The Porn Star and the President - Part VII

 

The Porn Star and the President – Part VII

(A Story of Lying)

At least one of these people is a known liar - the guy in the hat.

IN PART VI, MICHAEL COHEN, PRESIDENT TRUMP’S PERSONAL LAWYER AGREES TO TESTIFY BEFORE CONGRESS. 

NATURALLY, TRUMP TURNS ON COHEN:

 

2/19/19: The president’s unceasing efforts to contain the damage his allies are suffering, and protect his own lard ass continue to fail. 

Cohen is indicted and pleads guilty. Then he agrees to testify before Congress once more – and correct the record. Trump switches from calling Cohen a man he “liked and respected” to labeling him, mafia-style, “a rat.” 

Rudy Giuliani, who had previously insisted Cohen was “an honest man,” suddenly decided he was a “pathological liar.” 

When Trump hinted in a tweet that members of Mr. Cohen’s family might be in legal jeopardy, almost anyone with a basic understanding of how the courts work knew this was tantamount to witness intimidation. The president responded to criticism by saying of his former lawyer, “He’s only been threatened by the truth.” He didn’t deny that Cohen was being threatened.

___ 

 

2/27/19: “Disgraced felon” Michael Cohen is set to testify publicly before the House Oversight Committee. 

It’s interesting to note that the term “disgraced felon” is coming from Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and other White House aides. That makes me wonder. Aren’t all felons “disgraced?”

Or: just the felons who might have dirt on President Trump, both before he took office and after?

___ 

 

March 1, 2019: I’m going to assume you did not have seven hours to invest in watching former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen testify before the House Oversight Committee. I’m retired. So, I watched till my eyes bugged out.

 

_______________________ 

In those glory days, Cohen was lying for Trump.

_______________________ 

 

It was hard, while watching, not to imagine that Republicans on the panel were suffering from mass hysteria. They were boiling mad to learn that Cohen had lied to Congress in September 2017, even though they controlled both the House and Senate at the time and could have investigated more thoroughly had they wished. Then again, in those glory days, Cohen was lying for Trump. 

A few observations follow.

 

*

LET’S PICK UP the thread of testimony, allowing for a little literary license, with the first Republican speaking and/or yelling: 

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH): ADMIT IT, MR. COHEN, YOU ARE A LIAR! DID ANYONE EVER TELL YOU THAT? 

Cohen: Yes. 

Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI.): Admit it! You are a COLOSSAL LIAR! 

Cohen: I did lie. 

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-VA): Admit it! You lied to CONGRESS? 

Cohen: I just admitted it. 

At that point, Foxx “yielded back” her time (each representative had five minutes) to Rep. Jordan, who started shouting again. Rep. Jordan looked like he wanted to leap over the dais and throttle the witness. You got the feeling he was the kind of guy who could strangle a puppy without remorse. 

I decided to pause my TV and look up what Cohen said back on September 19, 2017, testifying before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. That’s when he lied. In those days, Republicans, and the president himself, were thrilled with what Cohen said under oath: 

Given my own proximity to the President of the United States as a candidate, let me also say that I never saw anything – not a hint of anything – that demonstrated his involvement in Russian interference in our election or any form of Russian collusion.

 

I assume we will discuss the rejected proposal to build a Trump property in Moscow that was terminated in January of 2016; which occurred before the Iowa caucus and months before the very first primary. This was solely a real estate deal and nothing more. I was doing my job. I would ask that the two-page statement about the Moscow proposal that I sent to the Committee in August be incorporated into and attached to this transcript.

 

I hit the pause again, to restart the hearings: 

Jordan (still yelling at Cohen): YOU SNAKE! YOU ARE A HUMONGOUS LIAR!!! 

Me (thinking): Cohen knew in September 2017 about a secret June 9, 2016, meeting with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort with agents of the Russian Federation. That was the meeting all three “forgot.” Then the truth came out because the “enemies of the people,” in the free press were digging to find it. Then the president lied about the purpose of the meeting. Next, Press Secretary Pinocchio (Sanders) lied and said her boss never lied about that purpose. Later the president’s lawyer admitted, “Okay, he did lie.” 

My reverie was interrupted by another shouting Republican, Rep. Bob Gibbs of Ohio. He called Cohen a liar. 

 

The President of the United States had to know. 

