Category Archives: corrupt motherfuckers

but what if he’s guilty?

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The concept of due process is getting a lot of attention right now, and rightly so. It’s at the heart of the Trump administration’s attempt to destroy democracy. Due process–the adherence to the laws that balance the power of the State against the civil rights and liberties of the individual–is the primary defense against the US becoming a police state.

Most folks can grasp that concept in theory, but a LOT of people have trouble with the practice itself.

I spent seven years or so as a private investigator specializing in criminal defense; I had a contract with a Public Defender program. For the most part, the lawyers I worked for represented people charged with major crimes…robbery, rape, murder, etc. I rarely told strangers what I did for a living, because it would almost always result in some variation of this conversation:

“Do you ever have a guilty client?”
“Almost all of my clients are guilty.”
“How can you defend a person you KNOW to be guilty?”
“Because I believe in civil rights and liberties.”
“But if you KNOW they’re guilty?”
“They still have rights.”
“But if you KNOW they’re GUILTY?”
“The only way to protect the rights of the innocent is to force the State to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt every single time.”
“Sure, you have to protect the innocent, but if YOU KNOW THEY”RE GUILTY?”

The Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution tells us No person shall…be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. It’s really that simple. It doesn’t say ‘No citizen.’ It doesn’t say, “No white person.’ It doesn’t say, “No rich person.’ It says NO PERSON. Period. Every person who is at risk of losing their life, their liberty, or their property MUST be allowed the full protection of the law BEFORE any penalty can be applied.

“Let the jury consider their verdict,” the King said, for about the twentieth time that day.
“No, no!” said the Queen. “Sentence first–verdict afterwards.”

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who probably paid a higher proportion of his income in taxes than Donald Trump, has the right to expect the same due process of law as Donald Trump. Not because he’s been illegally detained and imprisoned (although he has), but because EVERYBODY in the US is–or should be–protected by due process. Timothy McVeigh, who killed 168 people in an act of terrorism 30 years ago yesterday, received more due process than Garcia.

I’ll also say this. As somebody who spent years helping defend the guilty, there is nothing more terrifying than an innocent client. There is so much at stake with an innocent client. Seeing an innocent person go to prison feels a hundred times worse than seeing a guilty person go free. And the ONLY way to protect the rights of an innocent person is to require the State to follow the law EVERY SINGLE TIME, even with the guilty.

this guy?

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Okay, first off, I admit I’m confused. I mean, I understand that Donald Trump, with the assistance of a cadre of feral Christo-fascist authoritarians and the support of a cartoonist collection of buffoons, is conducting an aggressive frontal assault on the US Constitution. And so far it’s been mostly effective.

Unlike a LOT of folks, I’m inclined to think Trump has a plan. It’s a very simple, very very stupid, and very selfish plan, to be sure. It’s the sort of plan you’d expect from a cartoon villain. But it’s still a plan. As I see it, Donald Trump’s plan is as follows:

Make everybody dependent on the whims and wishes of Donald Trump.

It’s ridiculous, isn’t it. What Trump really wants, of course, is loyalty and respect. Two things he’ll never get. He’ll never get the respect he wants (and thinks he deserves), and I suspect he knows that. Nor will he ever get real loyalty, because loyalty is reciprocal; you earn loyalty by being loyal to others. Trump is loyal to nothing and nobody. Who’s going to respect of be loyal to this guy?

Since he can’t/won’t get the respect and loyalty he truly wants, Trump has to settle for a shabby substitute–unquestioned obedience. The problem for Trump, even as POTUS, is that there are HUGE intentional limits to presidential obedience in a representative democracy.

The president’s actual job is to preside over the government, not to rule it. ‘Preside’ literally means “to sit in front of.” The president is basically like an orchestra leader. In order for Trump to command unquestioned obedience, he has to first weaken or destroy the Constitutional constraints on presidential power.

