Former President Trump News/Discussion....

[DTravel]

'Desperation': Trump's blitz of nonsense motions could lose his case before it starts
Raw Story

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...1e33dd93&ei=50

Former President Donald Trump has resorted to every idea in the book to try to slow down or throw out the Manhattan hush money trial — most recently, a claim of presidential immunity, despite the fact that virtually all the alleged conduct occurred before he was even president. Ultimately he was smacked down by Judge Juan Merchan for not making the motion in a timely fashion.

The former president needs to be careful at this point, wrote legal experts Norm Eisen and Taylor Redd for MSNBC on Thursday — his tactics, which reek of "desperation," could make an enemy of the judge, and end his defense before it even begins.

"Even if absolute presidential immunity existed — which, as we’ve previously explained, it doesn’t — Merchan rightly recognized that Trump’s motion was too little, too late," they wrote. "As an initial matter, Merchan noted, Trump filed his request to adjourn the trial months after 'the 45-day period [after arraignment and before commencement of trial] provided by statute.' New York courts have discretion to vary that stricture. But Trump offered little in the way of justification for his tardiness. As Merchan pointed out, Trump was long ago 'well aware that the defense of presidential immunity, even if unsuccessful, might be available to him.' There was absolutely no reason Trump could not have at least tried to bring it up more promptly."

The problem for the former president, they continued, is that "Merchan has had to deal with and reject numerous other delaying maneuvers by Trump." And that is a grave risk: "It is not wise to lose the judge before the trial has even started, both because of the myriad decisions affecting the defense he will have to make during its pendency and because if Trump is convicted, Merchan will mete out the sentence."

All of this might have been a risk worth taking when Trump had the runway to try to stop the trial from happening at all — but, they concluded, it's inevitable at this point, and he's just hurting his own prospects.

"Trump’s one constant throughout all of his prosecutions is his attempt to delay proceedings," they wrote. "As the Manhattan trial inexorably approaches, he will surely become even more frantic. But that is a profound sign of weakness — indeed, it shows that Trump now recognizes that he is finally facing his reckoning."

[DTravel]

The disturbing irony behind a disgraceful new endorsement of Trump
MSNBC - Opinion

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other...1e33dd93&ei=57

On Tuesday, the 12,000-member Police Officers Association of Michigan (POAM) disgraced itself by endorsing Donald Trump for president. At a campaign event in Grand Rapids, Trump supporters cheered as uniformed officers flanked the former president — who’s facing dozens of criminal charges in four different indictments, and was already found liable for sexual abuse. The spectacle of police officers supporting a man indicted in two states and in two federal jurisdictions raises the question: What exactly are they endorsing?

POAM President Jim Tignanelli noted that his group first endorsed Trump in the 2016 election. “In the midst of a rapidly changing political landscape,” he argued, “it’s imperative for organizations representing law enforcement to endorse candidates who prioritize safety, security, and the well-being of communities.” I’m not a big fan of police engaging in any politically partisan activities, but since Tignanelli wants to go there, let’s try and figure out what he meant.

Maybe, since Trump used the event to focus on border security, the police representative might have referred to a perception that undocumented migrants are causing a coast-to-coast violent crime spree. That’s certainly the picture that Trump was painting. The former president referred to undocumented migrants as “animals” and accused President Joe Biden of being responsible for a “bloodbath” at the southern border.

Except, that’s not what the facts tell us. Law enforcement is supposed to be about gathering facts to use as evidence. The facts, convenient or not, tell us that crimes rates are down in cities that receive the most migrants. An NBC News review of “available 2024 crime data from the cities targeted by Texas’ “Operation Lone Star,” which buses or flies migrants from the border to major cities in the interior — shows overall crime levels dropping in those cities that have received the most migrants.” The truth is that violent crime continues to drop across the nation.

Perhaps the POAM leader was referring to the more local and tragic slaying of 25-year-old Ruby Garcia by her boyfriend, Brandon Ortiz-Vite. The man, who entered the U.S. as a child, confessed to killing Garcia and dumping her body near a Grand Rapids roadway. At Tuesday’s event, Trump correctly asserted that Ortiz-Vite was deported during his administration. But his claim that Ortiz-Vite re-entered the country under Biden’s watch, implying Biden is responsible for murder, could not be corroborated by immigration officials who noted that the date and location were unknown. The facts should matter to those who enforce the law.

Importantly, while police officers stood by listening, Trump claimed he had spoken with Garcia’s family members. In fact, Garcia’s sister told reporters that Trump had not spoken to anyone from the family. “It’s kind of shocking seeing that he had said he had spoken with us ... misinforming people on live TV,” Marvi Garcia said in an interview with NBC affiliate WOOD-TV. That Trump would lie on television isn’t surprising, but that doesn’t make his politicization of a pending homicide investigation any less disturbing.

