As we expected, Judge McAfee, the judge overseeing the Georgia Racketeering case, ruled today that the romantic relationship between DA Fani Willis and her chief prosecutor Nathan Wade did not avoid the appearance of conflict while not technically violating the law.  He gave her the choice that either she or Wade had to go.  He talked extensively about Willis’ poor judgement in a case this important and her unprofessional behavior during testimony.  Wade resigned a few hours later.  Legal experts are saying that this debacle almost assures that the case will unlikely go to trial before the election.

As I said before, this is 100% Willis’ fault.  What she did was stupid, but exceptionally stupid when she was going after a former president of the US.  The carelessness is breathtaking.  In another slow moving disaster, the NY hush money case was delayed today for at least 30 days because, after a YEAR of waiting, the SDNY US attorney’s office dumped 150,000 pages of evidence that DA Bragg had requested.  TFG’s lawyer asked for a 90 day delay but the judge delayed for 30, but that will surely be appealed.

So, with a big assist from the Trump-Thomas SCOTUS when they rewrote the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, it looks like TFG’s going to win by running out the clock.  Add that to TFG’s handpicked judge in Florida slow walking the documents case and that’s almost a certainty.  What’s infuriating is that Garland, the NY DA, and Fani Willis dragged their feet so long that we’re now up against the election and it’s almost certain that no trial, much less a verdict, will happen before the election.  Garland sat on his ass for almost two years before he was shamed into prosecuting Trump only after the Select Committee on January 6th produced a warehouse full of damning evidence of insurrection.  He also KNEW TFG was sitting on thousands of government documents, 800 of which were classified TOP SECRET, but waited 21 months to finally do something.  Because of that negligence and the stupidity on Willis’ part, we’re not going to get any justice before Election Day.

There’s a good chance TFG’s going to win the election, and if he does, the documents case and the election interference cases will certainly be dropped by his new AG.  The NY hush money case and Georgia case will continue, but prosecuting a sitting president will be almost impossible, and the Trump-Thomas SCOTUS will make sure nothing happens.  Fani Willis will probably lose her re-election bid and the new DA could just drop the Georgia case. But those aren’t the biggest problems – the biggest problem is that TFG will gut the DOJ and FBI, pardon the almost 1,000 charged or convicted insurrectionists, and undo all the progress we’ve made while Biden has been in office.   He’ll pack the WH and his cabinet with criminals, white supremacists, and authoritarians, and it could easily be game over for the US as we know it.  If by chance he loses the election, he most certainly won’t accept it and will call for civil war.  There’s no good result here, and you can thank the Trump-Thomas Court, Merrick Garland, and Fani Willis.  Thanks for nothing.

This afternoon, the SCOTUS issued a one sentence rebuke of TFG in his efforts to hamstring the DOJ investigating his theft of thousands of government documents.  The order, one sentence long, said:

TRUMP, DONALD J. V. UNITED STATES

The application to vacate the stay entered by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit on September 21, 2022, presented to Justice Thomas and by him referred to the Court is denied.

Even the SCOTUS can occasionally surprise by doing its goddam job.

Earlier this week the NYTimes published an investigative story that had several revelations including an account of TFG demanding that yet another lawyer lie for him early last year that he had returned all the documents and that lawyer refusing.  More important, it’s damned likely he still has government documents somewhere else like his NY apartment, in Bedminster, or even Mar a Lago.

But the story also recounted TFG’s desire to used the stolen documents as trade bait.  The key quote:

“Mr. [TFG], still determined to show he had been wronged by the F.B.I. investigation into his 2016 campaign’s ties to Russia, was angry with the National Archives and Records Administration for its unwillingness to hand over a batch of sensitive documents that he thought proved his claims.

In exchange for those documents, Mr. [TFG] told advisers, he would return to the National Archives the boxes of material he had taken to Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Fla.”

So there it is.  Not only did TFG recklessly steal top secret and other government documents, he then concocted a plan to use his unlawful possession of stolen documents as a hostage to get evidence to support his contention that the FBI was out to get him.  It’s classic mobster behavior; worse, it’s stupid, careless, and another example of the danger this man poses to not only the country but to himself.

