Floridians are trying to enshrine the right to an abortion in the state constitution as a way of thwarting DeSantis’ and the Republican Party politicians' anti-Choice mania. Obviously, the path is not through the gerrymandered puppet legislature, but via a ballot proposition which would require a 60% majority. It’s very much looking like it can be done; polling in favor is at 70% right now. So… apparently Florida is far from a lost cause.
Most of the worries about Trump’s Florida trial have centered around the incompetent MAGA judge, Aileen Cannon, who was assigned the case. But what about the jurors? We’re talking about a very bad pool here. There are 5 counties that make up this division of the Southern District of Florida, where jurors would be chosen for a potential trial of Donald Trump— St. Lucie, Martin, Indian River, Okeechobee and Highlands. This is MAGA country.
Dave Bohman from WPTV in West Palm Beach reported that “Any juror would have to be registered to vote and there are 563,000 in those counties. A pool of 18,000 prospective jurors would be asked to be ready to serve in any federal court case in Fort Pierce in a two-year period. That means there's a 3.2% chance someone from the district will make the federal court's jury pool.
But only a fraction of those 18,000 would be in a jury pool for the ex-president because most would be considered for other federal trials in a two-year time period.
Many of them would be eliminated from serving on a jury.
"There's going to be a substantial amount of jurors that are going to be excused for cause," said West Palm Beach Attorney Jason Weisser, who has tried cases in federal court.
Weisser added it may also be hard to find a fair jury in this smallest area in the southern district of Florida.
"You’re looking at hardships, where people aren’t going to have the ability to sit for six weeks or eight weeks of a long federal trial," said Weisser, adding the politics of people on both sides, in a district with a small number of potential jurors will eliminate even from serving on a jury.
“Obviously the polarizing issues in this case, and the media publicity, people might have difficulty being fair and impartial," he said.
Presiding Judge Aileen Cannon lives in Vero Beach and her home chambers are in Fort Pierce.
Weisser said while she may host pre-trial hearings in Fort Pierce, don’t be surprised if a trial is moved to Miami, Fort Lauderdale or West Palm Beach, due to the small pool of prospective jurors.
These were the county results for the 2020 election. Trump won all 5 of them and in 4 by much bigger numbers that he won the state (51.22%)
Highlands Co.- Trump 66.75%
Indian River Co.- Trump 60.23%
Martin Co.- Trump 61.82%
Okeechobee Co.- Trump 71.76%
St. Lucie Co.- Trump 50.38%
What if the trial gets moved to Miami, Fort Lauderdale or West Palm? That would be a lot worse for Trump, of course. Remember, his team’s strategy will be to seat a couple of jurors who lean in a MAGA direction and hope for a hung jury. Jury pool and jury selection are always a big deal in any trial, but they loom especially large in a case where passions run high and the relevant facts really aren’t in dispute. These 3 counties were all won by Biden:
Broward Co.- Biden 64.48%
Miami-Dade Co.- 53.31%
Palm Beach Co.- 55.97%
A polluted Florida jury pool (and crackpot judge) won’t be the end of the story here though. The other place where Trump was hiding stolen top secret documents was in New Jersey, at his Bedminster golf club. Yesterday Hugo Lowell reported that the FBI was investigating the Bedminster aspects of the case right from the very beginning. “The indications of classified documents at Bedminster so alarmed prosecutors that they focused part of the investigation on whether Trump might have transported the materials or disclosed their contents there in addition to refusing to return them to the government… Trump discussed a military plan to attack Iran and waved a classified map of Afghanistan in front of a staffer in 2021 at the New Jersey property.”
Within weeks of the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, the justice department sought to act on the indications of classified documents at Bedminster when it told the Trump legal team that prosecutors believed the former president still possessed classified materials, the people said.
The message in the letter, which became a formal court motion filed under seal weeks later, was clear: arrange for new searches of all of the Trump properties because, as of that time, the only place that had been combed for classified documents was the Mar-a-Lago resort.
Whether to acquiesce with the request split the Trump legal team. Trump in-house counsel Boris Epshteyn and Trump lawyer Chris Kise were uneasy about being ordered around by the government, while the other Trump lawyers Tim Parlatore and Jim Trusty suggested a cooperative approach.
The legal team ultimately decided on working with the justice department and, in one exchange, asked prosecutors which Trump properties and where at the Trump properties they wanted them to search.
The prosecutors were noncommittal and told the Trump legal team that they were not in the business of providing specific locations because they might not know about all of the properties in the former president’s control. But, notably, they did specifically request a new search of Bedminster.
Bedminster had not previously been searched after Trump received a subpoena last May for any classified-marked documents because it had been issued to the Trump political office, which is registered at Mar-a-Lago and a building in Palm Beach— not the golf club in New Jersey.
…[W]hen the new searches of the Trump properties by contractors took place, they found no classified documents at Bedminster, according to people familiar with what they certified to the then chief US judge in Washington, Beryl Howell, who was overseeing the grand jury litigation.
The results of the Bedminster search left prosecutors uneasy given the earlier evidence about indications of classified documents at the club, the people said, and prompted them to ask the Trump team for a custodian of records to attest that no further documents remained in Trump’s possession.
It was when the Trump legal team declined to make a custodian available— principally because Trump did not have one and suggested instead that Parlatore could testify to the grand jury about the new searches of the Trump properties— that prosecutors sought contempt proceedings, the people said.
The absence of classified documents at Bedminster led prosecutors to suspect that Trump treated it like a vacation home, where he took boxes of things away from Mar-a-Lago at the start of the summer, and then returned with all of his things to Mar-a-Lago at the end of the season, the people said.
Though it remains uncertain when exactly prosecutors learned about the audio tape of Trump discussing the military plan to attack Iran in July 2021 at Bedminster, their suspicions were confirmed by March when they subpoenaed Trump aide Margo Martin, who made the recording, to confirm its authenticity.
two very different topics here.
the first: if FL puts a ballot prop for a state constitutional amendment in the mix for the election, it might spell doom for at least a few nazis. It SHOULD make the non-nazi turnout extra big. And if FLians are really in favor 70-30, it should send some nazi pols (local, district and state) home... well, that is *IF* the democrap party arises from the dead and pukes up better than boiled dog shit for candidates. So... maybe not the good news (for yous) that it might be.
the second: the more you look at it, the more obvious it should be that the democraps are taking a dive on this. the jury po…