September 1, 2020: Let’s not delude ourselves. Donald J. Trump is the worst “LAW
& ORDER” president ever.
Today,
he traveled to Kenosha, Wisconsin, where
he basically talked about how much he loved cops.
This
week he also warned that there were “planeloads of thugs,” dressed in black, flying
about the country, landing in “Democratic-run cities,” stirring up rioting, and
causing mayhem and bloodshed.
That
sounded nuts.
____________________
The worst “LAW &
ORDER” president we’ve ever had.
____________________
Not
only is Trump the worst “law and order” president we’ve ever had, he puts Richard
M. Nixon and Warren G. Harding to shame. And why should we be surprised? This
is the guy who bragged about grabbing women’s pussies – because he could. That’s
sexual assault, of course.
“LAW
& ORDER,” Trump style.
Trump
isn’t interested in law or order. Not even common decency. He’s the man who has
two pending suits against him, filed by women, one by Summer Zervos, for defamation and sexual assault.
The other was filed by E. Jean Carroll, alleging rape. This is the guy who was accused of rape by one
of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, a 13-year-old virgin at the time of the alleged
attack, and listed as “Jane Doe” in court documents. Her claim was supported by “Tiffany Doe,” who said she witnessed four incidents of
assault by our now president, with Tiffany also admitting she helped recruit underage
girls for Epstein’s sex-abuse ring. That case was dropped in April 2017, when Jane’s lawyer
said her client “was fearful for her life.”
So, for
Donald, innocent until proven guilty, at least.
Still, you
get some sense of why the president went out of his way recently to say that he
wished Ghislaine Maxwell well. She is, of course, Epstein’s
alleged accomplice and main procurer of teen girls.
Trump
can talk “LAW & ORDER” all he wants. But to use his favorite word, it’s a “scam.”
This is the gentleman who defrauded students at his university and had to pay $25 million
in restitution. This is the man who stiffed undocumented immigrant workers in
the 1980s, and lost a $1.4 million judgment to them, too.
Trump and his talented
“Team of Felons.”
President
Lincoln is famous for assembling what historian Doris Kearns Goodwin calls a
talented “Team of Rivals” to serve in his cabinet. Trump will be remembered for
assembling a talented “Team of Felons.” As Citizen Trump, he had already revealed
his preferences by hiring Felix Sater, a convicted felon when Trump put him on
the payroll. It was Sater who later suggested that if they hoped to close the
Trump Tower Moscow deal in 2016, that they gift Vladimir Putin a suite in
the proposed building. It was a perk worth $50 million. There’s your “law and order.”
Putin is
a man guilty of a wide array of crimes, including bilking the Russian people
out of tens of billions of dollars. If anyone dares complain, he has them
arrested, if they’re lucky, poisoned if they persist.
On an
international front, since taking office, and even before, Trump has cozied up
to some of the bloodiest killers on the planet, people for whom “law and order”
means the authoritarian state dominates the lives of citizens, starting in the
cradle, continuing to the grave. At a campaign rally in Raleigh, N.C., in July 2016, Donald revealed
his colors. He admitted that Saddam Hussein was a “bad guy.”
“But you know what he did
well?” Trump asked the crowd. “He killed terrorists. He did that so good. They
didn’t read them the rights. They didn’t talk. They were terrorists. It was
over.”
It was.
It was over for more than
5,000 Kurds, mostly women and children, when the Iraqi dictator ordered his air
force to gas their town. It was over for all the brave Iraqis who protested against every kind
of human rights abuse. They were beaten, raped, and tortured, and finally murdered
in their cells.
“LAW & ORDER,” Saddam
style.
Since
rising to the highest office in the land, Trump has continued to cozy up to the
world’s worst dictators. When Bill O’Reilly warned a newly-elected president that
Putin was a “killer,” Trump showed disdain for simple justice and the rule of law. “What?”
he replied. “You think we’re so innocent?”
And it
was telling, too, that the president had agreed to sit down for an interview
with a journalist he knew as an ally, working for a network run by Roger Ailes,
Trump’s good friend.
A bizarre affinity for
monsters.
