In the Spirit of Jefferson Davis (part thirteen)

 

Part Thirteen.

 

Trump has so many legal problems it is impossible to believe that he will escape justice. On the other hand, it has been more than two years since he left office, and he hasn’t been indicted for anything yet. True, he’s facing multiple Federal criminal investigations, and other criminal investigations in multiple States, and these concern laws of some complexity; still, if I were Trump now, I’d feel confident, just paying my Attorneys to continue to muddy the waters and proceed indifferent to fear of Official sanction.

 

Which is exactly what he’s doing. He’s not declared his POTUS run for 2024 yet, but he’s clearly campaigning. He’s bullying the Republicans into continuing to kneel before him, even though he left office in disgrace. He’s pushing his own slate of Candidates for the all-important 2022 mid-term elections, which will likely to decide the fate of the Biden Administration. He upped-the-ante in this by campaigning against other Republicans who were not loyal enough to him in the Primaries; this could be especially devastating because if either, or both, Houses of Congress flip back to the Republican Party in the next election, Biden’s opposition in a divided government will not be the party of Lincoln, but a rabid pack of Neanderthal Trumpsters spewing the rhetoric as blindly selfish and irrational as those not-yet-potty-trained. The SCOTUS he was allowed to stack still has the last word on Election laws, and the pre-Trump Conservative Majority showed a pattern over State House control over individual voter’s rights and Federal oversight even before Trump turned it into a Super Majority.

 

Of the myriad of charges Trump faces, among the easiest cases to make seem to be in Georgia; that is when Trump made his incriminating calls to Governor Kemp and Secretary of State Raffensperger, as well as being an exceptionally well-documented of the Fake Electors. But Georgian politics have also turned uglier now than any time since the Jim Crow era, and that will likely have an impact on the likelihood if Trump goes to jail or not.

 

Patrick Byrne was a prominent Conservative Activist and the CEO of Overstock.com. He was force out of position at Overstock in 2018, when it was exposed that he was having an affair with Russian Spy Maria Butina. This was part of the scandal regarding Russian interference in the 2016 POTUS Election, and through Byrne, Butina was able to establish professional and political relationships with ranking Republicans and the leadership of the NRA leadership. Despite the public scandal, Byrne remained active in Republican politics and after the 2020 POTUS Election and worked closely with Trump Attorney Sidney Powell in promulgating Election Fraud Conspiracies. After Biden took Office, he rushed to get a book out, “The Big Rig,” trying to keep the Stop the Steal campaign going. The backbone of his argument was a Statistical Study conducted by Mathematician Edward Solomon, this was part of the voting machine conspiracies.

 

February 7^th, OAN Host Christina Bobb promoted the book pre-publication, telling viewers that Solomon “took a closer look at the election results at the precinct level,” in Georgia and determined that “computer software must have used an algorithm to change the votes.” The algorithm was used “long enough to change the advantage,” for Biden.

 

There were a few problems with this. Those same voting totals had been confirmed in a hand-re-count. Solomon had lied about his credentials. Finally, less than ten days after Bobb’s report was aired, and when the book was still in pre-publication, Factcheck.org had quoted experts in the field with actual credentials that explicitly stated that Solomon’s claims were groundless, that the “vote shares” he suggested were suspicious were “not at all surprising,” and in general Solomon “shows a basic misunderstanding of how vote counts work.”

 

Despite this, the book was released and, in fact, became a documentary with a multi-million-dollar budget (though a documentary so obscure you can’t find it on IMDB.com).

 

February 10^th 2021, Atlanta, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis opened an inquiry into Trump’s incriminating calls and the Fake Electors, as well as the apparently deliberate misstatements by Giuliani when he testified before the Georgia General Assembly in December. Willis sent letters to sixteen people informing them that they were targets in the investigation, among those targeted were Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer -- who had accused Raffensperger, not Trump, of “lawlessness” regarding the notorious call and its fall-out – State Senator Burt Jones, the Party’s Treasurer, a Car Dealer, and an Economics Teacher.

 

Willis stated that the accused could be charged with racketeering. CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen noted that Georgia’s Racketeering laws are more expansive than the Federal version, with “a much broader set of predicate acts” that “gives a prosecutor more leeway than a federal prosecutor charging RICO would have.” RICO is the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organization act, the Federal law, but used generically as the name of all the similar State laws.

 

As this is the criminal case on the State level that is being pursued most aggressively, it is also the one getting the most national attention. Trump has not been named as a target yet, but the case is clearly moving in that direction. Assistant Law Professor at the University of Kentucky’s Rosenberg College of Law Jonathan Shaub stated, “It’s a higher bar to say a former president should be indicted at the federal level than you have at the state level”

 

According to Rosen, if Trump is prosecuted in Georgia, it “is very likely to be one of the most important criminal RICO cases ever brought in United States history.”

