trump and His Cronies Aren't Even Hiding the Theft Anymore

This is how corrupt trump's administration is: he sued his own government for billions of dollars so he could then weasel out of the lawsuit and claim an imaginary settlement for a mere billion to pay off his foot soldiers among the insurrectionist ranks (from Katherine Faulders, Peter Charalambous, and Alexander Mallin at ABC News):

The Justice Department announced Monday that as part of a settlement agreement in President Donald Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, the attorney general is establishing an $1.776 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund" to compensate those who allege they were wrongly targeted under the Biden administration. 

The announcement came after attorneys representing Trump informed a federal judge in a court filing earlier Monday that the president was dropping his suit against the IRS.

The judge overseeing the case, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams, subsequently ordered the case closed -- signaling that she does not plan to challenge the controversial settlement. 

In a brief order issued Monday, Judge Williams said she was "stripped of jurisdiction" to continue overseeing the case. She noted that the settlement agreement was never docketed in the case, so there is no "settlement of record" -- leaving her with no authority to adjudicate the private settlement. 

Do you see it? There's no official settlement of record. There's no paper trail the legal system is supposed to rely on. And yet, there's a billion dollars that Congress never approved of getting set up in a slush fund that I doubt will have any real oversight to where it gets turned into a funnel of illegality where even more money gets siphoned off to gods know where.

As thought making the payment amount symbolic to make it say 1776 like it's for FREEDOM on our nation's 250th birthday is going to patch things over. GODDAMN THIS IS CORRUPT.

This is Paul Krugman over at the National Memo:

So the Trump administration is creating a $1.776 billion slush fund — 1776, get it? — to pay off victims of “lawfare and weaponization.” Just to be clear, if you’re a U.S. taxpayer, this action means that almost $1.8 billion of your money will be handed out to whomever a panel appointed by Donald Trump decides to reward. The beneficiaries are likely to include January 6 insurrectionists, as well as Trump, his family, and his allies.

Few things shock me these days, but this development — in which a Justice Department that works for Trump is paying a vast sum to “settle” a lawsuit brought by Trump himself — is a new nadir in self-dealing, further revealing Trump’s utter contempt for the American people.

Now, massive corruption on the part of Trump and his minions isn’t new. But the shamelessness of this latest episode of looting takes it to a new level. Until now, we’ve seen a combination of crony capitalism and insider trading. Plutocrats and corporations have been enriching Trump through back channels, especially crypto, in return for government contracts and policy favors, while Trump himself and people close to Trump have been making hugely profitable market bets thanks to advance knowledge of government policies.

But now Trump has eliminated the middlemen, effectively telling his officials to pay money directly to him or anyone else he favors.

Granted, we already knew that Trump was, by orders of magnitude, the most corrupt president in U.S. history. But now Trump is the most explicitly corrupt leader in today’s world. After all, Vladimir Putin has obviously stolen billions, but never this brazenly. Even Third World dictators normally try to mask their corruption.

If there's any true justice, trump's move here should get tied up in the courts - especially over that fact that there's no judge-approved agreement on record - long enough for the Democrats to win back Congress this midterms well enough to guarantee they will use their Article I constitutional powers to block trump and his cronies from stealing one more nickel from our nation's coffers.

This is why the Republicans are so desperate to gerrymander the hell out of congressional districts, this is why the Republicans are so desperate to suppress voter turnout to keep their Senate seats safe from statewide anger. They're not that stupid to ignore the polls showing how unpopular they've gotten among even independent voters (and even enough registered Republicans willing to flip their ballots).

Voter turnout still matters: that's the good news. The Republicans can't rig enough barricades and tip enough scales to stop all of us angry at them and trump. Everyone needs to understand the mission this midterms: GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT FOR DEMOCRATS. VOTE EVERY REPUBLICAN OUT AT EVERY LEVEL OF THE BALLOT.

We can save this nation from an eternal void of Far Right grifting and greed, if we show up and vote goddammit.

Five Years Later: It Was STILL An Insurrection

I hate that January 6th is now known for the trump-led rioting at the nation's capitol, and won't be forgotten any time soon.

The damage done - engraving into a section of the American conspiracy mindset that "trump's victory was stolen" - still hasn't gone away, even after trump issued a blanket pardon his first day back in the White House, and even as the arc of time is proving trump's lie for what it is (via Alan Feuer and Dan Barrya through gift link to the New York Times): 

The pardon proclamation saved them, opening prison doors and ending all of the criminal prosecutions related to the Capitol attack. Even more, it gave a presidential stamp of approval to their inverted vision of Jan. 6, 2021: that those who assaulted the police and vandalized the historic building that day were victims, and those who spent the next four years using the criminal justice system to hold them accountable were villains.

But nearly a year after Mr. Trump’s sweeping proclamation asserted that he had cleared the way for “a process of national reconciliation,” many recipients of his clemency remain consumed by conspiracy theories, angry at the Trump administration for not validating their insistence that the Capitol attack was a deep-state setup and haunted by problems from both before and after the riot...

A lot of the rioters were "promised" some level of validation for their fear and hatred of the dirty libruls "ruining" their lives. And it didn't help a number of them were already troubled, criminally-minded bastards in the first place:

In the five years since the Capitol was stormed, no new facts have emerged to undermine the basic findings of congressional and Justice Department investigators that many of the rioters acted in the misguided belief, pushed relentlessly by Mr. Trump, that he had been robbed of victory in 2020 — and that in attacking the Capitol they not only injured about 140 police officers but also struck at a cornerstone of American democracy: the peaceful transfer of presidential power.

Even so, Mr. Trump has long maintained that the rioters endured horrible, even illegal, mistreatment during their prosecutions.

And yet if that is true, some pardoned rioters are now asking, then why haven’t their persecutors been thrown in jail? And if the rioters are martyrs to a righteous cause, as the president and his allies have often said, then why haven’t they been made whole through financial reparations?...

What J6ers rarely seem to acknowledge is the possibility that Mr. Trump’s government has failed to reveal the hidden truth about Jan. 6 because there is no hidden truth, no deep-state conspiracy, and therefore no legal reason to bring further charges related to the riot...

By feeding a steady diet of unfounded conspiracy theories not only to the J6ers but also to others in their base, Mr. Trump and his allies have spawned what some experts have likened to a zombie army of followers. And now, by failing to follow these theories to their logical conclusions, they are seeing that army begin to turn on them.

“When you’re told day after day that you’re a victim — when you’re told that for four years straight — it sinks in,” said Jon Lewis, a research fellow with the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. “They’ve become conspiratorial-minded people looking for the next thing to mobilize for...”

For many Jan. 6 defendants, clemency was not enough. From the moment Mr. Trump issued his proclamation, there came demands for more: deep-state actors held accountable, hidden truths revealed and reparations — some form of monetary apology — paid.

Nearly two months after Mr. Trump’s decree, lawyers representing Jan. 6 offenders were making plans to sue the Justice Department. They intended to argue that the cases stemming from the Capitol attack amounted to malicious prosecution and that many rioters had been grievously harmed by their own government.

Two lawyers were behind the effort: Mark McCloskey, known for brandishing a semiautomatic rifle in 2020 as Black Lives Matter protesters paraded past his home in St. Louis, and Peter Ticktin, a friend of Mr. Trump since their teenage years at the New York Military Academy.

The men had reason for hope. Asked in the spring about possible compensation for the rioters in an interview on the right-wing news channel Newsmax, Mr. Trump gave a typically opaque answer...

But there is a yawning chasm between talk and action — especially in Washington. And recognizing the hurdles to winning lawsuits against the government, Mr. McCloskey began pitching top Justice Department officials on a more audacious plan, establishing a panel to award damages to the rioters, similar to the special master who distributed money to victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks...

But as the first year of Mr. Trump’s second term drew to a close, Mr. McCloskey’s proposal was in limbo. It was not lost on many pardoned rioters that Mr. Trump himself had demanded that the Justice Department pay him up to $230 million in similar claims for the criminal inquiries it conducted into him...

The conspiracies all work only if trump is the one getting paid, understand? Anyone else thinking they're going to earn a windfall from a settlement payout isn't going to see a wooden nickel (because pennies are no longer minted).

It's not helping the case of the rioters that a number of their own who were pardoned are turning back up in prison on unrelated charges ranging from sexual child abuse to homicide. You all were troubled souls joining up for trump's rampage against law and order, and you all are going to get in trouble again because most of you still see yourselves above the law like your golden idol.

This is not a good anniversary for anyone. But at least these rioters are in a hell of their own making.

The One Crook Who Didn't Go To Jail

At least in Brazil they know what to do with corrupt ex-presidents who stage insurrections to stop elections (via Tiago Rogero and Tom Phillips with Guardian US): 

A Brazilian supreme court judge has ordered the house arrest of former president Jair Bolsonaro for allegedly breaching “preventative measures” which were imposed amid concerns the far-right leader might abscond to avoid punishment over an alleged coup attempt.

