Francisco 2.0

Right? There is a subset of Twitter that is still legitimate news, sports, whatnot. Then there's this whole other part of Twitter that is the absolute worst that humanity has to offer. Twitter isn't much different than the internet as a whole. Thing is, you have to actively go looking for the deplorable shit on the internet, where on Twitter it can get served up to you at will. It's a feature, not a bug. Elon is all about free speech, alright. He wanted a platform where the worst in humanity is guaranteed a online home.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/22/opinion/elon-musk-william-durant.html

Once upon a time, Elon said it might be worth over $100,000 in the future. Funny how things change.

FYI for those with interest: There’s some good news for people who want to follow the Trump trial in detail, but can’t make it to the courthouse. The New York state court system has just agreed to publish a transcript of each day’s proceeding by the end of the following day on its website. You can find the daily transcripts here. https://ww2.nycourts.gov/press/index.shtml

Blanche equates the “catch-and-kill” scheme involving The National Enquirer, alleged by prosecutors, to ordinary editorial decisions made by newspapers. Blanche is now trying to portray The National Enquirer’s practices as similar to how other news outlets operate, in terms of deciding when and how to publish a story. That is not correct. Now Blanche turns to Stormy Daniels, who he says is also “biased” against Trump. He narrates their meeting, saying at the time, Trump was working on a very popular tv show called “The Apprentice.” “Ms. Clifford has made a life off these communications,” Blanche says, attacking Daniels by her government name, Stephanie Clifford. He says the money she made from the Cohen payoff was pure opportunism on her part, and adds that she has made a lot more money since the story came out. It certainly sounds as if Blanche expects Daniels to testify. He says that “her testimony, while salacious, does not matter,” arguing that she knew nothing about the actual crimes charged here.

Blanche makes it clear that the defense will continue to deny that Trump had sex with Stormy Daniels. I’m curious whether that will affect the plan for Daniels to testify; it had seemed to be up in the air, but the defense may have just opened the door for prosecutors to ask directly. Prosecutors have objected three times during Blanche’s opening statement. Justice Merchan just called them to the bench. The prosecution wins the objection and Blanche loses a little bit of his opening. He moves back to saying that there is “nothing illegal” about entering a nondisclosure agreement.

It seems as if Blanche will seek to convince the jury that everything that happened was appropriate and done by the book, not even worthy of notice. That Cohen was Trump’s lawyer, and he was paid for legal services. But he’ll also seek to distance his client from the matter: “President Trump had nothing to do with the invoice,” he says. Blanche is not addressing any of the underlying claims by prosecutors so far, focusing strictly on the payment process. Blanche downplays the 34 charges of falsfying records Trump faces as a “business records violation.” He points toward the disparity between the $130,000 hush money payment and what was repaid to Cohen. He asks them, if Trump really was so frugal, would he have repaid Cohen so much? “This was not a payback,” he says, adding of Cohen: “He was President Trump’s personal attorney.” “Ask yourself, would a frugal business man -- would a man who pinches pennies -- repay $130,000 debt to the tune of $420,000?”

And now, it's time for defense. Batting first, Todd Blanche Blanche highlights that Trump is entitled to the presumption of innocence, which is something that some of his more heated critics sometimes lose sight of. Blanche explains why they all call Trump “President Trump,” saying he’s earned it and it’s the office he’s held. Then he mentions that Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee. Todd Blanche is now up, with the defense's opening statement. J “President Trump is innocent,” are the first words of Blanche’s opening. ’President Trump did not commit any crimes.” “He is cloaked in innocence,” Todd Blanche says of Trump Blanche says that the prosecution told a “clean nice story,” but that it is not as simple as they would have the jury believe. He says that many of the documents in evidence are almost a decade old. The testimony, he suggests, is similarly old. And, he says, the story that jurors just heard “is not true.”

As Colangelo continues to discuss the repayment scheme to Cohen, he says Trump’s willingness to go to the trouble “shows just how important it was to him to hide the true nature of Cohen’s illegal payment to Ms. Daniels and the overall election conspiracy that they had launched.” Jurors and prospective jurors had expressed a lot of nervousness about their role here, and with good reason. But Colangelo may be giving some a reason to be glad they were not excused. The politics, the payoffs, the intrigue, the importance: This case will be transfixing. Having finished with the most fascinating part of the story, the series of payoffs, Colangelo is on to the less interesting part, which, by the way, is the part the criminal charges stem from. He is describing the paperwork arrangement to reimburse Michael Cohen for the hush money payment he made to Stormy Daniels, and how, Colangelo says, Trump and Allen Weisselberg, his company's C.F.O., sought to disguise the repayment. Colangelo is offering up a dense series of details, but the jurors are still paying close attention. Some chuckles in the courtroom as Colangelo says Trump was a “very frugal businessman” who watched all the spending at his empire. It really is surreal hearing this story told in one long tale of the tape. The government’s opening statement suggests we will see a lot of previously undisclosed text messages between the main players, and phone records.

What the hell. I thought I was putting all this in the Indicted thread, which is where it really belongs. So...off to the Indicted thread.

For years, this story has been told by reporters with caveats and caution. So it’s really striking to hear Colangelo lay the hush money scheme directly at Trump’s feet, with perfect clarity. “It was election fraud, pure and simple,” Colangelo says bluntly. Colangelo then continues the narrative, saying the Access Hollywood tape’s emergence was the precursor to a story from a porn star named Stormy Daniels that was about to become public. “So at Trump’s direction, Cohen negotiated a deal to buy Ms. Daniels’s story in order to prevent American voters from learning that information before Election Day,” he says. “Another story about sexual infidelity, especially with a porn star, on the heels of the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape, could have been devastating to his campaign,” Colangelo says of the Daniels story. He says that “with pressure mounting and Election Day fast approaching, Donald Trump agreed to the payoff and directed Cohen to proceed.” Someone in the courtroom well giggles as Colangelo says Trump told Cohen to drag out paying Daniels, in the hopes of getting past the election and then not paying her at all. As Colangelo said that Trump did not want the Stormy Daniels story to come out, Trump pursed his lips and wrote a note on a notepad, which he passed to one of his lawyers, Todd Blanche. He later tapped another lawyer, Emil Bove, on the arm and whispered to him.

