Donald Trump's actions the week of March 19, 2023 have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that America is now operating in a never-before seen circle of political and criminal hell. In a single week, Trump established two new lows for the conduct of ex-Presidents. He lashed out about his own projection of a criminal arrest and simultaneously warned of death and violence because of his arrest. But he also promoted his first official campaign rally which was held March 25 in Waco, Texas and - by doing so -- directly drew parallels between his perceived persecution by "racist prosecutors" in three different proceedings to the "persecution" of Branch Davidian cult leader David Koresh and eighty five persons killed with him by "jackbooted" government thugs after federal agents attempted to execute search warrants related to child sex abuse charges and illegal weapons violations.
Lest anyone think such a linkage is purely coincidental, a CURRENT "pastor" of the Branch Davidians (yes, the cult still exists…) responded to Trump's public comments by agreeing with them and explicitly drawing the comparison between the siege on the Branch Davidian complex and the execution of a search warrant for illegally retained top-secret documents at Mar-a-Lago. Like Ronald Reagan's choice of Philadelphia, Mississippi as the site of a "state's rights" speech in the 1980 campaign, it isn't a mere dog whistle tactic if EVERYONE can hear it a mile away.
So if it appears possible for a religious cult to survive thirty years after an apocalypse brought on itself by its own leader, what hope is there for any end to the Trump cult of ignorance, fear and hatred? Answering that is difficult without first contemplating the charges facing its leader, the tactics being used to avoid accountability for them and the larger feedback loop between political systems and criminal justice systems that are worsening the problems rather than correcting them.
In as few words as possible, the various charges facing Donald Trump are summarized below:
- an ex-President is being sued for libel stemming from a stalled lawsuit for an alleged rape in late 1995 / early 1996 that originally could have been dodged under the "no indictment of current President" rule until the same libelous comments were made a second time
- an ex-President is under investigation for violations of New York State law involving possible state misdemeanor charges of falsification of business records which may have been conducted to hide illicit use of campaign funds (a federal crime) elevating the state misdemeanor to a state felony -- the root of the issue is a $130,000 payment to a porn actor after a prior public fiasco about taped comments about sexual assault in the week prior to the 2016 election
- an ex-President is under investigation since January 2022 for possible criminal violations of the Espionage Act due to boxes of highly classified materials found missing from National Archives inventories
- an ex-President is under criminal investigation based upon a criminal referral from the House Committee on January 6 involving: obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to make a false statement, inciting and/or assisting an insurrection
- an ex-President is under investigation by Georgia state officials for his efforts made after the 2020 election to alter certified voting results to switch Georgia electoral votes to flip the 2020 Presidential election
- as a result of the missing document criminal investigation, an ex-President is also now under criminal investigation for lying to government agents attempting to recover said documents and filing demonstrably false affidavits in the process
At a minimum, one would think that any ONE of these situations would be enough to ensure the target would never enjoy one additional second of airtime or attention from anyone except prosecutors, judges and juries. Instead, the target has paralyzed legal efforts at the state and federal level with a consistent, escalating set of strategies:
- claiming permanent immunity from civil / criminal actions as a President or ex-President -- even for actions PRIOR to becoming president
- delaying proceedings through bogus claims of Executive Privilege to block sharing of information
- filing frivolous motions and objections to further delay proceedings
- churning through lawyers to further delay proceedings as new counsel ramps up
- filing demonstrably false affidavits with courts
- interfering with potential witnesses by offering financial incentives for future employment
- interfering with potential witnesses by making derogatory / threating public comments
- venue shopping proceedings with courts with a higher proportion of Trump-appointed judges
- interfering with proceedings by making public threats against prosecutors and judges
In a properly functioning justice system, these tactics would be immediately identified and halted in their tracks with immediate rejections of bogus motions, harsh reprimands of attorneys at initial use of these tactics and financial sanctions / disbarment upon repeated offenses. As these first levels of criminal tactics for defending the target were defeated, pressure would immediately focus on the many participants supporting the alleged activity to compel testimony to move the investigation or trial forward.
Of course, under normal times, one would assume at least SOME of those participants would evaluate the ethics of their actions and their immediate legal peril and provide truthful testimony that could quickly cut through any remaining fog and bring the cases to an appropriate conclusion. These are not normal times. In this case, the target has a lifetime career of fraud and racketeering-like behavior and attracted an entire paid team of Administration advisors and shadow advisors consisting of people from the far fringes of ethics and basic sanity who have no issues with using the same tactics. Months of delays were encountered as staff attempted to exercise bogus claims of Executive Privilege and other Constitutional claptrap. As of March 25, 2023, appeals courts have rejected nearly every one of these stall tactics and have finally put several key witnesses in the box in front of grand juries without even Attorney / Client privilege protections.
