Not Looking Back in Anger

 

The Biden Administration wasn't perfect, but it was professional. You want the most benign, bloodless take I can make on it--there you go. We'll be asking ourselves for a long time what else could have been done:

Did they do all they could to prevent Trump 2.0 and bring him to any kind of justice? Did they try hard enough to whip inflation--or at least, leave a bigger impression that's what they were doing? Did they do enough for Ukraine? Could they have done less for Israel and prevent the worst of the suffering in Gaza?

Here's what I do know; hindsight is 20/20. The Biden Administration, like Biden himself, weren't perfect and weren't able to do everything they wanted to do. Biden himself would say, "Don't compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative." You can pick apart what might have been different, in terms of policy, in terms of politics, that might have given us a second Democratic term. You can ask if Biden should have, oh, right about after the midterms, said that he wanted to concentrate on seeing out his term and promoting a new candidate to lead his party. 

TWGB: The Farce of Law

 

Special Counsel Jack Smith has asked for the dismissal of the election interference case against Trump (without prejudice) and has dropped the challenge to Judge Cannon's dismissal of the classified documents (espionage) case--with respects to Trump, not with respects to his accomplices. 

People are pointing fingers. I see a lot of shit being shoveled Merrick Garland's way. I remember the disappointment folks had with Robert Mueller when Barr terminated his investigation and called for the report, which never did exonerate Trump, except in the eyes of TrumpWorld--and people who hadn't been paying attention. Look--I am not a lawyer, and I don't know what all goes into grand juries, planning a case, and dealing with the sheer firewall of money and privilege that comes with a guy being a former president. like Trump's lawyers were able to throw a lot of chaff up in the sights and gum up the works pretty nicely--no matter what the evidence was. 

There was a pretty damn serious PR game going on, too. And it looks to me like the clear news aspects of what Trump had done, and what those around him had done, got lost.

It seems like a lot to reckon with in a short time. I defer to the expertise of people who are experts about these things, and don't confuse my disappointment with a valid criticism--it truly is not my place to judge that part. I know my limits. 

On the other hand, the political aspect of this farce and who to blame for it all is something I feel competent to judge:

I blame Republicans. The Republican party is without honor. Since the Bush years, I have never gotten a fix on which part of them was dishonesty and which part ignorance, and I have long since stopped caring as both attributes are disqualifying. 

TWGB: Resorting to Crimes

 

Former President Donald Trump "resorted to crimes" to attempt to stay in office after losing the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, federal prosecutors allege in a newly unsealed court filing released Wednesday.

In the filing submitted by special counsel Jack Smith,… pic.twitter.com/lr2ut8tFn2

— PBS News (@NewsHour) October 2, 2024

You know, it seems like it was just yesterday that current Trump running mate JD Vance was trying to focus on the future instead of discussing whether Trump lost the 2020 election, and I love that for him. Corey Lewandowski was also stuck in the same groove when asked--unable to admit His Nibs lost in 2020. 

Judge Chutkan has done the world a favor by airing out Jack Smith's brief regarding how the Trump Team, with reckless disregard for the truth, democracy, the Constitution, public safety or any other damn thing, resorted to crimes in an attempt to defraud the American people regarding our presidential election. Trump and his people did everything they could to delay his reckoning regarding January 6th, but he can't actually delay people being forewarned and forearmed--he lied about one election, and he is just bound and determined to lie about this one. 

What Trump tried to do in 2020 was election interference. This right here right now, is letting you know what he does and plans to try again. Disenfranchising people in swing states, by fraudulently messing with our votes, is something I take very personally. He says bad things happen in Philadelphia, and I may be a bad thing happening in Philadelphia myself, but I am a very legitimate voter and you DON'T try to throw out my vote without me taking it very personally.  

My feminist foremamas didn't hit picket lines and get forcefed in prison for me to not get pissed when someone tried to first of all steal my vote and then use it to support anti-woman policies like banning abortion, birth control, or any other thing that liberates me and my sisters. And I fucking mean as a White lady to correct the past by supporting the right to vote and the right of having the votes counted of the Black and Brown people Trump (and the Republican party) want to exclude.

TWGB: Winning on Character!

