Today is Thursday, February 15, 2024. Today a judge rejected the Trumpikan frontrunner’s attempts to dismiss charges of covering up hush money payments to a porn star, setting the momentous stage for the first criminal trial of a former U.S. president to begin on March 25. Leave it to New York for having this first trial of the Orange Hemorrhoid.

What the repugnican nominee did when struck such a disappointing blow by this judge was what he does best: whine, whine, whine, and whine even more. Chump reiterated his baseless claim that the charges were “just a way of hurting me in the election.” This piece of garbage said, “How can you run for election if you are sitting in a courthouse in Manhattan all day long” as he arrived here today. Well, Mr. Dump, if you hadn’t committed these alleged crimes in the first place, you wouldn’t have been sitting in a damn courthouse today defending yourself against them. So this is your damn fault, Mr. ex-president, not the current president or his Justice Department or anyone else.

In the courtroom, Dump’s legal team pulled out all the stops by arguing that their Orange Baboon of a client would not receive a fair trial in New York because another Manhattan jury already awarded $83.3 million to E. Jean Carroll, a writer whom Trump was found to have sexually assaulted and defamed.

However, Judge Juan Merchan rejected this claim for a change of venue, as well as arguments by Chump’s lawyers that there was too much media coverage for a jury to be unbiased.

Merchan declared, “Given all the information I have before me, we are moving ahead to jury selection on March 25,” to the chagrin of the Dump legal team.

The former president is facing 34 counts of accounting fraud linked to payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Prosecutors contend that Dump illegally covered up remittances to longtime aide Michael Cohen to reimburse him for payments to bury stories about Dump’s alleged extramarital sexual relations with Daniels and a Playboy model.

Leaving the courthouse, Drumpf described the proceedings as a “disgrace.” What other adjective could he say about this proceeding?

I’m just hearing on Lawrence O’Donnell’s show The Last Word that Drumpf’s tenacious lawyers tried desperately to delay once again the trial date, which they failed to do. Thank God for Judge Merchan who wouldn’t budge from this intense pressure from Trump’s legal team. All I can say then after today’s major ruling is, “let the trial begin!” This will be the first time in our nation’s history that a former president will be facing a jury in a criminal trial.

A New York grand jury indicted Chump in March 2023 over the payments made to Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford. Thus this long-awaited trial will begin a year to the day that Drumpf was first indicted. Don’t you think that’s enough time to wait considering what’s at stake in November?

In another courtroom today, combativeness was on full display when now-embattled Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis defended herself against allegations that she had a romantic relationship with another prosecutor, Nathan Wade, in which money exchanged hands from Willis to Wade, which could potentially derail the Georgia election subversion case against the former president. This stunning testimony from Willis is examined in an online CNN article by Marshall Cohen, Devan Cole, Holmes Lybrand, and Katelyn Polantz entitled “Takeaways from Fani Willis’ stunning testimony in Georgia.”

At the hearing, two top prosecutors testified under oath about their romantic relationship at a hearing triggered by allegations of self-dealing that have the potential to upend the indictment.

“The all-day hearing escalated steadily throughout the day, culminating with Willis taking the witness stand for a combative brawl with defense attorneys that drew several rebukes from the judge.”

The judge in this hearing, Scott McAfee, convened the hearing after some of Drumpf’s codefendants surfaced allegations of a relationship between Willis and Wade, whom she hired in 2021 to join the prosecution team. As expected, Drumpf and his codefendants want the judge to disqualify Willis’ team from the case – or throw out the charges – because of a possible conflict-of-interest.

The hearing will continue tomorrow with Willis still on the stand. The judge said he does not plan to issue a ruling on Friday, so here is another trial that can be interminably delayed for these new allegations against the DA set to prosecute Chumpf and others for election interference in Georgia.

Some takeaways from the hearing are provided below:

Willis’ defiant afternoon on the stand

What unfolded in this courtroom is extremely rare in American courtrooms. The district attorney who has charged Dump with racketeering went under oath to defend her ethics and answer personal questions about her relationship with Wade.

