>>Note: I’ll have to stop early due to Dr appt but will add what I miss when I return.
As always, I can’t reply during live-thread of multiple reporters. Plz remember to preface q’s w “Not for Laffy” or something similar since I’m too distracted to answer. Others can for me. TY.
🔥New York AG #LetitiaJames: "This morning, Mr. Trump will take the stand in our trial against him, the Trump org & other defendants. Mr. Trump has repeatedly & consistently misrepresented & inflated the value of his assets. & before he takes the stand, I am certain that he will engage in name calling & taunts & race baiting & call this a witch hunt. But at the end of the day, the only thing that matters are the facts and the numbers — & numbers, my friends, don't lie."👈🏼
(Painters slowed me down. I'm catching up...patience)
Via InnerCityPress aka Press:
Habba: My client & I wish to pt out Ms Carroll can sit in front of jurors every day. But my client has to choose between attending his mother in law's funeral--
Judge Kaplan: I have ruled. Sit down
Habba: I don't like to be spoken to that why. Please refrain. I am asking for an adjournment for a funeral.
Judge Kaplan: Denied. Sit down
🔥Judge Kaplan: No, we are not going to read out loud a document not yet in evidence. We are going to take a break right here to 3:30 and you're going to refresh your memory about how you get a document in.
Habba: Do you keep the supporting emails?
Carroll: Yes. I tend to delete questions that I know I won't use. But I have an entire label for supportive messages.
Habba: Do you control your email?
Carroll: Yes.
Habba: So only you deleted them?
Carroll: Yes.
Habba: Ms. Carroll, are you aware it is illegal to delete evidence?
Carroll's lawyer: Objection
🤦🏻♀️Habba: I move for a mistrial, evidence has been deleted
👉🏼Judge Kaplan: Denied and the jury will disregard everything Ms. Habba just said
🧵THREAD starts here 1/…. As always I’ll live-thread reports from multi reporters, scrambling, so can’t reply. Plz remember to preface replies w “Not for Laffy” or similar so I don’t get distracted. TY
Via Dan Alexander:
#Ivanka#Trump just made the long walk up the stairs of the Lower Manhattan courthouse where she will face questioning this morning from the #NewYork attorney general’s office as part of her father’s 250 million fraud suit. #legal
This is a spectacular example of aggregation/curation in real time by @GottaLaff -- a collection of reports about Ivanka Trump's testimony in her criminal father's New York fraud trial.
@GottaLaff
Well, let's see.
Did you ridicule these folks with funny names? Absolutely.
Doxxed anyone? Nope.
Misrepresented documented facts? Nope.
Fundraised off the unfairness of it all? Nein.
Incited a mob to attack your targets? Nopeitty nope.
Baselessly claimed that your targets were CORRUPT IN ALL CAPS and that THIS IS ALL POLITICAL AND TOTALLY UNFAIR (WHINE WHINE)? Gotta nope that one too.
So on balance, I find you guilty of satirizing some whiny grifters. Carry on!
I'm a former comedian. I'm a political commentator. I'm not a reporter. I comment on the reporters, I mock those who hurt us. But I try to NEVER be hurtful.
Not that I'm even close to being in his league, but would people tell Jon Stewart or any other satirist to stop mocking these people?
Today at 10am ET, U.S. District Judge Tanya #Chutkan will preside over her first hearing in the election interference case — and decide whether to limit what #Trump can reveal to the public about government evidence. #legal#TrumpIndictment 1/… 🪡
24/ Chutkan: What the effects on the political campaign are, are not before me and will not influence me here. This is a criminal trial. Brought at the time the prosecution was ready to bring charges. I don't have any control over that. I cannot & and will not factor in my decisions on whether it will effect a political campaign on either side.
People keep wishing for Trump to be detained pretrial, without realizing that pretrial detention orders are appealable even before the trial happens – ie, if he's jailed before trial, he conceivably could postpone the trial date while he appeals. (See above for more )
But now that there's a parallel state court proceeding, Fani Willis can drop the hammer on his witness- and jury-pool tampering without slowing down Smith's case!
What he's done is prep his followers to believe, at such time as Fox gets arnd to reporting he lost (they haven't, yet), he lost for reasons he "predicted" he wd lose: bc judge & the Black Woman Prosecutor ganged up on him
If last wk's judgmt & this trial were (or is--they still cd be) reported w 1/2 the attention reporters pay to Hunter dick pix then it MIGHT lead some ppl to realize Trump is a fraud, always has been
But thus far Trump has utterly dictated storyline.
As the day drew to a close, Trump seemed to take great issue with testimony from David Bender, an accountant at Mazars who spent years preparing Trump's personal tax returns.
At times, he appears to be very upset, with his face turning beet red. At one point, Trump turned to Cliff Robert, the attorney for his adult sons, and whisper-yelled at him, while pointing and waving his finger.
As always, I’ll be juggling coverage of Shouty McCokeFace’s testimony from mult sources; if you @ me w a ques, I won’t be able to reply, so please make sure to say “Not for you, Laffy” or, “For others to answer” or something. TY!
#DonaldTrumpJr’s 2nd day of testimony will begin later this morning. On the 1st, he tried to shift focus to his accountants—& the AG's counsel shed light on his father's trust. #Trump#legal#DonJr
Asked whether he even understood his dad had a statement of financial condition as of 2012, Eric says, “Not that I recall.” He clarifies, “I don’t know what I knew at the time.”
