The Georgia case is all about election interference. It was messy at the start, with so many defendants. Chances of success seemed to improve as four defendants decided to accept plea bargains and testify for the the prosecution.   It just got worse with the accusation that District Attorney Fani Willis had a romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, a private lawyer who has received over $600,000 in preparation for this case.  The Republican controlled Senate could not be more pleased to attack Willis, and on Friday approved a special committee to investigate Willis. See links:

Politico: A Reality Check on the Fani Willis Scandal, Is Trump’s Georgia prosecution about to get derailed?

Fox News: Georgia Senate approves special committee to investigate Fani Willis misconduct allegations

Will this be a fair investigation? Oh please, this is an election year, and there’s nothing more the senators would like to do is get rid of DA Willis. You can expect a very aggressive response as she has done in the past when legislators try to interfere with judicial proceedings. Impeachments are political processes, and normal rules of admissible evidence are gone. The charge of an affair is made by Nathan Wade’s wife in a divorce proceeding.

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Next subplot arose when Smartmatic, a vendor of voting systems, filed a lawsuit against One American News (OAN), for defamation. In April 2023, Dominion settled their defamation case with Fox News for $787 million dollars. Dominion has helped Smartmatic with their lawsuit, by handing over thousands of pages of documents. In support of discovery against OAN, Smartmatic claimed in a filing that OAN Pro-Trump network OAN execs may have ‘engaged in criminal activities’ while promoting 2020 election lies. It is too early to tell if there is any real substance to this claim. See link below:

CNN: Pro-Trump network OAN execs may have ‘engaged in criminal activities’ while promoting 2020 election lies

I note that Smartmatic is suing Fox for 2.7 billion dollars, for defamation. I’m not sure how much they’ll try to sue for against OAN. OAN has stated that these allegations are baseless.

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Legal experts expect Trump’s business fraud case to conclude this week. The judge has already concluded that the overvaluations of Trump’s properties constituted fraud, so the trial was to determine the penalty. It is going to be more than 370 million dollars. It was speculated by Bloomberg, that following this court decision, the IRS will likely be looking at the evidence in the case, for tax fraud issues. We shall see.

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The presidential immunity case is in the Appellate court and a opinion could be issued any day. Trump’s lawyers see this as a chance to push back the Jan 6 federal case, beyond March, 2024. Most legal experts suggest the case will have to be re-scheduled. Legal experts also suggest that if Trump loses and appeals this case to the Supreme Court, they might not take it up. It would help prosecutors keep a trial date before the election.

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The Colorado disqualification case and the Fischer case will be heard by the Supreme Court. I have posted before on the Colorado case, as I believe as a practical matter, Donald Trump should be on the ballot in both the primary and general election as it is vital that the president is elected by the people. However, what seems right and practical is not how the Supreme Court decides issues. The Colorado Supreme Court ruled in favor of taking Trump off the ballot, and the Supreme Court will decide if this judgement was contrary to law. Other states will likely follow Maine’s example and keep the status quo, until the Supreme Court rules.

The Fischer case will decide if prosecutors went too far in applying a law that was used to convict over 300 rioters of obstructing an official proceeding. It is the same law that prosecutors used in indicting Trump on 2 of the 4 counts of the Jan 6 criminal federal case to be tried in Washington.

Scotus Blog: Court to weigh in on scope of law used in Jan. 6 prosecutions

A lot will be decided soon. A lot will be appealed.

Stay tuned,

Dave