At a particularly depressing and anxious time for the human race like the one we find ourselves in now, depression and anxiety are understandable. It is hard to stay optimistic in the face of prolonged social isolation, a still raging incurable disease that can kill you, lies and denial of reality in the service political brutality, cascading climate catastrophe and all the rest. The hanging out with friends, family and likeminded strangers that used to remind us of the other side of life is now dangerous, must be approached with caution, if at all.
Social media, texts and emails are no substitute for personal contact with people you like. People think you are insane (and they are probably justified) if you send them a hand-written letter in the mail. Sekhnet, a self-proclaimed happy hermit, is relatively fine with cheerful random encounters with strangers, by phone or socially distanced and masked. At times I find myself wistful about the ongoing lack of connection with others.
I’ve been aware of not falling into the trap of despair. The world is the world, always full of danger and challenges, and though fear may grab us hard sometimes, and doubt, and all the other dark things of this world, it is best to keep in mind all the rest, the sweetness of life that keeps us grateful for every lifegiving breath we take.
The world is also change, all life is constantly moving, evolving, changing. This shit too will pass, surely, and once the pandemic is over we’ll hang out together to talk about it and laugh in relief to have survived it.
There is hard work to be done fixing a lot of things that are badly broken, I’d like to help. I hope to figure out how to lend a hand, throw my back into it. I feel like I’ve been doing OK emotionally, the usual complaints (the arthritis in my left knee is getting to be a real pain) aside.
Last night I cheerfully dialed an old friend, to check in, to resume my long habit of checking in with distant friends. I’d decided not to talk for long, just hear how he was doing, hopefully have a laugh (he’s a funny bastard) as I exercised my ailing legs outside in what was suddenly a mild evening. I got his voice mailbox, which was full.
I suddenly remembered the weight he carries, responsible for the livelihoods of literally hundreds of people in his badly stressed organization, dozens of whom must call his cellphone daily. It was too late to ring his home phone, his wife goes to bed early and it was already almost 10:00. Figured I’d call the home line tonight, after the dinner hour, see how they’re doing.
Watched an episode of David Attenborough’s brilliantly presented (and beautifully shot) Planet Earth on Netflix, had a moment of despair about what human greed has made of the oceans and deep seas (which contain 95% of the earth’s life, I think I heard), but mostly, we marveled at the weird and wonderful beauty of nature and the gentle, wise presentation of it . Here’s a nice montage from the wonderful limited series.
Sekhnet and I went upstairs, played few rounds of Wordscapes on my phone and I tucked Sekhnet for the night (so she could spend the next hour learning Chinesein Duolingo).
Then sometime after I did a little watercoloring (a variation on the figure below):
washed the dishes, got myself a cold drink and sat down to prop my leg up and watch a dark crime show, I became aware that the Black Dog had crept into the room with me.
I’d truly forgotten all about el perro negro.
“Remember me, motherfucker?” asked the black dog.
I did, indeed. Everything was suddenly hopeless. Why bother calling my friend? I’d destroyed my life, utterly, the whole thing a series of stupid mistakes I’d keep making until the end. Nobody gives a rat’s ass about your precious, polished, meaningless, unmonetized hobbies. The world is only a depressing antechamber to certain, terrible death. Nothing is ever going to work out well, you’ll see. Everyone who ever said they loved you was lying, and they proved it, in spades; everyone you love, dead. Evil triumphs in this world and if you think it doesn’t — fuck you, I’ll slit your ugly face. Look around, asshole.
“Forgot how persuasive I am?” asked el perro negro, stinking faithfully at my feet.
Not for a second.
I took two Tylenol PMs (discovered by Sekhnet’s insomniac cousin recently) and waited for the stabbing in my left knee to subside. Within an hour I was drowsy, went up to bed. Today, no sign of the black dog, though I can still smell his wet, cloyingly pungent fur. I’d forgotten all about the motherfucker, actually.
I wrote two long versions of this the last two days, assessing the painful one-sided travesty that resulted in a jury that included the 45th president’s co-conspirators (Hawley, Cruz, Graham, Lee, Tubaveale among the most vocal) voting, on a disputed, minority-embraced technicality, to acquit a president they helped to organize and incite an insurrection against the government.
Two things the angry pro-Trump mob chanted during the ransacking of the Capitol that I don’t necessarily disagree with — “Treason!” (yes, it was) and “Hang Mike Pence!” (I’m never in favor of political murder, but if some sacrificial lamb has to go, why not the already soul-dead religious bigot Mr. Pence?) [1].
I realize now, fittingly on Presidents’ Day, that it’s time to look forward, to always frame things in the positive, from our perspective, what we concerned citizens need to do to fix a broken democracy, not from the incendiary and intentionally crippling perspective of modern day Nazis. The immediate future includes criminal conspiracy prosecutions of violent criminals (and ethics investigations of those in Congress who continue — they persist, even now — to shill for the soundly disproven Big Lie about a “stolen” election Trump and his party unsuccessfully tried to rig) and changes to the law to allow actual fair trials in future impeachments and similar Congressional investigations.
First, a palette cleanser, from E. J. Dionne (in an op-ed in yesterday’s Bezos, er, Washington Post) for a bit of perspective:
Don’t waste time mourning the Senate’s failure to convict Donald Trump for crimes so dramatically and painstakingly proven by the House impeachment managers. The cowardice of the vast majority of Republican senators was both predicted and predictable.
