Eighty Sixing Forty Seven

There are several constants in the known universe. One of them is that donald trump will not stop his bullying ways to avenge even the slightest injury to his raging fear/hate.

I noted last November how trump's "Revenge Tour" - attacking everyone who exposed his ties to Russia, investigated that nation's likely involvement in the 2016 election fiasco, or refused to do his bidding to go after his perceived enemies that first go-around - was falling apart because the facts of the universe did not fit trump's fantasies of being the victim/hero. Those legal failures by his puppeteer-ed Justice Department ended up costing lackey Pam Bondi her job as Attorney General, setting up a replacement AG to do trump's dirty work pursuing vengeance on even flimsier evidence.

Which led to this past week's act of injustice when Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche filed charges against former FBI Director James Comey (again) on the pretext that Comey threatened trump's life by sharing a photo of seashells on the seashore (more details from Ryan J. Reilly, Monica Alba, Gary Grumbach and Michael Kosnar at NBC News):

The two-count indictment, posted Tuesday afternoon, alleges that a reasonable person would interpret the image of the shells, arranged to spell out “86 47,” as “a serious expression of an intent to do harm to the President of the United States."

Justice Department attorneys sought the indictment in the Eastern District of North Carolina, where Comey has a beach house and where he posted the beach scene photo. The Department of Homeland Security previously investigated Comey, who has long been a Trump target, over the May Instagram post, even subjecting him to questioning by the Secret Service.

Comey had deleted the post, saying it never occurred to him that it would be interpreted as being violent. "Eighty-six" is a term commonly used in restaurants when an item is sold out, and it's also informally used to mean "cancel" or "get rid of."

In a subsequent Instagram post in May, Comey said that he assumed the shells he saw on a beach walk were "a political message" and that he "didn't realize some folks associate those numbers with violence," adding that he opposed violence "of any kind."

Comey said in a video posted after his indictment that he was innocent, that he was not afraid and that he still believed in the independent judiciary.

"They're back," he said of the Trump administration. "This time about a picture of seashells on a North Carolina beach a year ago. And this won't be the end of it."

By the by, should we count the number of times donald trump threatened violence or wished harm on other sitting presidents like Obama or Biden? In those instances, he openly directly called for violence. trump never got charged by the Justice Department for that. All Comey did was flash a photo of "86 47", and trump's lackeys are having fainting spells across the Sunday talk shows.

The hypocrisy of this reeks.

It's also pulling what's called The Streisand Effect: By drawing attention to a minor, almost ridiculous matter, trump has instead exploded interest and willingness by a lot of other Americans and protestors to use "86 47" as a vocal protest against him.

Sales of "86 47" merch are expanding.

The actual legality of what Blanche and the rest of trump's enforcers are attempting is up for debate. It's just that a good number of experts are pointing out how stupid it all is (via Matthew Chapman at Raw Story):

Former FBI Director James Comey's indictment for supposedly threatening violence against President Donald Trump is completely ridiculous, said former FBI official and counterintelligence specialist Michael Feinberg on MS NOW's "Deadline: White House" Tuesday.

"I mean, again, [former Congressman] Matt Gaetz posted, 'We’ve now 86’d: McCarthy McDaniel McConnell; Better days are ahead...'" said anchor Nicolle Wallace. "Is there any reasonable interpretation that Matt Gaetz meant we'd killed them? I mean, is this — is this in law enforcement, an accepted phrase that is associated with threats of death?"

"No," said Feinberg. "I actually first learned the phrase when I was working the door at a bar in Chicago shortly after I graduated college, where we would use it to refer to ejecting unruly customers. So when I saw Jim Comey's post on Instagram from last year, I simply assumed it was a reference to removing the president from office."

"It is a very large leap to claim that that is a threat of violence," said Feinberg. "And because of that, I don't want the phrasing I'm about to use to make light of how malevolent and destructive of constitutional norms this Justice Department is being with this indictment. But this is the single dumbest charging decision I have ever seen in my entire law enforcement career, or in my even longer career as an attorney. This is the definition of bad faith."

The indictment isn't even likely to result in a conviction - the case is that weak - but it demonstrates trump's willingness to harass and harm his "enemies" in spite of reality (via Steve Benen at Maddow Blog):

When Comey, a lifelong Republican, went public with his concerns and criticisms about Trump, the president came to see the ousted FBI chief as one of his most important enemies, and in April 2018 he started demanding that Comey be prosecuted for crimes that Trump struggled to identify.

It took several years, but the president is seeing the results he’s long sought.

Months after Trump’s Justice Department brought absurd criminal charges against the former FBI director, in a case that ultimately collapsed, prosecutors secured a second indictment against Comey this week, claiming that he used Instagram to call for violence against Trump by way of a seashell-related code.

Though the case is rooted in an indictment of Comey, it’s actually more of an indictment of a weaponized DOJ. Legal experts are reportedly “shell-shocked” over how preposterous the case is, and for good reason: No fair-minded observer could defend or take seriously such spurious charges.

This isn't about justice, or securing the safety of a sitting president occupant of the Oval Office. This is about trump using the executive branch of government to humiliate and harass anyone who ever crossed him.

A case like this should never have gotten through a grand jury. It shouldn't stand before any judge who should see this as a legitimate witch hunt - pushed and prodded by a guy who screamed about all his criminal and civil cases being 'witch hunts' - for political (and stupid) reasons.

Every DOJ lawyer from Blanche on down involved in this farce deserve to get sanctioned and disbarred for this, along with a hundred other illegal acts trump's gotten them to commit against our nation. This is "sandwich guy getting charged with assault" levels of stupid that Justice lawyers are committing here, and it's going to end with the same (acquitted) results.

In a sane world, trump's campaign of legal terror would lead to impeachment and criminal charges.

Goddamn the Far Right partisan bastards in the Supreme Court and a broken Congress who are protecting trump from the justice he's deserved for decades.

We need to get rid of trump. Get him out of power he's clearly abusing for his own greed and rage. Flush him down the toilet like the shitgibbon he is, the way you're supposed to when you 86 something (that's how my fellow middle schoolers used the phrase back in the day).

Am I going to get criminally charged for blogging that he needs to get flushed down a toilet? Try me, motherfuckers. There's at least 60 percent of fellow Americans you're going to have to prosecute alongside me.

Revenge Tour Collapsing Into Farce (Again)

When trump secured that ungodly re-election in 2024, one of the things we all knew - supporters and opponents alike - was that he would seek to punish the people perceived to have humiliated trump by exposing his scandals, his fraudulent acts, and his sexual assaults.

As much an open secret as anything else, hell the media called it "Trump's Revenge Tour" and documented the atrocities (via Quinta Jurecic at The Atlantic):

When Donald Trump appointed Lindsey Halligan to act as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, critics worried that he had tapped her specifically to bring prosecutions against his enemies. It didn’t take long for Halligan to prove the critics right. On September 25, she successfully persuaded a Virginia grand jury to indict former FBI Director James Comey. Yesterday, she secured an indictment against New York Attorney General Letitia James. Whether those prosecutions will actually hold up under the scrutiny of judges and juries, however, is a different matter.

Presenting the case against Comey to a grand jury was the first time Halligan had acted as a prosecutor. Trump installed her at the U.S. Attorney’s Office after her predecessor, Erik Siebert, reportedly refused to move forward with the case against James and raised concerns about a potential prosecution of Comey. “There is a GREAT CASE, and many lawyers, and legal pundits, say so,” Trump wrote on September 20 in a Truth Social post addressed to “Pam”—which, The Wall Street Journal reported, was intended to be a private note for Attorney General Pam Bondi, not a public message on social media. After that post, the Justice Department began moving quickly against Comey and James. Other criminal cases, including one against Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton, are in the works...