According to the ruling on Monday by Justice Alexandre de Moraes, Bolsonaro breached a ban on using social media which was imposed last month, when he was also ordered to wear an electronic ankle tag.

Moraes wrote that as demonstrators took to the streets in several cities across the country on Sunday in support of the former president, Bolsonaro used the social media accounts of allies to share messages containing “clear encouragement and incitement to attack the Supreme Federal Court, and overt support for foreign intervention in Brazil’s judiciary”.

“There is no doubt the precautionary measure was breached,” Moraes wrote...

The arrest order is part of an ongoing supreme court case in which Bolsonaro is accused of leading a plot to overturn the results of the last election, in which current president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva defeated the former army captain.

The trial is expected to conclude later this year, with Bolsonaro facing a potential sentence of more than 40 years in prison.

Many of those protesters urged the US president Donald Trump – who recently hit Brazil with 50% tariffs in retribution for the alleged “witch hunt” against Bolsonaro – to take further action to help save their embattled leader...

Of course trump would attempt to bully the Brazilian people in order to get a fellow corrupt bastard out of legal hot water. trump admires the dictators across the globe as the only humans he'll ever respect. That he's disrupting any foreign relations not just with Brazil but with the rest of South (and Central) America doesn't matter to him and his America First cronies.

trump should have answered for what he did - stirring up rioters to storm Congress and disrupt the electoral count on January 6th - in a court of law, but Biden and his attorney general didn't understand the urgency and took their time, allowing trump's lawyers to delay delay delay until the 2024 election, during which he and his allies in the mainstream media lied and bluffed their way back into the White House and negating any chance of justice.

It remains frustrating to me and millions of others who knew trump was a monster and did everything we could to keep him out of power and yet too many other Americans didn't care - or worse didn't care to know - and made the monster president (again).

What the hell, America. And now the whole world is paying for the crook we wouldn't put in jail.

And Injustice For All, Because Justice Came Too Late

The January 6th part of Jack Smith's Special Counsel report is officially out.

You can read for yourselves the parts where donald trump intentionally started and condoned a riot in our nation's capitol to interfere with the 2020 election results. These were things Smith was convinced could be proved in a court of law and leading to trump's conviction on federal charges. This is why people called it an insurrection and what should have disqualified trump from ever running for office again.

And yet, he did run for office again. The Republican Party failed to maintain any personal ethics and allowed this viper the chance to run again; Merrick Garland and the Justice Department moved too slow out of fears of politicizing matters, refusing to convene a grand jury and press for indictments for years; the Supreme Court refused to hold trump accountable and even granted more executive powers that trump can now abuse; the mainstream media ignored all the evidence and all the corruption, and failed to label trump as the violent insurrectionist that he is; and above all 77 million of our fellow Americans decided to vote for the crooked son of a bitch back into the White House where trump will inflict worse horrors on the nation.

What the hell, America. THIS monster - this court-confirmed sex offender, this convicted felon, this sociopathic insurrectionist - is what you want to lead you. The cruelty and injustice we're about to suffer is ALL ON YOU.

Never Forget: trump's Treason

On January 6th, 2021, donald trump betrayed his oath of office and incited a mass riot to break into Congress and disrupt the vote count certification so he could steal the presidential election results.

In a sane and just universe, trump would never have been allowed anywhere NEAR the White House again. he should have been put on trial within weeks of the assault on our political institutions and the sanctity of the Constitution. Hundreds of the MAGA rioters - around 1,600 of them - had gone through exactly that, either pleading out or getting convicted with serious jail time. trump should be rotting in prison alongside them.

And yet, no. Biden's Justice Department led by Merrick Garland dragged their feet, resisting the necessity of holding trump accountable because of whatever "good faith" political decorum - the refusal to hold presidents accountable for ANY acts at all - still informed their world-view. It took a hotly contested congressional inquiry to force Garland's hand and appoint a special prosecutor to pursue the matter. And while Jack Smith did bring charges eventually, the electoral calendar swung back around to where trump ran for the presidency again - in spite of his insurrectionist misdeeds - and won the damn thing even with a majority of Americans knowing he was a crook, rendering any further federal criminal charges moot (because the courts determined Presidents are immune from criminal charges while sitting in office).

And now, trump is trying to rewrite history. he lies about the level of violence that happened that January 6th, declaring it was all "a day of love". he calls each of the imprisoned rioters "patriots" and "heroes" and will likely pardon every one of them as soon as he's in the Oval Office (arguably after he issues executive orders confirming mass deportations, declaring war on Mexico, and insane tariffs on Canada).

There were 140 police officers assaulted that day. Property damage in the millions. Seven people dead, including one Capitol Police officer who was driven to suicide from the trauma of that day. There was no love that January 6th. Just violence, rage, fear, and the closest collapse of our nation's existence since the Civil War.

trump reveled in that violence, enjoyed spinning the narrative to twist it into his great day of dominance over the American spirit, and will do everything in his power to relive that moment through further acts of violence and illegality upon our nation and the world.

To the 77 million Americans who voted for this insurrectionist: what the actual hell. You saw this. January 6th was on the front page of every paper, on the news broadcasts of every channel. And you STILL VOTED for the son of a bitch.

There will come a future when we are free of this trumpian madness, and there will be a reckoning for you and this nation for the sins trump will inflict upon us.

Until that day, fuck you. You're going to earn the nightmare we're all about to endure. 

Injustice For All

Update: Again, many thanks to Batocchio for including this article at Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up. Sorry I'm not in a better mood. Please leave comments below, hopefully the revised Blogspot system is easier to navigate. I just want to hear from people. It's so lonely for me.

Ever since the election results, I've been dreading this moment. Special prosecutor Jack Smith - who had been pursuing two criminal cases against donald trump for both his involvement in the January 6th Insurrection AND the theft of thousands of classified documents - filed paperwork with the courts today to cancel those prosecutions now that trump will be legally protected with presidency. David A Graham at the Atlantic tries to cover the implications (paywalled):

Donald Trump will never face federal criminal charges for trying to corrupt the 2020 presidential election, the fundamental democratic procedure. Nor will he ever face consequences for brazenly removing highly sensitive documents from the White House, refusing to hand them back, and attempting to hide them from the government.

Special Counsel Jack Smith, representing the Justice Department, today filed to dismiss charges in the two federal cases he was overseeing against Trump. Smith effectively had no choice. Trump had promised to fire him and end the cases as soon as he took office on January 20. (The president-elect reportedly plans to fire not only Smith but also career attorneys who were assigned to his team.)

In both cases, these were crimes that only a president could commit: No one else could have attempted to remain in office by the same means, and few people could have made off with boxes full of these documents. And only a president-elect with nearly unlimited resources could have gotten away with them.

Trump pulled off this legal trick with a simple and effective strategy of running down the clock until being reelected president. Traditionally, defendants have had two ways to beat a rap. They could convince a judge or jury that they didn’t do the crime, or at least that there isn’t enough evidence to prove they did. Or they could look for a way to get sprung on a technicality. Faced with a choice between A and B, Trump chose option C: weaponize the procedural protections of the American justice system against itself.

The problem is not that these protections exist. They are a crucial part of ensuring fairness for all defendants. But just as he has done in other circumstances, Trump sniffed how the things that make the American system great can also be cynically exploited. If you have sufficiently deep pockets and very little shame, you can snow a case under procedural motions, appeals, and long shots, enough to slow the case to a crawl. And in Trump’s case, delay was a victory—not because he could put it off indefinitely, but because he will soon be president again, with the Department of Justice under his authority...

I decried trump's tactics, and I hated how the legal system seemed to go out of its way to play the game by his rules not theirs. And yet this is how broken our American Justice has become: 

But in Attorney General Merrick Garland, Trump drew the ideal foil. The man overseeing the two cases against Trump is obsessive about proceduralism. His view was that the best way to restore the justice system, and the Justice Department, after the first Trump presidency was to do everything precisely by the book, no matter how long it took. It took quite a while—Smith was not appointed until November 2022, two months after the paperwork coup began and three months after the FBI seized documents at Mar-a-Lago. By the time Smith brought charges, in summer 2023, the timeline was tight, either for verdicts soon enough to inform voters or to avoid dismissal if a Republican won the presidential election...

Most important, Garland’s attention to detail meant the system failed to do the basic work of holding accountable someone who had committed serious crimes in plain sight. And partly because of that, Trump will soon return to the White House with the power and intention to destroy all the independence and careful procedures that Garland took such pains to protect...

The lack of accountability for January 6 is an affront to the Constitution. But the lesson that Trump will take from charges being dropped, along with the immunity ruling, is that the system is not capable of holding him accountable for most rules that he violates. The affronts will continue.

