations to do so.

Five of the 18 traits for evaluation

The GOP
Trait        My score

1               9

2               9

3               10

4               9

5               8

6               5

7               7

8               9

9               8

10             6

11             7

12             7

13             7

14             9

15             10

16             8

17             10

18             10

Total         148

If the average score is a 5 for all the traits that total score is 90. The highest score is 180.

I see the GOP as a 148, making it look quite dangerous to me.

Is that about right or too high or low?

Microplastics on the brain; Is CT gonna pull an RBG on us?; The stink eye is upon us

The University of New Mexico Newsroom reports:

Microplastics Make Their Way from the Gut to Other Organs, 

UNM Researchers Find

In a recent paper published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, University of New Mexico researchers found that those tiny particles – microplastics – [could have an] impact on our digestive pathways, making their way from the gut and into the tissues of the kidney, liver and brain.

Scientists estimate that people ingest 5 grams [5,000 mg] of microplastic particles each week on average – equivalent to the weight of a credit card. [What!? Really? . . . . Actually, not really. It is ~3 mg/week. That is a typo. Bad UNM Newsroom, bad, bad 

UNM Newsroom!]

~3 mg microplastics/week isn't very much, 

but it accumulates and we don't know how potent it is 

in eliciting good or bad biological responses

While other researchers are helping to identify and quantify ingested microplastics, Castillo and his team focus on what the microplastics are doing inside the body, specifically to the gastrointestinal (GI) tract and to the gut immune system.

Over a four-week period, Castillo, postdoctoral fellow Marcus Garcia, PharmD, and other UNM researchers exposed mice to microplastics in their drinking water. The amount was equivalent to the quantity of microplastics humans are believed to ingest each week.

Microplastics had migrated out of the gut into the tissues of the liver, kidney and even the brain, the team found. The study also showed the microplastics changed metabolic pathways in the affected tissues.  

In a paper published in the journal Cell Biology & Toxicology in 2021, Castillo and other UNM researchers found that when macrophages encountered and ingested microplastics, their function was altered and they released inflammatory molecules.

Well this is interesting. One’s brain-mind wanders, being addled with plastics and all. Nanoplastics, the inevitable decay products of microplastics, can cross cell membranes and enter directly into cytoplasm. What fun! Wonder what that will do. Can they test for microplastics without cutting out your brain? Maybe there’s no advanced civilization in the universe because they all discover plastic and it kills them. This could be is our generation’s answer to the joy of lead paint and popcorn ceilings loaded with asbestos!

My goodness, there is so much fun stuff to think about here.

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The Hill reports about an unexplained absence of the USSC’s oldest fart on the bench, Clarence Thomas:

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was absent from the court Monday with no explanation. Thomas, 75, also was not participating remotely in arguments, as justices sometimes do when they are ill or otherwise can’t be there in person.

Chief Justice John Roberts announced Thomas’ absence, saying that his colleague would still participate in the day’s cases, based on the briefs and transcripts of the arguments. The court sometimes, but not always, says when a justice is out sick.

Good old USSC. It likes to keep the rabble in the dark and fed full of BS. In this case, we are fed BS consisting of nothing at all. We don’t deserve to know when justice is deathly ill, just like when RBG up and dies on us so that DJT could appoint another authoritarian radical right monster to the court. 

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Newsweek reports: Donald Trump 'Glares' at Reporter Who Exposed Him Sleeping During Trial

I guess Trump’s rapper name is Sleepy-D!

DJT as baby giving the stink eye

to the reporter

DJT as dog doing stink eye

DJT as DJT giving all of us the stink eye

Greta Thunberg giving DJT

the stink eye

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A sad WaPo story from Gaza:

For three-and-a-half long hours on Jan. 29, the cellphone in 6-year old Hind Rajab’s hands was the closest thing she had to a lifeline. Alone in the back seat of a car outside a Gaza City gas station, she was drifting in and out of consciousness, surrounded by bodies, as she told emergency dispatchers that Israeli tanks were rumbling closer.

Paramedics were on their way, the dispatchers kept telling her: Hold on. The paramedics were driving to their deaths.

