Our Man in Washington
Lawyers, guns & money ... Trump turns his indictment into a cash cow ... More guns for Republicans ... Gun originalism ... Judicial manipulation ... Torture memos ... Review of detainee treatment ... Wisconsin Supreme Court on the move ... Roger Fitch reports
"What kind of person can charge another person, in this case a former President of the United States ... with a Crime, when it is known by all that NO Crime has been committed, & also known that potential death & destruction in such a false charge could be catastrophic for our Country? Why & who would do such a thing? Only a degenerate psychopath that truely [sic] hates the USA!" - Donald Trump tweet
"Paying hush money to a porn star is the broken tail light of white collar crime - not something you can afford when there's a body in the trunk" - Caitlin Flanagan, in the Washington Monthly
"[I]f Trump has to pay a fine, he will likely steal the money from his campaign funds, lie in official records to disguise the payment, and start the criminal wheel turning again. One constant feature about Trump is he's always committing new crimes to take the place of the ones he’s already gotten away with" - Elie Mystal in the Nation
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Tuesday, April 3, 2023 was a Big Day in the States.
Democrats gained a majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, ending fears of dirty judicial tricks in the 2024 elections, and offering hope of breaking the Republicans' gerrymandered lock on the state.
Chicago elected a progressive Democrat mayor.
The recidivist Donald Trump was criminally charged in Manhattan (see annotated indictment and Statements of Facts).
Outside court, his foolish lawyers vilified the prosecutor.
A fundraising carnival was already underway. Within 24 hours of indictment, America's worst and most corrupt president raised $4 million from his rube supporters, likely to be spent as Elie Mystal surmised.
Of Trump's many legal problems, four criminal cases present the gravest danger: "hush-money" payoffs; purloined classified documents; election interference in Georgia; and the January 6 insurrection.
Hush-money seemed least important, yet even before arraignment, Trump was attacking the NY County prosecutor, the "degenerate psychopath" Alvin Bragg; he's a Democrat, and black, useful for Trump's dog whistles to racist supporters.
After court, Trump insulted the judge, Juan Merchan, who (perhaps unwisely) had withheld a gag order.
Much has been made of the initial "hush-money" payments. In fact, the case centres, not so much on the legality of payments as on fraudulent statements and falsification of records that offend New York State laws, some rising to felonies when designed to cover up a crime, e.g, violations of federal election law.
Judge Merchan: family threatened by the Trumpenvolk
Congressional Republicans attacked the prosecution and called the charges "political", ignoring the fact that the same transactions formed the basis for Michael Cohen's conviction during the Trump administration - a prosecution in which Trump was identified as the unindicted co-conspirator.
Sadly, aside from the 14th amendment's bar of insurgents, the US constitution is silent on criminality of federal officeholders, impeachment being the sole remedy for rotten presidents. Twice, candidates have stood for president while in prison.
Meanwhile, it's all hands on deck in the House of Reps, as Republicans endeavour to save Trump's skin and spoil Biden's presidency. Sharing responsibility for this are five Republican house groups, which artlessly compare themselves to the five Mafia families that once shared-out organised crime in New York City.
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In the kakistocratic Republican red states, ever more extreme gun legislation is proposed. Oxymoronically called "gun rights", the laws are designed to promote and spread gun ownership/use, no matter the mass shootings. Their lodestar is the supreme court's appalling 2022 Bruen decision (see below).
Where elections are concerned, no Bill is too wild for consideration.
In the Texas legislature, proposed legislation would give the election supervisor (a Republican) the authority to overturn election results in Harris County, the state's most populous county (circa five million) and the third most populous county in America.
Time is short: millions of Houstonians are voting Democrat.
Red state courts are drafted into the cause: judicial corruption reached its logical conclusion in North Carolina, where a newly-elected Republican-dominated supreme court plans to rehear and overturn a decision made only a few months ago by a Democrat-majority court, all in order to reinstate Republican gerrymanders the last court struck down.
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Thomas: gun originalism
In the wake of the supreme court's dreadful Dobbs and Bruen decisions, there's a new demand for historians schooled in 18th century sexual practices, and weaponry, respectively.
The results of Clarence Thomas's gun originalism are everywhere.
In US v Rahimi, a Fifth Circuit panel comprising Trumpistes James C Ho and Cory T Wilson and Reagan appointee Edith Jones put a horrifying gloss on Bruen.
In the initial opinion, written by Wilson, the court ruled threats of imminent domestic violence cannot deprive an offender of his weapon; in a revised opinion, Judge Ho dug the hole even deeper.
Ho is a case-study in Republican judicial manipulation. He was appointed in 2017 to a seat on the 5th circuit vacant since 2013, when a Carter-appointee took senior status. Republicans blocked filling the seat until Trump could appoint a "movement" lawyer.
When Ho was appointed, the former Texas SG already had a reputation as an extreme right-wing lawyer with the Dallas-based First Liberty Institute, the "Christian conservative" legal group that employed Trump-appointed Texas federal judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk.
Ho was vigorously opposed in the US Senate, not least for his part in the Torture Memos: he wrote a pro-torture memo for Assistant AG Jay Bybee (now a 9th circuit judge) in 2002 when both were employed by the Justice Department.
Ho's memo Possible Interpretations of Common Article 3 of the 1949 Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, falsely claimed the Convention Against Torture (CAT) "distinguishes between torture and other acts of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment".
This was cited by Bybee in his infamous memo, Standards of Conduct for Interrogation under [the US Torture Act].
Bybee's still-shocking memo (mostly by John Yoo) concluded that, notwithstanding US obligations under the CAT, the Torture Act reached only the most "extreme" and "heinous" acts, those causing pain "akin to that which accompanies physical injury such as death or organ failure".
This advice led directly to CIA torture overseas, while the US also failed to fulfil its CAT obligations at Guantánamo, according to a newly-published review of detainee treatment by the UN Rapporteur.
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Recently, the US urged the International Criminal Court to hold Russians to account for war crimes and torture in Ukraine, though the US routinely obstructs the ICC when Americans or Israelis are involved.
It seems only yesterday that congress passed the belligerent "Hague Invasion Act", and Donald Rumsfeld threatened "consequences" for NATO headquarters in Belgium unless its government shut down war crime and torture claims against American officials, including himself.
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