Today Will Not Be a Happy Day for Rudy Giuliani

In Nov. and Dec. 2020, Rudy Giuliani claimed that two Black Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea "Shaye" Moss, stuffed the ballot box for Joe Biden. The two received death threats and had to go into hiding. They worked as poll workers because they knew that getting the right to vote for Black people was an immense struggle that took a century and many lives. They didn't expect to be attacked on television by someone as prominent as Giuliani. Their lives were ruined. But they still had faith in the rule of law so they sued Giuliani for defamation. At first, Giuliani fought the charges, but then he ran out of money to pay his lawyers. Eventually, he admitted that he was lying and that they didn't stuff the ballot box. D.C. Federal Judge Beryl Howell found his admission sufficient to rule in favor of the two women.

The next part of the story begins today. Howell has scheduled a jury trial to determine how much Giuliani has to pay the two women. Jury selection will begin this morning in Howell's D.C. courtroom. Freeman and Moss' lawyers are asking for $43 million in compensatory damages plus punitive damages. In this kind of case, lawyers typically work on a contingency basis and get something like 30% of what they can squeeze out of the defendant, so they are highly motivated to put Giuliani through the wringer. The two women are going to testify, showing how Giuliani ruined their lives for partisan reasons. Juries tend to eat up these stories, and given the demographics of D.C., it is likely that half or more of the jury will be Black.

Giuliani is already at the brink of financial ruin. He has been trying for more than half a year to sell his lovely apartment on 66th St. in Manhattan for $6.1 million, but nobody seems to want it for that price. Sometimes a house that a celebrity lived in fetches more than comparable houses nearby, but in this case, the ghost of Giuliani may be decreasing the value.

And this trial isn't Giuliani's only problem. He has been sued by Dominion Voting Systems for his absurd claims that their machines were rigged to help Joe Biden. He has also been indicted for racketeering in Georgia. Since his long-time lawyers are no longer working for him (and, in fact, are suing him for nonpayment of overdue bills) and he can't afford new ones (assuming he could find any, since lawyers don't like working for corrupt, bankrupt people who are very likely to lose in court), he has a couple of problems. Assuming the jury in Howell's courtroom orders him to pay even $10 million, he will probably be forced into formal bankruptcy. The court-appointed receiver is then likely to drop the asking price on Giuliani's apartment to turn it into cash. Oh, and bankruptcy does not discharge the alimony payments he owes to his three ex-wives. Giuliani may end up dying in prison as a pauper. (V) hereby apologizes to (Z) for scooping him on this and thus not making this story usable Friday for "This Week in Schadenfreude."

Donald Trump ought to be scared out of his wits at this point, but that is not his style. Some of Giuliani's debts can be made to go away by filing for bankruptcy, but the Georgia RICO criminal case won't be affected by bankruptcy. The costs of a decent defense lawyer there could easily run to $300,000. One of the fake electors in Georgia, Cathy Latham, is trying to raise that amount. Back on Oct. 2, she was a bit under $22,000 and had 2,800 prayers. Now she has raised $22,324, but has picked up another 100 prayers and is at 2,907. At this rate, she might cross the magic 3,000-prayer milestone by mid-February, but probably still won't have even $23,000 (7½% of what she needs). Maybe Giuliani could also try crowd-funding to raise money for his defense, but it probably wouldn't work for him either. Trump has already made it clear that he will not cover Giuliani's legal fees.

So what will Giuliani do to reduce or eliminate his legal fees and stay out of prison in Georgia? One option that might occur to him is to flip and rat on Trump. He knows so much that Fulton County DA Fani Willis might be inclined to go easy on him and let him off with a few months of community service in exchange for hanging Trump. If the defamation case in D.C. lasts a couple of weeks and the jury awards the two women tens of millions of dollars, then it will be decision time for Giuliani (and maybe Trump). (V)

But It Will Be a Happy Day for Donald Trump

Donald Trump was expected to be a witness in the civil trial New York AG Letitia James brought against him. He was going to testify today. Yesterday, he changed his mind and won't testify on his behalf at all. He doesn't have to, since it's his defense, and his side gets to decide what witnesses to put up. This is good news for him since James' lawyers would have torn him limb from limb on the stand and undoubtedly gotten him to commit perjury multiple times. He is a terrible witness and should never have even considered testifying in his own defense.