That’s exactly what he’s doing. In his first term, Trump converted the entire Republican Party to so-called MAGA loyalists (I say ‘so-called’ because many/most of the GOP are just sycophantic cowards or craven opportunists, not actual loyalists). He also stacked the Supreme court with ‘loyalists’. The only check on his authority came from the professionals who occupied the Cabinet posts and the various governmental agencies. Now, in his second term, he’s replaced the Cabinet secretaries and the heads of every government agency with more so-called loyalists. He’s basically removed or degraded almost every federal administrative constraint on his authority (there are still some federal judges who remain independent, though they’re under attack now).

This guy? Powerful politicians and institutions are afraid of this guy? This fucking guy?

There are a few other social constraints that can challenge the president: independent law firms, universities, business interests, and independent news sources. Trump is making every effort to hobble or undermine them, threatening retaliation either in the form of investigations or by removing federal financial aid and federal contracts. In order to avoid this sort of persecution, these social institutions are being required to appeal to Trump personally. To humiliate themselves by publicly kissing his ring. You want to avoid tariffs on products you need? Humbly ask Trump to remove them for YOUR company. You want federal financial aid for teaching or research? Humbly ask Trump to restore the funding he denied. You want to practice law or receive federal contracts? Humbly ask Trump to overlook any earlier opposition and publicly promise to support him. You want access to the Trump administration as a news source? Humbly agree to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. What kind of person or institution would humble themselves before this guy?

But hey, it’s working. Some large law firms and some universities have already compromised themselves; many news agencies have modified their coverage of Trump and are parroting his bullshit; a lot of businesses threatened by Trump’s trade practices are considering personal appeals to Trump and praising his harmful policies. Intimidation works. But c’mon, how could anybody be intimidated by this guy?

I find truly astonishing that so many people and institutions are afraid of this guy. He’s a cartoonish nitwit; he’s more a malignant Elmer Fudd than an evil genius. The sheer mass of his ignorance could bend light. He’s ten pounds of racist bullshit in a five pound bag. He’s a coward and a liar. People are afraid of taking on this guy?

This guy?

but this is trump

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By now, everybody is aware of the colossal fuck-up in which senior Trump national security officials conducted a high level discussion about launching at attack in Yemen using…and it sounds so stupid to write this, but it’s true…using a messaging platform that IS NOT approved for exchanging classified or secret intelligence.

These weren’t low-level aides we’re talking about. This was Trump’s Vice President, his Director of National Intelligence, his National Security Adviser, his Secretary of Defense, his CIA Director and his Chief of Staff. Oh yeah, and the editor of The Atlantic. The fact that these people had this discussion on a commercially available cell phone app is scandal enough. But it’s just ONE OF MANY scandals revealed by this fuck-up.

For example, Trump’s national security team isn’t quite sure if Trump has actually ordered the attack. They were discussing the timing of the attack–when the attack should take place–when Trump’s Chief of Staff says, “As I heard it, the president was clear: green light.” Seriously, this attack took place when it did because Stephen Miller interpreted some comment from Trump as a ‘green light.’ Apparently nothing was signed; apparently no official record exists authorizing an attack on a foreign nation. In any normal administration, that would be unthinkable. But this is Trump.

Another thing. One of the members of Trump’s national security team, Steve Witkoff, was in Moscow at the time (he’s Trump’s Ukraine negotiator) meeting with Putin and his people. Let me just say that again. This guy was part of a group chat discussing highly sensitive information involving the military’s attack capabilities, using an unapproved app on a cell phone while waiting for a meeting with Vlad Putin IN MOSCOW. In any normal administration, that would be unthinkable. But this is Trump.

There’s more. During this astonishingly stupid group chat on a non-secure cell phone, Trump’s Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Ratcliffe, used the name of an active intelligence officer. He basically outed a working spy, which is a criminal act. In any normal administration, that would not only be unthinkable, but would lead to criminal charges. But this is Trump. His Attorney General and Director of the FBI will almost certainly refuse to investigate the matter, let alone bring criminal charges.