Me (still thinking): Cohen lied again when he claimed negotiations to build a Trump property in Moscow ended in January 2016. Those lies served to shield Mr. Trump. Surely, the next GOP lawmaker to speak is going to realize… 

Mark Meadows (R-NC): I hope you rot in jail for 5,000 years, Mr. Cohen. You are a liar. Have we not asked if you are? 

Cohen: I lied. So did the presi….. 

Meadows: SILENCE!! 

Me (still cogitating): Cohen lied about payments to keep a porn star’s story out of the news. Those lies also benefited Trump. Someone on the Republican side is sure to bring this up. 

Mark Green (R-TN): Liar, liar, pants on fire! Let the American people note: We have a poster to make the point! 

(He gestures toward it.) 

Meadows, Jordan and Massie: inordinately proud of their poster.

 

Me: If Cohen lied to Congress, the President of the United States had to know! The president had a tongue that wagged and Twitter thumbs to tap out correction. Even the greatest idiot ever elected to Congress should be able to figure this out. 

Or not… 

Thomas Massie (R-KY): I’m not going to ask you again, Mr. Cohen, you fraud, you faker, you falsifier? You LIED, DIDN’T YOU! 

Cohen: Yes. 

Massie (beaming): I knew it!!!!! 

Me (thinking, as always): Maybe I should mute the TV when Jordan talks next and just watch facial expressions…. 

Jordan: ----- 

Me: I never knew veins on a neck could stick out that far. Okay, next is this Democratic guy; I’ll unmute the TV. 

Rep. John Sarbanes (D-MD): I wonder……………if………Mr. Cohen………… 

Me: This guy is phrasing his question so deliberately I don’t think he’s going to get it out before his five minutes are up. 

I take a quick bathroom break. When I return Sarbanes is done but I have no idea what he said. Another Republican is shouting at Cohen.

 

Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ): You are a THUG, MR. COHEN. Also, has anyone mentioned that you are a cheat, a phony, and a swindler? If President Trump was a liar, a cheat and a racist, as you claim, why did you work for him for TEN YEARS!” 

Gosar gets so fired up, because he thinks he has Cohen trapped, that he blathers on and when he tries to launch into a quotation that he says he loves, his five minutes are up. He’s left mumbling incomprehensibly into his microphone. 

Me (pondering the obvious): If Cohen was a thug and a liar, why was Trump happy to keep him around for a decade? 

 

“Someone I always liked & respected.” 

The hearings continued. I was amused when GOP lawmakers acted as if they couldn’t believe what a sleazebag Cohen had always been – what with cheating on his taxes, which Cohen also admitted. Fortunately, I had a vestige of memory and knew Cohen had been the deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee until June 2018. He lost his post only after it became clear he might turn on President Trump and, shall we say, start correcting his story. 

I’m sure no one on the GOP side wanted viewers to recall that Elliott Broidy, another RNC deputy finance chair, had employed Cohen to arrange a secret hush money payment. In that case, Broidy had to fork over $1.6 million to shut up another Playboy Bunny – as opposed to the hush money payment Cohen helped arrange to shut up the other Playboy Bunny with whom Trump had had an affair. 

So, yeah – Cohen – what a thug!

Or was it a “rat.” Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-MD) seemed interested in the fact that the President of the United States had labeled Cohen a “rat” on Twitter, after it became clear he would cooperate with prosecutors. This seemed odd, because until it became clear Cohen was going to turn, Trump had tweeted, calling Cohen a “good man” and someone “I always liked & respected.” 

Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) spoke next. Higgins, a bullet-headed gentleman, proved unique in that he was clearly baffled by the simplest facts. At one point, Cohen produced evidence, a signed check for $35,000, indicating President Trump was paying him as late as August 1, 2017, for his role in covering up the story of Stormy Daniels, in violation of campaign finance laws. 

He said he had more evidence he could share. 

Higgins: By thunderation, sir, where is this treasure trove of documents of which you speak? Why are you hiding evidence, good sir? Do you think we Republicans on this committee are fools? 

Cohen: These documents are in a storage locker. They were seized last April in a raid on my office and home. They aren’t “hidden.” They were returned to me by investigators after they gathered the evidence they needed. 

Higgins: What kind of monster would hide boxes of evidence, by God and all the 12 Commandments!!! 

Cohen: Um… 

There was, here and there during testimony, some good news for the president. Cohen said that he himself had never been to Prague. A potentially devastating allegation, included in the Steele dossier, was that Cohen flew there in the summer of 2016 to work out payments to Russian hackers so they could keep up their good work interfering in the election to help Trump win. 

A Democratic member, whose name I missed, asked Mr. Cohen about other stories he might have helped “capture and kill” to protect Trump. Was there an elevator tape that might show him striking Mrs. Trump, as had been rumored? Cohen was adamant in stating that he did not believe the president would ever strike his wife. He also said that he did not believe a tape of hookers peeing on a Moscow hotel bed for the viewing pleasure of Donald J. Trump existed. 

 

Trump must have wanted him to lie. 

That was it for the good news. Cohen pointed out that his false testimony in September 2017 had been vetted by defense lawyers for Mr. Trump. He said he discussed his testimony with the president himself. 

Me: So if that testimony was false… 

Meadows: Why are we listening to THIS DECEIVER, THIS DISSEMBLER? 

Me: Trump must have wanted him to lie… 

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY): When was the last time you had contact with Mr. Trump in regard to possible testimony before Congress or cooperation with investigators? 

Cohen: I think…about June 2018. I cannot comment further because the matter is part of an ongoing investigation in the Southern District of New York. I am in constant contact with prosecutors. 

Rep. Jordan gets five minutes “yielded back” by a GOP colleague and spends them calling Cohen a liar. 

Eleanor Norton (D-DC): Mr. Cohen, are there other crimes involving Mr. Trump which this panel should know about? 

Cohen: Yes. But I cannot comment further because investigations are… 

Rep. Meadows: Mr. Cohen, I would like you to look up here. Behind me, we have Lynn Patton, an actual African American woman! She has worked for Donald J. Trump for many years and now holds a government post. She says Trump is not a racist. How dare you say Mr. Trump is a racist now that we can show he has a black friend? 

(Ms. Patton stands there, not opening her mouth, looking like a hostage who might want to try blinking in Morse code.) 

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI): The fact that my colleague would use an African American as a prop is, in itself, a racist ploy. 

Meadows (looking like he might be suffering a stroke): How dare you call me a racist!!! 

Tlaib: Mr. Cohen, do you believe the president and others have been trying to intimidate you, to convince you not to correct the record before Congress? 

Cohen: I do. I worry. I never walk with my wife and children in public anymore. I send them ahead. I’m afraid one of Trump’s 62 million Twitter followers might attack the people I love. 

Finally, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has her turn to question the witness, and here, and in the Democratic questions above, we quote actual questioning and witness testimony verbatim. The young Democrat from New York goes straight to the point. She has learned, she says, that Trump often overvalued assets, golf courses and the like, if he wanted to win favorable loan treatment from large money-laundering, international banks. To avoid paying property taxes he would then order lawyers and accountants to undervalue the same properties. Was this an accurate assessment, she asked? 

Cohen: Yes. 

Ocasio-Cortez: Would anyone else know about such practices? 

Cohen: Allen Weisselberg, Ron Lieberman and Matthew Calamari. 

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez: A recent article in The New York Times notes that taxpayers spent $127 million to help build Trump Links, a Trump property in the Bronx, my district. But the deal allowed Mr. Trump to keep almost every dollar the golf club took in. Is it possible he undervalued Trump Links for tax purposes? On financial disclosure forms the president claimed that Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida was worth $50 million. Yet he reported to local tax authorities that the property was worth no more than $5 million [emphasis added]. 

Cohen: That is identical to what Mr. Trump did with Briarcliff Manor, another private golf club. 

Ocasio-Cortez: Would it help for the committee to obtain federal and state tax returns from the president and his companies to address that discrepancy? 

Cohen: I believe so. 

That was when I decided to click off the TV and go pour myself a stiff drink.

 

UPDATE (4/15/24): It would take four years before Congressional and state investigators managed to pry Trump’s tax records loose. It was then that we would learn, definitively, that Donald paid zero federal income taxes most years – whereas this blogger and his lovely wife always get slammed on April 15. 

See my excellent post: “President Trump Buys Some Bullets.” 

November 6, 2019: Sondland Says Security Aid to Ukraine Was in Our Vital National Interest

 

11/6/19: At a rally in Kentucky, standing beside “Fat Nixon,” Sen. Rand Paul shouts that it’s time for the free press to “do your job.” 

Yes, Sen. Paul wants the free press to………expose the whistleblower! 

Name him (or her), he shouts.

 

____________________ 

“Have you no sense of decency? At long last, have you no sense of decency?” 

Joseph Welch, replying to Sen. Joseph McCarthy

____________________

 

 

For once, this threat proves too much even for some of Sen. Paul’s GOP colleagues. A lawless president has trampled a supine Republican Party for years. Perhaps we are approaching our “Joseph Welch” moment. 

This was the televised instant in 1954, when Welch, representing the U.S. Army during congressional hearings, reached a point where he had had all he could stand. Sen. Joe McCarthy was attacking the reputation of a young lawyer on Welch’s staff, without producing any evidence. 

“Until this moment, Senator,” Welch said with icy calm, “I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.” When McCarthy dared continue, Welch interrupted angrily. “Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency? At long last, have you no sense of decency?” 

In fact, like President Trump, McCarthy did not. From that moment forward, McCarthy went into decline.

Sen. Joseph McCarthy, left, with aid Roy Cohn.

(Ironically, Cohn would later be a confidante of Donald J. Trump.)

 

Now a few Republicans dared, if not to stand tall, at least not to crawl and crouch. “We should follow the law,” Sen. Lamar Alexander said. “And I believe the law protects whistleblowers.” 

“The whistleblower statute is there for a reason,” Sen. John Thune agreed. “And I think we need to respect the law where whistleblowers are concerned. Eventually that person may decide to come forward voluntarily.” 

Sen. Chuck Grassley, who has worked for years to build up whistleblower protections, concurred. “All I can say is I expect whistleblowers to be protected according to what the law gives them,” Grassley explained.

 

But Sen. Rand Paul stood by his threat to name names; and Sen. Lindsey Graham backed his craven play. 

Cowardice runs thick in most Republican veins.

 

* 

SEN. JOHN CORNYN hits the nail square on the head. There’s not much reason to go hunting the whistleblower now. “It’s kind of a moot issue,” he says. “People can read the transcript themselves.” 

Yes, they can! People are free to read the original nine-page whistleblower complaint. It won’t even take long. 

Or they can dive into the transcripts documenting the testimony of career diplomats and military men, which are being released daily. Even a cursory reading shows that the whistleblower complaint has been validated on nearly every point. As Sen. Cornyn says, the whistleblower’s identity is “kind of a moot issue.” 

 

Rep. Jim Jordan cites two entire words from a transcript. 

You can take your pick of transcripts if you want to dig for truth. On Twitter, Rep. Jim Jordan does just that. He selects one transcript, and cites two entire words of testimony to prove that Donald J. Trump is the best man ever to plant a fat fanny in the Oval Office.

Interesting how Rep. Jordan wants to ignore hundreds of pages of transcripts,

save for two words: "no linkage."

 

 

Of course, if you really wanted to understand what was going on, you could dive deeper. You had, for example, the 156 pages of testimony from Michael McKinley – who, by the way, accused Secretary of State Mike Pompeo of lying. You could read Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch’s testimony, 317 pages in length. If you enjoyed that you could wade through 360 pages of testimony provided by Ambassador Volker, not simply pluck out two random words. 

Or you could delve into the 379 pages served up for lawmakers by Ambassador Gordon Sondland. That would include the four pages of amended testimony Sondland added after his memory was jogged by testimony from Ambassador Bill Taylor and National Security Council official Tim Morrison, and, perhaps, motivated by fear he might have perjured himself.

 

* 

BY THE WAY, Sen. Graham, who really wants good Americans to know the name of the whistleblower, has said that he’s not going to read any of this testimony, because, 

lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalala… 

He doesn’t care what any of the witnesses have said. 

Let’s go the senator one better, and tax our brains and peruse just the last four pages of amended testimony from Ambassador Sondland. His original comments provided President Trump at least a fig leaf of cover. 

Now to remove that fig leaf and… 

Gag.

  

 

“Security aid to Ukraine was in our vital national interest.” 

As early as May 23, 2019, Sondland originally said, he understood that, 

a White House visit for President Zelensky was conditioned upon President Zelensky’s agreement to make a public anti-corruption statement. This condition had been communicated by Rudy Giuliani, with whom President Trump directed Ambassador Volker, [Energy] Secretary [Rick] Perry, and me…to discuss issues related to the President’s concerns about Ukraine.

 

Sondland added, “I understood that satisfying Mr. Giuliani was a condition for scheduling the White House visit, which we all strongly believed to be in the mutual interest of the United States and Ukraine.” 

So, last spring, there was already a quid and a quo, and Sondland knew it. Zelensky gets the meeting. Quid. 

Rudy and his boss get an anti-corruption statement that they hope will damage Joe Biden. 

Quo.

 

Now, in his amended testimony, Sondland has even more to say. This time he related a meeting in Warsaw, on September 1, involving Vice President Pence and Mr. Zelensky. Three days earlier, the suspension of U.S. military aid to Ukraine had been revealed by the free press. Now the suspension of aid was openly discussed. “I always believed that suspending aid to Ukraine was ill-advised,” Sondland made clear in his amended testimony, “although I did not know (and still do not know) when, why, or by whom the aid was suspended.” 

Is this, then, a second and more critical quid pro quo? Sondland explained, that in the absence “of any credible explanation for the suspension of aid, I presumed that the aid suspension had become linked to the proposed anti-corruption statement. As I said in my [original] prepared testimony, security aid to Ukraine was in our vital national interest and should not have been delayed for any reason.” 

Sondland’s amended testimony offers depth to our understanding of what was happening behind the scenes. At the conclusion of the meeting in Warsaw, he told lawmakers, “President Zelensky had raised the issue of suspension of U.S. aid to Ukraine directly with Vice President Pence.” In fact, it had been the first matter Zelensky brought up, to start the meeting. Afterwards, Sondland spoke briefly with Andrey Yermak, a top adviser to Zelensky. He told Yermak “that resumption of U.S. aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anti-corruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks [emphasis added].”

 

Soon after, he learned that “the public statement would need to come directly from President Zelensky himself.” 

Military aid. Quid. 

Zelensky gives Trump a statement he badly wanted. 

Quo.

 

Sondland goes on to say he cannot recall whether he had “one or two phone calls with President Trump in the September 6-9 time frame.” He does know this. 

Despite repeated requests to the White House and the State Department, I have not been granted access to all of the phone records, and I would like to review those phone records, along with any notes and other documents that may exist, to determine if I can provide more complete testimony to assist Congress.

 

Or as Sen. Lindsey Graham might say, 

Lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. 

 

NOT-SO-FUN-FACT: Ambassador Sondland is the second person to testify, after Bill Taylor, that the Department of State has refused to let him review his own documents to prepare for testimony in front of Congress.

February 13, 2022: Trump Favors Executions - Not Worried about Trials

2/13/22: If you don’t realize Donald J. Trump is nuts by now, there’s no hope and you should not be reading this blog, referring to yourself as a “patriot,” or playing you’re your guns. 

Once again, Trump is suggesting Americans deserve to be executed for crimes not yet charged, let alone adjudicated. Mull that over a moment if you will. See if it squares with your understanding of protections enshrined in the Bill of Rights. 

Trump has heard parts of a story about how, in 2016, the Clinton campaign might have paid a tech company to “infiltrate” Trump Tower servers looking for links between Trump and Russia, and how that alleged breach may have allowed Clinton operatives to keep spying while he was president and out playing golf. 

So, Trump has issued a statement based on a tenuous understanding of the case – and his idiot spokesperson put it out on Twitter, because her boss is already banned for spreading disinformation. That statement read in part – and  raise your hand as soon as you see the first mistake: 

The latest pleading from Special Counsel Robert Durham provides indisputable evidence that my campaign and presidency were spied on by operatives paid by the Hillary Clinton Campaign in an effort to develop a completely fabricated connection to Russia. This is a scandal far greater in scope and magnitude than Watergate and those who were involved in and knew about this spying operation should be subject to criminal prosecution. In a stronger period of time in our country, this crime would have been punishable by death.

 

Don’t see an error? Trump didn’t either because he never checks his imaginary facts. Liz Harrington, his spokesperson, didn’t catch the error, because she’s an idiot, working for a liar, and facts only get in the way. The mistake is minor but telling. The report was not issued by Robert Durham. 

Try “John” Durham next time.