Just to note, whenever trump claims "many people say so" without providing actual names of who's saying so is him gaslighting (again) that whatever he's arguing for is perfect and legal... when it isn't.

So since that September, how have the persecutions of Comey and James progressed?

Welp. Turns out trump and his "many lawyers and legal pundits" were absolutely wrong as the judge threw both cases out due to serious procedural errors, namely Halligan's appointment was illegal to begin with (via Ryan Lucas at NPR):

A federal judge on Monday dismissed the Justice Department's criminal cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, finding that the acting U.S. attorney who secured the indictments against the two prominent critics of President Trump was unlawfully appointed.

The decision from U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie on the appointment of Lindsey Halligan as the top prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia marks a significant setback to efforts to go after the president's perceived political enemies.

In dual rulings, Judge Currie said "all actions flowing from Ms. Halligan's defective appointment," including the indictments against Comey and James, "were unlawful exercises of executive power and are hereby set aside..."

Trump tapped Halligan to serve as acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia after he pushed out the previous top prosecutor, who had expressed doubts about bringing charges against both Comey and James.

Halligan is a former insurance attorney who once served as Trump's personal lawyer before his return to office, when she joined his administration as a White House aide.

Halligan, who has no previous prosecutorial experience, was sworn in as acting U.S. attorney on Sept. 22. Three days later, she secured a two-count criminal indictment against Comey—just days before the statute of limitations expired...

Judge Currie dismissed these cases on a simple point of law that Congress set limits on when and how Presidents can appoint US Attorneys, but throughout the proceedings the courts exposed a series of errors, miscues, and illegal decisions from Halligan's office - as well as screw-ups from the rest of the Justice Department under AG Bondi - that could have easily shut down the prosecutions due to sheer ineptitude.

Marcy Wheeler over at Emptywheel has kept track of all the screw-ups, highlighting a few weeks back how the magistrate overseeing the evidence slammed the DOJ for mishandling the grand jury involved in Comey's indictments:

As Fitzpatrick describes, there were several errors. DOJ didn’t scope most of the communications seized in 2019 and 2020 (that is, a Bill Barr fuck-up). And then, they chose not to obtain a new warrant to access the materials for a totally different investigation...

Second, after being exposed to privileged communications, Miles Starr nevertheless still presented the case to the grand jury.

Third, Lindsey Halligan fundamentally mis-informed the jury, first by suggesting that Comey would have to testify at trial, and second by implying there was a bunch more evidence that would be used at trial (which might reflect taint from the privileged comms Starr knew of).

Fourth, she apparently did not re-present the charges the grand jury approved...

The way Wheeler and other legal pundits described it, these were mental errors from Halligan and her crew that even first-year law students learn not to commit when dealing with grand juries. But even Bondi - who does have experience as a state-level attorney general and a number of years as a prosecutor - should have known better, and even she screwed up adding her seal of approval to this entire clown show.

All of this is happening because trump cannot accept certain facts. The criminal and civil cases that he has railed against ever since the 2016 campaign - the investigation in Russia's involvement in US elections (what trump keeps denying as "the Russian Hoax"); the investigations into trump's questionable tax returns at the federal and state levels; the allegations of sexual assault/harassment of women; the matter of trump's illegal taking and mishandling of classified documents; trump's unproven allegations of the 2020 election results being "stolen"; the incitement to insurrection on January 6th - remains a thorn in trump's pride. he continues to deny any and all of those cases were legal, that he's innocent and everything he did/does is "perfect".

In order to play to his gaslighting narrative of innocence, trump has to sell the narrative that all of those cases were themselves illegal in the first place: the "Russian Hoax" was a Hillary Clinton scam; the fraud and tax evasions cases were partisan hack jobs; he has total ownership of government documents, those classified documents belonged to him; his behavior towards women was "normal" and "everybody who's a celebrity" does it; he "won" in 2020 because he never loses; the riot at Capitol Hill was "peaceful and legal".

To flip the narrative that he's the hero (and victim), trump has to accuse everyone else of being the real criminals.

We saw this before: trump's desire to whitewash his ties to Russia during the 2016 elections required him to push for a special prosecutor investigation into Hillary Clinton and her campaign, trying to sell the narrative that she and her cronies faked the entire thing. trump got his replacement AG William Barr - the previous AG Jeff Sessions refused to play along - to find a federal prosecutor John Durham to pursue the matter as special prosecutor. Durham proceeded to follow every conspiracy theory and half-baked lead trying to indict and convict various Clinton campaign officials... all of which either led to misdemeanor plea deals and lost court cases.

Durham's case was doomed to fail because trump's narrative - based on trump's own delusions of greatness and weave of lies he casts around himself - was all a lie. As Marcy Wheeler noted as Durham's investigation collapsed, there was no crime. Just trump's desire to deflect, deny, and denounce everyone else.

It was an Underpants Gnomes kind of case: 

1) Indict people to force them to plea deal and flip on bigger fish, 

2) ? ? ?, 

3) Profit!

Except there's no profit because there's nothing there to begin with.

We're getting the same thing now as trump pursues baseless charges against Comey, James, and even John Bolton - his own former National Security Advisor - all because they made trump look criminal (or worse, a loser). This is how trump views the entire legal system: a weapon only he can deploy against anyone who dares crosses him.

The only good news about all of this is that trump - and his lackeys like Bondi and Halligan, and other wingnuts in the Justice Dept. - is obsessing over the twisted reflections in his own addled mind. The courts - in spite of what the Far Right thinks of the law - require proof and relevancy to work, not rumor hearsay or fake accusation.

The bad news is that trump - and his lackeys Bondi, Halligan, and dozens of other wingnuts - will never admit he is in the wrong, and will double-down on these attacks and fake allegations until all he has left is to burn the entire judiciary to the ground for failing to uphold his lies.

Keep resisting, America. Keep to the facts. 

And Happy Thanksgiving, if you can enjoy that at least this harsh year.

I Might Cry

Goddammit, one right after the other. trump's getting the damn delays in his criminal trials he wanted.

First off, yesterday the trump-appointed judge overseeing the documents theft case in Mar-A-Lago decided to indefinitely delay the start of that trial until certain matters - matters she's muddled in the first place - are resolved (via Russell Lewis at NPR):

Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed to the federal bench when Trump was president, had originally set a trial start date of May 20. In a hearing on March 1, attorneys with special counsel Jack Smith's office urged Cannon not to delay the trial beyond July. Trump's legal team wanted the trial to start after the presidential election.

In a written order issued late Tuesday, Cannon said there are too many outstanding pre-trial motions and classified issues that need to be resolved — and said a trial date cannot be finalized. It is unlikely that the trial will now start before the November election...

Marcy Wheeler at her site goes into more detail how this happened:

...Trump nominated Judge Cannon on May 21, 2020. Judge Cannon’s order ceded to the requests of Trump and his co-defendants for hearings on all sorts of requests that, before any other judge, would be deemed frivolous. She adopted deadlines Trump asked for last year. The order undoubtedly delayed accountability in this case, with the next deadlines set for a month after the original trial date. And Trump is alleged to have stolen nuclear documents. In the original 15 boxes returned in January 2022, there were three documents classified FRD, for a total of 57 pages and charged document 19, which was seized on August 8, 2022, is also classified FRD, formerly restricted, a classification used for nuclear stockpiles and targeting. All would have been covered by the Presidential Records Act and so belong to the US Government; Trump could declassify none of them on his own...

