Donald Trump and maga Republicans are supporting the evil commander in THIEF greed!

New York Times echo opinion by Thomas Friedman

 Trump Has Failed as Commander in Chief❓Who knew❓🙄

With each passing month, Donald Trump behaves more like America’s commander in thief than its commander in chief.

How so❓ Let me count the ways. We are a nation at war today, with tens of thousands of troops deployed near Iran. 

Generally, when our nation has been at war, the commander in chief’s top domestic priority is to keep the country united. Because there is nothing more demoralizing for U.S. troops fighting abroad than to look back and see our country ripping itself apart at home. And, there is nothing that encourages an enemy to hold out for better terms for ending a war with America than seeing America at war with itself.

But, how has Trump risen to that commander-in-chief unifying duty❓ He has not lifted a finger to bring the Democrats behind his war. Instead, he’s prioritized acting like an autocratic monster  "in thief". At the same moment Trump was asking our men and women in uniform to make the ultimate sacrifice, he engaged in a brazen, in-your-face attempted heist of the U.S. Treasury to benefit himself, his family and his political allies, which could include those who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. It was so outrageous that even some of his most reliable Republican Party sycophants couldn’t accept it.

Trump conspired with his own Justice Department, headed by his former personal lawyer, to use taxpayer money to create a 💲1.776 billion political slush fund, supposedly to compensate those Trump supporters who “suffered weaponization and lawfare” at the hands of his predecessor. In fact, as this paper’s editorial board noted, it would “reward loyalists willing to defy the law and commit violence on behalf of the president.”

Fortunately, a federal judge put a temporary hold on the scheme that no one described better than the Republican former Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell: “So the nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops❓ Utterly stupid, morally wrong — take your pick.” In the face of all that opposition, Trump’s acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, said on Tuesday he was withdrawing this terrible plan.

If Trump had an ounce of integrity, instead of scheming to set aside 💲1.776 billion to potentially pay off these phony defenders of freedom’s frontier — loyalists who ransacked and defecated in the halls of Congress — he would direct Congress to spend that exact amount to support today’s real defenders of freedom’s frontier: the Ukrainian Army. It is both resisting Vladimir Putin’s attempt to crush Ukraine’s democracy and sapping Russia’s ability to threaten the other free countries of Europe. God bless Ukraine’s fighters.

Alas, though, Trump apparently wants money only for people who tried to overthrow our Constitution at home, not for those who want to emulate our constitutional democracy abroad.

In addition, the Trump-directed Justice Department quietly inserted, as a supplement to that slush fund deal, a one-page document signed by Blanche stating that the government would be “FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED from prosecuting or pursuing” pending tax claims against Trump, his family members or his businesses. That measure remains in force, Blanche said on Tuesday.

Trump has another moniker suggesting his ethical challenges: “trader in chief,” as The Associated Press recently proposed. Why❓ Because “recent presidents have stayed away from trading stocks in companies whose fortunes they could lift or scuttle with the stroke of a pen, but Donald Trump smashed that precedent in the first quarter of this year with more than 3,600 buy and sell orders,” The A.P. (Associated Press) wrote, “many of them involving companies whose profits have been directly impacted by his decisions as head of the government.”

That was an average of 50 trades a day in stocks that included U.S. military suppliers affected by the Iran war. “If he were defense secretary, he would be committing a crime,” Richard Painter, the chief White House ethics adviser in the George W. Bush administration, told The A.P. “Technically he can do this, but it is a fundamental breach of trust.”

Not only has Trump choked off virtually all U.S. financial aid to Ukraine, but he is also reducing U.S. troops on the ground in NATO countries right when Putin, sensing he is losing the war, is increasingly threatening them.

Just as Americans are starting to realize that Trump is becoming a predator on our system — trying to manipulate the justice system to generate cash available to his Jan. 6 pirates and immunity from ongoing inquiries into taxes for himself and his family — our allies are concluding that Trump’s America is becoming a dangerous predator on them.

Indeed, something is happening with America’s traditional allies that I never thought I would see in this lifetime or the next. In the post-World War II era, we and our allies together embraced the doctrine of “deterrence” against the Soviet Union, and later Russia, to prevent any attempt by the Kremlin to forcibly expand its influence into the free world or put neighbors under its thumb.

Not any longer.

• Our allies watched Trump threaten to make Canada the 51st state and to seize Greenland from Denmark. 
• Our allies have watched him start a war with Iran without consulting NATO and then demand that NATO help rescue us from what has turned into a mess. 
• Our allies watched Trump slash U.S. financial assistance to Ukraine, but put the Russian aggressor on the same moral footing as that country 
• And then, top it all off with reckless, ill-conceived tariffs on all our allies.

As a result of all that, something unprecedented is happening: “Deterring Trump’s America is now becoming a strategic priority of our allies as much as deterring Russia was,” Nader Mousavizadeh, the chief executive of Macro Advisory Partners, a geopolitical consulting firm, and a former senior adviser to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, told me.

And how could it not❓ When you look at how Trump has hammered Canada with tariffs, it is hard not to conclude that the worst position for a country to be in during the second Trump administration “is to be America’s closest ally and have integrated your economy, energy systems and military with that of the United States,” Mousavizadeh said. Everyone can now see, he added, that Trump will “weaponize any country’s dependence on America and use it to extract whatever he can in the narrowest and most tactical and transactional definition of American power.”

No wonder that after Trump stepped up his rhetoric about taking over Greenland, European NATO members — Germany, Sweden, France, Norway, the Netherlands, Finland and the United Kingdom — all announced plans to send small military contingents to Greenland to bolster the Danes.

