There’s an adage that the essence of drama is describing how all the chickens come home to roost. Certainly that is true of Donald Trump’s personal saga in Washington. Today we learned that Mark Meadows, and some Secret Service agents of Trump’s have testified in Jack Smith’s investigation, giving rise to the speculation that a charging decision is imminent.
Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA is taking this news particularly bad. He’s telling the MAGA troops that Trump won’t be on the ballot, oh my oh my.
“If you really want to game this out, if Donald Trump is facing federal charges, he can still be a felon, run, and win the presidency,” Kirk said. “He cannot run and win the presidency if he is charged with insurrection or something adjacent to insurrection, which is likely going to be the next indictment.”
“So, if we’re going to map this out, they’re going to try to get him on documents, and then they’re going to do Georgia, probably in August, (Fulton County DA) Fani Willis. And then they’re probably going to get him on some sort of ridiculous incitement of insurrection or incitement to overthrow the United States.”
Wellll, the only issue here, as more participants in the January 6 riot continue to be sentenced (the guy wielding the baseball bat that smashed the glass of the Capitol drew a 51-month sentence earlier today) is that there is an abundance of evidence that but for Trump encouraging people to march on the Capitol and commit mayhem, they would not have been there. So yes, Kirk is paranoid now and with just cause to be so.
“And as ridiculous and baseless as that is, they’re going to file that in D.C. and they can basically get whatever they want in D.C. Meanwhile, we sit idly by, and we wait, and we listen, and we wait.”
“We’re not even playing checkers. Democrats are playing chess. We’re playing pattycake. We’re playing rock paper scissors. We’re not even on the same terrain. The whole thing’s a joke.”
The joke’s on you, buddy. You followed Trumpty Dumpty and he took you off the wall and splat, onto the sidewalk.
Let’s see what happens next. There are those of the view that if Trump can’t be on the ballot MAGA will rise like some ubiquitous sea monster and riot. If the MAGAs are that stupid, after seeing the people who broke into the Capitol and attacked the police, draw stiff prison sentences, then they deserve in rot in prison, too.
I think MAGAs are like Trump, cowards to the core, and without their fearless leader dangling legal fees and pardons in their direction, they’re not leaving the couch.
Wait and see.
Weren’t the MAGAs supposed to riot in the streets of NYC if Trump was indicted there? Did that happen? So sorry, Charlie.
They were happy to throw their weight around in D.C. because they thought Trump would pardon them. Now, unless they are complete imbeciles, they know that’s not going to happen.
Well, they are complete imbeciles.
They’re all cowards. Here’s a quote from Pericles about being truly brave: Those who can truly be accounted brave are those who best know the meaning of what is sweet in life and what is terrible, and then go out undeterred to meet what is to come.
Time for those of us who know the difference between lies, and the best truth we can know, to go out undeterred to meet what is to come. Our collective thirst for truth and social justice IS the hope of our country and the larger world.
Well said.
Well said, Scott!
“AND AS RIDICULOUS AND BASELESS AS THAT IS, THEY’RE GOING TO FILE THAT IN D.C. AND THEY CAN BASICALLY GET WHATEVER THEY WANT IN D.C.”
Uh, sorry Charlie but charges are filed in the jurisdiction in which crimes are committed, or started at least. While in some cases, especially federal one since typically crossing state lines is needed to make a federal case determining the proper jurisdiction can be an issue. Not this time.
The documents, both regular Presidential papers that belong to the people and should have gone straight to the National Archives (at least unless/until Trump opened a Presidential Library and even then they’d be under the control of the Archives and ITS people), as well as the Classified documents were STOLEN from the White House. Which, and I know this because I used to live across the river and have been to DC countless times sits right there in DC!
As for January 6, much if not most of the planning took place at Trump’s hotel in DC! And probably in the WH itself which I’ve already noted is in DC. Trump himself called for the mob to assemble for a rally on the National Mall where he whipped them up and turned them loose. He lit the match to his crowd bomb across the street from the WH to that crowd on the Mall – in DC! And where did the insurrectionist mob attack? The United States Capitol which again just so happens to be situated in… (this is too easy!) DC!
Nope. Trump doesn’t get to have charges filed where HE wants which is down in FL giving him decent odds of finding at least one lying MAGAt slime their way onto the jury and hang it. The appropriate place to file charges and hold a trial is the jurisdiction where the crimes took place. In DC. Here endeth the lesson Mr. Kirk.