Before long, Willis’ testimony could be seen as generally quite combative, as she sparred with defense lawyers, raising objections, making legal arguments and even having exchanges with the judge. Instead of acting like a traditional witness, Willis behaved more like a prosecutor, which she is.

Willis repeatedly accused some of the defense attorneys of peddling lies – before and after the judge’s admonishment.

At one point, Willis told attorney Ashleigh Merchant, “You’ve lied in this. . . . I think you lied right here,” pointing to copies of filings that raised accusations of self-dealing and nepotism.

‘I’m not on trial,’ Willis says

It appeared that the district attorney here had fought efforts for Willis to appear, both in Wade’s ongoing divorce proceedings and in the hearing today, up until the moment she came into the room to take the stand. Willis was not going to be unable to defend herself so she took the opportunity to take the stand, even though her presence was not expected.

In her sharpest pushback of the day, Willis retorted, “You think I’m on trial. These people are on trial for trying to steal an election in 2020,” she fumed, as she pointed toward the table of lawyers representing defendants in the criminal case. Willis stated, “I’m not on trial, no matter how hard you try to put me on trial.”

She later slammed the defense attorneys, calling them “confused” and “intrusive.”

When did the relationship start?

The hearing focused on the question as to when the relationship between Willis and Wade actually began. On the stand, Wade stuck to his earlier claim that his romantic relationship with Willis began in early 2022 and that they split travel and vacation expenses.

However, a former friend of Willis contradicted that claim, testifying that she had “no doubt” that the affair began in late 2019. If that’s true, this would be before Willis hired Wade to lead the Chump probe in late 2021.

There was some salacious testimony to the effect that Wade cheated on his ex-wife by having the affair with Willis. However, Wade testified that his previous marriage was broken since 2015, long before his relationship with Willis began, saying, “My marriage was irretrievably broken” in 2015, and “I was free to have a relationship.”

Wade and Willis describe using cash for reimbursements

During the hearing, there was the question that there was essentially no paper trail to back up Wade’s claims they split expenses. Willis discounted this by saying the reason for this was that she used cash.

Willis: ‘I don’t need anybody to foot my bills’

There was also a dispute over when the relationship ended, and whether it had any impact on the decision to seek the massive RICO indictment against Trumpf and others last August.

Both claimed the relationship ended in the summer of 2023. The Georgia district attorney implied that the physical component ended earlier in the summer.

At another point, Willis confessed how Wade thought of women. Talking about Wade and his attitudes toward women, Willis said, he “is used to women that, as he told me one time, ‘the only thing a woman can do for him is make him a sandwich.'” Hmmm, sounds pretty sexist to me and no wonder this stolid, savvy, independent woman decided to break off her relationship with her coprosecutor. Mentioning her own attitudes toward men, she said, “I don’t need anything from a man – a man is not a plan. A man is a companion. And so there was always tension always in our relationship, which is why I would give him his money back.” She finally declared, “I don’t need anyone to foot my bills.”

Unfortunately, this heated hearing serves as an unnecessary distraction from the charges against the former president. No supercharged testimony as what was heard today in a Georgia courtroom could erase the factual allegations against Drumpf, Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, or the other GOP allies who are accused of trying to overturn the 2020 election. But for a moment, the conversation shifted the conversation away from those charges and away from Chump’s legal woes for now.

Let’s hope that we don’t miss the boat with this crucial case in the Peach State because of these new revelations against the DA prosecuting the case. Willis could be accused of the indiscretion of not revealing this relationship sooner, but I strongly believe she should not be disqualified here and that the case itself must proceed apace.

It’s now getting late since Elliot and I watched another episode of FX’s Feud: Capote vs the Swans that dishes the dirt on famous writer Capote and his relationship with New York’s superrich socialites and their strained association after the tiny writer thinly wrote about their sexual peccadillos in an extract from his unfinished novel Answered Prayers that was published in Esquire. The chapter published was called “La Cote Basque,” named after the restaurant of the same name frequented by the Swans, the name Capote dubbed these upper-crust denizens of the rich and powerful. As I mentioned earlier, I read the book the series is based on: Laurence Leamer’s Capote’s Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era.

Stay safe and be well.