Tiagnelli and the POAM’s leadership might argue that Trump has the backs of police around the country. Tell that to the U.S. Capitol Police union who tallied 140 officers injured during the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump calls the criminals who assaulted those officers “hostages,” whom he pledges to release if he wins the presidency again.

In a statement ahead of Tuesday’s rally, Biden-Harris 2024 Michigan Communications Director Alyssa Bradley said, “Donald Trump is coming to Grand Rapids where he is expected to once again try to politicize a tragedy and sow hate and division to hide from his own record of failing Michiganders.”

Now, Trump and his shortsighted cohorts in Michigan law enforcement have politicized the police too. I say shortsighted because endorsing a man who refers to migrants as animals, and was found liable for sexual assault, is anathema to the law enforcement mission. Will rape victims report crimes to police departments who endorse Trump? Will migrants who are beaten because of the color of their skin report their incident to a sheriff who supports what Trump stands for?

Hate and division are Trump’s bread and butter — but hate and division have no business dressing up in a police uniform. Tignanelli said he “hopes that in the future with leaders like Trump, honor will be restored to the law enforcement profession”. But endorsing a man who stands against the rule of law and uses officers as props is the furthest thing from honorable.

[DTravel]

A criminologist explains why keeping Trump from the White House is all that matters | Opinion
Raw Story

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...1e33dd93&ei=77

The danger and consequences locally and globally of electing Donald Trump for a second time must be stressed every hour of every day between now and Nov. 5.

That’s because this election is first and foremost a matter of national security at home and abroad, and Trump poses a grave threat to both.

This election is not a matter of politics as usual.

Nor is this election about the “crucifixion” of Trump by a “deep state.”

Or the selling of an overpriced Bible by a lifelong atheist portraying himself as a Christian on Easter Sunday and International Transgender Day of Visibility.

The 2024 election is about Trump posting a video on Truth Social of a picture of President Joe Biden hog-tied on the back of a MAGA pickup truck allegedly on its way to a funeral of a New York police officer killed in the line of duty.

This election had also been about gag orders not going far enough and the failure to implement sanctions to lock Trump up for threatening prosecutors, judges, family members and witnesses — at least until Monday night's ruling in the Manhattan case by Judge Juan Merchan.

The deference to Trump thus far has had absolutely nothing to do with the First Amendment or the fact that he is running for president. It has had everything to do with the institutional failure of the U.S. criminal justice system to treat Trump — who faces 88 felony charges across four separate criminal cases — the same as anyone else who threatens the fair administration of the due process of justice.

A victory this fall by Trump threatens the end of American democracy as we have known it for some 250 years.

At best, a second Trump administration would usher in a new domestic order of illiberal democracy and disinformation. At worst, it would result in the United States’ entry into an anti-democratic axis of autocratic, plutocratic and kleptocratic nations.

Open recognition of these realities must become an everyday part of the 2024 presidential election.

Trump’s desired illiberal democracy or authoritarian regime is being brought to the nation by the thinking and planning of Turning Point USA, the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and the Conservative Partnership Institute.

This coalition of conservative “stink” tanks led by the Heritage Foundation are all in with Trumpism and they have helped to produce Project 2025. This 920-page report was published in 2022 and “promises revenge, oppression, and autocratic rule,” says Thomas Zimmer writing for Democracy Americana.

The foreword, “Mandate for Leadership,” was written by Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts. According to Zimmer, “In just 17 pages, it captures and oozes the siege mentality, self-victimization, and grievance-driven lust for revenge that is fueling the Right and animating the plans for a second Trump administration.”

Their agenda is also in alignment with the conservative decision making of the U.S. Supreme Court that, since 2010, has been empowering corporations, stripping individuals of their rights and chipping away at the checks and balances of the U.S. Constitution.

As we have all witnessed, the far-right supermajority Supreme Court is all in with Trumpism. They have been busy running interference for the insurrectionist-in-chief and delaying the trials of the four time criminally indicted presumptive GOP nominee.

The New York Times Magazine published an extensive interview with the Heritage Foundation’s Roberts back in January of this year entitled: Inside the Heritage Foundation’s Plans for "Institutionalizing Trumpism."

Some of the highlights from this interview included that Roberts had nothing but praise for Viktor Orbán’s autocratic regime in Hungary. Echoing Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, he acknowledged that he, too, wants to destroy the administrative state. Roberts also wants to fire 50,000 federal workers.

