FIRE THAT CANNON!

From the U.S. Courthouse in Fort Pierce, Florida . . . the greatest miscarriage of justice in American history in . . . two weeks! 

If you need any more proof that not all female Hispanic judges are "wise Latinas" like Sonia Sotomayor, by all means consider this.  Judge Aileen Cannon just dismissed the classified-documents case against Donald Trump.  Se declared that the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith by Attorney General Merrick Garland was a violation of the Constitution’s appointments clause on the grounds that Smith, as an Officer of the United States, should have been appointed by President Biden with the confirmation of the U.S. Senate. Cannon also ruled that Smith violated that clause for using indefinite open-ended funding.  Both rulings, I'm certain, would not have been possible without the Supreme Court's presidential-immunity ruling.

Smith can and likely will appeal this ruling, but there won't be a trial in any case before Election Day, and there never would have been one anyway.  Judge Cannon was likely slow-walking the case until she found the right time and argument to dismiss it, and once she found both, dismiss she did.  It's even more imperative for Judge Tanya Chutkan in the insurrection case to start evidentiary hearing in August - and for the voters to go to the polls and return Biden to office this fall to get this trial started.  That should be our Project 2025. 

Trump says his Republican presidential nomination acceptance speech, in the aftermath of the attempt on his life, will focus on unity.  Just remember - his idea of unity is a one-party state with a rubber-stamp legislature and nine rhymes-with-glass-poles like Aileen Cannon on the Supreme Court.

Hur Story

Only in the Democratic Party could anyone be in political trouble by being exonerated of wrongdoing.

Independent counsel Robert Hur (above) cleared President Biden of any intentional malfeasance in having a bunch of classified government documents in his garage and made a clear distinction between his accidental retention of classified government documents and Donald Trump's deliberate retention of a number of documents so large he'd need an auto show's worth of space to store them outside Mar-a-Lago.

And then he shot a poison arrow by inserting his own personal take on Biden by concluding that he is "a well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory."

Democratic damage control was more damage and less control.  While they were correct in saying that Hur's personal observations were gratuitous and unnecessary and that they did not add anything to Biden's exoneration - indeed, it had the effect of a political, if not judicial, indictment - they sounded like a bunch of whiners and spoilsports.  No more than President Biden himself, who came out forcefully in a hastily called press conference in which he challenged Hur's assertions of his feeble-mindedness and added that "my memory is fine."

It would have had more resonance coming from a man who did not, in that same press conference, refer to the president of Egypt as the president of Mexico.   

Biden tried to show how on the ball he was by being angry and defiant.  Hmm, it sort of reminds me of that ne time an ultimately failed presidential candidate declared himself, when his integrity was questioned, to be an "angry and defiant man." 

Yeah, that worked out wonderfully, didn't it? 

What Hur, a Republican, accomplished was a well-played and well-executed political move.  By inserting the remarks about Biden's age and mental acuity, Hur took attention away from Trump's own feeble-mindedness, which has proven itself to be much more dangerous.  Notice how everyone suddenly stopped talking about Trump confusing Nancy Pelosi with Nikki Haley?  And by the way, did you also notice how people have suddenly stopped talking about Nikki Haley? 

Hur also skewered Attorney General Merrick Garland, already on Democrats' hit list for taking so damn long too start investigations against Trump to avoid looking "political."  Democrats have gone after Garland for failing to edit out the age-sensitive references toward the President before issuing the report.  But had Garland done so, he would have edited out elements of the report that would likely have been leaked to the press and made it look like he was protecting Biden for purely political reasons, damaging his reputation for being above politics.  The only way to have kept Hur's personal appraisal of Biden's mental acuity out of the report was for Hur to have kept his personal appraisal himself and not put it in writing in the first place.  

So what do Democrats do now?  An obvious answer would be to pivot to Trump's own public displays of mental breakdown, including his Pelosi-Haley mixup, as the only things Pelosi and Haley have in common is that they are female politicians whose first names begin with the later "N" who go by their married surnames.  (Aside: Pelosi ges by her married surname because she loves her husband, while Haley ges by her married surname because it sounds more American than "Randhawa."  Oh, wait, I'm getting gratuitous here!)  But that amounts to "what-about-ism," something Democrats always accuse the Republicans of doing, and that's one shoe that should not be on the other foot.  Besides, Trump neutralized the issue long ago by instigating aspersions and insinuations regarding Biden's mental abilities so that efforts to call attention to his own declining mental facilities.  It's why he highlights Democratic corruption as a counteroffensive to those who call out his own corruption - to neutralize the issue in his own favor. 

