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babylonsister

babylonsister's Journal
babylonsister's Journal
June 12, 2023

How Much Prison Time Does Former President Trump Face? Applying the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines

https://www.justsecurity.org/86901/how-much-prison-time-does-former-president-trump-face-applying-the-u-s-sentencing-guidelines/


How Much Prison Time Does Former President Trump Face? Applying the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines
by David Aaron
June 12, 2023



Now that the public has seen the current list of federal charges against former President Donald Trump, there is a long road ahead. If the defendant is ultimately convicted, that road will lead to sentencing. The Espionage Act charges the defendant faces carry a maximum prison sentence of ten years. The Tampering (and related Conspiracy) and Concealment charges each carry a maximum prison sentence of twenty years. The Scheme to Conceal and False Statements charges each carry a maximum prison sentence of 5 years. Of course, in any criminal case, numerous factors affect the sentence, and focusing on the statutory maximums can be misleading. Federal law, specifically 18 U.S.C. § 3553, directs courts to impose a sentence based on a list of considerations. The U.S. Sentencing Commission issues Sentencing Guidelines to assist courts and promote consistent application of criminal law. Sentencing trends in similar cases can provide reference points, but only if similar cases exist. This quick note gives an idea of how a sentence would be calculated, with the caveat that issues such as sentencing on multiple counts of conviction, related conduct, and new factual developments could arise.

snip//

For a defendant with no prior criminal convictions, an offense level of 29 yields 87 to 108 months (7 1/4 to 9 years) and an offense level of 25 yields 57 to 71 months (4 3/4 to almost 6 years). A defendant who accepted responsibility could reduce those ranges to either 63 to 78 months or 41 to 51 months if the prosecution agreed to deduct the third point.

The question of whether sentences would run concurrently or consecutively has come up. The answer will depend on a variety of factors, not least of which include the evidence at trial, the count or counts of conviction, and “grouping” under Section 3D1.2. Section 5G1.2, which addresses sentencing on multiple counts, provides that if the sentence imposed on the count with the highest statutory maximum is sufficient to implement the total punishment, then the sentences on multiple counts will run concurrently. But if the sentence on the count with the highest statutory maximum is insufficient, the court can run sentences consecutively to achieve the target sentence.

It is important to reiterate, however, that the Guidelines are advisory and that Section 3553 directs courts to impose sentences that are consistent with other cases that involve defendants who committed similar crimes under similar circumstances. Identifying those cases in any Section 793(e) retention case is a challenge because of the sparsity of cases and the unique factors that each case involves. If the former President is convicted of one or more counts of Section 793(e), both sides will present examples of prior retention and disclosure sentences and reason by analogy, but United States v. Donald J. Trump is an unprecedented case for a variety of reasons that could be relevant to sentencing.

June 12, 2023

Rod Stewart: My Wife Banned Me From Being Friends With Donald Trump

https://www.thedailybeast.com/rod-stewart-says-wife-penny-lancaster-banned-him-from-friendship-with-donald-trump?ref=home


Rod Stewart: My Wife Banned Me From Being Friends With Donald Trump
ON THE OUTS
Brett Bachman
Night Editor
Updated Jun. 12, 2023 5:04AM ET /
Published Jun. 11, 2023 11:29PM ET


Sir Rod Stewart said in a recent interview that his wife, the model Penny Lancaster, banned him from being friends with Donald Trump because of his derogatory comments toward women. The pair are neighbors in the same area of Palm Beach, Florida, and Stewart has performed at several of the former president’s casinos in the past—but their friendly relationship came to a halt when he married Lancaster. “I used to go to his Christmas party and the balls he held but my wife said ‘no,’” Stewart told Scottish Field magazine. “There was stuff he was coming out with, what he was saying about women he had known in the past, and Penny said ‘you’re not going. He’s a disgrace.’”
June 12, 2023

Democrat Big Shot Raked in Millions Meant for NYC's Poor


Democrat Big Shot Raked in Millions Meant for NYC’s Poor
MEDICAL BAG
New filings show Democratic fundraiser Henry Muñoz’s firm has received $41.6 million intended for the health care of NYC’s neediest, even as his legal problems mount.
William Bredderman
Senior Researcher
Updated Jun. 12, 2023 3:29AM ET / Published Jun. 11, 2023 8:39PM ET


Newly released documents show an entity owned by a top Democratic Party official has taken in $41,642,485 in public funds since landing a gig at a medical group catering to New York City’s most vulnerable—an arrangement that has proved lucrative for both him and his political allies.