 

A little while ago, Rich Lowry took some heat for writing a column suggesting that Trump could "win on character", which seems stupid as hell, but meant something like using policy as demonstrating that he's steadfast to his principles or some such drivel. I noted in my last post that there was something "weird" about using hallowed ground for a campaign photo-op--but it gets worse. The Trump campaign muscled aside a civilian employee who tried to stop them from filming the event for their use. 

Well--this is consistent with Trump principles to be sure. We can all remember Trump using tear gas on protestors to clear the way for a photo op at a church and using his cabinet members and a bible like props. Maybe we also remember when he exploited a murder victim's funeral, alleging he had spoken with her family when he had not, and claiming things he had read in an obituary were memories they had shared with him. 

Trump uses people as things. That is his character. Maybe he wanted to use a photo op to counter the claim that he considers our war dead as "losers" and "suckers", which was resurrected in part by his gross assertion that the Presidential Medal of Honor, which he has awarded to political allies, is in some ways better than the Congressional Medal of Honor, awarded to military heroes of conspicuous bravery. Maybe it's to counter the book just out by his former national security adviser General McMaster. 

Come to think of it, when we look at who Trump consistently is, it really is hard to see how he could "win on character". This is the man who betrayed our Constitution over his 2020 loss by instigating a riot at the Capitol and setting in motion a plan to avoid the transfer of power despite losing his election.

TWGB: Are You Buying What He's Selling?

 

Donald Trump said he learned about murder victim Ruby Garcia's "contagious laughter and when she walked into a room, she lit up that room" from her family. The family denies speaking to him, and that language appears in her obituary as reported in Trump's beloved New York Post. pic.twitter.com/RjeuEdLdIW

— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) April 3, 2024

I think I want to start this one with a weird lie--Trump said that he met with the family of Ruby Garcia and they talked with him about her and--that did not happen. It really looks like he "remembered" stuff from an obituary he read. I first wondered if he was conflating meeting with Ruby Garcia's family with meeting with Laken Riley's family. That doesn't seem to be it.  He just plumb forgot, after a long history of telling fictional "Sir" stories about strapping big men with tears in their eyes who sing his praises, that if you talk about real people, they can contradict you. 

That's not normal. Most people would understand that you don't lie about something like that. Trump does not. 

Most people would not go out of their way to violate a gag order, either. Trump would, though He would continue to lie about the relatives of a judge in one of his trials, and even insist it was necessary for him to do so. It would seem like he's either really just too dumb to know when to shut up, or maybe he thinks getting tossed in jail will earn him valuable martyr-points. (Jail is bad. Peter Navarro says so.) 

My question today is--are you buying what he is selling? It's a simple question--is this guy Mr. Honesty?  Are any Trump fans ready to wake up and smell the bullshit yet? 

We've got some fun, fun, fun stories about Truth Social today. It was reiterated that yes, Virginia, Truth Social was carried over the finish line to the IPO date by Russian money. And this is connected to the brothers who just pled to insider trading, because that's a very auspicious way to start a business.  And if you want to know where Trump sits in all of this, it's suing the Celebrity Apprentice guys who hooked him up with this scheme for poor management. He wants their shares. The value of the stock he has might be slipping so he saw what they had and went:

You know how he does--possession being nine tenths and a third of the law, or whatever--oh wait: that's his Mar-A-Lago documents strategery!

TWGB: Wondering About His Super Seedy Ass

 

This could strike some as reminiscent of when Manafort obtained $16M in loans approved by bank CEO Stephen Calk, who was seeking positions in the Trump administration. Calk was convicted for that by a jury in Manhattan. Press release by DOJ ⬇️ https://t.co/WAFC0JBLQY https://t.co/TmGwu2K1s9

— Andrew Weissmann (weissmann11 on Threads)🌻 (@AWeissmann_) March 8, 2024

It says a lot about Trump that when he finally does post a supersedeas bond to forestall collections activity in anticipation of appeal of the defamation civil case, instantly people go to work trying to find out the sketchy part: Who is the surety company? What's the catch? Does he have a cosigner? Isn't someone from that company a crony? Does that company have ties to Russia? Aren't they mentioned in his fraud trial?

