The Racism That SCOTUS Just Allowed

Knew this day was coming ever since Mitch McConnell stole a Supreme Court seat away from Barack Obama. One of the driving missions of the Far Right lawyers and judges of the last 30 years has been to overturn the use of Affirmative Action in college applications, and today the heavily Far Right Supreme Court pretty much nuked that system from orbit. Via Amy Howe at SCOTUSBlog: 

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts explained that college admissions programs can consider race merely to allow an applicant to explain how their race influenced their character in a way that would have a concrete effect on the university. But a student “must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race,” Roberts wrote. The majority effectively, though not explicitly, overruled its 2003 decision in Grutter v. Bollinger, in which the court upheld the University of Michigan Law School’s consideration of race “as one factor among many, in an effort to assemble a student body that is diverse in ways broader than race.” Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett joined the Roberts opinion.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor – a graduate of Princeton and Yale Law School who once called herself “the perfect affirmative action baby” – dissented, in an opinion that was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Sotomayor emphasized that the majority’s decision had rolled “back decades of precedent and momentous progress” and “cement[ed] a superficial rule of colorblindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society.”

The reason race-based college admission practices existed in the first place was to confront the near century-long period of segregation in the American workplace, something determined by our educational backgrounds. Young people getting hired to the best jobs tend to graduate from the better-ranked universities. Having Harvard or Yale on your resume - or depending on your region, the University of Texas in that state or University of Florida in that one - opens doors that having Florida Poly or Middle Tennessee VoTech couldn't.

Even well-established Black colleges like Howard, Florida A&M, or Morehouse can't compete if someone with a Juris Doctorate from Stanford or a medical degree from Duke stepped through the door looking for a job.

It's also a question of diversity, of getting the demographics of the nation - if not the state that university was in - to reflect the communities these college students were going to join as adults. Given how the state of Mississippi is roughly 37 percent Black, would it make sense that Ole Miss or Southern Miss or Mississippi State be so segregated that the White students never meet a single Black student? That sort of segregation before the 1960s in our schools made it easier to maintain that segregation in our societies since the post-Reconstruction Era.

And yet, here comes Roberts' conservative court, declaring "race-neutral" should be in effect when deciding who gets to enter our higher education. Like as though other factors like gender, income, and family connections aren't as problematic. Hell, the worst thing in college enrollments are the Legacy applicants: Students who get in not because they're at the top of the class but because their parents or grandparents are alumni, especially the alums who donate million-dollar building projects as a quid pro quo.

When I got into the University of Florida back in 1988, I wasn't a Legacy (my mom was Auburn, and was sore disappoint none of her sons went War Eagle), nor was I disadvantaged. Affirmative Action had no discernable affect on me. I was White, yes, but I graduated in the top two percent of my high school and scored in the top five percent of the SATs that year and I had sufficient AP and dual enrollment credits to appease the registrar's office.

The thing for Affirmation Action was that it gave disadvantaged students - often poor, and in this systemic racist nation often ethnic minority - an equal opportunity that I had to apply and enroll at what was - and hopefully still is in spite of DeSantis' recent sabotage - the top university in the state, as well as one of the top universities when it came to business, education, medicine (major pharmacy program if I recall), and journalism (the reason I applied). As a result, I attended classes with several Black students, socially interacted with them on occasion - I was to my personal shame something of an introvert, which haunts me to this day - and had no negative experiences sharing the campus with them. The biggest negative experience I got was from a white graduate student who yelled at me for biking on the wrong side of the road.

With this ruling, the Supreme Court isn't exactly banning colleges from considering race when reviewing their applicants, but they can sure as hell ignore race when rejecting those disadvantaged kids in favor of more Legacy (read: White and Wealthy) students whose parents can pay into school endowment coffers more readily. 

Elie Mystal at the Nation has a more thorough and bitter debunking of the Supreme Court's moves today (paywalled):

It has been a long goodbye. The Supreme Court declared race consciousness in college admissions, also known as affirmative action, unconstitutional today. The vote was predictable, 6-3, with all the justices appointed by Republican presidents standing together to revoke the policy. The majority opinion was written by Chief Justice John Roberts himself, who ruled that affirmative action violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The 14th Amendment was, of course, written explicitly to revoke the racism practiced by whites against Blacks through their slaver’s Constitution, but Roberts doesn’t care about all that. His opinion attempts to capture the 14th Amendment and redeploy it to justify a white version of “color blindness” that just so happens to lock in a status quo that benefits whites...

But the death of affirmative action was not achieved merely through the machinations of Republican lawyers. While conservatives on the Supreme Court delivered the fatal blow, the policy has long been made vulnerable by the soft bigotry of parents, whose commitment to integration and equality turns cold the moment their little cherubs fail to get into their first choice of college or university. If you want to see a white liberal drop the pretense that they care about systemic racism and injustice, just tell them that their privately tutored kid didn’t get into whatever “elite” school they were hoping for... Some of the most horribly racist claptrap folks have felt comfortable saying to my face has been said in the context of people telling me why they don’t like affirmative action, or why my credentials are somehow “unearned” because they were “given” to me by affirmative action.

That last bit is in some ways the most devastating: Black people are attacked and shamed simply because the policy exists, regardless of whether it benefited them or not. I’ve had white folks whom I could standardize-test into a goddamn coma tell me that I got into school only because of affirmative action. I once talked to a white guy—whose parents’ name was on one of the buildings on campus—who asked me how it felt to know I got “extra help” to get in. The sheer nerve of white folks is sometimes jaw-dropping...

The actual cases decided today involve lawsuits brought by Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), a group of AAPI (Asian American/Pacific Islander) students organized by white conservative legal gadfly Ed Blum. Blum has made it his life’s work to destroy affirmative action, and in this case, he found plaintiffs eager to argue that affirmative action policies discriminate against AAPI students who don’t get into elite schools despite competitive grades and standardized test scores.

On the facts, Blum and SFFA are simply wrong. The district court (the finder of fact in our federal system) found that the universities do not intentionally discriminate against AAPI students—and, more specifically, that there is no evidence that affirmative action is hurting them. (I have written that I think Harvard does discriminate against AAPI applicants, but that discrimination has nothing to do with affirmative action.) What this means is the entire argument against affirmative action is based on the feelings of some students (and their parents) that they would have gotten into these schools if the schools admitted fewer Black people, but that too is a thin argument. Getting rid of affirmative action will neither require schools to admit more AAPI students nor force them to weigh so-called “merit-based” factors more heavily. In California, which ended its affirmative action policies over 25 years ago, the studies show that, without affirmative action, Black enrollment plummets, Latino enrollment plummets, AAPI enrollment goes up a little bit, and whites flood the remaining opportunities...

Policies like affirmative action, as I mentioned above, were first enacted in this country during Reconstruction. Any good-faith “originalist” argument would have to acknowledge that the authors of the 14th Amendment contemplated the use of affirmative action, and we know that because affirmative action was used in their own lifetimes, after the ratification of the amendment.

But the conservatives did not adopt originalism for its good-faith arguments. They’re not ending affirmative action to help Asian American students get into Harvard or UNC. The conservative majority is ending affirmative action because college admissions are maybe the only place in American life where being white isn’t an automatic benefit to the possessor of precious white skin...

To wit, historically, the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action have been white women. Women held only 35 percent of bachelor degrees before affirmative action policies were reintroduced; now, women’s enrollment in college outpaces men, and has for some time. Now, elite colleges and universities are giving men a boost in admissions considerations, because their grades and scores are not keeping pace with women’s.

Yet you’ll note that the Supreme Court did not ban gender consciousness in college admissions. Nor did it ban legacy consciousness, wealth consciousness, geographic consciousness, or athletic consciousness. Race, and only race, is the thing the conservatives don’t want colleges and universities to look at. Because race is the card white people use that never gets declined. It is their most powerful characteristic, the one through which all else is possible.