Roberts echoes McCarthyism, as well, when he asserts that Chinese communists have infiltrated the U.S. government. He also believes that there is a communist plot in the highest echelons of American power, although he has conceded this may only be a socialist plot.

Who said you can’t make this stuff up?

The administration of Trump 1.0 (2017-2021) was uninitiated and disorganized. It was full of chaos and disorder. It experienced resistance from within its own corridors of power. Beyond the Oval Office, it was still subject to institutionalists, to checks and balances, to the rule of law.

As Barton Gellman has reflected in The Atlantic’s special issue, “If Trump Wins,” the former president “tried and failed to cross many lines during his time in the White House. He proposed, for example, that the IRS conduct punitive audits of his political antagonists and that Border Patrol officers shoot migrants in the legs.”

That didn’t happen.

But following Biden’s victory in 2020, Trump and a sizable number of his supporters operationalized several schemes to overturn a legitimate election, including a failed insurrection that violated section three of the 14th Amendment.

The contending forces of political power combined were barely enough to impede Trump from his desire to remain — at any cost — in the White House as an unelected commander-in-chief.

Many politicians and politicos, as well as former officials from the Trump 1.0 administration, believe that if Trump is re-elected that he will not leave office after a second term. As former Rep. Liz Cheney has been saying, a vote for Trump may very well become “the last election that you ever get to vote in.”

Trump may face criminal referral from Jan. 6 committee, Cheney says Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) has questioned whether American democracy will survive another Trump presidency. (Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times/TNS)

Trump 2.0 (2025-?) would be very different from Trump 1.0 for several reasons:

First, Trumpian lawlessness, corruption and weaponization of state attorney generals has taken over and spread throughout the Republican Party.

Second, the next Trump administration will be experienced and far better organized around Trumpian goals than the last one.

Third, the internal resistance and the threat of governmental institutionalists will have subsided. Rule of law itself will even become a secondary threat to Trump so long as he’s a free man..

Fourth, in the next administration, only political loyalists need apply for work. And loyalty oaths — not to the U.S. Constitution but to dictator Trump — will almost assuredly be implemented throughout the administration and civil service, if not across American society.

The continuing if not escalating assault on American democracy and the rule of law since Jan. 6 by Trump and his captured GOP including their desire to sanction the fourth estate, to deconstruct democratic institutions, and to weaponize law enforcement are all in sync with the rising waves of anti-democratic and authoritarian movements worldwide.

In the contemporary world, Trump’s nationalist “America first” vision of the United States has aligned with other illiberal and authoritarians engaged in populist rule underpinned by xenophobia, scapegoating and political targeting. What all these countries share in common is that they are trending toward fascism, standardization and disinformation.

For example, 30 years after the collapse of the Soviet bloc, we have President Vladimir Putin invading Ukraine and promising another Russian Empire.

In Brazil, there was former Army Captain Jair Bolsonaro elected to office in a landslide in 2018. He had surfed an anti-corruption wave promising to put an end to the “old politics” — only to be defeated in 2022 by the progressive and former jailed President Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro, a Trump ally and fellow failed insurrectionist, hung out at Mar-a-Lago after his defeat. After only six months, the Brazilian Electoral Court barred Bolsonaro from running again for political office until 2030.

In Argentina, there is the self-described “narco-capitalist-libertarian” and recently elected President Javier Milei. The 53-year-old economist and TV pundit ran on a ticket promising to reduce the size of government and three decades of triple-digit inflation. With the backing of the International Monetary Fund and the Davos crowd, Milei broke the hegemony of the nation’s two leading political forces — the Perónists, or left-of-center party, and the older conservative party, the Union Civica Radical.

Newly elected President of Argentina Javier Milei of La Libertad Avanza speaks after the polls closed in the presidential runoff on November 19, 2023, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. (Photo by Tomas Cuesta/Getty Images)

Most recently in the Netherlands, there was the election of the anti-Islamic leader Geert Wilders. As the new prime minister, he is promising to spread the populist message, shake up democratic institutions and break a few rules.

So what do we have to do to save American democracy from its impending demolition?

In the long term, we must change and modify the electoral and constitutional systems of politicking and governing that have brought the United States to this historical quagmire in American democracy. There are no shortages of necessary reforms, recommendations, and programs waiting in the wings to be implemented for ameliorating our dysfunctional “bipartisan” democracy.

I have summarized these in Indicting the 45th President: Boss Trump, the GOP, and What We Can Do About the Threat to American Democracy that was published on April 1.

However, without the defeat of Trump in November, there will be no chance or opportunity to correct the existential crisis that consumes us all.

