FWIW, iDJiT’s attorneys are on record as saying he’s not interested in any plea deals.
Guest starring Stormy Daniels?
Yup, and Wee Man dressed up in a “mushroom” costume.
As of today, 814 days since Jan 6, but who’s counting?
From the Watergate break in to Nixon’s resignation was 782 days. But who’s counting?
I can’t even image him pleading guilty.
Do you know why it’s taken so long? I do.
According to Geoff Berman, the US Attorney who was in charge of SDNY when all this was unfolding, Trump’s DOJ henchman, Bill Barr, actively reached into the investigation and told them to cease all investigations on Trump with respect to this and other cases. He wrote about it in his book. That’s why the Feds didn’t proceed on this case for all this time. Manhattan picked it up instead. But they had to investigate from scratch, because Barr wasn’t permitting cooperation between agencies.
Re the DOJ, here’s why I think it has taken as long as it has. This will be a long post.
First, Merrick Garland’s confirmation was delayed for as long as possible, to March 10, 2021.
Second, Garland entered a DOJ/FBI that had been compromised and undermined by Trump as much as possible. Many of the most experienced personnel had been forced out or reassigned to areas of much less importance. Accordingly, DOJ/FBI are tremendously understaffed and still are catching up. Funding for additional agents/US Attorneys has been denied by Congress at least twice that I’m aware of.
Third, Garland was fighting a “Trump contingent” within those agencies, people who were actively working to frustrate efforts to prosecute Trump.
Fourth, there are many, many thorny and untried legal issues, most of which the majority of Americans don’t even think about, that Garland had to game out with respect to how each would likely be treated by district and circuit courts as well as the Supreme Court. These issues are all case law precedent, because we’ve never done this before: Prosecute a former president. Think back to what happened with the Aileen Cannon case and you begin to appreciate how carefully Garland had to proceed. That whole debacle was a master class in how to test the waters before plunging ahead.
Fifth, Garland had to satisfy himself that sufficient evidence would be available to prosecute Trump successfully. You don’t plunge the country into a potential second civil war lightly or without having the goods cold. Not just tried in the press, but to a jury.
Sixth, once Garland was certain the threshold legal issues would go his way despite a partisan SCOTUS and some really scary district and circuit courts, he was ready to unleash his best and most experienced prosecutor: Jack Smith.
Seventh, as fast as Jack Smith has worked, these are still immense, complicated cases requiring a ton of people working round the clock to bring them to trial and for Smith to get his arms around. The totality of the January 6th case alone is the largest one DOJ has ever undertaken.
Eighth, Trump is a legal terrorist who counts on delay as a tactic to get what he wants. He’s employed it throughout all these proceedings. That is coming to a close – even the courts are no longer helping him out – but he’s been able to use this tactic to great effect up to this point.
Ninth, I’ve seen cases much smaller and less complex than these take 5-8 years to bring to trial. To me, these cases are moving lightning fast.
Yeah, there’s no argument this hasn’t been slow. If I robbed a bank today, I’d be indicted tomorrow. Yes, these cases are more complicated, but a prosecutor could get the ducks in a row in 6 to 12 months if they wanted.
I read somewhere that the Georgia legislature is or is considering passing a law that gives them the power to replace any DA they feel is corrupt. That would mean that there will be no Georgia prosecution no matter what, because they would remove the prosecutor as soon as it began.
There were two years of a Democratic majority in the house. Democrats denied the funding?
I think it was sandwiched in with another request that they didn’t favor due to poison pill provisions, but don’t quote me on that. It’s a long time ago now.
Thank your for the thorough explanation. The intentional roadblocks thrown up by Trump’s henchmen during his administration makes it all the more essential to act, though, before there is any possibility that the traitorous orange fuck might regain the White House, which would be a national catastrophe on so many levels. I think the chances of him winning a general election are close to zero, but not close enough!
Trump and his lawyers have said many things, like that the election was stolen, that pleading the Fifth proves you’re guilty as sin until Trump did it himself, and then it was OK, or that he’d be arrested on March 21. You can tell Trump is lying because his mouth is flapping. Trump’s ability to say one thing and do the opposite is matched only by his good buddy Vladimir.
That said, I suspect it’s a good bet that his instinct will be to fight the charges and try to take it all the way to his pals at the Supreme Court.
I’m with you on that one, for sure!
I have one more item to add:
Tenth, we don’t know yet, but I think Smith’s January 6th investigation contemplates charging a lot more people than just Trump. There are many in Congress and other higher-ups such as Meadows, Eastman, Scavino, Rick Scott, Mike Lee, Jim Jordan (the list may be quite long) who have culpability in this caper. If Smith intends to wrap this up as a RICO-style case, then that lends a tremendous amount of complexity to the process. I think he intends to get as many as are gettable for their complicity in the January 6th crime spree.
It also explains why Republicans are working so hard to hang together. Because as we know if they don’t, they will surely hang separately.
Maybe Josh Hawley, too. Lord, I hate that fucker! Not sure if he actually committed a crime, but he was certainly pro-insurrectionist. Personally I think it should be a crime for a human to have a face like a horse.
It makes my head hurt to try and come up with all the names. Personally, I especially hope for Mike Flynn, Roger Stone, Steven Bannon, Stephen Miller and Jeffrey Clark. And many others I can’t think of at the moment.
Speaking of Stephen Miller, I have a tendency – perhaps to excess – to judge people’s qualities based on their appearance, but man, Stephen Miller could not resemble a more perfect Nazi if he tried. He has that scary look of someone who just stepped out of Hitler’s inner circle, and in fact his visual aura bears distinct suggestions of Joseph Goebbels. Compared to Stephen Miller, Josh Hawley is just a nice horsie of relatively low intellect, even for a horse. And Eric Trump’s vapid expression suggests he’s probably harmless unless, due to the inability to master the tying of shoelaces, he trips and falls on you. The current Republican zeitgeist is certainly something to behold. Dave Barry once described being repelled by Richard Nixon due to the perception of his resemblance to a nocturnal rodent, but Nixon was a paragon of respectability in comparison to what we have today.
I like to think about how a man who paints his head in a vain attempt to hide his baldness will fare in prison.
A plea deal would require him to admit that he’d done something wrong, and as we’ve seen, he is simply incapable of doing that, for even the most trivial of mistakes, down to typos and the like. No way will he ever do that.
Plus, he still suffers from the delusion that his three Supreme Court appointees are eternally indebted to him (with tears in their eyes), and that they, along with the two lunatics already in place, will guarantee him any victory he needs.
Stephen Miller looks like he answered a casting call for the new Hellraiser movie but failed because he’s not as warm and cuddly as Pinhead.
Ben Franklin told me in a vision that he wishes you wouldn’t quote him in this context.