Even with what Mystal says, the response to today's end of Affirmative Action won't make it easier for White kids to enroll in the colleges of their choice. It's going to make it easier for mediocre RICH White kids who didn't earn the privilege to enroll in the top universities and force everyone else - even poor Whites with great grades - into lesser-valued schools.

The elitism is going to get worse.

Fuck Harvard and Yale. Fuck the Ivies. Fuck my alma mater UF if they dare decide to segregate again.

Start hiring more college grads from the universities that still push for student diversity in spite of the conservative outrage against them.

There has to be other ways to ensure diversity and merit in our educational system, if only to work towards ensuring that diversity and merit in our whole society. Access to higher education is one of the few equalizers we have in American society to undo the damage of centuries of racism, and this Supreme Court just took that away. There is nothing neutral or color-blind in the United States, conservative judges, stop pretending there is.

Who Run Trumptown?

Over at the Washington Monthly, David Atkins has kind of figured out the same thing I figured out back in 2015: The modern Republican Party is terrified of and yet still panders to the rage and racism of their Far Right voting base.

Trump is not just a danger to the country and an embarrassment to his party. He is also a proven electoral liability, having weighed down Republican fortunes in the last three election cycles. And yet, his legal problems have only elevated his positioning in the fight for the Republican presidential nomination against Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and the rest of the field. Even though the party leaders know Trump is a liability, they remain silent or vocally defend him.  

A normal, rational political party would jettison Trump and find a more reputable champion for its policies. But today’s Republican Party is not normal. It has seemingly abandoned basic political reasoning and lost its self-preservation instincts. Conventional wisdom in political science says the party decides who its nominees will be. But who makes the decisions in today’s GOP?

One answer is that Trump is in charge, singlehandedly bending the party to his will and putting his self-interest ahead of the party’s. But this explanation fails to explain why most influential conservatives and Republican leaders don’t try to change this dynamic.  

More importantly, it misreads Trump himself. The man has bigotries, manias, and obsessions and has done much to imprint them onto the Republican Party. But he is more a sheep than a shepherd. His fervently held opinions reflect what he last saw on TV or social media. He usually agrees with whomever he spoke to most recently...

It's not so much that donald trump is in control of the GOP: It's that the only type of leadership the GOP voting base will respond to are those who will pander and instigate the same ways trump does. Watch how DeSantis is doing his damnedest to punish immigrants and attack liberals over "Woke" issues. He's doing the best trump impersonation he can, if not to usurp trump's position but to fill the void when trump eventually falls. 

His criminal indictments may eventually doom trump, but the specter of trumpism is now embedded into the Republicans' collective psyche until the party itself crashes and burns. In short: For the Republicans it's now trumps all the way down.

Feeding into that doom is a Far Right media industry that profits immensely from their constant fearmongering to keep the MAGA voters entranced and enraged. But that very pandering makes that media terrified of losing their audiences, which drives them into self-inflicted damage like the Dominion defamation lawsuit:

Fox News and other conservative media outlets are often credited with being the real leaders. There is something to this: Republican politicians are far more afraid of Fox News personalities than vice versa.  

However, one interesting result of the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit was the revelation that Fox News is terrified of its own viewers. Fox News executives feared that if they failed to toe the line on Trump’s lies about the election and many other issues, their viewers would abandon them for competing far-right TV networks Newsmax and One America News Network...

It doesn't help that Newsmax is facing their own lawsuits on the matter and could well be forced to stop pandering to their viewers... but that would kill off their audience and their profits. They're now stuck in that Catch-22 as well.

Nor are the billionaire GOP donors really in charge. The famed Koch network pulled its support from Trump long ago and has launched a so far unsuccessful campaign to defeat him because they believe he cannot win a general election. Newly empowered MAGA politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz are not darlings of the donor class, who prefer less overtly divisive candidates who will cut taxes for the wealthy without disrupting global trade.

The deep-pocket donors are stuck because they have nowhere to go to deny or delay a Democratic Party that would likely end their tax cut cash grabs and regulate their capital gains to - gasp - help the poor. They could afford to start a third party, but they don't have enough gullible candidates to put on the ballots to replace the existing Republican Party, and any splitting of the ballots could either give the Dems more legislative control or worse let trump back in the White House where his misrule would lead to global economic chaos.

As Atkins concludes, the Republican Party leadership created a monster in their lab: An unthinking, ill-informed voter base driven by decades of Culture War insanity to act with malice towards "the Dread Other" to where they can't dial it back. All that fear and hate the Far Right media - pushed by GOP officials to win elections for offices they can't govern - sold in the public forum were like drugs, addicting that voter base. And like any addict, the Far Right voters need stronger and bigger doses to feel the same highs.

It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the GOP base is in control of the party. Trump succeeds because he appears to be one of them. He vents their rage, watches the same television, shares the same vitriolic personality, and wears the same hatreds. He is less their leader than their reflection. Fox News is expert not at manipulating the base—though its editorial choices do certainly accomplish that to some extent—but at stoking its outrage. Big donors don’t so much generate the passions around which the base revolves as they help provide the financial fuel to turn those passions into electoral victories and legislative action...

It's all one big circle jerk: The billionaire donors keep feeding in the money to the wingnut media who gives trump every outlet to spew outrage and keep the audiences fired up as raging hate machines. It's just the group behind the wheel of this clown car are now the MAGA voter hate addicts. Everyone else in the GOP are hanging on in the back seats for dear life.

The problem is that in our skewed two-party electoral system of Winner-Take-All and partisan epistemic bubbles, we face the dangerous reality that the MAGA voter hate addicts can end up driving the national bus, and drive us all over the cliff.

For the love of GOD, to everyone else NOT in the MAGA bubble, please stop voting Republican. It's the only honest way to end their cycle of self-immolation and even help them recover to some semblance of Eisenhower normalcy.

Russia Rushing Toward Collapse (w/ Update)

Holy shit things are moving fast. 

Last night, the head of the mercenary Wagner group turned against the Russian military they were working with in Ukraine, seizing a key command HQ and twisting the knife into Putin's corrupt rule. The early hours of the turning created a lot of chaos, as Adam L Silverman the Intel expert at Balloon Juice tried to make sense of the early reports, conflicting stories, possible staged grievances, and other picture postcards:

As  I write this Prigozhin, supposedly leading Wagner, has announced that he’s moving on Moscow to deal with Minister of Defense Shoigu and the senior military staff/leadership who have failed Russia, the Russian people, and Vladimir Putin with both how they’ve prosecuted the reinvasion of Ukraine and how they’ve misled Putin. Not a coup, just a long overdue violent annual performance eval. In response the Fortress Plan – the security crisis action plan for municipal defense – has been activated for Rostov on Don and for Moscow. And the FSB, the Russian successor to the Soviet KGB, has either opened a criminal case or actually charged Prigozhin for violating the laws regarding not disparaging the military during the Special Military Operation and/or calling for armed rebellion. I’ve also seen reports that the St. Petersburg Police and/or Russian Special Forces have raided Wagner’s St. Petersburg offices.

Silverman adds among the Twitter feeds he's relying on for commentary that:

Other than videos and some audio released on social media THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE THAT THE RUSSIAN MOD BOMBARDED A WAGNER REAR BASE OR THAT WAGNER, LED BY PRIGOZHIN IS MOVING OUT OF THE DONBAS, THROUGH RUSSIA, AND TOWARDS MOSCOW!!!!!

(This is presented in the BOLD CAPS LOCK mode that he's working with)

In Silverman's opinion, if Prigozhin was triggered by something it wasn't any kind of attack. Personally, my money is on the likelihood that the Russian military wanted to take direct control of the Wagner units to counter-attack Ukraine's counter-attack currently underway, and Prigozhin didn't want to deal with their sorry asses anymore (Update: I was kind of right. Prigozhin was refusing to sign contracts with the Ministry of Defense that would have taken away his control over his private army).

Silverman then spools together a Twitter thread by Tatiana Stanovaya, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, which I'll copy here:

Here are a few insights into the situation surrounding Prigozhin:

1️⃣ For a long time, Prigozhin has been out of direct contact with Putin, yet he’s believed he was acting in Putin’s interests “by default”. His significant contributions in the war enhanced his sense of exclusivity and privilege.

