Thread by @SethAbramson

(🧵) We again see the difference between reportage and curatorial journalism. I just read 20 identical tweets saying Judge Chutkan has jurisdiction over the January 6 case again, set an August 16 status hearing, and dismissed Trump’s Motion to Dismiss without prejudice.

Uh, so?

1/ None of those facts are particularly newsworthy.

For instance, a status conference is just a check-in; there is nothing to say about it until it happens.

2/ By the same token, a dismissal of a Motion to Dismiss *without prejudice* means it can be filed again later on. Nothing has actually been decided.

3/ Just so, Judge Chutkan getting jurisdiction over the January 6 case again is a procedural *inevitability* that we always knew was coming. It is not really news.

4/ But corporate media wants clicks and eyeballs and respect, so they tell you these non-news items as though they are precious gems.

They are meaningless.

I will tell you what *curatorial journalism* makes of all this—and it *starts* by determining what is actually newsworthy.

5/ QUESTION 1: Will Trump go to trial on his January 6 case before he has an opportunity to corruptly end it? This is a matter of trial schedule, DOJ policy, conventional court process and polling—so you must draw from many sources. You can’t just re-report a court press release.

6/ And when we look at multiple sources, we see the scandal behind the ho-hum re-reporting corporate media is doing today.

I’ll explain.

7/ Why did Judge Chutkan just get the case back *now*? Did you know it’s because the Trump-appointed/pro-Trump super-majority on SCOTUS *deliberately held onto jurisdiction for an extra month* to ensure the case could not be heard pre-election?

Did corporate media report *that*?

8/ This Supreme Court, having already needlessly delayed the January 6 case *over five months* by re-opening an issue resolved by a Circuit Court *simply to rewrite the Constitution in a way that bewilders legal scholars of every stripe*, *could* have released jurisdiction ASAP.

9/ Instead, it held onto jurisdiction for a month for no reason. The case *languished*. And did so despite this *same super-majority* treating issues touching on Trump *time-sensitive* when a delay would *hurt* him. Yet they did nothing with the case for a month, just to aid him.

10/ So now corporate media puts out tweets saying there’s no way this case can go to trial before Election Day...

...but not telling you why.

If SCOTUS had released the case immediately, the status conference would’ve been held July 16—*plenty* of time for a pre-election trial.

11/ Corporate media might also have told you—if it used curatorial journalism—that Judge Chutkan already said she wouldn’t take Election Day into account in setting a trial date. And it might’ve told you that the conventional timeline in a felony would imply a pre-election trial.

12/ You know who *does* know how long felony cases usually take between arraignment and trial?

SCOTUS.

So when it delayed this case for five months, and then an additional month, it was deciding *for* U.S. voters whether we have a right to know about January 6 before we vote.

13/ But DOJ also put out a statement recently that *should* have been in all the reporting today but *was not* because it would have required journalistic curation: DOJ says it will *continue* prosecuting Trump over January 6 up through *at least* January 20, 2025.

14/ Corporate media failing to mention that *is* odd, is it not?

Because had the Supreme Court sent this case back to D.C. ASAP, we would have had a status conference on July 16th *at the latest* (Judge Chutkan might have set it even quicker, thinking of a pre-election trial)...

15/ ...and a drop-dead date for the prosecution that was at that point *over half a year away*. On that timeline, it would’ve been impossible for the corporate media not to acknowledge that Donald Trump *will* be adjudicated regarding January 6 before he can do anything about it.

16/ Curatorial journalism, because it is not bounded by what is happening *in this second only*, also allows a greater consideration of (a) history, and (b) how a situation may play out going forward.

So what happens if Trump is convicted over January 6 before January 20, 2025?

17/ Assuming Trump has won in November—which is seeming less and less likely, but I will get to that in a moment—the chances of a J.D. Vance presidency beginning *at the start of next year* get *much* higher (they are currently hovering around zero). Why won’t media discuss that?

18/ Well one thing we know about corporate media is that it likes close races. Another thing we know is that it’s terrified of scaring off prospective customers—which is precisely why conservatives make their hate of media well known: so media will kowtow to them (which it does).

19/ If you know the usual timeline for a felony, you know that JD Vance is the most consequential VP pick in American history because his chances of being the person MAGAs are *really* voting for in November is high. So him being a creepy weirdo with no charisma or principles...

20/ ...is *massive* news. It’s *daily* breaking news. Its relevance won’t dry out. So what’s corporate media doing instead? Reporting that a) Trump is unlikely to go to trial "pre-election" (a misleading time marker) and b) echoing Trump/Vance claims that Vance *doesn’t matter*.