The latest tax filings now available for Bronx-based nonprofit SOMOS Community Care show the organization, a network of doctors catering to the Big Apple’s low-income immigrant communities, paid more than $11.5 million in 2021 to a San Antonio-based pass-through company belonging to Democratic National Committee Vice Chair Henry Muñoz. This comes on top of almost $15.8 million The Daily Beast previously reported the group had paid to the party official’s S corporation MSTZO LLC, which does business as Cultural Productions, and upwards of $14.3 million it paid to him directly since he became its consultant in 2017.

These colossal sums place Muñoz, whose professional background is in political fundraising and construction design, among the highest-compensated individuals in the health-care sector in New York City or anywhere else. SOMOS was launched in 2015 to capitalize on a new Medicaid program, which was the sole source of its funding for most of its existence.

That program expired in 2020, however, and the organization has become increasingly dependent upon contracts to provide COVID-19 testing and vaccination services to immigrant communities, for which SOMOS has received roughly $100 million in city and state funds, procurement records show.

Muñoz’s team has maintained he disburses the bulk of the funds the group allocates him to other contractors, and asserted that $9 million of the $11.5 million sum in 2021 went toward marketing expenses. They highlighted some multimedia material that they had previously sent The Daily Beast as examples of his design work, including a four-page Marvel-produced comic book from August 2021 promoting inoculation against the novel coronavirus, a tie-in pop-up vaccination site in Times Square, and some Spanish-language videos about the return to in-class instruction in public schools that fall. However, his representatives never provided price tags for any of these productions.

more...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/democrat-henry-munoz-raked-in-millions-through-his-soley-owned-firm-meant-for-nycs-poor?ref=home
June 11, 2023

Supreme Court Surprise: Good Rulings Show Benefit of Public Pressure


Supreme Court Surprise: Good Rulings Show Benefit of Public Pressure
by Joan McCarter | June 11, 2023 - 6:42am
— from Daily Kos

snip//

The biggest surprise Thursday was who wrote the majority opinion preserving what’s left of the Voting Rights Act: Chief Justice John Roberts. If his political and legal career can be characterized as anything, it’s “lifelong crusade against voting rights.” As chief justice, he’s overseen a near-total dismantling of the 1965 law. To say he was not expected to be the champion of the last remaining effective scrap of the law banning racial gerrymanders is an understatement. Justice Brett Kavanaugh stepping over the ideological divide with him to form a majority was also a stunner.

The second big decision handed down was nearly as consequential and more shocking in its division: 7 to 2. Four of the court’s six conservatives—all but Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas—upheld the right of Medicaid beneficiaries to sue in federal court when they believe their rights are being violated by state officials. In this case, the spouse of a dementia patient in Indiana alleged he had been abused in a state-run nursing home and was suing under a Reconstruction Era law, Section 1983, enacted as part of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871. It was written to protect the rights of Black Americans, allowing them to use the federal courts when state officials violated their constitutional or statutory rights.

What was at stake here was huge: the enforcement of federal Medicaid law to protect patients. On a broader scale, the ruling applies not just to Medicaid but to other federally funded safety net programs, like SNAP (formerly known as Food Stamps) or WIC, the food program for new mothers and their infants. The decision keeps this critical law for holding states accountable and ensuring they provide the full services required for the federal spending programs. It was a bit of a sleeper case which nonetheless had huge implications for social safety net programs and the civil rights of people using them.

Would there have been this much restraint from the court if they hadn’t been under a barrage of criticism from the public, the press, and Congress for the past year after the Dobbs decision? Almost certainly not.

more...

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/joan-mccarter/106558/supreme-court-surprise-good-rulings-show-benefit-of-public-pressure
June 10, 2023

"I am on page 24 and JESUS LUPITA NYONG'O CHRIST."



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fooler initiative Profile picture
fooler initiative
@metroadlib



I LITERALLY stopped working on my memo so I could read this indictment.

I am on page 24 and JESUS LUPITA NYONG'O CHRIST.

