Quit With the Excuses, Mr. Trump: Pony Up Your $454 Million Judgment
Quit With the Excuses, Mr. Trump: Pony Up Your $454 Million Judgment
Plus: Putin’s Recycled Rationalizations
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DENNIS AFTERGUT AND NEIL GOTEINER: Quit With the Excuses, Mr. Trump: Pony Up Your $454 Million Judgment
ON WEDNESDAY, A NEW YORK APPELLATE COURT denied Donald Trump’s baseless request to reduce by nearly 80 percent the bond he needs to pay to secure, during his appeal, the state of New York’s $454 million civil fraud judgment against him.
Trump has until March 25 to obtain a bond or a loan for the full amount. In the meantime, he has worked overtime trying to distract us from the judgment’s message: that his business modus operandi, like his political persona, is built on lies.
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CATHY YOUNG: Putin’s Recycled Rationalizations
OVER THE TWO YEARS OF VLADIMIR PUTIN’S WAR in Ukraine, we have heard all sorts of alleged reasons for the invasion—not just from Putin himself, but from his Western apologists, be it Tucker Carlson or Tulsi Gabbard, Glenn Greenwald or Marjorie Taylor Greene. It’s NATO enlargement and Russia’s legitimate fear of NATO bases. It’s the existential threat Moscow sees in a pro-Western, Russia-unfriendly government in Ukraine. It’s the oppression of ethnically, linguistically, and culturally Russian communities in Eastern Ukraine, in territories many Russians regard as historical Russian lands. It’s the need to “denazify” the country. Farther on the fringe, it’s the urgent mission to protect the Slavic world from conquest by the global gay mafia, or the menace of Ukraine’s sinister American biolabs (who knows, maybe they’re injecting Slavic babies with the gay gene!).
KIM WEHLE: Justice Delayed: Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Trump’s Immunity Case.
DONALD TRUMP HAS JUST SCORED ANOTHER BIG WIN in his legal strategy of delaying any accountability for his alleged crimes until after the 2024 election—which he gambles will return him to the White House and safely beyond the reach of justice.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court granted his request to consider overturning the unanimous ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit holding that he does not have complete immunity from criminal liability for acts taken as president. At least four justices voted to take this step. The Court has scheduled oral argument for April 22.
🚨OVERTIME🚨
Happy Thursday! Talk about an own-goal by WAMU, the NPR affiliate shuttering a beloved local news site it agreed to take over. For a member-supported organization, there’s almost no worse way to have handled this.
Meanwhile, in Missouri… The GOP Candidate for Governor Was Only ‘Honorary’ KKK Member (RFT).
The Scandal… of Clarence Thomas’s New Clerk (Jane Mayer, New Yorker)
The Daily Showography of RFK Jr…. Immune to Normal (Daily Show.)
The Curious Case… of the Mildly Annoyed Judge (Balls & Strikes).
The Cases Against Trump… Are Not "Lawfare” (Patterico).
Stephen Richer vs. a TPUSA “activist.” A Twitter battle that went multiple rounds, which Richer victorious each time.
Biden invites Trump… to work together to lobby Congress on an immigration bill as both candidates visit border (NBC).
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