With regards to the one criminal trial that did convict trump on 34 counts, even that is now facing turmoil as the prosecutors and judge try to figure out sentencing on someone who will be federally protected from the law. The civil trials that trump lost - the one involving tax fraud on his properties, and the ones involving his sexual assault and defamation on E. Jean Carroll - are likely to continue through the appellate process, but you can be damn sure trump will use every legal power the presidency can inflict on those rulings to weasel his way out of those matters.

I am angry at Garland - and at President Biden, who nominated Garland as a sign of professionalism and normalcy returning to the Justice Department - only as far as his inability to understand the seriousness and severity of everything trump represented. Dammit, man. trump was - still is - a clear and present danger to the United States.

I am more angry at a Republican Party that - confronted with multiple facts that trump was dangerous and criminal to boot - refused to hold trump accountable, and refused to regain any semblance of ethical responsibility towards the United States. They happily did something the Founders could never have imagined: They openly supported a convicted felon, tax fraud, and sex offender for the highest office in the land.

I am extremely angry at a Beltway media that repeatedly refused to remind the American public who and what trump really is. Not just the increasing signs of mental instability and the ongoing evidence of trump's sadism, sexism, and racism. They kept underplaying the facts that trump had been convicted of felonies, that he'd been exposed as a business fraud and gaslighter, that his contempt towards women drove him to acts of vulgarity. This is the same Beltway media that had fucking meltdowns over Hillary's emails, and they failed to point out how trump was the most corrupt person - in a field containing the likes of LBJ, Nixon, Harding, and Andrew Jackson - in presidential history.

But my deepest ire is for the 75 million or so fellow Americans who - with all the evidence that IS out there, with all the reporting that did happen that showed trump was a convicted felon and sex offender - still voted for a monster like him. There may have been a lot of low-information voters out there this cycle, and a number of them voted for trump without knowing - or comprehending - the facts that trump was a legal abomination. But enough of you knew. Enough of you knew he was a criminal and you voted for him anyway. Goddamn you.

trump is now the most dangerous person in America, because he's going to get granted executive powers - yet again - that he openly promises to abuse the minute he gets sworn into office. trump is going to twist the Department of Justice into his Department of Vengeance, attacking every person who exposed his criminal acts by turning them into criminals without evidence or rationale. Think of the disastrous Durham prosecutions that never proved trump's lies about the 2016 elections: Think of how worse it's going to be as trump pursues falsehoods and fantasies about 2020 being 'stolen' from him that four years of digging by his wingnut allies never confirmed. Think about all those people who were convicted for their roles in the January 6th Insurrection, that trump claims are 'heroes' and who'll get pardoned even after all those trials and juries proved how violent those insurrectionists are.

Think of how trump's entire existence - all the bankruptcies, all the acts of fraud he plead away - is proof that our legal system fails to hold everyone accountable. If you're poor, if you're a minority, if you're a woman, you won't find any justice with prosecutors or judges or cops who'll punish you even when you're innocent. If you're rich, if you're white, if you're male, you can buy and bully your way into favorable treatment and slaps on the wrist because you can afford the lawyers who play the game.

And if you're donald trump, you fucking get away with everything.

Goddamn us.

"Make Them Riot": trump Needs to Answer for his Insurrection

On the personal notes, mom's doing okay in the hospital but she's stressed out because dad's in hospice care and she feels she needs to be at home taking care of him. Mom, you're the one with the cracked skull and broken wrist... 

While donald trump won't face the criminal trial before the November general election, the court case focused on his role in the January 6th Insurrection is still proceeding; and got to the point where the special prosecutor Jack Smith presented evidence that's going to be used in that trial. To say that's it damning is an understatement (via Carrie Johnson and Ryan Lucas at NPR):

In a newly unsealed court filing, special counsel Jack Smith provides the most detailed picture yet of his criminal case against Donald Trump for allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 election and why the former president isn't immune from prosecution.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over the case, released the filing, with minor redactions, on Wednesday.

A link to the court documents is here. The redactions for what they're worth are mostly hiding names of trump and his alleged co-conspirators/handlers... which hasn't stopped people from matching them based on the evidence that's already out there.

The special counsel uses the 165-page document to make his case that Trump's actions around the election were made in a private capacity and not in his official role as president.

The filing comes after the Supreme Court ruled this summer that presidents enjoy broad immunity for official acts while in office, but not for unofficial acts as a candidate or a private citizen.

"When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office," the special counsel's team writes. "With private co-conspirators, the defendant launched a series of increasingly desperate plans to overturn the legitimate election results in seven states that he had lost..."

The broad strokes of the special counsel's allegations against Trump have long been known. The filing, though, adds some new details, including sensitive testimony from witnesses and notes taken by former Vice President Mike Pence...

Getting into those details highlighted the lengths to which trump and his cohorts attempted to sabotage, hinder, or destroy the 2020 general election results. The Politico website counted multiple seriously deranged and illegal acts (via Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein):

According to prosecutors, at one point during Trump’s bid to overturn the results, a Trump White House aide overheard Trump tell his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner: “It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell.” The comment was allegedly made on Marine One.

Prosecutors said they would prove at trial that Trump and his allies often made up statistics about voter fraud “from whole cloth.” For example, Trump and allies alleged that 36,000 noncitizens had cast ballots in Arizona, changing the figure to “a few hundred thousand” five days later, eventually revising it back to “bare minimum … 40 or 50,000,” then to 32,000 and back up to the original number of 36,000.

One week after Election Day in 2020, Trump told then-Gov. Doug Ducey (R-Ariz.) that he was “packaging up” fraud evidence to share with him, prosecutors wrote. But Trump never provided it. Ducey told Trump that Arizona was all but lost, comparing it to being in “the ninth inning, two outs, and [the defendant] was several runs down,” Smith’s brief recounted...

Never mind that there's already laws to ensure non-citizens can't vote, trump was still using his fearmongering over immigrants to justify overturning legit election results. He and his team kept fibbing the numbers to whatever they needed in that moment to claim whatever victory trump could. And when it came time to present evidence, they never did. Because it was never real. Goddamn him.

Prosecutors, who had more access to telephone records and emails than the congressional committee that investigated Jan. 6, allege that Trump spoke to ally Steve Bannon by phone on Jan. 5 less than two hours before Bannon issued a prescient and provocative prediction on his War Room podcast that “all hell is going to break loose” on Jan. 6...

Well before Jan. 6, an unidentified Trump campaign employee enthusiastically spoke of the potential for a riot in Michigan. The employee, whom prosecutors described as a co-conspirator, allegedly sought to “create chaos” at a polling center in Detroit when it became clear a batch of election returns favorable to Biden was legitimate. “Find a reason it isn’t,” the alleged co-conspirator said to a colleague, prosecutors wrote. When the colleague said an outbreak of violence appeared imminent, the campaign employee replied: “Make them riot” and “Do it!!!”

These are the tidbits that prove trump and his people wanted a riot, all the riots across battleground states as well as the Capitol, in order to disrupt and destroy the results, so he could steal the election and stay in power. trump's "rally" on January 6th was never going to be peaceful: It was a call to violence.

It's terrifying that trump is not going to sit in a courtroom and answer for his misdeeds before the November 5th election day. It's insane that the Republican Party refused to stop trump from forcing himself back atop their ballot, because now we're facing the possibility trump can steal (he can't win the popular vote, at best he can skew the Electoral College or at worst throw the results into chaos) the presidential election.

If trump gets back into the Oval Office he will squash this and every other criminal investigation into his actions. trump will deny New York the 34-count felony conviction and destroy the entire concept of "justice for all" for the nation for all time. We will have a confirmed felon and sex offender as President and he will inflict his criminal passions upon the nation and the world.

This isn't up to the courts anymore: Chief Justice Roberts made certain of that.

This is up to us voters, all of us from Democrats to Independents to even Republicans who respect the rule of law and despise trump and what he stands for.

For all the efforts to suppress voters - for all the lies about who's voting - the Republicans can't win if everyone shows up to vote and NOT vote for them. If the numbers are overwhelming in favor of Democrats - in favor of the pro-choice referendums on many state ballots - the Far Right wingnuts trying to sabotage the results won't have any legal leg to stand on. They would - and should - fail in many of the courtrooms even to the point where trump's own compliant Supreme Court can't save him.

Get the vote out, America. Every single one of us who sees trump for what he is - a failed, corrupt criminal - and who sees Republicans for what they are - broken, fear-driven rage merchants living in their own conspiracy bubbles desperate to rule or ruin - need to show up this election cycle. Be it by mail-in ballot, be it by early voting, be it by standing in line this Tuesday November 5th: We need to show up and vote. Our vote matters. Our vote is our power.

We need to stop trump from committing more crimes, and our vote for Harris/Walz and the Democrats across every seat on the ballots will do that.

Good luck.