“I don’t know anything about it.”

And if that’s not scandal enough, when confronted by news media about the incident, Trump said he wasn’t aware of it.

“I don’t know anything about it. You’re telling me about it for the first time.”

This is Trump, so that’s almost certainly a lie. Almost certainly, also because this is Trump. It’s entirely possible his national security team 1) had decided Trump probably intended to order an attack on Yemen and didn’t bother to get the decision confirmed, 2) were too lazy or incompetent to use secure communications systems to organize the attack, 3) and when it became public that they’d not only used wildly inappropriate and insecure tech to discuss the attack BUT ALSO INCLUDED A FUCKING CIVILIAN WHO WAS THE EDITOR OF A GODDAMN NEWS MAGAZINE, they decided NOT to tell POTUS that they’d fucked up. Which would mean Trump can’t trust his own hand-picked national security team to keep him informed or tell him the truth. Which is entirely possible. Although it’s more likely Trump just lied about not knowing, because that’s what he does.

In any normal administration, an incident like this would lead to mass resignations and/or terminations as well as criminal charges. But this is Trump.

Right now, it appears the Trump administration is attempting to put the blame for all this on National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, who set up the ‘group chat’ and accidentally included the editor of The Atlantic. But every single person who participated in the discussion should have known the proper protocol; they should have objected to having the discussion outside a sensitive compartmentalized information facility (SCIF); they should have refused to participate.

What will happen? Who knows? Democrats will be outraged, but will they actually DO anything? Who knows? Will anybody be held accountable for such a colossal fuck-up? Who knows? It’s possible that this scandal, like every Trump scandal, will be buried beneath the next cascade of scandal. It’s possible nothing at all will happen; nothing will change.

Because this is Trump. Nothing is ordinary anymore. No rules apply, no norms are maintained, no standards exist. There is only Trump and his cadre of trolls, banging around randomly, ignoring actual governance in their pursuit of performative trolling.

no longer unthinkable

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Here’s a terrifying thing that’s almost certainly going to happen. At some point in the not-too-distant future, SCOTUS is going to be forced to decide on the limits (if any) of Comrade Trump’s authority. I don’t know what the issue will be. Maybe it’ll be about marriage equality, maybe about immigration or birthright citizenship, maybe about his authority to dismantle entire federal agencies without Congressional approval.

But at some point, THIS IS GOING TO HAPPEN. SCOTUS and POTUS will face off with the Constitution on the line. Maybe SCOTUS will just give up and agree Trump is king/dictator. That’s horrifying, but possible. But they may also rule there are limits to his authority. I like to think that’s more likely (but then I didn’t think it was likely that Trump would be re-elected, so what do I know?).

The question is this: what will happen when Trump ignores SCOTUS? Because he almost certainly will. I’m just going to remind you that SCOTUS has no power to enforce its rulings. In fact, the entire judicial branch of government at every level–municipal, county, state, and federal–depends on the executive branch of government to enforce its decisions. When a judge says, “Do this thing,” it falls to law enforcement agencies (which are part of the executive function of governance) to see that the thing is done.

But what happens if/when the court says, “Do this” and the executive branch says, “Nope”? What happens if/when the Supreme Court of the United States says, “Do this” and the President of the United States says, “Nope”?

Let’s say, for example, that Comrade Trump issues an executive order ending birthright citizenship and further orders people born in the US to immigrant parents be deported. Let’s also say SCOTUS rules those orders are clearly unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” And finally, let’s say Trump says, “Yeah, I’m deporting them anyway” and follows through on that.

What happens?

There aren’t many remedies. The 25th Amendment of the Constitution allows VPOTUS and the Cabinet to remove POTUS if he’s “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” But what if he’s just unwilling to do his duty? And what if the Cabinet agrees with POTUS (which, after all, is exactly why he picked those corrupt fucks)? The 25th Amendment assumes a Cabinet comprised of people with integrity and a firm belief in representative democracy. We don’t have one of those. So what else can be done?