Daniel Fried, a former U.S. ambassador to Poland, noted in an essay for the Atlantic Council that though these NATO allies tried to frame their move as necessary to bolster Arctic security, they also “have used the word ‘deterrence.’ For Europeans to speak in such terms about the United States, even implicitly, is a low point, but it is needed.”

Let’s not forget that early on Trump forced Ukraine to give the United States access to critical minerals in return for U.S. help against a Russian Army trying to overrun it. This is the real “Trump Doctrine”: Oppose America, and I will tariff you; depend on America, and I will extort you.

The only rational response for our allies is to try to “deter and diversify,” Mousavizadeh concluded. And if Trump keeps this up for his full four years, he added, “no NATO leader can ever again responsibly agree to the degree of dependence on U.S. technology, U.S. defense systems or financial systems” that NATO countries long took for granted.

I have been in Portugal this week and I have been shocked by the degree to which European business executives speak of having lost faith in American institutions ❗and in America as the guarantor of global legal norms — something they have always taken for granted. It is literally disorienting for them, like hikers who have lost their compass.

In short, having a president who behaves like a commander in thief — not a commander in chief — is costing us dearly at home and abroad. This perversion of the American presidency is undermining the very alliance structure that won two world wars and the Cold War and generated one of history’s longest ages of peace and prosperity. Every day we tolerate such behavior we endanger our children’s future.

P.S. Senator Susan Collins where are you❓ Impeach Trump now❗

By Thomas L. Friedman, the foreign affairs Opinion columnist. 

Donald Trump and maga Republicans going to use America's tax money to support convicted criminals!

$1.8 billion slush fund is all the evidence you need that Trump is corrupt.

Echo opinion letter published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, written by Sharon Carlberg, in Cheyenne, Wy.

The recent unethical awarding by the Trump Justice Department of 💲1.8 billion to Donald Trump is all anyone needs to know to understand that the United States of America has been so badly compromised by this administration it might never recover.

Please use your own intelligence to put that in perspective. This is something that happens in lawless, corrupt governments.

It encapsulates everything that is wrong with this corrupt Trump administration and exposes the con man you elected twice.

Please- America and the Congress wake up❗⏰⚠️ lease be honest.  This grifting of tax payers bodes well for no one outside the billionaire class.

Would love to be the fly in the "ketchup on the White House wall" during Donald Trump's Elon Musk tantrum

Commentary | Ya' Think❓ Bromance: Bruised Musk brand is his (horrible❗) DOGE legacy

Opinion by Maureen Dowd published in the Santa Cruz Sentinel news: 

"Oh but it's sad when a love affair dies
But we have pretended enough
It's best that we both stop fooling ourselves", Evita.

Elon Musk came to Washington with a chain saw and left with a black eye.

Shrinking government is hard, particularly when you do it callously and carelessly — and apparently on hallucinogens.

As with Donald Trump’s tax tariffs, the Department of Government Efficiency has created more volatility than value.

A guy who went bankrupt six times doesn’t really care about spending. And Trump certainly didn’t want to see the headline, “Trump Cuts Social Security.”

He just wanted to get revenge on “the bureaucracy” by deputizing Musk to force out a lot of federal employees and give the impression that they were cutting all the waste.

It is sickening that the Justice Department is considering settling a wrongful-death lawsuit by giving $5 million to the family of Ashli Babbitt — who was shot on January 6, 2021, by a Capitol police officer, when she ignored his warnings and tried to climb through a smashed window into the Speaker’s Lobby in the Capitol.

If Babbitt was trying to help Trump claw back a “stolen” election by breaking into the Capitol, then breaking into the Capitol must be a good thing to do, and any police officer who tried to stop her and protect lawmakers cowering under desks must be in the wrong.

To abet Trump’s fake reality, the craven House Republicans refused to put up a plaque honoring the police officers and others who defended the Capitol that awful day.

I take it personally because my dad spent 20 years as a police inspector in Washington in charge of Senate security. He would run to the House whenever there was trouble. So if on Jan. 6 Mike Dowd had been preventing insurrectionists from assaulting lawmakers, he would now be, in Trump’s eyes, not a hero deserving of a plaque, but a blackguard who was thwarting “patriots,” as Trump calls the rioters he pardoned.

It is a disturbing bizarro world.  Trump was rewriting reality again Friday afternoon as one of the most flamboyant, destructive bromances in government history petered out in the Oval Office.

It had peaked last winter when Musk posted on social platform X, “I love @realDonaldTrump as much as a straight man can love another man,” and again when Trump tried to reciprocate by hawking Teslas in the White House driveway. Nevertleless, even these grand master salesmen couldn’t sell the spin that Elon had “delivered a colossal change.”

Musk has acknowledged recently that his dream of cutting $1 trillion had been a fantasy. He said changing Washington was “an uphill battle” and complained that Trump’s “big, beautiful” budget bill, which could add over $3 trillion in debt, undercut his DOGE attempts to save money.

As Trump said, Musk got a lot of “the slings and the arrows.” His approval rating cratered and violence has been directed toward Tesla, a brand once loved by liberals and in China, which is now tarnished.

Musk cut off a reporter who tried to ask about a Times article asserting that he was a habitual user of ketamine and a dabbler in ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms even after Trump had given him enormous control over the government.

That could explain the chain saw-wielding, the jumping up and down onstage, the manic baby-making and crusading for more spreading of sperm by smart people and the ominous Nazi-style salutes.

When a reporter asked Musk why he had a black eye, he joked about the viral video of Brigitte Macron shoving her husband’s face. Then he explained that while “horsing around” with his 5-year-old, X, he suggested the child punch him in the face, “and he did.”