Also, there's no way you can show up Trump on the age issue because of the show Trump puts on.  Unlike Biden, who is normally quiet, measured and reserved,  Trump comes across as being feisty, animated and vigorous, a point of fact he demonstrates with his incendiary rhetoric and his expressive body language.      

Democrats have to remember that the best defense is a good offense and they have to talk up President Biden's record and how he has been not a good but a great President, as former Republican operative Stuart Stevens has suggested.  Why not?  After all, he got passed the biggest social-welfare and social-amenity legislation since Franklin D. Roosevelt, got passed the biggest infrastructure program sice Dwight D. Eisenhower, and pursued the most aggressive civil rights agenda since Lyndon B. Johnson.  But no, Democrats won't do that, since aggressiveness is not in their DNA, which means that come January, American democracy will be DOA.  Instead of looking out for number one in the campaign, Democrats are doing number one in their beds.

In 2016, the Hillary Clinton campaign had a slogan that went, "I'm With Her."  In 2024, expect the Trump campaign to have a similar slogan - "I'm With Hur." 

Trump Trumped

As if to let Donald Trump know he can run but he can't hide, Jack Smith has expanded his indictment of the former White House occupant to include charges of trying to obstruct justice destroy evidence when he, ironically produced evidence that Trump ordered Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos de Oliveira to erase video security-camera recordings showing classified documents being moved around the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.  The evidence presented involved de Oliveira telling fellow Trump employee, IT staffer Yuscil Taveras, that "the boss" wanted the recordings deleted, but Taveras could not and would not do so.  De Oliveira was arraigned yesterday for his role in the cover-up; Taveras is cooperating fully with Jack Smith's office. 

Oh, and another witness said that the documents Trump was boasting about having in his possession in an audio recording was indeed war plans for Iran.

This is actually bad news for anyone that wants to see Trump go to jail, because this may force Smith to have the documents trial - now scheduled for Monday, May 20, 2024 - delayed because of the extra charges and witnesses this new evidence entails.  A delay of the trial will push the start of it into the fall general election campaign, when Trump, barring a major disaster, will be the Republican presidential nominees once again.  And we know that major disasters that derail once-inevitable presidential nominees only happen to Democrats (*cough cough*, Gary Hart, *cough cough*).  As for the inevitable Democratic nominee, Democrats are hoping that Joe Biden can overcome his sagging poll numbers, though not even an improved economy seems to be working for him.  And something that would take Biden out of contention for the Presidency would certainly be a disaster by providing yet another disaster (*cough cough*, Kamala Harris, *cough cough*)  The only way for the Democrats to stave off another Trump victory at this point to keep him from regaining the Presidency and replacing investigations of him with investigations of all of his opponents would be to nominate someone else with no connection to the Biden administration for the White House (*cough cough,* Martin O'Malley, *cough cough*), but we all know that's not going to happen.

However, there is a silver lining.  With the start of the Trump hush-money trial in New York City planned for two months before the coducmetns trail, Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney and the prosecutor of the hush-money case, has hinted that he might delay his own Trump trial sdo Smith can get an earlier start.  We'd better hope for either that or for people to realize that President Biden has actually done a lot of good in the past quarter decade and give him another presidential term, because if Trump gets back in, the cases against him won't be the only things he makes disappear.

Remember what happened in Argentina in the seventies and early eighties?    

Note that I didn't cough that time.

And how is House Speaker Kevin McCarthy handling this?  He apparently wants to impeach Presdient Biden for . . . something.

Word: Documents

 As soon as Donald Trump was revealed to have had a classified document that likely contained plans to attack Iran in a worst-case scenario, it was only a matter of time before Jack Smith could be comfortable in thinking that he had Trump with the goods.  Trump has been indicted on 37 counts involving willful retention of national defense, violating the Espionage Act, and obstruction of justice.  The cavalier manner in which Trump handled the documents also put or may have put the national security of the American people at risk.  You can read all about it here.