The post is a good way to start thinking about the information economy that led us to a place where a Republican judge helps delay accountability for stealing nuclear documents and storing them in a closet normally storing campaign swag. This information economy creates an environment in which a former prosecutor like Aileen Cannon either believes, or claims to believe, outlandish claims of bias and ill-treatment solely because career national security officials — rebranded by Trump as the Deep State — did their job...

Wheeler highlights a number of social media wingnuts who threw out argument after argument against the legal system and our own national security people that Cannon could then use as excuses of her own to treat trump's situation differently than any other national security breach we've known:

And by feeding the rubes shamelessly false claims, Julie (Kelly) has become quite the celebrity, speaking at CPAC and regularly appearing on Steve Bannon’s show. Bannon knows a useful propagandist when he sees one!

Now, I’m not begrudging Julie the fame she has carefully cultivated with her shamelessness. She has earned it! The right wing propaganda network — the deliberate fostering of lies masterminded by people like accused fraudster Bannon — always rewards people who will tell the rubes what they want to hear.

What I’m trying to explain is how her role gives Aileen Cannon cover to do truly astonishing things, like entertain the notion that  putting a non-partisan in charge of the investigation of Trump for classified documents while putting a Trump appointee who had already deprived a Trump target of due process in charge of the Biden investigation is instead proof of selective prosecution against Trump.

In addition to that premise — that investigating Trump in the same way as investigating Biden is proof of selective prosecution against Trump — Aileen Cannon’s order yesterday and earlier orders signaled she is entertaining the following claims:

• That Walt Nauta, who doesn’t claim to have sorted through any documents, must have the ability to sort through classified documents
• That because the document investigation, which included crimes in DC, started in DC, and used DC SCIFs for the investigation, it’s proof that Jack Smith was deliberately attempting to bypass SDFL
• That because Mark Meadows and Pat Philbin got the White House involved in document response, it’s proof that Biden improperly intervened
• That even though multiple Trump-friendly witnesses testified that Trump didn’t even know Tom Fitton’s Clinton socks theory until 2022, he should be able to argue to jurors he applied it in 2021
• That because NARA informed DOJ about classified documents, the same way they did with Joe Biden, it’s proof that NARA are part of the prosecution team as opposed to the victim
• That because Trump’s surveillance system uses difficult software and one of the defense lawyers only uses an iPad, prosecutors have failed to meet discovery obligations
• That Trump has immunity to steal nuclear documents that he couldn’t even declassify on his own

These are all, individually and collectively, crazy. It’s unclear whether Cannon truly believes them or simply doesn’t care. She has chosen to treat Trump’s claims according to the reality his propaganda bubble has created rather than the actual facts before her...

Cannon could claim inexperience dealing with national security matters in the first place, but that ought to require her either recusing herself so a judge with that experience can take over, or for an appeals court to do that for her. Otherwise, this is just her finding not only opportunities to delay this trial, but any opportunity to dismiss these serious charges against trump.

This morning, news came out from Georgia that the Fulton County election fraud case got hit with a delay when the state's appeals court agreed to hear trump's argument to have DA Fani Willis removed from that prosecution (by Sam Gringlas at NPR):

The Georgia Court of Appeals has granted oral arguments after former President Donald Trump appealed a decision allowing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to stay on the criminal case involving Trump and others.

The court's decision likely further diminishes chances that the Georgia election interference case goes to trial this year.

In March, Fulton Judge Scott McAfee allowed Willis to remain on the case — if the special prosecutor she had been in a romantic relationship with resigned. That special prosecutor, Nathan Wade, resigned.

Trump and other defendants who first raised allegations of a conflict of interest appealed McAfee's decision.

It seems unlikely the appellate judges will accept trump's argument, since the matter at the district level was resolved by that judge. But the way things are going, I don't have that optimism anymore, all my previous aspirations of justice being firm and swift are now gone. 

We're left with the status of the DC matter involving four felony charges on trump for his involvement in the January 6th Insurrection, and THAT could be overturned outright by five wingnut SCOTUS Justices looking for any excuse - even if it destroys the checks and balances of the Constitution itself - to get trump off the hook. If by the off-chance the Court rejects trump's claims of immunity - at least involving what happened that day - and does so within this month (or early June) then we could see Special Prosecutor Jack Smith getting a trial set up just as the Manhattan trial concludes.

I no longer have my hopes up for that though.

We'll get there when we get there, I guess.

In the meantime, for the millions of Americans who know full well the damage trump has done - and the damage trump threatens to inflict - need to get the damn vote out this November 2024 and stop trump - and the Republicans - from usurping our power and responsibility to vote at all.

trump's Only Defense

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

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

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

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

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

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) June 12, 2023

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

— Walter Williams (@WaltTheStalt) June 12, 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Execution of Tyre Nichols

I doubt you can call me as a juror on this case. I've already made up my mind about what those five officers did to an unarmed Black man in Memphis Tennessee (via Jonathan Franklin and Emma Bowman at NPR):

Police said on Jan. 8 that Nichols was taken into custody after a traffic stop that involved two confrontations with officers. During the initial confrontation, Nichols fled the scene of the traffic stop, police said.

Following the arrest, Nichols then complained of shortness of breath, according to authorities, and was taken to the hospital in critical condition, where he died on Jan. 10.

His family has said the police beat him so severely that he was unrecognizable.

There was video, some of it from the body cams, one from a nearby street camera that the officers had to know was recording them (and they still didn't care):

In the videos, officers are seen dragging Nichols from his car and shouting profanities throughout the confrontation. An officer tries to deploy a Taser at Nichols and then begins to chase him on foot. "I'm just trying to go home," Nichols is heard saying. Later, officers are seen repeatedly kicking, punching and using a baton to strike Nichols as he lies on the ground. At one point he's heard yelling "Mom." Lawyers for the Nichols family says this encounter happened within 100 yards of the family's home.

The video is hard to watch. If you do, you'll notice the cops took turns beating Nichols.

...

Five cops, beating one unarmed man. If you've ever been bullied in school, you'll understand how overwhelming and terrifying that can be, getting ganged up like that.

Oh, he shouldn't have run, the defenders will opine. That just made the cops angry.

Bastards, listen up. Everybody runs when confronted with the possibility of death. Nichols must have sensed something was wrong, something was going on with these "officers of the law" that was going to end up with him bloodied and broken.

It was the cops who were over the line, not Nichols. And Nichols is the one who ended up beaten to death.

There are serious problems with law enforcement in our country. Our police aren't being trained to protect and serve, they're being trained to bully and intimidate. Our police aren't being trained to defuse situations, they're being trained to escalate to violence. Our police are getting hammered with the message that there's a war on the streets, that they're soldiers in an Us vs. Them struggle not only with gangs but with everyday citizens who can turn violent in a heartbeat. 

Everyone - who are poor minorities - are a threat to them now. It makes everyone - those poor minorities - a target.

And it doesn't matter to these police officers if they target unarmed Black men at night or broad daylight, they don't believe they'll get into trouble even as they administer beatdowns in front of street cameras or eyewitnesses. 

Our nation's law enforcement have learned nothing from Rodney King, from the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, from the execution of George Floyd, from the reckless murder of Breonna Taylor, none of that.

Unarmed Blacks are going to keep getting killed by systemic failure in our legal system - one driven by fear and racism and arrogance - on the part of law enforcement that ought to work to keep us all safe, instead of appointing themselves executioners.

