Location: At the dude ranch / above the sea Gender:
Posted:
Aug 30, 2025 - 1:16pm
kurtster wrote:
Jack Smith was an illegally appointed Special Prosecutor. He was never confirmed by the Senate which is a specific requirement for making someone a Special Prosecutor according to statute.
Smith had no legal standing. He was illegally appointed specifically for political purposes / ends.
In all of this folderol, the thing that irks me is that none of this seems to dwell in the world of âright and wrongâ but simple lawyer technicalities. Having been caught up in those shenanigans before (probably most of us have), I have a jaundiced eye that what ANY lawyer contends is rooted in righteousness - and more about their lying just to get judgement in their favor. Like our president does.
Jack Smith was an illegally appointed Special Prosecutor. He was never confirmed by the Senate which is a specific requirement for making someone a Special Prosecutor according to statute.
Smith had no legal standing. He was illegally appointed specifically for political purposes / ends.
Most legal analyses that I read stated that Smith had legal standing to prosecute and that Cannon made a bad ruling.
The Trump Documents Case Should Not Have Been Dismissed, says law prof
By Gregory Germain, Professor of Law, Syracuse University College of Law
Jack Smith was appointed to be Special Prosecutor by Attorney General Merrick Garland under a Justice Department regulation that has been in effect since 1999, and is substantively identical to regulations that were in effect for decades and during the Nixon Watergate case, which was prosecuted by outside Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski. The Supreme Court affirmed the trial courtâs decision in United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683, 694 (1974), noting that Jaworski had been appointed under the DOJâs regulation. No prior court has taken seriously a challenge to a special counselâs appointment under the special counsel regulations.
In 2019, two law professors published a law review article arguing that it was unconstitutional under the appointments clause for the Attorney General to appoint an outside special counsel, in that case Robert Muller, who had not been confirmed by the Senate. See Steven G. Calabresi and Gary Lawson, Why Robert Muellerâs Appointment as Special Counsel was Unlawful, 95 Notre Dame L. Rev. 87, 115â16 (2019). These law professors gave Judge Cannon the legal firepower to argue that Jack Smithâs appointment violated the appointments clause of the Constitution.
Is Judge Cannon right that Jack Smithâs appointment was unconstitutional when so many other courts have turned a blind eye to the argument? Calabresi, Lawson and Cannon have a colorable argument that Smithâs appointment violated the appointments clause of the Constitution. The appointments clause requires the President to appoint, and the Senate to confirm, all âOfficers of the United States,â except for âinferior Officersâ who can be appointed by others without Senate approval if they are authorized by law to make the appointment. U.S. Const, Art 2, Sec 2. Cls 2.
The Courts have recognized, however, that mere âofficialsâ and âemployeesâ can be hired without authorizing legislation, presidential appointment or Senate approval. The distinctions between âOfficers,â âInferior Officers,â âOfficialsâ and âEmployeesâ is not defined in the Constitution, and depends on factors like power, authority, control, and permanency.
Jack Smith claimed to be an âInferior Officerâ appointed under law by Attorney General Garland, who is an Officer appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Judge Cannon held that the legislation cited for Smithâs appointment does not apply, and suggests that the broad unsupervised powers given to the Special Counsel might make him a âSuperior Officerâ who must be appointed by the President and approved by the Senate. The legality of Smithâs appointment turns on the uncertain characterization of his role, and the application of the laws authorizing his employment as an âinferior officer.â
...
If the Court accepts Judge Cannonâs argument, does that mean all of the prior special counsel cases will now be invalid? While it would mean that all of those decisions brought by outside special counsel were wrongly decided, it does not mean that those wrongly decided cases are now invalid. In general, court decisions that become final (by not being appealed, or by affirmance on appeal) are valid and enforceable, even if the decisions are later proved to have been wrong. Court decisions must be attacked on appeal, and can generally not be âcollaterally attackedâ in another court, even if the decisions were wrong. See United Student Aid Funds, Inc. v. Espinosa, 559 U.S. 260 (2010).
An exception to the rule prohibiting collateral attacks applies when the court lacked jurisdiction to issue the decision, but the problem here is not the courtâs lack of jurisdiction but the prosecutorâs lack of authority. The jurisdiction exception should not apply. So no, Richard Nixon would not be able to get his Watergate tapes back if Judge Cannonâs decision is affirmed. Sorry Richard.
But even if Judge Cannonâs reasoning is upheld, her disposition of the case was wrong. Dismissal is an extreme remedy that should not be used when well-settled law, that has been reasonably relied on for decades, is overturned, and where the defendantsâ rights would not be materially harmed by the technical deficiency that previously occurred. Rather than dismissing the case, the Court should allow the Justice Department to fix the technical problem.
