December 2, 2020: Pardons Loom Large in Presidential Psyche

 

12/2/20: With seven bleak weeks left to run the table on the Trump presidency, let’s start cleaning out the junk drawers of this administration and prepare for Lame Duck Donald’s ouster from the White House. 

If nothing else, Attorney General Bill Barr, until now a Trump lapdog, says today that “To date, we have not seen [voter] fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election.”  

Trump stooge, Rudy Giuliani, immediately hit back, saying, “Is too! Is too! Is too!!” That was pretty much the level of his response. 

Sidney “Unleash the Kraken” Powell suggested that aliens from a faraway galaxy had dropped off rocket ship loads of fake ballots for Biden. 

And Trump fans believed her. 

(Okay, that was the blogger’s idea of a joke.)

 

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Pardons loom large in the presidential psyche.

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Recently-pardoned former National Security Advisor Gen. Michael T. Flynn is one who isn’t ready to see the moving van pull up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue just yet. Taking his cue from an advertisement placed in the Washington Times on Tuesday, he urged his old boss to declare “limited martial law” and order a new election. If that one turned out badly, Trump could put Gen. Flynn in charge of a few armored divisions and let them clank across a few blue states. 

The ad in the Times cited Abraham Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War as precedent. “Then, as now,” it read, “a President with courage and determination was needed to preserve the Union.” 

Pardon Mr. Blogger if he says he’s getting less of an “Abe Lincoln, with malice toward none” and more of a “Tiananmen Square squash the protesters” vibe.

Lone protester stopped the Chinese tanks.

Later the tanks decided to run over hundreds of Chinese citizens.

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WHAT OTHER NUTS, and loose screws, and useless old batteries, and unidentified bits of hardware can we find in the junk drawer of the Trump administration, as Donald’s days in power dwindle? 

Congress appears ready, on a bipartisan basis, to block sale of 50 advanced F-35 warplanes, a massive stockpile of missiles, and 18 Reaper drones, to the United Arab Emirates. The deal is worth $23 billion but is seen by lawmakers as likely to destabilize the Middle East and spark an arms race. 

We have also heard that the president has been discussing pardons at length. Pardons loom large in the presidential psyche. Sources say he has talked about pardoning three of his adult children, Don Jr., Ivanka and Eric, and son-in-law Jared Kushner, to be safe. He has also floated the idea of pardoning himself. There has been discussion about pardoning Rudy Giuliani. And for good reason (see below). 

On a positive note, neither Mrs. Trump nor son Barron is thought to need a pardon of any sort.

 

In other court news, a lawyer for the president has asked that a civil suit for damages, filed against the president and his three oldest children – but not Tiffany – for actions taken when he was a private citizen, be moved from court to arbitration. As Reuters explains, the class action lawsuit involves American Communications Network, a multi-level marketing company (think: “pyramid scheme” by a kinder, gentler, quasi-legal name) and Trump family links to an operation that plaintiffs call a scam. 

Four plaintiffs, including a hospice worker, accused Trump, his adult children Donald Jr., Eric and Ivanka[,] and an affiliate of their family company of promoting ACN in exchange for millions of dollars in secret payments [emphasis added, unless otherwise noted] from 2005 to 2015.

 

The plaintiffs said ACN charged $499 to sell videophones and other goods, and the Trump family conned them into thinking Donald Trump believed their investments would pay off.

 

The president and his grifter kids have said the lawsuit is “politically motivated,” but echoes of the Trump University scam are impossible to ignore. The Trumps insist they had no control over ACN and what it did, and just cashed those checks for fun. Donald Trump’s endorsement was only an “opinion.” This is a free country. You can’t blame a guy for having opinions. 

 

You get a pardon! And you get a pardon! And you get… 

We do know court victories have been sparse of late, for the president and his clan. First Daughter Ivanka was forced to give a deposition in a Washington D.C. court on Tuesday. Her testimony was requested as part of an investigation of – what else – the 2016 Trump Inaugural Committee. Basically, Team Trump has been accused of overpaying, to the tune of $1 million, for space and services at the Trump International Hotel in D.C., as part of the festivities.  