Both
men would eventually be ousted, after women who worked at Fox came
forward and made it clear O’Reilly and Ailes had long abused their power and
been guilty of all manner of sexual harassment.
Trump is
the guy who said later that O’Reilly, who had already paid several
multi-million dollar settlements, shouldn’t have settled.
And, of
course, while still a candidate, Trump said that he had always found Ailes to be “a very, very good person.”
Whereas
many of the women who worked at Fox News soon made it clear: Ailes was a
predator.
 |
Roger Ailes - Trump's kind of guy. |
Since
taking office, Trump has shown a bizarre affinity for monsters. He has called
the murderous Kim Jong-un a “friend,” and talked
about the “very beautiful letters” Kim has sent him. Meanwhile, the North
Korean dictator has continued to slaughter his critics and starve his people. Trump
commended Rodrigo Duterte, the President of the Philippines, for the
“unbelievable job” he was doing on the “drug problem” in his country. Duterte’s
secret, according to multiple human rights watchdogs? He had his police summarily execute alleged dealers, their clients, innocent
bystanders, and political opponents who complain about his tactics. Later, Trump
defended Mohammed bin Salman, after the Saudi leader ordered a journalist
assassinated and sliced into pieces. President Trump called him a friend, too;
and he called Xi Jinping, China’s president, as
corrupt a communist kleptocrat as ever walked the planet, both a “friend” and
“an incredible guy.” Xi recently brought “LAW & ORDER” to Hong Kong.
That
is: If you are a really big fan of stifling the free press, and sending in the
military to crush dissent.
This
president doesn’t care about law and order, except when he thinks he can scare
his base, and guarantee he wins reelection. He’s the guy who has one son
fighting a subpoena, demanding he appear in court and testify in a fraud investigation.
Three of his children (Don Jr., Ivanka, and Eric, again) were banned from doing
charitable work, after a pattern of questionable spending was revealed at the Trump Foundation. My favorite example would be the decision to
spend $10,000 in charitable donations on a massive painting of … Donald J.
Trump.
Crookery introduced like
a virus.
Having
made crookery a staple of his business career, Trump brought crookery to his
campaign, and introduced it like a virus to the White House. This particular
germ tended to kill honest public servants. Felons, including those who were
already felons when they were hired, those convicted since, and alleged felons,
include Roger Stone, Rick Gates, Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, Gen. Michael T. Flynn,
George Papadopoulos, and George Nader. Nader was already a felon when he went
to work for the campaign, having been convicted of child sex trafficking in
1991. He has since been indicted on additional child-pornography-related offenses.
He pled guilty and was sentenced to ten years in prison. Steve Bannon, a mastermind
of the 2016 campaign, was indicted in August, as part of an alleged fraud scheme. To add insult
to legal injury, that scheme is said to have involved stealing money from the poor
MAGA-hatted crowd who elected Trump, and thought Mexico would pay for the wall.
Innocent
until proven guilty, again, in Bannon’s case, but good Lord, do we see a
pattern yet?
Felons
stick together, like the proverbial birds, and do what felons do. Trump and
Nader helped win a massive contract for Elliott Broidy, to perform security
work for the United Arab Emirates. That contract was worth as much as $200 million. And who wouldn’t be tempted to break a few laws for that
kind of money? Breaking the law was kind of a habit for Broidy. He had already committed
a few felonies, a decade earlier. To be fair, Broidy copped to one, that felony
involving bribing four New York State officials, at a cost of $1
million. In return they granted him investment control over a huge slice of the
state employees’ pension funds.
The
crimes Trump’s campaign crew committed were many and varied. There is no record
that anyone, behind the scenes, ever talked seriously about “law and order.” Manafort
earned most of his felonies for work he performed for shady Russian and
Ukrainian oligarchs, including Oleg Deripaska, this work having been done before
he joined Team Trump. Fittingly, Deripaska, a Russian businessman, had been
banned from travel to the United States over his role in an international money-laundering
scheme. Manafort would then earn a “bonus” felony, one of ten he piled up in
court, for witness tampering during the Russia investigation.
