Justice Department Sends Message to Trump After Supreme Court Ruling

Despite the Supreme Court giving Donald Trump near-absolute immunity and the rest of his trials certain to continue after Election Day, the Department of Justice doesn’t plan to back down in its cases against the former president and convicted felon.

A new report from The Washington Post, citing sources close to the department, said that prosecutors plan to pursue cases with a deadline of Inauguration Day in January, in keeping with the Supreme Court’s ruling that a sitting president can’t be prosecuted.

“The Justice Department isn’t governed by the election calendar. Its prosecution of Trump is based on the law, the facts and the Justice Manual—the department’s bible that lays out the post-Watergate norms that have prevented it from being weaponized,” Anthony Coley, a spokesperson for Attorney General Merrick Garland until last year, told the Post.

“Until those norms change, or they’re ordered otherwise, I’d expect this Justice Department to be full speed ahead. And they should be,” Coley added.

The Supreme Court’s ruling also placed restrictions on what kind of evidence could be collected from a presidential administration, dealing heavy blows to the federal election interference case against Trump. That change alone will add more delays to the D.C. trial, which was already pushed back thanks to the Supreme Court case on presidential immunity. If Trump wins reelection, his lawyers will very likely ask federal judges to drop the case.

Trump’s other federal case involves his alleged mishandling of classified documents in Florida, where he has a friendly judge who has bogged down the case with a myriad of seemingly irrelevant hearings. Even the one guilty verdict against Trump, his hush-money case in New York, has had its sentencing hearing postponed, with the judge giving an ominous warning about the case’s fate. Trump’s election interference case in Georgia is still in limbo too.

While the DOJ’s reported intentions suggest that it will press for consequences for Trump, the fact of the matter is that thanks to the Supreme Court, Trump may evade any consequences altogether.

President Joe Biden’s performance in last week’s debate has sent the Democratic Party into a tailspin, pushing some party members to debate whether Vice President Kamala Harris would be a better replacement for a “comatose” or “dead” Biden.

This week has seen a series of calls between donors, party members, and consultants on how to push Biden out of the 2024 race as support for the incumbent president dramatically wanes in light of his age and frailty.

In a conference call featuring dozens of Democratic SuperPAC American Bridge donors held early Wednesday, former Clinton aide James Carville urged donors to consider an alternative to Biden, and said that donors who want Biden to exit the race should consider cutting off their funds from lawmakers who don’t agree with them, reported Semafor.

“Seventy-two percent of people want something different. Why not give it to them?” Carville said, according to a recording of the call obtained by Semafor. “They’re just asking for a different choice.”

In another call on Tuesday, panic rose among a bevy of Democratic donors, several of whom emphasized that keeping Biden at the top of the ticket would only encourage more Americans to vote for Donald Trump.

“What can we as donors do to encourage the change in the ticket?” asked one donor.

“If you wake Joe Biden at three o’ clock in the morning and ask him who’s president, does he get it right?” worried another.

But not everyone on the call was in agreement. Dmitri Mehlhorn, an adviser to entrepreneur and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, told donors to stick with Biden, since, despite his health issues, he’s still the more popular choice compared to the next obvious option.

“Kamala Harris is more threatening to those swing voters than a dead Joe Biden or a comatose Joe Biden,” Mehlhorn said. “So if Joe has to go, it’s gonna be Kamala, and if it’s Kamala, it’s gonna be harder.”

If there’s one silver lining to Biden’s devastating performance, per Carville, it’s that the symptom was caught early.

“Maybe we look back on this thing and say, ‘This is the best thing that ever happened to us,’” Carville said, according to Semafor. “If this would have happened to us on October fifth, we’d be more than bruised, screwed, and tattooed. Maybe this will set it into motion something different.”

“And maybe the people on the Zoom call, or maybe we’ll reconvene and I told November tenth and say, ‘God damn man, this thing came together a lot better than we ever thought we would back on July the second,” he added.

It seems that Representative Summer Lee has joined the K-Hive.

The Pennsylvania Democrat on Wednesday joined the steadily growing chorus of Democratic leaders sounding the alarm over concerns about President Joe Biden’s candidacy, pitching Vice President Kamala Harris as the “obvious choice” to replace him should he choose to withdraw.

“Maybe folks don’t want to hear, but we have timing that is running out. Time is not on our side,” Lee said during a radio interview, according to CBS News.

“We have a few months to do a monumental task. It’s not cheap and it’s not easy. If our president decides this is not a pathway forward for him, we have to move very quickly,” she continued. “There’s not going to be time for a primary. That time is past.”

“The vice president is the obvious choice. She’s sitting right there. She’s already been in the White House. And has the name recognition. And has been on the trail,” Lee said.

She also remarked that the “optics of pushing a Black woman aside” were “not good.”

