“Hours after Smith filed his request Monday, the court said it would consider the request on an expedited basis.
“Petitioner’s motion to expedite consideration of the petition for a writ of certiorari before judgment is granted, and respondent is directed to file a response to the petition on or before 4 p.m. (EST) on Wednesday, December 20, 2023,” the court wrote. The response does not mean the court will take up the case – only that it will consider the request in an expedited fashion.“
This is freaking hilarious.
It cost Trump’s business and his 2024 presidential campaign treasure chest some $877,500 to hear from finance academic Eli Bartov at trial. In return, the Trump family got to watch their expensive expert get torn apart by an AG attorney who pointed out contradictions in his testimony, get repeatedly interrupted by the judge, and finally be discredited as a failed voice of authority.
I bet millions of experts would say damaging things about Trump for free…
it makes sense that an expert would get paid for their expertise. at the same time, i sure hope that’s disclosed to the jury. paying someone for their testimony, and expecting that testimony to be truthful seem distinctly at odds with each other
eta:
It cost Trump’s business and his 2024 presidential campaign
okay. how is that remotely legal?
It is. An Expert Witness’s full disclosure of payment is as much a part of the routine as “do you solemnly swear …”
As an engineer, I was offered Expert Witness work once but couldn’t give it the time it needed. The pay is always much higher than one’s usual work, but the level of scrutiny is astronomically higher. And you’ve got to sit in court and defend your work, which is stressful if you give a shit.
A federal appeals court ruled that former President Trump cannot assert presidential immunity in a defamation lawsuit brought by writer E. Jean Carroll, denying Trump’s bid to avoid civil trial next month and thus setting up a Supreme Court battle.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit ruled against Trump, finding that presidential immunity could be waived as a defense and that Trump had in fact waived it.
Also in immunity news…
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4357831-trump-court-immunity-jan-6/
trump attorneys: “Blah, blah, blah, blah…”
I’m surprised he even copped to contracting COVID-19 in office instead of claiming that would be impossible since he already had total immunity.
A 2700 page binder doesn’t get created from thin air. What fucking server is the files or files that were printed out to create that binder sitting on??
No worries. All the information in it was already declassified using the mental superpowers of a very stable genius.
Sometimes, having physical copy makes sense, such as when you need to have multiple people look at something… Plus, let’s not pretend that servers are magically more secure than paper. 
What pisses me off about that Guardian article is this little gem:
But Mueller did not establish collusion between Trump and [Russia]
Not exactly. It left open the probability of collusion because they thought that key participants (like Paul Manafort and Steve Bannon) were lying. And it turns out that they were lying, and convicted of doing so. Any reference of the Mueller Report is misleadingly incomplete without that critical detail.
We’ve deeply got him? Cool!
Let’s hope SCOTUS doesn’t fuck it up… I mean, does Roberts REALLY want to be THE chief justice that ended Democracy in America? I hope that he doesn’t.
Being remembered as the last Chief Justice isn’t much of a win.
The question is if he can keep right wing under control or not. There is no way that Alito and Thomas are going to vote in favor of the president being accountable to the law, so Kavannaugh, Barrett, and Gorsuch need to be on board… ironically, the three justices Trump appointed… while they are certainly right wing, I don’t think they’ve been Trump’s “yes justices” like he entirely expected… there have been times they’ve voted against him (when some of the cases over 2020 got to the court).
Corrupt self-interest may come to the rescue. Even Alto and Thomas have to realize that Day One Dictator isn’t going to want a Supreme Court, and their jobs would be surplus down the line. Will they vote to put T beyond their power?
(Hey Thomas, do those billionaires really like you, or will they ghost you as soon as you’re out of the power loop?)
Lawful evil vs chaotic evil.
They all got exactly what they needed from the Trump train and have no real reason to give a shit about him ever again. Their ideological aims are a boot stomping on everyone’s faces forever into the future, and Trump is yesterday’s news.
Alito, maybe not, but Thomas strikes me as the kind of guy who really believes that he’ll still be able to carve himself out a space for his own power… or could be that he’s really a true believer in all this shit, and bringing the country under a theocracy is his goal all along…
Couple that with what @RickMycroft said above, and it’s hard to see them doing that… but then again, there are still people who believe that they are the ones in charge of all this, and they’ll be able to bring the MAGA movement to heel.