2️⃣ The President’s administration maintained the stance that unless explicitly directed, it wasn’t feasible to openly confront Prigozhin, despite a strong inclination to do so. In fact, they had even convinced themselves of his usefulness.

3️⃣ As I’ve previously stated, the atrocities of war can drive people to the brink of sanity. Even the most loyal players, who are dependent on the Kremlin (which doesn’t imply complete manageability), can lose their sense of proportion. This is especially true when there appears to be no response to the continual attempts to escalate the situation.

4️⃣ Now that the state has actively engaged, there’s no turning back. The termination of Prigozhin and Wagner is imminent. The only possibility now is absolute obliteration, with the degree of resistance from the Wagner group being the only variable. Surovikin was dispatched to convince them to surrender. Confrontation seems totally futile.

5️⃣ The impending end of Wagner has satisfied many in power. He had become excessively anti-state, which is intolerable during a war. However, a significant number of those outside of power now lament the loss of a character like Prigozhin, who had begun to appeal due to his daring and audacity. Consequently, political repercussions are expected.

A crucial point to note is that many within the elite will now personally fault Putin for letting the situation escalate to such extremes and for his lack of a timely, adequate response when to many it was evident that Prigozhin was pushing the limits of Kremlin’s tolerance. Therefore, this entire saga is also an undercut to Putin’s standing...

Even if Putin puts down Prigozhin's betrayal/coup attempt, this weakens Putin's own standing. He'll also be eliminating one of the few effective fighting forces he has in Ukraine, as the Wagner mercs will either flee or refuse to fight under the command of Russian generals they know are corrupt and inept.

The flip-side of that - as I was waking up to this morning as Prigozhin's attempt is still ongoing - is if Wagner succeeds in overthrowing the Russian military command or even Putin himself, utter chaos reigns. A demoralized army - already broken by a meat-grinder war in Ukraine - will have no idea who's truly in charge. Unless Prigozhin is primed and able to assume full command - and show any tactical and strategical skill needed to maneuver a large-scale military offensive - he's simply going to take over a bad job and make it worse for Russia.

The political implications of this coup are enormous. As long as Putin is in charge of anything, Prigozhin won't be able to dictate terms to the government (the "legislature" and "courts" however legitimate they are). There's also the reality of the oligarchs allied to Putin, and determining which way they'll jump (which will always be to favor their own pockets).

When I woke this morning, this was the current reporting from the international newswire Reuters: TANKS - okay, maybe just one so far - ARE ROLLING ONTO MOSCOW.

ROSTOV-ON-DON/VORONEZH, Russia, June 24 (Reuters) - Russian military helicopters opened fire on Saturday afternoon on a convoy of rebel mercenaries already more than half way towards Moscow in a lightning advance after seizing a southern city overnight.

President Vladimir Putin vowed to crush an armed mutiny he compared to Russia's Civil War a century ago.

Fighters from Yevgeny Prigozhin's private Wagner militia were in control of Rostov-on-Don, a city of more than a million people close to the border with Ukraine, and were rapidly advancing northwards through western Russia...

Prigozhin, whose private army fought the bloodiest battles in Ukraine even as he feuded for months with the top brass, said he had captured the headquarters of Russia's Southern Military District in Rostov after leading his forces into Russia from Ukraine.

In Rostov, which serves as the main rear logistical hub for Russia's entire invasion force, residents milled about, filming on mobile phones, as Wagner fighters in armoured vehicles and battle tanks took up positions.

One tank was wedged between stucco buildings with posters advertising the circus. Another had "Siberia" daubed in red paint across the front, a clear statement of intent to sweep across the breadth of Russia.

In Moscow, there was an increased security presence on the streets. Red Square was blocked off by metal barriers.

"Excessive ambitions and vested interests have led to treason," Putin said in a televised address, comparing the insurrection at a time of war abroad to Russia's revolution and civil war unleashed during World War One.

"All those who deliberately stepped on the path of betrayal, who prepared an armed insurrection, who took the path of blackmail and terrorist methods, will suffer inevitable punishment, will answer both to the law and to our people."

Putin's saying this while on Twitter - instant news whether you want it or not - the observers are chortling "Moscow in 3" (either hours or days, they haven't agreed on which) as an ironic echo to Putin's 2022 decree of taking Kyiv in 3 days.

Kiev in 3 days has become Moscow in 3 days.

— Darth Putin (@DarthPutinKGB) June 24, 2023

This is all still chaos. Meanwhile in Ukraine, the fighting hasn't stopped. Russian troops are still holding their defensive positions in the Donbas and southeastern half of that country. Unless Putin decides he needs his troops back in Russia to stay in power, or if Prigozhin takes control and orders them back to consolidate himself, this war isn't going to be over anytime soon.

But if Putin does indeed fall from power, this seriously changes everything. He has tied himself into so many elements of Russia - the political corruption and the economic corruption and the religious corruption and the cultural corruption - that there is no idea what could rise up to fill that void.

Putin's dream of empire is still a nightmare for the rest of us, even as it crashes down around him.

Update: Not more than six hours after I blogged this, there's a tentative peace deal between Putin and Prigozhin. Via Reuters:

Heavily armed Russian mercenaries who advanced most of the way to Moscow began turning back on Saturday, de-escalating a major challenge to President Vladimir Putin's grip on power, in a move their leader said would avoid bloodshed.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former Putin ally and founder of the Wagner army, said his men reached within 125 miles (200 km) of the capital. Earlier, Moscow deployed soldiers in preparation for their arrival and told residents to avoid going out.

The Wagner fighters captured the city of Rostov hundreds of miles to the south before racing in convoy through the country, transporting tanks and armoured trucks and smashing through barricades set up to stop them, video showed...

The office of Alexander Lukashenko said the decision to halt further movement of Wagner fighters was brokered by the Belarusian president, with Putin's approval, in return for guarantees for their safety.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Prigozhin himself will move to Belarus under the deal. Peskov said Lukashenko had offered to mediate because he had known the mercenary leader personally for around 20 years...

To have Putin's puppet regime in Belarus broker this deal is merely one part of the overall humiliation brought to Putin's table. Throughout this crisis, Russia's own military failed to respond in full against a "turncoat" private army, highlighting the low morale and poor discipline plaguing the regular forces. Prigozhin made faster advancements marching into Russia within 24 hours where it took him and his Wagner brigades over three months to achieve anything at Bakhmut.

Despite all the assurances between the two sides ("We ARE struggling together!"), how can there be any trust now between Prigozhin and Putin? Prigo's gonna have to watch every drink handed to him and sleep with one eye open and avoid tall buildings for however long Putin's on this Earth. Putin is going to have to deal with the consequences of a failing military that may still mutiny themselves if he cracks down too harshly on them for this failure, and worry that Prigozhin's popularity with a Russian population that worships basic competence can still undermine him.

It should be noted that making any kind of deal like this is a mug's game. A deal with a Russian is no deal at all. The question is, which Russian is going to break it first?

A Simple Question (w/ Update)

(Update: Many thanks again to Batocchio for adding this article to Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up on 06/22/23. Please take a few minutes to peruse the other articles I've written, and please leave comments!)

To all of the Far Right, MAGA-driven Republican voters siding with donald trump on his allegations of his indictments being a "WITCH HUNT" I ask a simple question.

Do you honestly think that all of these criminal charges and indictments on trump would happen to Chris Christie if he had been your 2016 Presidential candidate and had upset Hillary in the Electoral College?

I use Christie as a "what if" example as the then-governor of New Jersey was neck-deep in the Bridgegate scandal that had erupted over the partisan closing of an interstate highway bridge. Allegations about misuse of federal relief aid after Hurricane Sandy were still rampant. A lot of questionable criminal allegations surrounded Christie more than 8 years ago.

