Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door Old adage
Welcome back. Yesterday I wrote about how Special Counsel Jack Smith was using his decades of federal, as well as international prosecutorial experience to not only run rings around Trump’s defense team, but around novice district court judge Aileen Cannon as well. But a little bit ago, when I was cutting up chicken breast and Andouille sausage to marinade in Cajun seasonings for homemade Jambalaya tomorrow, I suddenly realized that Smith was actually playing a longer term game.
Let me explain. As I reported yesterday, Smith did a brilliant job of shutting Traitor Tot down when he asked for no kind of gag order or speech restrictions against Trump whatsoever. The media immediately jumped his sh*t, but in strictly legal strategy sense, irt was a classic switchback maneuver.
If Smith’s team had tried to muzzle His Lowness, two things would have immediately happened. First, Trump’s defense team would immediately ask for a hearing, citing Trump’s 1st Amendment privileges, especially since he’s running for President, and needs full access to free speech. And second, FrankenTrump will immediately run to the nearest FUX News microphone and camera, or the nearest rally stage, and bellyache about how Smith is Persecuting hi and trying to muzzle him, something Trump will never allow to happen!
Which is not what Jack Smith and the prosecution want The Mango Messiah talking about. Trump whining about his persecution and 1st Amendment rights are not what you want Trump talking about. Those are not self incriminatory statements. Why have him bellowing about that when there are so many more juicy subjects you can set him loose on, and then use his statements to crucify him at trial?
Which is where Jack Smith just pulled a truly diabolical mindf*ck. I mean, Smith is truly getting medieval on Trump’s ass. As I wrote yesterday, Smith submitted a protective order to Judge Cannon in which he advised the court that the prosecution was ready to immediately deliver all non classified material to the defense to satisfy the discovery protocol. I wrote that this hammered Trump’s legal defense attempts to delay the trial by giving them access to the material at least 6-8 weeks before the preliminary hearing that normally opens the discovery process.
Which is where Jack Smith baited the hook for El Pendejo Presidente. In his filing, Smith requested that the judge issue an order prohibiting anyone on the defense from disseminating any of the information contained in the documents to the public, since doing such could adversely impact ongoing criminal investigations.
Oh, sweet Jesus, this is cruel and unusual punishment. Remember this, everything that Smith and his team are handing to Trump is already sanitized, the defense has the right to see it, and there is every likelihood that it will end up being brought up on trial. So why ask for that ONE rider, when the prosecution has been so compliant to Trump in all other things?
Here’s why. Let’s say you have a kid. When you’re getting ready to go out the front door to go to the store, you turn to the kid, point your finger at the child, and say, Your birthday is next week. While I’m gone, don’t you dare to go through my closet looking for your presents, or I’ll take them all back! Guaranteed babe, you won’t even be all the way out of the driveway before the kid is trashing the closets. You made it inevitable.
Which is what Smith just did to Trump. It comes down to two simple things. First of all, Trump, as a defendant has an equal right to examine the evidence that is going to be used in court against him in order to assist in his defense. And second, Nobody. Tells. Trump. What. To. Do.
When Smith makes that material available, The Trumpster Fire is immediately going to pore through it, with his limited attention span. But he won’t be going through the information looking for weaknesses in the government’s case. Instead, he’ll be scouring those files looking for things that either dent his dignity, make him look weak, diminish his former power and authority, or dent his precious persona.
Which is exactly what Trump will take to the airwaves of FUX News, and every rally stage he takes for the next year. And in doing so, His Lowness will screech out insane nonsense trying to rehabilitate his image, instead of trying to use the leg up to dispute the actual, damaging evidence against him. With Trump, everything is about his d*ck.
This is the beauty of it. Smith is leading Trump around like a puppy on a choker chain, and there’s nothing that judge Aileen Cannon could do even if she wanted to. Smith is controlling the information that the Trump legal team gets, knowing full well what will trigger Trump’s temperament, and then he just sits back, watches, and harvests the nonsense for use in the court trial. Game. Set. Match.
Smith is running rings around Trump’s ‘defense team’, and they haven’t even noticed he’s moving.
Does tRump even HAVE a “defense team?” So much can change overnight. Being tRump’s defense team is going to be about as successful as trying to nailing Jello to a tree.
Trump.got the paid version of a public defender who just graduated from law school. No one else but fifth tier lawyers will take his case because (1)they don’t want to destroy their reputation in what will be the most important case since Dred Scott, (2) they may have realized they have some tiny scintilla of ethics left, though I kinda doubt it and (likely most importantly 3) they know he would not pay them.
Jack must have all the Columbo episodes at home for his viewing pleasure. The crooks, thinking Peter Falk, dressed in yesterday’s clothes, fumbling around, could never outsmart THEM. They all must have been wondering, once caught, how the hell did that happen? It also brings to mind the great line in Casablanca when major Strasser talked about the bumbling Americans and Louie said I was there when they bumbled into Berlin in 1914. Big cats never attack from the front. They stalk their prey from behind and pounce when the time is right. The prey never sees it coming. Neither will baby huey. Jack the cat.