HOW this man still has the capacity to shock me after everything that's happened, i'll never know.

but I am sitting here *STUNNED*.
I'll be honest--
b/c i really DO lean into naivete sometimes. it's difficult for me to assume the worst from ppl, even when they have done all of the worst things.

so this wholllllle time, i've been thinking, "wonder why he didn't give back those docs. he's probably lost them."
and also, "this dingus just grabbed shit from the white house b/c he's too stupid to know he couldn't. he probably doesn't even realize what he has."

lol.

nooooooooooooooooooooope. noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooope.
this was a DELIBERATE and CONCERTED effort to remove the most sensitive docs the country has, and KEEP them.........and then SHOW THEM TO PPL AT HIS LEISURE WHILE *ACKNOWLEDGING* THAT HE WAS NEITHER SUPPOSED TO HAVE THEM OR SHOW THEM....
he haphazardly stored the docs ANY DAMNED WHERE........INCLUDING.........IN A GODDAMNED BATHROOM SHOWER.......they were chucked to some random room in Mar a lago, and occasionally the boxes----because there were SOOOOOOOOO MANY--would tumble down......
and TOP SECRET DOCUMENTS.........DOCUMENTS HAVING TO DO WITH DEFENSE PLANS, MILITARY CAMPAIGNS, NUKES, YOU NAME IT.....DOCUMENTS *CLEARLY MARKED* "TOP SECRET" AND "SECRET" AND "CONFIDENTIAL" AND TWO OTHER DESIGNATIONS I'D NEVER EVEN HEARD OF BEFORE TODAY...BUT WHICH APPARENTLY
MEAN SUPER DUPER DUPER DOUBLE PINKY SWEARSIES REALSIES SECRET......WOULD JUST............
SPILL OUT ONTO THE GD FLOOR........AND LIE THERE.........EXPOSED FOR ALL TO SEE.........JUST.....NAKED AND BARING ALL TO THE WORLD LIKE A NATIONAL SECURITY FULL MONTY.
AND AS IF *THAT* WEREN'T ENOUGH.....the Archives asked this MF fifty-leven times to give all this stuff back. and 45 would be all, "I GAVE YOU EVERYTHING I GOT. DAMN. SHIT. THERE'S NOTHING HERE."

THEN HE WOULD HAVE HIS AIDES MOVE THE BOXES......

more...

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1667248343255220227.html
June 10, 2023

Rude Pundit: The Trump Indictment Is Just Embarrassing...

https://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2023/06/the-trump-indictment-is-just.html

The Rude Pundit
Proudly lowering the level of political discourse
6/09/2023
The Trump Indictment Is Just Embarrassing (Sorry, MAGA Cretins, Not for What You're Thinking)


snip//

But that doesn't in any way hinder how embarrassing the whole affair is because, from what we know now (and, sure, it's definitely possible that a thousand more shoes will drop), it looks like Trump did all this just because he wanted to keep important shit and show off what a big shot he was. Motherfucker waved around documents and talked about how secret they were. It was just another version of dick measuring: "Oh, you own a Picasso? Well, I can tell you how to blow up France. Top that." And he didn't want to give them back because then he wouldn't be that big shot anymore. They were his and fuck you if you wanted them back.

I mean, honestly, it would be less embarrassing if this whole thing turns out to be espionage because at least there's a fucking purpose beyond feeding the voracious ego of a soulless orange monster with mommy, daddy, and every other relative issues. At least it would mean more than impressing the dead-eyed zombies with botox smiles parading around a cut-rate Xanadu, pretending to worship the moron king who gets off playing DJ, spinning "YMCA" while everyone gorges themselves at the overpriced feed trough. God, this is all so devoid of meaning that the nation should be ashamed that it allowed his election, that it allowed him to roam free for so long, that it didn't rise up and vomit him out like bad, overcooked steak.

snip//

Or, to put it another way, the politicians and media apparatchiks who push this agenda are fucking frightened little bitches asserting their remaining power to fuck shit up for everyone not them. (And let's be clear: the public doesn't support most of this shit.) They want to fuck up public education. They want to be able to jail or punish ideological enemies. And they want to do it by pretending that's what the endgame of "wokeness" is when the endgame of wokeness is really, simply to fucking ask people to stop being assholes and to acknowledge that reality is fucking real. Yeah, that means teaching children that shit was fucking awful and, hey, let's learn about the awfulness so we can be less shitty. Yeah, that means saying that trans people need our support and that queer couples are just couples. But I guess it takes some effort to do that. It's a hell of a lot easier to tell people, "You should be afraid. Go hide and cower with your guns until we make it safe for you again."

If the "anti-woke" forces had to say what they ultimately want, it would sound vile. It's about erasure. It's about elimination. It's about returning to an imagined past that they keep insisting was somehow good when, really, it was just a clusterfuck of hate, violence, and repression. That's why they need to be pushed to say it.

