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With each new scandal involving Donald Trump, the question arises again: Is this the one that will finally exact some pain on the former president?

The question is in the air once more following the FBIs seizure of top-secret documents from Mar-a-Lago last week. On the one hand, as both Trumps allies and adversaries have noted, such a warrant on a former president is unprecedented, one of Trumps lawyers reportedly told the government all files were returned prior to the search, and Trump has offered nonsensical defenses, all of which point to the seriousness of the situation. On the other, many cases involving mishandled classified information end without chargesjust ask Hillary Clintonand some experts speculate that the goal of the search may simply have been to recover the documents rather than to build a criminal case against Trump.

But because this case is only the latest in a string of scandals, the question cant be separated from a broader context: Trumps repeated ability to escape the most serious, and sometimes any, consequences for his serial misbehavior. This skill has birthed memes, including a reappropriation of the Teflon Don moniker, well-deserved conservative mockery of premature political death warrants, and the immortal Ah! Well. Nevertheless tweet.

David A. Graham: Trumps scandals are never done

This pattern has created an air of invincibility around Trump that can drive liberals to nihilistic fatalism and conservatives to hubris. In truth, the dichotomy is misleading: Though Trump has evaded the most serious legal consequences so far, he has paid a political price; theres a reason hes the former president and very unpopular with the majority of Americans. Still, as we await more information on the Mar-a-Lago search, the record reveals the maneuvers that have gotten Trump out of jeopardy in the past.

Before the Presidency

The Scandal: Too many to summarize, as I chronicled in a running tally before he was elected president, including housing discrimination, a scammy university, and sexual-assault and -harassment allegations going back decades.

When: 19732017

How He Got Away With It: You name it, he tried it: connections, luck, running out the clock, endless litigation. But more than anything, a pattern emerged of Trump managing to sidestep serious legal consequences by paying fines to dispose of regulatory headaches, civil lawsuits, and other matters, frequently without having to admit guilt or submit to any other penalties. Many of the cases involved corners cut or laws bent to benefit his business, and the fines tended to represent a sliver of whatever revenue hed made by way of the infraction.

Russian Collusion

The Scandal: Although Trump, as well as many people who ought to know better, insists that the story was a hoax, his campaign colluded with Russian agents during the 2016 campaign, hoping for some edge against Hillary Clinton.

When: 2016

How He Got Away With It: First, Trump left the dirty work to lieutenants, skipping (for example) the infamous Trump Tower meeting with Russian agents. Second, Trump critics overreached, becoming obsessed with sideshows, such as the Steele dossier or the campaign hanger-on Carter Page, that distracted from the core offense. Third, Special Counsel Robert Mueller was hobbled by a Justice Department policy against charging sitting presidents with crimes, and he seemed so determined to play his investigation by the book that he soft-pedaled the seriousness of his findings.

Extorting Ukraine

The Scandal: Using congressionally appropriated funds, Trump tried to blackmail Ukraine into assisting his reelection campaign by announcing an investigation into Joe Bidens son Hunter.

When: 201920

How He Got Away With It: The facts were relatively simple, and the House impeached Trump. But in a pattern that has been central to his enduring impunity, the majority-Republican Senate worked as a bloc to let him off, with only one GOP senator voting to find him guilty on one of two countsputting the vote well short of the 67 needed to convict.

Emoluments Clause

The Scandal: Critics argued that Trump violated the emoluments clause of the Constitution because his businesses allowed him to accept money from foreign governments. The Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., for example, became a magnet for overseas officials.

When: 201721

How He Got Away With It: Two cases were tied up in litigation until after Trump left office, at which point the Supreme Court ruled that they were moot. A federal appeals court rejected a third case, brought by Democratic members of Congress, who judges said didnt have standing to sue under the law. This has been one of Trumps essential insights: Just because a law exists doesnt mean it can be enforced.

Ethics Violations

The Scandal: Trump aides appear to have repeatedly violated the Hatch Act and other laws that prevent civil-service employees from engaging in politics or promoting Trump family businesses.

When: 201721

How He Got Away With It: In another demonstration that a laws existence doesnt guarantee that it matters, breaches of many ethics laws are identified by an independent office, but the person responsible for disciplining top appointees is the president. When Trumps aides got in trouble for breaking them for his benefit, he naturally made no effort to levy any punishments.