So, um, yeah, there's something possibly sketchy in there--it's TrumpWorld. He wanted to waive having to put up a bond for this case altogether on the grounds that he was good for it, and then turned around and had paper filed in his fraud civil case implying no, he is not good for hundreds of millions of dollars. (You know, the one where he was accused of inflating his wealth and claimed he WAS SO worth hundreds of millions, liquid.) 

TWGB: Running Interference

 

It's a funny old thing that Trump wants to scream "ELECTION INTERFERENCE!!!" with respects to his two lawsuits today. They are both actually election interference lawsuits, in that Trump took extralegal efforts to interfere with what happened in both the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. 

In the so-called "hush money" case that Trump lost his motion to dismiss today, the case really has to do with using his business funds fraudulently to cover up information that would tend to prejudice voters against him: that he had intimate relations with an actor in the porn industry while his third wife had just given birth. This kind of secrecy and coverup is a part of Trump operations in general: he has long been an avid user of employee NDA's (which were, as constructed, not a valid truth-quashing mechanism for political campaigns or White House administrations) , and used his friendship with National Enquirer exec David Pecker to "catch and kill" negative stories. 

Trump is really great at using funds. sometimes fraudulently, to cover up things. Some say he used Trump Foundation money to pay to Florida prosecutor Pam Bondi's political campaign org to stop an investigation into Trump University, (I dunno if it happened that way, but the results are the results.) Trump sued Tim O'Brien for pointing out Trump's numbers never did add up because he hated to be called out on what we could have should have known about his businesses. Was it worth it to give some of us a glimpse into what we learned later when his 2005 taxes were exposed--he's been drawing down his liability from a mega loss in 1995? (He still was benefiting from losses when his last six years got opened up later on.) He mightily fought to keep that tax data unknown. Because he was doing crimes. 

Magnets-How Do They Work?

 

Trump: All I know about magnets is this, give me a glass of water, let me drop it on the magnets, that’s the end of the magnets pic.twitter.com/TopK4BRsOq

— Acyn (@Acyn) January 6, 2024

Look, just take a kitchen magnet and get it wet.  It will still work. I don't know what he thinks will happen.  I don't know where this thing came from. Anyway, he thinks gas sells for $8 a gallon. He has said people need to show their ID to buy groceries. He doesn't know how things work, which is why he also says things like he was going to sell US oil and gas to Europe to pay the national debt.  He has a real problem with windmills. He just kind of thinks everyone else also does not know how things work and will also think what he is saying is great and smart. 

He still seems to not know how bills become laws or what branch of government does what or how he got indicted four times. It's very concerning.

Judge Chutkan and Jack Smith were recently swatted. It's really hard for me to reconcile going out of one's way to terrorize people to try and get one's favored candidate for office clear of a lot of very serious charges with that person also being a transparent idiot. 

TWGB: The Hot Stove Lessons of Democracy

 

A couple of days ago, one of the insurrectionists sometimes called "Pink Hat Lady" (government name: Rachel Powell) took to Twitter to complain of her treatment.  She has apparently spent the last three years barefoot and mooning out the window like a princess in a tower...no wait, she was able to move about, but violated her pre-term release and got home confinement. She pretends she has no representatives, but she had lawyers. She exhorted her fellow 1/6 dopes to enter the Capitol that day--why isn't she being looked at as a possible "Fed" provocateur, huh?

She's living in a whole different universe from our reality. She went from saying on social media: “We will do what we want and there’s nothing the gov can do to stop us,” to asking, “Why should I go to jail? Over what? A broken window?”

Burglars break windows, too, and are felons. And apparently, the government actually DOES do something about that. These windows were broken because the stolen-election-believing sheeple who went to the capitol on 1/6 wanted to steal the election back for their Peerless Feeder. 

Will incarceration "fix" Rachel? Who knows? But maybe she educates others as an example to not be her. 

This is why I look at nattering nabobs like David Axelrod with disdain. OOoooooohhhh, taking Donald Trump off the ballot will divide the country, will it? Tell it to the fuckfaces who already thought we were in a Civil War on 1/6. A Civil War, because Trump's election is a Lost Cause that he keeps fighting, and maybe, just maybe, that shit needs to be removed from his grasp, and the people who lived through our bloodiest conflict on this soil understood that very well. 