On his failing boutique social network, Trump wrote: "As everyone knows, I have very successfully & conclusively testified in the corrupt, Biden directed, New York state attorney general's rigged trial against me." Virtually every word of that is false, except maybe "I" and "me." One of Trump's lawyers, Chris Kise, who is reasonably competent, said: "President Trump has already testified. There is really nothing more to say to a Judge who has imposed an unconstitutional gag order and thus far appears to have ignored President Trump's testimony and that of everyone else involved in the complex financial transactions at issue in the case." This is an odd thing for Kise, an experienced lawyer, to say. Trump insults the judge all the time because he is hoping this will goad the judge into making some mistake that the appeals court can latch onto to throw the trial out. Kise knows playing that game is the longest of long shots and something no halfway decent lawyer would try. It's possible that Trump made him say this, against his professional judgment. Certainly, Kise knows very well that you don't insult the judge in a bench trial, like this one.

Last week, Eli Bartov, a professor of accounting at NYU, testified that he saw no evidence of fraud in Trump's transactions. He also admitted that the Trump Organization and Trump's super PAC have paid him $875,000 for his testimony. When asked if that money affected his testimony, he said: "No." Good to know that. Judge Arthur Engoron will sure be pleased to know he gave honest testimony, independent of getting almost $1 million from Trump so far. That amount might just have been the first half, with the rest due after his appearance.

James is expected to put two more witnesses on the stand. Then both sides will write up their arguments for the judge. On Jan. 11, both sides will return for closing oral arguments. Engoron said he will rule within a few weeks after that. And don't forget that Trump has already lost on one count. Now we're just waiting to see if he's found liable on the remaining counts, and what penalty Engoron will assess. By then we will be into primary season, and a ruling that Trump has to pay $250 million or more in fines will not make him a happy camper, but it may not move the needle much because this is a civil case. Also up in January is the second defamation lawsuit E. Jean Carroll has thrown at Trump. While one loss in court may not matter much, a series of big losses in the NY AG's case, Carroll's case, and maybe the federal trial scheduled for March 4, could begin to add up. (V)

Haley Polls Better Than Trump against Biden

With the caveat that the election is still almost 11 months away, a new batch of polls is interesting. In the RCP polling average, Nikki Haley beats Joe Biden by 5.8 points, Donald Trump beats Biden by 2.2 points, and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) beats Biden by 0.9 points. That's a big difference. Also, the fact that multiple Republicans are beating Biden is more evidence that a fair number of Democrats are lukewarm on him and may sit out the election. It is not that Trump is suddenly getting more popular. Biden's problem is with Democrats, not Republicans.

Again, these are national popular-vote polls well in advance of the election, but the crosstabs are interesting. The results show that Haley and Trump would put together very different coalitions against Biden. In particular, Politico was interested in "Biden-Haley" voters; that is, people who would vote for Biden if he were running against Trump but would vote for Haley if she were the Republican nominee. This is a key voting bloc. One predictor of the Biden-Haley voter is whether the voter has a very unfavorable view of Trump. About 14% of these voters would vote for Biden against Trump but for Haley if Trump weren't running. These are likely old-school Reagan-Bush Republicans for whom Trump is simply unacceptable.

The data also show that 19% of the "double haters"—people who despise both Biden and Trump—would vote for Haley if she was on the ballot. Interestingly, this applies equally to men and women. Also, while in a Biden-Trump race, Biden wins the women easily, in a Biden-Haley race, among women it's a tie. In other words, there are quite a few women whose desire for a female president overrides any partisanship they have. Haley could apparently close the gender gap. This issue didn't come up in 2016 because many women were already planning to vote for the Democrat and the fact that the candidate was a woman didn't change that. Clinton was sufficiently reviled by Republican women that she wasn't worth voting for, even by women who would have liked a female president.

What Haley also does is pull college-educated women who were traditionally Republicans back into the fold. Trump repels these voters. And she does this without alienating noncollege white voters. In fact she does as well among them as Trump does.

Haley is already touting her "electability" but it is still an uphill climb for her. Many Trump voters would rather go down on the S.S. Trump than win with Haley. Her task is to convince them that winning with someone they don't like all that much is better than losing with someone they worship. It won't be easy. And don't forget that she's 30-50 points behind Trump in all the early primary/caucus states, so for the moment, all this discussion is purely academic. (V)

Biden Is Way Behind on Setting Up Campaign Infrastructure in Key States

Some Democrats are getting out their worry beads because Joe Biden's reelection campaign hasn't hired any staff in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin. All of these are going to be major battleground states. Biden is trailing both Barack Obama's reelection campaign in 2011 and Donald Trump's reelection campaign in 2019. Both of those campaigns had paid staff in all the battleground states at this point in the election cycle.