The result in real life was that Christie avoided a courtroom. The federal and state investigations couldn't prove enough against him on many of those allegations and he skated. The Supreme Court overturned the convictions of two of his staffers who were involved in the bridge closing. One thing about a career politician like him is that he knows how to create plausible deniability between himself and his handlers. If he had been President, it certainly would have put a hold on the investigations (bloody OLC memo, mutter grumble).

But would a former President Christie be facing a "witch hunt" today by vengeful Democratic/liberal leadership of the Biden administration? There could have been a few unanswered questions after 2021 that Biden's people could have reopened to make Christie's life a living hell. And yet, no it did not happen.

Has there been a history - I'm thinking back to LBJ, who could be that petty - of previous Democratic Presidencies that turned the Justice Department into the Vengeance Department, anything that would suggest something like that happening now towards trump or any other Far Right figure? There were and still are a number of partisan Republican annoyances who could be jailed just for being so, but yet you don't see that happening (yet. To be honest: the January 6 Grand Jury may drop that hammer soon). For the love of GOD, Matt Gaetz is still a free man because the FBI and DOJ were not able to find enough evidence and credible eyewitness testimony - Gaetz's cohort Greenberg was compromised, and the teen girl Gaetz abused refused to testify - to bring him to court. 

Also, there's no evidence that Christie would have risen to the level of criminal behavior - especially with the theft of classified documents and obstructive attempts to keep them - that trump has. Character still matters in the formation of Presidential behavior, and while Christie can be a bully there's no evidence he is as narcissistic as trump to where Christie would have crossed the lines trump has.

You could also ask if there's been a history of previous Republican Presidencies that tried to make the Justice Department the Vengeance Department, but for what I've learned the closest was Nixon's administration going after Anti-War protestors like the Chicago Eight. 

You can ask that simple question at the beginning of this article not only using Christie but of every other credible 2016 primaries choice for the GOP: Would Jeb Bush have done the things trump has? Would Marco Rubio? Would Scott Walker? Would John Kasich? Hell, would Ted Cruz be as stupid and crooked as trump when it comes to violating the federal laws - stealing classified documents, obstructing investigations, inciting insurrection and violence towards Congress - trump is alleged doing?

Let us be honest here: If the Republican voting base had not gone for donald trump, if they had agreed that their standard bearer could have been any of the other 2016 candidates, the Republican nominee would have been someone better versed and more savvy about the political and legal systems. That person would have had a (slightly) stronger Character. That candidate (and President) would have avoided the traps trump happily jumped into. And there would be nothing today for the federal justice system - which isn't liberal by nature, but has to uphold laws in as consistent a manner as possible - to pursue for indictments, either legitimately or for "witch hunts".

No. Everything that is happening to trump - every criminal charge getting laid at his feet - is tied directly to trump's nature as a con artist grifter obsessed with money, power, and leverage (or as his Russian buddies call it Kompromat). It has nothing to do with trump being conservative, or Republican, or Christian, or "great". It has everything to do with trump being a crook his entire adult life.

trump is calling it all "WITCH HUNT" not only because he's desperate to avoid criminal conviction, he is also convinced that the legal system is meant to inflict witch hunts and punishments on political opponents in the first place. You can look to how he pushed for dubious "investigations" into Hillary's 2016 campaign for "illegally spying on him" all of which ended up as John Durham's Special Counsel inquiries... which all ended with no proof of trump's allegations and acquittals on the two cases Durham brought to trial.

Durham's failures should in truth prove that the American legal system - from the federal courts to the Justice Department to the FBI to even the state police and courts - tries its best to avoid political attacks in spite of trump's accusations (and hopes, should he return to power). The legal system is not based on Narrative - the opinions and unproven fears of the partisan hacks - but on Fact - the evidence gathered, the testimony of witnesses, the relevant matters - and on the Facts trump is either lying to the public or he's lying to himself. It can be both.

Again, this is the simple question: If it had been anyone else in the White House other than trump, would we be honestly seeing criminal indictments on the things trump has done (and hilariously enough, things he's openly bragging about)?

Here is the simple answer: No. This is all on trump.

The horrifying thing is how the rest of the Republican Party now wants to behave like trump.

This is not going to get better anytime soon. 

And yet, let justice be done.

Update: Later today I saw reports from the Washington Post that the FBI and key Justice Department figures fought against any kind of investigation into trump's misconduct in the Presidency. This partly fits my argument that the federal law enforcement agencies are not "witch hunting" as trump proclaims, but this does point to a troubling unwillingness by the FBI and DOJ to hold ANY high-level figure accountable (as long as that figure isn't Hillary). That it took the DOJ almost a full year to open investigations into trump's involvement in the January 6th riot, and that the department dragged out the efforts by the National Archives to recover the stolen classified documents, signals how slow this move towards justice truly is.

There's a ticking clock here, America, and if trump delays any justice until Election Day 2024, we may well be screwed forever.

Speed it up, Garland. Let justice truly be done.

My Thoughts On Calls By Beltway Elites To Pardon trump

So now that the indictments are starting to pile up, the Who's Who among the "centrist" (actually conservative) punditry in Washington are calling on President Biden to "become the statesman" and offer donald trump a blanket pardon for all sins "in order to unite the nation."

There are so many things wrong with that Beltway opinion it took me forty-two minutes to puke my guts out. I'm better now, still angry about it though...

The first thing wrong with Marc Thiessen and Danielle Plekta's proposal is that trump himself would never accept a pardon. Even he would recognize the pitfalls that would put him in. Above all, he loses the Fifth Amendment protection from self-incrimination on anything that pardon covered. If that covers his tax evasion stunts, that can block him from every business scam he knows to pull off. trump himself may remain protected but everyone who worked for him - could work for him - is screwed. It would cut himself off from every lackey he needs. It also opens him to Civil lawsuits on everything considered under the pardon. He will be stuck in courtrooms until the end of his days.

(There's a reason trump never issued a blanket pardon to the January 6th rioters and even his congressional allies who begged for them: They would have been compelled to testify on him as the DOJ/Special Counsel Smith's office went after trump for inciting it)

The next reason trump would never accept a pardon is that accepting such a thing would be an admission he did something criminal. It would go against his years-long screaming about "WITCH HUNTS" that fuels his "I'm the victim" narrative. He and his MAGA followers could pretend otherwise, but the mainstream media and millions of other Americans - not to mention the world - will never let trump live it down.

Somewhere in the back of trump's mind will be the thought that someone like Joe Biden can use that pardon to exact concessions from trump. Ever the mob boss, trump thinks in terms of "kompromat" all the time (one of the big reasons why trump held onto valued classified documents against foreign powers). Even if Biden takes the high road as Thiessen and Plekta suggest and issue a blanket pardon with no conditions, it will gnaw at trump that he will somehow owe Biden on this and trump's pride will make him reject that pardon.

But those are not the reasons why the Beltway pundits pushing for a pardon are wrong on this.

Above all, these pundits are wrong to claim that a pardon will "unite the nation" and let us "move on."

There are at least 81 million Americans - the number who voted for Biden - who will never accept trump escaping the justice of a courtroom and conviction. All they will see is a system of justice that punishes the lower rungs of the nation - the poor, the ones who can't afford lawyers, the low-ranking members of the military or civic administration who broke espionage and obstruction laws committing fewer crimes than trump has - while the power elites give themselves "Get Out of Jail Free" cards in order to continue their criminal acts down the road.

There will be at least 74 million Americans - the number who voted for trump - who will celebrate and crow that "their" boy donald trump "outwitted" the libruls who "hunted" trump as though winning cheap political points were the objective instead of upholding the Constitution and our belief in justice for all. Their behavior - already bullying and offensive towards those they hate - will get worse with the idea that as long as their Patron Saint trump is untouchable they can do whatever they like.

There will be no peace if trump is pardoned. There also will be no peace if trump is convicted in a court of law, there are no illusions about that, but at least there will be justice done.