(This matters because in his supporting data worksheets underlying the statements of financial condition, McConney cited phone conversations with Eric in 2012 and 2013 as the basis for the valuation of Seven Springs.)
This will be 1/… of a new 🧵and as always, sorry, but while I scramble to aggregate posts from multiple reporters, I can’t reply, so your questions go unanswered.
Klasfeld:
Good morning from New York.
#MichaelCohen will return to the stand for his second day of cross-examination, after testifying that #Trump had him "reverse engineer" assets to "artificially" inflate his net worth. #legal
36/ BOOM. #WompWomp, although you'll all tell me it's not enough. Even if I agree, I accept this and understand a Judge who wants to avoid being overturned on appeal, leaving room for even more punishment. Sue me.
Via Orden:
Judge: To whom were you referring when you said the person sitting alongside? Trump: You and Cohen.
Judge: "As the trier of fact, I find the witness is not credible."
11/ We're starting again. The judge warned that he'd start in 15 min, even if certain people aren't here on time. Lo and behold, Trump hasn't walked back in.
His lawyers are here.
Where is he?
👉🏼In what's become typical MAGA fashion, Trump's lawyers are now trying delay tactics during the trial.👈🏼
Suarez keeps asking insanely long questions about accounting arcanum, repeating them for each year from 2020 back to 2011.
Again, I won't reply to you while live-posting multiple accounts. If you want me to see your reply, please wait until AFTER the threads are over and reply to me then.❤️
This is particularly interesting given the allegation that Egypt gave Trump $10M in September 2016.
Dan Alexander:
AGs office then shows a slide suggesting that, if Trump had been forced to pay higher interest rates, he would have either (a) run out of cash or (b) had to cut back some of his expenditures, like funding a presidential campaign. Super interesting.
From focus on the 'soft voice' of extremist #MikeJohnson to soft-selling #Trump's dictatorial plans to calling killing civilians 'a crater,' something's very wrong with the #media today
It's called cowardice
From Gaza City to Capitol Hill, a cowed media is chronicling the death of democracy in a passive voice
2/ "Shocking, incredibly important story on the front page of NYT... warned its readers that Trump — if returned to the WH in 2025 — is grooming a new team of extremist government lawyers who would be more loyal to their Dear Leader than to the rule of law, and could help Trump install a brand of American fascism.
You say you didn’t hear anything about this? That’s not surprising. The editors at the Times made sure to present this major report in the blandest, most inoffensive way possible..."
Let’s call this what it is: Trump is planning a military dictatorship. This is radical stuff that would end America as we know it. It must lead every newscast until every voter fully understands what this is. Yet it’s not even the top story in the Post.
#TrumpTrial started earlier than I did today. Grabbing coffee, starting THREAD HERE🧵1/… #Trump#legal
Here’s the list of Trump’s allies attending his trial today:
AG Alan Wilson
Rep. Eric Burlison
Rep. Andrew Clyde
Rep. Mary Miller
Rep. Keith Self
John Coale
Alan Dershowitz
Will Scharf
Steve Witkoff
Bernie Kerik
Kash Patel
Vernon Jones
Jerry Kassar
Chuck Zito
BOVE: What makes this case different is the predicate for the 175.10 charge (the NY state election law) is it's only unlawful if there is unlawful activity. Otherwise, it's just agreement to win an election.
👉🏼After Merchan cuts in, Bove waves his arms and continues to try to argue, but Merchan calms him down, and says "relax."
"I'm going to be consistent with my earlier rulings," Merchan says, reminding Bove that the People initially had 4 theories, and he ruled against one of them.
Closing arguments in Trump's New York criminal trial will begin the Tuesday after Memorial Day — May 28 — Judge Merchan says, to ensure there are not multiple days between summations and deliberations.
WHICH SUCKS because I'll be in the car on my way to Canada, which will make it REALLY hard to do any live posting.
You may disagree fervently with Pres. Biden's Israel policies, and that's fine. But if you come into my feed calling him "Genocide Joe" or any variation on that theme, you're blocked.
I've already had to block a few accounts for this.
Pres. Biden is not "for genocide." I will not argue with you on this topic, nor do I discuss the Israel/Hamas war here.
But I will not tolerate accusations of "genocide" by Pres. Biden. He's not "pro genocide."
@GottaLaff
I must have missed all these "genocide Joe" promoters' lauding his pro-Palestinian actions before Hamas attacked Israel on Putin's birthday.
My dad, a dr., was an award-winning photographer, but would never take money for his work. He got his photos in National Geographic calendar and other places, won contests, etc, but wouldn’t take a dime.
I’m going through his photos (he took, developed them himself, start to finish), have to get rid of a ton bc we can’t take them to Canada, 100s of mounted 11x14s. I’ll share some soon.
& if you’re very very good, I’ll also share a pic of me at 19 that he took in London. 😊 Maybe even more.
@GottaLaff Sorry to hear this, and that nobody can help. I'm not as well-travelled, but mounted my pics for photography competitions. Less than 20 takes up awkward space, and were a pain to move and store, so I started reusing the mounts.
I framed ~4, and will dispose of the rest, as I think they'll not come out again. I went through the same 'disposal' ideas you probably did, and none were viable (e.g. venues didn't want them; wrong format for charities, too much work to sell them online).
@GottaLaff Oh, my God, that photo"s AMAZING! His wisdom in focusing on the photographers rather than on the woman; her odd relative size and submissive posture could make it a commentary on the male gaze and media culture and colonialism.