Trump Still Standing While Allies Get Sentenced To Prison, Face Ruin

If there’s any doubt that everything Trump touches dies, just ask David Correia, a pro-Trumper who was sentenced to a year and a day in prison today for investor fraud and lying to the government. He was also ordered to pay restitution of $2.3 million and three years probation. If his name is ringing a bell, it’s because he’s linked to Rudy Giuliani and Lev Parnas. Uh oh, Rudy, the feds just got one step closer. Courthouse News:

Correia established the business Fraud Guarantee with the Ukraine-born Lev Parnas, with whom he was first indicted in late 2019. The company is the same one Parnas used to hire Giuliani, then the personal attorney to President Donald Trump, in a relationship that has drawn scrutiny from federal prosecutors.

Judge Oetken, an Obama appointee, noted during the hearing Monday that Correia raked in a profit of $43,000 — just 2% of what was a $2.3 million investment fraud. Prosecutors say the bulk of the funds went to Parnas.

And this is but the tip of the iceberg in Trump world. Trump’s attorney allies are desperately trying to hang onto their law licenses. They’re finding that the feckless quest to keep Trump in power by creating the election fraud myth was not a winning proposition — and they’re finding that out the hard way.

Much of their current ruin came as a direct result of their decisions to become major players in Trump’s failed authoritarian endeavor to cling to power. All of them have refused to admit that Trump, in fact, lost fair and square. Of this band of MAGA allies (which most prominently included people like Rudy Giuliani, Michael Flynn, Sidney Powell, Lin Wood, Jenna Ellis, Cleta Mitchell, John Eastman, and Peter Navarro), arguably none of them has lost more in the time since the election than Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO and personal friend of the ex-president’s.

When Trump was in power, Lindell served as Trump 2020’s Minnesota co-chair and as a big financial backer of several efforts to overturn Biden’s win. He was welcomed by Trump into the Oval Office in the very last days of the term to brief the then-leader of the free world on a stack of documents purporting to show evidence that China and other foreign nations somehow tipped the election to Biden. (One of the papers in that packet included a suggestion for declaring martial law to bar the Democratic president-elect from office.) … Lindell cast the video’s [Absolute Proof] release in apocalyptic terms, claiming on a North Dakota radio show shortly before the Friday release that the “end times” await if his video doesn’t catch on with “all the marbles on the line,” and that “I’m serious, this is biblical. This is Revelations. This is Mark of the Beast stuff. This is that vaccine and all that garbage.” […]

Down in Georgia, Lin Wood isn’t doing that much better. During the tumultuous Trump-Biden presidential transition, Lindell financially supported Wood’s legal work as he made a name for himself with his especially groundless, violence-endorsing assertions about the election. The then-president would repeatedly phone Wood in late 2020 to get updates on his latest moves in Georgia. But Wood’s operation, working in tandem with Powell, caused rampant anxiety among conservatives on Capitol Hill, inside the Trump administration, and in the campaign. Many Republican operatives and lawmakers still, in part, blame Wood for helping to blow the GOP’s chances in this year’s Georgia runoff, costing the party control of the U.S. Senate at the dawn of the Biden era.

And then there’s Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, who are facing both disbarment proceedings and mega money lawsuits from the voting machine companies they have accused of all kinds of nefarious deeds, without evidence. Those two you remember. But cast your mind back to Cleta Mitchell, who was a partner at a high profile law firm and who resigned after her pro-Trump stand on the now famous phone call between Trump and Brad Raffensperger.

And then there’s John Eastman, who posed not only as a constitutional law expert and Trump mouthpiece on Fox News, but also spearheaded the Kamala Harris truther movement, challenging whether Harris was an American citizen. That died a quick death and so did Eastman’s career when he was pressured to resign from Chapman University.

Then there’s Jenna Ellis, who, it was opined, was looking for a permanent gig in the Fox News pantheon of stars. That didn’t happen, but overall, she’s not done as badly as the others.

But at least she still has her job as special counsel for the socially conservative Thomas More Society, and hasn’t lost her Twitter account of nearly 800,000 followers. Nowadays, she can be found tweeting her continued support of the former president, broadsides against the Biden administration, and her thoughts on issues such as why conservative women are definitely “hotter.”

Wow, I can’t wait to hear Jenna’s views on that.

Then there’s Peter Navarro, who told Trump that he should get rid of the “stiffs” on his impeachment defense team and hire Matt Gaetz. Do it, Donald, do it. The ratings will be epic, but not for the reason you think. And what’s Donald been up to?

He’s been scribbling down potential disses and harangues at his political foes, insults that he now cannot tweet himself to the broader public. He’s dictated petulant remarks sent to the Hollywood elites at the Screen Actors Guild who don’t want him anymore. […]

His office has also been messaging friends and high-profile allies on his behalf, inviting them to visit him at Mar-a-Lago […]

Some individuals close to the ex-president say he’s started getting lonely and bored with his existence out of power, and misses being constantly surrounded by powerful sycophants and being the center of attention for the news media, U.S. politicos, and leaders abroad. But the ex-president is still living in luxury, and has been recently very confident about his continued standing and influence in the Republican Party and conservative movement.

Everything Trump touches dies, except, astonishingly, him. There’s a moral to this, we just haven’t found it yet. The image that comes to mind is that of some arrogant, idiot child who drives a go-cart down the freeway, causing cars to pitch off bridges, ambulances to turn over, police cars to explode, helicopters to crash, dead bodies everywhere — think of Escape From New York on steroids — and somehow the ditzy kid walks away without a scratch. Don’t ask me, I haven’t a clue.