 

 

Senior Adviser to Trump, Jason Miller, described it as “the timing here is not accidental given today’s impeachment trial [he’s referring to the Senate trial]. This is simply the Democrats’ latest attempt to score political points by continuing their witch hunt against President Trump, and everybody sees through it.”

 

Attorneys Kimberly Bourroughs Debrow and Holly A. Pierson, who were representing 11 of the 16 Fake Electors, accused Willis of “misusing the grand jury process to harass, embarrass and attempt to intimidate the nominee electors, not to investigate their conduct.”

 

Ms. Willis is also seeking to compel testimony from John Eastman, an architect of the legal strategy to keep Mr. Trump in power, as well as other lawyers — Kenneth Chesebro, Jacki Pick Deason, Jenna Ellis and Cleta Mitchell — who played critical roles in the effort.

 

Various mechanisms within Federal law try to limit the use of the Impeachment process for purely partisan purposes, and part of that is that the POTUS, or any high-ranking Federal Appointee, must face two impeachment trials separately, the House first and then the Senate shortly after. Further, Impeachment isn’t achieved by simple majority, it requires a 60% majority to convict. Despite the on-paper safe-guards, Impeachments generally follow party lines extremely closely.

 

By this point Democrats enjoyed majorities in both House and Senate, and in the Senate, needed 16 Republicans to break ranks to Impeach Trump. This doomed the House win in the Senate.

 

Senator Rand Paul, an advocate for the Big Lie, argued that an Impeachment trial of the POTUS after he’d left Office was Unconstitutional, which was silly.

 

First off, there is nothing in the Constitution that prohibits that. Secondly, there is precedent to support it: In 1797, the House impeached Senator William Blount was expelled for conspiring with a hostile Government in furtherance of a Real Estate deal (basically lobbying to guarantee England got to keep Florida and Louisiana which were not yet under US control), and then choosing to try him afterwards. In 1876, Secretary of War William W. Belknap was tried with the goal of Impeachment because of his role in the Trader Post Scandal (a kick-back scheme), but resigned hours before the House vote; the vote proceeded anyway, he was convicted, and then the Senate tried and acquitted him.

 

Thirdly, the Senate was still empowered to punish Trump, not by removing him from Office obviously, but denying him the option to ever run for Federal Office again, which would’ve been helpful given Trump’s threats to run again.

It should be pointed out that Paul’s misunderstanding was likely because he was not an attorney, just a Medical Doctor of questionable Certification.

 

The decision was made for a speedy trial, so no witnesses were called, no new evidence was presented, the transcript of the first trial was the whole basis of the debate in the Senate. There was some logic to that, because though more complex issues were emerging, especially the Fake Electors, there wasn’t enough time to responsibly investigate them for the Impeachment, so the focus was entirely on Trump’s public behaviors in inciting the 1/6 attempted Coup.

 

February 13^th, Trump was acquitted. This was predictable given how reflexively, brutally, partisan everything in Congress has been going back more than a decade. Still, it’s significant that the Impeachment fell ten votes shy in an all-but-evenly divided Senate. Seven Republicans voted in favor of Impeachment, a notable number, because during first of Trump’s Impeachment (regarding blackmail a Foreign Head-of-State to manipulate the POTUS Election), only one Republican, Romney, voted against his Party’s majority.

 

McConnell had ceased to be the Majority Leader, and instead became the Minority Leader, on January 20^th. He had seriously considered voting to Impeach, but in the end, voted to Acquit. After voting to let Trump of the hook though, he made it clear, he believed Trump was guilty, calling Trump’s conduct on 1/6 a "disgraceful dereliction of duty … There's no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day … The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president, and having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories and reckless hyperbole which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth …

 

“He did not do his job. He didn't take steps so federal law could be faithfully executed and order restored. No. Instead, according to public reports, he watched television happily — happily — as the chaos unfolded. Even after it was clear to any reasonable observer that Vice President Pence was in serious danger."

 

His excuses for not voting to Impeach were similar to Senator Paul’s, and reflected his double-talk when allowing Trump a late-in-term SCOTUS appointment after denying Obama the same. He argued that the process of impeachment and conviction is a "limited tool" and that Trump wasn’t "constitutionally eligible for conviction … The Constitution gives us a particular role. This body is not invited to act as the nation's overarching moral tribunal."

 

The new Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer thanked the Republicans who broke ranks, "I salute those Republican patriots who did the right thing. It wasn't easy. We know that."

 

With the possible exception of Senator Romney, every one of the Republicans who voted against Trump, both House and Senate, would face punishment by their own Party, serious Primary challenges backed by Trump, and several saw their political careers ruined.

