The TFG and his spawn lost big time today when a New York Supreme Court judge ruled against their effort to quash subpoenas by NY AG Letitia James to give testimony in her civil fraud investigation where they are suspected of overstating values of their assets for banking purposes and understating them for tax purposes.  The case came to a head earlier this week when long-time TFG accountants Mazars resigned and said their financial statement audits for the last 10 years were not reliable and couldn’t be depended on.  TFG will appeal, of course.  If he ever gets in front of James, expect him to take the 5th, because otherwise he’ll lie because he can’t help himself.

The slow plod towards justice continues, as slow as it is.

Since November 3rd, Trump has been childishly ranting about the election, obstinately refusing to accept the inevitable. For the most part, his enablers have played along with his claims of massive fraud and even amplified his claims.  There are now plans being circulated by Trump loyalists in Congress to actually steal the election from the voters on January 6th when both houses meet to tally the electoral votes and finally certify the election.  That effort will fail, of course, but the damage Trumpists will do to our democracy is incalculable.

Let’s consider how we got here.  One of these conclusions are true:

1. 1. Thousands of voting machines, run by Dominion Voting Systems, were manipulated by a server in Berlin to delete millions of votes for Trump and flip the votes to Biden.  Dominion has links to Venezuela and its dead former president Hugo Chavez.  Also, thousands of dead people voted for Biden, and thousands of volunteer vote tabulators added suitcases full of fake ballots, all in favor of Biden.  Republican vote observers were denied access to the counting rooms in counties where Trump lost.  Also, state legislatures violated the Constitution by making it easier and safer for legal registered voters to vote during an exploding pandemic.  Mysteriously, all of this massive voter fraud and unconstitutional action exclusively benefitted Biden.  While the election was being stolen from Trump, Republicans gained seats in the US House and kept control in most State houses.  To accomplish this fraud on Trump, the conspiracy was massive, requiring thousands  of politicians, career staffers, and volunteers all over the country to conspire to steal the election.  Then all of those involved in the conspiracy committed perjury or just remained silent to cover their crime.
   2. More people voted for Biden.

From Merriam Webster:

A company run by Trump’s digital director was caught sending thousands of incendiary texts to Trump supporters telling them to amass in Philadelphia and falsely demonstrate that Dems were stealing the election.  This will pretty much shoot down Giuliani’s claims of voter fraud.

You can read the US Attorney’s announcement here. Bannon, et al were indicted for defrauding tens of thousands of donors to a crowd funded scam of “We Build the Wall” that collected $25 million.  Bannon and his partners are accused of funneling over $1.5 million to themselves through fake invoices and dummy non-profits.  Bannon himself took $1 million.  The DOJ has got them dead to rights.  Maybe they’ll try to get Bannon to flip on Trump for some unrelated charge, but as JJ said, expect pardons for these thieves.

Trump tweeted this morning that we should delay to November elections until people “can properly, securely and safely vote??”  Here’s the offending tweet:

Let’s make sure we’ve got this right – it’s safe to open schools, safe to go back to work, but now it’s not safe enough to vote?  Yeah, that will make you dizzy.  The one thing that doesn’t make you dizzy, though?  Trump and his goons have intentionally made the pandemic more severe and longer so he could have an excuse to shut down the election.  If he had responded as a competent president or even a normal human being, we would have been on the other side of the pandemic like most other developed countries rather than being consumed by exploding cases and deaths.

Yes, I just said it…Trump has caused tens of thousands of deaths, cost Americans trillions of dollars in losses, and prolonged the suffering of millions of people just so he can try staying president.  He doesn’t care if you live or die.  Well, Fuck Him.  If he thinks he’s seeing unrest in the streets now, he hasn’t seen anything yet.

Yesterday, the Brookings Institution issued a position paper authored by Norman Eisen, Richard Painter, and Laurence Tribe called THE EMOLUMENTS CLAUSE: ITS TEXT, MEANING, AND APPLICATION TO DONALD J. TRUMP.  Here are the brief bios on the authors as published by Brookings:

“Norman L. Eisen, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, was the chief White House ethics lawyer from 2009 to 2011 and ambassador to the Czech Republic from 2011 to 2014. He is the chair of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). Richard W. Painter, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, was the chief White House ethics lawyer from 2005 to 2007. He is the vice chair of CREW. Laurence H. Tribe is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor and Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard University.”

(more…)