Instead, ponder how to build on the genuine achievements. Led with extraordinary grace by Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.), a diverse and able group of prosecutors laid out an indelible record not only of what happened on Jan. 6 and why, but also Trump’s irresponsibility throughout his term of office: his courting of the violent far right; his celebration of violence; his habit of privileging himself and his own interests over everything and everyone else, including his unrequitedly loyal vice president.
This record matters. We often like to pretend that we can move on and forget the past. But our judgments about the past inevitably shape our future. Every political era is, in part, a reaction to the failures — perceived and real — of the previous one. The Hoover-Coolidge Republicans loomed large for two generations of Democrats. Ronald Reagan built a thriving movement by calling out what he successfully cast as the sins of liberalism.
By tying themselves to Trump with their votes, most House and Senate Republicans made themselves complicit in his behavior. And Trump will prove to be even more of an albatross than Hoover, who, after all, had a moral core.
Given the chance to cast a vote making clear that what Trump did was reprehensible, only seven Republicans in the Senate and 10 in the House took the opportunity to do so.
You can tell how worried Republicans are that they are now the Trump Party by the contortions of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who aided Trump almost to the end. Rarely has a politician been more blatant in attempting the impossible feat of running with the foxes and hunting with the hounds.
Moments after voting to let Trump off — “on a technicality,” as Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas shrewdly observed about many GOP “not guilty” votes justified by anything and everything but the question of guilt itself — McConnell blistered the inciter in chief in a speech the impeachment managers could have written.
His words told the world who won the argument. They also underscored how wrenching it will be for Republican politicians to appease the GOP’s Trump-supporting majority while pretending to be another party altogether.
The fact that only seven Senate Republicans bolted should end the absurd talk that there is a burden on President Biden to achieve a bipartisan nirvana in Washington. If most Republicans can’t even admit that what Trump did is worthy of impeachment, how can anyone imagine that they would be willing and trustworthy governing partners?
The case for ending the filibuster is now overwhelming. There are not 10 Republican Senate votes to be had on anything that really matters.
The case for ending the filibuster is now overwhelming. There are not 10 Republican Senate votes to be had on anything that really matters.
Free speech is our right as Americans, but, at this point, so is shutting off noise that makes free thought and informed debate impossible. We don’t need to endlessly give oxygen to demented theories endlessly repeated by our agitated mass media. No reason to waste energy further debunking the lies of a party that unites behind Big Lies that are shown to be false over and over and over and that have proven to lead to violence and mayhem. Nobody cares, those who drank Trump’s/GOP’s insane kool-aid have shown they will swallow anything. The Jews did it, fine, we did it, now let’s move forward.
If Democrats do the only sane and practical thing and end the filibuster, which has been used (since its creation by slavery advocate John C. Calhoun three decades before the Civil War) overwhelmingly to support slavery (fake, there was never slavery here! LIAR! Jew!) and racism (only Black people and radical Jews perpetuate that lie!!! Anti-lynching laws blocked by filibuster were attempts at COMMUNISM!!!) they can pass laws favored by the vast majority of Americans. Here’s a short list.
Pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, making it easier for people to vote, as a right of citizenship, and much harder for Republican state apparatuses to continue violating the Voting Rights Act in the name of suppressing the majority vote, which they frame as a “privilege” only their side is fully entitled to.
Use actual scientific knowledge to fight the pandemic and give financial relief to millions of Americans who are in desperate situations.
Get busy doing everything possible to slow the hastening destruction of the earth.
Nominate five or more “moderate” Supreme Court justices and confirm them with as much bipartisan support as is available.
Stop aiding foreign despots in genocide (our billionaire Saudi “allies” are mass murdering Yemeni people in the poorest country in their region).
Restore faith in the rule of law by enforcing the law against powerful serial scofflaws like several criminal associates pardoned by our criminal former president (“Mr.” Trump must now be prosecuted for leading the well-financed “collusion” to overthrow an election) guys like Roger Stone and the always innocent Mike Flynn, who called for violence and actively participated in the planning and promotion of the riot and (in the case of self-proclaimed rat-fucker Stone) whose phalanx of Oath Keeper bodyguards all took part in breaking into the Capitol (as the NY Times documented yesterday).
Free OJ and exonerate him (sorry, couldn’t help myself… trying to be bipartisan. How did Trump miss this layup? Why is Bill Cosby still languishing in prison? Oh yeah, Trump is the least racist person in the world.)
and so forth.
And here’s an important concrete suggestion, from former federal prosecutor/justice activist Glenn Kirschner — create an Inter-branch Dispute Court [2].Here is why this idea is a crucial step toward actual justice and enforcing a true democracy-protecting balance of powers, as intended by the sainted Framers.There was, sadly, a strong argument for the seeming resigned, weak-kneed capitulation of Democrats on the issue of calling fact witnesses to disprove transparent lies told by Trump’s defense team about crucial facts that established Trump’s guilt — the interminable delays caused by the slowness of adjudications by federal courts.
When Robert Mueller interviewed former White House Counsel (and weasel-dicked Conservative operative) Don McGahn, McGahn admitted, under penalty of perjury, that Trump asked him first to fire Mueller, and then, after he refused because it could be seen as part of an ongoing pattern of Trump’s obstruction of justice, to write a memorandum for the record falsely stating that Trump had never asked him to fire Mueller. Erring on the side of staying out of prison, McGahn left the White House (after successfully installing Gorsuch and Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court) and returned to private practice.