There’s impeachment by the House of Representatives and conviction by the Senate, which would remove POTUS from office. But how likely is that? There’s also the 2028 election. But even if there’s a free and fair election, we know Trump is unlikely to willingly leave office.

That’s basically it. Those are essentially the only legal options if POTUS defies SCOTUS. The less-than-legal options? A military coup. Citizen rebellion, insurrection, revolution. Before the 2024 election, these would have been unthinkable. Now…who knows?

Let’s say Trump refuses to follow a decision by SCOTUS. What happens? I can see mass protests by citizens. I can see Trump ordering US troops to help state and local law enforcement to suppress those protests. I can see him ordering them to fire on protesters. I can see some commanders/troops refusing to follow those illegal orders.

Again, such a scenario was unthinkable a few months ago. Now it seems possible. Now it seems almost inevitable. Because Trump IS assaulting the US Constitution. And SCOTUS will eventually have to deal with that. And IF they rule against Trump, it’s exceedingly likely he’ll ignore them and do whatever the fuck he wants.

And if he ignores them…well, then. Here we are.

a long history of betrayal

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To folks who are surprised by Comrade Trump’s betrayal of Ukraine, I’d just remind you that he has a history of betraying US allies to the benefit of Russia. Let’s start back in 2019.

After Kurdish forces helped the US to dismantle the ISIS regime, Trump casually betrayed them. Something like 11,000 Kurdish men and women died fighting against ISIS. With ISIS largely destroyed, Turkey, who had their own problems with Kurdish forces, wanted to invade northeast Syria and attack the Kurds. A thousand or so US troops were in the way. Trump decided to withdraw the US troops, saying, “We never agreed to protect the Kurds for the rest of their lives.”

Hundreds of thousands of Kurdish civilians were displaced; hundreds were killed by Turkish forces. A few days later, Vladimir Putin announced Russia had made a pact with Turkey to take joint control of the Kurdish territory. Russian troops moved in and took command of the abandoned US military bases in Syria. A month later, Trump held a White House reception for Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, thanked him for the job he’d done in Syria and called himself “a big fan” of Erdoğan.

And don’t forget, a year later, in 2020, US intelligence agencies reported that Russia was offering/paying bounties to Taliban-linked militants in Afghanistan for attacking and killing coalition forces—including both US and British troops. Members of both political parties (not quite ALL the GOP had gone full MAGA-brained back then) insisted Trump raise holy hell with Russia and demand the bounties stop.

Trump did…nothing. Wait, not true. Trump 1) invited Putin to visit the US and stay at a Trump-owned property, 2) decided, after a call with Putin, to pull US troops out of NATO partner Germany, 3) suggested Russia should be reinstated in the G7 summit (a suggestion which other G7 nations soundly rejected), 4) refused to implement measures to combat Russian interference in the 2020 presidential election, 5) worked with Putin and Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed Bin Salman (who, let’s not forget, had a Washington Post reporter kidnapped, killed, and dismembered) to raise oil prices (which benefited US oil companies while raising prices of gasoline for consumers), 6) had his Department of Justice drop criminal charges against the Russian citizens and firms that criminally interfered with the 2016 election, and 7) had his DOJ drop charges against his former National Security Advisor who’d twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his interaction with Russian intelligence services.

Now, of course, he’s betraying Ukraine. Again. Remember, Trump’s first impeachment was grounded in his attempt to lean on President Zelenskyy. He tried to coerce the recently elected Zelenskyy into conjuring up some dirt on Joe Biden’s son by withholding missiles which Congress had already authorized. Trump wasn’t even very subtle about it; it was basically flat out mob-style extortion.