The storage of documents at Trump's Mar-a-Lago complex, which includes confidential information shared with the United States by its allies and casually friendly nations, may make such countries think twice about sharing any information with us.  Some of the information was stored in the ballroom of Mar-a-Lago in great proximity to the liquor cabinet - and remember, Mar-a-Lago is a publicly accessible country club with hotel-style guest rooms and a spa.  This is much different than, say, if classified documents had been found at Reagan's Rancho del Cielo ranch in Santa Barbara or Obama's Washington home. Similarly, no one could have accessed Dwight D. Eisenhower's Pennsylvania farm when Ike and Mamie live there after his Presidency.  It only became open to the public in 1980, after both Eisenhower and his wife were dead. 

And yet most Republicans still support Trump.

Speaking of historic sites, I hope Mar-a-Lago - ironically, a mansion that cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post left to the government as a presidential residence but was turned to her foundation because President Carter thought it would cost too much to maintain - is demolished after Trump dies or goes to prison (whichever comes first), much like Hitler's Chancellery in Berlin was destroyed. 

More and More Classified Documents

Now the government has found classified documents in former Vice President Mike Pence's home.

And his house looks suspiciously like Joe Biden's.

Given that Pence is notoriously meticulous with things, it's likely that his aides put classified documents in files to be sent back to Indiana when Pence's vice presidential term ended without his knowledge.  The same is probably true for Biden, whose stash of classified documents go back to his vice presidential terms and his Senate tenure.

The National Archives and the Justice Department are urging all former Presidents and Vice Presidents to check for classified documents in their possession.  Jimmy Carter likely has a file pertaining to Lithuanian freedom fighters' plans against the Red Army, or maybe a document specifically explaining to the President why the Desert One hostage rescue was never going to work. 

And as the current President's files have had to be searched for classified documents from his days in the Senate, it's very likely that the current Vice President's files will be searched for classified documents from her days in the Senate, and the FBI will find . . . nothing.

And at that point, MSNBC's Zerlina Maxwell will insist that Kamala Harris must run for President in 2024 because, once again, it's up to black women to save America.

Because, you know . . . white guys can't file.  They can't type either, nor can they even answer the phone. 

On a more serious note, pundits think the discovery of classified documents in Pence's home defuses any political concerns over Biden.  Alas, it might also help Trump keep out of jail. 

More Files In Da House

At President Biden's invitation, the Justice Department conducted a thirteen-hour search of the President's house in Greenville, Delaware and found . . . yet more classified documents.  

This is the fifth time that classified documents have been found in Biden's possession.  The bright side to this ongoing story is . . . uh, there is no bright side.

Okay, the President is cooperating fully.  And yes, he has one-tenth as many documents as Trump had. And yes, Biden has not claimed ownership of any of the documents found in his possession the way Trump tried to claim ownership of all of the documents at Mar-a-Lago.  But - you knew I was coming to a but - it smells politically, what with the dripping of information piece by piece and with Biden's moral superiority over Trump on the documents now eradicated.  Even Democrats aren't defending Biden now.  And Republicans - who have never defended Biden for anything - are salivating over starting their own investigation of the Biden documents in order to make it look even worse than it does.

And Biden wants to run for re-election again . . . 

Right, I'm done. Count me out of rooting for anyone for 2024.  I'll just vote for whom I think the better presidential nominee is (not the best presidential nominee, the better - no more third parties for me!), but I'm not backing any one person for President, what with my own personal choice having already signaled a complete and utter lack of interest in the office.  

So who could run for President for the Democrats in Biden's stead, if I had to choose someone?  I don't know.  Maybe Tim Ryan.     

His hopes for a Senate seat long since dashed, he has nothing else to run for.

Drip, Drip, Drip

 

Everything was going well for Joe Biden until the roof caved in on him.  Again.

Just when we thought every government document in President Biden's pre-presidential Washington office and suburban Wilmington home had been recovered, another five documents showed up in his house.  Some of those same documents appear to have been where previous documents have been found - in the President's garage.  Biden pointed out that he keeps his valuable 1967 Corvette locked up in there, so it's not as if they were out on the street.  Right now, I think car thieves who could have broken into his garage would have said to hell with the Vette and taken the documents.