I like the Columbo reference. Here’s another one: In the Shawshank Redemption while recounting the Warden blowing his brains out rather than be arrested, Morgan Freeman’s character intones “I’d like 6o 6hink the last thing that went through the Warden’s mind, other than that bullet was to wonder how Andy DuFraine ever got the best of him.”
Also, much as I want to have to spend a few years in prison before dying behind bars I’d be ok with him doing a real-life version of Martin Sheen’s character at the end of the movie version of The Dead Zone. Christopher Walken’s character’s gift allows him one last peek into the future, of the disgraced would be President sitting alone in a run down room in his tighty whities, unshaven for days and generally drunk and disheveled with a newspaper bearing his picture using a kid as a human shield and a headline, knowing it’s over and he’s totally disgraced blowing his brains out.
The condition that the discovery information not be divulged because of on-going investigations might suggest that Smith is planning additional indictments. Which raises the question: has the Florida grand jury been dismissed? I have the feeling the miserable mango mutant will realize he’s so completely screwed his only remaining option is to run. Are we going to see an O.J. redux in the air? (fingers crossed)
And don’t underestimate the importance of the requirement for security clearance for trumps lawyers. I doubt the once indicted for fraud but not charged and currently facing disbarrment guy will qualify. Trump may have to hire real lawyers who insist on operating in reality. And getting paid up front.
Did any. professionals proof this before publication? It would have been much better without the typis/errors. Good copy editors greatly improve the original work.
When you have visited this site you will find out that the Murfster has eyesight problems (and anyway, along with a lot of others, I can read and write fluent Typonese)
Copy editors cost MONEY (and that’s something which the team doesn’t have a lot to spare).
I’m sure that if you offered to do it pro bono, they may accept the offer
Murphy has vision problems and sometimes can’t get something edited. Most here understand it and are ok with it. Please be kind.
Types the person who’s starting sentence is “Did any.” Of course then that person considers “typis” to be an actual word.
Glass houses dude.
The massive intelligence gap between Trump and Smith is bolstered by Smith’s ability to read every little body language note Trump generates …
Instead of wasting time with a whole list of, “What-ifs”, in designing his traps for Trump, he just listens to Trump’s own babbles, whines and whatever makes him print out his web messages in ALL CAPS with exclamation marks !!
Limp Dick Donald has so many clues in his piss-poor interviews … Smith can just spin the big wheel of chance and Trump will HAVE to defend his own super-high intelligence, after all, he DID take a simple test of his cognateness, comic book symbols and a few simple words to retain, WOW, he passed with flying colors strung out behind the jets flying over his head …
A sight to see of course, after he regains the throne of ill repute and our country begins to celebrate a one-year-long 4th of July, get busy with thousands of wild fires, caused by low brain Republicans and very dry grasses, bushes and trees …
Yep, hard to sit still while Trump continues to loose floor space between those walls of justice, but Smith has become the hero of the moment and apparently, over the next few months, (fewer every day Trump flaps his jaws), Smith, WILL kick that block of homegrown red oak out from under those phony clown shoes, that Trump has so much trouble with on inclined ramps …
Hot popcorn with REAL melted butter, a touch of pink salt from the Himalayas, lots of lemonade or cold beer, a comfortable lounge chair out in the woods, listening to the bird’s farewell song to Trump …
There’s a mental health diagnosis, usually applied to children, but since tRump’s emotional development ended somewhere between 5-7 years of age, it’s probably still appropriate.
Oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), and just the name says TFG to me, includes a frequent and ongoing pattern of anger, irritability, arguing and defiance toward parents and other authority figures. ODD also includes being spiteful and seeking revenge, vindictiveness. tRump deals with everything with opposition and defiance, doesn’t matter what it is. No one is going to tell him what to do or not do, dammit, so I hope you’re right, Murph. That Jack is setting a trap for he who won’t shut the hell up. As it is, our country/the media is absorbed, consumed, 24/7, with someone who has the emotional level of a mentally ill 5-7 year old. Think about that for a moment, and a good portion of his baser instinct followers aren’t much better. Why is an inmate running the institution, even if by default? How many other insane people have we ever allowed to lead this country around by the nose? Why has this one gotten away with it (thank you faux)? How do we get out of the grip of our addiction to watching this train wreck try to undermine and destroy our country? The legal system HAS to work.
YES YES …. we love it.. and everything he says will INCRIMINATE himself every time he says it….
this will be FUN!
EVEN MORE FUN when Smith nails him for JAN 6 …and all fake electors go to prison! as hundreds of Trumps JAN 6 mob have.
PS Yes there is a Jack Smith Fan Club…
see AXIOS