Refreshing the Charges Against trump

Oh, and in case you missed it - and you likely did because the New York Times didn't even put it on the front page like they did with Hillary's emails in 2016 /rage - Special Prosecutor Jack Smith re-indicted donald trump for his role in the January 6th insurrection.

David A Graham at the Atlantic has some of the details (paywalled):

When the Supreme Court ruled last month that presidents are immune from prosecution for anything done as an official act, many observers reacted with immediate horror. They warned that the ruling would allow future presidents to act as despots, doing whatever they like without fear of accountability. And in the immediate term, they predicted doom for the federal case against former President Donald Trump for attempting to subvert the 2020 election.

The effect of the ruling on future presidents will not be clear for some time. But Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is prosecuting Trump for the Justice Department, isn’t acting too rattled by the Supreme Court’s decision.

Smith obtained a superseding indictment today in the case against Trump, whom he had previously charged with four felonies. The new document is a little more concise and changes some language, but it keeps the same four felony charges and most of the same evidence. After taking a few weeks to review the Supreme Court ruling, Smith has apparently concluded that it doesn’t change much about his case at all.

Roberts and his conservative buddies on SCOTUS can try to warp reality all they want, but what trump did was criminal and by GOD he needs to answer for it.

In addition to some slight rephrasing here and there, Smith makes two notable changes. First, he takes out all references to Trump’s attempt to involve the Justice Department in his subversion. Trump, who has spent much of his current presidential campaign warning about the “weaponization” of the federal government, attempted just that as he sought to stay in office. The then-president asked the department to issue a letter saying the election was corrupt and then “leave the rest to me and the R[epublican] Congressmen,” according to meeting notes taken by a DOJ official. One of Trump’s confederates was Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department official whom Trump tried to install as acting attorney general to further the scheme, before fierce resistance from DOJ and White House lawyers stayed his hand.

But the Supreme Court ruled that “because the President cannot be prosecuted for conduct within his exclusive constitutional authority, Trump is absolutely immune from prosecution for the alleged conduct involving his discussions with Justice Department officials.” The superseding indictment thus takes out references to Trump’s conversations with these officials. It removes Clark from a list of co-conspirators. And it deletes a section of the initial indictment that explained how Trump tried to enlist the department to help solicit slates of false electors from states.

The fact that Smith and his team were able to re-indict trump to basically the same four charges underscores just how much dirt they still have on trump that the Supreme Court can't wash away (for now).

If I can refer to Marcy Wheeler at Emptywheel to get her take on this:

Altogether, the changes incorporate not just SCOTUS’ immunity decision, but also the DC Circuit’s Blassingame decision deeming actions taken as a candidate for office are private acts, and SCOTUS’ Fischer decision limiting the use of 18 USC 1512(c)(2) to evidentiary issues.

The logic of Blassingame is why Jack Smith included these paragraphs describing that Trump and Pence were acting as candidates.

1. The Defendant, DONALD J. TRUMP, was a candidate for President of the United States in 2020. He lost the 2020 presidential election.

[snip]

5. In furtherance of these conspiracies, the Defendant tried–but failed–to enlist the Vice President, who was also the Defendant’s running mate and, by virtue of the Constitution, the President of the Senate, who plays a ceremonial role in the January 6 certification proceeding.

As I’ve said repeatedly, it’s not clear that adopting the Blassingame rubric will work for SCOTUS, even though they did nothing to contest this rubric...

The decision to supersede this indictment may have turned what could have been an immediate dispute about the viability of the indictment at all into an evidentiary dispute to be managed later...

At the very least, Jack Smith suggests he has something viable on which to arraign Trump (and Trump’s Xitter wails treating this as a real indictment suggest he may believe that)...

This should serve - again - as a reminder to the general American voting public that trump is dangerous, that he's not pursuing the presidency for some lofty purpose: trump is running for President to keep his orange ass out of jail. It's not only the criminal charges trump is still facing - not only in DC but also in South Florida as Smith appeals to the appellate level to reinstate the classified documents case Cannon dismissed, and in Georgia with the state fake electors case - but also the criminal matter in Manhattan where he sits with 34 jury-confirmed felonies (with the presiding judge ruling mid-September on what happens next).

And those are the criminal charges and convictions. trump's civil trials found him liable for business fraud, defamation, and sexual assault (that the judge rose to the level of rape).

We've never had a major national party stoop so low as to have a convicted felon and confirmed sex offender like trump running for the highest office in the land (remember, Debs was a minor party candidate who never had a chance).

Every registered voter in America needs to understand how horrifying and criminal that is, and make certain that trump never gets within 100 miles of the White House again.

For the LOVE OF GOD AND JUSTICE, America, STOP VOTING trump.

That Could Have Gone Better

Update: Thank you Steve for including this article in Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! I would say GO BUCS but they're not in this year's Super Bowl alas. In the meantime do sing Happy Birthday to my cat Mal the Krazy Panfurr who was born on a Super Bowl night 10 years ago! ;-)

The U.S. Supreme Court heard the matter of Colorado Supreme Court's decision to ban donald trump from the 2024 ballots over his January 6th insurrection, and by most accounts the Justices came out swift and painful against anyone in favor of a 14th Amendment Solution. Mark Joseph Stern over at Slate pretty much noted the "goose is cooked" regarding SCOTUS' view on the matter:

The Supreme Court is not going to let Colorado, or any other state, remove Donald Trump from the ballot in 2024. That’s the upshot of Thursday’s arguments in Trump v. Anderson, the blockbuster case contesting the former president’s constitutional ability to run for office. A clear majority of justices expressed overwhelming skepticism toward the plaintiffs’ claim that Trump is disqualified under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment because he “engaged in insurrection.” The only real question is what rationale the court will use to reject that theory—though one emerged as a probable consensus: Justices across the ideological spectrum suggested that individual states cannot enforce Section 3 against federal candidates, at least not without congressional approval...

The notion that individual states can’t take unilateral action to strip federal candidates from the ballot has immense practical appeal, and arguably aligns with broader constitutional principles. But it is not what Section 3 says on its face, nor is it clearly borne out by the original meaning of the amendment. Many of the justices’ questions on Thursday amounted to policy arguments thinly cloaked in the language of textualism and originalism...

Amy Howe over at SCOTUSBlog covered how much of the conservative Justices looked at the matter, arguing over the history of the 14th Amendment's actual implementation:

A central issue at Thursday’s argument was whether the question of how Section 3’s ban on government service by individuals who have “engaged in insurrection” can be enforced – do states like Colorado have the power to enforce it themselves, as the voters contend, or (as Trump argues) can it only be enforced through laws passed by Congress?

Some justices looked to history, pressing Murray to provide examples of other scenarios in which states have relied on Section 3 to disqualify candidates for federal office. Murray pointed to an 1868 congressional election in Georgia, as well as to state elections and candidates disqualified by Congress, and he noted that the dearth of examples was “not surprising” because elections operated differently then, with ballots for political parties rather than individual candidates. Therefore, he reasoned, “there wouldn’t have been a process for determining before an election whether a candidate was qualified.”

But that answer did not mollify Justice Clarence Thomas, who observed that the “plethora of Confederates” still present in public life in the post-Civil War era would suggest that this issue would come up.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh echoed Thomas’ emphasis on the absence of any historical examples as evidence that states do not have the standalone power to disqualify candidates under Section 3. He cited Griffin’s Case, an 1869 decision by Chief Justice Salmon Chase, serving on a lower court. In that case, Chase ruled, Section 3 can only be enforced through laws passed by Congress.

Although the decision is not binding on the Supreme Court, Kavanaugh suggested that one year later Congress had Griffin’s Case in mind when it enacted the Enforcement Act of 1870, which gave the Department of Justice the power to bring lawsuits seeking to disqualify federal officials. For 155 years, Kavanaugh concluded, no state has attempted to disqualify a federal officer from the ballot under Section 3 because “there’s been a settled understanding” that states don’t have that power. Moreover, he added, “Congress can change that” but hasn’t done so.

Murray pushed back, suggesting that no state had tried to disqualify candidates for federal office because there had not been a need to do so. Virtually all former Confederates had received amnesty by 1876, so that there would no longer be a need to disqualify them from the ballot, he observed. And since then, he contended, there had been no reason to invoke Section 3 because the country had not previously experienced anything like the Jan. 6 attacks...

But on the question of enforcement, the court focused even more specifically on the possible implications of upholding the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision. Justice Elena Kagan was among the most vocal in expressing her concerns. Why, she queried, should one state be able to disqualify a candidate from the ballot and, in so doing, effectively determine who becomes the president of the United States? Rather than sounding like an issue for an individual state to decide, she said, that “sounds awfully national to me.”