Questionable Tax Returns

The Scandal: Many questions have been raised about Trumps tax returns, including whether he has followed either the spirit or the letter of the law, going back to his refusal to release his returns as customary in 2016. What information has emerged to the public suggests that he has at the very least violated the former. The House Ways and Means Committee has requested his tax returns from the IRS under an existing statute.

When: 2016present

How He Got Away With It: Delay and stonewalling. The Trump Treasury Department put off a decision as long as possible, then announced that it would not produce the records. Since then, the matter has been tied up in litigation. The House committee still hasnt obtained the records, though it has repeatedly won court cases as it seeks the documentsmost recently last week. By now, of course, the matter is ancient and politically neutered.

Attempted Coup

The Scandal: Trump sought to overturn the 2020 election, pressuring state officials to rig vote totals, trying to engineer alternate slates of electors, and finally inciting a violent mob that disrupted Congresss certification of the count.

When: November 2020January 2021

How He Got Away With It: The House promptly impeached him a second time, but the GOP-led Senate insisted on delaying the trial. By the time it came around, some senators anger had cooled, theyd had a chance to test the political winds, and they decided that sticking with Trump was prudent. A majority of senators voted to convict, but the total was still short of the necessary 67.

That isnt the end of the story. The House committee investigating the maneuvers continues to turn up damaging information, which seems to have eroded his standing among Republican politicians and voters. The Justice Department is investigating and could potentially bring charges. A district attorney in Georgia is also investigating Trumps pressure campaign in that state. No one knows whether any of these will lead to charges or other material punishmentsbut Trump has plenty of battle-tested tactics to try to prevent that or fight them if they happen.

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The Donald J. Trump Guide to Getting Away With Anything - The Atlantic

Former President Donald Trump.AP

Tim O'Brien, a writer who wrote Trump Nation in 2005, said the Trump Org will go out of business.

The prediction comes after Trump's longtime CFO took a plea deal and admitted that the Trump Org dodged payroll taxes for 15 years.

"I think a lot of this is going to come to a head in the fall," O'Brien told MSNBC.

A biographer who chronicled former President Donald Trump's rise to fame in a 2005 book predicted that the Trump Organization will go out of business shortly.

Tim O'Brien, author of Trump Nation, said in a Friday interview with MSNBC that there are various signs of an impending collapse.

He said one of those signs is Trump's longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, taking a plea deal last week, per Newsweek.Weisselberg, as Insider's Laura Italiano reported, admitted that the Trump Organization, under his purview as a chief financial officer, dodged payroll taxes for 15 years.

Weisselberg will have to testify against the Trump Organization.

"Weisselberg, if he is found to have lied during that testimony, could face as much as 15 years in prison instead of a five-month sentence he will get otherwise," O'Brien said, according to Newsweek. "So he is going to be mightily incented to answer every question that the prosecutors asked him about a wide range of financial issues in the Trump Organization."

O'Brien noted that the result could be that the Trump Organization could "wind up" going "out of business."

"It is already in a very vulnerable position," he said, per Newsweek. "Donald Trump is in the worst business you can imagine during the COVID era: urban real estate, and essentially tourism and hotel businesses, and he's got a lot of debt against those businesses and he is personally going to need a substantial amount. He's also flailing possibly financially. I think a lot of this is going to come to a head in the fall."

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A writer who chronicled Donald Trump's rise to fame predicted that the Trump Org will be 'put out of business' - Yahoo News

(Photo by Kevin Lamarque-Pool/Getty Images)

One of the loftiest decisions that a president can make is the choice of an individual to nominate to the Supreme Court. On average, a new appointment to the Supreme Court is made every 2.5 years. President Trump lucked out in this respect with three nominations. Four presidents Andrew Johnson, Harrison, Taylor, and Carter never had a justice confirmed to the Court, while the president with the most confirmed justices aside from George Washington was FDR with eight.

With the nomination and confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson, Biden had his first opportunity of making a dent on the Court. It is unlikely that Justice Brown Jackson will have a significant effect on the Court in the short term due to the Courts composition. The picks that tend to have a substantial impact are ones where there is a distinct ideological shift due to the transition. Examples of this include when Justice Barrett took Justice Ginsburgs seat on the Court and when Justice Thomas took Justice Marshalls seat. To a lesser degree, the shifts from Justice OConnor to Justice Alito and Justice Kennedy to Justice Kavanaugh had this type of impact as well.

