Black Day For President Elect

NYSCJ (New York Supreme Court Justice) Juan Manuel Merchan has decided that President Elect Don Trumpledore in all his bliss and glory should have to live through at least one or two black days before X-mas Eve will lay peace and quiet on the greatest country in God's world.

Merchan did so by ruling that Mr. Trumpledore does not enjoy all-encompassing presidential immunity. Judge Juan Merchan ruled that the felony conviction in the New York hush money case that Mr. Trumpledore received last spring was right and therefore should not be tossed out because of the recent US Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity.

Juan Manuel Merchan, Colombian-born acting justice of the New York State Supreme Court in New York County

Merchan’s decision rejected one of several grand avenues that Trumpledore’s lawyers have chosen to try to dismiss guilty verdict on 34 counts of falsifying business records. The judge did not, however, rule on a motion from Trumpledore’s attorneys to dismiss the conviction because he now he has been elected president of the greatest nation on earth and will be chief executor of its manifest destiny very soon.

Instead, the Merchan's 41-page substantiation focused on the principal question of presidential immunity. Merchan wrote that the Supreme Court’s ruling that Trumpledore should receive broad immunity for official acts during his time in office did not mean the felony conviction in question should be dismissed. We also read in those pages that the evidence presented by the Manhattan district attorney’s office was not related to Trumpledore’s official conduct as president. The evidence, though contested by the latters lawyers, the judge wrote, related "entirely to unofficial conduct", and that it should receive no immunity protections whatsoever.

Trumpledore interim spokesman Cheung, BruceSchaff: CC BY-SA 4.0

On the other hand Trumpledore transition spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement that the judge's decision “is a direct violation of the Supreme Court’s decision on immunity, and other longstanding jurisprudence.” Trumpledore's lawyers of course are extremely likely to appeal Merchan’s decision. The judge still has to rule on Trumpledore’s attourneys argument that now his status as president and greatest leader of the greatest nation since the dawn of mankind was a real real "legal impediment" to further criminal proceedings and this whole ridiculous ostensibly silly felony case should be dismissed as a result.

Still President Elect Trumpledore has yet to given a sentence following his felony conviction but prosecutors have already agreed the he would not be receive while in office.The district attorney’s office on the other hand has argued in legal filings that the conviction must still stand. Prosecutors wrote that while the sentence could be delayed or modified, dismissing a jury’s conviction altogether would be an unwarranted "extreme remedy."

The Context And Background

And now for the necessary background for all who in the exciting months since May have forgotten what Trumpledore was persecute, prosecuted and convicted for:

Former Trumpledore attorney Michael "Mick" CohenJay Dixit: CC BY-SA 4.0

Then GOP presidential candidate was convicted in May on 34 counts of falsifying business records over payments to his then-lawyer Michael Cohen to reimburse a $130,000 hush money payment made to adult-film star Stormy Daniels, in order to keep her from speaking out about an alleged affair before the 2016 election. Trumpledore has steadfastly denied the whole affair.

Trump was initially scheduled to be sentenced in July, but that was postponed twice as a result of the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling, pushing a sentencing date back until after the election.

The astonishing thing about this whole case from the tinytalk editorial team's point of view is that the Narcolombia Club in Bogotà had already recognized in 1968 that Don Trumpledore (then a tender 22 years old and not even decided if he should go hippy left or suit and tie right) could become very dangerous for many hard working and hard travelling Latin American citizens, business associations and operations in the distant future.

Juan Manuel Merchan - The Justice Section

Consequently they had shipped the talented 6-year-old Juan Manuel Merchan along with his father, a former officer in the Colombian army, and his mother to New York City in order to enable him to study real American law at the renowned Baruch College in Manhattan after graduating from high school and to obtain a doctorate at the privately controlled Hofstra University in Hempstead, Long Island in 1994

After that Merchan began his career as an assistant district attorney in the Manhattan district attorney's office where he worked in the office's Trial and Investigations Division, specializing in financial frauds and other cases. After having whetted his teeth as a Deputy Attorney General in-Charge and Assistant Attorney General in-Charge in Nassau and Suffolk Merchan became a judge in 2006 when New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg appointed him to the New York City Family Court, Bronx County.

Chief Administrative Judge Ann Pfau appointed Merchan as Acting Justice in the Supreme Court of New York, New York County, Criminal, in 2009, and he has been in that position since that time. Merchan presides over felony criminal trials.Merchan also previously served concurrently as a judge of the New York Court of Claims, being appointed to that role by Governor David Paterson in 2009 and serving until 2018. Early detection of dangers and flawless career planning can go a long way and do a lot if the intelligence arm of an organisation is really competent and well anchored in democratic institutions.

