Smith has filed in DC for a trial date of January 2, 2024; suggesting the trial would take no longer than 4 to 6 weeks. Trump's little cupcake in Florida was apparently too cute by half when she said she'd tentatively begin in May; there'd be time to try him in DC, in at least one of the states where he'd be indicted, and still have him show up in Florida in an orange jumpsuit in time for his trial. Though of course he'd be allowed civilian clothes for the actual court appearance before he's taken back to a local jail to sleep.

Not that I'm assuming a conviction or two. Of course not. And I'm also not rating highly the ability of Trumps hired help to convince the judge to let them pull special privileges out of rich-white-male-hammerspace. Still, his being convicted under the Klu Klux Klan act in time for the party convention would make it extra entertaining for the Republicans, wouldn't it?

What with the indictments in Georgia pushing Trump up over 90 felony counts so far, there are two bits of Georgia law I've heard which might make life interesting. First, no one in Georgia can grant a pardon until some significant fraction of the sentence is spent in prison. Literally no one. Which might be awkward.

But before we get there: apparently to be released on bail, the defendant in Georgia has to establish that they pose no danger of intimidating a witness. The presumption is that they'll be locked up, and it's on them to prove otherwise. That might be even more awkward, since this particular defendant has already tried to intimidate witnesses in this case (to say nothing of the others he's facing). Friday the 25th may be a busy news day.

Within hours of the Georgia indictment, some GOP pundit was on Fox suggesting the state legislature repeal said law so that Brian Kemp can pardon Trump. They can't, though, it's part of the state constitution. Of course they're all for law and order until it applies to Trump.

The violent nutters are coming out of the woodwork again. Hope that we get through the trials without a political assassination.

For now they're too scared that they're being set up to take another fall.

Btw, it's worth noting that the flipping on Trump has begun. He's so scared he even decided to help raise money (as opposed to actually parting with any) for Rudy. This should be fun.

We finally have the mug shot everyone has been waiting for. My favorite comment on it so far: "Looks like the Grinch banged an oompa loompa."

Just for what it's worth, I've been taller than Trump since I was in high school. And according to his pictures, he's rather (shall we say) plumper than I am. But when he had that picture taken, by his own account he was my height and lighter than me.

Ok, ok; but consider that this was just his warmup lie. Soon he's going to plead not guilty, and you can't just dive into a lie like that without stretching or you'll hurt yourself.

While I doubt they could be bothered: the Fulton County law enforcement types own the copyright to Trumps mugshot, and could go after him for every penny he's made off of it (plus points). Even if he somehow ties it up on court, sales would probably instantly vanish; which of his little people in the cheap seats will buy something that will eventually only profit Ms. Willis?

Now that the Supremes have agreed to hear the Colorado case for Trump, it's going to be interesting to see who the Republican judges decide to prostitute themselves to this time. For all that the garbage grade base and low level party professionals want Trump on the ballot, the One Percent wants him gone because he's openly dangerous to them; and the Republicans on the Supreme Court were mostly chosen to be the handmaidens of the One Percent. And there's also the consideration that Trump is very dangerous to the bribe stream and position of the Republicans on the Supreme Court; he's made it clear that he's never going to listen to a single adverse word they might say to or about his theoretical next administration. So this might not be completely cut and dried yet.

Though there's also the consideration of what might happen if they put Trump back on the ballot and Colorado and/or Maine refuse. If the DOJ shrugs and says 'you've got your decision, you enforce it', then stuff gets interesting.

I don't think it's a question of whether the Supreme Court puts Trump back on the ballot, but how. Sure, the one percenters would be glad to see Trump choke to death on a piece of KFC, but they've never done a single thing to push him out. None of them want to be seen as the one who stabbed Trump in the back. They're all terrified of the base. John Roberts will not stick his neck out. And chances are some of the liberal judges will chicken out because they don't want to be accused of disrupting an election, even if it is to keep an insurrectionist off the ballot. Establishment liberals usually try to smooth things over for what they perceive as the credibility of the system. They pardoned Nixon. They let most of the Reagan administration get away with Iran Contra. They acted like Bush vs. Gore had no shenanigans. They went along with Bush starting a forever war for fake reasons. Nobody high up ever got punished for torture. So sure, one of the candidates is a textbook fascist who openly brags about wanting to persecute his opponents but can we just pretend everything is normal?