In
fact, he was so inclined to continue waltzing down a rewarding criminal path that
the judge in his case refused to grant bail.
Roger Stone
also piled up the felonies, seven in all, including one for lying to Congress during
the Russian investigation. Then he added a cherry felony to his six scoop-sundae
by trying to intimidate a witness.
Trump’s
personal lawyer for more than a decade, Michael Cohen, racked up eight felonies.
Most of those were earned in service to Donald, himself. Those counts included tax
evasion and campaign finance violations, including payoffs to a porn queen, one
Playboy bunny, a Trump Tower doorman – and good god – a second Playboy bunny.
The first three were meant to protect Trump’s reputation, such as it was,
during the run-up to the 2016 election. The last payoff, a $1.6 million whopper,
went to silence a Playmate who alleged she had been impregnated by Mr. Broidy, and
keep her from talking about their affair and a subsequent abortion.
And lest
we forget: the indictment filed in Cohen’s case mentioned a co-conspirator, labeled
“Individual 1.”
Trump.
Before
moving on, we should mention two more indicted individuals: Konstantin Kilimnik
and Natalia Veselnitskaya. Kilimnik worked closely with Manafort during the time
the latter ran Trump’s 2016 campaign. In a recently-released, bi-partisan report from the U.S. Senate
Intelligence Committee, Kilimnik is referred to as a Russian secret agent,
and Manafort as “a grave counterintelligence threat.”
Veselnitskaya
famously met with Manafort, Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr. at Trump Tower
in June that year. The meeting was arranged after she claimed she could offer
dirt on Hillary Clinton.
Sadly,
both Kilimnik and Veselnitskaya are currently beyond the reach of U.S. law,
having absconded to Russia.
I’m sorry this post
can’t be read in Braille.
If
there has ever been a more criminally-inclined, anti-law-and-order bunch to
lead this nation, I am not aware. And I taught American history for decades. Trump
is the first president, to my knowledge, to step in repeatedly and overturn punishments ordered by U.S.
military courts. He’s the only president ever to call the military justice
system a “disgrace.” Trump has repeatedly put a thumb on the scales and tried
to tip it one way or the other, something normal presidents try not to do. He
suggested two different U.S. soldiers, Chelsea Manning, and Bowe Bergdahl, were
guilty of treason, the fit punishment being execution. He has called for swift and harsh punishment for criminals facing
trial in civilian courts, too, and called a jury verdict he considered too
lenient a “travesty of justice.”
Even
before he ran for office, his “law and order” instincts were warped and
dangerous. He liked to refer to people accused of crimes as “animals,” even
though the “animals” often proved innocent. He once demanded death for the Central Park Five. Those young African
American men were, indeed, convicted for their part in a brutal rape and the
near-fatal beating of a white female jogger.
It took
years to clear their names; but cleared they were. If Trump had had his way, five
innocent men would have been dead.
Donald
J. Trump is to “law and order” as Al Capone is to “paying taxes.” Trump has
been battling doggedly to keep his own tax records hidden from prying eyes. He
and his legal team battled all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to fight a
request for documents. That request is part of – yes – another fraud
investigation, filed by the State of New York. The Supreme Court swatted away his arguments in one case and gave only
temporary relief in the other.
Who is
this guy? Trump is the guy who pardoned one felon (Stone), because that felon never
ratted him out.
Trump
is the guy who tried to stop another felon who served him (Cohen) from writing
a book about his experiences. When that felon was released from prison, as part
of an effort to clear inmates out of cells in the face of spreading COVID-19
infection, the Trump administration ordered him back to prison, unless he agreed
to take a deal. That deal? Stop talking about the book and stop working on it
and you can remain free. Cohen refused. He filed suit. A federal judge ruled in
his favor, saying his First Amendment rights had been violated.
Look.
If you still don’t see the trend, I’m sorry my post can’t be read in Braille. Trump
showed his stripes again, when two congressman, Duncan Hunter (and his wife)
and Chris Collins, early supporters of Trump’s run for office, were indicted in
separate cases. Hunter and his wife were nailed for stealing campaign funds.
