A key witness against former President Donald Trump and his two co-defendants in the Mar-a-Lago documents case recanted previous false testimony and provided new information implicating the defendants after he switched lawyers, special counsel Jack Smith’s office said in a new court filing.
Yuscil Taveras, the director of information technology at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s club in Palm Beach, Florida, changed his testimony last month about efforts to delete security camera video at the club after he changed from a lawyer paid for by Trump’s Save America PAC to a public defender, Tuesday’s filing says.
If the prosecution believes that perjury should be prosecuted, this mans second testimony should have put him in prison, because he either committed perjury previously, or is committing it now.
That’s where I step off the bus and say “hey, this is fucked”. That’s the line for me. You can’t base an indictment off testimony that someone made under the auspices of that.
I wildly disagree with it at the bottom too… the “let the little fish testify” isn’t better, and I don’t support that shit either. This is a little worse though… this fish is either lying or has lied, under oath. He’s factually proven that he’s committed perjury… If the prosecution is threatening him with perjury, they basically own him, because he’s factually demonstrably committed perjury based simply on the existence of two opposing testimonies…
So “say this, or go to prison”. That’s fucking extortion.
But if they DON’T say anything he WILL go to prison for perjury anyway as they can already prove he’s lying, the only thing this does is give him a chance to avoid prison. That’s like literally the opposite of extortion, because the threat isn’t too hurt him, the “threat”, if anything, is to do nothing and let him go to jail. “If you tell the truth we will help you” isn’t extortion.
It’s not “if you tell the truth”… It’s “if you say what we say is the truth”…
If there’s proof that what he’s going to testify to now is the truth, what the fuck do they need his testimony for? They have proof of this ostensible “truth” you’re claiming they want him to say, so why is it necessary to have a known liar testify?
This is bullshit. I’m not fucking buying this. You can’t testify to something directly in opposition to a prior testimony and have any value whatsoever, period.
Sure you can. Especially if he can bring receipts related to why he was lying. Threats, promises of compensation, etc. Is it ideal that he lied under oath? Of course not. And it opens a giant door for the defense to challenge all of his testimony but it’s not irrecoverable.
Much as you seem to wish it was.
“And it opens a giant door for the defense to challenge all of his testimony but it’s not irrecoverable.”
I just simply don’t agree on the irrecoverable part :) or more accurately, I don’t believe it’s worth the effort to “recover” evidence from a shitbag. Dudes a testimony for sale, nothing he has to say has any value as truth.
“Much as you seem to wish it was.”
I don’t wish that (I don’t really care much outside of wishing the word trump would gain some fucking obscurity… it’s like a really bad penny), I just don’t like that this entire process is pretty clearly a matter of politics rather than justice. It’s a political headhunt, and it’s very reminiscent of pre-collapse Soviet government. We’re trying to fill the gulags up in this motherfucker. I’m not really speaking in support of the defense, Im speaking against the witch hunt.
Because if he said he wasn’t at X but they can prove he was at X that doesn’t mean they can prove everything he saw and heard there, but on the other hand they can get him to testify he was there and tell what he saw and heard there with that proof of his presence included.
That doesn’t mean his new testimony will be considered fully trustworthy by the court, but it does mean they can now submit his story into evidence when they previously couldn’t.
Then they can additionally ask others about details in his testimony to uncover further evidence and try to prove their case.