No, the only real reason why the Beltway media is eager for Biden to issue trump a pardon is that it gets themselves - the blowhards, the opinionated, the often-wrong - off the hook for wasting 40 years of everyone's time on a Reagan Era Fantasy of (Conservative) Prosperity and Happiness that was never real.

These "Pardon trump" pundits are the same ones who went after the Clintons - especially Hillary - for slights and misdeeds without mercy or reason, they're the same ones who attacked Obama for any perceived flaw. These are the same pundits who gave Bush the Elder a pass when he issued pardons to everyone convicted or facing investigation into Iran-Contra. These are the same pundits who failed to go after Bush the Lesser for covering up the Plame Scandal by getting Scooter Libby commuted to time served, and told Liberals to "let it go" when they screamed about investigating Bush and Cheney for their lies that led to an unwinnable occupation of Iraq and a torture regime - that Thiessen himself cheers on - that blemished our global prestige.

Lemme ask you this, Mr. Thiessen: If Hillary Clinton had been charged and convicted on her secret server and her emails back in 2017-18, would you be calling on then-President trump to pardon her for the good of the nation?

What's happening here is that the Beltway talking heads, having built up their careers pushing a "Both Sides" narrative that equated Republican corruption to Democratic corruption, are running out of excuses for their lazy work. If they could point out the flaws and follies of Democratic elected officials, they did so in the desire to downplay or negate the sins committed by their Republican counterparts.

But they can't do that with trump's pending criminal charges on espionage, obstruction, and (hopefully soon) incitement to insurrection. There are no equivalents among the Democrats that make trump disappear from the judicial media coverage, there is no story out there to distract the Right-leaning media elites from the reality that their conservatism is clearly more corrupt than liberalism.

trump himself is trying to get the media to carry the stories about Bill Clinton keeping his memoir audiotapes in his socks drawer (which was investigated and the DOJ determined no laws were broken), and doing his damnedest to indict Joe Biden for having his Senatorial papers stored in a car garage (ignoring the reality that congressional paperwork follows different federal laws and guidelines). The wingnut pundits would love to spread those stories in the court of public opinion, but they are going to go nowhere in a real-life court of law where trump's crimes will attract attention across every corner of the globe.

So, I would say "HELL NO" to any attempt by Biden to pardon trump. President Biden, you will not be doing this nation or the world any favors by letting donald trump off the hook for the crimes he's committed.

You will only let the useless talking heads in our national media off the hook for being wrong for so long.

Indictment Day In Miami, Again the Question: Will There Be Violence?

Back in March, when the New York Manhattan's District Attorney's Office was set to indict donald trump at the state level, I wrote Will There Be Violence? as trump was signaling to his MAGA followers to show up at the courthouse to start a ruckus.

It was clear trump wanted the same disruption as he had gotten on January 6th, but with better results (reminder about the adage "insanity is repeating the same mistake and expecting different results"). 

When those indictments came, the protest turnout was by all accounts meager: There were more reporters than Proud Boys. No violence took place, no officers of the court were intimidated, and people went back in line to wait for the new Super Mario movie at the cinemas.

Today, there's a new indictment drama playing out, this time in Miami FL, with higher stakes as trump is facing federal indictments on major felonies like Obstruction and Espionage.

trump and his MAGA allies spent the weekend since last Thursday's reveal making the same noises made back in March, calling on protestors to show up in big numbers and with the implied threats that violence will happen. So again, we're playing a repeat: Will there be violence from trump's Far Right base?

It would be nice to say "It'll be as quiet as Manhattan," except there are different factors at play for Miami.

Above all, there's a stronger, more organized conservative (and pro-trump) faction in South Florida, due to the high number of anti-Castro Cuban-Americans who view anything to the left of Ronald Reagan as Communism.

There's the history: Miami is where the Brooks Brothers Riot took place in 2000, successfully disrupting the recount efforts in Dade County to where it virtually guaranteed Bush the Lesser would win the contested state. Even though that riot - of Far Right men in business suits led by Roger Stone - clearly interfered with election officials in violation of federal and state laws, no one was ever held accountable for that, and so there's that baseline of thinking "we can get away with this."

Also remember the mad pipe bomber of 2018? Turned out to be a South Florida trumpian supporter with anger management issues. And across much of Florida itself (oh Gods, trust me on this), you'll have hundreds of angry MAGA guys (and gals) just like him.

To counter-argue, there's the fact that - just like the swift indictment announcement in New York - there hasn't been a lot of time to plan and organize for the MAGA protestors to get an idea of how they'll react once they get to the Miami courthouse. On the flip side of that, ever since January 6th local and federal law enforcement are taking the threats of MAGA violence more serious and are likely to ramp up security around downtown Miami to prevent another riot (it helps that trump and his handlers are in no position to interfere with security like they did ahead of January 6).

There's also the paranoia among the MAGA faithful that this will be a trap. trump promised them a revolution on January 6, but instead the Far Right witnessed Congress still approving Biden's election while half of the MAGA protestors ended up in jail (with trump failing to mass-pardon the insurrectionists as they had hoped). There are individuals on social media and reportedly in the Dark Web making open calls to violence, but the overall sense is that in-person rioting is too high risk.

I am wary of the overall situation. I had hoped the January 6 situation wouldn't erupt into violence, and yet it did. I have lived most of my life in Florida and I can get a certain understanding of the goddamned wingnuts who surround me. This is a state on mental edge, dominated by elected Republican leaders who fearmonger at the citizenry daily and with constant displays of Florida Man forms of violence.

I doubt there will be an organized or planned riot, but a chaotic one will be just as dangerous. If trump protestors do show up, they will likely be constrained by a more prepared police/federal presence. But the spillage from contained spaces into the streets of downtown Miami itself will increase the likelihood of assaults towards innocent passers-by or local workers/residents caught in the storm.

If you have no business being in downtown Miami today, DON'T GO. There are perfectly good beaches to visit instead. If you have business in downtown Miami today, call in sick and enjoy the beaches. If you can't avoid being in downtown Miami, stay safe, move in numbers, and keep your heads down.

Crazy Tuesday today. 

trump's Only Defense

Randy lay there like a slug. It was his only defense!
- from A Christmas Story

Twitter was atwitter today when word got out that donald trump - facing criminal indictment in a South Florida courtroom this Tuesday - was struggling to find a local lawyer as required by law to represent him in that courtroom.

NBC News: Trump's arraignment can't go forward unless he finds local counsel — and it's unclear whether he has.

At least one prominent Miami-based defense attorney has turned down Trump.

If Trump doesn't find local counsel, the surrender and first appearance will still happen,…

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) June 12, 2023

He's checking the billboards on way from airport for a good accident lawyer.

— Walter Williams (@WaltTheStalt) June 12, 2023

Jokes about forcing trump to take on a Public Defender - like an alleged billionaire was unable to afford one - quickly filled up the boards. Which did bring up a valid question: ARE there public defenders who can appear in a Florida court who are versed in Espionage Act and Obstruction cases?

The reality of trump's situation is more complex than this. he DOES have lawyers representing him in this federal matter, but none of them are currently licensed to practice in front of this Florida district court. Hence the need to find someone local, and someone versed in these legal matters. The story is that nobody sane - even among a legal market bound to have a number of conservative Cuban-American lawyers with some experience in these matters (due to a lot of Cuban spying, global intrigue, what have you) - wants to touch a client like trump who won't even consider the seriousness of these charges and how he's misrepresenting the mountain of evidence against him. Via Gabriella Ferrigine at Salon:

Trump has been turned down by multiple attorneys, according to The Messenger, and NBC News' Ken Dilanian reported that if the former president cannot find someone by Tuesday, "the arraignment may have to be postponed."

"The surrender and first appearance will happen regardless," he tweeted. 

The Guardian's Hugo Lowell reported that Trump will spend Monday meeting with potential attorneys but is currently expected to be represented by his New York lawyer Todd Blanche and Florida attorney Chris Kise, who was reportedly sidelined last year after urging Trump to calm tensions with Justice Department investigators.