McGahn was subpoenaed by the House to testify to this effect, on live TV, in connection to Trump’s first impeachment. Had McGahn (and others who swore to damning facts in Mueller’s Obstruction of Justice volume II) been allowed to testify, the House surely would have drafted an article for Obstruction of Justice, backed by the eye-witness testimony of those asked by Trump to “collude” in making the Mueller thing go away, as he had tried to make the Flynn/Russia thing go away by firing Comey. It would have been hard, with that sworn, live testimony, for even today’s GOP to unanimously (thanks, Mitt, I didn’t forget your historic guilty vote on one count) acquit their leader, even at the no witness, evidence-free first impeachment trial.
McGahn had the politically unpalatable (for him) option to appear before the Congressional committee, and likely the legal obligation to testify, but McGahn chose to fight the subpoena in court, one of several such decisions by prominent present and former Trump officials to defy/contest subpoenas during the Trump term. McGahn v. Congressional Cucktards was filed in federal court in 2019. The matter has still not been decided.
As angry as I was Saturday that Democrats didn’t pause the trial and get testimony from former Trump aides present with him during his absorption in the riot on live TV, testimony that would have made an airtight case that Trump didn’t care how many police officers and other people had to die when his Stop the Steal riot was going on, I grasp one aspect of their hesitation. While in office Trump ordered subordinates to defy 130 lawful subpoenas, under Barr’s inspired suggestion he assert a ridiculous pre-emptive blanket immunity against anything that could tend to incriminate or compromise the Unitary Executive. His remaining loyalists, like Kevin McCarthy, who had already said he would not testify voluntarily, would certainly fight a subpoena, as his team does now by reflex.
Trump was never held accountable for that open violation of the law under color of Barr’s absurd theory of absolute Executive branch authority. One reason the issue was never decided is is that federal courts are overwhelmed, even essential cases of great public consequence move lethargically. Another reason is that if you manage to run out the two year clock on a Congressional subpoena, as McGahn, John Bolton and other “patriots” did, the question of defying the subpoena expires too, when that Congress ends, the subpoena is no longer valid. The “case” becomes moot, as they say.
When there is a dispute between the Executive Branch, insisting on its Article II supremacy, and Congress, enforcing its legitimate Article I powers, that dispute must go to a court that can immediately rule on the question of vital national concern expeditiously. Glenn Kirschner outlines how this dedicated court would work:
McGahn refuses to testify, based on an asserted presidential privilege. McGahn sends the legal arguments for his refusal to obey a lawful Congressional subpoena to the IDC. The Court gives Congress 72 hours to respond, they file an answer. The court then has 72 hours to make a ruling. Instead of a two-year wait for House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to appear as a hostile witness, admit that he had a shouting match with Trump during the riot and that Trump said at one point “Well, Kevin, obviously there are people a lot more upset about this stolen election than you are, bitch…” the wait is less than two weeks. Impeachment trial adjourned for the ruling of the IDC and the inevitable Supreme Court challenge (which would be fast tracked, as in the instant overnight vacating of stays that sought to prevent the execution of federal death row inmates Trump was intent on killing). McCarthy then testifies, under penalty of perjury, and we learn the truth about a matter crucial to all of us, as the rule of law should have it.
Instead, because of the practical impossibility of enforcing Congressional subpoena power, impartial jurors Graham, Cruz and Lee are free to openly strategize with Trump’s defense team on the eve of their (angry, incoherent, false) closing arguments and Lyin’ Ted is free to visit Trump’s legal team during breaks in the trial itself, right up to the acquittal.
There are ways for people of good will to fix some of the fatal weaknesses Trump’s lawless reign exposed. Now we have to get busy doing it. La lucha continua! Let’s get busy, and be of good cheer!
[1]
And, talk about unfailing, obsequious loyalty, nobody, NOBODY, showed this more than Mike “I’m NOT a Fag!!!” Pence. You can see him standing behind the president every time Trump made an outrageous claim, his face a solemn mask of moral neutrality, conveying a certain zombie-like fealty to his master at the same time. Pence passionately defended his insane boss at every turn. When others quit, went to the media with accounts of Trump’s insanity, Pence made speeches praising Trump. He defended indefensible statements and actions, over and over, proudly. His reward for this doglike fidelity?
An angry crowd, dispatched by Trump, calling to hang him for betraying them by not breaking the law. Learning how Trump actually felt about him and Karen. When Trump learned they hadn’t yet strung up the traitor Pence, he sent another rage tweet (ten minutes later) that was immediately read aloud through a bullhorn, repeating Trump’s opinion that Mike Pence lacked courage, had not stopped the steal and, arguably, deserved whatever happened to the weak fuck.
Trump made it clear to coach/senator Tommy Fucking Tuberville, in their phone call that ended after Pence was hustled out of the Senate, that Pence’s life meant nothing to him. He also told House Minority Leader and expert bootlicker Kevin McCarthy that he didn’t give a rat’s ass about the riot, or dead and wounded cops, that Pence was as dead to him as Sessions, Barr, Bolton, Bannon, McMaster, Tillerson, Mulvaney, Liz and Dick Cheney, that the important thing was to continue to Stop the Steal. Poor Mike Pence!
