TWGB: The Hope Hiccup

 

The funny thing about Hope Hicks being the person whose testimony thus far has most atomized Trump's defense is that her job used to be helping defend Trump--even telling "white lies" to do so. "White lies" are a TrumpWorld problem--they add up, and after a while, they stop being quite so white, because there is a lot of dirt underneath. Like snow that has been trampled--it all mixes with the mud eventually. 

We are told she broke down on the stand at the start of cross examination, and some folks have speculated as to why--why, then? 

I have a notion--secrecy is prized far more highly than honesty in TrumpWorld, and the penalty for honesty can be high. For a long time, Hicks was able to tell white lies and stay in the good graces of "the family", but even though Trump had nothing to say on leaving the courtroom (being a bit more sandbagged with reporters over Merchan's unceremonious dumping of Trump's "I can't testify because of the gag order boo hoo" whinge) to properly articulate (to the best of his current abilities) his displeasure, it will be felt. 

TWGB: He is an Obstruction

 

I didn't post anything this weekend because I'm getting over some kind of extremely fatiguing chesty coughing situation, and also, too, when Trump compared himself to Nelson Mandela, my brain just kept frantically hitting the "NOPE" button.  Oh, hell no, we are not talking about how Trump is not Jesus followed by how he is not Madiba. Trump is not the oppressed. Trump is far from a founder of this country--he;s a homewrecker. Then, the House Judiciary Committee posted Trump as the whole mammy-jamming eclipse.  A blockhead who blocks the sun. 

Well done, cult members. You've finally described him correctly. He's a temporary obstruction blocking daylight: but daylight will prevail. 

Yep, one of the constant stories of these TrumpWorld grab-bags is Trump, the obstructer. The delayer. He is only transparent to the effect that he desperately despises transparency. And you can easily see that part--the NDAs, the Byzantine business structure, the Omerta, the stalling subpoenas and other dilatory bids of various kinds, all throughout his business and political career. 

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: The Bride at Every Wedding

 

The highlighting of the above screenshot is courtesy this Tweet from Ben Collins, wondering what exactly Trump is doing here. But I'm the idiot who does TrumpWorld Grab-bags, so I know. He's too clever for us, is Trump. He can't scarper. He won't go scuttling away in the dead of night--why no! he's too famous for that! He won't go abseiling down the wall of the tower he will, Rapunzel-like, be held in. Not even if you gave him enough cable.

He's thinking about it though. Does he think Daddy Vladdy has an extraction team ready to escort him to a well-appointed dacha? Because it isn't 55 years ago, and Russia can't even invade neighbors or land spacecraft on the moon like they used to. They tie up loose ends a very different way now. (He's 90. I mean nothing by this. Of course, I don't. Also...) 

What Trump is saying is "poor, poor, pitiful me" because he is far too rich and famous to disappear and that's just an incredible burden. He's too recognizable--what is he to do, shave his head? Wear sweats? Quel dommage, mais no. Even so, he's known from Jibib to Atlantis.  

Maybe Kushner has an in with the Saudis. I understand they can make people disappear. 

Am I being unnecessarily dark? Sigh. I am cutting up the revelations of the soul-baring of a narcissist who wants you to identify with his plight. Usually, it's only in banana republics a former leader needs to fear coming to justice for a planned coup. Usually, it's only in banana republics a leader plans one. He is, as Francis Albert (who didn't care for him, BTW) sang, doing it his way. And oh! the melodrama! 

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: The Target

 

We're on pins and needles, aren't we? I mean, news has come out that Trump's lawyers have received a letter that he's a target in the documents' investigation, and we also hear that the grand jury is considering charges for Trump under the Espionage Act and for obstruction.  We also are finding out that Mark Meadows has accepted a plea to some federal crimes in exchange for his testimony against Trump, which overlaps both the Espionage case and the 1/6 investigation--which has the bonus of so much admissible stuff against so many people he was texting with, like a whole lot of people. 

For what it's worth, even if the Espionage Act stuff (Two grand juries? with Jay Bratt whose deal is Espionage Act? Hmm!) seems like the real damaging stuff (I think it's bad, because it certainly looks bad), I'm not overlooking the possibility that Trump also eventually sees some heat from the 1/6 stuff, especially regarding the gathering of R. Congress people and talking to assorted goons to that fell purpose. (I consider Flynn a goon. Some people wouldn't but that just attributes to his success at creative goonery.) Steve Bannon has been subpoenaed in that matter. 