Trump is also represented by Linsdsey Halligan, an inexperienced Florida attorney he hired last year during another stretch when he struggled to find prominent attorneys to represent him.

"No offense to Ms. Halligan but this is an Espionage Act prosecution of a former president," tweeted national security attorney Bradley Moss. "The idea an insurance lawyer will have to take point on this right now is simply unacceptable..."

Trump's struggles come after two of his attorneys in the Mar-a-Lago case, Jim Trusty and John Rowley, resigned from his defense team just hours after the indictment...

The Messenger reported that Trump's legal team has interviewed six Southern Florida law firms thus far but many have passed on the opportunity to work for the ex-president, largely owing to his inflammatory and polarizing nature. 

"The problem is none of us want to work for the guy. He's a nightmare client," a leading federal criminal defense lawyer in the Southern District of Florida told the outlet, also commenting on the ongoing rumors of infighting and deep-seated distrust amongst Trump's legal team...

The "nightmare" client may refer to the facts that A) trump keeps blabbing about the crimes he did as though he was already exonerated, behavior which would drive any defense lawyer crazy; and B) trump can never consider a plea deal - something most of these lawyers would argue in favor if only to keep their client out of jail on a misdemeanor - because his ego won't accept admitting he was guilty in any way. 

Unspoken in the article are reports that trump's been failing to pay his lawyers on time.

Also unspoken in that article is the possibility that this situation is exactly what trump wants.

Ferrigine does note that if trump is unable to find adequate representation in this courtroom, it delays the arraignment process. This falls into a recognizable legal pattern for trump: Delay Delay Delay, something he's done over and over in Civil court proceedings to weasel his way out of paying people what he owed them.

It is a tactic that works in Civil matters: However, it might not work for Criminal cases like this.

Jack Smith is already on record saying he wants a speedy trial, with a legal system in place that can fast-track this to a 70-day start date (placing this in late August 2023!). If Smith gets his way, trump will be seeing the courtroom well before any primary debates even start, and could well be convicted before 2024 even rolls onto the calendar.

trump's inability to find legal counsel is one of the loopholes in the Speedy Trial Act that he could abuse to try and stretch this matter out for a year, and even appeal decisions to prolong the fight over the trial's start as much as possible. trump is likely going to do this because, quite honestly, trump has no other legal defense at all.

The 37-count indictment is replete with evidence of trump caught on tape bragging about the classified documents in his possession. Prosecutors have more evidence of trump intentionally shifting and hiding the boxes whenever the FBI and Justice Department came knocking with subpoenas between 2021 and 2022, knowingly obstructing them. And given the Espionage charges, it's likely the government has proof he's exposed national top secrets to people - and worse, selling or trading those secrets - he shouldn't have. trump's own guard dog former AG Bill Barr said on Fox Not-News this weekend: "If even half of this is true, he's toast."

trump's attempts to twist around the legal definitions of the Presidential Records Act and Espionage Acts will likely fall on deaf ears, even with a deferential judge overseeing the trial. Without any kind of legal standing to offer a jury, trump's only other option is to attack the DOJ and the Special Counsel directly. he's already screaming on social media - WITCH HUNT! - to undermine the legality of the government itself bringing the charges against him. But even that may alienate the courtroom he has to win over: Witness the other recent trials where trump's organization was found guilty, and trump found liable for sexual assault against Carroll. trump used similar attack methods there and the jurors - even with people who voted for him - still ruled against him.

Any jury trial on these charges are a risk for trump. So he's going to use the only defense he knows: Delay everything until it favors himself, preferably to where he's stolen the 2024 elections and lied/bullied/tricked his way back into a White House where he can get a new Attorney General to shut everything down.

The only sane response to any delay tactic is to deny trump the satisfaction. he's supposed to have the money to afford a good lawyer. There ought to be ways for the courts to appoint an attorney - something called a "Panel Attorney" if I'm reading this properly - to handle trump's matters in that courtroom. If that's not applicable, I wonder if Smith's Special Counsel could argue to change venue to a location - like say Washington DC, where lawyers versed on Espionage cases are falling out of the trees - that can resolve trump's need to find an attorney or rely on the ones he already has.

No more delays for trump. By all evidence, trump has been delaying justice since the 1980s. he is way overdue for accountability before the law.

Let justice be done. Preferably before Halloween so "trump in prison garb" costumes can get sold at those Spirit Halloween shops that crop up in September.

Buh-Bye, Brexit Boris

A grand day for exposing conservative douchebaggery across the globe. Boris Johnson has just straight-up resigned from Parliament (via Rowena Mason at The Guardian): 

Boris Johnson is standing down immediately as a Conservative MP after an investigation into the Partygate scandal found he misled parliament and recommended a lengthy suspension from the House of Commons.

The former prime minister angrily accused the investigation of trying to drive him out, and claimed there was a “witch-hunt under way, to take revenge for Brexit and ultimately to reverse the 2016 referendum result”.

In a bitter 1,000-word statement, he attacked Rishi Sunak’s government, blaming the current prime minister for rising taxes, not being Conservative enough and failing to make the most of Brexit.

Johnson hinted that he may try to make a return to politics, saying he was “very sad to be leaving parliament – at least for now”.

I personally can't see how Boris Badhair returns to politics. He's burned every bridge and goodwill he's ever had including within his own party. He's only quitting now because the suspension he was threatened with - 10 days of it - would have triggered an automatic by-election. He had to know he was going to lose in an election where it was him alone on the platform, and forced to explain how badly he performed as Prime Minister and as a human being.

Blaming Sunak for Brexit's failure is of course a charming way for Boris to deflect how his own screw-ups and obsessions with pushing a harsh No-Deal break from the EU is why Brexit never worked out the way he lied promised it would.

Can't wait to see how Chris Grey blogs about this over the weekend.

But man. trump getting hit with serious federal charges, and now Boris Johnson fleeing in shame from his own party. I wanna get a hat trick here people, let's hit the trifecta. C'MON GOD, HIT PUTIN WITH A LIGHTNING BOLT TONIGHT.

The Stakes for the Rule of Law vs. trump (w/ Update)

MAGA trump voter: My President committed 37 counts of federal criminality!
Every sane person who voted for Hillary and then Biden: In a row?
-- I'm Gen Xer dammit, of course I fucking quote from Clerks

So, the day after the big announcement, more details emerged as the Special Counsel moved to unseal the indictments (because trump just wouldn't shut up about them on social media).

Special Counsel Jack Smith showed up, gave a brief speech about the importance of national security, the seriousness of obstruction and espionage, the right of trump (and fellow defendant Walt Nauta) to presumption of innocence before a court of law, and the need for a speedy trial. (via Emily Olson and Barbara Sprunt at NPR): 

"We have one set of laws in this country and they apply to everyone," Smith said. "Adhering to and applying the laws is what determines the outcome of an investigation. Nothing more, nothing less...

"Today, an indictment was unsealed charging Donald J. Trump with felony violations of our national security laws, as well as participating in a conspiracy to obstruct justice.

"This indictment was voted by a grand jury of citizens in the Southern District of Florida. And I invite everyone to read it in full to understand the scope and the gravity of the crimes charged.

"The men and women of the United States intelligence community and our Armed Forces dedicate their lives to protecting our nation and its people.

"Our laws that protect national defense information are critical to the safety and security of the United States and they must be enforced.

"Violations of those laws put our country at risk.

"Adherence to the rule of law is a bedrock principle of the Department of Justice, and our nation's commitment to the rule of law sets an example for the world...

"It's very important for me to note that the defendants in this case must be presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

"To that end, my office will seek a speedy trial on this matter consistent with the public interest and the rights of the accused. We very much look forward to presenting our case to a jury of citizens in the Southern District of Florida."

The actual indictment count might be 38 - I keep reading different numbers - but 37 is more poetic and I don't wanna lose the quote above, so let's roll with that. ANYway.