 

No doubt the mood around the White House soured further when the attorney general for the District of Columbia described Ivanka’s, “who, me” public comments regarding the case as “highly misleading.” 

We don’t know how this case will turn out, and Ms. Trump could be as innocent as a newborn lamb. We do know, however, that Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, at the time spokesperson for Melania Trump, and the main planner for the 2016 inauguration, had expressed concerns about the price Trump International was charging for use of space for the celebration. 

Wolkoff said she believed one rental should cost “$85,000” at most. That was less than half the hotel’s second offer, after Wolkoff protested the first, which was twice as much as the second. 

Karl A. Racine, the D.C. attorney general, noted that the Trump Inaugural Committee paid $175,000 in the end. 

He also noted that the same space later rented for $5,000 for a Presidential Prayer Breakfast. Which seems odd.

 

It also seems odd that Rick Gates, Paul Manafort’s right-hand man, was one of the top officers of the Inaugural Committee. Both Gates and Manafort have been convicted of multiple felonies. 

Also tagged as a felon: W. Samuel Patten. Patten pled guilty in 2019, to steering foreign donations to…the Trump Inaugural Committee. That would be an absolute violation of federal law. 

And we’re not done yet. 

We know the office of the U.S. District Attorney for the Southern District of New York was looking into additional allegations of fraud involving donations to the Inaugural Committee (including foreign money), “in exchange for access to the incoming Trump administration, policy concessions or to influence official administration positions.” That investigation was headed up by Geoffrey Berman, a Trump appointee, who was fired under questionable circumstances last summer. 

Attorney General Bill Barr first announced that Berman had resigned. He would be stepping down gracefully. Berman said that was news to him. He hadn’t resigned. Barr then told reporters that the president fired Berman. Asked to comment, Trump played dumb. “Attorney General Barr is working on that. That’s his department,” the president insisted, “not my department. But we have a very capable attorney general. So that’s really up to him. I’m not involved.”

 

Finally, we know that in October, Elliott Broidy, a major fundraiser for – yes – the Trump Inaugural Committee – plead guilty to one count of conspiracy. To be fair, the felonious activities involved in this case were carried out in a different context. Yet, the conspiracy charge he plead to does have a familiar ring. Broidy admitted he had taken money from a Chinese billionaire and lobbied the Trump administration for favors in the billionaire’s behalf.   

 

A bribe offered in return for a presidential pardon? 

So much court news to consider! Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two former associates of Rudy Giuliani, who worked with him in Ukraine to dig up dirt on the Biden family, were hit with additional “corporate fraud” charges this week. Both men plead not guilty. For his part, Rudy had been paid $500,000 by their fine company, for his excellent legal advice. And slowly but surely you begin to understand why the word “pardon” is being bandied about at the White House. 

This week, you also had a story about a bribe being offered in return for a presidential pardon. 

In heavily-redacted court documents, and in subsequent follow-up by practitioners of the free press, we learned the details. The person needing a pardon: Berkeley, California psychologist Hugh L. Baras, who was looking at a 30-month prison sentence for tax evasion and assorted financial misdeeds. The lawyer who was hoping to get a pardon for Baras was employed and paid for by Sanford Diller. 

Allegedly, Diller promised members of Team Trump he could make a “substantial political contribution” to the president’s 2020 campaign, having donated $6 million to the cause four years before. 

Mr. Diller died in 2018, before he could write another seven-figure check, and the plot may have fizzled. According to court records, however, someone approached the White House Counsel’s Office to ensure the “clemency petition reached the targeted officials.” Baras eventually went to prison, served his sentence, and got time knocked off for good behavior. No “government officials” are believed to be under investigation in this matter. Still, this is pretty much exactly the kind of story you’d expect to read about, involving a pirate crew where scruples are rare.

 

Here we have yet another Broidy sighting. We know he did his best to help out in the Baras matter, putting Diller in touch with a Washington D.C. lawyer he thought might be able to be of use. Broidy sent Diller to Abbe Lowe, Mr. Lowe also being the lawyer for Jared Kushner. 

So, Oprah-like, President Trump may be dispensing pardons to everyone in the White House in the next few weeks.

 

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“Precious little proof.” 

