9/4/18: Just when you think Trump
might make it through an entire day without trampling on the rule of law, he
puts on golf spikes and starts taking divots out of the U.S. system of justice.
First, he puts his fat orange thumb on the Twitter button and pushes down hard
on the scales of justice. This time he’s upset about the indictments of two
Republican members of Congress.
 |
Rep. Duncan Hunter - now indicted. |
____________________
“An
attorney general’s job is not to play goalie for a president.”
Brit Hume, Fox News
____________________
That means it’s time to insult Attorney General Jeff Sessions
and vilify the Department of Justice:
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......
....The Democrats, none of
whom voted for Jeff Sessions, must love him now. Same thing with Lyin’ James
Comey. The Dems all hated him, wanted him out, thought he was disgusting - UNTIL
I FIRED HIM! Immediately he became a wonderful man, a saint like figure in
fact. Really sick!
There in one tidy package you glimpse the “beauty” of
President Twitter Thumbs and his tweets.
In just 95 words, without checking grammar, employing logic a
fifth grader could demolish, the President of the United States manages to:
1. Undercut
faith in the Department of Justice.
2. Sow
doubt about the fairness of the courts.
3. Show
disrespect for the rule of law.
4. Hint
that Obama still can’t be trusted.
5. Avoid
mentioning the indicted men by name.
6. Avoid
talking about why they were indicted.
7. Label
Comey a liar (and hope his fans aren’t keeping track of all the president’s
lies, which are bountiful).
8. Call
Democrats “sick.”
9. Insult
Sessions without having the nuts to fire him.
It’s a dump truck of stupidity; but a stunning number of
Trump lovers will swallow it all down. Note the “retweets” and “likes” when I
checked at 9:22 this morning:
Here’s what we know for sure. Trump can remove Jeff Sessions
and we know he burns to do so. He doesn’t dare, at least till after midterms.
If he were to fire Sessions, most Americans, including sensible people among
his supporters, would see it as increasingly clear evidence of intent to
obstruct justice. (See: 11/7/18.)
It might go like this: Sessions gets it first. Trump puts a stooge in his place: Devin Nunes, Horndog Rudy? Judge
Jeanine from Fox News? The stooge fires Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The
“witch hunt” is ended.
Presto! No more annoying rule of law.
Even on the president’s favorite cable news channel, where
truth goes to die, real journalists are restive. Brit Hume, senior political
analyst at Fox, counters Trump’s pair of tweets with one of his own: “Will DJT never learn that an attorney
general’s job is not to play goalie for a president or his party, or any party
for that matter?”
*
Here, it would be remiss not to point out that the Department
of Justice investigates politicians of all stripes. Senator Robert Menendez
(D-N.J.) was indicted on fourteen felony counts in April 2015, when Obama was
in the White House. Menendez managed to survive a trial.
In most cases the DOJ gets its man or woman. Prosecutors indicted Sheldon Silver, a powerful Democratic New York
State legislator in 2015. They managed to prove that Silver was a bribe-taking
bum, who pocketed millions of dollars. Silver survived a first trial,
only to be convicted in a second.
If you’d like to be both appalled and amused go to Wikipedia
for a list of “American federal politicians convicted of
crimes.”
Under Mr. Obama, DOJ went after miscreants in bipartisan
fashion. Anthony Weiner, a Democrat, was convicted after sending pictures of
his weenie to a 15-year-old girl. Rick Renzi, a Republican, was acquitted
on 15 felony charges! Finally, an innocent politician…
Okay, nope. He was found guilty on 17 other felony counts.
Others who fell afoul of the law while Mr. Obama was in
office, included: Dennis Hassert, a former Republican lawmaker, convicted of paying
off a wrestler he had sexually assaulted when Hassert was coaching in high
school. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL), scion of a famous clan, was nailed for
misusing $750,000 in campaign funds. Trey Radel (R-FL) got busted for cocaine
possession. Chaka Fattah (D-PA) ran up an impressive total of 23 felony
counts. Michael Grimm (R-NY) pled guilty to a single count of felony tax
evasion. He avoided trial on nineteen additional counts and was sentenced to
eight months in jail. Still, if you like audacity, all hail Grimm! Fresh out of
the slammer, he decided to run for Congress again in 2018.