Interviews with more than 20 elected Democratic officials and strategists showed that they were worried about activating marginal voters, especially Black and Latino voters. Also, not having a state chair means there is no one to talk to in these states about organizing travel to the state, holding rallies in the state, distributing resources, or working on countering Republican attempts at voter suppression. Pete Giangreco, a longtime Democratic strategist, said: "You have to build an infrastructure to drive [the] message and deliver votes. It's not something you do just on paid communications."

If Biden's approval rating were in the high 50s, instead of the low 40s, and horserace polls showed him 10 points ahead of every Republican, Democratic strategists wouldn't be worried, but low approval, bad polls, and no infrastructure is not usually a winning combination.

Part of the disagreement is how professionals think about strategy. Some think spending money (by hiring lots of staff this early) is a huge waste of resources. They want those pennies saved for spending starting in next summer, when the voters are starting to pay attention. There is also a big internal debate about the value of staff on the ground vs. virtual staff. Some Democrats think the way to reach marginal voters is not to knock on their doors a year before the election, but to advertise on Facebook and TikTok next fall. A campaign spokesman, Kevin Munoz, said: "Every cycle, anonymous sources and pundits vent to reporters, but make no mistake: This campaign is building strategically and aggressively to earn every vote and to win what will be a competitive election."

One difference between Biden and Obama is the role of the DNC. Obama ignored the DNC and let it deteriorate. Biden has strengthened it and encouraged it to use its resources as it sees fit. It has focused on digital ads in key states and also ads on radio targeted at Black and Latino voters. Biden has said that too many worriers have missed the fact that while the campaign isn't busy on the ground in the battleground states, the DNC is very active there digitally. Jim Messina, Obama's 2012 campaign manager, said: "Anyone who mistakes headcount as a stand-in metric for communicating with voters doesn't know much about the realities of the modern election cycle."

On the other hand, one critic of Biden's approach said: "They are trying to save money, but what would a state director or deputy state director cost them for an extra three or four months to really get organized?" Another one said: "They're looking at it like, 'We have a year.' But what they're underestimating is how much damage is being done now... with massive disinformation campaigns." Who's right? After the election a lot of people will suddenly become unrecognized experts—or GOATs. (V)

Caucusgate Hits Iowa

Last Friday, Casey DeSantis was on Fox News and said: "You do not have to be a resident of Iowa to be able to participate in the caucus." She encouraged moms and grandmoms from North Carolina and South Carolina to descend on the state and join in. Our take is that she didn't do well in geography in elementary school. The closest points in those states are almost 600 miles from Keokuk, the closest point in Iowa to them. She seems to have missed the fact that six states (Minnesota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Missouri, Illinois, and Wisconsin) actually border Iowa. Why not ask moms and grandmoms from those states to show up to caucus? Somebody ought to send Casey a map of the U.S.

The reaction was nearly instantaneous. The Iowa Republican Party tweeted to X (Twitter): "Remember: you must be a legal resident of Iowa and the precinct you live in and bring photo ID with you to participate in the #iacaucus!" Talk about an unforced error.

DeSantis tried to recover later in the day by saying that residents of other states could help by volunteering in Iowa, but the damage had been done. The Trump campaign issued a statement reading: "The Trump campaign strongly condemns their dirty and illegal tactics and implores all Trump supporters to be aware of the DeSantises' openly stated plot to rig the Caucus through fraud." The Trump campaign also called on Gov. Kim Reynolds (R-IA), who supports DeSantis, to reaffirm the caucus rules. In addition, Trump's super PAC issued a statement on "Casey DeSantis' embrace of voter fraud." Trump has often bellowed about voter fraud, but this time he might actually be right. Casey DeSantis should have checked with the lawyers and geographers before urging women to travel 600 miles to commit fraud. (V)

Takeaways from the Hunter Biden Indictment

Hunter Biden was indicted on nine counts of tax charges last week, in addition to an earlier indictment relating to buying a gun in 2018. The new charges were brought by U.S. attorney and Special Counsel David Weiss, who was first appointed by Donald Trump but continued on the case after Joe Biden moved to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

An obvious question that many people are asking is: "How is all this going to impact the election?" No one knows, of course, but The Hill's senior staff writer Niall Stanage took a whack at it and came up with these items.