This time he’s betraying Ukraine while claiming to negotiate a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia. Negotiating, my ass. This is what he expects from Ukraine:

  1. for Zelenskyy to apologize for not being grateful enough to him personally,
  2. to agree that Russia can keep the territory it illegally acquired in the invasion,
  3. to agree never to join NATO,
  4. to accept all that WITHOUT any guarantee of security in case Russia decides to end a cease fire.

This is what Trump expects from Russia:

  1. the US will lift sanctions against the government of Russia
  2. the US will lift sanctions against specific Russian citizens and oligarchs.

That’s it. Essentially, Comrade Trump wants to ‘negotiate’ Russia’s victory. He’s openly serving Russian interests. He has no interest in the welfare of Ukraine, or Europe, or humanity in general. He has no interest in democracy; to be fair, I don’t think he has any real interest in fascism either. Trump’s only real interests are in getting and keeping power, and punishing his detractors.

EDITORIAL NOTE: Trump doesn’t just betray US allies; he betrays everyone. His fellow Republicans, his business partners, his charities, his clients, his wives. In a very real way, I don’t think we can say Trump has betrayed the US, but only because he was never loyal to the US to begin with. He’s never been loyal to anything or anybody.

five things

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Name five (5) things you accomplished this week in support of the agenda of President Comrade Donald J. Trump.

  1. Further dismantled the US government’s ability to govern itself by summarily firing several thousand random federal employees.
  2. Played 18 at Trump Doral in Miami and 18 at Trump International in Palm Beach. Scores not reported, but probably best ever.
  3. Abandoned role as global leader in democracy and open aligned the US government with noted Communist dictator Vlad Putin (assisted by that bearded guy who’s always hanging around).
  4. Had a public temper tantrum when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy failed to thank me enough. He also refused to thank my buddy Vlad Putin. Nobody would even know this Zelenskyy guy’s name if not for Vlad. He owes a lot to Vlad.
  5. Attended a presidential cabinet meeting hosted by Elon Musk, who said he fixed that thing where he accidentally stopped preventing ebola for a while. Is that right, ebola? I thought that was the way colored people spoke. I mean the Blacks.
“Look, all I want is for you to thank me, preferably on your knees, like that bearded guy does.”

Extra credit: The S&P 500 and the NASDAQ fell for the second week in a row as tariff threats escalated again and US government bonds fell to their lowest levels in nearly three months.

recruited?

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Over the last couple of days I’ve seen a few social media posts and online articles repeating a claim made by Alnur Mussayev, the former head of Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee. In the British tabloid The Mirror, Mussayev wrote: “In 1987, our directorate recruited Donald Trump under the pseudonym Krasnov.”

I don’t believe that. I simply don’t believe Comrade Donald Trump was recruited to be a Russian intelligence agent. Part of my objection is semantic; recruitment involves getting folks to enlist–which literally means to sign your name on a list. I don’t believe ANY intelligence services in ANY nation would consider enlisting Trump as an intelligence agent. He’s not qualified to be an agent. He simply doesn’t have the skills, the temperament, or intelligence to be an agent.

No intelligence service would recruit this smug, self-satisfied, duplicitous fuckwit.

On the other hand, he’s an ideal intelligence asset. An asset is just a person (or a thing) that can be used to gather or disseminate information that might be useful to an intelligence service. An ideal human intelligence asset is somebody who is 1) easily manipulated through intimidation or flattery, 2) gullible and/or ignorant, 3) vulnerable to various forms of kompromat, 4) impulsive, 5) immoral or amoral, and 6) has access to useful information and/or can serve as a conduit for misinformation/disinformation. As an intelligence asset, Comrade Trump is a whole protein–he contains all the essential ingredients.

I totally believe Trump has been a Russian intelligence asset for decades. I absolutely believe Trump has knowingly served Russian geo-political interests. It’s indisputable that Russia engaged in coordinated disinformation campaigns to help get Trump elected, both in 2016 and in 2024. Back in 2021, The Guardian published a report stating the newspaper had possession of a Kremlin report of a 2016 meeting between Putin and his senior intelligence ministers outlining an intelligence operation to help Trump become POTUS. They felt electing Trump (who is described as an “impulsive, mentally unstable and unbalanced individual who suffers from an inferiority complex”) would “definitely lead to the destabilisation of the US’s sociopolitical system.”