And that old argument that the Biden White House acted appropriately by alerting the National Archives and the Justice Department promptly doesn't make it with people anymore.  The White House still failed to get out ahead of this by informing the public as soon as the documents were discovered and examined (CBS broke the story), a situation that could have affected the midterms was kept secret until after people voted, and Biden's anger over Donald Trump's "irresponsible" behavior (expressed on  - you guessed it - CBS) seems hollow in light of a file problem of his own that never seems to run out of surprises.  The Biden administration's mistakes have turned the file issue into a situation where one detail drips out after another, and the possibility that there could be more files in Biden's possession as yet undiscovered makes those oceanic differences between the Biden document case and the Trump document case seem more riparian. 

The word "riparian," for those who don't know it, means "pertaining to a river."  And the river separating the Biden and Trump file scandals is more like the narrow Brandywine River in Biden's home state of Delaware than the mighty Mississippi.     

And that's why Attorney General Merrick Garland had to investigate former U.S. Attorney Robert Hur as a special counsel to investigate the Biden documents issue.   

House Republicans already planning to investigate possible Biden family connections to China and to Ukrainian energy companies now plan to investigate these matters in tandem with the classified documents found in Biden's possession, hoping to connect the dots to make the case to impeach the President for high crimes and misdemeanors they are already convinced were committed.  They undoubtedly plan to make any evidence, no matter how contrived, fit their pro-impeachment narrative.

Am I going to propose a backup presidential candidate for the Democrats if Biden is compelled to forego a shot at a second term?  Nope, I've had it with that sort of thing - I'm done! I can't be bothered anymore.  

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. 

Just a Few Minor Redactions . . .

The federal government, in investigating Trump's acquisition of secret documents and storage of said documents in his Florida home, filed an affidavit that convinced a judge of the need to search Mar-a-Lago.  Demands for the reasoning behind the search convinced the Justice Department to release the affidavit with all of the secret bits blacked out.  After all of the redactions were made, this is what the document looked like. 

And here is the Justice Department lawyer who issued it.

 

All right, I kid a little, but for the most part, this is a serious matter.  Many of the documents found in Trump's possession were classified information gleaned from human intelligence - i.e., spies, like CIA agents, that sort of thing - as well as sensitive information taken from various other sources that, if they got into the wrong hands, could compromise national security.  And Trump had these documents lying around in his mansion.

Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, has ordered a review of sensitive information to see if any damage was done and how much damage may have been done.  Meanwhile, Trump has sued to have an outside review of the documents seized by the FBI from his not-so-humble abode because he says some documents may be privileged information between himself and his lawyers.  Federal judge Aileen Cannon - a Trump appointee - has indicated the need of an account from the Justice Department of all of the documents taken from Mar-a-Lago on August 8 and a report of the government's ongoing review of those same documents so someone can see if any are covered by attorney-client privilege.  Except that the Justice Department says it's already looking for attorney-client-privileged documents.

If Trump gets away with all this, God help us.  But if God wanted to help Americans, why did He let Trump become President? 

Unclear Error

The classified-documents scandal involving Trump keeps getting more difficult to follow,  There were so many documents retrieved from Mar-a-Lago in January 2022  that it resulted in the criminal investigation that led FBI agents to recover more classified documents.  Trump has since sued to request that a master special agent - or something like that review the documents that were confiscated.

"The previously unreported volume of the sensitive material found in the former president’s possession in January helps explain why the Justice Department moved so urgently to hunt down any further classified materials he might have," the New York Times reported.  Trump may have had these materials to just show how important he used to be and expects to be again, or maybe he was keeping them for . . . something else.  We have since learned that he went through these documents personally.

Right now, a judge has asked the Trump legal defense team, which neither offers legal defense nor is a team, to clarify the completely unclear intent of the lawsuit.  Unclear intent?  How about nuclear intent? (Note the anagrams!)   Some of those documents chronicled atomic secrets - what was he going to do with THOSE? (Capital letters are more necessary for emphasis than italics here.)

The affidavit spelling out the cause for the FBI investigation maybe released in redacted form today.

Going Nuclear?

The FBI's search of Mar-a-Lago uncovered . . . classified information on nuclear weapons?