[2]
[00:59:17] To deal with, for example, interbranch disputes between Congress and the executive branch, so Congress issues a subpoena for testimony in an impeachment hearing, the executive branch says, nope, you can’t have that witness. Well, you know what you do? You go to the interbranch dispute, caught the eye, BDC and you get 72 hours to file your brief. You get another 72 hours to prepare and conduct your oral argument, and then you’re going to have a court opinion in another 72 hours.
[00:59:52] Was that nine days? If I can count, I don’t have my calculator. You want to appeal that decision? 72, 72, 72. Now, in less than a month, you’ve got an appellate court opinion and it’s been all but definitively resolved because you could still go to the Supreme Court. But what you have done is you’ve taken out the endless Don Meghann year and a half delay to run out the clock. The interbranch dispute caught folks it’s imminently doable.
[01:00:19] Donald Trump has opened our eyes to all of the problems, all of the deficiencies, all of the areas for abuse, right where they’ve wiggled into the cracks in our system and they’ve engaged in their abuse in those cracks and they’ve just blown them out into chasms, chasms of abuse and corruption and crime. By Donald Trump and his cabinet members and his family, and they’ve exposed they’ve exposed the weaknesses in our government, in our republic, in our democracy and our institutions.
Few people realize that in addition to being a world class bagpiper and a former two-time Attorney General, Bill Barr is also a gifted stand up comedian. I just wonder if he still finds this particular bit as hilarious as he did when he tried it out for the Federalist Society last year.
This post is, in part. an example of the power of media reports to enflame passions. I’d been thinking all along that it was a grave mistake for Democrats not to call witnesses. Every expert I admire felt the same way. I woke up late, to the notification of breaking news from Jeff Bezosand immediately had to update the post I began in the wee hours of last night/this morning:
I was glad the Democrats had decided to prove their case by using sworn, live testimony to demonstrate that the Trump defense team attacks on crucial evidence (e.g., their claim that Trump had no idea he was sentencing Pence to death by lynch mob when he tweeted to his followers to gently take care of him, that he was horrified by the violence he was enjoying on live TV and immediately tried to stop it, that the trial is not about Trump’s long, coordinated $54,000,000 Stop the Steal campaign but the meaning of the word “fight” on January 6, etc. ) were easily disprovable lies.
In a case where one side sticks to the facts and the other side keeps doubling down on lies, and calls the truthful presenters of evidence liars, a few strategic witnesses– Republicans who spoke to Trump during the riot, an aide instructed by Trump to stand down and stand by while Trump enjoyed the riot on TV, a member of the mob, a Capitol police officer, an aide in the room with Trump as he called people locked down in the Senate, pressuring them to block the certification while his crowd ran wild and he ignored repeated cries for help— is the only waycorrect the record, for history — if not to actually get 17 votes against the leader from his shameless cult of personality.
In hindsight I’m glad I missed the Democrats latest real-time display of spineless passivity (truly the principled Weimar Republic move, to back off when your unscrupulous enemy goes into a rage) and “sticking to the plan” no matter what strategy the enemy employs, no matter what the guaranteed outcome of not changing tactics.
I understand the Senate chamber became very ugly after the Democrats announced that Trump’s lawyers might miss their planes home, that they intended to continue fighting, with fact witnesses, to prove their case. Trump loves ugly, it’s as much his brand as fake gold. Ugly always plays to his advantage.
There was undoubtedly much outrage from Trump’s party of grievance, and no doubt more snarling, terrible threats to paralyze Joe Biden’s (and America’s) urgent agenda. Why not call Speaker of the House aspirant Kevin McCarthy as a hostile witness to deny under oath that Trump told him to fuck off during a shouting match when McCarthy called to ask Trump to call off the rioters? There would be nobody to block his subpoena the way Trump did for witnesses whose testimony could prove inconvenient, 130 times during his run. In time, the Supreme Court may rule that it was illegal for Trump to have done that, but why split hairs?
Instead, here you go, the end of the strong evidence-based fight and final surrender to the anti-fact party, sticking to the opinion that Trump won in a landslide, in the name of not dragging things out. Put this in the history books as an illustration, one screen of Bezos updates a few hours ago. It was this snapshot of apparent spineless capitulation by Democratic shot-callers that made my blood boil (read bottom to top):
To paraphrase Michelle Obama: when they go low, we make a strong, principled objection and then they lynch us, the bastards!We’ll repeat all of our strong, fact-based arguments again in closing, the ones that were all denounced as partisan lies by Trump’s hastily assembled legal team, and let the Senate vote as it will.
The remainder of this post is from late last night/early this morning, when I still had a shred of hope the Democrats would actually fight like hell (Trump claims they always fight to the death, the truth is, he is the only one willing to have his followers fight to their deaths):
In the name of trying to save what was left of my sanity in these final days of American democracy, I decided to sit out Trump’s lawyers’ arguments yesterday. Their job today was simply to give a fig-leaf of cover to at least 35 Republicans to vote to acquit Donald J. Trump of orchestrating the riot at the Capitol to Stop the Steal. I knew they’d make desperate arguments, was fairly certain they would resort to lies and name-calling.