Emptywheel takes a moment to document the 31 times trump allegedly withheld documents (all the times he refused to return them to the National Archives), which included the ones he eventually returned in June 2021. Consider 5. June 2020 concerning nuclear capabilities of foreign country (TS/XX/XX/ORCON/NOFORN), or 8. October 4, 2019 military capabilities of foreign country (S/REL TO USA FVY), or 13. Undated document concerning military capabilities of foreign country and United States (TS/SI/TK/NOFORN), or 19. Undated document concerning nuclear weaponry of US (S/FR), or... AAAAAAAAAAaaaaaa.

What's important are the dates of each document and the importance those documents had as classified materials, and you'll spot a lot of those documents involve the military capabilities of foreign nation(s) that could be pretty valuable commodities for the nations opposed to them.

In this, you see how damaging trump's mishandling of these documents are: Our allies' military secrets exposed, or worse exposure of our ability to gain intel on our antagonists. Worst of all, our own nation's military and nuclear secrets, exposed to the world while sitting in trump's Mar-A-Lago ballroom (or in the bathrooms. /headdesk).

Digby over at Hullabaloo has her thoughts:

I just read through it quickly and it’s much, much worse than we thought. He had very sensitive documents including war plans and classified info about America’s nuclear arsenal and showed them to people. He kept them in totally insecure locations, including an unlocked bathroom and a ballroom at Mar-a-Lago. When they asked for them back he moved them around, rummaged through them and tried to get his lawyer to lie about what was in them...

There's a link to the full indictment if you want to read it all. Apparently, by the second page of the document you w-- OH MY FUCKING GOD.

Well okay it probably won't get worse than t--

Did trump AT LEAST keep all these documents in secure parts of Mar-A-Lago?

(blank stare) The White and Gold Ballroom?!?!

Great. Not only could the Chinese guests sneak in and snap photos of all the classified stuff, they could bring their own DJ and dance to Milli Vanilli songs 'til the sun came up.

I shouldn't joke. This is serious business. We are dealing with the reality that a former President of the United States violated his oath of office to "preserve, protect and defend" our nation. We're dealing with - considering the number of classified documents trump released to the wild where any visitor without clearance could access them - one of the largest failures of national security since the likes of Robert Hannsen and Aldrich Ames.

As David A Graham points out at The Atlantic:

But Trump faces his own political complications. Voters have proved fairly willing to forgive politicians’ personal failings, especially in recent decades and especially when it comes to Trump. (The Manhattan case, for example, stems from hush-money payments to an adult-film actor who has claimed a sexual liaison.) But the removal of the documents is an act that stems directly from his role as president, and it implicates the very security of the country. The documents removed are reported to have included detailed information about Iran’s missile program and intelligence programs in China—the sorts of things that are kept under tight wraps in government facilities, but were reportedly stuffed haphazardly in storage areas at Mar-a-Lago...

In Trump’s long career in and out of the courts, he has not yet faced a legal peril this serious, but just how serious it is will not be clear until the charges emerge. Prosecutors could use several laws to bring those charges, with different standards and different penalties.

His defense will face difficulties, including the huge amounts of evidence obtained in the search, as well as a ruling that one of his lawyers had to turn over information that otherwise would have been shielded by attorney-client privilege. Trump will likely try to spin the charges as concerning “process crimes,” as though those are not just crimes, and deflect from the papers themselves. He has also claimed that he declassified all of the papers at the end of his presidency, but he produced no evidence for that, and his lawyers have avoided making the claim in filings. Reports last week said that prosecutors have a recording in which he seems to acknowledge that he cannot show a document to visitors because it is classified. And if he’s charged for refusing to return the documents, their classification status will not matter. (Graham wrote this before the indictment's release, and the charges do point out trump acknowledged he held classified docs AND refused to return them)

The number of charges do not shock me, because this is trump and to me his flagrant abuse of the legal system is limitless (I was hoping for more). I'm also aware these are merely the charges being brought in South Florida: There are pending federal indictments in DC on these classified documents matters as well.

And for all the details provided in this matter, we're talking about the human element of any criminal prosecution: The jury. It's going to be their job to weigh the state's evidence and listen to trump's arguments about why this is a witch hunt why he shouldn't be found guilty. Even with the legal system's batting averages of oft-times getting at least one Guilty verdict out of a major crimes case, there is no given of victory for the rule of law here. This is trump: his shamelessness can translate into convincing enough jury members to believe his gaslighting (then again, his failures in recent courtroom matters suggest juries can suss out the gaslighting for what it is and convict). trump can easily push for jury nullification in some form, especially a hung jury forcing a mistrial. Everything is at risk.

The greater risk is if trump survives this - and other - felony indictments at the federal and state levels. If he does, he goes into the Republican 2024 primaries vindicating his "success" and ability to thwart those who would stop him. If trump can then win a second term, you can look to how he behaved in pushing out those who were disloyal to him and how he insisted on using the Justice Department to persecute those opposed to him. And then multiply that by 100, because trump will know he can't leave unfinished business like the way it was left in 2020.

trump will shred every intelligence agency he felt complained about his lack of security protocol, he will decimate the Justice Department and fill every opening with lackeys regardless of skill or experience (he will likely fill them with incompetents whose only value is loyalty to him alone). trump will resume his plan of filling the federal benches with judges who will owe him favors (SEE: Aileen Cannon, who is reportedly in line to preside over this case!). trump will gut the federal government across every department and every branch, and he will ensure complete control to where he will never face accountability like this again.

trump is, based on the evidence presented by Smith, a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States. trump is a threat to every allied nation we have, who will immediately close off every shared intel we have with them because they know what he will do with it. trump will turn our nation away from our strongest, most reliable allies we've had over the centuries - France, the UK, NATO, Japan, half of South America, most of Central America and the Caribbean - and align us with corrupt regimes like Russia, who profits from trump's reckless disregard for the Constitution and rule of law.

This is what you're still voting for, Republicans. What the hell. You're doubling down on a business failure and national security risk. You have a chance to choose better - well, sort of - this time. Take it. 

And let justice be done.

Update: It keeps getting worse. There's photographic proof trump stored multiple boxes in the Mar-A-Lago bathrooms.

From the Slate article

Where's the toilet paper?

AND WHY THE FUCK IS THERE A CHANDELIER IN THE BATHROOM??!?!?!!?!?!

IT'S HAPPENING: trump INDICTED ON MAR-A-LAGO CHARGES

IT'S FITZMAS.

NBC News has some of the details:

Former President Donald Trump has been indicted by a federal grand jury in connection with his mishandling of more than 100 classified documents, two sources confirmed to NBC News.

Trump, who first revealed the news earlier Thursday in a post on his Truth Social platform, faces seven counts, according to his lawyer and another source. The charges include false statements and conspiracy to obstruct, two sources said.

A federal grand jury in Florida has been meeting in special counsel Jack Smith's investigation of Trump’s handling of classified documents, according to sources familiar with the investigation.

The Florida grand jury is separate from a panel that was convened in Washington, D.C.

The investigation began last year when the National Archives alerted the FBI that government documents Trump had returned after having been out of office for about a year included 184 that were marked classified. Trump has denied any wrongdoing.

Insert ALL the dancing GIFs here!!!

Okay I'll settle down.

The specific charges may not be known for some time. The courtroom appearance is reportedly scheduled for next Tuesday (CLEAR THE CALENDAR!) in Miami and it'll be a question of how quickly this gets sent to actual trial. I'm hearing stuff on MSNBC about a 'fast track' for major criminal cases, and I'm sure the DOJ wants this done before the 2024 primaries.

This doesn't affect the separate grand jury investigation into trump's role in the January 6th riots, and there's a chance additional charges from the DC grand jury investigating trump's theft/mishandling of classified documents are forthcoming.

MORE DANCING GIFS!

Oh, by the way, remember how the Republicans and the mainstream media screamed bloody murder about all the "criminal acts" of Hillary Clinton to suppress voter turnout for her in 2016? 

How many DOJ investigations into her server? 

How many Congressional inquiries into Benghazi and other things she did as Secretary of State? 

BUT HER EMAILS! 