Damned If You trump, Damned If You Don't

As you might know, donald trump former President Loser of the Popular Vote (Twice) is facing a set of investigations in New York regarding his business dealings and his questionable tax dodging. It's a twofer: One investigation is pursuing the evidence as a Civil matter, another grand jury investigation is looking at the Criminal violations.

And yes, in our legal system you can get investigated in both Civil and Criminal systems over the same alleged acts (SEE: OJ Simpson's trial for murdering his ex-wife and another man AND the wrongful death lawsuits of those murders) without it violating Double Jeopardy.

The newsworthy thing happening today was that trump and his children involved with his businesses were in court arguing to prevent the Civil case from forcing them to testify to that particular grand jury. Their case was that anything they said - or didn't say - regarding civil violations could get handed over to the criminal grand jury and violate their Fifth Amendment rights over self-incrimination.

If we go to the AP News coverage for an explainer:

(New York Attorney General Letitia) James, a Democrat, is considering whether to sue Trump or his company, the Trump Organization, over the way they have valued his assets over the years. Essentially, her investigators contend Trump and his company had a “fraudulent or misleading” pattern of saying properties they own such as golf courses and skyscrapers were worth more when they wanted better deals on loans, and less when they wanted tax breaks...

Trump has bristled at allegations that he lied about his wealth. He and his lawyers have pointed out that asset valuations can be subjective. They’ve repeatedly ripped the investigation as purely political, and even sued James to try to stop her probe.

IS THERE A CRIMINAL PROBE, TOO?

Yes. The Manhattan district attorney is also investigating. A grand jury has been hearing testimony and reviewing documents covering much of the same subject material as James’ civil probe.

WHAT IS A DEPOSITION?

A deposition is like an interview, usually held in a law office or conference room, except witnesses must swear an oath and could be subject to penalties if they commit perjury. They’re typically recorded.

Depositions, frequently depicted in legal dramas as pitting one side against the other across a table, are most common in civil litigation and are often used to obtain information or get someone’s answers on the record.

WILL TRUMP HAVE TO ANSWER THE QUESTIONS?

Since anything a person says in a civil deposition could also be used against them in a criminal investigation, witnesses are free to invoke their Fifth Amendment right to remain silent at any time.

So if he chooses, Trump could simply refuse to answer many questions...

Refusing to answer the toughest questions could hurt Trump in any Civil trial. A jury is allowed to know if a person has refused to answer, and is also allowed to infer that if the person had answered the question, it might make them look bad...

The problem apparently is that trump (and his family members as well) could plead the Fifth out of a fear that any testimony will incriminate himself in the Criminal proceedings at the other end of the courthouse, and if the Criminal investigation leads to charges and a trial his pleading the Fifth can't be used against him. However, the likely Civil court case can present his refusal to testify to the jury, which makes him vulnerable to any "guilty" or "culpable" findings there.

An interesting thing about the differences between a deposition - which Civil cases rely on - vs. grand jury Criminal testimony:

IS THIS LIKE TESTIFYING BEFORE A GRAND JURY?

There are some similarities, but in New York, anyone who testifies before a grand jury automatically gets immunity from prosecution for any crimes they discuss.

For this reason, New York prosecutors are unlikely to call Trump before a grand jury...

Hence trump's argument that James' Civil investigation is a witch-hunt trying to work around the limits of a Criminal probe.

Thing is, the judge wasn't buying trump's argument (Also via AP News but article by Michael R. Sisak):

Former President Donald Trump must answer questions under oath in New York state’s civil investigation into his business practices, a judge ruled Thursday.

Judge Arthur Engoron ordered Trump and his two eldest children, Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr., to comply with subpoenas issued in December by New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Trump and his two children must sit for depositions within 21 days, Engoron said following a two-hour hearing with lawyers for the Trumps and James’ office...

21 DAYS! (checks calendar) Holy shit, that's March 10. MARK IT DOWN, PEOPLE.

“In the final analysis, a State Attorney General commences investigating a business entity, uncovers copious evidence of possible financial fraud, and wants to question, under oath, several of the entities’ principals, including its namesake. She has the clear right to do so.” Engoron wrote in his decision...

Suck it, trump.

Trump’s lawyers told Engoron that having him sit for a civil deposition now, while his company is also the subject of a parallel criminal investigation, is an improper attempt to get around a state law barring prosecutors from calling someone to testify before a criminal grand jury without giving them immunity.

“If she wants sworn testimony from my client, he’s entitled to immunity. He gets immunity for what he says, or he says nothing,” Trump’s criminal defense lawyer, Ronald Fischetti, said in the hearing, which was conducted by video conference.

Anything Trump says in a civil deposition could be used against him in the criminal probe being overseen by the Manhattan district attorney’s office. If Trump invokes the Fifth Amendment, Fischetti said it could still hurt a potential criminal defense.

“That’ll be on every front page in the newspaper in the world,” Fischetti said. “How can I possibly pick a jury in that case...?”

If you're wondering why pleading the Fifth is so damaging, you'll need to do some research on "Fifth Amendment Commies." Back in the days of the McCarthyist witch hunts for Communists, it was a favorite tactic of the Far Right to summon people before public hearings and get them to refuse to self-incriminate. Back then in the 1950s, in an era of Loyalty Oaths, people could actually lose their jobs if they admitted they were ever members of the Communist Party (which a number of people were back in the 1930s and the Great Depression) even for a day. So they plead the Fifth, after which McCarthy and his allies would accuse them anyway of being "Fifth Amendment Commies," forcing their employers to fire them anyway.

As a result, even though it's perfectly legal under the Constitution, the Fifth Amendment protection from self-incrimination has a bad reputation in the public discourse. Republicans still enjoy pummeling anyone who goes to that legal tactic in any way: trump himself bashed the Fifth Amendment as a "refuge for mobsters" and that you shouldn't plead the Fifth "if you're innocent." So this has to burn for him. You can't claim to be a winner and you can't claim the legality of your actions if you have to go on court record pleading the Fifth (and pleading it more than 500 times like son eric trump recently did).

Another thing that has to bother trump - and especially his lawyers - is how any deposition runs the risk of trump committing perjury in any way. It's been noted before: trump can contradict himself on testimony at any given time if forced to answer questions. Driven by the need to look perfect - to look like a winner at all times - trump will say one thing about an incident in one sentence and then say the exact opposite about the same incident in a later question if it makes him look good. He'll make grand statements about any meetings or conversations he has, opening himself up to counter-testimony from other people who'll remember those conversations differently... and have records to prove what happened.

If trump is compelled in the Civic deposition to say something other than pleading the Fifth, he opens himself up to the risk of countering the thousands of receipts AG James already has (especially from the Mazars accounting firm that just pushed trump under the bus).

No matter which way trump is forced to testify, he's in deep trouble.

Which is probably why he doesn't want to testify at all.

But the legal system is no longer treating him with the kid gloves they've used back when he merely filed for bankruptcy four (or six?) times back in the 1990s and 2000s.

He's in deep trouble now.

And the best thing the rest of us can do is break out the popcorn GIFs, as always.

via GIPHY

These Things Go Through Your Head When There's a Man On Your Back

(Blog title stolen from Tori Amos, who suffered this hell)

As I followed the stories coming out of the Congressional testimony by our women's Olympic gymnasts about the years of sexual abuse they endured, the thing that horrified me most wasn't their ordeal at the hands of their rapist (and what they suffered WAS/STILL IS HORRIFYING).

