Trump’s New York fraud case

Pointing to the most recent Trump civil case, WV AG candidate Mike Stuart tells us that he has “never seen such abuse of the justice system.” For proof, Stuart links to an article by a blogger, Walter Olsen, at the Cato Institute:

So punitive and so outlandish, I’ve never seen such abuse of the justice system. If Mar-a-lago is valued at only $18m, WV should seek emergency spending authority to buy it today. It would be the greatest ROI EVER for WV! ⁦@WVGOP⁩ https://t.co/0fEe1aaJpd

— Mike Stuart (@MikeStuartWV) February 20, 2024

Cato is probably the country’s most influential libertarian organization and I expected, since Stuart was referencing it, that the post would overwhelmingly support Trump in his real estate fraud case. In the article, Cato blogger Olsen mostly cites a legal scholar (Orin Kerr), and I was very surprised to find that, while the source does question a few of the case’s conclusions, it overwhelmingly supports the state’s case against Trump. Here is Olsen’s conclusion:

Overall, misgivings and all, I share Kerr’s reaction: it’s “not obvious to me what particular part of Judge Engoron’s 92‐page ruling is legally wrong.”

Huh? How does this article support Stuart’s claim of abuse of the justice system?

Did Senator Mike Caputo (D-Marion) support Stuart’s Texas wire fences bill?

WV Senator Mike Stuart recently proposed that West Virginia financially support the governor of Texas’ efforts to build a razor wire barrier on its border with Mexico. (I wrote about it here.) Earlier this week, Stuart once again reminded his Twitter followers of his legislation. In his post, he links to an article which seems to suggest that Democrat Mike Caputo was supporting his bill:

How can anyone defend the Biden Administration for the national security and human crisis at our border? As WV Attorney General, I will work with fellow AG’s with a sense of urgency to secure that border. ⁦@WVGOP⁩ ⁦@FAIRImmigration⁩ https://t.co/NZkYaO0lwx

— Mike Stuart (@MikeStuartWV) February 18, 2024

But if you go to the article by Matthew Young at RealWV, there is no doubt that Senator Caputo was clearly being sarcastic* about Stuart's "wonderful campaign speech":

“Things like this reassure me that I made the right decision not to run for re-election.”
That’s what Sen. Mike Caputo, D-Marion, said from the Senate floor while delivering a scathing indictment of SR 42, a proposed resolution to support “Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Texas’ constitutional right to self-defense.”

And later in the article:

“Of course there’s bad people,” Caputo said. “But we’re going to support using every tool – including razor wire fences. For innocent children that are being brought here by others, we’re going to support using razor wire fences.”

“Have we lost our minds?” Caputo asked. “Have we lost our minds? There’s not one of us in this chamber who doesn’t care about children. Razor wire fences – that’s insane.”

Thank-you, Mike.

Of course, Stuart was there and so he knew exactly where Caputo stood on his support-for-Abbott bill. Yet, he posts in such a way that casual readers would assume that Caputo supported his bill. And similar to the previous Cato article, Stuart assumes his readers won’t actually bother to read the original. Nice: the more I read from-and-about Mike Stuart, the more disgustingly dishonest he gets.

*Note to politicians, headline writers, and bloggers (myself, included): this is another lesson on why using sarcasm is dangerous – it can easily be misunderstood or worse, turned against you.