To be fair, Trump’s hastily assembled legal team have an impossible job actually countering the strong case presented that Donald Trump, after spending months, (and $50,000,000 in ad buys), claiming the rigged election he won in a landslide was stolen from him, after repeatedly calling for his followers to assemble on January 6, for a “wild” rally he funded with another $3,500,000 of donated funds [1], on the day the vote total would become official and binding, and fired them up with 70 minutes of outrage about the stolen sacred landslide victory, sent them to the Capitol to fight to Stop the Steal, then did nothing for hours as they rampaged, attacked police, killing one and wounding 140 others, and vandalized the Capitol as they called for traitors’ blood, including the obsequious Mike Pence’s.
I figured I’d let Mehdi Hasan, Glenn Kirschner, Heather Cox Richardson and the late night comedians give me the selected highlights and lowlights after the defense rested.
Then in the car with Sekhnet late in the afternoon, I heard some of the questions and “answers” provided by Trump’s crack legal team, to give cover to Republicans so they could acquit their disgraced leader with a clear conscience. I think these five minutes sum Trump’s defense up pretty well.
Freshman Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, graduate of prestigious Stanford University and then Yale Law School, submitted a question so brilliant, I am still not sure exactly what it means. He posed a Zen koan of a puzzler:
If the Senate’s power to disqualify is not derivative of the power to remove a convicted president from office, could the Senate disqualify a sitting president but not remove him or her from office?
(as his office Senate website notes, he and his wife are “the proud parents of two young children, Elijah, Blaise, and Abigail.”)
The president’s feisty new lead attorney, Michael van der Veen, was all over that clever, key question with his answer:
One more of van der Veen’s answers, responding to whether the ex-president’s claim that he’d won re-election in a landslide was a Big Lie, surely also greatly pleased his new boss, Mr. Trump. It is worth hearing in its entirety. Van der Veen reframed the question and told the nasty questioner in no uncertain terms what the real question was.
It won’t surprise you to learn that, according to Mr. van der Veen, the real perpetrators of the Big Lie are the impeachment managers, who claim, with zero evidence, that the Mr. Trump is a big liar with very deep pockets who organized, funded and whipped up an angry crowd with classic First Amendment speech. The riot had nothing to do with anything Mr. Trump said, in any way. And that’s the real issue before the Senate, zero evidence presented that anything the president said on January 6 was inciteful (which sounds just like “insightful”) of anything bad. It was pre-planned, as Democrats admit, so how could Trump’s protected free speech have had anything to do with it? Plus, he pointed out, the Democrats are the liars and cheaters who famously contest virtually every election, like they did in 2016. He did everything in his two and a half minutes but answer the question.
Subpoena Kevin McCarthy as a hostile witness, to verify, under oath, his screaming match with the ex-president during the riot, as Trump focused on stopping the steal and McCarthy snapped at him that he had to end the fucking riot, people were getting killed?
The statement explained: “WhenMcCarthy finally reached the president on January 6 and asked him to publicly and forcefully call off the riot, the president initially repeated the falsehood that it was antifa that had breached the Capitol. McCarthy refuted that and told the president that these were Trump supporters. That’s when, according to McCarthy, the president said, ‘Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.’ ” (Her italics.)
McCarthy indeed, shortly after Biden was inaugurated, made an urgent pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago days later to kiss his boss’s ring and so on, but on the day in question, he tried to do the right thing. Make him admit that, during the riot, Trump told him “well, Kevin, I guess there are people much more upset about this stolen election than you are” .
Or, take what you imagine is the high road in a fight to the death where your determined enemy delights in the thought of drinking your blood. And has demonstrated its taste for it.
Tip of the hat to Nancy and Chuck Chuck Bo-Buck.
[1]
People involved in organizing the January 6 “Stop the Steal” protests that led to a deadly riot at the Capitol building received more than $3.5 million from the Trump campaign and its associated fundraising committees, a Wednesday report from the Center for Responsive Politics found.
… BIG NUMBER:$771 million. That’s how much the Trump Make America Great Again Committee spent through a shell company called American Made Media Consultants LLC, OpenSecrets found. The New York Times noted in December that the LLC, which at one point counted Trump’s daughter-in-law and senior campaign advisor Lara Trump among its board members, has been criticized for deliberately concealing the recipients of campaign funds. Last summer, the Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint with the FEC alleging that the Trump campaign violated campaign finance laws by “laundering” money through firms run by campaign officials.
Lawyers/jurors Lyin’ TedCruz, Lindsey Graham and Mike Lee met with the president’s defense team yesterday to coordinate Trump’s defense strategy, as good impartial jurors/co-conspirators often do. Democrats have condemned the meeting as “inappropriate”. There appears to be little more that anyone can do to enforce “fairness” in an impeachment trial, as we are reminded over and over that impeachment is a political, not legal, process.
A criminal trial is much different than a political process in the Senate, where presidential supporters who voted that the whole thing was unconstitutional, and lost that motion, can still refrain from following the evidence (or even attending the trial, as many did yesterday, demonstrating their contempt for the process) based on that ephemeral, quasi-legal ground of inchoate “unconstitutionality”. They are also free to coordinate strategy with the defense team, something that would result in harsh penalties if they tried that in a court of law.
One difference between an impeachment and a trial in a court of law is that, in court, once a procedural objection is overcome, it’s done with, irrelevant, may not be considered in jury deliberations. Another difference — juries in criminal trials must listen to all the evidence and decide the case based on evidence presented or the lack of evidence. Neither of those things apply in an impeachment trial where jurors are under no such obligation, may listen to evidence or not, and may (and usually do) vote strictly based on political allegiance.
