The Hounds Snap Fierce at trump's Heels

(The article title refers to a quote from Euripides' Electra, but I can't find the actual source. It may be from an disreputable early translation)

A lot of stuff related to donald trump's criminal shenanigans happened today.

The silliest thing to report is how New York Attorney General Letitia James went to court to ask the judge to stop trump and his people from forming a new corporation in Delaware in a likely attempt to avoid the $250 million civil suit James had filed earlier this year. Why is it silly?

Because the best name trump could come up with it was "Trump Organization II LLC".

Yes, social media exploded with "Electric Boogaloo" jokes.

If you're going to try and hide your wealth from a state-level civil suit, try to rebuild your business empire with a new holding elsewhere, don't you think you should come up with a completely new name so that NOBODY CAN SEE YOU STARTING A NEW COMPANY TO AVOID ACCOUNTABILITY??? You know, name it something more generic or obscure like "DT Corporate Holdings LLC" or "Acme Developments INC" or some such.

trump's vanity is so overwhelming he couldn't dare allow a new corporate entity exist without his name emblazoned - in gold font, no less - all over the paperwork. So OF COURSE AG James and her staff spotted it and called it a clear attempt to dodge the hammer her office is dropping on him.

In more important legal news today, the Supreme Court dismissed trump's plea to intervene in the Special Master situation between Judge Cannon, the 11th Circuit, and the FBI, meaning that the Special Master will not have access - and thus, neither will trump and his lawyers who were hoping to force the Special Master to grant them oversight - to the 100-plus classified documents found at Mar-A-Lago. More details via Mark Sherman and Jessica Gresko at AP News:

The Trump team was asking the justices to overturn a lower court ruling and permit an independent arbiter, or special master, to review the roughly 100 documents with classified markings that were taken in the Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago.

The move Thursday appears to greatly reduce the potential impact of the special master process to the ongoing Justice Department criminal investigation into the classifed documents.

A federal appeals court had already restored the department’s access to the classified documents, which had been investigators’ primary goal. And the Supreme Court’s decision to stay out of the fray ensures that the special master will not have access to those same records as the FBI and Justice Department evaluate if criminal charges are merited...

The Justice Department's full appeal against Judge Cannon's intervention for her benefactor trump is still ongoing.

And in a more dramatic development today, the House Select Committee investigation the January 6th Insurrection mostly wrapped up their proceedings this afternoon, revealing more evidence how trump and his handlers planned for violence that day to disrupt the electoral confirmation that Biden won. The committee did leave a possibility of at least one more presentation by voting unanimously to subpoena donald trump to testify to them about his role in what they've uncovered. Over at The Atlantic, David A. Graham thinks this should happen, because the people need to know:

The House Select Committee on January 6 ended what may be its final public hearing today with what is almost certainly a futile gesture: The members voted unanimously to subpoena former President Donald Trump for testimony and documents about his effort to subvert the 2020 presidential election and his incitement of a mob that attacked the Capitol.

The odds that they will get their way are effectively zero. Trump will surely fight the subpoena, just as many of his associates have resisted the committee’s demands. One of them, Steve Bannon, was even convicted for contempt of Congress. Whether or not the committee could compel Trump’s testimony in the abstract—and the legal and constitutional questions are complicated—doing so requires time that the committee likely doesn’t have. If Republicans retake the House in the midterm elections, the liquidation (or appropriation) of the committee will be one of their first orders of business.

But what is likely to happen, and what is legally enforceable, are not the same as what is right. The American people deserve to hear from Trump.

Much of today’s hearing was a summary of what the panel has laid out in previous sessions, arranged to make the case that Trump had a premeditated plan to contest the election and declare victory, no matter the results; that he knew he had lost and claimed victory anyway; that he lied in claiming election fraud; that he had a role in putting together the violent mob that assembled in Washington on January 6; and that he encouraged his supporters to march to the Capitol in full awareness that they were armed and would do harm...

The committee has unearthed an impressive amount of evidence about the paperwork coup before January 6 and about the planning and execution of the insurrection itself—far more than many observers, including me, expected. But some facts remain out of reach. Vice Chair Liz Cheney said that more than 30 people invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination before the committee. Others, such as former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, offered insightful testimony on many topics but refused to disclose conversations with Trump because of executive-privilege claims.

All of this is why the nation must hear from Trump himself. He is the one person best equipped to know what he planned before the election, what he was doing on January 6, and what he was thinking and feeling at the time. Although it is true that Trump is not always self-aware, and plain that he is exceptionally dishonest in his public statements, his language in sworn testimony is surprisingly honest and blunt, as I reported in 2018...

If Trump does fight the subpoena, or if he were to invoke his own Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, the implication would be clear for the public to see. The Fifth Amendment right is just that: a baseline constitutional right. A criminal defendant’s decision to invoke it is not admissible as evidence of guilt. But this is not a criminal proceeding. It is a political one, in every sense, and it is a matter of great importance for the safety of American democracy. The public deserves a chance to know what its president was doing in a pivotal moment and to make up its own mind about a political leader outside the artificial environment of a courtroom.

If Trump is too cowardly to tell the public, under oath, what really happened on January 6, that will be the clearest testimony the committee gathers to prove its theory...

It is obvious trump will fight the subpoena, and pray for the House to flip Republican this November - this is WHY the 81 million who showed up to vote him out in 2020 need to show up again this midterms to stop the Republicans from any win, hint fucking hint - so he can avoid accountability.

But the House Committee did something else this hearing: They made it clear they can refer their findings of possible criminal activities by trump and his insurrection plotters to the Department of Justice, which is currently outside of Republican reach. The DOJ is likely to file those charges to go alongside everything they're ready to do regarding trump's theft of White House documents when he left office in 2021. There's hints from the DOJ appeals that they are prepping to file charges over violations of the Presidential Records Act in the DC courts - nowhere near Mar-A-Lago and far away from Judge Cannon's reach - that have jurisdiction. 

The process needs to speed up, though. Gods help us, time is running short on exposing the crimes trump committed.

Just charge trump already and let justice be done...