E. Jean Carroll on the Verge of Forcing $5 Million From Trump
INSIDE: Hannah Dugan ... Andrew Boutrous ... Marco Rubio
Time to Pay Up, Bub
President Trump’s last-ditch bid to avoid having to cough up $5 million to pay the judgement that E. Jean Carroll won against him for sexual abuse and defamation was rejected by an appeals court.
The late-evening denial by the Second Circuit came after the trial judge earlier in the day ordered the court clerk to disburse to Carroll the money Trump had deposited with the court, plus some $800,000 in accrued interest.
In an accompanying opinion, U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of Manhattan accused Trump of “stalling” the case for years before declaring it was time for Trump to pay up:
Carroll has waited a long time, not so much for the money, but for the comeuppance Trump so richly deserves and has spent most of his life avoiding with the help of a family fortune, a endless string of enablers, and hardball litigation tactics.
Mass Deportation Watch
Houston: The family of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, the immigrant killed by ICE this week in Houston, is demanding an independent investigation at the same time the Houston district attorney is saying the feds have sidelined local officials from participating in any investigation.
Eswatini: Eleven more migrants have been deported to the African country where they were immediately detained in its notorious Matsapha correctional facility, a U.S. lawyers told Reuters. “The arrivals bring to 29 the number sent to the southern African country under a $5.1 million agreement that has been challenged by lawyers who say deportees are being detained despite having already served sentences for crimes committed in the United States,” Reuters reports.
Judge Dugan Avoids Jail Time
Former Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan was ordered to pay a $5,000 fine but avoided any jail time for her conviction on a felony obstruction charge for shielding an immigrant from ICE agents in her courthouse last year.
Trump DOJ Watch
Chicago: After a last-minute bid to avoid having to appear in federal court this morning was rejected by the judge, U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutrous is set to have to explain why his public comments about a criminal case against reputed members of the Tren de Aragua gang didn’t violate the judge’s order sealing the case.
Houston: Federal judges in the Southern District of Texas have appointed the virulently Islamophobic Aaron Reitz as interim U.S. attorney. “Islam is not compatible with Western Civilization,” Reitz declared this year, during his unsuccessful GOP primary campaign run for state attorney general, in an X post that remains live.
Main Justice: The Trump DOJ has eschewed challenging mergers on antitrust grounds because of reticence from Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, the department’s No. 3 official, Bloomberg reports:
He has taken an unusually active role in the work of the antitrust division compared to previous administrations, stifling merger litigation, according to people familiar with the matter. …
In meetings about antitrust issues, Woodward has questioned why the DOJ can’t simply stop reviewing deals and suggested that blocking a merger could violate a company’s constitutionally protected due process rights, according to some of the people, who are familiar with his remarks.
Jan. 6 Never Ends
TPM’s Khaya Himmelman surveys the states where election deniers are on the ballot this year to serve as top election officials: Nevada, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, Wisconsin, and Vermont. They are all, of course, Republican candidates.
Platner Out
Graham Platner’s inevitable withdrawal came in a video posted last evening. Now Maine Democrats now have 18 days to try to salvage come kind of challenge to Sen. Susan Collins (R).
Hostilities With Iran Continue Into Day 2
With the ceasefire in in tatters, the U.S. and Iran exchanged fire overnight in the biggest escalation of hostilities since President Trump declared the Islamic republic’s “unconditional surrender” last month.
Criminalizing Dissent: International Edition
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has invited senior ministers from more than 60 countries to a meeting in D.C. next week about the “resurgence of transnational far-left terrorism,” the WaPo reports, based on documents it reviewed.
The Trump administration has at various levels labeled left-wing opposition to the president as “domestic terrorism,” and has successfully brought criminal charges in at least one case.
White House counterterrorism czar Sebastian Gorka has been pushing the myth of a broader international union of left-wing terrorists, and the State Department meeting seems to fall in line with that push. A linkage to foreign terrorist groups “can unlock certain investigative tools,” such as surveillance, one U.S. counterterrorism official told the WaPo.
How Much Risk Does New AF1 Present?
At the Secret Service’s insistence, President Trump returned from the NATO summit in Turkey aboard the old Air Force One, not the fancy newly refurbished Qatari-donated one, seeming to confirm suspicions — despite White House denials — that the gifted plane was rushed into service without all of the necessary security features, the NYT reports:
But people briefed on the new plane’s capabilities, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security issues, said the new plane does not have all the features of the older plane. The switch in the president’s aircraft when he departed Turkey was a precautionary measure made at the advice of the Secret Service and not because of a specific threat, they said.
RIP Bonnie Tyler
I don’t usually share purely pop music here, but the voice of Bonnie Tyler, who has died at 75 after an extended illness, still immediately transports me back to the first couple of years of high school, when her music was ubiquitous:
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trump is out $5 mil plus interest on the first trial loss, but on the second judgment of $83.5 mil, Scotus has not definitively stated it will hear his final appeal...does that mean it will linger on well into the next Court's session beginning in October, or can the Court issue a statement before then?
“White House counterterrorism czar Sebastian Gorka”—A more terrifying string of words I cannot imagine.