An important question often asked during the nomination process is how well can we predict a justices future behavior when they join the Court. Surely not through the confirmation hearings. Presidents want to know a prospective justices voting behaviors to ensure they can make informed decisions about their nominees. The nominations of Justices Warren, Souter, and Stevens are examples of failures in this respect. A wider circle of litigators and interested parties also want to know what to expect with the transition of justices.

Exactly pegging a justices voting positions prior to their joining the Court can be a tricky business. This is due to the fact that judging on the Supreme Court is so unique. The most similar judicial position is as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals. Court of appeals judges are bound by stare decisis, however, while justices on the Supreme Court are not. Appeals court judges also decide the vast majority of cases on random assignments of three judge panels. This means they dont often decide cases with the same judges and a three judge panel is vastly different from a nine justice one where you always vote with the same judges. These differing variables make inferring positions based off a judges votes on courts of appeals to ones he or she will make on the Supreme Court a difficult enterprise.

Beyond these limitations, scholars such as those involved in theSupreme Court Database(including myself) have compiled detailed information of all Supreme Court cases. Due to the vastly more significant number of court of appeals cases and the different variables that such an analysis would require, there is not a similar dataset for these courts. The most proximate example of this is the Songer Appeals Court Databasewhich looks at random samples of court of appeals cases each year. This does not aggregate enough information to generate ideology scores for all judges based on their votes though.

Some have tried to generate ideology scores of appeals court judges on which to categorize judges positions and to predict how they will vote in the future.One waythat they have done this is by sampling a smaller set of votes. Another way is throughJudicial Common Space Scores(JCS) which are based on the judges appointing presidents and home state senators ideological positions. Athird measurelooks at the campaign finance donations of a judges clerks to gather a judges policy positions.

The second and third measures allow for vague comparisons to be made between a court of appeals judges judicial behavior and how they may vote on the Supreme Court. For the reasons mentioned above though, court of appeals judges positions do not necessarily translate well to how judges will vote if they are elevated to the Supreme Court.

Five Thirty Eightran a piece about Justice Brown Jacksons potential ideological position relative to the rest of the Court which showcased the hurdles of making any accurate predictions. The Five Thirty Eight article uses the campaign finance scores and the JCS scores to predict judges positions on the court of appeals and on the Supreme Court. In the JCS model Justice Brown Jackson comes up as the most moderate liberal justice while the campaign finance scores place the justice further to the left than any of the justices including Sotomayor who is currently the most liberal justice on the Court. This shows that while Justice Brown Jackson is not likely to make a substantial impact on the justices overall decisions, her position on the left of the Court is still quite unclear.

Justice Brown Jackson only sat on the D.C. Court of Appeals from June 2021 to June 2022, and since she was nominated to the Court in February 2022 she did not sit on any panels after that time. This left her with a very small number of panels on the D.C. Circuit and far too few to help infer her policy positions.

She was also a judge on the District Court for D.C. from 2013 to 2021. Another way to define her positions and the one that I chose to use was studying a sample of her district court decisions that were later appealed to the D.C. Circuit. We can gather a sense of Brown Jacksons decision making by observing which appeals court judges voted to affirm and to reverse her district court decisions. This too is an incomplete method, but it has several advantages over the other methods and most importantly, it is based on votes and is focused on a set of cases in which Brown Jackson participated.

I examined 33 published appeals decisions from cases where Brown Jackson was the district court judge below. Thirty-one of these were three-judge panel decisions and two were en banc decisions. The number of cases involving each appeals court judge is as follows:

While most of the cases on a district court judges slate are criminal matters, those that later become published appeals decisions come from a wider variety of matters. The issues tackled in this set of cases include the following:

The appeals panels included 11 judges appointed by Republicans and eight judges appointed by Democrats. The next graph shows the appointing presidents of each of the appeals court judges.

One way that has been used to predict votes of court of appeals judges is by looking at the party of appointing president of the appeals court judge and comparing that with the district court judges party of appointing president. If the majority of the panel is composed of judges that were appointed by presidents of the same party that appointed the district court judge, then the expectation is that they will side with the district court judges position. If the majority composition is from a different party than the district court judges party, then the expectation is that they will vote to reverse more frequently. The majority of all (not only published) appeals court decisions affirm district court judgments.

For the purpose of this exercise, votes to affirm and reverse in part were treated as reversals if at least a substantial portion of the decision was to reverse. Fifteen of the three-judge panels voted to affirm Brown Jacksons decisions and 16 panels voted to reverse.