Collins got arrested and charged with insider trading.
This
prompted the president to fire off an angry tweet:
Two long running, Obama era,
investigations of two very popular Republican Congressmen were brought to a
well publicized charge, just ahead of the Mid-Terms, by the Jeff Sessions
Justice Department. Two easy wins now in doubt because there is not enough
time. Good job Jeff......
In
other words, Trump wasn’t interested in law and order so much as protecting his
pals. He called Sessions, his pick for Attorney General, “weak” for ignoring his
wishes. Duncan Hunter has since been sentenced to eleven months in prison, while his wife got off
with eight months of home confinement, largely because she flipped on her
sticky-fingered hubby. Collins pled guilty, as did his co-defendants, Cameron Collins, his
son, and Steven Zarsky, father of Cameron Collins’ fiancée.
And if you’re
keeping track, those cases would represent five wins for true law and order, and
zero for Trump.
Law
& Order: 5
Trump:
0
The
list of examples to prove the central point could be continued for as long as a
diligent reader could stand, that central point being that this president cares
no more about “law and order,” or even the rule of law, than guys like Kim
Jong-un and Putin and the bone-sawing types. We just happen to be fortunate
that we live in a country where the rule of law applies, and where even a president’s
worst instincts (so far) have been checked. And those instincts are starkly manifest.
Trump
has called the U.S. system of justice itself “a disgrace.” When the lower
courts go against him, he attacks judges. He called one judge who ruled against him “a hater.” He said the
judge was biased because he was “Mexican.” That judge was born in Indiana
and went to law school in Indiana too.
The
president has insisted that an array of political foes and even critics should
be jailed, despite the fact none have ever been:
1. Charged with actual crimes.
2. Been granted trial, with a real judge, jury, lawyers for
and against, witnesses – you know, the works.
3. Convicted by a jury or plead guilty.
These
individuals would include, but not be limited to, Hillary Clinton, Huma
Abedin, a Clinton aide, financier George Soros, former F.B.I. Director James
Comey, Comey’s deputy, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok (an F.B.I. agent guilty of
“treason,” according to Trump), Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, flag
burners, Steve Rattner, a critic, and the rapper Snoop Dogg.
Trump
has even suggested that The New York Times could be guilty of treason
for printing articles he doesn’t like.
“LAW
& ORDER,” Hitler style.
In
fact, a perfect measure of Trump’s lawless instincts would be the fact that he
wanted flag burners thrown into prison. This, despite the fact the U.S. Supreme
Court ruled, in Texas v. Johnson, a 1989 case, that flag burning, just
like flag waving (which President Trump loves almost as much as he loves
banging porn stars) is just one different form of First Amendment free speech.
A closeted
authoritarian, ready to come out.
This is who and what
Trump is. He’s a closeted authoritarian, ready if re-elected to “come out,” in
all his flaming glory.
This is a president who
dispatched Rudy Giuliani to Ukraine to drum up any dirt he could find related
to Hunter and Joe Biden. Rudy is the toady who quickly lined up two men, Lev
Parnas and Igor Fruman, to help. Last October, both were charged
with violating straw and
foreign donor bans in U.S. political campaigns. And again, we should see
patterns. We know Sam Patten, a well-connected Republican fund raiser, pled guilty to arranging for a
Ukrainian oligarch and another foreigner to
buy $50,000 worth of tickets to one of the Trump inaugural events. To do it
they used an American straw purchaser. We know Imaad Zuberi, who donated $900,000 to the inauguration fund, was
later indicted and admitted to his own series of
felonies. Among other questionable actions, which led to a charge of
obstruction of justice, Mr. Zuberi covered up the fact that at least $50,000
“he” donated came from a foreign individual.
According to CNN, Zuberi also deleted
emails related to a number of illegal transactions. Those included “a $5.8 million
transfer from a foreign national that came in around the time of his [$900,000]
political donation.”
