Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman have a new book coming out next week, but bits and pieces are being leaked already. First up is Sen. Lindsey Graham's grand jury testimony in late 2022:
A new book reveals that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) “threw Trump under the bus” during Graham’s secret grand jury testimony in the Georgia election subversion case.
....“After fighting a four-month legal battle all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to block his grand jury subpoena — and losing — South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham turned on a dime ‘and threw Trump under the bus,’ according to a source familiar with his testimony. According to secret grand jury testimony in Fulton County confirmed by the authors, Graham testified that if you told Trump ‘That Martians came and stole the election, he’d probably believe you.’
“He also suggested to the grand jurors that Trump cheated at golf.”
That's cold. Isikoff and Klaidman also say that Atlanta DA Fani Willis had trouble finding a prosecutor willing to take on the vote fraud case against Trump and others:
Willis initially approached Roy Barnes, the former governor of Georgia and one of the state's premier lawyers, to serve as the senior counsel on the case. But he turned her down. She then tried Gabe Banks, a former federal prosecutor and highly respected Atlanta criminal defense lawyer. Banks also wasn't interested.
Neither Barnes nor Banks wanted to plunge into such an all-consuming case at the expense of their lucrative law practices, as laid out in the book. But the two were even more concerned about the inevitable threats that would come with such a politically incendiary case. Barnes declined to discuss his conversations with Willis, but nodded to those concerns in an interview: "Hypothetically speaking, do you want a bodyguard following you around for the rest of your life?" Banks declined comment.
It was only after those two turned her down that Willis appointed Nathan Wade, whom she is currently suspected of being romantically involved with.
Wait... so she had to fuck the lawyer AND pay him to get enough people ?
That's bleakly funny.
So the fact that Fani Willis may have had sex with one of her co-workers is a major news cycle scandal, but the fact that the Trump Cult is crumpling our institutions by threatening them with murder is just politics as usual.
Especially remarkable since even if Willis is guilty of what's alleged, it has ZERO to do with the case against trump.
This has completely confused me as well. I have no idea if she had an affair with the prosecutor, but if she did, how would that affect the cases of any of the defendants? It’s the Underpants Gnomes theory of prosecutorial misconduct.
the threat of violence is so overt and so rarely mentioned by the media.
Yes, but they're presumably just concerned about protecting the sensibilities of trump's Christian supporters, who would never knowingly follow anyone other than another follower of the Messiah. /s
"Hypothetically speaking, do you want a bodyguard following you around for the rest of your life?"
Haven't seen a Secret Service stat for the increase in death threats during the Obama administration and afterwards, but I'd guess that Kevin would have to turn his monitor to portrait mode to graph them.
“After fighting a four-month legal battle all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to block his grand jury subpoena — and losing — South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham turned on a dime ‘and threw Trump under the bus,’
Turned on a dime?? I call B.S. on that. For four months, Graham tried everything he could to avoid testifying. Because he knew he'd be under oath and in his world-view of ethics, that meant he'd have to tell the truth. So he did his darndest to avoid it.
But after his avoidance efforts had failed, he had to tell the truth. So he didn't "turn on a dime," nor did he "throw Trump under a bus." He simply did what he had tried so hard, at considerable expense, to avoid. He told the truth.
The book: “He also suggested to the grand jurors that Trump cheated at golf.”
Kevin: "That's cold."
What? You thought maybe he would not cheat?
I have a friend who's a lifelong Republican except he voted for Clinton because he'd heard Trump cheated at golf.
"How and why President Trump cheats at golf — even when he’s playing against Tiger Woods"
https://golf.com/lifestyle/celebrities/how-why-president-trump-cheats-golf-playing-tiger-woods/
I wonder if his wives found his cheating equally humorous? Maybe so!
Lindsey didn't throw Trump under the bus; he told the truth. The truth is what kills Trump every time.
Oh, I've got it.
Trump is a porkubus.
It's like an incubus or a succubus but it's a massive demonic filthy pig that appears in your room in the dark of night and wallows around in your bed while you remain huddled in terror and revulsion in the furthest corner of the room perhaps behind a chair knowing that no one will believe you when you tell them what really happened and they'll think you just did that yourself.
I love it! Porkubus!
Cite the Georgia statue making currently romantically involved a crime???!!!
Honest question: what difference does it make if the DA and the prosecutor are sleeping together? What's the ethical problem? I know it seems bad in terms of optics. But why is that, exactly? I could see the conflict of interest or ethical dilemma if the prosecution and defense were in a relationship. But the DA and the prosecutor are on the same team: they both think that Trump is guilty and they both want to send him to jail? What's the harm?
"...What's the ethical problem? .."
The DA hired the prosecutor. He allegedly is using some of his pay to buy her gifts,
Assuming he did buy her gifts of more than minimal value, whose pay should he have used? Someone else’s? People who pay for gifts with other people’s money are generally known as “embezzlers.”
This is a Comer-esque accusation: one that sounds vaguely plausible on the surface, but just collapses under five minutes of examination.
"This is a Comer-esque accusation: one that sounds vaguely plausible on the surface, but just collapses under five minutes of examination."
Generally speaking if you are a public official you are not supposed to use public money to hire your paramours.