In a court of law there also that thing called perjury, which all of Mr. Trump’s biggest supporters know is a trap for a compulsive liar with impulse control issues forced to take an oath to tell the truth or repeatedly remember to invoke his privilege against self-incrimination.
So Trump is right not to be too worried about being convicted by his peeps in the Senate, no matter how chaotic and incoherent the improvised defense mounted by his third rate lawyers is. It’s the criminal cases he’s about to face that give private citizen Trump the Heebie Jeebies.
One expected criminal investigation, from the great state of Georgia, hit the news cycle yesterday. It relates to Trump’s several calls to Georgia officials (as well as Lindsey Graham’s, one presumes) to solicit their help in overturning the thrice-counted, duly certified electoral count in that state.
Fulton County DA Fani T. Willis began a criminal investigation into Trump’s calls to solicit conspiracy to commit election fraud under the Georgia Criminal Code. She wrote a businesslike, thorough, letter to the Governor’s office instructing them to preserve all documentary evidence, including emails and texts, relating to the period between the election and January 2 when Raffensberger made the tape of Trump’s latest “perfect call”.
In that recording (made by Raffensberger to protect himself) Trump violates every provision of the Georgia criminal law. The call is like a walk through all the elements of the crime, Trump ticked every box. It’s hard to see any defense for the GOP’s strongman leader in the criminal trial. Mandatory minimum two year sentence, if convicted, if I recall correctly. Let him be convicted, sentenced and appeal all the way up to Amy Coney Barrett. If justice is served in court, he’ll be in prison in time to rant about the 2024 presidential campaign as a guest of the great state of Georgia.
[Fulton County District Attorney Fani T.] Willis, a Democrat, told state officials that her office will examine whether anyone illegally solicited election fraud, made false statements to state and local government officials, made threats, or participated in a criminal conspiracy as part of attempts to influence the election outcome.
Of course, the timing of this totally unfair witch hunt, by a “colored” female partisan Democrat (pictured below), an obvious Trump-hater from the late John Lewis’s crime-infested anarchist jurisdiction, a hotbed of fraud that Trump claims helped Biden steal, by 11,799 fraudulent votes, the state from the rightfully elected Donald John Trump, is pretty goddamned suspicious.
Or maybe not– what say you, Lindsey?
Oh wait, actually, you could be called as a witness, or even indicted as a co-conspirator, since you also called Georgia elected officials on behalf of your guy, Mr. Trump, to try to convince ’em to do the right thing and toss those dirty Democrat votes.
Sad that in our nation of laws Congressional co-conspirators who knowingly stood on what they had to know was Trump’s Big Lie about a rigged and stolen elections, are not excluded from voting on the guilt or innocence of their partner in crime.
What we need in this impeachment trial are a few witnesses (how about Raffensberger and the Capitol Police officer who lost an eye to the MAGA mob?) to hammer home by their testimony the enormity of the crimes Mr. Trump and his followers committed since losing the presidency in November. Here’s a good analysis from Greg Sargent in today’s Washington Post — Democrats have one big weapon left against Trump. Will they use it?
I’m starting to fear that the next thing we’re going to see in our law and order nation are political assassinations committed by fanatics with nothing to lose, the only thing left to do on the way to the final triumph of the John Birch Society in America.
The hallmark of Trumpism is a strong and repeated commitment to any lie that can help its cause. It used to be embarrassing for a president to be caught in a lie. That seems a long time ago. The new, well-worn norm is that as long as he didn’t lie under oath (and only a sucker would place himself in a “perjury trap” by agreeing to tell the truth if it didn’t benefit him) — fuck off and get over it, loser.
Impeachment managers today continue to try to convince 34% of a committed block of GOP obstructionists, as well as the American people, that a president who lies for months to inflame rage and finally incites a violent insurrection to overturn an election must be held accountable. The pundits all seem to agree that this is an exercise for the history books, for the midterm elections and possibly beyond. The smart money says that 17 Republicans, in the name of healing and looking forward, will not break ranks to convict their fearsome leader of wrongdoing.
Consider the Republicans’ united embrace of Trump’s right to any reality he chooses. It was seen in the weeks before their leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, acknowledged Joe Biden as the president-elect. After the election McConnell soberly told the country that Mr. Trump has every right to do everything he thinks best to make sure that Biden didn’t win by cheating. It was seen as an act of betrayal for any Republican to acknowledge the fair counting of the ballots and the bipartisan certification of the vote in all 50 states.
Fast forward to after all the federal and state lawsuits contesting the election were dismissed, after all legal avenues to contesting an election Trump lost by 7,000,000 votes were closed. January 2, four days before the final certification of the votes by Congress:
“The 2020 election, however, featured unprecedented allegations of voter fraud, violations and lax enforcement of election law, and other voting irregularities.”
This appears to be the cunningly worded work of clever lawyer and former Supreme Court clerk Lyin’ Ted Cruz. Note the key word “allegations”. We’re not saying that there was unprecedented voter fraud, violations and lax enforcement of election law, and other voting irregularities, we’re not saying there wasn’t — we’re just stating the indisputable truth that tens of millions of Americans honestly believe these things, these arguably unproven, allegedly baseless, allegations. [1].