It's been seven years now: Every allegation aimed at Hillary turned out to be nothingburgers. Not even Durham's trump-ordered investigation into Hillary's 2016 campaign "spying" on trump turned up serious criminal charges or jury convictions. 

Meanwhile, trump himself is so corrupt he's facing his SECOND CRIMINAL INDICTMENT THIS YEAR.

DAMMIT. Why are there NO GIFs of Jennifer Connelly dancing?! /cries

KEEP DANCING, AMERICA. LET'S PARTY.

This May Be for trump, But It's Feeling Like Fitzmas

A lot of you kids may be too young to remember, but back in 2003 there was a serious criminal investigation into political shenanigans that disrupted national security: Reporters outed a noted critic of the Bush administration's Iraqi invasion narrative as being the husband of a CIA covert operative Valerie Plame. Because that revelation exposed ongoing CIA operations - a serious breach of security and forced the shutdown of various overseas operations, if not exposing other operatives to harm - the agency insisted on a special prosecutor to hunt down the leaks, which ended up pointing to Vice President Dick Cheney's office staff that were eagerly promoting our nation's involvement in Iraq. 

The Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald had a solid reputation as as prosecutor, and by all evidence he conducted a thorough investigation. By 2005, many of Bush's (and Cheney's) critics - the ones who opposed the Iraqi invasion, and who questioned the lack of WMDs that were a cause for that invasion - were hoping that Fitzgerald found enough proof that the leakers included Cheney himself (or that they at least did so on Cheney's orders).

Excitement ran high. Those of us waiting - and yes, I was among that throng - began calling the expectant day of charges "Fitzmas" as a mash-up on Fitz's name to Christmas: The Special Counsel as our Santa Claus delivering presents indicting a corrupt administration of their malice and deceit.

So there was a ton of disappointment when Fitzgerald's final report led to only one person getting charged - Scooter Libby, who was found guilty by a jury but then his sentence commuted by Bush to complete the cover-up - and not enough evidence to prove Cheney had any hand in the leak (Karl Rove almost got indicted on charges of lying to investigators, but Fitzgerald decided against it).

Ever since then, there's been this sense of justice denied. That the moment of holding corrupt figures in high office accountable - Dick Cheney then, donald trump now - had passed us by.

The Mueller special counsel investigation into both Russia's involvement in the 2016 elections as well as any trump ties to Russia during that election cycle started and ended in a similar fashion: High expectations that the most obvious thing - trump had known business ties for decades to Russia, half his campaign people had ties to Russia, trump openly begged for Russia to dig up dirt on Hillary - would lead to justice against a strutting con artist. That ended with Mueller proving only half the matter - he uncovered Russian interference in our elections - while AG Barr ended Mueller's work prematurely and issued a heavily redacted report that Barr claimed exonerated trump (which we can't prove because too much of it remains redacted).

Today, we're coping with a series of federal criminal investigations since 2021, of donald trump's involvement with the January 6th insurrection as well as revelations that trump pilfered hundreds of classified documents to Mar-A-Lago. If you've been regularly following this blog, you'll know that I've been waiting - impatiently, as before - for some form of justice to finally indict trump for the things he's done.

(And this is alongside the state-level investigations in Georgia that should issue indictments on trump and his allies for electoral interference and election fraud - maybe even state racketeering - some time in late July)

It's like every other day there are new revelations and reports to the media about how Special Counsel Jack Smith's digging into trump's misdeeds are going, but today a lot of bombshells got dropped that hint to the very big possibility that federal felony indictments on the Mar-A-Lago documents case are happening this weekend.

A more formal report at the Guardian from Hugo Lowell:

Federal prosecutors formally informed Donald Trump’s lawyers last week that the former US president is a target of the criminal investigation examining his retention of national security materials at his Mar-a-Lago resort and obstruction of justice, according to two people briefed on the matter.

The move dramatically raises the stakes for Trump as the investigation appears to near its conclusion after taking evidence before a grand jury in Washington and a previously unknown grand jury in Florida that was impaneled last month.

Trump’s lawyers were sent a “target letter” days before they met on Monday with the special counsel Jack Smith leading the Mar-a-Lago documents case and the senior career official in the deputy attorney general’s office and argued that prosecutors should not indict the former president in the matter...

On Wednesday, former Trump spokesperson Taylor Budowich testified before the Florida grand jury and was asked in part about a statement that Trump drafted in early 2022 that said he had given “everything” back after he returned 15 boxes of materials to the National Archives.

The statement was never issued, Budowich is understood to have confirmed. Several aides to Trump were against releasing the statement because they were not confident that the assertion was accurate, a person close to the former president said.

What charges might emanate from the Florida grand jury remains unclear.

But prosecutors would most probably prefer to bring charges in Washington, where the judges at the US district court are more familiar with handling national security cases – though Florida also has a robust national security section – and the jury pool skews more Democratic.

The impaneling of grand juries has to do with where prosecutors believe a crime was committed. And the most straightforward reason for the Florida grand jury is that prosecutors have developed evidence of criminal activity at Mar-a-Lago, which is in the southern district of Florida.

In this investigation, prosecutors considering charges against Trump for retaining national security material may have concluded from the evidence that he was still president when classified documents were moved to Mar-a-Lago, meaning his “unlawful possession” only started in Florida...

Andrew Feinberg over at the Independent (may be paywalled) is reporting the grand jury is voting this week on the indictments:

The Department of Justice is preparing to ask a Washington, DC grand jury to indict former president Donald Trump for violating the Espionage Act and for obstruction of justice as soon as Thursday, adding further weight to the legal baggage facing Trump as he campaigns for his party’s nomination in next year’s presidential election.

The Independent has learned that prosecutors are ready to ask grand jurors to approve an indictment against Trump for violating a portion of the US criminal code known as Section 793, which prohibits “gathering, transmitting or losing” any “information respecting the national defense”...

It is understood that prosecutors intend to ask grand jurors to vote on the indictment on Thursday, but that vote could be delayed as much as a week until the next meeting of the grand jury to allow for a complete presentation of evidence, or to allow investigators to gather more evidence for presentation if necessary...

A separate grand jury that is meeting in Florida has also been hearing evidence in the documents investigation. That grand jury was empaneled in part to overcome legal issues posed by the fact that some of the crimes allegedly committed by Mr Trump took place in that jurisdiction, not in Washington. Under federal law, prosecutors must bring charges against federal defendants in the jurisdiction where the crimes took place.

Even if grand jurors vote to return an indictment against the ex-president this week, it is likely that those charges would remain sealed until both the Washington and Florida grand juries complete their work.

Feinberg added that that Mark Meadows - who was serving as trump's last Chief of Staff during the final days of his administration, and who was clearly in the room when a lot of things happened - has already testified to both federal grand juries and has accepted a plea deal to testify in exchange for lesser charges.

MORE: It is understood that Mr Trump's last White House chief of staff, @MarkMeadows, has agreed to plead guilty to several lesser federal crimes in exchange for his testimony under a limited grant of immunity. https://t.co/7ZMm60nhxf

— Andrew Feinberg (@AndrewFeinberg) June 7, 2023

It may take a few more days for all of this to play out. 

HOWEVER.

(Insert GIF of Happy Snoopy Dance)

I'm as giddy as a schoolboy.

And so, in honor of the Fitzmas that's finally arriving - better late than never - a quick little ditty sung to the tune of "It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas" (lyrics by Michael Buble):

It's beginning to look a lot like Fitzmas
As Smith's grand juries go
Trump is looking at five to ten with indictments closing in
Obstruction and espionage don't you know

It's beginning to look a lot like Fitzmas
Classified docs on the floor
But the prettiest sight to see is Donald Trump that will be
Behind his own prison door

And while we're at at, Justice Department, will you PLEASE release the full unredacted Mueller Report?

Ahhhh, this could be an enjoyable weekend for me, personally.

And yes. I know the Proud Boy types might start street riots if this happens, but damn trump and his decades of avoiding his sins. Let justice be done.