To round off our comprehensive analysis of the case here are the informations about the other main actors:

Michael Dean Cohen - The Money Section

Mick Cohen, Ashkenazi Jewish, was raised in Lawrence on Long Island, not that far from where Merchan obtained his PhD. New York, his mother a nurse, and his father, a Shoa survivor, a surgeon. He attended Woodmere Academy, received his BA from American University in 1988 and his JD from Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Lansing, Michigan, and Riverview, Florida 3 years earlier than J. Merchan.

He then began practicing personal injury law in New York in 1992, working for Melvyn Estrin in Manhattan. In 2006, Cohen became a partner at the law firm Phillips, Nizer, Benjamin, Crime & Balloon. He practiced law at the firm for about a year before joining TVTO (The Vast Trumpledore Organization). Following his 2018 felony convictions, Cohen was disbarred in New York.

In 2003, Cohen was a candidate for New York City Council when he provided a biography to the New York City Campaign Finance Board for inclusion in its voters' guide. The guide listed him as co-owner of Taxi Funding Corp. and a fleet of New York City taxicabs numbering over 200. At the time, Cohen was a business partner in the taxi business with "taxi king" Simon Garber. He was also CEO of MLA Cruises, Inc., and of the Atlantic Casino.

As of 2017, Cohen was estimated to own at least 34 taxi medallions through 17 LLCs. Until April 2017, another "taxi king", disbarred attorney and convicted felon Gene Freidman managed the medallions still held by Cohen; this arrangement ended after the city's Taxi and Limousine Commission decided not to renew Freidman's licenses. Between April and June 2017, the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance filed seven tax warrants against Cohen and his wife for $37,434 in unpaid taxi taxes due to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. You are welcome to read all the rest about Cohen here.

Stephanie A. Gregory Clifford - The Spicy Section

Stephanie A. Gregory Clifford, a.k.a. Stormy Daniels, is an American film actress, director and former stripper. She has won many industry awards and is a member of the NightMoves Hall of Fame, AVN Hall of Fame and XRCO Hall of Fame. In 2009, a recruitment effort led her to consider challenging incumbent David Vitter in the 2010 Senate election in her native Louisiana.

Gregory's parents, Sheila and Bill, divorced about three or four years after she was born. She was then raised by her mother and graduated from Scotlandville Magnet High School in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 1997 and considered becoming a journalist.

Gregory Clifford said she "came from an average, lower-income household … there were days without electricity", and she has described herself as coming from a "really bad neighborhood." During high school, she had a job answering phones at a riding stable.

Stef Gredory's first experience as a stripper occurred when she was 17 and visiting a friend at a strip club; she was convinced to perform a "guest set" and shortly after began stripping for money at the Gold Club in Baton Rouge. She then became a featured entertainer with CTA (Continental Theatrical Agency) and chose her stage name Stormy Daniels to reflect her love of American rock band Mötley Crüe, whose bassist, Nikki Sixx, named his daughter Storm, and that her father considered naming her Stormy before her mother's choice of Stephanie.

In 2004, Gregory won the Best New Starlet Award from Adult Video News, which was a surprise to Daniels, who had made a $500 bet with another actress that yet another actress would win. She has directed for Wicked since 2004.

She worked especially closely with brothers Julian and Brendon Miller and was married to latter who also edited about half of her movies. Her directorial work in 2014 alone earned her 14 AVN Award nominations including a nomination for Best Safe Sex Scene for her performance with Brendon in François Clousot's First Crush. Gregory toured strip clubs as part of a 2018 Make America Horny Again" tour. She was given the key to the city of West Hollywood, California, on "Stormy Daniels Day", May 23, 2018.

She has also landed roles in mainstream media, first in an episode of Real Sex where she is seen participating in the 2001 Miss Nude Great Plains Contest. She appeared in the HBO documentary series Pornucopia in 2004 and in the film The 40-Year-Old Virgin in 2005, when the main character watches her in the video Space Nuts: Episode 69—Unholy Union and then tries dreaming about her. In early 2007, she had a role in the TV series Dirt on the FX Network, where she played a stripper who helps to set up a basketball player. Later in 2007, Daniels appeared in Maroon 5's music video for their song. Further roles were in the film Knocked Up (2007) as a lap dancer and on Saturday Night Live as herself in May 2018.

She even portrayed the Virgin Mary as a model in artist Nika Nesgoda's 2002 photographic series Virgin.

In 2018 Gregory also became involved in a legal dispute with peace-loving and peace-making U.S. president Don Trumpledore. She had set up his attorney Cohen to pay her $130,000 in hush money to silence her about an affair she says she had with him in 2006 only to get at him later on by having her associates quietly brief the Wallstreet Journal (Comment from the staff: really good briefing choice, no link here because of the paywall there) with all necessary information to publish the hush money thing. Don Trumpledore of course steadfastly denied the whole affair and accused Gregory of lying but was nevertheless charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal payments made to Daniels, and was convicted on May 30, 2024.