In the short term, therefore, we must do everything in our collective power to make sure that Biden is returned to office for a second term in 2025.

This entails convincing all voters, especially anti-Trump Republicans, independents and short-sighted Democrats, as well, that this election has little to do with partisan politics and policies.

It has everything to do with saving our democratic republic from Trump, Trumpism and the former Grand Old Party that has morphed and metastasized into something unrecognizable and dangerous.

[Baxter49]

The two founders of Trump's media company plead guilty to insider trading.
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Money Never Sleeps comes back to life on 4/22 10am Judge Engoron has scheduled a hearing regarding Trump's bond viability. He also has a ten day delay now to find another bond holder.

Mr Trump once the Hush Money case begins is a criminal defendant he must make all appearances.

Am I wrong or did Trump say he can pay his bond in cash?

[Baxter49]

https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/05/busin...low/index.html
Trump Media stock sinks to post-merger low

Shares of Truth Social owner Trump Media & Technology Group tumbled 12% on Friday, sinking to their lowest level since the company went public last week.

The selloff has erased nearly $2 billion from the value of former President Donald Trump’s stake in the company this week.

Trump Media shared surged to as high as $79.38 on March 26, the day trading began on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “DJT.”

Since then, the Truth Social owner’s share price has plunged by 49% to the closing price of $40.49 on Friday.

Trump Media’s shares have lost about a third of their value this week. Despite this week’s losses, Trump Media shares have still spiked by more than 130% so far this year.

Trump’s personal stake in the company is now valued at about $3.2 billion. That’s down from $4.9 billion at the end of last week.

Trump Media recently disclosed losing $58 million last year on very light revenue of just $4.1 million. The financial results underscore concerns raised by some experts that the company is being vastly overvalued by Wall Street.

Barry Diller, the billionaire chairman of Expedia and People Magazine owner IAC, told CNBC on Thursday that Trump Media is a “scam” and people buying the stock are “dopes.”

“I mean, it’s ridiculous,” Diller said on CNBC. “The company has no revenue.”

A Trump Media spokesperson denounced critics of the company.

“It is unsurprising to see die-hard Trump haters and leftwing flacks blow a gasket now that Truth Social has become a public company that, still today, refuses to suppress political expression that contradicts the narratives they want to enforce,” Shannon Devine, a Trump Media spokesperson, said in a statement to CNN.

[DTravel]

Tensions flare between special counsel Jack Smith and Judge Aileen Cannon
Politico

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...9e49acdb&ei=21

Special counsel Jack Smith is palpably frustrated with Judge Aileen Cannon after several confounding rulings — and lengthy bouts of judicial indecision — have threatened to derail his case against Donald Trump for stashing classified secrets at Mar-a-Lago.

The long-simmering tension came to a boil this week in a court filing in which Smith’s team sharply questioned the judge’s willingness to entertain a legal theory that Trump has advanced in a bid to dismiss the case. Prosecutors called the theory “pure fiction,” and their submission featured tartly worded threats to appeal any adverse decision. They also demanded that Cannon decide quickly to prevent her from hamstringing the prosecution on the eve of trial.

Cannon shot back Thursday, revealing her own frustrations with Smith’s team, saying in a prickly order that the demand for a hurried decision was “unprecedented and unjust.”

The strained dynamic between Smith and Cannon — a Trump nominee confirmed by the Senate in 2020 — has in some ways overshadowed the grave felony counts against Trump, who is facing dozens of charges that he hoarded military intelligence in his South Florida home and then tried to obstruct the government from reclaiming those records. The judge’s handling of the case has led to a furious public debate about her intentions and inexperience.

Smith’s supporters have railed against Cannon’s odd and sometimes inexplicable decisions, voicing their own frustrations that Smith hasn’t pushed to get the judge booted from the case.

“It’s clear that she is going in a ridiculous direction,” said Nancy Gertner, a retired federal judge from Massachusetts, who says Smith should move for Cannon’s recusal from the case. “The government could be without recourse after a trial begins. … I don’t even know why they indulged her. … I think they need to stop playing games and move to disqualify her.”

Persuading an appeals court to remove a trial judge is usually a quixotic quest. Appeals courts generally grant that relief only in the most extraordinary circumstances — such as if a trial judge repeatedly defies direct orders from a higher court.

Meanwhile, Trump has moved to capitalize on the obvious tension, heaping praise on Cannon — a “highly respected Judge,” he intoned on his social media platform,Truth Social, Thursday morning. Smith, Trump said, is “obviously trying to ‘play the ref,’” a comment he made while employing the same tactic for which he had just criticized the special counsel.