If that was done, dismissal would only be appropriate if the defendants were somehow prejudiced by Smithâs wrongful appointment. Everything that was done by Jack Smith in the case could have been done by Jack Smith under the supervision of a United States Attorney. The technical defect in Smithâs appointment, which was easily curable, did not prejudice the defendants. There is no reason that a United States Attorney appointed to supervise the case now could not ratify Smithâs past work, and allow Smith to proceed with the prosecution. A case prosecuted by Jack Smith under the supervision of the United States Attorney would be like the thousands of cases brought by Assistant United States Attorneys every day in every jurisdiction. Without proof that the defendants were severely prejudiced by this technical appointments issue, the extreme remedy of dismissal was totally unwarranted and should be reversed on appeal.
The entire DOJ was working with Jack Smith. You look pathetically foolish to suggest that the cases headed by Smith were legally untenable and driven by one vengeful man.
Jack Smith was an illegally appointed Special Prosecutor. He was never confirmed by the Senate which is a specific requirement for making someone a Special Prosecutor according to statute.
Smith had no legal standing. He was illegally appointed specifically for political purposes / ends.
There are a lot of conditionals in your conjecture that "Trump could have legitimately pulled out a win." For that to have occurred, among the "newly discovered votes" there would have had to been at least 10,780 more votes for Trump than Biden. That doesn't seem likely at all.
IIRC the GA vote was counted THREE times. The vote had been certified by the state. Then Trump made the phone call. The guy lost and tried to cheat out a win. Not that hard.
Exactly right.
26% of all votes in GA in 2020 were mail-in ballot. COVID drove that number. Counted three times. The idea that Trump could net gain 11,000 votes from missing ballots, even if he were going to a 2/3rds to 1/3rd advantage to Trump... you need almost 34,400 votes to create the necessary difference to change the election.
It wasn't about accuracy... it was entirely about manipulating the result.
The question now... would any Republicans care if he openly stole the election?
With a little DuckDuckGo-fu you can read up on the rumors that heâs died. Most interesting is the pizza index, which rises when âsomethingâ is happening, and rose 300-400% on Friday.
Meh, rumors. Let me know when he's laying in state.
Location: At the dude ranch / above the sea Gender:
Posted:
Aug 30, 2025 - 6:40am
With a little DuckDuckGo-fu you can read up on the rumors that heâs died. Most interesting is the pizza index, which rises when âsomethingâ is happening, and rose 300-400% on Friday.
What's interesting about this whole episode is that the most charitable reading of what Trump was asking for was to check the mail-in ballots, make sure every vote cast was actually counted. Most county clerks have a deadline where they have to cut off counting, even if a bundle of legitimately-cast ballots don't get counted because they didn't get delivered in time. The "hanging chads" episode in Bush2 v Gore there were some suspected absentee ballots cast by a navy crew whose ballots couldn't be delivered because they were deployed. The longer the official count was delayed, the closer those ballots got to Florida (IIRC) but eventually a judge just said "end it."
I can imagine that out of 5 million ballots, there's quite a few that are un-scannable but otherwise valid. Pepsi Syndrome etc. 1%? Certainly not, I hope. There are probably some that are mis-read and in some counties that's too bad but a secretary of state can probably order clerks to count them manually. Like if the voter used a red pencil or didn't color the oval well or erased an oval poorly and voted another oval so it gets kicked out by the machine. Again it's not always codified how those are handled, it's up to the county clerk and supposedly they apply whatever rule consistently. Could this account for 1%? In my experience, yes, very much.
If most of these ballots are cast at the polling place vs mail-in/absentee, we know from recent experience those tend to favor conservatives. So in my mind, it is totally reasonable for a candidate to ask a secretary of state to keep counting. Don't call a cutoff time until every possible ballot has made it across the line.
Anyway, 12000 votes is like .2% of the total. If they found 1% of uncounted ballots due to these sorts of things, it is very likely that in that particular case, Trump could have legitimately pulled out a win.
Republicans in my state and across the country are enacting harsh new rules about mail-in balloting (they know those votes skew left), machine counting (machines kick out votes cast by people who follow directions poorly) and enforcing strict voting tabulation cutoff times (hand counting is slow so this ought to be fun).
tl;dr: Republicans are enacting laws to prevent counties from "finding votes" like those that would have gotten Trump elected.
There are a lot of conditionals in your conjecture that "Trump could have legitimately pulled out a win." For that to have occurred, among the "newly discovered votes" there would have had to been at least 10,780 more votes for Trump than Biden. That doesn't seem likely at all.