Justice Amy Coney Barrett appeared to agree. If the court upholds the Colorado ruling, she posited, it will as a practical matter decide the issue for all the other states. Like some of her colleagues, she envisioned possible logistical problems, observing that the court would have to make its decision using the facts developed in whatever state-court case made its way to them first. In a scenario in which the factual record isn’t well developed, she asked, how should the court review those findings? It “just doesn’t seem like a state call,” she concluded...

When the liberal-leaning Justices are questioning the validity of a matter alongside the conservative ones, it doesn't look good. That Kagan was looking at the question of jurisdiction - and that Jackson was looking at the historic element that the 14th Amendment focused on ex-Confederates reaching Congress instead of the presidency - suggests that applying Section 3 to trump running for the White House - for the moment - won't happen.

The way SCOTUS is framing the debate, they could well make it that the 14th Amendment could apply but that it's up to Congress at the federal level to enforce it. The issue of what "insurrection" actually is - Jackson did berate trump's lawyer over whether an insurrection can be "organized" or not - could also get applied to the final ruling here, although it may force a set of concurrent rulings that would muddle things further.

I had hoped earlier last month when Colorado Supreme Court made their ruling that this would be the way to prevent a violent, vulgar force like trump from regaining presidential power. I did fear that the conservative-controlled U.S. Supreme Court would try to find a way to excuse trump's behavior in some way: Thing is, the point of contention that today's arguments aimed for - the question of who has the power to enforce the 14th Amendment - did reach valid conclusions. I have to admit that banning trump from the ballot over his calls for insurrection on January 6th may not work after all.

There is still the matter of the federal court case charging trump on four counts over his misdeeds that day, with the question of trump's efforts to delay that trial set to get resolved soon - this Monday at least - and whether the Supreme Court will hear that and rewrite all of reality to grant trump his request for Absolute Immunity. THAT seems less likely to pass judicial scrutiny even for the conservative justices like Roberts.

But then again...

We voters have to take into consideration that the legal system is not going to let us off the hook anytime soon. It is up to us - to the 81 millions who voted for Biden in 2020, and any newer voters rising to join those ranks - to return to the ballot box this November and ensure trump and his Republican lackeys get denied any claim to power by our power to vote.

For the LOVE OF GOD AND COUNTRY, America. Do not vote trump, at all.

Dare Call It Insurrection, What trump Ordered This Day

Much like the days of national tragedy - April 14th, December 7th, November 22nd, September 11th - January 6th is now entering the American memory as a major anniversary.

The day donald trump talked a mob into raiding the United States Capitol to disrupt the formal vote on the Electoral College results that named Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 Presidential Election.

We're now at the point where our elected leaders - President Biden himself - are making speeches about the impact and seriousness of this anniversary. As quoted from Biden's Valley Forge Speech:

Today, we gather in a new year, some 246 years later, just one day before January 6th, a day forever shared in our memory because it was on that day that we nearly lost America — lost it all. 

Today, we’re here to answer the most important of questions.  Is democracy still America’s sacred cause?  I mean it.

This is not rhetorical, academic, or hypothetical.  Whether democracy is still America’s sacred cause is the most urgent question of our time, and it’s what the 2024 election is all about...

Three years ago tomorrow, we saw with our own eyes the violent mob storm the United States Capitol.  It was almost in disbelief as you first turned on the television. 

For the first time on our history, insurrectionists had come to stop the peaceful transfer — transfer of power in America — first time — smashing windows, shattering doors, attacking the police. 

Outside, gallows were erected as the MAGA crowd chanted, “Hang Mike Pence.” 

Inside, they hunted for Speaker Pelosi [of] the House, was chanting, as they marched through and smashed windows, “Where’s Nancy?”

Over 140 police officers were injured.  Jill and I attended the funeral of police officers who died as a result of the events of that day. 

And because Donald — because of Donald Trump’s lies, they died because these lies brought a mob to Washington. 

He promised it would be “wild,” and it was.  He told the crowd to “fight like hell,” and all hell was unleashed...

There's hundreds of video clips out there highlighting the rioters attacking, getting into places that should have remained secure, waving the historic flags of insurrection and cheering each other on as trump watched his followers do his dirty work. In spite of all the attempts by the Far Right and the Republican leadership to downplay the violence of that day - claiming it was peaceful, focusing only on the parts where the mob stood around not knowing what to do next - people died. People were scarred.

All because donald trump is terrified of being seen as a loser. All because trump dare not lose the legal protections the presidency gave him.

Everything trump did on January 6th - and all the things he did leading up to that riot - were violations of the Oath of Office Presidents are sworn to: "I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

trump was NOT faithful to the Constitution or the office of the Presidency. trump did NOT act to the best of his ability to Preserve or Protect or Defend the Constitution. he actively attacked the Constitution, tried to stop the Electoral Count, got his followers to raid the legislative branch to undo that count, and then continued to lie about the election results - to deny that he lost - to keep his mob ready to fight in the next Presidential election cycle (which is now).

It is that violation of the oath of office that is a serious matter today, this anniversary of trump's betrayal. It is because of that betrayal of the oath that trump is on the brink of being denied from running for office again. The Colorado State Supreme Court ruling - and the Maine's Secretary of State's findings - found that trump engaged in insurrection when he incited his mob:

Trump’s attorneys also had urged the Colorado high court to reverse Wallace’s ruling that Trump incited the Jan. 6 attack. His lawyers argued the then-president had simply been using his free speech rights and hadn’t called for violence. Trump attorney Scott Gessler also argued the attack was more of a “riot” than an insurrection.

That met skepticism from several of the justices.

“Why isn’t it enough that a violent mob breached the Capitol when Congress was performing a core constitutional function?” Justice William W. Hood III said during the Dec. 6 arguments. “In some ways, that seems like a poster child for insurrection.”

In the ruling issued Tuesday, the court’s majority dismissed the arguments that Trump wasn’t responsible for his supporters’ violent attack, which was intended to halt Congress’ certification of the presidential vote: “President Trump then gave a speech in which he literally exhorted his supporters to fight at the Capitol,” they wrote...

Even the judges who are giving trump his due process are finding he incited violent insurrection, which means he violated Section 3 of the 14th Amendment:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

This all matters on today's anniversary because the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the Colorado ruling by February 8th, leaving it to them - the highest arbiters of constitutional law - to determine what trump truly did reaches the level of insurrection. SCOTUS would have to accept or overrule the lower court's findings that trump incited insurrection, they would have to figure out what the 14th Amendment means by "taken an oath of office" and if Presidents are officers of the Untied States (you would think by common logic that both apply here).

If the Supreme Court fails here - if they go by partisan design and grant trump the right to run for office in spite of the public acts he's done - we are guaranteed future insurrections every four years on January 6th as rioters disrupt another Electoral count. It won't stop with trump, it will continue on with all the mini-trumps following in his wake.

If the Court finds that trump did engage in these riots - which doesn't require the Due Process of a criminal court trial (which trump is still facing this March) - and applies the 14th Amendment to deny his spot on the ballot, we may get MAGA riots in the streets soon after: But the anniversary of January 6th will fade into a calm reminder that violence had no place in the American democratic republic. It didn't work in 1861 and it shouldn't work in 2021.

Let justice prevail, SCOTUS. trump violated his Oath of Office that January 6th. Hold him accountable to it.

What If: The Colorado Ruling Applies to ALL of 2024 Primaries?

So, let's just say the Colorado Supreme Court ruling that said trump should be barred from the presidential ballot because he engaged in insurrection regarding the January 6th riots goes to the US Supreme Court, and even the majority conservative bench of six Republican jurists rule against trump in some fashion.

It's not a given that the six will rule for trump outright. Doing so would go against their own Originalist opinions the Far Right justices had been arguing over the years. They would have to flush down the toilet the Colorado court's detailed opinions, some of which used a SCOTUS Justice's - Gorsuch - own arguments to make the decision that the states are obligated to defend the electoral process. In some respects, trump is asking the Supreme Court to ignore a constitutional amendment - or interpret it into utter uselessness - which bodes ill for any future rulings that could ignore other amendments to the Far Right's detriment. The justices may feel territorial about holding onto their powers of judicial review, after all.

There could still be some kind of ruling where Chief Justice Roberts can retain some integrity for the high court all the while giving trump what he wants - to stay on the ballot to avoid his criminal fate as much as possible - but that would be threading the smallest eye of a needle in legal history. 

This is as much a YES or NO legal decision as we will see: Either trump committed acts in violation of the 14th Amendment and should be barred from future elected office, or the 14th Amendment section insisting on blocking insurrectionists is unenforceable and trump stays on ballot (they shouldn't be able to argue if trump engaged in seditious/insurrectionist acts to begin with, because the lower court and state supreme court both found trump did, and that it violated the 14th's requirements. The lower court ruled that it didn't find trump was an "officer" as defined by the amendment, which the state court overruled).

So, let's say the Supreme Court rules 5-4 at the least that trump did violate the 14th Amendment, and that Colorado and other states could remove trump's name from the ballots for the 2024 Republican primaries.