What horrified more than THAT was the ordeal those women suffered at the hands of the legal authorities who failed to protect them, and worse failed to believe them (via Ailsa Chang, Vincent Acovino, and Justine Kenin at NPR): 

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

ALY RAISMAN: It disgusts me that we are still fighting for the most basic answers and accountability over six years later.

CHANG: That is Aly Raisman, who, along with three other Olympic Team U.S.A. gymnasts - Simone Biles, Maggie Nichols and McKayla Maroney - told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the FBI mishandled its investigation of Larry Nassar. Here is Simone Biles.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

SIMONE BILES: To be clear - sorry.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Take your time.

BILES: To be clear, I blame Larry Nassar. And I also blame an entire system that enabled and perpetrated his abuse.

CHANG: McKayla Maroney said the FBI did not report her abuse for 14 months and falsified her testimony when they did.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MCKAYLA MARONEY: Let's be honest. By not taking immediate action from my report, they allowed a child molester to go free for more than a year. And this inaction directly allowed Nassar's abuse to continue. What is the point of reporting abuse if our own FBI agents are going to take it upon themselves to bury that report in a drawer...?

Let's repeat that part: Maroney accused the Federal Bureau of Investigation of falsifying her testimony. They not only ignored what she said, they altered it so that everyone else wouldn't believe it.

And it allowed sexual predator Larry Nassar - now serving essentially life in prison for numerous counts of sexual criminal conduct - to keep assaulting young girls while that "investigation" did nothing.

It's as though law enforcement still hasn't figured out the one common thing about rapists and sex predators: THEY DO NOT STOP AT ONE VICTIM. Rapists and assaulters and stalkers and pedophiles will not stop until stopped. The second the FBI had reports from multiple women that Nassar was a threat, THEY SHOULD HAVE STEPPED IN. Someone in charge should have made efforts to separate Nassar from his source of victims.

Yet no one did.

When the FBI did investigate, it turned out they repeatedly mishandled information and failed to follow their own agency's policies. To quote the internal DOJ investigation:

The DOJ Office of the Inspector General (OIG) found that senior officials in the FBI Indianapolis Field Office failed to respond to allegations of sexual abuse of athletes by former USA Gymnastics physician Lawrence Gerard Nassar with the urgency that the allegations required. We also found that the FBI Indianapolis Field Office made fundamental errors when it did respond to the allegations, failed to notify the appropriate FBI field office (the Lansing Resident Agency) or state or local authorities of the allegations, and failed to take other steps to mitigate the ongoing threat posed by Nassar.

After eight months of inaction by the FBI Indianapolis Field Office, the FBI Los Angeles Field Office received the same allegations. The OIG found that while the Los Angeles Field Office took numerous investigative steps, it too failed to notify the FBI Lansing Resident Agency or state or local authorities of the allegations, and failed to take other steps to mitigate the ongoing threat posed by Nassar. The FBI Lansing Resident Agency did not become aware of the Nassar allegations until after the Michigan State University Police Department (MSUPD) executed a search warrant on Nassar’s residence in September 2016, following the MSUPD’s receipt of separate complaints of sexual abuse by Nassar, and discovered child pornography at Nassar’s residence. During this period from July 2015, when the allegations were first reported to the FBI, to September 2016, Nassar continued to treat gymnasts at Michigan State University, a high school in Michigan, and a gymnastics club in Michigan. Ultimately the investigations determined that Nassar had engaged in sexual assaults of over 100 victims and possessed thousands of images of child pornography, led to his convictions in federal and state court, and resulted in Nassar being sentenced to incarceration for over 100 years...

The specific findings of the report include:

Officials in the Indianapolis Field Office violated numerous FBI policies in handling the Nassar allegations. Specifically, officials in the Indianapolis Field Office:

* failed to formally document a July 28, 2015 meeting with USA Gymnastics during which the FBI first received the allegations against Nassar;

* failed to properly handle and document receipt and review of relevant evidence, i.e., a thumb drive provided by USA Gymnastics President Stephen D. Penny, Jr.;

* failed to document until February 2017 an interview of a gymnast that was conducted on September 2, 2015, during which the gymnast alleged sexual assault by Nassar; and failed to transfer the Nassar allegations to the FBI Lansing Resident Agency, where venue most likely would have existed for potential federal crimes.

Indianapolis Field Office Special Agent in Charge (SAC) W. Jay Abbott and an Indianapolis Field Office Supervisory Special Agent (Indianapolis SSA) made false statements. Specifically, we concluded that the gymnast interview summary that the Indianapolis SSA drafted in February 2017, 17 months after the interview took place, contained materially false statements and omitted material information. We further concluded that the Indianapolis SSA made materially false statements when twice questioned by the OIG about the victim interview. In addition, we concluded that Abbott made materially false statements during his OIG interviews to minimize errors made by the Indianapolis Field Office in connection with the handling of the Nassar allegations.

Abbott violated FBI policy and exercised extremely poor judgment under federal ethics rules when he, without prior authorization, communicated with Penny about a potential job opportunity with the U.S. Olympic Committee, an entity with which Penny had professional connections. Abbott communicated with Penny about the potential job opportunity while the two continued to discuss the allegations against Nassar and while Abbott took an active role in conversations about the FBI’s public statements regarding USA Gymnastics’ handling of those allegations. Abbott should have known—and we found that he in fact did know—that this conduct would raise questions regarding his impartiality. Further, Abbott applied for the position with the U.S. Olympic Committee, and then falsely denied that he had done so when questioned by the OIG on two separate occasions...

Jesus Christ.

That the Department of Justice let these men retire or simply fired from their jobs is part of the overall mishandling of this situation. These men should be charged for their active crimes of falsifying statements and their own lies.

All because of what? Why the hell did the FBI - and nearly every other agency involved in this nightmare - screw up, at some points intentionally?

Because too many men in law enforcement, too many men in power, simply don't treat rape as a serious matter.

Just look at everything else out there where our legal system is failing rape victims and women in general:

• Preferential treatment to male suspects, especially when those suspects are celebrities, men of wealth, and men of power. Hi, Bill Cosby, Jeffrey Epstein, Roy Moore, Harvey Weinstein, and too many politicians and millionaires to count. Those men only answered after decades of people in authority looking the other way couldn't afford to look away anymore... and even then the likes of Cosby got out early because a DA screwed up an earlier plea arrangement.
• Rape kits left untested for years if not decades, reducing the likelihood of catching rapists who keep raping while the evidence to stop them degrades into uselessness.
• Investigators who harass, confront, and mishandle rape victims and assault accusers in ways that convince rape victims they'll never be believed in court and never see any justice served.

Even with rape as an act of violence, not only physical abuse but emotional abuse and spiritual abuse, and everybody who can do something to stop it - the cops in charge, the attorneys in charge, the judges in charge, the juries empaneled - keep acting like they want to handle anything else. That it's not worth their time, that the rape was "miscommunication" or that the woman "asked for it" with her clothes, her hairstyle, her drunken state, her demeanor, her bitchy attitude, or the shape of the moon that night.

Again, the word here. Horrifying.

One of the other shocking things is how little research into rape accusations there's been. Nothing to clarify or confirm the reality of how many rape victims there are, and if the allegations are valid (given how so many cops and DAs worry that rape victims are "ginning up" their stories for revenge or blackmail). If there's been any research, it keeps getting overlooked: There was one case study in 2010 done... which found only 8 percent or so of rape allegations were false. That meant 92 PERCENT OF RAPE ALLEGATIONS WERE REAL... and yet our legal system still treats rape like it's hearsay and we barely see any rape charges filed at all. Until it's too late and there's more victims piled up to make the "hearsay" into "Oh God they were telling the truth all along." 

