Oh, Dearie

Trump and his lawyers may have met their match in, ironically, the very person they recommended with the Justice department's approval to be the "special master" that Judge Aileen Cannon (who is so similar to Judge Kathryn Mizelle that they must be the same person) ordered to review documents the FBI found at Mar-a-Lago.

Judge Raymond Dearie (above) began making requests for the documents he wanted to review but Trump's lawyers held them back, saying they didn't want to open up any documents that might lead to their client getting indicted. This perplexed Judge Dearie, who responded that if the lawyers didn't have any documents to provide there was nothing for him to see.  Trump's lawyers have made the claim that some of these documents -  especially classified ones - may have been planted, and Judge Dearie angrily responded that he wants to see proof of that claim.

I think Trump's legal team is made up of lawyers who graduated from Ed's Law School Degree Company of Delevan, Indiana.      

Also, Trump says that many of these classified documents have actually been declassified - he declassified them.  He just thought about doing it, and that automatically declassified them.

I think I'm going to my local Mercedes-Benz dealership this week to get the SL Class convertible I purchased when I simply thought about buying one.

Meanwhile, a three-judge panel on the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals - two of the judges Trump appointees - overruled Judge Cannon's directive that barred the Justice Department from looking at documents in its investigation an said that the Justice Department could resume examining them.  They found Judge Cannon's reasoning faulty and unfathomable.  Among other things.  She's clearly a loose Cannon.

I can't explain all of this in great detail.  I advise you to watch Lawrence O'Donnell's MSNBC program at 10:00 P.M. Eastern, where he has been explaining all of this better than I could ever hope to. 

Voter Justice

I hope the announcement this past week from U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland (below) means we've reached the nadir of the assault on voting rights.

Garland announced that the Justice Department will step up enforcement on voting rights in the states by scrutinizing voting laws that aim to restrict certain constituencies and challenge anything that the Justice Department finds unconstitutional and/or a threat to attempting to deny the right to vote to any eligible citizen.

"We know that expanding the ability of all eligible citizens to vote is a central pillar," Garland told the press. "That means ensuring that all eligible voters can cast a vote; that all lawful votes are counted; and that every voter has access to accurate information."

This comes as local election officials throughout the country are being harassed and intimidated by Trump supporters, and some of these local election officials have been driven into resigning from office.  Garland hopes to stem, if not stop completely, the tide of angry Trump supporters who are working in myriad of ways to rig the 2022 midterms and the 2024 presidential lection to ensure that the Republicans win back power in Washington with less than zero chance that Democrats ever regain it thereafter. Then we become a nominal democracy in which a white minority government controls a multiracial society like apartheid-era South Africa.  That would be the best-case scenario.  The worst-case scenario is that another pandemic or another attack on the Capitol leads to an authorization of board powers for the President - not necessarily Donald Trump but possibly Ron DeSantis or some other Trump lackey - that allow a declaration of martial law, the suspension of the Bill of Rights, the outlawing of opposition parties, and the suspension of passports, thus criminalizing emigration as well as immigration for those who wish to escape.  

And then after that, the quarter-millennial, or semiquincentennial, celebration of American independence in 2026 will ring hollow and the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics will recall Berlin in 1936.  

Garland is off to a goo start, and the Justice Department has a good deal of power to go after voter-suppression efforts, but it can only do so much. It could do a lot more with either voting-rights bill in Congress passed by Congress and signed by President Biden, but Republican opposition to both bills in the Senate means that Garland, like voters in states where casting a ballot will become as difficult as walking a tightrope between two skyscrapers, will have to work with what he has and figure out how to get around the obstructions. 

It's either that or we celebrate America's 250th birthday with tanks rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue.

Trump Unbound, Justice Undone

Trump is feeling emboldened after being acquitted of crimes and misdemeanors by the Senate, which is why he tweeted his desire to have the Justice Department intervene in trying to get a lesser sentence for crony Roger Stone rather than seven to nine years that staffers at the Justice Department recommended.  Three of the four lawyers handling the Stone case quit it, and the fourth quit the Justice Department entirely.

Doing Trump's bidding has been the modus operandi of Attorney General William Barr (above), who has been shielding Trump from numerous threats to his power, going as far as to deliberately take the Mueller report out of context and misrepresenting the facts in it.  His politicization of his office and the department he administers has had a chilling effect on career prosecutors in the government, now suddenly reluctant to conduct any investigation that Trump may not like.

Barr did speak out against Trump this past week, urging him not to tweet any input into the Stone case or any other, saying that it makes him hard to run the Justice Department with any impartiality.  Don't be fooled.  Barr is happy to do with Trump wants.  He's opposed to Trump's tweeting on Stone and other matters not out of the need to preserve the good standing of the Justice Department but because Trump's openness in demonstrating his manipulation of justice has gotten so obvious it's become a public relations problem.

With the Republican Senate staying silent and House Democrats having few options in trying to stop him, Trump will continue to wreck havoc on the justice system unabated until and unless he's voted out of office.   Will that happen in November?  Well, it depends on the intelligence and the voters and the integrity of the electoral process.

Sorry to disappoint you. :-(