Am I confident that we're going to see some indictments in these things as early as this week?  Hell if I know. I know in the short term, based on what I see on the MAGA comments on Twitter, if it happens some folks are gonna be shirt-ripping mad, and then their mommas are gonna be mad they ripped their shirts. 

TWGB: The Picture Worth a Thousand Takes

 

The rebuttal to the Trump filing I referred to as the "Clown Suit" from DOJ made some of the points I expected it to make, to wit--the former guy and his lawyers were lying about turning over all of the documents and they were already gone over so there was no need for a special master. It also included a picture of the kind of documents that had been found during the search, just to hammer home how clearly the top secret/classified docs were marked.  The white space is redacted. You aren't being exposed to anything other than what should be obvious to you by now--these were sensitive materials that should not have been in desk drawers or closets or boxes in a basement. They should have been in NARA's hands. 

Trump and his defenders are in denial. How dare anyone show these documents on the floor as if to suggest that was where he would carelessly leave them? Why would they take a picture of them if they were so secret? Is this how the FBI handles these docs?

Oh, for fuck's sake. This kind of picture is the story of many a bust. Cops love to pile up the evidence so people can get a tangible picture of what they were doing in a search:

In this case, the point is that you can see the clear markings on the docs, which were mixed in with random other shit and in boxes and in different rooms, because it's Trump who didn't care. The docs were on the floor (and they never did imply it was Trump who put them there) only to show the extent of what they were finding. And then those docs were put into containers and taken to where they were actually secure. The FBI didn't mishandle them--they were documenting what they saw.

TWGB: The Mine! Field

 

Apparently, we're at the point where people are exhausted enough with the Trumpaganda to start saying true things, and among them is, Trump saw White House documents as being his, for him. He did not understand the idea of US intelligence as being something for the US to protect the US. It was his. Because he doesn't understand that the US doesn't revolve around him. 

Really good lawyers don't want a part of his case, and there's good reason. He's a bad client. He does weird stuff like making negative public statements and apparently trying to gin up a violent reaction among his fan club, That's the sort of stuff good lawyers would recommend against. He doesn't have good lawyers. 

Among silly things his inexperienced lawyers have done is tacitly suggest civil violence. And also suggest they want the affidavit to be released so that there can be witness tampering. It is really weird when lawyers are fairly open to suggesting that maybe their legal strategy is obstruction of justice, but that exactly sounds like the strategy Trump would want. He loves witness tampering and obstruction of justice! They are his LIFE!

And you know, when one of your "reasons" for why you took the documents is so that the various entities looking onto your business (1/6 committee, assorted grand juries) can't get hold of them, that's bad. It's obstruction of justice, as well.

He doesn't own those documents. But he definitely owns this trouble--you could say he brought it home with him. 

Reality Could Be a Problem For Mike Flynn

 

Convicted felon: Michael Flynn sues January 6 committee to block phone records subpoena - CNNPolitics https://t.co/8RK0pIgwB0

— Frank Figliuzzi (@FrankFigliuzzi1) December 22, 2021

Flynn's restraining order against Pelosi and the 1/6 Committee against checking his phone records sounds about right because his phone history sure has hung him up before, but I think admitting that "goddamn it, don't check into me because I'm fucked if you do" is going to fly in court any more than Trump's similar kind of claim does. Sure, you can invoke the fifth at the time of testifying as opposed to running your face, but I don't see how your circumstantial evidence should be protected. Once again, it overreaches reasonable protection to kind of invalidate the whole system of trying to investigate.

Also, part of Flynn's complaint is that he didn't really have involvement on January 6. Okay. But. January 6 had planners leading up to it, and sorry, it does look like Flynn had a lot to do with promoting the Big Lie and the January 6 rally, whether he gave a speech then and there or not. 

But just like PA Rep. Scott Perry, we're looking at people shrugging off the 1/6 Committee because they just don't feel like they want consequences. Apparently, the Committe isn't legitimate if the non-respondents just don't want to deal with them, just like the 2020 election wasn't legitimate if they didn't like the outcome. 

It's like they insist upon their own entire reality, regardless of the law. And how dare anyone try to look at facts!

UPDATE: The flawsuit was denied because of technical difficulties, but he will have another chance for the court to LOL it out of existence.