Yes, there is due process. Yes, there should be steps to ensure the accused have their defense and day in court.

But for the love of God, the victims deserve due process too, the victims deserve their day in court to see justice served. If you're a cop or a lawyer or a doctor or a school administrator or a teacher or a social worker and someone's telling you they're a victim of assault or rape, you have the moral obligation to trust them and take the time to find out and make the effort to ensure rape doesn't happen again.

And yet here we are, finding more evidence our cops and investigators and administrators don't give a rat's ass.

Some of them deserve to be in jail as long as the rapist will be, for letting him flourish and rape again while they fiddled.

And what point will women trust this legal system that DOES NOT TRUST THEM?

One Sentence Thought About the Legal System Letting Cosby Walk On His Sex Crimes

There are sixty women, AT LEAST SIXTY WOMEN, who came forward to report how Bill Cosby drugged them, sexually assaulted them, publicly humiliated them, and they had enough evidence for a Pennsylvania jury to find him guilty of sexual assault on three of those women, and even with all that the state's Supreme Court lets Cosby walk free overturning those convictions because an idiot district attorney from an earlier administration gave Cosby a verbal agreement of immunity when he testified beforehand in a separate legal matter, and now there are thousands if not millions of women who endure sexual harassment and rape in this country who realize they may NEVER see any modicum of justice from a legal system and nation that seems to punish women for their sex. 

The Self-Dug Graves of donald trump

A lot of holes in the desert, and a lot of problems are buried in those holes. But you gotta do it right. I mean, you gotta have the hole already dug before you show up with a package in the trunk. Otherwise, you're talking about a half-hour to forty-five minutes worth of digging. And who knows who's gonna come along in that time? Pretty soon, you gotta dig a few more holes. You could be there all fuckin' night.

-- Nicky, Casino

When I began writing this article on Saturday morning the impeachment trial was still ongoing. But then the day turned sideways, a vote on allowing witnesses turned into a debacle that I STILL can't figure out, and it ended with a vote in the U.S. that went 57-43 in favor of removing trump for his Incitement to Insurrection... which did not clear the 2/3rd supermajority needed to make it happen.

We knew it going in that the cowardly Republicans in the Senate would not rise above the gross partisanship of their own party's base, but there was still a slim hope that enough facts and evidence of trump's misdeeds would get out to convince enough Republicans to put country ahead of party. In the end only seven - Mitt Romney (UT) who had previously voted against trump over the Ukraine scandal, plus Richard Burr (NC), Susan Collins (ME), Bill Cassidy (LA), Lisa Murkowski (AK), Pat Toomey (PA), and Ben Sasse (NE) - realized the danger trump's riot posed to Congressional safety and our Constitution's integrity.

Mitch McConnell attempted to have it both ways: Blaming trump for causing an insurrection, but then voted to protect trump's ass from removal. Mitch's hypocrisy is damning and two-faced, and it will likely get more Americans killed as trump uses this as an excuse to continue his lying campaign to overturn an election he lost.

The only good news out of this day is threefold: One, it exposes how broken our Impeachment system is to where it needs to go away; Two, it proves we should hold sitting Presidents accountable to arrest on serious federal felony charges (so SCREW that OLC memo); and Three, it leaves trump still exposed to the civil and criminal charges he's facing already.

Let's go to Lloyd Green at The Guardian:

In case anyone forgot, the US attorneys’ office for the southern district of New York previously treated Trump aka “Individual-1” as un-indicted co-conspirator in Michael Cohen’s case. As a result, the confirmation hearings of Joe Biden’s pick for attorney general, Merrick Garland, will certainly be interesting.

Already, prosecutors in Manhattan have the Orange Don and his crew in their cross-hairs. According to court filings and published reports, Cyrus Vance Jr, Manhattan’s district attorney, is investigating the truthfulness of the Trump Organization’s financial reporting and the company’s relationship with Deutsche Bank...

In addition, Trump’s recent bouts of wrath have given lawyers in Washington and Georgia plenty to ponder. Local authorities in the Peach state are weighing a criminal investigation into his failed efforts to browbeat Brad Raffensperger, the state’s secretary of state, into submission. Trump telling Raffensperger to “find” 11,779 more votes and interfering with election certification may have been a step too far...

Green wrote that article back in January 20. That Georgia case just went to Hyperactive this week (via Stephen Fowler at NPR):

The Fulton County District Attorney's office has launched a criminal probe into former President Donald Trump's attempts to overturn Georgia's election results, including a call pressuring Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find" enough votes for him. The county includes Atlanta, Georgia's capital.

In a letter sent to state officials and obtained by Georgia Public Broadcasting, newly elected Democratic District Attorney Fani Willis said the investigation will look into several potential violations of state law, including "the solicitation of election fraud, the making of false statements to state and local governmental bodies, conspiracy, racketeering, violation of oath of office and any involvement in violence or threats related to the election's administration..."

The letter from prosecutors asked several state officials to preserve all records from administering the 2020 election, with "particular care" given to those that "may be evidence of attempts to influence the actions of persons who were administering the election."

In the hourlong call obtained by Georgia Public Broadcasting, an angry Trump alternately cajoled and castigated Georgia's top elections official, seeking to have him toss out the November election results, which was counted three separate times, and "find 11,780 votes" to declare Trump the winner.

trump cannot accept the reality that he lost, he clings to his own lying narrative of "stolen ballots" to keep alive his slim hope of regaining political power, and worst of all he's got a literal mob of followers willing to riot for him to make those lies become a bloody "truth" at everyone else's expense. The cost of letting trump off the hook to keep these lies going will lead to more riots, more anger, more bullshit that won't go away until trump goes away.

This is the only hope for sanity our nation has left: That someone, either in Manhattan or Atlanta or DC, puts it on the line to file credible criminal charges that will convict trump for the damage he's done and remove him from the political stage for good.

There is, for example, the possibility that Biden's Justice Department could reopen the Mueller Report findings and use that to file Obstruction of Justice charges that Mueller determined could be done once trump is out of office. These are serious charges and everything about them should already be lined up and ready to go.

The civil courts are a different matter: trump was already facing a number of civil charges especially a sexual assault/defamation trial from E. Jean Carroll. Any damages, and loss of life, that happened during trump's Insurrection could be charged in civil courts as well. trump has been delaying these trials over and over as he usually does (it's the only true way he's ever won in court, outlast the plaintiff until they quit or take a lesser deal) but he's running out of room to dodge these cases. Sooner rather than later, trump's got to face his accusers before the law.

The legacy of the donald trump post-White House years will be spent in the courtrooms. he will be dealing in cases that won't settle out of court, that won't sign off on any plea deal where he walks away without admission of guilt.

trump does have a terrifying habit of wriggling his way out of ANY accountability, but for the LOVE OF GOD he's broken so many laws and ruined so many lives, the bill for his sins HAVE to come due now. The grave that needs to get dug now is for his future, a future that ought to be trump sitting in a SuperMax jail cell wondering if his con jobs were ever really worth it.  

The Nation Plans Accordingly...

I hear always the admonishment of my friends:

"Bolt her in, constrain her!"
But who will guard the guardians? 
The wife plans accordingly and begins with them.

-- Juvenal, Satire VI

I've been struggling the past few days to get into words what it is I want to say about the current protests and community uprisings against police brutality, tying it in with the remembrances of Tank Man and the need for protesting injustice under all circumstances.