Okay, after all the MAGA rioting settles down, what would actually happen?

The most likely thing is that the heavily Democratic-controlled (Blue) states will take trump's name off the ballots. The Republican Party and the media may scream that it denies the voters a choice; but this isn't about the voters this is about the constitution, and the constitution restricts choices all the time (after all, the Natural Born requirement for Presidents is why we don't have a President Schwarzenegger - who was popular nationally - after his stint as California's governor in the 2000s).

It's likely the heavily Republican-controlled (Red) states will ignore the legal efforts to block trump's name, even if the state courts follow through on any lawsuits filed over the matter (it would then be a matter if the state courts will hold Republican elections officials in contempt over this). The question mark will then be the battleground states where governments split between parties for legislatures, courts, and executive branches decide to bar trump as an insurrectionist from the ballots.

How would any of this affect the 2024 elections cycle.

If we look at the primaries themselves, trump can't afford to be blocked from too many state ballots. Based on the information at the Green Papers website tracking the primaries, the Republican nominating process requires a winning candidate lock up 1215 delegates.

Why is New Jersey, a state in the top 20 for population,
stuck with so few delegates?

So let's say the states that we know are solidly Democratic - California, New York, Illinois, about 16 others - and several battleground states that may agree that trump can be barred - New Hampshire, maybe Virginia, maybe Georgia considering all the local opposition from the governor and other state officials going on - take trump out of the primaries? How many delegates will that be? 

Given that the delegate total of blocked states is around 1093 (out of 2429), it looks like trump could still eke out a delegate victory with the remaining Red/pro-trump states and get his name on the Republican general ballot.

This all depends on which states actually follow through on removing trump from the ballot. Some of these states I added may not, and who knows one or three of the Red states may see it happen if their courts rule on it and can enforce those rulings. If enough states bar trump to where he can't reach 1215, he's screwed.

This also depends on if the US Supreme Court rules against trump outright, finding his actions on January 6th are punishable by disqualifying him from every state (or at least encourage all 50 states to do so).

This also depends on if the Republican national leadership doesn't change their own primary rules in case trump does get thrown off ALL the ballots. They could try pulling a last-minute rule change to negate primaries and just go with a convention floor vote in spite of the 14th Amendment's enforcement.

While the state primary ballots are at play now, if trump survives that he still has to deal with a general election where the states that barred him on the primaries can do so again with the November ballot. The Electoral College math is slightly different from the delegate math, and if enough battleground states deny him a spot on the ballot - and refuse all write-ins - he could once again lose enough Electors to face defeat (that he could be barred in nearly half the states will definitely lower his popular vote total across the nation).

This is all speculation, of course. We still have to see how the Supreme Court rules: If they abide by the judicial review process, if they agree with Colorado's ruling, if they find trump accountable under constitutional law. If Roberts' Court gives trump carte blanche, then partisanship wins out and the legal system is truly dead under trump's inevitable misrule.

The one thing we know for certain is that elections matter, that voter turnout matters, and the majority of the nation that dares not let trump back in the White House better fucking show up in 2024 to stop him. Get the damn vote out, Americans. Stop trump, save the world.

Update 12/28/23: I may have misspoke too soon, in that Colorado has not fully removed trump's name from the ballot, as they're awaiting the Supreme Court decision and the Secretary of State won't be doing it for the primary vote.

Michigan's Supreme Court agreed with a lower court to allow trump to remain on their ballot, although I've read elsewhere - need to find that link - that the state would revisit the matter if trump is convicted in the federal case regarding his involvement in the January 6th riots.

In the meantime, Maine's Secretary of State held her own hearing on the matter and determined trump violated the 14th Amendment, so she IS removing his name from the ballot. This will clearly go to the courts as well.

Just a reminder kids that this isn't about the voters' choice, this is about the rules etched into the Constitution itself.

Insurrections Have Consequences. Colorado Can Block trump From the 2024 Ballot

This is breaking news:

 

BREAKING NEW: WE WON! The Colorado Supreme Court just ruled Donald Trump is disqualified from the ballot and from holding office under the 14th Amendment!

Much more coming soon.

— Citizens for Ethics (@CREWcrew) December 19, 2023

Let me find a more detailed news report. Ah here, NPR has it... no wait it's the Colorado regional version of NPR, Bente Birkeland reporting in:

In a landmark decision, the Colorado Supreme Court has ruled that former president Donald Trump is disqualified from appearing on the state’s primary ballot next year.

The Justices’ 4-3 ruling concludes that Trump engaged in an insurrection with his words and actions around the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol and therefore cannot hold the nation’s highest office again. 

“We are also cognizant that we travel in uncharted territory,” wrote Colorado’s Supreme Court in its unsigned 213-page decision.

This is the first time a state’s high court has concluded the 14th Amendment’s Civil War-era Disqualification Clause applies to both the office of the presidency and the actions of the former president. Supreme Courts in Minnesota and Michigan dismissed similar complaints.

“We do not reach these conclusions lightly,” wrote the Justices. “We are mindful of the magnitude and weight of the questions now before us. We are likewise mindful of our solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favor, and without being swayed by public reaction to the decisions that the law mandates we reach...”

The ruling overturns the finding of a district court judge that the Disqualification Clause does not cover the office of the presidency. It also reaffirms that, under Colorado law, the court has jurisdiction to bar disqualified candidates from the Republican Party’s primary ballot. They also concluded that the judicial branch is empowered to apply the clause...

Earlier this year - as the January 6th rioters found themselves charged and convicted for their role in disrupting Congress' duty to confirm the 2020 Electoral votes - there were calls from various Constitutional legal experts that trump - now facing his own federal charges for his role in that insurrection - could and should be blocked from having his name on the primary (and general) election ballot. As I quoted experts like J. Michael Luttig and Laurence H. Tribe earlier:

Having thought long and deeply about the text, history, and purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment’s disqualification clause for much of our professional careers, both of us concluded some years ago that, in fact, a conviction would be beside the point. The disqualification clause operates independently of any such criminal proceedings and, indeed, also independently of impeachment proceedings and of congressional legislation. The clause was designed to operate directly and immediately upon those who betray their oaths to the Constitution, whether by taking up arms to overturn our government or by waging war on our government by attempting to overturn a presidential election through a bloodless coup.

The former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and the resulting attack on the U.S. Capitol, place him squarely within the ambit of the disqualification clause, and he is therefore ineligible to serve as president ever again. The most pressing constitutional question facing our country at this moment, then, is whether we will abide by this clear command of the Fourteenth Amendment’s disqualification clause...

What happened in the Colorado matter was that the lower court judge ruled that trump did engage in an act of insurrection, but failed to accept that the Amendment's definition of "officer" did not apply to Presidents. The state's Supreme Court overruled that view, determining trump was an officer under the Constitution and thus can be barred. 

Either way, the courts are finding that trump's behavior that January 6th - and the months leading up to it - fit the definition of insurrection. This is something every state dealing with these filings - I need to find out how many more states have ballot challenges - because if enough of them do block trump from even the GOP primaries, we're talking massive chaos in the 2024 election cycle.

Consider the situation if trump's name stays on in various Red states, but those tend to be the smaller states with fewer primary delegates at play. Considering the nature of the courts in Texas and Florida I doubt they will kick trump off the ballots, but big states like California, Illinois, and New York could. We could be talking about a delegate split between trump and whomever is left standing next year - it's looking like Nikki Haley, with half everybody else dropped out save for Christie, Ramsaway, and DeSantis (although he's so doomed he might not even stay in before New Hampshire) - to where neither have enough to outright win the first ballot. Chaos would be an understatement.

Consider also the wrath trump and his handlers will invoke if he's officially blocked off enough primary ballots to doom his re-election efforts to avoid criminal trials starting next year. The MAGA crowd are already primed for violence. If trump is convinced he can't regain the safety of high office through election, don't be surprised if he tries to avoid his legal woes by inciting secession or getting his congressional allies to stage some coup (even more than the failing impeachment scheme they're trying to inflict on Biden).

These are unprecedented days. All of it due to a rabid Far Right voting base that chose a crooked con artist to lead them, while the rest of the nation tries to get the legal system to establish some form of sanity and accountability to the Constitution our elected officials and officers of the law are sworn to uphold.

Hold onto your hats. The crazy train is speeding up as we head into 2024.

Rats, Sinking Ship, SS Trumptanic

This morning we got word that Jenna Ellis, a lawyer on donald trump's payroll since 2019, made a plea agreement with the Fulton County DA's office. Via Gringlas at NPR: 

Ellis is the fourth defendant to plead guilty in the broad racketeering case focused on efforts to keep then-President Donald Trump in office after his 2020 loss to Joe Biden.