Alas, for those of us who like to make fun of the GOP, Grimm
went down to defeat in a June primary.
It’s not hard to understand any of this, really. We want the
Department of Justice to go after as many crooks in government as they can find
and convict them when the evidence merits.
The two congressmen indicted, but not named by Trump in his
tweets, are Chris Collins (see: 8/8/18)
and Duncan Hunter (see: 8/22/18). I
suspect the president didn’t want to name them because some of his supporters
might Google their names and not come away impressed.
The U.S. system of justice, though often flawed, is arguably
the greatest ever designed. It’s a system of men and women – not just laws
– and therefore lacking perfection. Innocent individuals have been convicted of murders and sent to death row, or worse.
Illegal immigrants do sneak into our country. Some commit heinous crimes. See,
for example, the tragic story of Mollie Tibbetts. Native-born Americans
also commit heinous crimes. Yet, even the most terrible criminals are accorded
the fairest trials possible. Real criminals sometimes get off when a dozen
jurors can’t be sure they committed crimes they committed. Police have planted evidence. Prosecutors have suppressed exculpatory material. A crime lab technician
forged test results. Poor defendants are often ill-served by
bad lawyers, including one barrister who fell asleep during a client’s trial. Rich white people
get off with light sentences while darker, poorer individuals get carted
off to jail. Where people of color are concerned, the system is sometimes more
flawed than just; and so we keep working to improve it.
As for Collins and his pals, and Mr. and Mrs. Hunter, they
may ultimately prove innocent, or avoid jail if found guilty. The rule of law
requires they be indicted if evidence indicates crimes have been committed.
You can learn a great deal about how U.S. courts function if
you’re not too lazy to read. You won’t learn anything , and you’ll end up
dumber, if you are gullible enough to fall for the president’s tweets.
*
NIGHT FALLS and the president heads for bed at the end of
another rough day. When he turns on the TV hoping to relax, he can’t escape the
news.
All the cable channels are reporting on Bob Woodward’s new
book, Fear: Trump in the White House,
due out September 11. The details
revealed so far are not flattering to the man gazing at the TV.
An
orange jump suit for an orange president.
According to CNN, Woodward quotes White House Chief of Staff
John Kelly as saying of Trump: “He’s an idiot. It’s pointless to try
to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in Crazytown. I
don’t even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I’ve ever had.”
Woodward also writes about the efforts of the president’s
lawyers to prepare him for a possible meeting with Robert Mueller. The
president can’t get through a 30-minute mock session without exploding. John
Dowd, head of his defense team at the time, warns him never to sit down and
testify under oath. “There’s no way you can get through these [talks]. ...Don’t
testify. It’s either that or an orange jump suit.”
Dowd, Kelly, and others have denied saying what Woodward
quotes them as saying. But if we go back to Watergate, we know Mark Felt, the
F.B.I. agent who repeatedly tipped off Woodward and Bernstein, denied just as
repeatedly that he was their famous source, “Deep Throat.”
Woodward describes Trump as lonely and increasingly paranoid,
often watching hours of TV alone in the White House residence.
Trump often sounds, in Woodward’s telling, exactly how you
think Trump would sound behind closed doors. The president describes Reince
Priebus, his first chief of staff, as “a little rat. He just scurries around.”
The president isn’t interested in the details of foreign policy. He doesn’t
care about the positions of our allies, or the subtleties of our enemies’
negotiating positions. Trump goes off on his generals when they try to explain
the complexities of the fighting in Afghanistan. “You should be killing guys.
You don’t need a strategy to kill people,” he snarls.
Woodward says it was after this that Secretary of State Rex
Tillerson declared: “He’s a fucking moron.”
In a January 2018, Defense Secretary James Mattis is
described as explaining why the U.S. has a large troop presence in South Korea.
“We’re doing this in order to prevent World War III,” he says to Trump.
Afterwards, he tells a close associate that the president has the same
understanding as a “fifth or sixth grader.”