The rest of the statement is peppered with suggestive lies. Although, admittedly, the “breadth and scope” of voter fraud is disputed (and virtually none was found by Trump’s Commission on Voter Fraud before it disbanded, nor by any of the many courts that dismissed Trump’s/RNC’s evidence-free claims of fraud), “by any measure, the allegations of fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election exceed any in our lifetimes.“
Widespread public belief in these “allegations”, of course, has nothing whatsoever to do with a constantly repeated presidential lie about massive fraud or the $50,000,000 in advertising to convince people the election was stolen from Mr. Trump.In fact, Mr. Trump, in his speech on January 6, expressly and strongly denied spending a single dollar on any ads promoting this falsehood, to wit:
I did no advertising. I did nothing. You do have some groups that are big supporters. I want to thank that. Amy and everybody. We have some incredible supporters. Incredible. But we didn’t do anything. This just happened. Two months ago, we had a massive crowd come down to Washington. I said what are they there for? Sir, they’re there for you. We had nothing to do with it.
“Ideally, the courts would have heard evidence and resolved these claims of serious election fraud. Twice, the Supreme Court had the opportunity to do so; twice, the Court declined.” writes Cruz.
Ideally, the courts would have heard evidence of serious election fraud, had any existed. I love the lawyerly shot they take at the apparent betrayal of justice by the anti-Trump Supreme Court in refusing, twice, to even hear a case that could have thrown the election to Mr. Trump.The AG of Texas had every goddamned right to contest fake, anti-Trump votes in other states!
The above group of senators, now jurors in Trump’s impeachment trial, voted to contest the final, largely ceremonial, certification of Joe Biden as the president, even after the rioters ransacked the Capitol. As is their right, of course, based on evidence, suspicion or political expediency, it is not our place to question their motives, or their ability to be impartial jurors now.
After Trump was impeached on January 13th, Mitch McConnell seemed to unequivocally condemn him and the lies that had stoked the rage that led to the deadly attack on the Capitol, which he said Trump and other leaders provoked:
Then, because he’d refused to reconvene the Senate during the remainder of Trump’s term so that the article of impeachment could be delivered to the Senate and a trial scheduled during Trump’s remaining time in office, the tricky, “transactional” McConnell voted with 44 other Trump-supporting senators that the impeachment was now unconstitutional, since, after Biden’s inauguration, Mr. Trump was indisputably a private citizen and could no longer be removed from office. (Talk about unclean flippers, Mitch, you slimy bastard).
Trump’s defense team in the unconstitutional impeachment made an outstanding pointin their answer to the charges, after observing:
“The 45th President of the United States performed admirably in his role as president, at all times doing what he thought was in the best interests of the American people.”
Indeed, Mr. Trump watched the riot unfold on live TV, tweeting a reminder to the rioters, during their attack, that Mike Pence lacked courage (hang the traitor!), then an hour or two later, tweeted a video telling them that he knew their pain, that the election had been stolen, that he loved them, that they were special. All admirable and in the best interests of the American people. No other president would have behaved any differently, if he truly thought his actions were in the best interests of the American people (ask Alan Dershowitz!).
They then came to the heart of the matter about Trump’s hundreds of arguably false and inflammatory statements about a rigged and stolen election:
“Insufficient evidence exists upon which a reasonable jurist could conclude that the 45th President’s statements were accurate or not, and he therefore denies they were false.”
See? There simply is no evidence — plus, a very strong denial! Therefore, he can’t be lying — and, even if he is, he strongly DENIES IT [2].
And on and on with the “I know you are, but what am I? you’ll never get 17 votes, losers, nyah, nyah!” defense.
It may be that under the RICO investigation the DOJ is planning to conduct into the organization and planning of the riot at the Capitol, some of the jurors who will soon vote to acquit Mr. Trump, along with some of the majority of House Republicans who voted to contest the election and against impeachment, will be investigated and indicted for their seemingly key roles in fomenting the insurrection.
It may be that, whatever their involvement or culpability, Trump patriots Hawley, Cruz, Tuberville, Graham, McCarthy, Brooks, Taylor Greene and co. will get a pass. After all, ladies and gentlemen, this is the United States of America, the greatest democracy Jesus ever personally blessed.
[1]
“The election of 2020, like the election of 2016, was hard fought and, in many swing states, narrowly decided. The 2020 election, however, featured unprecedented allegations of voter fraud, violations and lax enforcement of election law, and other voting irregularities.
“Voter fraud has posed a persistent challenge in our elections, although its breadth and scope are disputed. By any measure, the allegations of fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election exceed any in our lifetimes.
“And those allegations are not believed just by one individual candidate. Instead, they are widespread. Reuters/Ipsos polling, tragically, shows that 39% of Americans believe ‘the election was rigged.’ That belief is held by Republicans (67%), Democrats (17%), and Independents (31%).
“Some Members of Congress disagree with that assessment, as do many members of the media.
“But, whether or not our elected officials or journalists believe it, that deep distrust of our democratic processes will not magically disappear. It should concern us all. And it poses an ongoing threat to the legitimacy of any subsequent administrations.
“Ideally, the courts would have heard evidence and resolved these claims of serious election fraud. Twice, the Supreme Court had the opportunity to do so; twice, the Court declined.
