Jenna Ellis also went on social media, after pleading guilty, to say that she didn’t mean it.
The article contains this paragraph for the ages:
Ellis’s first job as a lawyer was as a deputy district attorney in Weld County, Colorado, where she spent most of her time in traffic court. After six months she was fired “because she refused to bring a case to trial that she believed was an unethical prosecution.” Or at least that’s what she told the Wall Street Journal. The Colorado Sun reported that she was axed for “unsatisfactory performance” and then successfully won an unemployment claim because the hearing examiner determined that she was too incompetent to be fired for cause.
Nope. The plea agreement came with a universal gag order. If Powell breaks the agreement - which she arguably has already - then they reset and put her on trial for the original raft of charges.
They also have the option to put her in jail pending trial on the basis that clearly she cannot abide by any court orders.
I’m no lawyer, but my understanding is…she’s pled guilty. The plea deal was for sentencing. The judge can revoke the plea deal and re-sentence her, but they don’t just bring her up on a whole batch of new charges and re-try her.
She pleaded to lesser charges. They can still bring the big ones.
The whole point of any agreement is that it binds both sides. If one side breaks the deal, it’s broken. You can’t hold the other side to their part of the agreement.
I thought that if she broke the agreements of the plea deal she’s on the hook for the felonies, as in not going on trial for them but straight to the punishment go-to-Georgia-state-prison phase, like she pled guilty to them.
If only we had a lawyer or two on this site…
My non-lawyerly understanding of how it works is that they drop the more serious charges in return for a guilty plea to lesser charges and a sentencing recommendation. If Powell doesn’t live up to her side of the bargain, Willis can reinstate the more serious charges and go to trial, but there’s no automatic conviction because Powell hasn’t made a plea to those charges.
Judge Chutkan has taken up a very well-reasoned motion by NBC to have cameras in the courtroom for Trump’s trial. Basically, NBC argued that the entire world wants to see this but only a handful of people can fit into her courtroom, and that they - the press - has a 1st amendment right to broadcast the trial.
She has asked Team Trump for their comments as to their preference. Either they can say that they want cameras present so that the world can see first hand Trump’s innocence and unfair treatment, or they can argue against cameras because they don’t want people to see Trump’s guilt and fair treatment.
[insert sweating over buttons meme here]
To be, or not to be…free
Jack Smith filed a motion last night asking Judge Chutkan to lift her stay of the gag order that she allowed pending appeal. Smith reasoned, accurately, that Trump went back to vilifying all and sundry the moment the gag order was stayed, and cannot be trusted to be out on pre-trial release without one.
But Smith went further. He asked the judge to attach compliance with the gag order to Trump’s pre-trial release. Using what we have all seen in NY, where Trump scoffs at the measly fines imposed by Judge Engoron, Smith argued that the order in the case needs to have some teeth to it.
If Chutkan agrees and makes compliance a condition of pre-trial release, violation would mean exposure to charges of criminal contempt of court and also, you know, being tossed into jail. Not as the final rung on some escalation ladder, but the immediate and automatic result of a violation.
The Mike Johnson back story just gets weirder and weirder. At age 25, while a single man, Johnson took in a “boy”, aged 15. Reports are calling this an adoption, but it’s not clear that a formal adoption ever took place.
Three years later, Johnson entered into his covenant marriage and the boy (now 18) basically vanished from his life. He has excused away this disappearance by saying that adoption is hard.
If he was really into helping at-risk youth, why only this one time? Why did the boy exit his life when he got married? Doesn’t adoption being hard, such that even a dedicated and devout man such as himself cannot handle it, undermine his forced birth ideology?
The questions will keep coming because the press will keep looking. Enjoy your time in the spotlight Mr. Speaker, while it lasts.