And hey, bingo. Look at us now. You know Vlad Putin is a happy boy.

Even before his 2016 election, Trump was promoting Russian interests. Remember, when candidate Trump’s team established the GOP party platform for the 2016 election, the ONLY change they made was to weaken support for Ukraine’s defense. The original GOP platform promised to “provide lethal defensive weapons to the Ukrainian government” in response to Russia’s invasion of Crimea and their ongoing attempt to militarily annex the Donbas region. Trump’s people had that strong anti-Russia language removed (at the insistence of Paul Manafort, who was Trump’s campaign manager at the time AND who, according to the Mueller Report, made at least US$75 million for supporting Russian interests in Ukraine).

Now that he’s been re-elected, Trump is more openly supporting Russia and Russian interests. He may not have actually been recruited as an agent back in the 1980s, but there’s little doubt that he has now enlisted in the service of Russia.

trump and his nazgûl advisors want to take us back to 1798

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Shit’s getting way beyond weird now. We’re moving into deeply scary fascist lunacy. Yesterday Trump posted this:

I will invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to target and dismantle every migrant criminal network operating on American soil.

Okay, we can be confident Trump himself is completely ignorant of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. But some of his Nazgûl advisors are as clever as they are hateful, and they’ve latched onto an ugly 226-year-old chunk of legislation. The Act in question was one of a set of four laws dealing with immigration and speech enacted in response to an undeclared war with the French First Republic (after the fledgling United States decided to stiff France for loans they’d accepted during the American Revolution).

Three of those laws–the Naturalization Act (dealing with the requirements for citizenship), the Alien Friends Act (allowing the imprisonment and deportation of non-citizens), and the Sedition Act (criminalizing false and malicious statements about the government)–are no longer in effect. They were either repealed or allowed to lapse. But the Alien Enemies Act is still, weirdly, in effect. It’s now Chapter 3 under Title 50 of the U.S. Code. It states:

[A]ll natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects of the hostile nation or government, being of the age of fourteen years and upward, who shall be within the United States and not actually naturalized, shall be liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as alien enemies.

It was used against the French in that undeclared war in 1798, against the British in the War of 1812, and against Japanese-Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbor at the beginning of World War 2 (and to a much lesser extent, against Germans and Italians after the US entered the war). Don’t ever forget that 82 years ago the US forcibly rounded up approximately 120,000 men, women, and children of Japanese descent, and detained them without trial for around three years.

This hateful fuck will try to end representative democracy in the US.

Could it happen again? Yep. If Trump should win/steal the election and invoke the Alien Enemies Act, it absolutely could happen again. Obviously, the act would be appealed to SCOTUS. Although none of the Acts of 1798 were subjected to judicial review (Marbury v. Madison, which confirmed the concept of judicial review, wasn’t decided until 1803), the few SCOTUS references to the Alien and Sedition Acts have suggested the Court would consider them unconstitutional. But that was before the current Trump Court, which is so far up Trump’s ass that they granted him wide immunity for ‘official’ actions. It’s very possible this Court would allow it.

Remember this: the Act refers to people “not actually naturalized.” To be eligible to begin the naturalization process, you have to have been a permanent resident in the US for at least five years (three years if you are married to a U.S. citizen). Once the process has begun, it still takes around another six months or so to become a citizen. That means people who’ve been living legally in the US for five and a half years could still be detained, confined without trial, and deported by Trump.

This is fucking terrifying on so many levels. Trump back in power, with a cooperative SCOTUS and aides who are dedicated fascists, will do unimaginable damage, not just to the US and representative democracy, but to the entire world.