Twelve days later, when a Palestinian civil defense crew finally reached the area, they found Hind’s body in a car riddled with bullets, according to her uncle, Samir Hamada, who also arrived at the scene early that morning. The ambulance lay charred roughly 50 meters away (about 164 feet) from the car, its destruction consistent with the use of a round fired by Israeli tanks, according to six munitions experts.

In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces said they conducted a preliminary investigation and that its forces were “not present near the vehicle or within the firing range” of the Hamada family car. Nor, they said, had they been required to provide the ambulance permission to enter the area. The State Department said it has raised the case repeatedly with the Israelis. “The Israelis told us there had, in fact, been IDF units in the area, but the IDF had no knowledge of or involvement in the type of strike described,” said spokesman Matt Miller.

A Washington Post investigation found that Israeli armored vehicles were present in the area in the afternoon, and that gunfire audible as Hind and her cousin Layan begged for help, as well as extensive damage caused to the ambulance, are consistent with Israeli weapons. The analysis is based on satellite imagery, contemporaneous dispatcher recordings, photos and videos of the aftermath, interviews with 13 dispatchers, family members and rescue workers, and more than a dozen military, satellite, munitions and audio experts who reviewed the evidence, as well as the IDF’s own statements.

From the crackpots & liars files: Fire employees

The BBC reports:

In a memo, first reported by news website Electrek, billionaire owner Elon Musk told staff there was nothing he hated more, "but it must be done".

The world's largest auto-maker by market value had 140,473 employees globally as of December, according to its latest annual report.

Tesla has not responded to the BBC's request for comment.

"We have done a thorough review of the organization and made the difficult decision to reduce our headcount by more than 10% globally," said the email from Mr. Musk.

"There is nothing I hate more, but it must be done. This will enable us to be lean, innovative and hungry for the next growth phase cycle."

There is nothing that Musk hates more than firing employees? That is seriously doubtful at best, much more like a brazen lie. Why would Musk, or any other blowhard business executive say that?

Simple. The fearsome power of public relations, i.e., propaganda. The label public relations was invented in the 1920s by the famous American propagandist Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud. Bernays was very smart. He understood Freud. In the 1920s, Bernays invented the phrase public relations. The term "propaganda" had been poisoned by thugs who saw the power in what Bernays understood about the human condition.

Bernays died in the utterly false belief that propaganda or public relations would always serve the public interest. He never understood how the cigarette industry and later cynical liars lusting for profit could viciously use what Bernays taught about how to deceive and manipulate mass public opinion. Bernays died self-deluded about the immorality and evil of the monster he and a few others created and unleashed on the human species in the name of "our own good."

America today still hemorrhages democracy, liberty and respect for truth from the knowledge of the human condition that Bernays elevated to the level of a real, powerful science. Bernays died self-deluded at best, cynical liar at worst.

Wealthy elites and average deluded government-hating 

people still argue that debunked bullshit makes sense

Nuclear treaty talks?; Ambiguity in an important law

A NYT article not paywalled (paywalled link) discusses an offer by China to start talks about a treaty among nuclear nations to formally adopt a no first strike policy for nuclear weapons:

Since China’s first nuclear weapons test, in 1964, the country has pledged loudly to never go first in a nuclear conflict — no matter what. That stance, coupled with a stated strategy of “minimum” deterrence, didn’t demand the level of American fear, loathing and attention that the Russian threat did.

The Pentagon says Beijing is on track to double the number of its nuclear warheads by the decade’s end, to 1,000 from 500 — a development that senior U.S. officials have publicly called “unprecedented” and “breathtaking.” China has drastically expanded its nuclear testing facility and continued work on three new missile fields in the country’s north, where more than 300 intercontinental ballistic missile silos have recently been constructed.

In truth, no one knows what China is planning. President Xi Jinping’s government, as with much of its domestic policy, releases vanishingly little information about its nuclear intentions, strategies or goals, and it has been equally unwilling to engage on arms control.

That is, until now.

In February, in a rare offer for nuclear diplomacy, China openly invited the United States and other nuclear powers to negotiate a treaty in which all sides would pledge never to use nuclear weapons first against one another. “The policy is highly stable, consistent and predictable,” said Sun Xiaobo, director general of the Chinese foreign ministry’s Department of Arms Control, in Geneva on Feb. 26. “It is, in itself, an important contribution to the international disarmament process.”