As Colangelo describes the “Access Hollywood” tape that he says turned the 2016 campaign upside down, he refers to this email chain. We learned it would be admitted as evidence only last week. It’s really striking how much important evidence in this opening was just allowed in, and it emphasizes the importance of the judge’s decisions. Colangelo is now describing the emergence of the "Access Hollywood" tape on Oct. 7, 2016, beginning with email outreach to Hope Hicks, the Trump spokeswoman, by our now-colleague David Farenthold, who was then a reporter at The Washington Post. Colangelo is reading out loud the most explosive language from Trump, who bragged about grabbing women’s genitals.

Colangelo is now describing the second “catch-and-kill” deal in question, relating to Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who said she had an affair with Trump. Colangelo says evidence will show that Trump “desperately” didn’t want that information public. “Before the meeting, during the meeting, after the meeting,” Colangelo says, The National Enquirer publisher was in touch with Michael Cohen, putting this deal right at Trump’s doorstep. Colangelo says Pecker will testify that $150,000 was more than The National Enquirer would typically have paid for such a deal, and that Pecker had trouble being reimbursed for it. Crucially, Colangelo says, Pecker will testify that he spoke to Trump about it. Colangelo mentions that the alleged affair with Karen McDougal happened while Trump was married. It will be interesting to see how much the prosecutors lean into the idea of infidelity in presenting their case. The sexual encounter that Stormy Daniels describes, in 2006, also would have occured when Trump was married. And obligatory:

Prosecutors are going to highlight three hush-money deals over the course of the trial. As our colleague Michael Rothfeld recently explained, Trump’s allies paid off the porn star, the Playboy model and the doorman. Matthew Colangelo emphasizes that it was the first time that David Pecker, of The National Enquirer, had paid for information relating to Trump. He’s emphasizing the key point: That every one of these acts involving hush-money deals sprang from the meeting at which he said the conspiracy was hatched. In other words, prosecutors are accusing Trump of using The National Enquirer to do for Trump what Trump says all the time that others do against him: promote “fake news.”

Colangelo is now describing the practice of “catch and kill,” in which The National Enquirer bought stories that were problematic to Trump and then buried them. To be clear, this is not a normal journalistic practice. I see one juror smiling slightly as Colangelo describes some of the National Enquirer headlines that helped Trump's campaign in 2016, embarrassing campaign opponents including Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. Prosecutors only won the right to talk about those headlines last week. We can see how important they are here today, as they go to what prosecutors say was Trump’s intent: seeking to assist his candidacy by promoting negative stories about others and suppressing those about himself. One of those catch-and-kill deals involved a story that turned out to be false about Trump fathering a child out of wedlock. A doorman at a Trump building was a key figure in it.

Matthew Colangelo has moved neatly through the crime, and is on to the grand jury indictment of Trump last year. His opening is expected to take less than an hour and I can see why it will be relatively quick: We’re moving briskly here already. Trump has attacked Colangelo on Truth Social repeatedly. He worked at the Department of Justice before being hired to work on this case in 2022. Trump has used that fact to baselessly claim the existence of a widespread conspiracy against him. As Matthew Colangelo says that Trump orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election, Trump shook his head. It remains to be seen if Trump has learned the lesson of the second Carroll trial, which he attended. He acted out in front of the jury throughout the trial. He ended up facing an $83.3 million civil judgment.

And we are off: Matthew Colangelo, one of the prosecutors, stands up to deliver his side's opening statement. Colangelo is known for his writing, but he has very little experience in Manhattan criminal court — I’ve never heard him give an opening before. He begins by telling the jury that Trump lied “over and over and over” again by disguising business records. Colangelo is saying that Trump, Michael Cohen and David Pecker “formed” a conspiracy at a meeting early in the campaign to help Trump get elected. Colangelo tells the jurors that Cohen paid the porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 to silence her story of a “sexual encounter” with Trump, in order to influence the presidential election. This story, that we’ve known for years, is finally being presented in full to a jury in a criminal case.

Oh, and this gem: The judge reads his ruling on the Sandoval hearing aloud. This determines what prosecutors can ask Trump about if he testifies. Justice Merchan says he will allow the prosecution to bring up six different determinations from four other cases, including his loss in the civil fraud trial earlier this year, in which Trump was found liable for conspiring to manipulate his net worth and penalized hundreds of millions of dollars. Justice Merchan will also let prosecutors ask about Trump’s attack on a law clerk in that case, in violation of a gag order. Prosecutors will also be allowed to ask Trump about having been found liable twice for defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll. But for now, Justice Merchan does not mention that Trump was also found liable for sexually abusing Carroll. Justice Merchan’s ruling has significantly increased the potential blowback Trump will face if he decides to take the stand and testify in his own defense. In the end, it’s his call and his alone to make. But the judge just handed the prosecution a fairly heavy legal cudgel to use against Trump if he does decide to testify. Kate Christobek April 22, 2024, 9:55 a.m. ET9 minutes ago 9 minutes ago Trump shook his head several times as Justice Merchan read his ruling into the record.

I've got work to do today, so I can't keep spamming the thread with Times updates, but this one is poignant: If anything, Trump is alone in life, and has been for years. This is just a microcosm of it. EDIT: and the judge has returned

And so it begins: