I know, I want to see Trump’s fat ass perp walked out of Bedminster too. But the odds seemed stacked party actually criminally charging a former President. But not so reticent that Gerald Ford didn’t decide he had to pardon Tricky Dick Nixon before the feds swooped in and gobbled him up.
There doesn’t seem to be any active criminal investigation of Trump for his myriad sins as President. But that doesn’t mean anything. As a general rule, if you don’t have a Jim Comey out to cover his ass by publicizing an investigation into Hillary’s e-mails, the DOJ and FBI seldom comment on ongoing investigations in fairness to the potential defendant(s).
This one started out like a tempest in a teapot, but is starting to mushroom out like Hiroshima. It was reported that El Pendejo Presidente had had multiple contacts with a senior, but not top level DOJ official, Jeffrey Clark, the head of the Civil Division of the DOJ, and a staunch Trump loyalist. Then lame duck acting AG Jeffrey Rosen admitted to the contacts, and railed about the fact that by DOJ standards, Clark should have had no contact with Trump without superior DOJ involvement.
The scam was for Clark to write a letter to the GOP dominated state legislature, telling them that the DOJ was investigating possible voter fraud in Georgia, and advising them that they should call a special session of the legislature, overturn the results of the election, and install a GOP slate of Trump electors to send to Washington instead. If that test run had worked, similar letters would have been sent out to GOP legislatures in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona.
It all fell apart. Acting AG Rosen as well as acting deputy AG Donahue refused to sign on the dotted line as Cark had done. They slapped him down, and an attempted coup for Trump to replace Rosen with Clark died when the entire top structure of the DOJ threatened a mass resignation.
This is a gift wrapped package for the Garland DOJ, with a big fat bow on top. The charge would be conspiracy to commit election fraud. The key word there is conspiracy. In federal rules, there are only two components in a criminal conspiracy. First, two or more conspirators must agree to commit a criminal act. And second, there must be one overt act to further the criminal conspiracy. And both are clearly present here.
Look, Trump wasn’t calling the head of the loyalist Civil division to make sure that the rights of the BLM protesters were being protesters. There would be no reason whatsoever for the head of the civil division to draft an election fraud letter to a state on his own. The fact that Rosen admitted the contacts, and their inadmissible nature, only leads to the reason for the writing of that letter.
The second requirement is at least one overt act to further the planned criminal act. And we already have that, in spades. Clark already knew that there was no rampant voter fraud in Georgia, his own US Attorney in Georgia told him so. And yet Clark wrote the letter, signed it, and forwarded it on to Rosen and Donahue, and pressured them to sign off on it. And that’s the overt act in furtherance of the criminal conspiracy.
From where I’m sitting, this is a slam dunk case, and legal experts on both MSNBC as well as CNN seem to agree. Right now, Jeffrey Clark is a man on a very lonely deserted desert island. Trump won’t open his mouth, and both Rosen and Donahue, as well as the Georgia AG have all testified to the Senate Judiciary committee. This will put incredible pressure on Clark, not only from the Senate Judiciary committee, but the House 1/6 committee as well. The dots on this one are so simple, and so easy to connect, with a miscreant in extreme peril, that it’s difficult to believe that the DOJ can’t make the case. Don’t touch that dial.
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Well, I wouldn’t go selling your front row seats to the trump perp walk just yet. Sure one bad case and maybe they don’t charge him. But he’s already used a lot of that capital. And he’s got cases popping up like mushrooms on a mushroom farm. There’s such a thing as public opinion and he’s got that building against him. To many candidates want that nomination. And a well planned little takedown could get you an election. Remember trumps base is only a little over 30% of the republicans base. That could go south real easy.