TWGB: Trump Derangement Syndrome

 

A funny thing happened in the news today: the Trump campaign was contacted about the similarities between Trump's recent "Vermin" comments and the language of dictators like Hitler and Mussolini, and we were given an unbelievably great quote from a Trump spokesperson:

“Those who try to make that ridiculous assertion are clearly snowflakes grasping for anything because they are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome and their entire existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House,” Cheung told The Washington Post on Monday.

Or--we're just people who can read and compare statements from historical figures like the aforementioned dictators and Trump. But I love this for his spokesman: actually saying aloud like a fucking tool: "their entire existence will be crushed". Oooooh, CRUSH ME BIG DADDY! Melt me like the little bitch snowflake I am! Wear the jackboots this time! 

Also, a not funny thing happened today: Trump's older sister Maryanne Trump Barry died today, and instead of making any reference to that, Trump posted the above quote on his failing (sooo many losses--SAD!) Truth Social:

Deranged Jack Smith, Andrew Weissmann, Lisa Monaco, the "team of losers and misfits' from CREW, and all the rest of the Radical Left Zealots and Thugs who have been working illegally for years to "take me down," will end up, because of their suffering from a horrible disease, "TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME (TDS!), in a Mental Institution by the time my next term as President is successfully completed. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! 

TWGB: TrumpWorld is Definitely Not OK

 

You know, all I wanted to do last night was post a little bit about Rudy Giuliani fixing to sue President Biden, but I fell asleep at the computer because it got so deep in the weeds, and as of today, there was more to the story:

Look, I think it's great that Rudy Giuliani found lawyers to take this case even though he is being sued by some of his other lawyers for not getting paid and can't seem to keep a Georgia-based counselor to save his behind. He's getting sued by Hunter Biden, of course, and by a former employee alleging sexual assault and harassment which is a case involving details that are profoundly stomach-churning. But these guys believe enough in Rudy Giuliani to pursue a case where his allegations are that Joe Biden's crack about Giuliani being a Russian pawn spreading disinfo cost him his reputation and millions of dollars of business--

In a way actually being a source of Russian disinfo, making wild pronouncements about a stolen election with shoe polish running down his face, putting on a presser at a landscaping service, farting COVID into the face of his stolen election co-counsel, losing his license to practice because of his shoddy ethics and being so frequently intoxicated that it's part of the investigation into the attempt of the Trump Team to steal the 2020 election are not the ACTUAL THINGS that screwed Giuliani's reputation? 

Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?

 

(A post also to be known as "Republicans in Disarray.) 

I don't know why I'm leading with the story that a resolution from Matt Gaetz drafted September 15th was found under a baby changing table in the restroom underneath the House floor.  I guess it's because of my astonishment that we didn't hear about such a resolution like, Friday. And who left it behind? Maybe Gaetz himself, setting up the changing table with a couple parallel o' grams of Bolivian Borax to chase away the Floridian palmetto bugs in his high-rise skull? I know Gaetz was opposed to McCarthy even being Speaker like he was a new stepdad threatening to be the boss of him. 

And of such drama is the current House GOP currently made. They can't pass a resolution on Pentagon spending. None of them know what they want. They want to cut the spending. They want to fund border defense. They want to strengthen the defense but maybe not fund aid to Ukraine (the Moscow Marge Caucus, I guess you'd call it). Kevin McCarthy can't count votes and he doesn't count in uniting his troops. And I seriously don't know who is supposed to be Speaker for the GOP if McCarthy isn't. Scalise? Maybe they don't want nobody to be the Boss of Them. 

They just want to shut down the government for no good reason and impeach the Democratic president for no good reason the year before the presidential election? Is that so wrong?

(YES?)

What it means is they can't govern. But take heart!

Um, Trump is the leader of their party and a hapless fuckwit, also, too. It seems like, while in my heart of hearts I wanted Trump's document investigation to reveal selling secrets or something very dire, the bare reality is Trump just apparently took boxes of paper to save trees, because clearly, there were clean bits you could still use. All of this lovely notepaper for grocery lists and whatnot--says a Mar-a-Lago employee. 