IIRC the GA vote was counted THREE times. The vote had been certified by the state. Then Trump made the phone call. The guy lost and tried to cheat out a win. Not that hard.
...Trump was on the phone with Raffensperger for about an hour, pressuring him to "fnd" enough votes for Trump to give him a win. Trump didn't want Raffensperfer to just find 11,780 for either candidate, he wanted Raffensperger to find all those votes JUST for Trump. ...
What's interesting about this whole episode is that the most charitable reading of what Trump was asking for was to check the mail-in ballots, make sure every vote cast was actually counted. Most county clerks have a deadline where they have to cut off counting, even if a bundle of legitimately-cast ballots don't get counted because they didn't get delivered in time. The "hanging chads" episode in Bush2 v Gore there were some suspected absentee ballots cast by a navy crew whose ballots couldn't be delivered because they were deployed. The longer the official count was delayed, the closer those ballots got to Florida (IIRC) but eventually a judge just said "end it."
I can imagine that out of 5 million ballots, there's quite a few that are un-scannable but otherwise valid. Pepsi Syndrome etc. 1%? Certainly not, I hope. There are probably some that are mis-read and in some counties that's too bad but a secretary of state can probably order clerks to count them manually. Like if the voter used a red pencil or didn't color the oval well or erased an oval poorly and voted another oval so it gets kicked out by the machine. Again it's not always codified how those are handled, it's up to the county clerk and supposedly they apply whatever rule consistently. Could this account for 1%? In my experience, yes, very much.
If most of these ballots are cast at the polling place vs mail-in/absentee, we know from recent experience those tend to favor conservatives. So in my mind, it is totally reasonable for a candidate to ask a secretary of state to keep counting. Don't call a cutoff time until every possible ballot has made it across the line.
Anyway, 12000 votes is like .2% of the total. If they found 1% of uncounted ballots due to these sorts of things, it is very likely that in that particular case, Trump could have legitimately pulled out a win.
Republicans in my state and across the country are enacting harsh new rules about mail-in balloting (they know those votes skew left), machine counting (machines kick out votes cast by people who follow directions poorly) and enforcing strict voting tabulation cutoff times (hand counting is slow so this ought to be fun).
tl;dr: Republicans are enacting laws to prevent counties from "finding votes" like those that would have gotten Trump elected.
Regarding the three cases you specifically mentioned, the two Jack Smith cases were bogus from the beginning. He has a long history of malicious and fraudulent prosecutions and has been severely rebuked by SCOTUS, at least once by a unanimous verdict IIRC.
The Georgia case, maybe. There was / is a possibility for a new prosecution team to take it up again. It had already been looked at and passed on. It would be interesting for the sake of having a precedent made for criminalizing political speech. I have heard both sides and believe it does not pass muster and why it was passed up once before the actual prosecution resulting in the mug shot and so far has not been reopened. It would be a tremendous expense for the tax payers of Atlanta, Georgia as it would go through an appeal process all the way to SCOTUS and imho ultimately be ruled in Trump's favor.
The entire DOJ was working with Jack Smith. You look pathetically foolish to suggest that the cases headed by Smith were legally untenable and driven by one vengeful man. "Malicious and fraudulent prosecutions is a real stretch. His case against the VA governor certainly held up all the way to the Supreme Court, which decided that it was OK for politicians to accept bribes for favors.
The GA case was based on Trump's attempt to change the final, certified vote in the state. Trump was on the phone with Raffensperger for about an hour, pressuring him to "fnd" enough votes for Trump to give him a win. Trump didn't want Raffensperfer to just find 11,780 for either candidate, he wanted Raffensperger to find all those votes JUST for Trump.
For you to claim that Trump was just making political speech is laughable. Trump was pressuring Raffenperger to commit electoral fraud.