21/ The *actual* story? Trump picked Vance for incredibly sinister reasons—PROOF is about to publish more on this—and just *one* of them is that *Trump* knows and the *Supreme Court* knows that with Judge Chutkan on the bench it will be hard to prevent a *pre-Inauguration* trial.

22/ So literally every *day* mattered at the time that SCOTUS held onto the January 6 case. Corporate media should have been on SCOTUS’s ass *daily* about releasing the case.

It was not.

23/ Just so, every *day* matters in the January 6 case now because the *real* timeline is getting it heard pre-Inauguration.

So what does corporate media do? It says the case cannot be heard *pre-election* and just *shrugs*... as though there’s now nothing urgent about the case.

24/ But in fact, curatorial journalism—which does something else common local reportage doesn’t do and draws on expertise from multiple fields (i.e. besides journalism)—would reveal that unless there are shenanigans it will be almost *impossible* to stop a pre-Inauguration trial.

25/ Which means media scrutiny on Vance should be *fiery hot*, as he’s more likely to be President of the United States—and soon—*far* more than Kamala Harris was when MAGA successfully got corporate media to treat Harris as the *real* POTUS candidate *before* Biden dropped out.

26/ To be sure, this is all *far* more complicated than I am making it out to be...

...which means it is *1000x* more complicated than *corporate media* makes it out to be.

To explain:

27/ As I know from having been a criminal defense attorney for many years, a felony case does not end with a conviction. There is a delay before sentencing, and a determination of whether the defendant will be out of jail pending sentencing. There is also a possibility of appeal.

28/ But if Trump is convicted in *this* case, prison time is certain—it’d be certain even if we only looked at other January 6 cases, putting aside that Trump would essentially be found to have been an insurrectionist ringleader. Leaving Trump free pre-sentencing would be insane.

29/ So even if the conviction came on January 10, 2025, *equal justice* would have Trump be jailed on *that day*—even if he planned to appeal, even if he hadn’t yet been formally sentenced, even if he had been made president-elect on or around November 5, 2024.

See the calamity?

30/ It is *such* a calamity that it must be discussed *now*. Because it means the possibility of a POTUS being incarcerated on the day of his inauguration, using constitutional means to temporarily have Vance become POTUS, having Vance pardon him, then having Trump resume office.

31/ Do you understand now why he chose Vance? Why he chose an unqualified putz who literally believes in *nothing* and would do *anything*? Because he might have to do things no other VP nominee has ever had to do—and corporate media should be discussing those things right *now*.

32/ But corporate media isn’t going to do that.

Because MAGAs would be angry if corporate media focused on Vance in that way.

And corporate media wants to leave the door open to making a post-election, pre-inauguration trial seem monstrous and unjust.

And why would it do that?

33/ Trump threatening the FBI at every turn has made the FBI do his bidding, or at least work hard not to displease him. He’s trained the FBI—like a *dog*—not to mess with him.

He’s done the same with major media. He has threatened major media so many times that people forget...

34/ ...that America has let Trump’s threats *work*. Judges are scared of him. The FBI is scared of him. Media is scared of him. If he’s elected November 5, corporate media has every intention of trying to please him by making the continuation of his January 6 case seem untenable.

35/ And why are these entities scared of him?

Do I need to spell out the Occam’s Razor answer?

It’s because *they know he’s scary*. They think he’s capable of *anything*.

Warrantless arrests, beatings, torture, a coup, a fascist dictatorship. And they are acting accordingly.

36/ So that’s the context in which Trump chose Vance. That’s the context in which Trump is telling us—with Vance lamely agreeing—not to pay any attention at all to Vance. That’s the context in which the Supreme Court held onto the January 6 case for five months, then another one.

37/ That’s the context in which polls now show Harris leading Trump. That’s the context into which DOJ said it will keep prosecuting Trump throughout any presidential transition, and that’s what Judge Chutkan was facing and thinking about in setting the status conference she did.

38/ So what the *hell* are all these milquetoast “game on” tweets blandly telling us that DC has jurisdiction again (duh), that a status conference is coming (duh), that a Trump motion was temporarily dismissed but could come back (duh), that the trial schedule is unclear (duh)?

39/ America deserves journalism that offers us (1) lateral context, (2) a historical view, (3) acknowledgment of known outcomes, (4) an interdisciplinary approach to investigation, (5) no bias against angering readers, and (6) fearlessness before tyranny. Is that too much to ask?

40/ I’m doing what I can, here:

Soon:

1⃣ The USIC Reveals Why It Was MIA For the Entire Trump Administration
2⃣ Vance: A Fascist Dynasty in the Wings
3⃣ An Accounting of Every Time Trump Was Violent in a Way Consistent with the Epstein Files’ Rape Claims sethabramson.substack.com