Lawyers Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell entered guilty pleas last week just before their trial was set to begin. Scott Hall, a bail bondsman, pleaded guilty in September.

In exchange for truthful testimony at future trials, Ellis pleaded guilty to one felony count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings. She had been charged with two counts, including racketeering...

Ellis' charge stems from a Dec. 3, 2020, subcommittee hearing of Georgia's Senate Judiciary Committee where Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Ray Smith made a litany of baseless claims of widespread election fraud.

Guliani and Smith, both co-defendants in the Georgia case, asserted that tens of thousands of minors, felons and dead people voted in Georgia's 2020 election. Ellis pleaded guilty to aiding this testimony, which prosecutors say was intended to convince the legislature to disregard Biden's victory in Georgia.

"The false statements were made with reckless disregard for the truth," prosecutor Daysha Young said at Tuesday's plea hearing.

DA Willis hadn't charged too much on Ellis, so there wasn't much for Ellis to plead out. She's still getting a sweetheart deal because - as any fan of Law & Order franchise will tell you - the ones who flip the earliest in a criminal conspiracy case are the ones who get the best deals.

What all these early plea deals do is put pressure on the remaining defendants - 15 to go - to make plea deals of their own before one of the others sets them up as the scapegoat. There are tiers to this racketeering case - the ones who made the plans, the ones who carried out the illegal acts, the ones who covered for the others - and it's clear prosecutors want the major players, giving the lesser members - the ones with more to lose - more incentive to flip now instead of later.

Ellis' plea deal is a serious blow to Ray Smith and Rudy Giuliani, so the expectation is that they might flip next. Smith could, since he's a state-level lawyer whose career - and life outside of prison - is at stake. But Giuliani might not: His reputation and livelihood are now so directly tied to trump's fortunes that he can't make a clean break. 

And trump of course - because his whole self-worth and ongoing grift is tied into the Big Lie of "stollen elections" - will never plead out. he will enter the court trial and try to bully and gaslight his way out of it.

Much like he's trying to bully and gaslight his way out of the January 6th indictments he's facing in Washington DC, except for the revelation tonight that Mark Meadows - trump's acting Chief of Staff during his final days in the White House - gave hours' worth of testimony to Jack Smith's grand jury and received full immunity as part of the deal. Via the Guardian: 

The testimony that Meadows provided to prosecutors included evidence that he repeatedly told Trump in the immediate aftermath of the election that the allegations about fraud were unsubstantiated, ABC reported.

Exactly when Meadows was granted immunity and when he testified before the grand jury in Washington remains unclear but he appeared at least three times, ABC reported. Trump was indicted in August for conspiring to defraud the United States among other charges stemming from the investigation.

The cooperation of Meadows in the criminal case against Trump would be a victory for the special counsel, Jack Smith, because Meadows was among the closest advisers to Trump in the post-2020 election period and had direct knowledge of virtually every aspect of the charges...

Meadows was literally in the room when it happened (yes, quoting from the Hamilton musical is unavoidable). There are multiple eyewitness accounts from other parties - Cassidy Hutchinson, Meadows' aide, already testified what Meadows knew and did to the Congressional hearings last year - that made it impossible for Meadows to testify otherwise. There'd been reports for months - especially when he wasn't named in the indictments Smith's grand jury issued against trump this past August - that Meadows had an immunity deal, but we're getting confirmation now.

That the Special Counsel team is willing to let this information out there hints to the likelihood they are ready to act on Meadows' testimony, increasing the likelihood that additional indictments over January 6th - and maybe even more indictments in the classified documents case - not only for trump but the other insurrection plotters are coming very soon.

Thing is for Meadows, while this deal grants immunity at the federal level, it doesn't cover state like the conspiracy charges he's facing in Georgia. Seeing how he's already made a deal with Smith, NOW would be the perfect time for Meadows to make a deal with Willis.

If donald trump's empire was a ship (not a luxury liner, but a garbage scow), it's already hit the iceberg, and the rats better get off it quick before they sink.

Disqualifying trump

As we bear witness to the growing indictments surrounding donald trump, as we enter into a historic moment where every alleged crime in trump's name and on trump's orders all build into the Trial of the (21st) Century, there are serious questions about how far the consequences should apply to trump should he be found guilty on even one felony out of the 91 (so far) he's facing.

The implications of a guilty verdict are staggering: Not only because we've never had in American history any former President convicted like that in a court of law, but also because trump is frantically campaigning for another term as President to use that office to avoid any conviction or jail time.

It's been discussed elsewhere, and mentioned a few times at this blog, that trump could be blocked from his Presidential campaign, to avoid the risk of a convicted candidate somehow winning the Electoral College votes. There's a provision in the 14th Amendment Section 3:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof...

Considering the charges trump faces regarding his - and his allies' - efforts before and during the January 6th Insurrection, there is hope that a conviction on any of those charges will trigger that clause and bar trump from any office no matter how much he screams "unfair".

There are now arguments - from respected legal and constitutional scholars - that we don't even need a conviction to bar trump from the Presidency (and his last remaining refuge from justice). Just on the evidence alone trump's conduct merits the disqualification, according to J. Michael Luttig - former federal judge from the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals - and Laurence H. Tribe - Emeritus professor of constitutional law at Harvard - over at The Atlantic (paywalled):

The historically unprecedented federal and state indictments of former President Donald Trump have prompted many to ask whether his conviction pursuant to any or all of these indictments would be either necessary or sufficient to deny him the office of the presidency in 2024.

Having thought long and deeply about the text, history, and purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment’s disqualification clause for much of our professional careers, both of us concluded some years ago that, in fact, a conviction would be beside the point. The disqualification clause operates independently of any such criminal proceedings and, indeed, also independently of impeachment proceedings and of congressional legislation. The clause was designed to operate directly and immediately upon those who betray their oaths to the Constitution, whether by taking up arms to overturn our government or by waging war on our government by attempting to overturn a presidential election through a bloodless coup.

The former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and the resulting attack on the U.S. Capitol, place him squarely within the ambit of the disqualification clause, and he is therefore ineligible to serve as president ever again. The most pressing constitutional question facing our country at this moment, then, is whether we will abide by this clear command of the Fourteenth Amendment’s disqualification clause...

And by "we," Luttig and Tribe are asking the federal officers currently upholding the Constitution - the judges, the prosecutors, the elected officials - as well as the public at large to make the call.

Someone, somewhere in the chain of command between the Justice Department or the Judiciary branch of government is going to have to step up and enforce that clause.

Someone among the ranks of Republican candidates for 2024, any of trump's challengers for those primaries, needs to consider filing a legal ruling to have the GOP remove trump's name from consideration due to that amendment. Someone among the ranks of the Republican party leadership itself - elected officials in Congress, party administrators, financial backers, anybody - has to make the hard decision here.

It can't be a Democrat making this move: Too many people - even fellow Democrats - would consider it too much a partisan ploy.

Thing is, whoever steps up to do this is also stepping up to take the hit when trump's rabid voting base goes on the warpath. We are talking about cultish MAGA followers who believe every trumpian lie, buy every trumpian grift, and revel in every trumpian call to violence. There's already been a trump supporter in Texas put in jail this week for issuing death threats against the judge overseeing trump's January 6th indictments. 

trump himself is still - even after multiple warnings from different judges about his public statements threatening juries and prosecutors as well as themselves - posting social media rants designed to keep his MAGA believers riled up and ready to rise up.

Anybody actively stopping trump from regaining the Oval Office - even using a lawful method - will see a bloodthirsty rampage against them.

trump may be courting potential contempt charges and detainment if he keeps doing this, but in all respect this is one of the few means left at his disposal to avoid all accountability. I wrote before that trump's political "career" - such as it is - is the last con game he's got left. There is nothing else past this that will refill his coffers to pay off his (growing) debts. trump needs to re-enter the White House and receive that OLC protection from criminal liability to save his own ass.

And we all know what will happen if trump does regain the Presidency. he dare not leave that office again. he and his Far Right allies will shred whatever's left of the Constitution under whichever excuse he can wield to ensure he stays in there - grifting and stealing millions more, and inflicting pain upon the people he hates from immigrants to political rivals - until he dies.

Should we dare risk the possibility that trump somehow wins - by hook or by crook, but knowing trump's previous actions in 2016 and 2020 it will definitely be by crook - in November 2024?

Or should we risk the trigger of open civil war with the Far Right population - already eager to fulfill their Turner Diaries fantasies - by stopping trump from campaigning for an office he's already debased and threatens to abuse again? We run the risk of that violence if trump fairly loses the next election, on a far greater scale than the violence they unleashed on January 6th.

There is even the risk that trump and his lawyers can force delays on all of the criminal trials he's facing to where he won't see a conviction before Election Day, leaving open the possibility of his gaslighting enough voters into supporting him even as his legal troubles are so serious he does not deserve that support.

