A progressive daily ledger of Trump-world self-owns, legal pain, policy blowback, and bad-faith chaos.
A New York fraud case gets a boost for prosecutors, and Trump’s election-subversion orbit is busy telling a judge they were just following the rules. Not exactly the aura of control.
September 28, 2022 was another day when Trump-world tried to reframe bad facts as noble process and mostly succeeded only in reminding everyone why the mess exists in the first place. The New York fraud case kept moving forward, while the fake-elector crowd in Georgia argued in court that their bogus slate was really some kind of legally wholesome “contingent” backup plan. That’s a fancy term for paperwork written to help a loser look less like a loser. The result was another useful day for prosecutors, and another headache for Trump’s political brand.
The pattern here is depressingly familiar: when Trump allies get pinned down, the explanation is never “we did the thing.” It is always “the thing was actually legal, historical, constitutional, theoretical, contingent, spiritual, or misunderstood by the fake-news goblins.” Courts and prosecutors were not buying much of that on this date, and that is the story.
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5 stars means maximum fallout. 1 star means a smaller self-own.
New York’s attorney general filed a civil fraud lawsuit against Donald Trump, the Trump Organization, and senior management on Sept. 21, 2022, and by Sept. 28 the case was still active. The complaint says Trump and his company repeatedly misstated asset values and net worth to help secure loans, insurance, and other financial benefits.
Lawyers for David Shafer, Shawn Still and Cathy Latham argued they were acting as “contingent” electors after the 2020 election, not as fake electors. Prosecutors rejected that view and said the signed certificate falsely claimed Donald Trump had won Georgia.