The president and the Tony Stark prototype tried to convey the idea that they would remain tight, even though Musk would no longer be getting into angry altercations with Scott Bessent outside the Oval, sleeping on the floor of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building and hanging around Mar-a-Lago. (Trump wants the $100 million Musk has pledged for his political operation.)

Musk, wearing a black “DOGE” cap and black “Dogefather” T-shirt, looked around the Oval, which Trump has tarted up to look like a Vegas gift shop and gushed that it “finally has the majesty that it deserves, thanks to the president.”

Trump gave Musk a golden ceremonial White House key, the kind of thing small-town mayors give out, and proclaimed: “Elon’s really not leaving. He’s going to be back and forth, I think.” Trump said that the father of (at least) 14 would never desert DOGE completely because “It’s his baby.”

Musk brought the Silicon Valley mantra “Move fast and break things” to Washington.

But the main thing he broke was his own reputation.

Maureen Dowd is a New York Times columnist.

Donld Trump ionly interested in serving himself. He told voters "I don't care about you". Philadelphia Inquirer calls for "Dump Trump"

Trump only interested in providing for himself - he said "I do not care about you"- Philadelphia Inquirer says "Dump Trump"

June 30, 2024
Evil 👿Trump is an unserious carnival barker running for the most serious job in the world. During his last term, Trump served himself and not the American people.

Thank you Philadelphia Inquirer

Donald Trump is a carnival barker and a danger to democracy

Although President Joe Biden’s debate performance was a disaster. ( Many of his responses were disjointed with a dazed look sparked calls for him to drop out of the presidential race 😒😟)....
But lost in the hand wringing was Donald Trump’s usual bombastic litany of lies, hyperbole, bigotry, ignorance, and fear mongering. His performance demonstrated once again that he is a danger to democracy and unfit for office.

In fact, the debate about the debate is misplaced. The only person who should withdraw from the race is Trump. To build himself up, Trump constantly tears the country down. There is no shining city on the hill. It’s just mourning in America.

After scheming to overturn the 2020, election, Trump refused to say if he would accept the results of the 2024 election. Unless, of course, he wins.

The debate served as a reminder of what another four years of Trump would look like. More lies, grievance, narcissism, and hate. Supporters say they like Trump because he says whatever he thinks. But he mainly spews raw sewage.

Trump attacks the military. He denigrates the Justice Department and judges. He belittles the FBI and the CIA. He picks fights with allies and cozies up to dictators.

Trump is an unserious carnival barker running for the most serious job in the world. During his last term, Trump served himself and not the American people.

Throughout the debate, Trump repeatedly said we are a “failing” country. He called the United States a “third world nation.” He said, “we’re living in hell” and “very close to World War III.”

“People are dying all over the place,” Trump said, later adding “we’re literally an uncivilized country now.”

Trump told more than 30 lies during the debate to go with the more than 30,000 mistruths told during his four years as president. He dodged the (robotic ❗) CNN moderators’ questions, took no responsibility for his actions, and blamed others, mainly Biden, for everything that is wrong in the world.

Trump’s response to the January 6, 2021, insurrection he fueled was farcical. He said a “relatively small number of people” went to the Capitol and many were “ushered in by the police.”

Trump told more than 30 lies during the debate to go with the more than 30,000 mistruths (aka- misinformation) told during his four years as president. He dodged the (robotic❗) CNN moderators’ questions, took no responsibility for his actions, and blamed others, mainly Biden, for everything that is wrong in the world.

Trump’s response to the January 6, 2021, insurrection he fueled was farcical. He said a “relatively small number of people” went to the Capitol and many were “ushered in by the police.”

After scheming to overturn the 2020, election, Trump refused to say if he would accept the results of the 2024 election. Unless, of course, he wins.

The debate served as a reminder of what another four years of Trump would look like. More lies, grievance, narcissism, and hate. Supporters say they like Trump because he says whatever he thinks. But he mainly spews raw sewage.

Trump attacks the military. He denigrates the Justice Department and judges. He belittles the FBI and the CIA. He picks fights with allies and cozies up to dictators.

Trump is an unserious carnival barker running for the most serious job in the world. During his last term, Trump served himself and not the American people.
Trump spent chunks of time watching TV, tweeting, and hanging out at his country clubs. Over his four-year term, Trump played roughly 261 rounds of golf.

As president, Trump didn’t read the daily intelligence briefs. He continued to use his personal cell phone, allowing Chinese spies to listen to his calls. During one Oval Office meeting, Trump shared highly classified intelligence with the Russian foreign minister and ambassador.

Trump’s term did plenty of damage and had few accomplishments. The much-hyped wall didn’t get built. Infrastructure week was a recurring joke. Giant tax cuts made the rich richer, while fueling massive deficits for others to pay for years. His support for coal, oil drilling and withdrawal from the Paris Agreement worsened the growing impact of climate change.

Trump stacked the judiciary with extreme judges consisting mainly of white males, including a number who the American Bar Association rated as not qualified. A record number of cabinet officials were fired or left the office. The West Wing was in constant chaos and infighting.

Many Trump appointees exited under a cloud of corruption, grifting and ethical scandals. Trump’s children made millions off the White House. His dilettante son-in-law got $2 billion from the Saudi government for his fledgling investment firm even though he never managed money before.

Trump’s mismanagement of the pandemic resulted in tens of thousands of needless deaths. He boasts about stacking the Supreme Court with extreme right-wingers who are stripping away individual rights, upending legal precedents, and making the country less safe. If elected, Trump may add to the court’s conservative majority.

