Month: June 2023

Briefings

Background Briefing: June 13, 2023

On By gram

 

Arrested and Arraigned Today, Trump is So Lucky to Have Judge Aileen Cannon Preside over His Prosecution

We begin with the arrest and arraignment on 37 charges of Donald Trump in a Miami courthouse today along with his body man Walt Nauta who has yet to find an attorney while Trump is scrambling to find representation with three of his lawyers having quit in the last two weeks. Joining us to discuss how lucky Trump is in having Judge Aileen Cannon hear the case against him is Harry Litman, a former United States attorney and deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department. A professor of constitutional law and national security law at the University of California San Diego and the University of California Los Angeles, he is the Executive Producer & host of the Talking Feds podcast and the senior legal affairs columnist at the Los Angeles Times where his latest article is “Five ways Judge Aileen Cannon could protect Trump from the classified documents prosecution.”

 

Could Judge Cannon Influence the Jury Pool to Ensure a Hung Jury?

Then we assess the possibility of a hung jury as a result of having just one MAGA Republican juror on the jury and the extent to which Judge Cannon could influence the jury selection. Joining us is Lisa Graves, the Executive Director of the new corporate watchdog group True North Research.  She has served as a senior advisor in all three branches of the federal government–as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department, as Chief Counsel for Nominations on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and as a Deputy Chief of the article 3 judges division for the U.S. Courts.

 

How Did a Ruthless Colonial Power The Soviet Union Get Away With Portraying Itself as the Anti-Colonial Champion?

Then finally we go to Tbilisi in the Georgia Republic to speak with Azamat Junisbai, a Professor of Sociology at Pitzer College. A native of Almaty, Kazakhstan, his research interests include social stratification and public opinion about inequality and decolonization in Central Asia and we discuss how the former Soviet Union was a colonial power but managed to portray itself as an anti-colonial champion and to this day as Putin tries to recreate the Soviet Union, many in the West still insist the US and NATO are the imperialists not Russia which has invaded two of its neighbors and is busy destroying Ukraine.