And the material is back in the hands of the government to review with his peculiar Sharpie handed seismic handwriting and all. He also obstructed justice by telling his secretary she didn't know anything about the boxes she saw, just like nobody was supposed to know about all the boxes. Of all the stupid, stupid things. 

TWGB: The Argument for a Speedy Trial

 

A few notable figures in the Fulton County case have requested a speedy trial--Ken Cheseboro (whose request for a speedy trial might have sent pangs through the legal teams of several of the other indicted individuals) and Sidney Powell. There's a benefit to a speedy trial, of course. The defense can work with still-fresh evidence and make their best case for what had happened. In the case where multiple people are indicted at once, it severs their trial from the rest--that's definitely a great idea in the case where one is providing evidence that others have more culpability for wrongful events--right?

It's a right of the accused under the Constitution. And one of Donald Trump's crack team of legal experts--the finest his political donors can pay for so far--has explained on television why even Donald Trump should think about going to trial as soon as possible:

He's very smart and has access to all the facts as well as anyone ever could! He doesn't need to be prepped! (He's incredibly intelligent as well as virile and good-looking, easily 6'3" AND A HALF if you add charisma! Like a 165 IQ. Easily.)

Roger Stone pushes elector plot on tape

Doesn't it remind you a little of the "Green Bay Sweep?" It should. Like the "Eastman Memos" it really suggests the bid to just declare victory and throw out Democratic votes was always part of the plan.  We always knew Trump would plan to declare he won early and take advantage of the "Red Mirage" to pretend the election was being stolen.  Trump and friends were going to bet on their little fan club's ignorance of how voting worked to pretend the steal was a thing, when they were going to do the stealing. After the fact of course. By leaning on every GOP person with the full force of the White House and all that. 

The dumbfuck thing was how many Trump stans fell for it. And he expects they will again when he reinvokes the same busted shit from a Bedminster stage in order to pretend he was exactly right to lean on the Georgia state campaign apparatus. Does anyone seriously believe he has some new shit he didn't wave from the rafters before he got indicted in Georgia? Like since he lost in 2020? 

It sounds stupid to me, like something he's doing to once again threaten some court somewhere to gag him so he can play FREEZEPEACHMARTYR!  I think he would adore the opportunity to have posters strewn about with his mouth sealed with duct tape or the like. Poor Trumpy, celebrity, owner of Truth Social, silenced. A victim of trying to do too much, to care too much, to be too much. Why do they hate him for being so awesome?

One thing better he could do? Gather up and pay his 2020 lawyers like Guiliani (who is apparently flat busted broke) that he forgot to pay anything to. In order to prevent them explaining in detail why their holding forth totally is fraud/crime exception in their plea deal.  Since he apparently didn't pay them and they got indicted anyway. And he went and fundraised on his trials and tribulations. 

But he won't think of that in a hurry. And that's great, too. I don't care. I am rooting for maximum Trump enbuggeration. Self embuggerment. Ye olde own petard-hoistification.  I dunno. The thing of when he goes off and finally fully fucks himself. 

TWGB: State of Mind-Bad. Looks Bad.

 

There was a lot of legal stuff to do with TrumpWorld yesterday, not even including the five-minutes-under-the-wire Trump legal response to the request for a protective order, but honestly, I'm not seeing the point in going over all that in detail. I mean, it's official--Trump's counterclaim against E. Jean Carroll was dismissed.  His writ of mandamus against Fani Willis is dismissed. 

You can't cover everything. Trump's got five cases in the next nine months, and I bet that feels like he's about to give birth to quintuplets. And tracking all the side characters like Bernie Kerik (turning over docs), Giuliani (selling his house), John Eastman (asking for his disbarment proceedings to be postponed because he's getting indicted)....whew! I'm petty, but I just can't be that kind of compleatist. 

But I am the kind of petty to point out that Dark Brandon is definitely in Trump's head based on yesterday's court filing. Apparently, the touting of the campaign merch is supposedly tweaking Trump based on his recent indictment. So says the Trump team.

Yeah. He's here to eat ice cream and put you in prison and he's all out of ice cream, jack. 