Whoever is in a legal position to do so must refer to the 14th Amendment and prevent trump from a Presidency he does not deserve, and hold him accountable for the oath of office he clearly violated. This is too serious a matter to "leave to the voters," as we've seen time and again the power of the vote twisted or undone to allow the likes of trump to avoid any semblance of justice and accountability.

That may not happen, alas. The political will to make such a move is not hearty enough. It may take a jury convicting trump - either on the documents case in Mar-A-Lago, either on the Insurrection case in DC, in any pending federal indictments trump has yet to face - for one of the judges or prosecutors to push for the 14th Amendment to apply.

We best pray for speedy trials. I've been asking for the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas of this year, but it's looking like January through May in 2024 for now.

Let justice be done. trump deserves disqualification from office. Our nation needs to hurry on ensuring that.

Will There Ever Be a Reckoning for What trump Did?

As donald trump gets marched into yet another courthouse today to get arraigned for criminal charges, that question remains at the fore. While trump is getting charged, and is facing his day in front of a judge and jury, will trump face any consequence for the sins he's committed?

There remains the actual matter of how the trials will end. trump is unlikely to plead to anything - his own narcissism and belief of being "above the law, they let you do it" will stop him from ever accepting guilt on even a misdemeanor deal - so it's going to determine if a jury finds him innocent or guilty on any of these matters.

Criminal cases are different from the civil cases trump has faced - and recently lost - before. The burden of proof on the state is higher, and the jury needs to be unanimous on all guilty verdicts. Meaning trump can pray for at least one die-hard conservative who survived voir dire process to nullify everything into a mistrial, which trump would crow as vindication and delay matters until after the November 2024 elections.

On the other hand, prosecutors have to have a strong case going into these matters in the first place, meaning Special Counsel Jack Smith has enough evidence to sway even a MAGA jury into realizing how badly the laws were broken. Considering the track record the Justice Department's had against the January 6th rioters so far - few acquittals and plenty of plea deals - they know how to present this kind of case to a jury to secure a conviction on at least ONE of the charges. trump's never faced anything this serious before, and is going up against prosecutors who know how trump is going to try to defend himself and will be prepped to outflank him.

What's also at stake here is the nation as a whole. We're entering literally uncharted waters now. We've never had a former President - the highest office in the land - face criminal charges of any kind post-admin. At most we've dealt with corrupt congresscritters going to jail for bribery and other unethical acts, we had to deal with the Confederate leaders like Jefferson Davis for their insurrection of Civil War (which led to the 14th Amendment provision blocking their like from any further office). This is new, and uncomfortably close for a lot of pundits towards crossing a line into partisanship.

In previous matters where a corrupt official found themselves cast adrift by their political party when caught in the act (Hi, Richard Nixon!), for trump almost the entire Republican Party has rallied to his defense. The nature of partisanship has gotten so severe that the modern GOP cannot cut themselves free of trump, and are tying his fate to theirs.

That also has a lot of the punditry worried, especially at the Atlantic (paywalled, by the by) that I still quote from often (blame TNC). Let's start with Ronald Brownstein:

The germ of election denialism that Trump injected into the American political system has spread so far throughout the Republican Party that it is virtually certain to survive whatever legal accountability the former president faces.

With polls showing that most Republican voters still believe the election was stolen from Trump, that the January 6 riot was legitimate protest, and that Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 results did not violate the law or threaten the constitutional system, the United States faces a stark and unprecedented situation. For the first time in the nation’s modern history, the dominant faction in one of our two major parties has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to accept antidemocratic means to advance its interests...

Sean Wilentz, a Princeton historian who specializes in American politics, told me that U.S. history has no exact precedent for a party embracing a leader so openly hostile to the core pillars of democracy. Presidents have often been accused of violating the Constitution through their policy actions, he said, but there is not another example of a president moving as systematically to “manipulate the apparatus of government or elections in order to subvert the will of the people.”

The closest parallel to Trump’s actions, Wilentz said, may be the strategies of the slaveholding South in the decades before the Civil War. Those included violent attacks on abolitionists, suppression of antislavery publications, and the promulgation of extreme legal theories such as the denial of basic rights to Black people in the Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scott decision, all of which were designed to protect slavery against the emerging national majority dubious of it. That decades-long “antidemocratic thrust” from the South, Wilentz noted, “finally culminated in the greatest violation of the American Constitution in our history, which was secession.”

And Adam Serwer notes the GOP voting base - and thus the GOP officials pandering to that base - is still with trump:

If you’re wondering how Trump has survived as a candidate for office, you can look squarely at the conservative elites in politics and media—including many people who would prefer to be rid of him—who have staked out the position that trying to overthrow the government is not illegal if a Republican does it. Those defending Trump after his indictment over his attempted autogolpe are not opposing the politicization of justice; they are demanding it...

The hard-core authoritarian right that has risen in Trump’s shadow, the one contemplating political purges, noncompetitive elections, and iron-fisted state repression of its political opposition, has no commitment to democracy as an ideal, and its continued support is no mystery. The group is small in number, even if a committed political vanguard can have influence beyond its numbers, especially given its growing acceptance in mainstream-Republican circles.

The majority of conservative elites, however, retains some philosophical commitment to democracy and self-governance. They have nevertheless repeatedly failed the most basic test of democratic citizenship posed to them, defending the right of their public to choose their leaders. Right-wing media knowingly encouraged the delusions of the conservative base that the election was stolen out of fear that their audiences would flee. Republican lawmakers, now including Trump’s own primary opponents, have validated the idea that Trump is a victim of political persecution rather than someone who engaged in a conspiracy to keep himself in power, because they fear the electoral cost of opposing him. Immobilized by their own cowardice, both groups remain indefinitely in his thrall.

It is that blind devotion to an obviously corrupt figure like trump that is sounding five-alarm bells. Quoting from Tom Nichols about the danger trump represents now:

Long before now, however, Americans should have reached the conclusion, with or without a trial, that Trump is a menace to the United States and poisonous to our society...  The GOP base, controlled by Trump’s cult of personality, will likely never admit its mistake: As my colleague Peter Wehner writes, Trump’s record of “lawlessness and depravity” means nothing to Republicans. But other Republicans now, more than ever, face a moment of truth. They must decide if they are partisans or patriots. They can no longer claim to be both.

The rest of us, as a nation but also as individuals, can no longer indulge the pretense that Trump is just another Republican candidate, that supporting Donald Trump is just another political choice, and that agreeing with Trump’s attacks on our democracy is just a difference of opinion... I have long described Trump’s candidacies as moral choices and tests of civic character, but I have also cautioned that Americans, for the sake of social comity, should resist too many arguments about politics among themselves. I can no longer defend this advice...

This is painful advice to give and to follow. No one, including me, wants to lose friends or chill valued relationships over so small a man as Trump. But our democracy is about to go into legal and electoral battle for its own survival. If we don’t speak up—to one another, as well as to the media and to our elected officials—and Trump defeats us all by regaining power and making a mockery of American democracy, then we’ll all have lost a lot more than a few friendships. We face in Trump a dedicated enemy of our Constitution, and if he returns to office, his next “administration” will be a gang of felons, goons, and resentful mediocrities, all of whom will gladly serve Trump’s sociopathic needs while greedily dividing the spoils of power.

This is the real danger we're facing: The likelihood of donald trump getting criminally convicted by a jury and still eke-ing out a win - thanks to a still-broken Electoral College system and likely Republican voter suppression - for the Presidency in 2024 that would negate any prison time for himself (and then mass pardons for all of his lackeys to join him in the White House to commit more crimes).

Remember, there's only these restrictions - must be 35 years or older, must be a natural-born citizen, must have lived in the United States for 14 years - on running for President. There's no law blocking a convicted criminal running for that office, only the moral and ethical limits of any party willing to back him. Eugene Debs, after all, ran for President from his jail cell in 1920 and garnered about 1 million votes. Thing was, Debs was a fringe candidate for a fringe party and that was 3 percent of the total. This time it's different: trump will be representing one of the two major parties able to rally at least 62 million and at most 74 million to trump's banner. Even with trump sitting in a jail cell come November 2024, Republicans will vote for a convicted trump.

This is the fear: That trump and his Republican followers will never face a true reckoning for the damage they've done to our nation, and threaten to inflict even more.

This is where the ones who can stop that - the 81 million voters who sided with Joe Biden in 2020, the Democratic voters, the No-Party independents - need to stand up, now and in 2024. We need to keep fighting for our right to vote even as the Republican-controlled states try to purge the rolls and rig the results. We need to show up - even more than 81 million strong - to ensure there is no chance the likes of a corrupt trump and a corrupt GOP seizing the Presidency.

Because they're - not just trump - openly promising to make sure they never lose that power again.

For the LOVE OF GOD, America, stop voting for a corrupt Republican Party and their crooked banner carrier donald trump.