In the meantime, this article - written by an ex-cop under the pseudonym A.Cab (the newest acronym for All Cops Are Bastards) about the systemic bias, rage, racism, sexism, and bullying in law enforcement - on Medium has turned into the must-read thing of the moment: 

This essay has been kicking around in my head for years now and I’ve never felt confident enough to write it. It’s a time in my life I’m ashamed of. It’s a time that I hurt people and, through inaction, allowed others to be hurt. It’s a time that I acted as a violent agent of capitalism and white supremacy. Under the guise of public safety, I personally ruined people’s lives but in so doing, made the public no safer… so did the family members and close friends of mine who also bore the badge alongside me.

But enough is enough...

If you’re tempted to feel sympathy for me, don’t. I used to happily hassle the homeless under other circumstances. I researched obscure penal codes so I could arrest people in homeless encampments for lesser known crimes like “remaining too close to railroad property” (369i of the California Penal Code). I used to call it “planting warrant seeds” since I knew they wouldn’t make their court dates and we could arrest them again and again for warrant violations.

We used to have informal contests for who could cite or arrest someone for the weirdest law. DUI on a bicycle, non-regulation number of brooms on your tow truck (27700(a)(1) of the California Vehicle Code)… shit like that. For me, police work was a logic puzzle for arresting people, regardless of their actual threat to the community. As ashamed as I am to admit it, it needs to be said: stripping people of their freedom felt like a game to me for many years...

In fact, let me tell you about an extremely formative experience: in my police academy class, we had a clique of around six trainees who routinely bullied and harassed other students: intentionally scuffing another trainee’s shoes to get them in trouble during inspection, sexually harassing female trainees, cracking racist jokes, and so on. Every quarter, we were to write anonymous evaluations of our squadmates. I wrote scathing accounts of their behavior, thinking I was helping keep bad apples out of law enforcement and believing I would be protected. Instead, the academy staff read my complaints to them out loud and outed me to them and never punished them, causing me to get harassed for the rest of my academy class. That’s how I learned that even police leadership hates rats. That’s why no one is “changing things from the inside.” They can’t, the structure won’t allow it...

To understand why all cops are bastards, you need to understand one of the things almost every training officer told me when it came to using force: “I’d rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6.”

Meaning, “I’ll take my chances in court rather than risk getting hurt”. We’re able to think that way because police unions are extremely overpowered and because of the generous concept of Qualified Immunity, a legal theory which says a cop generally can’t be held personally liable for mistakes they make doing their job in an official capacity...

If you take nothing else away from this essay, I want you to tattoo this onto your brain forever: if a police officer is telling you something, it is probably a lie designed to gain your compliance.

Do not talk to cops and never, ever believe them. Do not “try to be helpful” with cops. Do not assume they are trying to catch someone else instead of you. Do not assume what they are doing is “important” or even legal. Under no circumstances assume any police officer is acting in good faith.

Also, and this is important, do not talk to cops...

Reading the above, you may be tempted to ask whether cops ever do anything good. And the answer is, sure, sometimes. In fact, most officers I worked with thought they were usually helping the helpless and protecting the safety of innocent people...

And consider this: my job as a police officer required me to be a marriage counselor, a mental health crisis professional, a conflict negotiator, a social worker, a child advocate, a traffic safety expert, a sexual assault specialist, and, every once in awhile, a public safety officer authorized to use force, all after only a 1000 hours of training at a police academy. Does the person we send to catch a robber also need to be the person we send to interview a rape victim or document a fender bender? Should one profession be expected to do all that important community care (with very little training) all at the same time?

To put this another way: I made double the salary most social workers made to do a fraction of what they could do to mitigate the causes of crimes and desperation. I can count very few times my monopoly on state violence actually made our citizens safer, and even then, it’s hard to say better-funded social safety nets and dozens of other community care specialists wouldn’t have prevented a problem before it started...

This is where, in a sane and just world, instead of sending out more cops we need to be sending out more social workers. But gee, who wants to spend a billion dollar budget on social workers...? Back to the anonymous op-ed:

Police officers do not protect and serve people, they protect and serve the status quo, “polite society”, and private property. Using the incremental mechanisms of the status quo will never reform the police because the status quo relies on police violence to exist. Capitalism requires a permanent underclass to exploit for cheap labor and it requires the cops to bring that underclass to heel.

Instead of wasting time with minor tweaks, I recommend exploring the following ideas:

No more qualified immunity. Police officers should be personally liable for all decisions they make in the line of duty.
No more civil asset forfeiture. Did you know that every year, citizens like you lose more cash and property to unaccountable civil asset forfeiture than to all burglaries combined? The police can steal your stuff without charging you with a crime and it makes some police departments very rich.
Break the power of police unions. Police unions make it nearly impossible to fire bad cops and incentivize protecting them to protect the power of the union. A police union is not a labor union; police officers are powerful state agents, not exploited workers.
Require malpractice insurance. Doctors must pay for insurance in case they botch a surgery, police officers should do the same for botching a police raid or other use of force. If human decency won’t motivate police to respect human life, perhaps hitting their wallet might.
Defund, demilitarize, and disarm cops. Thousands of police departments own assault rifles, armored personnel carriers, and stuff you’d see in a warzone. Police officers have grants and huge budgets to spend on guns, ammo, body armor, and combat training. 99% of calls for service require no armed response, yet when all you have is a gun, every problem feels like target practice. Cities are not safer when unaccountable bullies have a monopoly on state violence and the equipment to execute that monopoly.
One final idea: consider abolishing the police...

As for all the calls (like this one) to "abolish the police" sounds like extreme demolition, but in the context that the op-ed writer is telling us, it's more along the lines of extreme reform. That things need to be broken down in order to rebuild something without the stain and sins of the previous shape of things. The current system, there's almost nothing good to salvage. The entire setup has to go, and a new, more humane and less violent system put in place. This requires not a revolution but determination.

A lot of this were warning signs back during Ferguson. I went back to look at what I wrote then. When the anonymous cop writes about "No More Civil Asset Forfeiture," that was one of the biggest takeaways we got from the official reports about those dark months. The way that department operated - fining the hell out of poor residents in order to raise their own revenues - created what I called an extortion racket the police couldn't give up. We had a legal system that relied on bad police behavior to the point our prosecutors and judges were accomplices after the fact. In Ferguson, much like what we've had in our cities this month, we had cops carrying firepower equal to most standing armies all to shoot and maim unarmed civilians. I still remember that quote from an actual Iraqi veteran: "We rolled lighter than that in an actual war zone."

SIX YEARS AGO, we had all these warning signs, and we've done nothing since then but let the local and county law enforcement get worse.

The need for accountability out of our guardians has always been high. The failure of our nation to hold them accountable has always been a great tragedy. Too many people have been killed and harmed already.

Who polices the police? We should, otherwise like the wife of Juvenal's satire we need to plan ourselves accordingly.

NSFW You're DAMNED RIGHT I'm Cursing trump For His Corruption of Pardon Powers

Just a few notes to consider:

trump's recent use of pardons - freeing white collar criminals and political scandal figures like Blagojuice, Blagomeister, DAMMIT lemme speel it right Blagojevich (!) - is essentially the Shitgibbon signalling to the federal Judiciary that he can fuck up any criminal accountability and free anybody - especially his own lackeys facing jail time like Flynn, Manafort (already in jail) and Stone - he likes. trump is basically attempting to shove every one of his scandals under the rug so he can crow about it to his MAGA fans during the 2020 campaign.

Never mind this exposes his "drain the swamp" campaign "pledge" for the fraud it has ALWAYS been. His base will never question it and the Mainstream Media will gloss it over, normalizing the new reality that JESUS GODDAMN CHRIST WE HAVE A GODDAMN MOB BOSS IN THE OVAL OFFICE.