It's absurd. Of course, it has nothing to do with Trump, but that his lawyers put it in there suggests it was on the client's mind. In the just the way his lawyers have to always be on the various chat shows, because if they aren't on television, how does Trump even know they are working? Of course, he wants to try this, and all of his cases, in the court of public opinion and make them political spectacles. 

It's both legally and politically questionable. But he's welcome to it. If it helps his obviously concerned state of mind. 

UPDATE: I'm just going to throw this down here, but I really think I like Judge Chutkan. She ordered the sides to get their act together by Friday to discuss the protective order--Friday. And the DOJ said, "Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, we're good." And Trump's lawyers thought it would be funny to say "How's next week?"

So she said, "Fine. 10 AM Friday."  And now they should understand whose court this is. 

Third Time's a Start, Mr. Trump (UPDATED)

 

The above court sketch is Trump pleading not guilty at his third arraignment. His defense plan is to re-litigate the 2020 election, which doesn't sound like a great idea because, as I recall, his campaign legal team lost over 60 cases, and his supporters floated easily debunked lies about the dead voting and more ballots being submitted than had been requested than were requested, and some outright weird stuff regarding Italian satellites, German servers, Chinese thermostats, and Venezuelan voting machines haunted by the ghost of Hugo Chavez. 

In retrospect, the 2020 defense he wants to make still reeks of desperate batshittery and I guess I wonder what sort of lawyers are happy to make this case. But let's face it, Trump is going through lawyers like Kleenex at the moment.

For a fun glimpse into how it's going so far based on yesterday, the case is being made that the DOJ has to demonstrate that Trump knew he lost and that these charges are about Trump's freedom of speech, not his entering into a conspiracy to defraud. Well. That's supposed to be the case. But Alina Habba admitted that everyone knew Trump lost, and John Lauro admitted that Trump did enter into a conspiracy to delay the congressional proceeding on the basis of his false claims. 

So, you know. It's going gggggrrrreeeeeaaaattt.

Oh well. It's Trump fans that should be questioning his representation since, you know, they're paying for it. Same as they paid for the suit that clarified that yes, it is fair to call Trump a rapist. And the way they will pay for the hush money trial and the case against Michael Cohen that could incriminate Trump some more and the stolen docs trial....

UPDATED: Trump thought he'd be cute the very next day:

Donald Trump swore in court yesterday he would not attempt to influence or intimidate witnesses, retaliate against anyone, or in any other way attempt to obstruct the administration of justice.

“Are you prepared to comply?” the magistrate judge asked.

“Yes,” Trump replied. pic.twitter.com/UWxcz0nZ1d

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) August 4, 2023

We all know what he was trying there; I've pointed out that he doesn't have to be explicit for his little fan club to get the jist and that gagging him because of his fat mouth was always a likelihood--one Trump also would have expected. The above Truth Social post for all the world looks to me like he's threatening retaliation on prosecutors and witnesses, etc. And I would say there's a good argument for pre-trial detention because this unfit man either can't or won't help himself from doing and saying such things. 

TWGB: Some Indictments for Those Incitements

 

The waiting for Trump's indictment over the attempted overturn of the 2020 presidential election is over, and I encourage everyone (even Ron DeSantis if he still hasn't!) to go ahead and read the indictment. It's not long, and it is pretty thorough in laying out the case that despite no evidence of voter fraud, Trump spread that lie and attempted to overturn the election by means of litigation alleging fraud, encouraging state legislatures and slates of alternate electors to act on the alleged fraud, to halt the lawful proceedings of Congress on 1/6 and to encourage Trump's faithful to wreak havoc on the day. 

Trump lost. There was no proof of voter fraud that would have changed the result of the election. And no, Trump's belief is completely irrelevant, because whether he chose to believe he won or not, he was informed on various occasions that his theories of fraud ("conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership") were bogus, as outlined in pages 6 through 8.

If Trump persisted in his belief, he was delusional, and we should not excuse people on the basis of being delusional--nor should we continue to entertain whether they are fit to lead a country if they are. 

It's also irrelevant whether he understood the law well enough to know exactly what he was violating--ignorance of the law has been determined to be no excuse long before this. 