The panel compositions based on parties of appointing presidents in cases where there are no split votes are shown below:

Surprisingly, all four decisions from panels with three judges appointed by all Democrats voted to reverse (at least in part) Brown Jacksons decisions. These cases were Crawford v. Duke(with Judges Millett, Rogers, and Pillard),Sickle v. Torres Advanced(with Judges Rogers, Srinivasan, and Millett),Pavement Coatings v. USGS(with Judges Millett, Wilkins, and Rogers), andUnited States v. Johnson (with Judges Srinivasan, Edwards, and Rogers). There were also no cases with all Republican judge panels, two en banc decisions, and four cases with split votes on the panels. One split vote was DR/R with a Republican and Democrat voting for Jacksons position and a republican voting against, one panel was D/RR with the Republicans voting against and two panels were R/DD with Democrats voting against.

Aside from the DRR non split panels the data do not show a particular bias of court of appeals Democratic nominees in favor of Jackson. This is one indication that Brown Jackson is perhaps not as liberal as President Biden had hoped or expected. When we look at the appeals court judges votes to reverse, the pattern is consistent with this more moderate formulation. The judges rates of voting to reverse Brown Jacksons district court decisions for judges on at least four of these panels are as follows:

The overall picture from these data conform more to the picture painted by the JCS Scores than to that painted by the campaign finance scores. The picture is of a liberal judge, not as liberal as Justice Sotomayor, and more likely a moderate with a similar ideological position to that of Justice Kagan. Even though we lack complete information on which to formulate accurate predictions of how future justices will vote when on the Court, this more refined way of viewing Brown Jacksons lower court record should give a more complete picture than other available methods.

Read more at Empirical SCOTUS

Adam Feldman runs the litigation consulting company Optimized Legal Solutions LLC. For more information write Adam atadam@feldmannet.com.Find him on Twitter:@AdamSFeldman.

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Justice Brown Jackson Won't Shift The Court, But Will She Shake Up The Liberals? - Above the Law

The average blue-collar working American paid more taxes in 2016 than former president Donald Trump.

It is true. Remember how his opponents kept asking him to release his tax statements, and he would not?

Thats because,according to a 2020 New York Times article, he only paid$750in income tax that year, the year he was sworn into office as president.

The newspaper also discovered through the records they obtained that 10 out of 15 years, he paid nothing, using his multiple failed businesses and many loans to tap into loopholes for the rich.

Though the news is old, people are responding on Twitter like it aint sweet.

Any of the 87,000 New IRS agents have my permission to ensure Donald Trump pays more than $750 in Federal Tax.

WHAT? $750? Are you kidding me?!?! Im on disability and paid more than that!! This is why he didnt want his taxes released! He didnt pay any!! $750 is pocket change to him! RIDICULOUS!!!

Even Trumpers know that is CHEATING!

In 2019 I paid more in income taxes than Donald Trump and Jeff Bezos combined. You probably did too. Thats because Trump paid $750 and Bezos paid nothing. Something is wrong with this picture.

How do you feel about this?

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YOU PAID MORE THAN DONALD TRUMP IN TAXES: He Paid The IRS $750 In The Year 2017 - AllHipHop

Liberal Senator Alex Antic has spent the last 18 months working to stem the leftward drift of Australias traditionally centre-right Liberal Party.

The South Australian senator is fighting at the grassroots level to grow the partys membership and steadily steer the party back to its roots.

They are people who are concerned about the direction of the state and the nation, and who believe in the partys founding principles such as freedom of speech, religion, and association, and the freedom to choose their own way of living and of life, he told The Epoch Times.

These people are now having a say in the election of party office bearers, the formulation of future policy positions, and ultimately, will have a say in the selection of strong principled candidates for parliamentary elections at both state and federal level.

Trying to right the ship of a political party is no small task.

The work begins at the grassroots with the recruitment of members to local party branches.

Generally, members are given the right to vote at Annual General Meetings, join the pre-selection process of candidates to contest upcoming elections, and vote for the position of office bearersthe president, the vice-president, treasurer, and secretary of the state party.

Having enough votes from a particular bloc can have a major influence on the direction of the party.

For example, having more right-leaning voters in a local branch will generally ensure that a candidate with similar values is selected for upcoming elections. Meanwhile, having enough office bearers can influence the partys operation and direction via voting at the State Council, which also votes for the State Executiveequivalent to a board of directors.