Jesus. I didn't think I'd ever have to stumble over spelling Blago's name ever again. Christ, this is going back to 2009, before I was more serious about hashtags. DAMN YOU trump!

Today is apparently the big day. Roger Stone is facing his sentencing hearing, something trump and his AG lackey Bill Barr had been meddling in during the past week. The over/under on trump issuing Stone a full pardon by nightfall would be good betting odds.

Goddamn us. We are heavily royally motherfucking screwed.

The trump Criminal Empire Threatens The Rule of Law

This is how fucked up our federal government is under the misrule of KING trump. Via Jamie Ross at Daily Beast:

The head of the Federal Judges Association has reportedly taken the unprecedented step of calling an emergency meeting to discuss President Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr’s intervention in Roger Stone’s sentencing recommendation. U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe, who leads the association of around 1,100 life-term federal judges, told USA Today that the issue “could not wait.” She said: “There are plenty of issues that we are concerned about... We’ll talk all this through.”

Rufe’s announcement follows an open letter signed by more than 1,000 former Justice Department employees calling on Barr to resign over the Stone case. Last week, Trump made clear that he was angry about the length of the sentence recommended for his friend Roger Stone, then Barr’s Justice Department withdrew that recommendation. Trump also attacked the judge in the Stone case, Amy Berman Jackson, with unfounded accusations of political bias. The Washington Post reported that the Federal Judges Association has never called an emergency meeting such as the one described by Rufe in the USA Today interview...

This has never happened before.

That is because we've never had a goddamned dictator-wannabe con artist asshole crook in office before. Yes, this is including the likes of Nixon and Harding and Jackson (and if you're so inclined I will include Bill Clinton in that mix).

That is because previous Presidents showed due deference to the independence of the Judiciary, whereas this President Loser of the Popular Vote trump wants every branch and every office of government bowing to him with undeserved fealty.

The amount of concern among other Republican leaders, especially the cowering ass-covering Senators who just gave trump their Stamp of Approval to break every law he wishes, will most likely rise to the level of telling Fox Not-News "Well, we'll write a strongly-worded letter to the White House as soon as we can find a typewriter that still works."

Christ.

Traditionally, the judges in our federal system try to avoid the appearance of partisanship or political bias - even as they pass rulings that have bias, thanks a lot Rehnquist Court for the Bush v. Gore monstrosity - but in this regard they can no longer avoid it. trump and his lackey AG Barr are directly attacking the independence of the third branch of our government, hacking at the checks and balances that are supposed to keep power shared and out of the hands of just one person.

But that's what trump wants, after all. trump has no respect for others unless they're rich and powerful, what he aspires to be (and what he secretly may not be, hence his refusal to ever show his tax returns). trump WANTS all that power, refuses to share it to those he views as lackeys and servants and losers. he chafes against the restrictions of dealing with Congress (even when his fellow Republicans controlled it between 2017-18, he couldn't handle sharing power with them), and he's expressed his disdain for judges before.

And now trump is unleashed. he thinks Congress can't touch him now (and with the Senate refusing to hold him accountable, he's right). The only thing standing in his way of Absolute Rule is a court system still holding his business buddies and Russian connections to count for their law-breaking before and during the 2016 elections.

Now trump wants the judges to arbitrarily give him and his buddies Stone, Flynn, Manafort and others a clean break, no more jail time for the sins they've plead out or convicted of, before trump has to resort to the obvious step of pardoning each of them anyway (trump and his lawyers have to understand the risks of pardons - if accepted, you can't claim Fifth Amendment protections from testifying later - so they want the judges to do the dirty work for them).

We are at a critical moment in our nation's history.

One branch of government - the Executive - is at war with another branch - the Judiciary - and the stakes are high. Above all the power of the Constitution itself serving as the Law of this Land.

Gods help us.

P.S. Dear judges, now would be a good time to figure out how to issue Contempt rulings on trump, Barr, Stone, and every other corrupt Republican threatening our legal system. KaiThnxBye

Injustice with trump and Barr

Remember when a number of trump's cronies and campaign handlers were caught, charged with felonies, convicted, plead out, and/or sentenced to jail?

That shit's over now.

Now that the Congressional Republicans have signed off on trump getting away with any crime he likes, trump has set his sights on clearing out the debris of the legal matters surrounding his people getting dirty with the Russians and lying about it all.

All it will take is trump tweeting out a message about something he doesn't like and then his lackey William Barr at the Attorney General's office will do his bidding and fuck things up.

For example, just today: trump's campaign ally Roger Stone was getting set to have a hearing on the sentencing recommendations that the prosecutors - working from the Mueller investigations - were filing over the seven GUILTY counts Stone received from a jury about witness tampering, lying to investigators, and obstruction.

When it got out that the prosecutors were looking for seven to nine years total - roughly one year for each Guilty count - trump tweeted out his displeasure that the sentencing was too harsh.

Let's go to Andrew Prokop at Vox.com for details:

Stone was indicted by Mueller’s team in January 2019 and charged with making false statements, obstruction, and witness tampering. The charges focused on Stone’s alleged lies to the House Intelligence Committee in 2017 about his statements on and efforts to get in touch with WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign. He was convicted on all seven counts at trial in November.

With Stone’s sentencing date of February 20 approaching, prosecutors had to submit their sentencing memo for him on Monday. In it, the prosecutors said that a sentence for Stone of between 87 and 108 months (about seven to nine years) — a range calculated by the probation office, in accordance with standard sentencing guidelines — would be “appropriate.”

President Trump responded to this with outrage in a set of late-night tweets and retweets. “This is a horrible and very unfair situation,” he tweeted at 1:48 am Tuesday. “The real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them. Cannot allow this miscarriage of justice!”

This immediately stoked speculation about whether Trump planned to pardon Stone or commute his sentence. Then later Tuesday morning, reporters started to hear that the Justice Department was in fact going to change its position.

A senior Justice Department source told the Washington Post Tuesday that “the Department finds seven to nine years extreme, excessive and grossly disproportionate” — and that they’d “clarify” their position “later today.” That source claimed they made this decision to do so before Trump posted his tweet (a claim that’s been greeted with much skepticism).

Such interference in a sentencing recommendation made by career prosecutors is highly unusual. And what happened next was even more unusual — Zelinsky informed the court he was withdrawing from Stone’s case just days before sentencing and resigning his special posting with the DC US Attorney’s Office. Kravis then said he was resigning from DOJ entirely, which was followed by Jed and Marando withdrawing from the case as well...

The prosecutors, clearly seeing their authority getting kneecapped by their boss Barr, decided to resign rather than accept the bullshit getting shoved down their throats. The replacement guy then presented the judge with an open-ended "Well, we don't know what will be appropriate" and left everything burning in the dumpster as of now.

This is what happens, Republican Senators, when you tell a corrupt, self-serving bankrupt con artist that he can break every law and violate every procedure to his "Absolute Authority" whims. But they wanted this, after all. The Republican Party for years showed disdain for the federal system of checks and balances, they hate it when their own have to answer to the law, and now they've got a guy in the White House and a willing lackey in the Attorney General's office to let them do what THEY will at the expense of our legal system.

Any minute now, we should expect trump to issue pardons to Mike Flynn, Paul Manafort, and everybody else who plead out or got jailed for doing trump's dirty work back in 2015-16.

trump and the Republicans are gleefully destroying each branch of the federal government one agency at a time. Here goes the Dept. of Justice, America.

We are so very royally extremely fucked.