The World According to Trump

 

Trump says he thinks it would be a lovely idea if Congress were to withhold any future aid to Ukraine in exchange for dirt on the Bidens. Wonder where the hell he got that idea from? If that sounds an awful like the grounds for his first impeachment--why yes! It does sound like he wants the machinery of the US government to be used to his benefit in 2024, just like he wanted it used to his benefit in 2020. (And also, Russia? If you're listening?)

Now, of course, he's not completely stupid. My no! He knows he can't be impeached for this quid pro quo when he isn't even in office anymore. Yet. Who else has had two whole impeachments? He's like, the expert on it.

Although some of his other pronouncements, like claiming that his second impeachment inoculates him from federal charges for 1/6 under double jeopardy, are a bit specious.

(That's not a new whine from this old sack, either. Also, failing to be removed from office in his case is a failure of his GOP friends--a jury might feel quite differently).

Anyway, and regardless, he's not getting indicted because of himself. He's getting indicted FOR HIS LOYAL SUBJECTS  THE HARDWORKING PATRIOTIC PEOPLE OF THIS COUNTRY.

That's why his donors are expected to pay his legal fees. And he's absolutely going to kick on some money for his 2024 campaign. Eventually. This is why the GOP loves and supports him so.  He is not either a rotting albatross around their necks. 

TWGB: Paper Chasing

 

So, while we were all waiting like utter pigeons for that 1/6 insurrection indictment to come down, what actually got dealt was the superseding indictment regarding Trump ordering his Mar-a-Lago employees to do obstruction of justice stuff. 

The revised indictment added three serious charges against Mr. Trump: attempting to “alter, destroy, mutilate, or conceal evidence”; inducing someone else to do so; and a new count under the Espionage Act related to a classified national security document that he showed to visitors at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J.

The updated indictment was released on the same day that Mr. Trump’s lawyers met in Washington with prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, to discuss a so-called target letter that Mr. Trump received this month suggesting that he might soon face an indictment in a case related to his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. It served as a powerful reminder that the documents investigation is ongoing, and could continue to yield additional evidence, new counts and even new defendants.

Prosecutors under Mr. Smith had been investigating Mr. De Oliveira for months, concerned, among other things, by his communications with an information technology expert at Mar-a-Lago, Yuscil Taveras, who oversaw the surveillance camera footage at the property.

He ordered his employees to wipe information he knew the DOJ was looking for because he understood it would incriminate him. 

So, what I'm gleaning is the 1/6 indictments are still in the pipeline, and this indictment is to keep Trump lawyers in mind that the charges can always be added to. For just how obviously ham-fisted the cover-up at Mar-a-Lago has been, recall these guys didn't just move boxes of White House docs where there was a surveillance camera that had data to be subpoenaed but the boobs tried to flood the area by draining a pool. 

Also, the Iran document that Trump both agreed he had and didn't want to say he had, has been verified as in this mook's possession and a big problem for him.

TWGB: Trump--Target and Bullseye

 

Trump hustled to let us know he got his letter on Suday, right after he did his little thing at TPUSA whatever, and he was so mad you guys. He knows this means an indictment (or several more) for him is likely imminent. 

Is he really surprised? I mean, do you concoct a whole "Stop the Steal" thing when your own Attorney General and two firms you hired to look into the voter fraud thing all say you lost, and think no one will notice you were lying? 

Trump's statement was extra-special:

Trump says he’s a target of special counsel’s criminal probe into 2020 election aftermath pic.twitter.com/ZR5swPqqJK

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) July 18, 2023

It's a litany of presumed wrongs heaped upon his noble brow--feh. It's a bunch of stuff he's also fucked up with. He's pointing out the many, many scandals imputed to him--do you really want to bet they are all hoaxes? If you really know Trump--would you put good money on ANY OF THEM being hoaxes?  

Look, given the Mar-A-Lago documents scandal, which is dumb as hell because he could have just given over what the National Archives asked for and no one would have said anything more, but OH HELL NO THAT'S NOT HOW TRUMP ROLLS, he played around. He FA and is big mad he has to FO about it. And he lost his election and knew it, and FA about that, and is now big mad he has to FO about that, too.