The Washington Post delineates a small bit of the massive chunk of taxpayer dollars that had to be spent because the provocative, lying grifter-in-chief, while bilking his own followers out of half a billion dollars in donations to “defend himself” after a “stolen election,” cost us all a similar amount — and counting — to protect against and repair damage that he did.
One of Trump’s greatest talents is flushing hundreds of millions of other people’s dollars down the toilet (while he famously nickels and dimes everyone who works for him). The reason he got that huge $70,000,000 tax refund that is now in dispute was because he lost a billion dollars in the preceding years while twisting from one bankruptcy to the next.
By all means, and any means necessary, acquit this poor man, Mr. Cruz, Mr. Graham, Mr. Hawley, Tommy Tubaveale, on a shaky technicality if that’s all you’ve got, in his second baseless, unconstitutional, impeachment trial, because the many provable facts of his long, coordinated con (hundreds of Republican officials and appointees colluded with him throughout) to steal the election he claims was stolen from him are really not relevant when measured against the irrational rage of people who simply hate him for no reason, as they hate our freedom, as they hate all White Christians in this white, Christian nation.
Nothing to see here, boys and girls.
Although, personally, I’m riveted by the clear presentation of damning evidence at the impeachment trial. I’m looking forward to the final vote to acquit, GOP senators rising, one after another, to look into the cameras and pronounce, now and for all time … uh…
note: you can “argue” anything, as we keep seeing from our litigious former president’s army of ever weaker lawyers.
I argue that these three statements by Donald Trump remove any ambiguity about the former president’s intent to incite the riot he provoked (according to Mitch McConnell) on January 6th.
As Joaquin Castro details months of Trump’s constant, angry lies about a “rigged election”, starting many months before the voting started (and amplified, as Eric Swalwell points out, by $50,000,000 in ads, the ad buys ending January 5th [1]), and reminds us of the armed gangs of Trump supporters who went, in the months before the riot at the Capitol, pursuant to that Big Lie, to STOP the counting of ballots in many places across the US, I was struck yesterday by these three statements by Mr. Trump, from the day of the riot.
Trump and his allies insist, to this day, that we will never know how prevalent the imagined electoral fraud was that swept the big baby out of office. Actually, we do know. There was very little voter fraud found anywhere. The former president’s lawsuits claiming fraud were dismissed, by the dozens, for lack of evidence of fraud. Even the former president’s gunsel/personal attorney/AG Bill Barr finally stated that there was no evidence of fraud on a scale that could have changed any election results.
Exhibit One:
A striking line from Trump’s 70 minute speech to the crowd he invited to DC for an organized January 6th protest he promised “will be wild,” just before the riot:
Say what you will about Donald Trump, he knows a thing or two about going by a very different set of rules.
Exhibit Two:
The text of Trump’s tweeted video two hours into the riot(after tweeting his disappointment at Mike Pence’s “lack of courage” [2]). At first, you think “there’s never been a time like this where such a thing happened” (note Yiddish-inflected syntax) refers to the riot at the Capitol he has spent months provoking. A second later you realize he is simply doubling down on his provocative lie, the only thing Trump knows how to do.
He didn’t know how people with COVID, who were not millionaires, felt about getting this scary, sometimes deadly disease, he doesn’t know how families felt when they couldn’t feed their children, or the terror of people finding themselves without health insurance during a deadly pandemic — but he did know exactly how his angry, armed supporters felt when they broke into the Capitol to hang Mike Pence and shoot Nancy Pelosi in the head[3].
Exhibit Three:
Trump tweet four hours into the riot:
“sacred landslide election victory,” y’all.
To the Trump party senators who intend to acquit their leader on a far-fetched constitutional technicality (that came about only because their party refused to reconvene the Senate in time), heed the words of your infallible leader, delivered to the crowd he exhorted to Stop the Steal:
Today, we see a very important event, though, because right over there, right there, we see the event that’s going to take place, and I’m going to be watching because history is going to be made. We’re going to see whether or not we have great and courageous leaders or whether or not we have leaders that should be ashamed of themselves throughout history, throughout eternity. They’ll be ashamed. And you know what? If they do the wrong thing, we should never, ever forget that they did. Never forget.
“We’re going to see whether or not we have great and courageous leaders or whether or not we have leaders that should be ashamed of themselves throughout history, throughout eternity. They’ll be ashamed.”
The People rest.
[1]
Always in character, Trump lied about this to the crowd that ransacked the Capitol on January 6:
I did no advertising. I did nothing. You do have some groups that are big supporters. I want to thank that. Amy and everybody. We have some incredible supporters. Incredible. But we didn’t do anything. This just happened. Two months ago, we had a massive crowd come down to Washington. I said what are they there for? Sir, they’re there for you. We had nothing to do with it.
“Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!” Trump wrote at 2:24 p.m. ET as the mob of his supporters was breaching the building.
[3] I transcribed that from the section of the 13 minute videotape played by the impeachment managers. There’s more, including a line pirated from from Bill “I feel your pain” Clinton:
“I know your pain. I know you’re hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election and everyone knows it… But you have to go home now,” Trump said in the pre-recorded video that was quickly locked by Twitter “due to a risk of violence.” “We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. We have to respect our great people in law and order. We don’t want anyone hurt. It’s a very tough period of time. There’s never been a time like this where such a thing happened where they take it away from all of us… This was a fraudulent election but we can’t play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So go home. We love you. You’re very special.”
gratuitousblahg 