 

Schumer added, "Let it live on in infamy, a stain on Donald John Trump that can never, never be washed away."

 

 

 

February 15, Parler, one of the main Social Media places for the Terrorists and Traitors to meet and organize their mayhem, resumed service after moving its domain registration to Epik, which also hosts Conspiracy Masturbater Alex Jones, and their cyber-security was provided by DDos-guard, and Russian-based company.

 

February 16^th, Paul Hodgkins was arrested. He was only one of the hundreds of people arrested regarding the 1/6 Insurrection, but his special significance would come in July, when he became the first to receive a prison sentence: eight months after pleading guilty for five felonies, including Obstructing an Official Proceeding. He was a former Eagle Scout, never been in trouble with the law before, and was mortified, “People acted like children and destroyed a place because they didn’t get what they wanted, and when I realized it had turned into that, I felt rotten. I didn’t feel wrong for wanting an audit or for supporting Donald Trump, but I do feel remorse for crossing the line. I wish I had just stayed home.”

 

February 19^th, The Brennan Center updated their State Voting Laws database. The Brennan for Justice at New York University School of Law, named after Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr, is a nonpartisan, nonprofit, law and public policy institute, that (among other things) tracks changes in voting laws under consideration Nation-wide. According to their database there were more than 250 bills that could potentially restrict/inhibit voting rights and/or voting access throughout the USA, “over seven times the number of restrictive bills as compared to roughly this time last year.” Journalist Nick Corasanti would write “Nationwide, Republican lawmakers in at least eight states controlled by the party are angling to pry power over elections from secretaries of state, governors and nonpartisan election boards.” 

 

Georgia was one of the places this was happening, and they started the process of favoring restrictiveness only seven days after the 1/6 attempted Coup. When the Brennan update was released, there were on-going hearings in Georgia House of Representatives related to Election Security. The stated goal was the drafting and passing more restrictive voting laws. Among those who didn’t advocate for the Big Lie, but still pushed for voting restrictions anyway, was Representative Alan Powell.

 

February 19^th, Powell was challenged on his restrictionist position and stated, “I’m not getting into the part about widespread voter fraud. You’re correct, it wasn’t found. It’s just in a lot of people’s minds, that there was.”

 

This statement angered observes on both sides of the issue. Liberal Journalist Ari Berman shared that quote, adding, “Fake voter fraud leads to real voter suppression.”

 

But the worst reactions came from the Trumpsters who heard the quote out-of-context, and didn’t realize Powell was actually on their side. There was hate mail and ugly phone calls including a message from an out-of-State number, “I know who you are and I know where you live because your address is public.”

 

Powell’s colleges urged him to call the Police, instead, he called back the number back. The caller proved to be a retired Police Detective. The caller told Powell he hadn’t meant to sound threatening.

 

Powell replied, “I’ll take you at your word.”

 

February 25^th, during the same hearings there was notable testimony given by Poll Watcher Ginger Bradsaw. She didn’t not claim to have observed fraud, but made claims regarding bad procedure and chain-of-custody that sounded at times improbable to me, might of reflected the volunteer’s ignorance of the procedure unfolding in front of her, and some were based on second-hand statements, not direct observations (this specifically applied to her complaints about the much-maligned staff of Dominion Voting Systems). Her most memorable statement concerned not being able to see the counting herself, “They could have been building a warship back there and I wouldn’t have known the difference because you couldn’t get close enough.” She also repeated the already debunked myth of dead people voting (this investigation will resume long after this date, and by December of that year, Georgia established only four dead people voted, in a State of nearly eleven million). She was deeply bothered that the were no legal punishments for those who engaged in voting fraud, except there obviously are, voting fraud is a felony.

 

As these things seemed to be taken as a matter of faith, the terrible consequences of these Hearings were predictable.

 

Chief Operating Officer for the Georgia Secretary of State Sterling made national headlines the prior December when he predicted, “Someone's going to get hurt. Someone's going to get shot. Someone's going to get killed." As it happens, that public stance put him at odds with some members of his own family. There was a Facebook exchange worth noting:

Relative: “The fact that there were more votes than registered voters in the US will never be explained away.”

Sterling: “There were not more votes than registered voters.”

Relative: “ALL Americans went to bed with Trump significantly leading across the board, only to wake up to see him at a considerable deficit.” This was followed a lengthy Conspiracy Masturbation that had been popularized by FOX News Host Sean Hannity and others that Biden’s win was a “statistical impossibility.” The relative added, “C’mon Gabe! You believe that BS?”

Sterling: “Most of the charges are [coming from] people who aren’t lying but don’t understand what they are seeing.”