• Biden fils and Trump will both be on trial in 2024: Hunter and Trump may both face trials in an election year, but there is a huge difference, much as Republicans would like to blur the line. Hunter is not running for any public office; Trump is running to be President of the United States. If the only issues that came up were tax and gun related, that might not be so harmful to the President. After all, are Republicans going to get up and say: "Evading taxes and trying to buy a gun are terrible, terrible things"? Probably not. But his lifestyle will certainly be a target. He put women with whom he was having sex on the payroll of one of his companies; spent money on drugs, escorts, and exotic cars; and claimed that a $10,000 payment was for joining a golf club but it was actually for joining a sex club. The sheer amount of money he was tossing around conflicts with his father's image of "Scranton Joe." Then there is the question of what Hunter did for the Ukrainian energy company that warranted a $1 million payment. None of this looks good.
  
  
• Biden père is not mentioned in the indictment: Republicans can go after young Biden all they want, but nothing in his indictments even mentions his father. Hunter lived a dissipated life, but there is nothing there to suggest that Joe did anything illegal, immoral, or wrong in any way. Are voters going to be disgusted at Joe for what his adult son did? If that comes up, then the subject of what Jared Kushner did to get the Saudis to give him $2 billion to play with is sure to also come up. Nothing Hunter did compromised national security. That is far less clear about young Jared.
  
  
• Hunter will be forced on the defensive again: The last few months, Hunter was on the offense. He responded to a subpoena from a House committee by saying he would be happy to testify, but only in public so everyone could hear the questions and answers and no one could lie about what they asked and what he said. The committee balked at that (suggesting that indeed the goal was to grill him in private and then lie about what happened). Hunter also sued Rudy Giuliani and others. With a trial pending, he is back to playing defense. However, he has hired Abbe Lowell as his lawyer. Lowell is one of the best defense lawyers in the country and extremely streetwise.
  
  
• The whistleblowers are vindicated: An IRS agent named Gary Shapley blew the whistle on the case when he got Weiss to say that he didn't have charging authority here. That implied that someone higher than he had the final say. Could that be AG Merrick Garland? Another whistleblower, Joseph Ziegler, said that the IRS had pulled its punches on Biden. In retrospect, maybe they actually knew something.
  
  
• Fresh momentum: The worst part of it is that it brings up a story that had kind of died out. Now it will be in the news again and Republicans will pillory Biden Jr. for his dissolute (former) lifestyle and try to somehow connect his father to it. The easiest connection is via the Ukrainian energy company. Were they trying to buy access via Hunter? Maybe. But if Hunter snookered them, took the $1 million, and didn't do anything in return, that simply shows that he is a crafty businessman and doesn't reflect badly on his father at all. He could even say: "I'm a better businessman than Trump. I got some suckers to pay me $1 million and I didn't do a thing for them. Donald should be proud of me."
  

In addition to all these, people are going to be comparing the seriousness of Biden's crimes with that of Trump's crimes. Biden violated tax laws, although he eventually paid all the tax due and penalties. Trump tried to end democracy in America. Do the Republicans really want to talk about the nature of the crimes? If they start the discussion, that is going to come up. (V)

Trump's Nightmare Cabinet

Donald Trump is already thinking about the cabinet for his second term. It is likely to be a nightmare for democracy. All the top jobs would be filled with people known to be loyal to him above everything and for their willingness to bend and break laws for him, punish his critics, and purge nonbelievers from the government. Trump wants to jail his critics (including politicians and journalists), whether or not they have broken any laws, deport thousands or maybe tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants (or lock them in concentration camps), and use the military to do things like invade Mexico (or maybe San Francisco). It would be a cornucopia of vengeance, retribution, and crime and probably nothing could stop him, not even the courts (which he would simply ignore: How many divisions of soldiers does the Supreme Court have?).

Imagine the following cabinet officers and you have an idea of what could happen if enough young people, Black people, and Latinos ask: What has Joe Biden ever done for me? How about secretaries Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, Kash Patel, and Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH)? Vance has a Juris Doctorate from Yale Law School, so he is clearly the "best" candidate for attorney general. Steve Bannon for secretary of homeland security, anyone? That would put him in charge of the border. Wanna bet on whether he might order all border patrol agents to shoot to kill anyone crossing the border illegally? Suppose the Supreme Court ruled that he doesn't have the authority to do that and he kept doing it anyway. Then what? If the Democrats get a majority in the House, they would instantly impeach Bannon. But would there be 67 votes to convict in the Senate? Alternatively, Bannon could be chief of staff to make sure everyone on the staff put loyalty to Trump above all else.