There is no "woke mind virus." There is only what's real and what's fake. And the GOP can't face reality.
June 9, 2023

Trump's New Indictment Is Truly Making America Great Again


Trump’s New Indictment Is Truly Making America Great Again
THE NEW ABNORMAL
The Daily Beast
Published Jun. 09, 2023 4:07AM ET


The orange air covering New York City from the Canadian wildfires must have been a premonition for Thursday's news that former President Donald Trump has been indicted on federal charges, including obstruction of justice and mishandling of classified documents, jokes co-host of The New Abnormal politics podcast Danielle Moodie.

“We’ve been waiting for this moment, for what feels like forever, and it doesn’t feel real. I feel like we’re in some type of dreamscape right now,” Danielle tells her co-host Andy Levy at the top of the latest episode of the show. “But the fact is that Donald Trump, twice impeached, now twice indicted, you are, sir, No. 1, and we are exhausted by all the winning you're doing.”


Trump announced the indictment on his social network Truth Social, saying it was a “dark day” for the country, a statement which Danielle wasted no time picking apart.

“Yes, this is a dark day for the United States of America, because we never thought that we’d have a grifting, criminal-ass crook in the White House, let alone one that would then take documents and tell the world, by the way, in his own words at a CNN town hall, ‘Yeah, I took the boxes. They were mine,’” she says.

“The only thing I’ll quibble with you on is I do think that indicting a former president is a good thing if there’s evidence that they have committed crimes,” adds Andy. “So I would say that this maybe does make America great again.”


more...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-new-indictment-is-truly-making-america-great-again?ref=home

June 8, 2023

'Venue matters': Trump charges could come from Florida federal grand jury



‘Venue matters’: Trump charges could come from Florida federal grand jury
by Rebecca Beitsch - 06/08/23 1:32 PM ET


The late-stage presentation of evidence to a Florida grand jury is the latest sign that former President Trump may face trial in Miami as prosecutors work to insulate the Mar-a-Lago case from legal challenges stemming from the location of the proceedings.

Special counsel Jack Smith has for months been calling witnesses before a Washington, D.C., grand jury on the matter, but a recent flurry of activity in the case — just days after Trump’s attorneys met with Justice Department prosecutors in D.C. — has instead been in Florida.

This week, a handful of witnesses have been appearing in Florida, including Trump aide Taylor Budowich, who tweeted Wednesday that he was compelled to answer questions in the probe.

The move is a sign Smith is weighing filing charges there in addition to or instead of D.C., as defendants have a right to face trial where the alleged crime took place.

more...

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4040729-venue-matters-trump-charges-could-come-from-florida-federal-grand-jury/
June 8, 2023

Breaking: Biden sending fire fighting assets to help extinguish Quebec wildfires.


Breaking: Biden sending fire fighting assets to help extinguish Quebec wildfires.
Thursday, June 08, 2023 at 9:40:05a EDT


Scripps news service:

President Joe Biden pledged additional help for Canada as wildfires fume, especially in Quebec, causing unhealthy air quality levels throughout much of the Eastern U.S.

In a readout of a call between President Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the president “directed his team to deploy all available Federal firefighting assets that can rapidly assist in suppressing fires impacting Canadian and American communities.”


The White House said 600 firefighters and support personnel have been sent to Canada.

Vedant Patel, spokesperson for the U.S. State Department, said the over 600 personnel came from the U.S. Forest Service and the Department of the Interior. He said this is in addition to several states sending help to Canada.

“The U.S. is supporting Canada as it faces extreme wildfires, which based on our assessments is on track to be one of the largest natural disasters in Canadian history,” Patel said.

more...

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/8/2174036/-Breaking-Biden-sending-fire-fighting-assets-to-help-extinguish-Quebec-wildfires
June 7, 2023

House Republicans in Conflict



https://politicalwire.com/2023/06/07/house-republicans-in-conflict/

House Republicans in Conflict
June 7, 2023 at 6:53 am EDT By Taegan Goddard


“The realities of the current House Republican Conference — and the knotty institutional issues facing the GOP leadership — are screaming back into full view this week, providing a neat encapsulation of what Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s team will need to contend with for the rest of the 118th Congress,” Punchbowl News reports.

“The GOP conference has once again devolved into nasty internecine conflict between hardline conservatives and everyone else. This split calls into question how Republicans can ever coalesce around their agenda or even whether they can govern at all over the coming six months.”

“This is all fallout from the endgame for the Fiscal Responsibility Act, and comes despite pleas from McCarthy to focus on the ‘next play’ now that the debt-limit crisis has ended.”

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