Of course, there were the unprecedented two impeachments. Now, Trump is a convicted felon who is staring at three more criminal indictments. He is running for president to stay out of prison.

If anything, Trump doesn’t deserve to be on the presidential debate stage. Why even give him a platform?

Trump allegedly stole classified information and tried to overturn an election. His plans for a second term are worse than the last one. We cannot be serious about letting such a crooked clown back in the White House.

Yes, Biden had a horrible night. He’s 81 and not as sharp as he used to be. But Biden on his worst day remains lightyears better than Trump on his best.

Biden must show that he is up to the job. This much is clear: He has a substantive record of real accomplishments, fighting the pandemic, combating climate change, investing in infrastructure, and supporting working families and the most vulnerable.

Biden has surrounded himself with experienced people who take public service seriously. He has passed major bipartisan legislation despite a dysfunctional Republican House majority.

Biden believes in the best of America. He has rebuilt relationships with allies around the world and stood up to foes like Russia and China.

There was only one person at the debate who does not deserve to be running for president. The sooner Trump exits the stage, the better off the country will be.



The Inquirer Editorial Board

Read the indictment and listen to the evidence about how Trump engaged in election interference

Alberto Gonzales was the 80th attorney general of the United States and counsel to President George W. Bush. He is now the dean and Doyle Rogers distinguished professor of law at Belmont University College of Law and serves on the advisory board for the Vanderbilt Project on Unity & American Democracy.

An echo opinion published in The Washington Post written by former AG Alberto Gonzales.

Alberto Gonzales was the first Hispanic Attorney General 

Last week, as I watched a former president of the United States, for the first time in history, be arraigned in federal court for attempting to obstruct official proceedings and overturn the results of the 2020, presidential election, I found myself less troubled by the actions of former president Donald Trump than by the response of a significant swath of the American people to Trump’s deepening legal woes.

To be clear, August. 3 was a sobering and singular day for our country. Trump’s obsession with remaining in power at the expense of the constitutional right of American voters to choose our president, which culminated in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, has been devastating. But the worst may still be ahead if we do not return to our roots as a nation of laws. A recent Vanderbilt Unity Poll shows that 38 percent of Republicans believe they support the Constitution while Democrats do not. Likewise, 33 percent of Democrats believe that they support the Constitution but Republicans do not. 

These figures send a chill down my spine, suggesting that what is really on trial is the rule of law itself.

I am among a number of jurists with experience at the highest levels of our government who grow more concerned as support for Trump mounts in direct proportion to the number of indictments against him. 😖 

Although Trump has a right to defend himself, his language and actions since 2016, have fueled a growing sense among many Americans that our justice system is rigged, and biased against him and his supporters.

Sadly, this has led on the right to a growing distrust of and rage against the Justice Department. I recently heard from friends and former colleagues whom I trust and admire, people of common sense and strong values, who say that our justice system appears to be stacked against Trump and Republicans in general, that it favors liberals and Democrats, and that it serves the interests of the Democratic Party and not the Constitution. For example, they cite the department’s 2018, decision not to charge Hillary Clinton criminally for keeping classified documents on a private email server while she was secretary of state during the Obama administration.

I can understand the skepticism, but based on the known facts in each case, I do not share it.

Our system of government and way of life are based on the rule of law, which is the principle that every defendant in this country is judged according to proven evidence, a known and accepted set of rules, equally enforced and independently adjudicated by a neutral judge or jury. I have often reminded the public that facts drive the outcome in every prosecution. A prosecutor’s assessment of the evidence affects decisions on whether to charge on a set of known facts, and government officials under investigation, such as Clinton, often cooperate with prosecutors to address potential wrongdoing. By all accounts, Trump has refused to cooperate. Regardless, once prosecutors believe they may have grounds for an indictment, they cannot unilaterally indict any individual they choose. They must bring their evidence before a grand jury, which is made up of ordinary citizens, who weigh evidence and have the final say as to whether a defendant should be indicted.

Our justice system, reliant as it is on human effort and judgment, is not perfect. From time to time, we learn after the fact of a miscarriage of justice. But far more often than not, only the guilty are punished. We have a duty as Americans not to blindly trust our justice system, but we also shouldn’t blindly trust those who say it is unjust. Our government officials have a duty to act at all times with integrity, and when appropriate to inform and reassure the public that their decisions are consistent based on provable evidence and in accordance with the rule of law.

"Rather than assuming conspiracies....." 

Ugh!

Defendants do not have the same duty. They can, and sometimes do, say almost anything to prove their innocence — no matter how damaging to our democracy and the rule of law. Republicans who feel aggrieved by the number of indictments piling up against Trump and others affiliated with him should bear this in mind and carefully review the facts of the cases against him rather than assuming conspiracies. I urge them to at least be open to considering that the problem may rest with Trump rather than the prosecution of him for his alleged crimes.

Let’s set aside the fact that three independent grand juries of Americans — not just three prosecutors — have indicted one Republican politician, Trump, for a variety of crimes. All crimes are important to the victims. The crimes alleged in the most recent indictment appear to be the most serious, because if they are true, then Trump engaged in crimes against democracy — crimes against millions of voters in this country. 

Scores of Americans who participated in the January 6th riots have been held accountable. It stands to reason that the person who urged them to go to the Capitol and who stood the most to gain from interfering with the electoral count should also be held accountable.

Remember that we are not seeing Republicans arrested for wearing their Make America Great Again hats or their Don’t Tread on Me bumper stickers, both are fine examples of free speech. 