However, over the years, the influence of left-leaning or moderate factions has become more prevalent across the Liberal Party, which has had an impact on the type of policies the party adopts.

Some commentators have argued that the trend is pulling the Liberal party further away from the vision of founder Robert Menzies, who espoused a party built on the values of classical liberalism, anti-communism, and upward mobility of the middle-class via private enterprise.

In South Australia, policies under former Premier Steven Marshall have galvanised religious voters to join the party, including support foreuthanasia and late-term abortion laws.

Thus far, the campaign by Antic has paid off with over 1,000 new right-leaning members joining the Liberal Party organisation in the state, bringing the total membership base to over 5,000.

Last year, Antics campaign hit a hurdle when the partys state executive tried to stonewall the onboarding of 500 new Christian members.

The individuals had to undergo an audit and agree to support the objectives of the Liberal Party and ensure they were not aligned with any alternative political entities,' according to a letter seen by The Advertiser newspaper.

The state President, Legh Davis,responded to the incident by saying: Those who clearly support the partys constitutional objectives and endorsed candidates will be welcome as members.

Antics campaign to encourage classical liberals and conservatives into the partys ranks would not have been welcomed by the then-dominant moderate faction of the Liberal Party.

In fact, for 30 years now, the state branch has been headlined by leading moderate political figures, including former Defence Minister Christopher Pyne, former Finance Minister Simon Birmingham, and recently defeated South Australian Premier Marshall.

For a long time, the South Australian division of the party has been controlled by the partys left-wing faction, and of course, any period of change brings with it a degree of resistance, Antic said.

Having said that, we are now seeing the many new members actively participating in events and meetings, and the influx has revitalised sections of the party which were struggling for enthusiasm, Antic said.

In the Australian context, moderatesgenerally advocate for free market economicsNew South Wales Senator Andrew Bragg (a moderate) has been a vocal supporter of dismantling the compulsory superannuation systembut are socially progressive on issues such as legalising same-sex marriage, abortion, and euthanasia.

Meanwhile, those in the right faction (like Antic) have focused more on social policy, including individual freedom, religious rights protection, and opposing the onset of progressive leftist causes such as gender fluidity and climate change.

Climate change has also been a major flashpoint between the right and moderate factions, which played out during the May 2022 federal election.

Moderates were concerned that failing to push for more ambitious climate change targets would lose the Liberal Party several inner-city electorates. In contrast, right faction members have criticised the climate change movement pointing out the lack of consensus around climate science, as well as the feasibility and enormous cost of transitioning to net-zero.

In a move to try to appease both factions and their voting blocs, the centre-right Prime Minister Scott Morrison adopted a net-zero by 2050 target in October 2021, and stuck to a 26-28 percent emissions reduction target for 2030.

The move was interpreted by some as neither here nor there and confusing to the electorate. As a result, the election saw the Liberal Party bleed votes on its left and right political flanks, with the party recording its lowest primary vote in recent times at 35.7 percent (the then-opposition Australian Labor Party won just 32.58 percent).

On its left flank, the Liberal Party lost several inner-city seats to Teal and Greens candidates who promised major climate change initiatives, including more ambitious emissions reduction targets. It also lost votes to the Drew Pavlou Democratic Alliance. Then on its right, the party continued to bleed votes to One Nation and new freedom parties like the United Australia Party, and Liberal Democrats.

One senior Liberal Party staffer told The Epoch Timeson condition of anonymitythat the election result was a wake-up call and that the former party of Robert Menzies needed an urgent rebuild.

Theres still very influential factional elementsresponsible for the recent past and where we found ourselves todaythat are still trying to cling to power and reshape things in a way that will suit them, the staffer said.

He revealed that members of branches in New South Wales have been restricted from being able to vote, a situation holding back better candidates.

Weve become less and less reflective of the people we are representing, and that comes down to not being democraticit is an elitist type of approach, he said.

Its a real fight to democratise and create transparency, he added. [As for] the public, they see it translating into people they dont really relate to or trust. We have to produce more grassroots community-driven people and get them through the process.

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Daniel Y. Teng is based in Sydney. He focuses on national affairs including federal politics, COVID-19 response, and Australia-China relations. Got a tip? Contact him at daniel.teng@epochtimes.com.au.

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Senator's Grassroots Campaign to Revive Founding Values of Australia's Liberal Party - The Epoch Times