Sorry denis…your inability to use only words that are three letters limits your ability to educate someone who isn’t as smart as the average household pet. Having tortured myself the past 7 years with baby huey’s political career, I can now understand why Fred Trump kept paying to get donny into schools. He was tired of his son being, as Jethro Tull noted, thick as a brick.
Fred Trump was a man of considerable intelligence, to all accounts. It must have driven him around the bend to have such an idiot son.
I’m no lawyer, but I suspect the criterion Smith is using for choosing jurisdictions for grand juries is where the alleged crime was committed. trump stole the documents in Washington, D.C. and a grand jury was empanelled there to consider that evidence. At MAL there may have been other crimes committed that include obstruction and possibly espionage. It may not have been just trump involved here, but also some of his lawyers and staff who moved documents and were involved in security monitoring. If any or all lied to investigators, they could be facing additional charges. Other than the surprising expansion of scope of Smith’s investigation, the significance of all this may be that indictments won’t be brought against trump et al. until the Florida grand jury has reached the that stage. The reason is that announcing indictments against trump in Washington could be prejudicial against him and others in the Florida proceedings. Another possibility that Haberman and Protess consider in their NYT story today is that there is only one grand jury, which has been commuting between Washington and Miami for the last month or two. In either case the indictment watch may be a little premature.
“after seeing the people who broke into the Capitol and attacked the police, draw stiff prison sentences” ?!?! So far as I have seen, all of the J6 seditious criminals have received ludicrously light slap on the wrist sentences! The least sentence that any of them deserve is 5-10 years at hard labor!! Yes I know, I am vindictive, but so far as I am concerned those cretins committed crimes just a hair away from treason, and need to pay a heavy price for their very serious crimes!!!
You’re not vindictive. The insurrectionists are not getting punishments that even come close to fitting their crimes.
After spending decades preparing the way for someone exactly like Trump, the Republican Party was entirely unprepared for the monster they’d helped to create. They resisted as best they could, but when they realized they were outmatched, they fell in line or left the party. Now they can’t get rid of him. Americans, let alone Democrats, can’t afford to be nonchalant about this. This is no time to let your guard down, or get complacent. If every able-bodied patriot doesn’t vote in every election for the foreseeable future, we’re screwed. But the political left in America needs to get up off the mat and start acting like they are the party of ideas and solutions. Quit acting like you’ve lost before you’ve even begun. It’s time to grab whatever sits between your legs and get in the fight. It’s time to stop fucking around.
It’s time to end this.
I’m not a lawyer either, but I have been paying attention to what lawyers (Glenn Kirschner, Harry Litman, Jill wine-Banks, Joyse Vance, to name just a few0 are saying, and venue is 200% critical in Federal cases. If the prosecutor presses charges in what is later found to be the wrong one, the defendant is protected by double jeopardy frrom being retried in the correct one. So it’s true – shoot at the King, you’d best not miss.
Joyce Vance’s “Civil Discourse” on Substack today (June7) is mostly a mini-class in venue.
I might also point out that, yes, Trump** stole the documents in DC. But it was mostly in Florida that he willfully retained them. That must be considered in order to get a conviction, let alone a sentence, that will stick.
I get that part but plenty of the court stuff on this case has been in DC. Ask yourself this: If it was anyone else, say a business person who committed fraud against partners and skipped out of town with corporate records they could use to prove it and then the crook spends a year fighting turning them over to prosecutors where would they be charged? I’m betting it would be back where the whole criminal activity began. The decision and conspiracy to have others help gather, pack up and ship those records elsewhere. Every other crime is a continuation of the original one.
What’s different here is POLITICS. It shouldn’t be a factor but it is and especially with some old school, thinking like it was the olden days traditionalist AG. Except he’s not acting old school. I don’t for one second believe political uproar has been on his mind all along – and that he’s done and will continue to do all he can to prevent it. Here’s the thing though:
I’ve been hearing commentary to the effect of “Well, Trump will say he can’t get a fair trial from a DC jury and if they try him in FL on HIS territory he and his supporters won’t be able to use that excuse.” If that’s factoring in then shame on DOJ. Because it doesn’t matter. Garland could fly down and hold a joint press conference with Trump, and announce that to be “fair” Trump will get to pick his own judge, say Judge Cannon, pick the jury without the prosecution having any input and hold the trial in the ballroom of Trump’s Mar A Lago. And Trump would STILL scream to high heaven the whole thing was rigged against him! Worse, the MAGAs will believe that sh!t. There is nothing, and I mean NOTHING short of Garland and Smith going to FL, publicly APOLOGIZING to him and then offering up their wives and daughters for a week to Trump to screw that will satisfy Trump. I’m not sure even that would do it.