But, the key difference is this: Speech that leads to crime has never been protected from prosecution. Wearing a Second Amendment shirt is not a crime, but conspiring to commit murder is a crime, separate from the murder itself. Lying to masses of Americans that their right to vote was taken away and encouraging them to take it back by any means — as Trump is accused of doing — can, based on evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, constitute a crime.

January 6th insurrectionists attack the US Capitol

To suggest that special counsel Jack Smith’s latest indictment on the January 6th, assault is just an attack on free speech, as some Republican partisans are claiming, is itself an attack on the rule of law. If a private citizen had organized the events on January 6th, there is little doubt that they would have been arrested and prosecuted. The Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol should not be held to a higher standard than the former president. If we decide that presidents should never be charged with crimes after they leave office for actions committed while in office, we are no longer a democracy.

Read more about Trump's involvement in the January 6th failed insurrection at this site here.

It may not be easy, but conversations around this case and the Justice Department demand civility and respect. The burden of proof is on the government, and the department should be given the chance to present its case, proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The defendant should then be given the opportunity to rebut the charges and present his defense if he so chooses.

As someone who once led the Justice Department and has great confidence in the thousands of men and women who work there, I feel an obligation to understand why there is such distrust in our justice system. Is it justified, or is it based on political rhetoric intended to stir political passions? Constructive and civil dialogue is essential in finding the answer.

While the stakes are high for Trump, the stakes are higher for our democracy. The reality is that, while this latest indictment is momentous, the impact on the American people’s perception of it will be more important moving forward. We all have a part in shaping that perception. It is important for politicians to avoid using the indictments announced on August 3rd,  as political fodder. The media has an obligation to fully inform the public and rigorously compare and contrast these indictments with past decisions by the Justice Department to decline to prosecute — as was the case relating to classified documents with both a Democratic secretary of state (Clinton) and a former Republican vice president (Mike Pence).

Pundits across the political spectrum have a duty to be honest with Americans and to demonstrate that Trump is not being singled out and treated unfairly unless there is clear evidence to believe otherwise. The American people should withhold their judgment, consider the facts as the case moves forward, and be wary of words designed to fan the flames of partisanship. The rule of law is the glue that holds our country together. If we are to survive as a democracy, we must continue to respect and protect it.

Special Counsel Jack Smith is leading a federal investigation into Donald Trump’s role in inciting the January 6th attack, and attempting to overturn the results of the 2020, election.

The former guy is detached from reality. He can never be trusted to tell the truth or to protect our government secrets

"I'm telling you, no matter what he says, no matter how he's bragging, [Trump] goes to bed every night thinking about the sound of the jail cell door closing behind him...When push comes to shove, I'm not so sure he won't take the plea." -- (Morning Joe -
@govchristie)

Donald Trump Should Never Again Be Trusted With the Nation’s Secrets!  (37❗ crimes, 'ya-think? 😡😠😕)  Echo editorial opinion published in The New York Times:

It is hard to overstate the gravity of the criminal indictment issued against Donald Trump late Thursday by a federal grand jury. For the first time, a former president has been charged with violating federal laws, laws that he swore to uphold just over six years ago. It is the first time a former leader of the executive branch has been charged with obstructing the very agencies he led, and the first time a former commander in chief has been charged with endangering national security by violating the Espionage Act.

The indictment, unsealed on Friday, accuses Mr. Trump of 37 crimes. The majority of them — 31 of the counts — are for willful retention of national defense information, each a violation of the Espionage Act. There is one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice, in which Mr. Trump is accused of conspiring with his personal aide, Walt Nauta, to hide classified documents from the F.B.I. and the grand jury investigating the case. The other charges involve withholding documents, corruptly concealing documents and making false statements to law enforcement authorities.

The potential prison sentences for Trump adds up to as much as 420 years, even though conviction almost never results in the maximum sentence. But this indictment confronts the country with the harrowing prospect of a former president facing years behind bars, even as he runs to regain the White House.

Trump and his Republican allies are already trying to politicize the indictment, insisting that the charges issued by 23 randomly chosen residents of South Florida were an attempt by President Biden to demolish his rival. But the evidence compiled by the government is so substantial that it is clear the Justice Department had no choice but to indict.

The indictment says that Trump not only took from the White House classified documents that he was not authorized to possess but also that he showed them to visitors and political cronies at his country club. One of the documents involved a potential attack on another country, which The New York Times has reported was Iran. “Isn’t it amazing?” he asked one visitor, brandishing the document. 

During that conversation, Trump acknowledged that he knew the document was “a secret,” the indictment said.

The details in the indictment make it clear that Trump knew that he was not authorized to keep national security secrets in his possession and that he played a cat-and-mouse game to conceal them from the F.B.I. and other federal officials. At one point he suggested his lawyer take some documents to his hotel room and “pluck” out anything really bad, the indictment says. “Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?” he asked his lawyers. He added, “Well, look, isn’t it better if there are no documents?” Meanwhile, he instructed his lawyers to falsely inform federal investigators that they had cooperated fully.

With these actions, the former president demonstrated once again his contempt for the rule of law, his disregard for America’s national security and his mockery of the oath he took to support and defend the Constitution.

In fact, Trump walked out of the White House with details of the nuclear capabilities of the United States and a foreign government, descriptions of support for terrorist activities by a foreign country and communications with the leader of a foreign country. It is the willful retention of this material that led to the 31 charges of violating the Espionage Act, which makes it a crime if someone deliberately retains national defense material “and fails to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it.”

Trump’s recklessness in retaining and showing off military secrets is both arrogant and breathtaking. It put the lives of American soldiers at risk. These are some of the United States’ most closely guarded secrets — so sensitive that many top national-security officials can’t see them — and Trump treated them like a prize he had won at a carnival. These actions underscore, yet again, why he is unfit for public office.