At the heart of the matter is Cannon’s unusual stewardship of one of the most important criminal cases in American history. In her short tenure as a judge, the former federal prosecutor has presided over only a handful of criminal trials, and certainly none as fraught, complex and closely scrutinized as this one.

Ten months into her supervision of United States v. Trump, her decisions — and non-decisions — have led to a tangle of confusing orders and unresolved conflicts. Huge swaths of the case have been walled off from the public while Cannon has spent weeks contemplating Smith’s demand for redactions to protect witness identities.

And perhaps most bizarrely, Cannon has not even completed what is typically a straightforward scheduling matter: setting the case for trial. Both sides agree that Cannon’s current trial date of May 20 has to be pushed back. But it’s been over a month since she heard arguments about a new trial date, and she’s been mum ever since.

The foot-dragging threatens to imperil the whole case, because if Trump is elected while a trial is still pending, he will almost certainly shut it down by ordering the Justice Department to drop the charges.

And even if Smith succeeds in getting the trial on track before November, Cannon’s critics worry that she will unilaterally pull the plug on the case before it reaches a jury.
‘Very odd approach’ to a critical legal question

The latest clash between the judge and prosecutors came over Trump’s aggressive interpretation of the Presidential Records Act, a post-Watergate law that governs federal recordkeeping and allows presidents to retain certain “personal” documents, such as diaries, from their terms in office. Trump has argued that the law empowered him to send a slew of classified material to his home.

At a mid-March hearing, Cannon signaled she was likely to reject Trump’s effort to dismiss most of the case under that theory. But days later, instead of issuing a ruling, Cannon asked both sides to submit competing jury instructions based on scenarios she had seemed poised to reject.

“I am not a conspiracy theorist and I don’t want to say this is being done to intentionally delay the way that the case is moving along, but the longer this drags out it seems that way,” said David Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor from South Florida.

Smith’s team complied with Cannon’s request, but only after a lengthy preamble in which the prosecutors said her proposed scenarios were based on fundamental errors of law and built on a fictional premise that Trump concocted a year after departing the White House. Virtually every sentence in the filing was couched with a disclaimer that the proposed instructions rested on faulty premises.

Some of the filing painted Trump’s legal position as so absurd that Cannon entertaining it would render the trial a farce. And the prosecutors took the unusual step of warning Cannon repeatedly that they could pursue a rare, pretrial appeal if she sided with Trump.

Some experts found the repeated threats of appeal, and the entire tone of the government’s brief, unusually combative.

“This is more aggressive than prosecutors typically are with federal judges (likely because federal judges usually rule in their favor) and reflects a level of frustration with Judge Cannon’s very odd approach to this issue,” former federal prosecutor Ken White said via email.

On Thursday, just 40 hours after Smith filed his brief, Cannon issued a terse decision rejecting Trump’s bid to toss the charges — sort of. The charges remain intact for now, but she left open the possibility that Trump could resuscitate the Presidential Records Act defense at trial. And she scolded Smith’s team for demanding that she quickly declare her intent about jury instructions on the issue.

Part of the reason the issue has become so contentious is that Trump’s defense may rise or fall based on Cannon’s ultimate interpretation of the Presidential Records Act.

“The legal issue that the judge is struggling with is potentially dispositive,” said former federal prosecutor Brandon Van Grack. “If she sides with the government, it is unclear what the defense would be then.”

Van Grack acknowledged that Trump’s lawyers have offered other defenses, like claiming that the Espionage Act is too vague to enforce against him, but said the Presidential Records Act argument seems like the one where Trump’s attorneys think they have the best chance of winning the judge to their side.
A backlog of motions and an uncertain schedule

Cannon’s management of the case has also featured jarring gaps in action. In addition to failing to announce a realistic trial date, she has allowed a long list of pretrial motions to pile up. She did hold a hearing recently on a couple of them, but she has not signaled when the others will be argued, much less decided.

The case has languished so long that it now faces a genuine complication: Trump’s looming criminal trial in New York state court for allegedly orchestrating a hush money scheme to cover up an affair with a porn star. That case is set to begin April 15 and could stretch into June.

And Trump has repeatedly pitted one case against the other as he seeks delays in all of them. His lawyers have told Cannon that Trump cannot prepare for a Florida trial — or attend pretrial hearings there — while sitting for weeks in a Manhattan courtroom.

Trump’s other two criminal cases, meanwhile, have no trial dates. His federal election case is on hold while the Supreme Court reviews his claim of “presidential immunity,” and his Georgia election case was sidetracked by allegations of prosecutorial misconduct. But if either of those two cases get trial dates this summer or fall, the window of opportunity for the classified documents trial to occur before Election Day will close even further.