While Lee is correct in saying that Harris would not have the chance to primary, it’s worth noting that she would be the only other Democrat who could access the $91.2 million that Biden has raised as part of his campaign, some campaign finance experts told NBC. That’s just another reason why she might be considered a top candidate to replace Biden.

On Tuesday, Texas Representative Lloyd Doggett became the first House member to formally call on Biden to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race, and Representative Jim Clyburn said he would support Harris “if [Biden] were to step aside.”

Like Clyburn, Lee’s comments stopped short of urging the president to withdraw his candidacy. Still, her comments make clear that Democrats are beginning to look elsewhere for leadership following last week’s unwieldy presidential debate.

During an appearance with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Tuesday night, Stormy Daniels detailed the harrowing circumstances she’s facing in the aftermath of Trump’s 34-count felony conviction and her big concerns moving forward, noting that threats against her have gotten “more graphic and detailed and brazen” because “people don’t care” to minimize their rhetoric or hide behind anonymous accounts.

“It just poured gasoline on some of the stuff that I had been going through the entire time,” Daniels told Maddow of how Trump’s guilty verdict intensified the harassment she faced throughout Trump’s hush-money trial, including explicit threats to her and her family and harm against her animals. “Some days I’m picking pellets out of my horse’s body,” Daniels said. “There have been moments where you’ve gotten to check out at least for a minute. I’ve never had a day like that in over six years.”

During the trial, Daniels said Trump followers threatened to “rape everybody in my family, including my young daughter before they killed them, very graphic things talking about a child.” Daniels further detailed the financial turmoil she’s been put into as a result of a defamation lawsuit her lawyer pursued without her consent and the legal costs of testifying against Trump. According to Daniels, she faces an estimated $600,000 in legal fees stemming from the trial and earlier defamation suit.

“I’m not afraid of what he could say about me or what he could call me.… I’m concerned [about] him saying something that will make his followers come after me,” Daniels noted in light of Judge Juan Merchan partially lifting Trump’s gag order. Asked about her concerns of Trump winning in November, Daniels expressed fear that Trump will exploit his presidential authority and give his followers permission to do whatever they want to her.

“I think that he will try to make even more of an example out of me,” Daniels said. “His followers will probably be even more bold, thinking if they do something, he’ll pardon them.”

While Daniels says costs from testifying and loss of work have been devastating, including clubs that book her getting hit with threats, the biggest struggle has been keeping her daughter safe. She told Maddow that the courts requested paperwork including her 13-year-old daughter’s legal name and date of birth, which she was unwilling to disclose, and that she’s facing possible jail time for refusing to pay legal fees from the failed defamation lawsuit.

“I didn’t fill out that part of the form. I left it blank, and they rejected it and sent it back, and are demanding that I be held in contempt with sanctions, and that I have to pay this money,” said Daniels regarding the defamation case. “I have to pay $600,000 plus sanctions and contempt of court, which comes with a warrant, possibly an arrest warrant, because the things I said which they found him guilty of, I also have to pay.”

While Daniels has started working again and friends created a GoFundMe to help her pay down legal fees and keep her home, Daniels says she’s still in the red—but most of what she’s lost has been her peace of mind.

“I’ve lost a lot more than I’ve made,” Daniels said. “Mostly my peace, mostly my daughter’s privacy and time I’ll never get back with her.”

Donald Trump spelled out his media philosophy in audio recordings released Tuesday, explaining everything he learned from his time hosting NBC’s The Apprentice—and subtly revealing just how much power he believes he has over the media industry and the American public.

In newly released audio from a 2023 sit-down conversation with Variety editor and author Ramin Setoodeh, Trump mused about the limitless potential of being a TV personality—including that the high-profile position allows one to be “evil” and the “most horrible human”—so long as your program grabs attention.

“So, if I went back to NBC right now to do something, they would do anything I wanted to do, showbiz-wise. I’m talking about,” Trump told Setoodeh. “Doing a show, anything I wanted to do right now, 100 percent.”

That’s because “show business” is all about one thing, per Trump: “ratings.”

“If you have ratings, you can be the meanest, most horrible human being in the world,” he continued. “There’s only one thing that matters: ratings. You can be nice, or you can be mean, you can be evil, you can be horrible. You can be crude or elegant. There’s only one thing that matters, and that’s ratings.”

Trump may have learned that final lesson in 2016, when he re-earned enough of the public’s favor to win the presidency despite a hot mic leak from a 2005 Access Hollywood interview that caught the former TV host bragging that he could force himself onto women and practically “do anything” he wanted to because he was a star, including “grab ’em by the pussy.”

Recalling his interview with Trump on MSNBC, Setoodeh said that Trump appeared to suggest that he was “being wooed” to return to TV.

“That’s the TV star in him,” Setoodeh told Nicolle Wallace Tuesday. “He wants people to see him as a TV star. A successful TV star, and that’s the philosophy and way in which he views the world and the way he governs, if you could call it governing.”