 

More importantly, let’s not gloss over what has been proven in court. In multiple cases, real juries were impaneled, and real judges – with gavels – held trials. Witnesses were called. There were actual lawyers and cross-examinations. 

Plus, dozens of felony convictions. 

Multiple Trump aides and advisors did indeed have contacts with Russians during the 2016 campaign. So there is no “completely fabricated connection.” I am too lazy to go back and provide a full list once again. But here are names that come readily to mind regarding proven Russian interference in the 2016 election. 

And let’s get this straight. Pretty much every U.S. intelligence agency came to the same conclusion. The Russians did interfere. They did interfere, because they wanted Trump to win. 

We know, then, if we are not too lazy to do a little reading, that the following Trump pals had contacts with Russians: 

Roger Stone – seven felony convictions, including one for witness intimidation. 

Paul Manafort – eight felony convictions, and an admission of guilt in ten more cases, and then another felony for witness-tampering. I can never remember how many total felonies Manafort had, because he also got a few for tax evasion.

 

Konstantin Kilimnik – zero felony convictions – because this Manafort pal escaped to Russia before he could be arrested. 

Michael Cohen – three felony convictions (for non-Russian related crimes, with Trump listed as an “unindicted co-conspirator” as the criminal cherry atop the ice cream sundae). Cohen also admitted to working on a Trump Tower Moscow deal even after Donald had clinched the Republican nomination to run for president. 

Even more fun: Rudy Giuliani – no felonies yet – later admitted that negotiations for a tower in Moscow remained active up to November 2016. Ha, ha. Until just days before the election – possibly up to the moment Trump won!!!

 

George Papadopoulos – one felony conviction. (I had to keep looking, to make sure he plead to a felony; but he did. Later, he ran for a seat in Congress, which was nervy, but didn’t win. You can even read the fourteen-page “statement of offense” in his case, online, if you wish. 

(I’ll be honest. I didn’t.)

 

General Michael T. Flynn – two admissions of lying about contacts with Russians, but pardoned by Trump prior to trial. The judge who dismissed the charges against Flynn, after the pardon, went out of his way to note that a pardon in no way meant Mr. Flynn was innocent. 

In December 2015, Flynn was paid nearly $34,000 for giving a speech at a Moscow dinner, with Putin seated on his left - but failed to get necessary approval from the U.S. Army beforehand. (I had previously seen a figure of $45,000; but only learned today that part of that fee went to Flynn’s speaker’s bureau. I was looking at an old story and learned (thanks, Politico) that “documents also show Flynn got two payments of $11,250,” for other speeches, delivered in Washington D.C., “from a Russian cargo airline company and a Russia-based cybersecurity firm.”

 

We also know that Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner, and Manafort met with Russians in Trump Tower in June 2016 and discussed an offer of help in the election. This meeting was kept secret for thirteen months until the free press in this country blew the lid off the story. You can easily read up on that story, too. 

Not “Fake News,” as Trump would call it. Not the work of “enemies of the people,” as he likes to call journalists. 

Just good reporting. 

For a final bit of fun let’s add that Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who attended that meeting, was later charged with assorted felonies, including one for obstruction of justice. She also fled to Russia ahead of arrest.

 

With that as background, let’s get back to the John Durham story. The details are murky – but that hasn’t stopped right-wing types or rejected-President Trump from howling about the despicable spying – which has yet to be proven in court. At least one individual has been charged with lying to the F.B.I. Would it be illegal to break into the Trump Tower servers? I’m no expert on cyber security. I fairly sure it would. Prove it in court and let’s see what a judge and jury consider fair punishment for the crime. 

It appears that there is no evidence that spying occurred after Trump was elected. So. No treason at all. 

Again, let’s see what comes out in court before we start yelping about execution. You know. Respect all the amendments, such as IV, V, VI, VIII and XIV, that protect defendants in court. 

(Such as Eric Trump recently pleading the Fifth in court five hundred times.) 

 

FUN FACT WITH TRUMP PALS: Sadly, the former president and his idiot spokesperson are not the only persons to fail to grasp the fundamentals of the U.S. Constitution and the nuances of the Bill of Rights. Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, as noxious a supporter of the former president as you can find, said on Sunday that he agreed with Trump in calling for the death penalty in this case. After posting the statement in a tweet of his own, Jordan said Trump was “right on target,” assuming you thought targeting other Americans for death was kind of cool.