But frankly, even that is likely not enough to ensure justice.
We are so far beyond any norms that there is STILL no assurance these parties will provide testimony. Given their self-selecting status as being ethically diminished enough to consider acting in the target's orbit, there is a HIGH likelihood they will plead the fifth amendment -- either as a final attempt to do the target's bidding by withholding information or because they are literally a party to the crime being investigated and may incriminate themselves as well. At that point, the only lever left for prosecutors involves carefully considered offers of immunity to key players who might possess info required to definitively secure charges and convictions against others higher in the chain.
But again, these are not "normal" criminal actors in normal times. These are "exceptional" criminals in abnormal times. Many of the actors could reject any plea deal for immunity, take their chances in a jury trial and bet on obtaining a state or federal pardon after the next election for Governor or President. Any leverage prosecutors have with plea deals is being ACTIVELY subverted by Republican politicians at the state and federal levels who are denigrating the prosecutors and judges involved with these proceedings, strongly hinting any convictions would be tossed out if the balance of power shifts back to Republicans. In Georgia, state politicians are scheming to create a new state-level review board that would have the power to remove any prosecuting attorney at the state / county level. Republicans previously OPPOSED such a panel when Democrats proposed a similar mechanism in response to the delayed prosecution in a prominent racially motivated murder so their sudden support of such a measure after the election of numerous minority women as prosecutors in 2020 seems HIGHLY suspect.
Analyzed as a set, all of these circumstances reflect a never-ending feedback cycle between flawed politics and criminal behavior:
- what started as a political problem (a balkanized electorate voting for a known racist, misogynistic fraudster)
- created epic political problems (an impeachment involving the extortion of an ally Ukraine in exchange for political dirt for use in an upcoming re-election campaign)
- then created unimaginable criminal problems (conspiracy to overturn an election and incite an insurrection thwarting the transfer of power)
- which triggered unprecedented political problems (a second impeachment)
- then petered out with more unprecedented post-term criminal problems (Espionage Act violations and lying to government agents about handling of national security documents)
We have traversed the circle multiple times and landed again upon…
….a political problem.
In the end, the duration and depravity of this American nightmare stem from the implosion of the Republican Party at the emergence of the Tea Party faction. The Republican Party was balkanized prior to February 2009 but outward political success allowed the internal divisions to be masked from outsiders, making the party appear to be operating as one large block of ice floating in the political sea with an appearance of plausible policies and tolerable behavior of its members. After losing the Presidency in 2008 to a black Democrat, Republican leaders organized IMMEDIATELY to create an internal strategy for blocking ANYTHING that black Democratic President would propose and that private leadership strategy became a public strategy under the "Tea Party" name within a month of inauguration of "the other guy."
At that point, older, traditional "country club" Republican leaders began retiring, further reducing any moderating forces in policy and conduct. After the re-election of a black President, the illusion of a unified "iceberg" of Republicanism was split into separate "ice cubes" floating around the Sea of Right. The preferences, fears and hatreds of those in the biggest single surviving ice cube "bloc" of the party exactly matched those of Donald Trump, a lifelong racist, misogynist and financial fraud.
While that bloc might not have been mathematically a majority of the party, because it was the largest single bloc of the party, it allowed Trump to gain momentum during 2016 primaries and no Republican leaders had the courage to publicly condemn such a fatally flawed human as their party candidate. Instead, decades of us-versus-them policymaking created a Republican bench that failed to yield a single candidate able to argue against Trump from a position of sanity and moral authority. All of his competitors bowed out and the entire Republican Party rallied around their candidate despite a sexual scandal of PROVEN epic proportions a week before the election and managed to win an electoral college victory to put him in the White House.
Regardless of what happens in the coming weeks in FOUR different ongoing court venues, the only viable solution that can ultimately eliminate the cancer of Trumpism lies in the political realm, not the criminal realm. As long as political forces continue rewarding politicians who threaten judges and prosecutors and allowing politicians to appoint corrupt judges willing to ignore CENTURIES of precedent while lying about it in their confirmation hearings, criminal proceedings are not a reliable means for curing these ills. The only solution is a mass exodus of voters who currently identify as Republican who are NOT part of the MAGA cult. As long as they continue to vote or act under the Republican brand, they are allowing an authoritarian / fascist minority to leverage a minority position of a party operating in a structurally flawed two-party system to impose grossly undemocratic policies upon an entire country.
WTH