The invitation came as a surprise. While Beijing has long claimed moral superiority over other nuclear powers on this issue — China and India are the only nuclear-armed nations to declare a no-first-use policy — opening the possibility for talks in such a public way is something China hasn’t done in years.   

[President Biden] supported a no-first-use policy as vice president amid deliberations inside the Obama administration, and as a presidential candidate on the campaign trail he said the “sole purpose” of the U.S. nuclear arsenal should be aimed at deterring or retaliating against an adversary’s nuclear attack. But when it came time for his own administration to adopt a declaratory nuclear policy, he decided not to break with America’s longstanding nuclear dogma and retained the first-use option.

In my opinion, the US must at least accept the invitation to talk and start to talk. Talking about an existential threat with parties capable of starting nuclear war is far better than staring at each other through distrusting eyes.

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Here is the text of a part of 18 USC §1512(c) that the USSC has accepted to hear a dispute about:

(c) Whoever corruptly—

(1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding; or

(2) otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so,

shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.

The fight is over the meaning of the word otherwise. The USSC will decide what otherwise means and how or if it connects (1) with (2). 

The stakes are very high. First, depending many the traitors convicted in Trump's 1/6 coup attempt could wind up having their convictions overturned. Second, a basis on which Trump himself can be prosecuted might vanish. Two two four felony charges Trump faces are based on this obstruction statute in relation to him trying to overturn the 2020 election. He could move to have those two charges dismissed if the Supreme Court rules for the 1/6 traitors in this case and get a great opportunity to exploit his self-proclaimed victimhood.

The HuffPo writes:

At issue is a law that makes it a felony if someone “corruptly … obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so.” This law — known as 18 U.S.C. 1512(c) — was enacted as part of the accounting reform law passed in 2002, in the wake of the Enron and Arthur Andersen scandals. Federal prosecutors have used it to charge 330 people who were involved in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, including Fischer — and former President Donald Trump.

Fischer argues in his appeal that the provision was not intended to be used in this way. Instead, he claims, a full reading of the law’s text shows that it was only meant to apply to the corrupt obstruction or impediment of documents in an official proceeding.

Fourteen district court judges have upheld charges for obstructing an official proceeding in Jan. 6 insurrection-related cases, on the understanding that “otherwise” means “in a different manner.” This would mean that the language of the first subsection related to the destruction of documents holds no bearing on the second subsection.

But in an appeal to dismiss the same charge when it was brought against Jan. 6 defendant Garret Miller, Judge Carl J. Nichols of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia reached a different conclusion.

In his March 2022 decision, Nichols wrote that the word “otherwise” imposes a limit on the second subsection and “requires that the defendant have taken some action with respect to a document, record, or other object in order to corruptly obstruct, impede or influence an official proceeding.”

Since Miller did not attempt to obstruct an official proceeding related to a document, Nichols wrote, that charge against him was dismissed.

Nichols referred to his decision in Miller’s case to similarly dismiss the charge against Fischer.  

On appeal, a majority from a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit disagreed. That ruling determined that the word “otherwise” should instead be defined by the “the commonplace, dictionary meaning” as “in a different manner” and, therefore, the “obstruction” prohibited by law does not refer solely to document-related crimes.

If the six radical authoritarian Republicans in the USSC want to protect Trump, this case is about as good as it can get. Two felony charges vanish and the sanctimonious liar-traitor Trump gets to play the martyred victim card with a vengeance. 

And this is happening in 2024. That is is a major part of why Merrick Garland looked to me to be too feeble and timid to do his job by May of 2021. All of this should have been resolved by at least a year ago. Now it is too late. Justice delayed could easily turn out to be justice denied and democracy killed. That is how high the stakes are for the entire, crumbling structure of the American rule of law. Biden failed us by (i) putting an incompetent in charge of the DoJ, and (ii) not firing him when it was obvious that Garland was not up to the job. Now it is just too late. We horribly messed our own bed and we get to sleep in it.