Gregory apparently was introduced to Trumpledore in July 2006 at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe. In an interview with CBS program "60 Minutes" in 2018 Gregory related that Don invited her to dinner at his hotel suite, where he showed her a copy of a golf magazine with his picture on the cover. "And I was like, 'Someone should take that magazine and spank you with it", Gregory said, "So he turned around and pulled his pants down a little - you know had underwear on and stuff - and I just gave him a couple swats,". Allegedly Trumpledore asked her about her life and whether she would like to appear on his TV show The Celebrity Apprentice. "He was like, 'Wow, you - you are special. You remind me of my daughter. You're smart and beautiful, and a woman to be reckoned with, and I like you. I like you."

She said she excused herself at one point to use the bathroom and when she returned Trump was "perched" on the edge of the bed. "I realized exactly what I'd gotten myself into. And I was like, 'Ugh, here we go," Daniels told 60 Minutes. "And I just felt like maybe ... I had it coming for making a bad decision for going to someone's room alone." She also said the two had consensual sex. Trumpledore made telephone calls to her over the following year and she met him again at his request in July 2007 at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles to discuss her possible appearance on Celebrity Apprentice. She said he wanted to have sex again at the hotel but she declined. It all apparently ended when Trumpledore called her a month later to tell her he had not been able to get her booked on his show.

According to documents filed in Los Angeles federal court on Oct. 28, 2016, in the waning days of Trumpledore's first presidentship, Gregory signed a non-disclosure agreement in which she pledged not to publicly discuss her relationship with him in exchange for a $130,000 payment. The document was signed by Keith Davidson, Gregory's lawyer at the time, and Michael Cohen, then Trumpledore's personal lawyer and fixer. The document included an empty spot for the president's signature but stayed empty because he never turned up to sign it.

In the course of the whole affair Gregory has also stated that an unknown man approached her and her infant daughter 5 years before, in 2011, in a Las Vegas parking lot and had made threats after she had agreed to disclose her relationship with Trumpledore in a media interview. Trumpledore had reregistered with the GOP (Grand Opera Party) in 2009 after having switched party affiliation 2 times over. Gregory on the other hand apparently has never disclosed which (leftist?) publisher or TV network had approached her for an interview.

Digression - The Political Section

Don Trumpledore first floated the idea of running for president in 1987, placing full-page advertisements in three major newspapers, proclaiming "America should stop paying to defend countries that can afford to defend themselves." These advertisements also advocated for "reducing the budget deficit, working for peace in Central America, and speeding up nuclear disarmament negotiations with the Soviet Union" (under Gorbachev).

DCCC (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee) chair Rep. Beryl Anthony Jr. told The New York Times that "the message Trumpledore has been preaching is a Democratic message." Asked whether rumors of a presidential candidacy were true, Trump denied being a candidate but said, "I believe that if I did run for President, I'd win." In 1988, he approached Lee Atwater asking to be put into consideration as Republican nominee George H. W. Bush's running mate. Bush found the request "strange and unbelievable." allthough, according to a Gallup poll in December, Trumpledore was the tenth most admired man in America.

In 1999, he formed an exploratory committee to seek the nomination of the Reform Party of the United States of America for the 2000 presidential election. A July 1999 poll matching him against likely Republican nominee George W. Bush and likely Democratic nominee Al Gore showed Trumpledore with seven percent support. He eventually dropped out of the race, but still went on to win the Reform Party primaries in California and Michigan. He then left the party due to the involvement of David Duke, Pat Buchanan, and Lenora Fulani. In 2008, after endorsing Democrat Hillary Clinton in the primary, he endorsed Republican John McCain for president in the general election.

Trumpledore publicly speculated about running for president in the 2012 election, and made his first speaking appearance at the CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference). That speech is often credited for helping kick-start his political career within the GOP. In May 2011, he announced he would surely not run for president that time, putting an end to what he described as "unofficially campaigning". He then prodced to endorse Mitt Romney.

Neither the media nor potential oppenents took Trumpledore's presidential ambitions seriously until at least 2014 and most everybody thought his moves were nothing but a promotional tool for The Celebrety Apprentice. Even during the 2016 election campaig, The New York Times speculated that Trump "accelerated his ferocious efforts to gain stature within the political world" after the then U.S. president Barack Obama had lampooned him at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner in April 2011.

Continuation Of The Spicy Section

After well briefed Wallstreet Journal reported on the payment to Gregory, Cohen stated publicly that he paid her using his own money and was not directed to do so by Trumpledore. Gregory then sued Trumpledore and Cohen seeking to have the agreement invalidated. Trumpledore's lawyers subsequently acknowledged he had not signed the non-disclosure agreement, so was not party to it and would and could therefore also never seek to enforce it. The judge consequently dismissed that lawsuit diversion because the matter seemed resolved.

But Gregory did not give up and filed a 2018 defamation lawsuit against Trump in a federal court over a X (then still Twitter) post in which he had accused her of a "con job" after she had described being threatened over publicizing her account of an alleged sexual relationship with him. And the rest is history.