by | Dec 27, 2024 | The Hill
Filing dubious lawsuits is one of Donald Trump’s favorite hobbies. He’s taken on the likes of
,
,
and
just to name a few. These legal temper tantrums aren’t designed to win (and usually don’t); mostly they have been about assuaging Trump’s bruised ego and keeping his name in the press.
The president-elect’s lawsuit against the pollster Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register, however, is different.
There are many things wrong with Trump’s claim. It’s still comical — there’s a reason that Donald Trump has so much trouble retaining top-tier attorneys, apart from his notorious reluctance to
— but it’s also deeply disturbing. The only real question is whether the judge will use the F word (frivolous) when it gets dismissed.
The
Trump filed is 25 pages long, but most of that is window dressing. There’s only one actual claim, and it boils down to Trump arguing that the Selzer poll predicting he might lose Iowa was false and that, because of this false poll, Trump had to spend campaign money to “mitigate and counteract the harms of the Defendants’ conduct.”
For starters, Trump doesn’t have standing to sue. He filed this action in his personal capacity, but it would have been his campaign that spent the money and suffered any damages. But let’s look at the bigger picture here.
Trump is claiming that he can bring an action for damages because Selzer and the Des Moines Register said stuff that wasn’t true and this caused him political harm. He says this is “election interference” and that it violates the
.
This is absolutely hilarious. Trump’s entire campaign was based on repeating
over and over and over again. If Selzer (or any other pollster, for that matter) were liable for coming up with an erroneous poll result, just imagine the kind of damages Trump would rack up after just one of his rallies.
And if the Des Moines Register were liable for publicizing the results of that poll, thousands of podcasters and media outlets would be on the hook for amplifying Trump’s nonsense for their audiences. FOX News already had to pay
for telling lies about Dominion Voting Systems. How much would they owe for the rest of their claims about Trump winning the 2020 election? How much would the bill be just for January 6th?
In short, if you could sue people for saying things that aren’t true during a political campaign, Donald Trump would spend the rest of his life and then some in court. Lucky for him, you can’t. Ann Selzer is safe and this suit will be dismissed. Unfortunately, getting to that point will cost both Selzer and the Des Moines Register time and money. And that’s the problem.
As absurd as it is, this new lawsuit is part of a deeply sinister, disturbing pattern of intimidation. We often talk about how authoritarianism begins. Well, this isn’t how authoritarianism begins — this is what authoritarianism is.
In repressive regimes, heavy-handed censorship is rarely necessary. Rather, people have been trained to engage in self-censorship, knowing that saying the wrong thing will result in legal action and that even if they eventually win in court, it will be a pyrrhic — and expensive — victory.
Businesses are out to make money, and even media companies are businesses. When government repression is in the wind, few companies will sail against it. Rather, they’ll tacitly cooperate and stay out of trouble.
A lot has been written about Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder,
, probably because he did not want to annoy Trump. The billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times did much the
. And just last week, ABC
in an extremely defensible case where Trump claimed he was being defamed because his attack on E. Jean Carroll had been mischaracterized as “rape” by George Stephanopoulos.
ABC’s decision to roll over and play dead seems to have been a business decision, not a legal one. Even if Trump had won, it was the sort of case where the plaintiff gets awarded $1 in damages. When it comes to sexual assault, Donald Trump hasn’t got much of a reputation to ruin. And yet, ABC agreed to pay Trump $15 million to settle.
Trump is already planning on
the power of the federal government and a compliant Justice Department to go after his enemies. He’s
about putting ABC out of business. Getting off Trump’s enemies list is just good business, and if you’re Disney, ABC’s owner — which earned
— $15 million is practically a rounding error.
Thousands of business executives are reaching the same conclusion. After the January 6th Capitol attack,
After the November election, Jeff Zuckerberg made a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago, where he stood,
, for a rendition of the national anthem sung by the “J6 Prison Choir.”
These lawsuits are ridiculous, but that is almost the point. Trump is making it clear to everyone that he will take retribution on his enemies and nothing will get in his way — not logic, not evidence, not the rule of law itself. This is a rare moment when we can see America’s culture of freedom slipping away before our eyes.
Happy New Year, everybody!
is an appellate attorney who served as Southern California chair for John McCain’s primary campaign in 2008.
by dap | Dec 27, 2024 | Chicago Tribune
ORLANDO — The silence has been broken, amid Miami Heat hopes that silence now can follow.
In the wake of increasing conjecture of Jimmy Butler pushing for a trade and the team considering a deal, Miami Heat President Pat Riley on Thursday issued a terse and pointed statement on the matter.
“We usually don’t comment on rumors, but all this speculation has become a distraction to the team and is not fair to the players and coaches,” Riley said. “Therefore, we will make it clear — We are not trading Jimmy Butler.”
In addition, a person intimately familiar with the machinations of recent days said that at no point has Butler requested a trade.