Other potential cabinet members might be Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Kari Lake, and Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R-AR), unless one of them was vice president.

Would any of these people be able to get Senate confirmation? It depends on which party controls the Senate, of course. If the Democrats are able to defend all the seats they have up for this year, except for the (hopeless) seat in West Virginia, then they will have 50 seats, so the vice president would break ties (unless Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-AK, occasionally voted with the Democrats, preventing ties). If the Republicans win a clear majority, there would be nothing to stop Trump. If he couldn't get Senate confirmation for, say, Miller as secretary of defense, Trump might appoint him acting secretary and let him start giving orders. It could be a year before the Supreme Court even got the case and it might rule that the president could fill vacancies with acting appointments. Who knows?

The only person in the cabinet who believed in the rule of law might be Elaine Chao. She has served as secretary of labor and secretary of transportation already. Trump might want her in the cabinet to make Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) happy. McConnell is married to Chao.

What we can be sure of is that cabinet v2.0 would be totally different from cabinet v1.0. Many of the initial people in v1.0 were at least somewhat competent and most supported the rule of law, including Rex Tillerson (State), Steven Mnuchin (Treasury), James Mattis (Defense), Elaine Chao (Transportation), John Kelly (Homeland Security), Mike Pompeo (CIA), and Nikki Haley (U.N.). Trump is not going to make that mistake again. As Maya Angelou said: "When people show you who they are, believe them." (V)

Americans Are Dead Wrong

Remember: "It's the economy, stupid." But that's not quite right. It is really: "It is how the economy is perceived, stupid." Or maybe even: "It's the narrative about the economy, stupid." It turns out what actually matters in most cases is not the facts, but who is spinning them.

Right now, Republicans are selling the story "The economy sucks and it's Joe Biden's fault." Leaving aside the issue of whether the economy is EVER the president's fault, most of the actual economic data now is pretty good, but the stories Republicans are telling are way off and many Americans are buying into their stories.

Example 1: More people are getting food stamps (SNAP) now. Is this because people are poorer and hungrier? No. It is because more poor people have found jobs. You need a job to qualify for food stamps. Example 2: The Bureau of Labor Statistics expects slower job growth in the next 10 years. Is that a bad sign? No, it is because we are near full employment. Almost everyone who wants a job, has a job. You can't add new jobs if everyone is already working.

The New York Times ran this headline recently:

The economic news is strong, but the Times is whining about it. When the media pitches the economy as sick, people think, "Oh, the economy is sick." Here are some questions pollsters have asked recently, along with the answers respondents have given and also the data-based answers.

The first one is a biggie. Ninety percent of the people asked think that prices have risen faster than wages in the past year. That is actually false. People see that eggs cost more than they used to but they forget they are also making more than they used to. Next, people think inflation is getting worse. Actually, it is way down from last year. And on and on. People's perception of the economy is wrong on just about everything. Is it Republican propaganda? Headlines like in the Times? Or just people cherrypicking a few facts that fit their preconceived notions?

Let us pause here to note that, on an individual level, it is entirely possible that times are difficult, that higher prices have not been counterbalanced by higher wages, that mobility is limited, etc. However, the numbers above would not be possible if there weren't millions of people for whom these things are not true (or are largely not true), and yet who tell pollsters they ARE true.

Are people just suffering from some mass delusion? Or maybe the rapid rise of inflation in 2021/2022 shocked them so much that it will take years before it wears off? If people think that the economy is terrible, when it really isn't, they may vote for Donald Trump. Then, during his administration, when they finally realize it is OK, he will take the credit and then maybe run for a "third term" using the Lurleen Wallace model. To do this, in the fall of 2027 he would get his veep to resign, nominate Ivanka as veep, get Congress to confirm her, and then resign himself. Then she could run in 2028 as the sitting president, with him pulling the strings behind the scenes. This is essentially what George Wallace did in 1966 and it worked—except that Lurleen died of cancer in May 1967 and the lieutenant governor took over and decided that he was actually the governor, not some kind of puppet. Wallace didn't like that, ran against him in 1970, and won.

And incidentally, as long as we are on the subject, let's announce a project suggested by reader T.K. in Warsaw, IN. T.K. suggests that readers send in photos that show the price of a dozen eggs, a gallon of milk, and/or a pound of bacon at their local stores. Here, for example, are the pictures T.K. submitted:

Send your pictures here, and please make sure to include your initials, the name of the grocery store, and the city and state. We shall see what comes of it! (V & Z)

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