"Trump's repeated efforts to convince Raffensperger to find some basis to overturn the election results were perceived as pleading and threatening. At one point on the call, Trump told Raffensperger, "What I want to do is this. I just want to find, uh, 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state."<7> During the call, Trump falsely suggested that Raffensperger could have committed a criminal offense by refusing to overturn the state's election results.<6> Legal experts have suggested that Trump's behavior and demands could have violated state and federal laws.<8><9><10>
On January 11, the phone call was cited in the article of impeachment in the second impeachment of Donald Trump introduced in the House of Representatives.<11> Raffensperger's office opened a fact-finding and administrative investigation of potential election interference regarding Trump's efforts to overturn the results in Georgia, and Fulton County prosecutors opened a criminal investigation in February of the same year.<12><13> On August 14, 2023, Trump, along with 18 co-defendants, was indicted in Fulton County on charges including racketeering and fraud. The phone call was a central element of the indictment.<14 "
Furthermore:
"Legal experts said Trump's attempt to pressure Raffensperger could have violated election law,<1> including federal and state laws against soliciting election fraud or interference in elections.<51><9> Election-law scholar Edward B. Foley called Trump's conduct "inappropriate and contemptible" while the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington called Trump's attempt "to rig a presidential election ... a low point in American history and unquestionably impeachable conduct."<59>
According to The Guardian, Trump might have committed a crime by attempting to pressure Raffensperger, as he might have been "knowingly attempting to coerce state officials into corrupting the integrity of the election", said professor of Constitutional Law Richard Pildes.<50><9><60> According to Michael Bromwich, Trump might have violated Title 52 of the United States Code when he said "I just want to find 11,780 votes", as reported in The Guardian.<50><61><62> Raffensperger has said the calls from Trump to him and other officials could be reason for an investigation into possible conflicts of interest.<63>
In March 2022, a federal judge cited the phone call when ruling that Trump ally John Eastman's emails could be turned over to the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6th Attack. Since Trump's request of Raffensperger had been "obvious" in its "illegality", the judge wrote, Eastman's correspondence related to this topic appears to discuss how to help Trump commit a crime, and therefore Eastman is not entitled to the privacy granted by attorneyâclient privilege.<64> "
Kurt, what about the documents case? The one where Trump had BOXES and BOXES and BOXES of government documents, some of them TOP SECRET, at Mar-a-Lago? What about his attempts to LIE And CONCEAL the documents from the federal government, after he was REPEATEDLY asked to return them? That case was derailed because Aisleen Cannon made a legally incorrect ruling that Smith was improperly appointed. It did not fail on its merits.
Stop pretending you're informed on these matters. Stop pretending you have an open mind. You just love being the contrarian and feeling sorry for yourself. So Fubking tiresome.
So with the exception of noenz who did leave the door open for acknowledging the possibility of “illegal tactics”, none of the rest of you here believe that there were any illegal tactics or untoward actions taken against Trump in all of his trials and investigations. That whatever Trump is doing is totally unprovoked as in there is are no legitimate reasons for him being upset about anything. With that being the case that "you all"* agree with, then why do you all call his actions retribution ? Retribution for what then ? * you all as in the collective sense
I commented only upon the three cases. Do you leave the door open to acknowledging the possibility that these were legitimate cases brought against Trump? I firmly believe he would have been convicted, at minimum, on the obstruction of justice charge in the classified documents case in Florida.
Regarding the three cases you specifically mentioned, the two Jack Smith cases were bogus from the beginning. He has a long history of malicious and fraudulent prosecutions and has been severely rebuked by SCOTUS, at least once by a unanimous verdict IIRC.
The Georgia case, maybe. There was / is a possibility for a new prosecution team to take it up again. It had already been looked at and passed on. It would be interesting for the sake of having a precedent made for criminalizing political speech. I have heard both sides and believe it does not pass muster and why it was passed up once before the actual prosecution resulting in the mug shot and so far has not been reopened. It would be a tremendous expense for the tax payers of Atlanta, Georgia as it would go through an appeal process all the way to SCOTUS and imho ultimately be ruled in Trump's favor.
All hail the King of pretzel-logic and general bullsh*t. Since no one else has called you out on it⦠I will. The shooting in Milwaukee (to this point) has had absolutely no connection established to any charged political rhetoric or hate speech. And for you to suggest otherwise is typically and predictably asinine of you. Congrats!
What other half-assed thoughts do you feel compelled to articulate? Might as well get them out.
It confounds me that anyone tries to have an intelligent conversation with him. He's a sheep.
Location: Perched on the precipice of the cauldron of truth
Posted:
Aug 29, 2025 - 1:40pm
Proclivities wrote:
This administration has taken bootlicking to a level that Goebbels and Kissinger could only have dreamt of. Witkoff, a real estate investor who is thoroughly unqualified for his post, is particularly adept at it.
Trump had a meeting the other day regarding a plan for post-war Gaza that included Witkoff and Jared Kushner.
This administration has taken bootlicking to a level that Goebbels and Kissinger could only have dreamt of. Witkoff, a real estate investor who is thoroughly unqualified for his post, is particularly adept at it.
A long read, but an excellent and succinct letter.
My resignation letter from CDC.
Dear Dr. Houry,
I am writing to formally resign from my position as Director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), effective August 28, 2025, close of business.â¦
A long read, but an excellent and succinct letter.
My resignation letter from CDC.
Dear Dr. Houry,
I am writing to formally resign from my position as Director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), effective August 28, 2025, close of business.â¦
Reefer Madness Reloaded