Cannon, for her part, has not addressed her many critics, or even given much insight into her plans for the case. The few written decisions she has issued are typically short and packed with virtually impenetrable legalese.

The judge, however, did once seem to bristle at the suggestion that her management of the case has been sluggish.

At a March 1 hearing, she told one of Smith’s prosecutors: “I can assure you that, in the building, there’s a good deal of judicial work going on.”

Just not by her....

[DTravel]

OPINION: The Yugest Grift, Part II - What Everyone Is Missing About Trump's Stock
MeidasTouch Network

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/tops...d388feb5&ei=21

The traditional liberal and conservative megaphones are covering the trading in DJT as though it is an extension of the propaganda warfare that the Dystopian-in Chief spews, and his adversaries dispute, wherever his attention lands. In so doing, they are missing the point, the actual explanation of what professional traders know about the current market conditions of DJT stock.

When DJT stock falls a couple dollars a share, it’s still 10 to 100 times higher than what it’s worth… and the orange-headed, penny stock promoter doesn’t “lose” share price with the 80 million shares he holds, because he can’t sell them now. This is all noise, not news. It is what popcorn is to food.

My last piece pointed out the distortion that enters the market due to high share borrow fees. It was a few days ago an outrageous 200%. As of today, the rates quoted are 800% and 900%, which are absolutely unprecedented for a NASDAQ stock trading in volume. The borrow fee structure skews the process of “price discovery”, distorting the very thing that markets are supposed to do.

At this point, everyone who cares knows that DJT stock represents a worthless company. While the stock just began trading under Trump’s initials, the Truth Social website has been functioning for over a year, and its metrics remain abysmal. As a business, all vectors point to its being worth 1/10th to 1/100th of its current market valuation ($4.00 to $.40 per share) .

However, that knowledge is not sufficient grounds for entering a short position in the stock. The outrageous borrow fees tell us that the stock is “heavily over-shorted” -- that there are too many shares shorted relative to the supply of shares to be loaned out for short selling. This creates scenarios that novice and causal stock traders are not familiar with:

1) Traders intending to short the stock now are volunteering to pay these unheard-of stock loan rates, to borrow shares they expect to fall rapidly to penny stock levels. They are likely to be disappointed and lose money. Why? Because too many people have already acted on that obvious premise, but weren’t aware they were going to be paying 2% or more per day, in cash, plucked directly out of their brokerage accounts, for the privilege. As days turn to weeks, this usurious rate will eat up an unknown but large amount of their capital. Paying a 2% borrow fee daily means that if the stock falls by half in a month, (usually a screaming win for a short position), you’ll barely break even.

2) The borrow rate resets every day, and those who are short have zero price protection. Someone already short at $20, paying 20% in the months prior to the conversion of DWAC to DJT, may have taken a big paper loss when the stock spiked to $40, only to now be paying a 10x higher overnight borrow fee (which went from 20% to 200%) as the graph in our last piece showed. And they’re paying that rate on double the equity of their position. Their actual daily outlay for borrow fee is now up 20x, while their P/L on the position shows a 100% loss. This is the painful reality of life as a short seller when a position traps you.

Now the overnight fee has quadrupled again from that nosebleed level. So a lot of investors positioned short are taking daily losses. Their expectation for a tidy profit on the fall in the share price has turned to “hope”... to get out with their capital not wrecked. And the borrow fee meter tries their patience and charges them every day to wait it out.

3) The other side of the borrow fee is called a “Stock Yield Enhancement Program”. Investors are buying DJT just to be able to loan out the shares and collect 50% - 67% of borrow fees charged to the short sellers. (Example) This provides a powerful financial incentive to hold the stock, and creates conditions for short squeezes. Buyers are betting the borrow fees they earn more than compensate for the risk of the stock falling rapidly.

4) As mentioned in our last piece, the insider game of yanking blocks of shares out of the borrow pool is well known by the pros. This drives up the borrow fee even higher, and can cause dreaded “buy-ins”, involuntary purchases made by brokerages to cover their customers' short positions if there aren’t shares to borrow. If DJT sees future violent price rises unexpectedly, this is probably the reason.

What about the Dystopian-in-Chief’s insider shares?

Legally, he can’t lend them out, or pledge or hypothecate them for the next 4 ½ months. During that time, it looks like he’ll earn 90% of another 40 million share “earnout” carved into this deal. It’s typical shortsighted greed. If you’re the insider, it doesn’t matter how many shares you grab; the value is determined by what the public will pay for the shares in the float. When the orange-headed shares unlock, when he actually sells, that’s when prices will really fall. The game is to delay his insider selling, or the appearance of it, as long as possible. Of course, he has people in his circle who know all this.