What makes the spectacle all the more stunning is that it was entirely unnecessary. Had Mr. Trump responded to the many formal requests to return the wrongfully taken documents by apologizing and handing them over immediately, he would have avoided any confrontation with federal law enforcement. That’s what responsible public servants like Mr. Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence did when classified material was found among their papers.

The former president’s defenders rushed in to call it political persecution. “It is unconscionable for a President to indict the leading candidate opposing him,” wrote the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, in a tweet before the indictment was unsealed, as if Mr. Biden had any involvement in these charges.

To make an accusation that a prosecution is a purely political act — one that will undermine the public’s faith in an independent judiciary — is a serious charge and requires at least some basis in fact before it is irresponsibly broadcast to the world. There is no support for that charge, because it requires ignoring two years of evidence painstakingly collected by nonpolitical law enforcement investigators. The Justice Department appears to have followed the basic processes and rules already in place to reach this decision. The public is now able to judge for itself whether the government has a serious case and whether it is actually the Republican critics who are the ones doing the instant politicizing.

And Trump will be afforded due process, including a trial by a jury of one’s peers and the right to appeal a guilty verdict — all the protections the Constitution guarantees.

The Justice Department’s role is to apply the law equally, without regard to the status or political affiliation of the accused lawbreaker. That’s what makes this indictment so necessary: Federal prosecutors have sought and won convictions in dozens of classified-document cases involving behavior less egregious than Trump’s. And that’s why the claims of a witch hunt are lamentable. Don’t take it from us; listen to Trump’s own former attorney general, Bill Barr.

“This says more about Trump than it does the Department of Justice,” Mr. Barr said on “CBS Mornings” on Tuesday. “He’s so egotistical that he has this penchant for conducting risky, reckless acts to show that he can sort of get away with it.” He added, “There’s no excuse for what he did here.”

It’s become common during the past eight tumultuous years to invoke the term “unprecedented” — a useful shorthand for Trump’s compulsion to upend established norms and blow past crucial democratic guardrails. But his unprecedented behavior should not obscure an equally important point, which is that the response to it has many precedents.

The United States has prosecuted dozens of former governors, cabinet members and lawmakers. These prosecutions are essential in reaffirming the principle that no one — and especially no political leader — is above the law. To fail to bring such a case is to make it more likely that other abuses of power will occur.

Donald Trump learns how the rules of law will finally will apply to him

Echo editorial published in The New York Times:

For the first time in American history, a grand jury has indicted a former president of the United States, The Times reported on Thursday. Donald Trump spent years as a candidate, in office and out of office, ignoring democratic and legal norms and precedents, trying to bend the Justice Department and the judiciary to his whims and behaving as if rules didn’t apply to him.

The former president was charged with 34 felonies in Manhattan, NYC, for his role in falsifying business records in order to conceal an illegal conspiracy to undermine an election. He pleaded not guilty.

As the news of the indictment shows, they do.
A pattern of disregard for the law often leads to a criminal indictment, and that is the outcome Mr. Trump now faces. Federal and state prosecutors were right to set aside concerns about political fallout, or reverence for the presidency, and initiate thorough criminal investigations of Mr. Trump’s conduct in at least four instances. The investigation by the Manhattan district attorney is the first known to result in an indictment.

Mr. Trump completely transformed the relationship between the presidency and the rule of law, often asserting that a president was above the law. 

So it is appropriate that his actions as president and as a candidate should now be formally weighed by judges and juries, with the possibility of criminal penalties on the line. Mr. Trump badly damaged America’s political and legal institutions and threatened them again with calls for widespread protests once he is indicted. But those institutions have proved to be strong enough to hold him accountable for that harm.

A healthy respect for the legal system also requires Americans to set aside their politics when forming judgments on these cases. While Mr. Trump routinely called for his enemies to be investigated by the F.B.I., to be indicted or to face the death penalty, his indifference to due process for others shouldn’t deny him the system’s benefits, including a fair trial and the presumption of innocence. At the same time, no jury should extend to him any special privileges as a former president.

Trump will finally have to follow the same procedures as any other citizen.

Alvin Bragg, the district attorney, has been pursuing a case of possible fraud and campaign finance violations by Mr. Trump for concealing payments he made to the porn-film star Stormy Daniels before the 2016, election. His actions — using money to silence critics and hide politically damaging information — were wrong. The question that will face a jury is whether that behavior meets the threshold for conviction as a felony.

If those are the charges, conviction will hinge on proving that Mr. Trump participated in falsifying business records while violating campaign finance law, a somewhat novel legal strategy. Falsifying records can be charged as a misdemeanor in New York; to make it a more serious felony requires proof that he combined it with a second crime, in this case, a potential campaign finance violation. The former president, who is seeking a second term in 2024, has denied the allegations and has said that the case against him brought by Mr. Bragg, a Democrat, is politically motivated.

While some legal experts have questioned the theory behind Mr. Bragg’s case, there is no basis for the accusation that it is politically motivated — a claim that Mr. Trump has made, for many years, about every investigation into his conduct. Just as jurors are routinely instructed to ignore evidence that is improperly introduced in a trial, they will also have to ignore the unsubstantiated implications raised by Trump supporters and attorneys in these cases and judge them strictly on the merits.

Among the most egregious are the accusations against him in Georgia. The Fulton County district attorney, Fani Willis, is weighing criminal charges against several people, including Mr. Trump, for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in that state, which President Biden won by 11,779 votes. Mr. Trump repeatedly pressured Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to “find” additional votes that would change the results of the state’s election, part of a scheme to undermine the will of the voters.