This was information that could have gotten into, oh, I don't know, Russian hands?

Gee, and I thought they were investigating his role in the insurrection!

Trump bitched that all the feds had to do was ask for the material.  The feds did ask, as far back as June - they even negotiated with his lawyers to get at it without having to search for it under a warrant.  And now it looks like the government might indict Trump for mishandling an possibly compromising secret documents that Trump says he declassified before they were planted!  (I don't get Trump's logic either.)

MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell has insisted that media attempts to frame what's happening with Trump as beneficial for him and his brand are bunk, but the Republican Party is standing behind Trump and all indications are this might increase Republican voter turnout not just in 2024 but in November midterms.  Remember when abortion was to get Democratic women to come out to the polls in droves?  Legal abortion is not a person any more than a human egg fertilized ten minutes ago is.  Despite suggestions to the contrary, Donald Trump is a person, and he's a person with a base of supporters with greater loyalty to him than I have for Martin O'Malley.  They are that scary.

And to respond to the inevitable insistence that Trump can't win with his base alone in 2024, Trump won the Presidency in 2016 by getting once apolitical reactionaries to join and expand the Republican Party and he's been successful in doing that ever since.

Any person who thinks Donald Trump can't benefit politically from this investigation is either a moron or an MSNBC host. 

Tell Me I'm Not Dreaming - 2022 Edition

It looks like the government is about to get Donald Trump with the goods.

As you all know, the Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a search warrant at Trump's Mar-a-Lago home in Florida for classified federal documents that Trump may have illegally taken with him on the way out of the White House after failing to fully respond to a subpoena.  The warrant was handed down by a judge, who decided it was necessary to give to the FBI permission to search Trump's not-so-humble abode.  The agents went in, warrant in hand, and confiscated several reams of paper, angering Trump and his toadies in Washington.  Trump is trying to make himself look like the victim, which he does very well, but so far the only two people are upset about all this other than Trump himself are Kevin McCarthy and Marco Rubio.

Trump calls this a Democratic plot to undermine his potential political comeback in 2024, but the last time I checked the only Democrat who's even involved in this is Attorney General Merrick Garland, and that's one more Democrat than the number of Democrats willing to talk about it.  Right now, there's no evidence that any of the documents recovered are necessarily tied to trying to prove that he committed a crime - the government simply might want all relevant documents for the National Archives - but there must be something very sensitive to Trump if he's trying to keep it to himself.  And it may not necessarily involve January 6.

Some Democrats may fear that the raid on Mar-a-Lago will energize the Republican base in the 2022 midterm elections.  I think it will energize the Democratic base because Democrats finally see Merrick Garland taking charge.  

Trump Trumped?

It seems as if the nooses are tightening around Donald Trump and his crooked family, considering the bad week Trump just had.

A New York State judge ruled that he and his children must sit for a deposition within three weeks to answer questions by New York Attorney General Letitia James about the Trump Organization's business affairs even as Mazars, the accounting firm Trump had employed for years, dropped him as a client.  Mazars issued a statement saying that ten years' worth of his financial statements were "unreliable," and they recommended that any accounting firm that takes Trump on as a client be notified of this.

Meanwhile, things are heating up in Washington.  The National Archives confirmed that Trump transported classified documents - well, any classified documents he didn't flush down the toilet or have for dinner - from the White House to Mar-a-Lago without authorization, even as he lost a bid to have three separate lawsuits against him regarding the January 6 insurrection dismissed.  

Despite all of this, I'm still skeptical.  Trump can easily appeal the directive to sit for a deposition, and he's probably scheming of how to gum up the lawsuits against him.  Because Trump is like an eel - he always manages to slip out of a tight spot. 

Rumor has it that a lot of anti-Trump Republicans currently raising campaign money off his name but, secretly wishing they could get rid of him, will find a way to cut ties with him once he's in enough trouble that they would have to do so anyway.  By that time, it is reasoned, they will have won back at least one house of Congress and several state offices and they won't need him anymore.  And then we will no longer have to worry abut Trump regaining the White House in 2024.  That does not, however, mean that we will no longer have to worry about the Republicans, who will still be in an excellent position to poison young minds, pollute the environment, and subvert the democratic process.