So it goes, in the fun-house mirrors world of
Donald J. Trump. You have a president who praises a member of Congress for
body-slamming a British reporter. That lawmaker, Greg Gianforte, first claimed
he didn’t slam anyone. Then witnesses said he did. Gianforte pled guilty eventually, got slapped
with a misdemeanor, and had to pay several thousand dollars in restitution. This
was reminiscent of Candidate Trump offering to pay the legal fees for a supporter who sucker-punched
a demonstrator at one of his rallies. That man was also charged with assault – which
is perilously close to the exact opposite of being for “law and order.”
Look, this isn’t “Fake News,” just because, if you like Trump, you
don’t like what you’re reading.
This blogger simply keeps track.
So, here’s a little more of
what I know, and the average Trump voter should, but doesn’t. After Matthew
Heimbach, an avowed white supremacist, assaulted an African American woman at yet another Trump rally, his lawyer
claimed Heimbach should not be held to account. His client had “acted pursuant
to the directives and requests of Donald J. Trump,” who had been working hard
to stoke hate. When Cesar Altieri Sayoc Jr.
sent bombs to Joe Biden, Barack Obama and CNN, his lawyer asked the judge for
leniency. His client, he said, saw President Trump as a “father figure.” When
three Kansas men were convicted of plotting to blow up the
homes of Somali immigrants, who happened to be Muslim, and attack a mosque, their
lawyers also blamed the President of the United States. As one defendant’s attorney
explained,
As long as the Executive Branch
condemns Islam and commends and encourages violence against would-be enemies,
then a sentence imposed by the Judicial Branch does little to deter people
generally from engaging in such conduct if they believe they are protecting their countries from enemies identified by their own
Commander-in-Chief.
I don’t make this up. I keep track. Who was the federal prosecutor,
for example, who let Jeffrey Epstein off on a single count of soliciting prostitution
in 2008? That sweetheart plea deal, when dozens of young women had already come
forward to complain, allowed Epstein to abuse girls for another decade. That prosecutor
would be Alex Acosta, chosen by Trump to serve as his first Secretary of Labor.
This is no “law and order” crew. Can you remember which Trump
cabinet official had to resign after racking up more than $1 million in unauthorized
travel expenses and sticking taxpayers for the tab? What other cabinet member resigned
in the face of at least a dozen investigations into abuse of power, including for
financial gain? Which cabinet official still has hundreds of millions of
dollars stashed in banks on the island of Cyprus, where money-laundering is a
sport? Finally, what former cabinet member called Donald J. Trump a threat to the U.S. Constitution, and accused him of ignoring the fundamental concept of “Equal
Justice Under the Law?”
Those cabinet members would be, in order, Tom Price, Scott Pruitt,
Wilbur Ross and Gen. James Mattis, the latter the only one honest enough to
quit in disgust.
This is exactly who Donald J. Trump is. He’s not about “LAW & ORDER”
and never will be. He might scare his base into believing that he’s the only
person who can stop the rioting in places like Portland and Kenosha – and crush
legal protesting too. He won’t even admit the difference, and doesn’t
care that there is.
Just this week the president defended the actions of a young 17-year-old
man, Kyle Rittenhouse, who has been charged with murder. Rittenhouse is alleged
to have killed two Black Lives Matter protesters, and wounded a third. None, as
far as we know, were armed. But Trump has already made up his mind, which means
he pressed his thumb down hard on the scales of justice. Trump said on TV that Rittenhouse
was “violently attacked,” basing his opinion solely on a bit of tape he had
watched. Had the young man not fired, Trump suggested, “he probably would have
been killed.” So, now we know. If a teen with an AR-15, a weapon he’s not
legally allowed to own, opens fire on people without weapons, then, sure. Call
it self-defense.
And watch out for imaginary thugs on imaginary planes.
In the end, the most dangerous thug in the United States today is
the President of the United States.
BLOGGER’S NOTE: Given Trump’s warped sense of what “law and order”
really means, we should hot have been surprised when his fans rioted on January
6, and tried to stop the certification of the final electoral vote count.
BLOGGER’S NOTE #2: In fairness, we should note, however, that Kyle
Rittenhouse was found not guilty by a jury in November 2021.
In fact, it turned out one of the three men he shot did have a
pistol.