A special grand jury impaneled by Ms. Willis recommended in February that charges be brought in the case; it’s not yet known which people or allegations were included in the grand jury’s recommendations or whom, if anyone, Ms. Willis may seek to indict.

A federal Justice Department inquiry led by a special counsel, Jack Smith, could also result in charges against Mr. Trump. Mr. Smith is investigating the former president’s efforts to prevent the peaceful transfer of power on Jan. 6, 2021, when Mr. Trump roused an armed mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol, threatening lawmakers who were gathered to certify the results of the presidential election. A bipartisan Senate report last year found that seven deaths were related to the attack.

Mr. Smith’s team is also investigating the former president over his mishandling of classified documents that were removed from the White House and taken to Mar-a-Lago, his private residence in Florida. Some 300 classified documents have been recovered in the case. Prosecutors are also examining whether Mr. Trump, his attorneys or staff members misled government officials seeking the return of the documents.

Three of the other investigations that may result in indictments are more serious, because they involve allegations not just that Mr. Trump violated the law but also that he abused his presidential office.

When will Americans read the complete unredacted Mueller report about Trump?

In response to a court order, the Justice Department has released a 2019 internal memorandum to then-Attorney General William P. Barr concerning whether the evidence gathered by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III would justify charging then-President Donald Trump with obstruction of justice. 

As Mueller noted in his report, the prospect of charging a president with obstruction raises difficult issues. But this newly released memo is not a serious attempt to grapple with those issues. It’s a whitewash — a failed effort to provide legal cover for Barr’s foregone conclusion exonerating the president. And as the statute of limitations clock continues to tick away, we still don’t have an honest assessment from the Justice Department regarding Trump and obstruction.

When will Americans read the entire report?  Copies of the January 6th report are best sellers so just imagine how fast the unredacted Mueller Report would be gobbled up.

Mueller infamously declined to make a prosecutorial judgment on this question, based on the long-standing Justice Department policy that a sitting president cannot be indicted. 

In the memo, dated two days after Mueller sent his 400-plus page report to Barr, senior Justice Department officials Steven A. Engel and Edward O’Callaghan urge Barr to make that judgment himself and declare there was insufficient evidence of obstruction. Barr did just that in a misleading letter to Congress released that same day.

Scooter Libby and Martha Stewart would like a word. Both were convicted of obstructing investigations that ultimately did not result in other criminal charges — and that is not at all unusual. 

At the time of the obstruction, of course, a defendant does not know whether criminal charges ultimately will be brought. And people obstruct investigations for all kinds of reasons — including that the results might be politically damaging or embarrassing — even if they don’t fear criminal liability.

But the bigger flaw in this argument is that the obstruction itself might be the reason there was insufficient evidence to bring charges. According to this memo, if you are good at obstruction and succeed in thwarting the investigation, you get a free pass not only for the underlying conduct but also for the obstruction itself. That is not the law.

Engel and O’Callaghan also claim Mueller had a flawed view of obstruction because he believed that otherwise lawful acts — such as firing the FBI director — could constitute obstruction if done with corrupt intent. They argue this is incorrect, and that obstruction charges could not properly be based on conduct that is “lawful on its face.”

Wrong again. Obstruction charges often apply when otherwise lawful acts are done with the corrupt intent to obstruct. If I shred my personal files because my office is cluttered, that is perfectly lawful. If I shred those files because they have been subpoenaed by a grand jury, that same conduct is now obstruction of justice, based on my corrupt intent.

The memo also suggests Trump’s actions were not obstruction because they were motivated by his belief that the Mueller investigation was unfair and was interfering with his governing agenda. No doubt all public officials under investigation feel the same way. But that is no defense. Just as believing he won the election would not justify Trump unleashing a mob on the Capitol, being unhappy about the Mueller investigation would not justify obstructing that investigation.

But the strongest evidence of the memo’s true purpose is its suggestion that Barr himself decided the obstruction question. Engel and O’Callaghan argue it would be contrary to DOJ policy to leave that question unresolved. But if that were truly the concern, the best solution was obvious: Barr could have ordered Mueller to make that call. The very purpose of a special counsel is to take such decisions out of the hands of political appointees. Mueller and his team lived with the investigation for nearly two years and were in the best position to reach a legal conclusion about Trump’s conduct. Barr’s failure to ask Mueller for his view and decision to claim that role for himself suggests he knew he would not like Mueller’s answer.

Before he was even appointed as attorney general, Barr wrote an unsolicited memo to the Justice Department arguing that Mueller’s obstruction theories were “fatally misconceived.” There was never any doubt about where Barr was going to come down on the obstruction question, and the flimsy analysis in this memo does nothing to further illuminate the issue. Merrick Garland’s Justice Department could still take an independent look — and potentially prosecute — but time is running out.

Randall D. Eliason a Washington Post contributing columnist, teaches white-collar criminal law at George Washington University Law School

John Eastman is a fake news expert!

Echo report published in The New York Times by Michael Schmidt and Maggie Haberman.

The former guy Trump is "able to muddy the waters so thoroughly that democracy wilts on the vine", The Independent

John Eastman’s path from little-known academic to one of the most influential voices in Donald J. Trump’s ear in the final days of his presidency began in mid-2019, on Mr. Trump’s favorite platform: television.

Mr. Trump, who had never met Mr. Eastman, saw him on the Fox News talk show of the far-right commentator Mark Levin railing against the Russia investigation. Within two months, Mr. Eastman was sitting in the Oval Office for an hourlong meeting.

