"WHY IS THE CORRUPT GOVERNMENT ALLOWED TO MAKE THE FINAL ARGUMENT IN THE CASE AGAINST ME?"

"WHY IS THE CORRUPT GOVERNMENT ALLOWED TO MAKE THE FINAL ARGUMENT IN THE CASE AGAINST ME?"

So picked on.

"WHY CAN’T THE DEFENSE GO LAST? BIG ADVANTAGE, VERY UNFAIR. WITCH HUNT! DJT"

Donald Trump learning in real time how trial procedures work in virtually every criminal court.

Politico senior legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney was one of the first to highlight Trump's odd statement.

"Donald Trump learning in real time how trial procedures work in virtually every criminal court," Cheney said. "Prosecutors typically get a rebuttal during closings because burden of proof lies with them, not defense."

Former Trump attorney Jenna Ellis, who was also indicted alongside the ex-president in a criminal elections case, chimed in, too.

"I’m sure his lawyers advised him of the procedures and why, but he didn’t listen and doesn’t care," she said.

Dr. Kristy Parker, a former federal civil rights prosecutor, weighed in on Trump's legal "ignorance."

"I wonder if there’s ever been a person who occupied the presidency who was this ignorant about basic principles of our criminal justice system," she wrote. "Actually, I don’t wonder."

University of Texas law professor Lee Kovarsky called the post "Kafkaesque," which led Randall Eliason, a former U.S. attorney who teaches law at George Washington University, to give his explanation.

"It's funny how many white collar defendants develop a sudden interest in criminal justice reform," he said. "And btw - the answer is that because the state has the burden of proof, it gets the last word."

E Jean Carroll lawyer Roberta Kaplan says, 'We have said several times since the last jury verdict in January that all options were on the table. And that remains true today -- all options are on the table," Haberman reported on Monday.

Former President Donald Trump all but ended the re-election hopes of embattled House Freedom Caucus chair Bob Good (R-VA) with an endorsement of his primary opponent John McGuire, a former Navy SEAL and state legislator who was present at the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

It's a humiliating blow to Good, a far-right lawmaker who just this month schlepped to New York City to stand in front of the Manhattan courthouse where Trump is being criminally tried and attack the family of the judge. And it leaves him with few remaining allies after he was refused assistance in his primary by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), who ironically came to power in part because Good joined a handful of renegade Republicans to oust his predecessor Kevin McCarthy.

Donald Trump has overtly taken the side of dictators including Putin, Xi, Orbán, and Kim over the past eight years, most likely because he admires the way each has crushed efforts toward democracy and ruled their respective nations with an iron fist.

Now US intelligence agencies say their big worry is that one or more of these nations will reciprocate Trump’s love by launching some sort of October Surprise to push voters closer to Trump in time for this fall’s election. Such an action could swing our election toward Trump, but also risks provoking a third world war.

The phrase October Surprise, of course, refers to the successful deal that the Reagan campaign cut with Iran’s Ayatollah’s government to hold the American hostages in the US Embassy in Tehran until after the 1980 election to destroy President Jimmy Carter’s chances. Both Iran’s then-president, Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, and the former Lt. Governor of Texas, Ben Barnes, have verified the plot, the latter last year in The New York Times.

An earlier (unknown until the past two decades) plot by the campaign of candidate Richard Nixon to blow up the 1968 Paris peace talks and thus sabotage President Johnson’s deal with the Vietnamese was the first known successful Republican effort to use treason to steal an election. It qualified for the October Surprise label, but wasn’t known until well after Reagan’s efforts had earned the title.

And, of course, there was the October Surprise in Florida in 2000 when Florida Governor Jeb Bush’s administration got the 68% Black and Hispanic list of Texas felons from his brother, Texas Governor George W. Bush, and used them to purge tens of thousands of Black and Hispanic Florida voters with similar names from the Florida voter rolls in the months immediately before that year’s election.

George “won” the 2000 election by 537 votes (he lost the national popular vote by a half-million), although the Florida Supreme Court-ordered recount that was blocked by five corrupt Republicans on the US Supreme Court would have revealed that setup and several other ways Jeb had rigged the election that year for his brother, and put Al Gore into the White House.

Two of the three October Surprise events employed by Republican candidates for president involved colluding with foreign governments to harm a Democratic candidate; Reagan’s hit on Carter was particularly treasonous and effective. Nixon’s — appropriate to remember on Memorial Day — caused the death of an additional 20,000+ American GIs in Vietnam.

So, it’s entirely reasonable to assume that Trump — still in touch with Putin, Kim, and Xi, even if only through media proclamations — is either planning or expecting help this fall from his autocratic pals.

‘In the name of God’

‘In the name of God’

Piecing Together the Secrets of the Stasi. (long)