Today is Tuesday, April 16, 2024. Today is Day 2 of Donald Duck’s unprecedented trial for election interference – don’t just call it the “hush money” case, which the no-nonsense judge presiding over the case, Juan Merchan, instructed the seven people already selected as jurors on the second day. An opinion for CNN by Norman Eisen advocates calling this not just a hush money case which sort of belittles the seriousness of it. The piece is entitled “Opinion: Don’t call it a ‘hush money’ case.”

Although the case has long been referred to as the “hush money” case, the judge’s first substantive words to the jury made clear that is wrong. Thus we should call it an “election interference” trial going forward.

When Merchan described the case to prospective jurors, he said, “The allegations are, in substance, that Donald Trump falsified business records to conceal an agreement with others to unlawfully influence the 2016 presidential election.”

Paying hush money is not in itself a crime. The crime alleged in this case is felony document falsification, as the judge detailed to the jury. That requires intent to conceal, aid, or commit another crime. Here, the prosecution alleges that the intent was to violate federal campaign finance laws and also the state statute prohibiting the “unlawful influence” of an election – i.e., election interference.

The judge’s point in all of this is to emphasize that the core issue in the trial that began yesterday is not about just the payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels in October 2016 to conceal her claimed affair with Drumpf (he stubbornly denies the affair took place). The core issue is why Chump made them.

This point was cleverly hammered home during the first half of Monday’s proceedings, where the morning was devoted to resolving the remaining legal disputes before the trial can commence, mostly about what evidence could be used. Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass skillfully advanced the election interference theory by structuring his evidentiary points in chronological order within that frame.

Steinglass began with issues relating to the alleged August 2015 Trump Tower meeting where Drumpf, his former fixer Michael Cohen and David Pecker, former chairman and CEO of American Media, which publishes the National Enquirer, reportedly agreed to benefit Drumpf’s campaign through a “catch and kill” scheme of buying salacious stories and then burying them to diminish their ability to taint Dump’s presidential campaign.

Now that the allegations have been laid out by the prosecuting team, it’s another thing to prove them, and District Attorney Alvin Bragg must now do that. In this country, Dump is still considered innocent until proven guilty. The case against him must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. The former president still maintains his innocence and will be by all indications vigorously contest the proceedings.

In Eisen’s opinion piece on Drumpf’s first criminal case, he states that calling the trial a mere “hush money” case risks minimizing what’s truly at stake. “It is an election interference one and we should say so.” Eisen also states that when information is withheld from voters, as Bragg alleges happened here, that results in democracy being undermined.

One thing is certain about this defendant on his first day and it is this: the Orange-Hued Turd was actually seen falling asleep during the proceedings and was caught in a courtroom sketch by an artist with his eyes closed, as onlookers noted that he “appeared to nod off a few times, his mouth going slack and his head drooping onto his chest.” It took his lead attorney, Todd Blanche, passing him notes for “several minutes” before Dump finally “appeared to jolt awake and notice them.”

Don’t you think this is odd behavior from someone who might be facing jail time at the end of this trial? What does this indicate? All I can say is that this tired old man better not refer to President Biden as “sleepy Joe” anymore since he fucking fell asleep at his own damn trial!

Stay safe and be well.

Here is Atticus looking down on his humans from atop the refrigerator.