Soon, Mr. Eastman was meeting face to face at Mr. Trump’s urging with the attorney general, William P. Barr, and telling him how Mr. Trump could unilaterally impose limits on birthright citizenship.

Then, after the November election, Mr. Eastman wrote the memo for which he is now best known, laying out steps that Vice President Mike Pence could take to keep Mr. Trump in power — measures Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans have likened to a blueprint for a coup.

Mr. Eastman’s memo is among the most alarming of the continuing revelations about the last stages of Mr. Trump’s time in the White House, when he was prompting the Justice Department to find ways to reverse his loss in the election and his top general was worried about the nuclear chain of command.

Mr. Eastman’s rise within Mr. Trump’s inner circle in the chaotic final weeks of his administration also underscores the degree to which Mr. Trump not only relied on, but encouraged, a crew of players from the fringes of politics. They became key participants in his efforts to remain in power as many of his longtime aides and lawyers refused to help him.

John R. Bolton, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, said in an interview that it was troubling that at such a critical juncture, Mr. Trump had pushed aside the Justice Department and White House counsel.

Instead, he said, Mr. Trump was listening to an outsider “without the institutional learning that has gone on for a couple of hundred years that undergirds the advice that is normally given to presidents that keep them in sane channels.”

Mr. Eastman’s appeal to Mr. Trump, fleshed out in interviews with Mr. Eastman and others who dealt with him during this period, rested in large part on his expansive views of presidential power — and his willingness to tell Mr. Trump what he wanted to hear.

When it came to immigration policy, a favorite topic of both men, Mr. Eastman argued that Mr. Trump could use his executive authority to impose limits on birthright citizenship — the foundational concept that anyone born in the United States is automatically a citizen — by saying it should not be applied to people born in the United States to noncitizens.

But Mr. Barr, who was increasingly finding himself having to fend off the advice of outside lawyers, television commentators and Mar-a-Lago hangers-on, dismissed the idea, saying Mr. Eastman’s argument was a stretch and ultimately impractical.

Mr. Eastman admitted Mr. Barr was right.

“Well, tell that to the president,” Mr. Barr told him.

Still, by early January 2021, amid his wide-ranging effort to overturn the election results, Mr. Trump had become so enamored of Mr. Eastman’s advice that the two teamed up in an Oval Office meeting to pressure Mr. Pence to intervene to help Mr. Trump remain in power by delaying the Jan. 6 certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.

In a two-page memo written by Mr. Eastman that had been circulated to the White House in the days before the certification — revealed in the new book “Peril”, by the Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Costa — Mr. Eastman said that Mr. Pence as vice president was “the ultimate arbiter” of the election, essentially saying he had the power to determine who won, and that “we should take all of our actions with that in mind.”

As Mr. Trump hints at another run in 2024, Mr. Eastman remains a bridge between the former president and the continuing efforts by some of his supporters to promote specious allegations of widespread election fraud in 2020 and to undercut faith in the electoral system.

In a series of interviews, Mr. Eastman said he was continuing to investigate reports of election fraud and was writing a book on the subject. He also said he would still like to represent Mr. Trump, who faces a range of legal battles.

He declined to say whether he had advised any state legislatures — which have become hubs for Republican efforts to push claims of election fraud — on voting issues. And he insisted that his two-page memo, which he said he hastily wrote while on Christmas vacation with his family in Texas, had been taken out of context, but defended his view that Mr. Pence could have done far more to help Mr. Trump.

“I won’t be cowed by public opposition to it,” Mr. Eastman said.

He added: “There are lots of allegations out there that didn’t get their day in court and lots of people that believe them and wish they got their day in court. and I am working very diligently with several teams — statistical teams, election specialists teams, all sorts of teams — to try and identify the various claims and determine whether they have merit or there is reasonable explanation for them.”

Like many of the lawyers who worked in Mr. Trump’s administration, Mr. Eastman had strong conservative legal credentials, initially giving him a patina of respect in Mr. Trump’s inner circle.

Mr. Eastman attended law school at the University of Chicago and clerked for both Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court and Judge J. Michael Luttig, a former federal appeals court judge who President George W. Bush considered for the Supreme Court. He is a member of the conservative Federalist Society and a former dean of the law school at Chapman University in Orange County, Calif. For two decades, he ran his own small law firm that focused on representing conservatives on issues like free speech, religious liberty, abortion and immigration.

After Election Day, Mr. Eastman served as a behind-the-scenes legal quarterback of sorts for Mr. Trump, alarming some of Mr. Trump’s aides, who feared he had found someone to enable his worst instincts at one of the most dangerous moments of his presidency. And it surprised many of Mr. Eastman’s longtime friends and others, who questioned whether his access to power had skewed his vision of reality.

“You’re always at risk when every fail-safe mechanism breaks down,” Mr. Bolton said.

Mr. Eastman’s role in Mr. Trump’s efforts to remain in power began the weekend after the election in Philadelphia, where Mr. Eastman had traveled for an academic conference. At a nearby hotel, Mr. Trump’s closest aides, including Corey Lewandowski, were putting together a legal brief to challenge the results in Pennsylvania.

Mr. Eastman had put himself on the radar of Mr. Trump’s political aides during the election when Jenna Ellis, a legal adviser to Mr. Trump’s campaign, had shared on Twitter an article Mr. Eastman had written. 

In fact, the article, in an echo of racist questions stoked by Mr. Trump about where President Barack Obama had been born, questioned whether Kamala Harris*, Mr. Biden’s running mate, could legally become president because her parents had not been born in the United States. (OMG!)

*Vice President Kamala Harris- Early life, family and education (1964–1990) Kamala Devi Harris was born in Oakland, California, on October 20, 1964!