Now, cash-constrained as his current predicament makes him, it will be very tempting for him to create handshake agreements with cronies. Now he has two motives: not only to create price lock-in trades as we pointed out previously, but to hypothecate shares through shadow entities to slurp up some of that borrow fee gravy. When has the orange-headed golfer ever let a little thing like the law restrain him? He’s perfectly capable of waging war with the SEC as he has with the DoJ, the Presidential Records Archivist, the nation’s Security Agencies, the “Biden crime family” and Congress, for that matter.

The press is climbing all over itself ignorantly calling out in headlines every stock price move as “proving” something, whether its that DJT is a worthless company or a great investment. The real mechanism by which it winds its way to penny stock status will be unpredictably choppy and take way too long for those paying the enormous borrow fees.

If you really want to know what the stock price is going to do, keep an eye on the borrow fee, which is repriced daily. However, it’s hard to find that data, and it can absolutely change violently at a moment’s notice, even within the trading day.

There’s a pretty good rule of thumb among traders -- when a stock becomes a tug-of-war, overhyped on both sides of a trade, the stock will move to the maximum pain point for both sides. It's the pros, the Citadels and Bill Gross types with the all-knowing algorithmic trading computers, that are the “house” in this game. That’s who makes the Yuge profits.

If DJT falls 1% to 3% a day for a while, both the longs and the shorts lose. Who wins? The house wins.

If you really want to apply your time and money to defeat the Dystopian-In-Chief, please be our guest.

If you want to defeat Trump, vote.

Don’t short DJT…not unless you really understand the game, and its weirdly counterintuitive risks.

[DTravel]

Judge in Trump hush money case quashes last-minute defense subpoena
ABC News

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...c117367e&ei=82

The judge overseeing Donald Trump's criminal hush money case quashed a last-minute subpoena by defense lawyers Friday, writing that the former president's request was the "very definition of a fishing expedition."

Trump's lawyers last month subpoenaed NBCUniversal for materials related to their documentary about adult film star Stormy Daniels, which was scheduled to be released one week before the case's original trial date of March 25.

Daniels is expected to testify at trial about the hush money payment she received in 2016 for her silence about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump that the former president has long denied. Trump has pleaded not guilty to a 34-count indictment charging him with falsifying business records in connection with the payment, which Trump's then-attorney Michael Cohen made to Daniels just days before the 2016 presidential election.

Jury selection for the trial is scheduled to get underway April 15 in New York City. The former president has denied all wrongdoing.

Defending their subpoena to NBCUniversal, Trump's lawyers argued that the requested records would "establish collusion between NBCU and Daniels" to release the documentary "as close to the start of the trial as possible to prejudice Defendant and maximize their own financial interest."

In his ruling Friday, Judge Juan Merchan quashed the subpoena and described Trump's arguments as "purely speculative." Evidence submitted by an NBC executive demonstrated that Daniels lacked control over the timing of and material included in the documentary, Merchan concluded.

"Because Defendant's claims are purely speculative and unsupported, his subpoena and the demands therein are the very definition of a fishing expedition," Merchan said.

"The Court has considered Defendant's explanation for seeking this court's permission to rifle through the privileged documents of a news organization and finds that he has not shouldered the very heavy burden necessary to overcome NY civil rights law," the judge wrote.

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'Pivotal': Judge may be about to spill key information on Trump's Jan. 6 actions
Raw Story

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...fbdaacb6&ei=62

A judge may be about to open up new information that could reveal former President Donald Trump took actions in his "private" capacity on January 6, rather than as a public official — with huge implications for his criminal trials.

According to Law & Crime, "This is a key distinction for a group of former and current U.S. lawmakers and police suing Trump for violations of the Ku Klux Klan Act, as Law&Crime previously reported. Just this week, the former president filed a motion to stay that civil litigation indefinitely, invoking his brewing immunity question before the Supreme Court." U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta is handling the matter.

"Trump argues the overlap between the civil claim and his criminal indictment prosecuted by special counsel Jack Smith is too great and that going to trial, or even beginning pretrial proceedings like discovery, would threaten his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination," the report noted.

This comes after the lawsuit, which has been underway for years, was allowed to move forward after Trump's claim to being immune from the civil action was rejected. The separate matter of whether Trump is immune from criminal prosecution is currently set to be decided by the Supreme Court.

