Thoughts On A Crazy Day
More important than the basic fact that the President is an unindicted co-conspirator in a felony conviction, it involves a felony which Trump directed that was designed to effect the outcome of an election that he won by less than 100,000 votes.
If Trump was willing to commit multiple campaign finance felonies to effect the outcome of the election, then why wouldn’t he collude with the Russians, or anyone else for that matter, to do the same.
Where’s the collusion? In plain sight; in the Trump Tower meeting; in the request for Russia to hack the emails; and now Lanny Davis is indicating that Cohen may have knowledge/information indicating that Trump had foreknowledge of Russian attempts to aid his campaign. Prague, perhaps?
It seems clear that Cohen has documentary evidence that Trump directed Cohen to make those campaign finance violations because of the damage the women in question could do to Trump’s campaign as opposed to protecting his reputation with his wife and family.
It’s important to note that it appears Manafort never really left the campaign after his “resignation” in August, 2019. At the end of November, 2016, Manafort emailed Jared Kushner with three recommendations for jobs in the Trump campaign. Rather than a polite “thanks for the input and we’ll let you know” if Manafort was really persona non grata with the campaign, Jared almost immediately responded with an “On it!” as though he had received an order.
This is yet another case of powerful men trying to silence women.
Based on the pathetic response of Republicans like Graham, Cornyn, and Corker (!) which focus solely on the fact that these convictions have nothing to do with Russia, it appears that the GOP would still support Trump if he really did shoot someone on 5th Avenue as long as the victim wasn’t Russian. They are not going to touch impeachment in this Congress.
The Trump base will stick with him until the very end and beyond. Incredible to see chants of “lock her up” and “drain the swamp” last night after yesterday’s news. Do these people know irony?
Everyone keeps focusing on the possibility of pardons but the more likely possibility is that Trump signals to Cohen and Manafort that they will only have to spend two years in jail because he will commute their sentences, a la Scooter Libby, in his lame duck period in late 2020. Pardons or commutations won’t help Manafort and Cohen on state charges which I assume are being prepared.
It seems pretty clear that a massive amount of white collar crime, and especially tax evasion, currently goes undetected or unprosecuted.
If you haven’t heard the WNYC report on the NYPD rounding up over 100 men of color in the Bronx in 2016 and charging them under the RICO statute as part of an ongoing criminal enterprise, namely gang affiliation, make sure you do.
Considering the Trump campaign chair, deputy campaign chair, national security adviser, a senior foreign policy adviser, chair of the inaugural committee, and Trump’s personal lawyer have all now pleaded guilty to felonies; considering that the RNC finance chair, Steve Wynn, was forced to resign over charges of sexual harassment and assault and two deputy finance chairs, Michael Cohen and Elliot Broidy, have resigned with charges of selling influence hanging over them; considering Donald Trump used the campaign to fill the coffers of his own businesses, wasn’t the entire Trump campaign just a racketeering enterprise that has continued in modified form under his presidency. Are they that different from the Bronx gangs?
The Trump campaign was always a vanity project to expand Brand Trump. The goal was not to win, which would require the actual work of governing and expose Brand Trump to scrutiny it couldn’t bear. But Trump got greedy and his narcissism drove him to win. Unfortunately for the country, the proper scrutiny never happened until after his election.
In the same vein, a question for the media – how did you miss all this stuff during the campaign? Answer, ratings and the assumption Trump would lose.
With the Supreme Court seat still waiting to be filled, the religious right will still not abandon Trump. Hate the sin, but love the sinner, especially when he is giving them what they’ve wanted for decades.
None of these convictions will effect Mitch McConnell. Brett Kavanaugh will be confirmed. These convictions may, however, allow some red-state Democratic Senators to withhold their vote.
The reason everyone tapes Trump is because he purposely leaves no paper trail in order to cover his crimes but the people who work for him know he will throw them under the bus in a heartbeat. Their only protection is to tape him.
We’ve really been in an incredibly slow-moving constitutional crisis since Trump fired Comey.
We’re also in a crisis of democracy as 18% of the population controls a majority in the US Senate.
Trump will still be President for quite a while and the damage he will inflict will only get worse.
When we look back, will yesterday be considered the day that Trump finally became ex-President.