IN GEORGIA, we had a brief ray of sunshine where the Trump 2020 campaign was concerned. A federal judge agreed to freeze the “rigged” Dominion Voting Machines used in three Georgia counties. This came in response to a lawsuit brought by Sidney Powell, once an important cog in the Trump legal campaign. 

(Until she started sounding looney.)

 

Those “rigged” machines, according to Powell, are central to Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results. 

In a four-page directive, U.S. District Judge Timothy Batten Sr. granted Powell her wish – to have the machines checked – writing: “Defendants are hereby enjoined and restrained from altering, destroying, or erasing, or allowing the alteration, destruction, or erasure of, any software or data on any Dominion voting machine in Cobb, Gwinnett, and Cherokee Counties.” 

Alas, the clouds returned when Judge Batten said there was “precious little proof” to back up any of Powell’s claims. 

Meanwhile, she and other lawyers working for, or in tandem with the Trump campaign, proved to be less than the sharpest legal minds in this great land. Powell claimed to be representing a congressional candidate in one of the lawsuits she filed. The candidate said he had no idea who Powell was. An expert witness in another case, claiming voter fraud in Michigan, cited illegal voting in Edson County. This will be difficult to prove since there is no “Edson County” in that state. 

Powell, and her legal sidekick, Lin Wood, a private Georgia attorney, insisted next, that since the Georgia election had been rigged, Trump supporters should boycott the January 5 runoff election, involving two critical U.S. Senate seats. In the resulting turmoil, attacks on Wood – as an Obama supporter in lawyer’s clothing – began spreading across the right-wing world. 

 

An election narrative very much like birtherism. 

In Wisconsin, the Trump campaign licked fresh wounds, after a $3 million recount of two counties, for which they paid, showed Biden gaining a net 87 votes. Having nothing to show for their efforts, save a participation trophy, they filed another legal challenge, asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to disqualify 221,000 votes, most of which, for reasons we need not address, it was assumed had gone to Biden. 

On a 4-3 vote, the  court passed on the chance to overturn the Wisconsin results. Two of the three judges, in dissent, said they would have taken the case under review, but questioned the idea that disqualifying hundreds of thousands of votes was the proper legal remedy. 

As the Associated Press explained: 

Trump’s lawsuit challenged procedures that have been in place for years and never been found to be illegal.

 

He claimed there were thousands of absentee ballots without a written application on file. He argued that the electronic log created when a voter requests a ballot online – the way the vast majority are requested – doesn’t meet the letter of the law.

 

He also challenged ballots where election clerks filled in missing address info on the certification envelope where the ballot is inserted, a practice that has long been accepted and that the state elections commission told clerks was okay.

 

Trump also challenged absentee ballots where voters declared themselves to be “indefinitely confined,” a status that exempts them from having to show photo identification to cast a ballot, and one that was used much more heavily this year due to the pandemic.

 

Chalk it up as another loss for Team Trump, as the losses in state and federal courts continue to add up.

 

Considering Trump’s repeated lies, regarding the election, Michael Frisch, the ethics counsel at Georgetown Law School, says the president is trying to sow doubt on the legitimacy of an election that he lost by creating a narrative “that’s very much like birtherism.” 

 

POSTSCRIPT: Health officials across the spectrum cheer the news today that Dr. Scott Atlas, the medical “expert” Trump most liked to listen to in recent weeks – because he told Trump what Trump wanted to hear – is resigning his post. 

“His resignation came not too soon, I mean, my goodness, he is somebody who spread more disinformation, confusing misinformation, than almost anybody out there,” Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University School of Public Health, said. “I think all of us were just shocked that this guy who knew so little about this topic, had the ear of the President. And so I think all of us are feeling a sense of relief that he is out.”  

Previously, Michael Osterholm, a renowned infectious-disease expert, had told reporters that a herd immunity theory  invoked by Dr. Atlas was “the most amazing combination of pixie dust and pseudoscience I’ve ever seen.” 

A coalition of professors at Stanford, where Dr. Atlas previously worked, had warned this summer that, “His actions have undermined and threatened public health even as countless lives have been lost to COVID-19.” Those professors praised his exit on Monday, as “long overdue.”