The attorney representing the plaintiffs, Joseph Sellers, told Law & Crime that the impact on the criminal case could be huge: “The criminal case that’s before the Supreme Court on the question of immunity is framed entirely differently in this respect and it’s quite important. In our civil case, the question is whether his conduct was primarily of an official or private nature. That’s pivotal.”

A big part of the case turns on the things Trump said at his "Stop the Steal" rally at the Ellipse on January 6 as the riot on the other side of the complex was beginning to take shape, said Sellers.

“It’s clear the content of what he said was about seeking and securing his reelection. The courts have repeatedly confirmed that seeking your reelection is a necessarily private act. There is no ‘official’ role that can be performed for people who are campaigning for their election whether you’re incumbent or not. Either way, the campaign activity is necessarily private in nature.”

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More Blood on Trump's Hands | Opinion
Newsweek

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opini...fbdaacb6&ei=70

It's not "just politics" when people are literally dying because of your actions.

Ukraine is in dire straits. As the war drags on, the people are starting to lose hope. Young Ukrainians are avoiding the draft, convinced fighting has become a futile effort, not wanting to spend years of their lives battling an enemy that has a vast amount more manpower and resources. POLITICO reported that the average age of the country's frontline soldier is now 43, showing both how desperate the nation is for soldiers and how problematic the draft-dodging has become.

Ukrainians have seen over 31,000 soldier deaths and another 10,000 civilian deaths in the war already. The army has reduced daily ammunition firing by over 70 percent, going from 7,000 rounds a day to just 2,000.

"If there is no U.S. support, it means that we have no air defense, no Patriot missiles, no jammers for electronic warfare, no 155-millimeter artillery rounds," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky pleaded to The Washington Post. "It means we will go back, retreat, step by step, in small steps."

A Ukrainian loss would prove not just catastrophic for Ukraine itself, but could very well force the United States and its European allies into a larger conflagration, as defense analyst Edward Arnold explained to CBS. Russia, he said, is "an aggressive state, and if they win in Ukraine, they're going to most likely start to look at other states in Europe, particularly the Baltic states." Our reluctance to help could also send a message to China, he said, that we will not intervene if that nation should attempt to invade Taiwan, which it could potentially be ready to do within the next three years.

Granted, our allies should also step up, as it is both the right thing to do and in their own interests. Yet any reasonable analysis of the situation also makes it clear that it's a complete no-brainer that we should pass the $60 billion aid package currently stalled in Congress. Why haven't we? Two words: Donald Trump.

There are two types of monsters in the world: those like Russian President Vladimir Putin who commit atrocities, and those like former President Donald Trump who allow them to do so for their own personal benefit.

Through his acolytes, including devoted House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), Trump has tied aid to Ukraine to a border security bill, and then prevented that bill from passing as well, despite widespread agreement that it would ease the border situation and provide much needed help to our border security agents. The package would have also sent aid to Israel and Taiwan, which has been carefully monitoring Chinese aggression.

There is absolutely no sound reasoning for doing this, and certainly no moral basis for it. The only basis is a political calculus: Trump is betting that the worse he makes things, the more the American people will want a change, and that they'll blame President Joe Biden rather than the person who is actually causing the damage, Trump himself.

This means that the border situation won't get any better, that Ukrainians will continue to suffer and die, and that the Taiwanese fears will continue to grow because Dirty Donald and his disciples will put their own interests before the safety and security of the United States and the world.

Not since former President Richard Nixon worked to scuttle a Vietnam deal in the lead-up to the 1968 election have we seen such a high level of self-interested duplicity. Nixon did it in secret; Trump is doing it out in the open, hoping Americans are too unaware and uninformed to notice.

It should come as no surprise, though, that Donald Trump is willing to go to such lengths, nor be shocking that his apologists are willing to do his bidding for him. We're now living in a world, after all, wherein essentially the entire Republican Party is pretending that Trump did not send an angry mob to overthrow our republic on Jan. 6, and that he is not guilty of many, many crimes, both involving the election and through his personal history of financial malfeasance. Trump has blood on his hands from Jan. 6 as well, and the Republicans know it, yet they are all subservient to their party's leader and afraid of what speaking out against him would bring.

Trump often talks in apocalyptic terms—not just with his "bloodbath" remark that his campaign insists was meant only as a metaphor for the economy—but in his constant refrain to supporters that if they don't put him back into power, they "won't have a country anymore" and that the people he's up against are "evil." He's began appealing to Christian fundamentalists through this type of oratory, and has even started comparing himself to Jesus, as if he is their sole savior.

The problem with this argument is that Trump isn't the firefighter, he's the arsonist. And because of him, in Ukraine, it's already an apocalypse.