I’ve had several theories about why TFG stole these documents and then toyed with the DOJ for over a year and a half; first, obviously TFG is a dumbass with shit for brains; second, I figured he saw value in them to sell to the highest bidder; third, he loves all the trappings of being president and continued playing Oval Office and pretending he’s still there; lastly I figured he just likes pissing off the “deep state”.  All of these theories are plausible and damned likely; what I hadn’t thought about that he believed he could use the stolen documents to steal more documents.  That act is just a glimpse into how evil TFG truly is.

Before this week I had never heard of Jeffrey Clark.  Who’s Jeffrey Clark, you ask?  Clark is a Trump plant in the DOJ who conspired with him to insert the DOJ into The Big Lie.  Clark wrote the draft letter that he tried to get acting AG Jeffrey Rosen to sign alleging that the DOJ was investigating “various irregularities,” and, “…we have identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple States, including the State of Georgia.”  The letter urges the governor to Georgia to reconvene the state legislature to reconsider the certification of the election for Joe Biden and choose a different set of electors for Trump.  Luckily for democracy, Rosen refused to approve the letter.  After his refusal, Clark then conspired with Trump to fire Rosen and appoint him as acting AG so he could use the DOJ to complete a coup against the duly elected president.

Even as we watched the train wreck of Trump’s attempt to overturn the election with The Big Lie, we didn’t know how close we came to a coup enacted by Trump plants not only at DOJ, but also DOD and other agencies.  And the terrifying thing is that NONE of these officials have paid any price for their treasonous conduct as employees of the US government.  That’s the shameful part.

Trump, even as late as this weekend, repeated the lie on his blog that the election was stolen from him by non-existent voter fraud.  He bragged that 80% of Republicans believed that lie as he desperately tries to keep his iron grip on the party that he wants destroyed.  Trump is nothing, if not obsesively vindictive.  What’s telling, though, have been his actions.  How do we know?  Trump tried to wreck as much of the US government as he could on the way out the door.  I don’t think he would have done that had he truly believed he won.

On November 9th, John McEtee, aide to Trump, told Douglas Macgregor, new acting defense secretary Chris Miller’s senior advisor, that Trump wanted full military withdrawal, by Inauguration Day,  from Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, all of Africa, and…wait for it…Germany.  Recall that Miller had just taken on the defense job after Trump fired Mark Esper by tweet just a few days earlier.  This, as you would imagine, was an impossible task, and worse, it was from out in left field.  A written order followed two days later that commanded the Pentagon to withdraw troops  from Somalia by December 15th, and Afghanistan bay January 15th.  It was personally signed by Trump in his idiotic scribble.  The order sent shockwaves through the Pentagon as leaders realized that this was an “off the books” operation with none of the usual planning, table top simulations, or alternatives.  This was just Trump being Trump, and luckily the Pentagon held the line, slow walking the order to run out the clock.

At the same time, Trump tried to wreck the CIA and dig dirt on his enemies by installing loyalists at the top of the agency trying to get the director, Gina Haspel, to resign.  Mercifully, that effort also failed as Pence and WH counsel Pat Cipollone came to Haspel’s defense.  Switching tactics, Trump then installed a Nunes staffer and Trump loyalist, Michael Ellis, to the general counsel position at the NSA, a position difficult to terminate by the new administration.  In an appropriate end to his short career, Ellis resigned in April after he had been sidelined by an IG investigation into his role in the handling of classified information and placed on indefinite leave.

It’s now just coming out that Trump’s DOJ tried to get the courts to unmask a Twitter user who had gotten under Devin Nunes skin with a parody account @NunesAlt.  Barr’s attorneys sought a grand jury subpoena of Twitter to reveal the user’s actual name, and Twitter had fought the subpoena until the demand was dropped after Biden took office.

These are just a few examples of the lengths to which Trump went in the waning days of his infestation to wreck as much of the government that he could, install loyalists as his spies, and punish his supporters’ enemies.  Luckily the actual public servants in these agencies kept their oaths to the Constitution, and repelled Trump’s attacks.  Next time (if there is a next time) we might not be so lucky.

The latest from the Lincoln Project.