There's some of that, but it's mostly the Republican wing of the Democratic party (especially in Ronnie's day, when they were actual Republicans just waiting to cross the aisle).

Just FWIW: for someone running as an incumbent (and 2/3 of the people who turned out in Iowa professed to believe that Trump won); just barely breaking 50% is pretty feeble. Especially awkward is that a tenth of those Republican dead-enders who turned out said they'd vote for Biden in a Biden-Trump race (the other 15% who said they'd vote 3rd party might be worth 7% by election day). That bodes ill for his chance of getting too many of the 'pretend we're independents or Democrats' Republicans, much less actual independents or Democrats.

50-ish % is still enough to beat off all Republican challengers, who are really running for Vice President anyway. I'm not looking forward to another soul-sucking Trump vs. Biden race, only with 900% more felonies.

Aileen Cannon is slow-walking the Florida documents theft case.

Fani Willis in Georgia has been hit with ethics accusations (she's accused of, essentially, hiring her unqualified boyfriend as a special prosecutor so that she could have him take her on vacation with the money he earned). It doesn't matter if it's true or not, it's going to throw the Trump trial into turmoil and possibly give Georgia Republicans an excuse to remove her.

His idiot fanbase attempted to SWAT Jack Smith, Arthur Engoron and Tanya Chutkan over the holidays.

At least he seems set to lose a hell of a lot of money in his civil trials. The rest is gonna be another dumpster fire.

Worth noticing: when Trump did his nut on his lie blog after Ms. Carroll was awarded $83.3 million, for the first time since the trial started his unhinged lies included not a syllable about Ms. Carroll. It seems that when you smack that cretin between the eyes with 83.3 million rolled up dollar bills, even he can learn.

And he's going to have fun raising that when he's about to be hit with the need to raise over $300 million in cash in a week or so. That New York fraud case is probably going to hammer him.

Well, New York did drop the boom on Trump; though it was something of a middle of the road verdict. Still, now he has to raise over half a billion dollars in cash (the judgement, interest on the judgement, plus a two year interest payment up front) in order to appeal. Between this and the Carroll judgements, he's got to come up with about 2/3 of a billion.

What makes it more fun is his three year (which probably means lifetime) ban on doing business in New York. That includes any company registered in New York, no matter where the deal is signed. So the lion's share of the financial industry is apparently banned from giving him credit. He's going to need a sugar daddy to cut him the mother of all bribes, and do it in a way acceptable (and untaxable) under New York law. This will be amusing to watch.

It warms my heart to see Trump lose large amounts of money, even if it is because of some pretty middling business crimes that New York prosecutors probably would have been happy to ignore if Trump been the worst president in history. I'm sure there's not a real estate developer in the world that doesn't inflate or deflate the value of their properties, Trump just did it so obviously and using such implausible numbers that it beggared belief.

What does it mean for a company to be registered in New York? Is that different from where a company is legally domiciled? Deutsche Bank, which has been pretty much the only bank willing to deal with Trump for years because the rest of them have some farking sense, is headquartered in Germany.

Re: the ruckus in Georgia, it seems like Fani Willis did a dumb thing by dating a coworker, but did not actually create a legal conflict of interest. They can't prove that Fulton County paid the guy any more than they would have paid any other lawyer, nor that Fani Willis manufactured unnecessary work for the guy. After that, what a man does with his own salary is his business. Not that this matters to the Fox News Scandal Machine.

I'm not actually sure exactly what 'registered in New York' means for this purpose. But the biggest apparent loophole here isn't exactly where the head office of a given bank is. It's that very few players in the shadow banking sector (hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds, that sort of thing) would be banned from dropping a few hundred million dollars on Trump by this. At least not so far as I know. This would be one of those things I suspect we'll be hearing more about as time goes by.

Oh, and Trump is shooting off his mouth about Ms. Carroll again. Her lawyer is going to endow her next thirty generations off that buffoon at this rate.