Earlier, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra also said Thursday that the desire of the team is to move forward with Butler, while also pausing to address reports of his star forward preferring to be elsewhere.
“That’s just the deal,” Spoelstra said of Christmas Day turning into
and the Sun Sentinel confirming from both sides of the equation that there had been no trade demand put forward. “You have to compartmentalize in this business. We want Jimmy here. There’s no ifs, ands or buts about it. And it’s just unfortunate that you have to control or deal with a lot of the noise on the outside.”
Thursday was the first opportunity for the Heat to address the speculation, with the team idle for Christmas, traveling to Orlando on Wednesday evening. Spoelstra spoke after the morning shootaround, ahead of Thursday night’s game against the Orlando Magic at Kia Center.
“In terms of this morning, this was a pretty focused group coming off of the last game that we came here,” Spoelstra said, with the Heat blowing a 22-point lead at the start of the fourth quarter in
. “The guys understand the task at hand and looking forward to getting out there on the wood and trying to redeem what happened the last time we were here.”
It is a process that instead came i
about Butler’s reported desires, with Butler having been away from the team the past week with what has been listed as a stomach ailment.
Asked whether Butler had within the team expressed a desire to move on, Spoelstra said, “That’s all I’m going to talk about. The more any of us talk about it, the more fuel it gets. It’s just really unfortunate that it just continues to build momentum outside of our building.”
Riley’s statement followed, amid the hopes of ending the fuel on that fire.
Butler then was declared out for Thursday night’s game against the Magic, the third consecutive game he has missed due to what had been listed as a stomach ailment.
As team captain, center Bam Adebayo said what matters with Butler is what happens on the court and within the building.
“You go out there and you win games,” Adebayo said. “That’s how you keep the distractions out. You go out there and win games, do it together. Like I said, they’ll handle everything behind closed doors.
“Obviously, you have the business side of it. So at the end of the day, we’re all a family, we’re all in a brotherhood. So we’ll worry about the basketball games that we have to play.”
So, no, Adebayo said, the conjecture did not sour his Christmas.
“It’s a holiday. We’re with our families, so we’re going to worry about our families and worry about everything else later,” Adebayo said.
Guard Tyler Herro, who has dealt with his share of trade speculation, said Wednesday’s televised conjecture was just part of the NBA process.
“I didn’t really have a reaction, honestly,” he said of the reporting on Christmas morning. “My focus is on my daughter and my son, and I haven’t really picked up my phone or worried about basketball until this morning. So, I don’t know.”
Herro said the concern was getting a teammate back to health and back on the court.
“Yeah. I mean, Jimmy is sick, I believe,” Herro said. “So he had to take a couple days off. If I was sick, I might need a couple days one day, too. So we’ll see what happens.”
Butler, 35, is eligible to reach free agency this summer should he opt out of the final year of his contract, a 2025-26 player option for $52.4 million. He also is eligible for an immediate Heat extension.
By NBA rule, players are not allowed to publicly demand trades while under contract. Former Heat forward P.J. Tucker was fined $75,000 by the NBA in February for public statements regarding a desire at that time to be relocated from the Los Angeles Clippers. Similarly, in August 2023, James Harden, then with the Philadelphia 76ers, was fined $100,000 by the league for publicly expressing a trade desire.
Butler, at least initially, played along with the conjecture, including changing the color of his braids to bright orange, a color prominently featured by the Phoenix Suns, one of his reported preferred landing spots.
“I actually like it,” Butler said following a Dec. 11 Heat practice at Kaseya Center of the conjecture. “It’s good to be talked about. I don’t think there’s such a thing as bad publicity to a point. But if somebody is talking about me getting traded, that’s a lot.”
Now there again is talk.
“It’s fine with me,” Butler said two weeks ago of speculation that likely will continue until either a move is made or the passing of the NBA’s Feb. 6 trading deadline. “It doesn’t bother me, not one bit, and I do appreciate it.”
Asked as a follow up to that answer about where he stands in terms of a potential long-term future with the Heat, he responded, “Who knows?”
by dap | Dec 27, 2024 | Chicago Tribune
Chicago police are alerting the Rogers Park community about a home invasion and sexual assault that happened in the West Ridge neighborhood in the early morning hours Thursday.
Police said there was a home invasion Dec. 26 at a residence in the 6200 block of North Bell Avenue where a male entered a residence through a back door while a victim was asleep and sexually assaulted the victim, police said. He told the victim that other people were with him before he took belongings from the residence and exited through a back door, police said in a community alert.
The suspect was describe as a Black male about 5 feet 10 inches tall with symbols tattooed on his face. He was last seen wearing a black face mask, police said.
Anyone with information on the assault should contact police.
Police cautioned others to pay attention to people loitering in the area and to contact police if they seem suspicious. Police also said to lock all doors and not to pursue a fleeing suspect.
Police said to try to give a detailed description of the suspect.
