In Western Christianity, this is “Holy Week” – commemorating the short period between Christ arriving in Jerusalem, being arrested by the Romans and condemned to die before rising on Easter. It also happens to be the same week that Donald Trump, once and future Viceroy for Russian North America, was first arraigned on criminal offenses by the State of New York.
Lest I seem mocking in comparing Trump to Jesus, it is a comparison seriously made by his fan club, which was formerly called the Republican Party. As Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (BR.-Georgia) told a reporter in New York Tuesday, Trump is in the same situation as Nelson Mandela and Jesus, being prosecuted by the state.
No, Trump really is like Jesus. I mean, look at the comparisons: They can both turn water into wine and sugar into cocaine, they both hang out with sex workers, and they both have close friends and family who are Jewish even though most of their worshipers don’t like to admit it.
Just as Jesus was arrested by the Romans on a Tuesday, this Tuesday Trump actually had to enter a courtroom and while there were some photos, there wasn’t much of a transcript as to why the proceeding took almost 90 minutes. It was most notable for the photo shot of Trump sitting at a bench with his lawyers, with that same worn-out, defeated look he has when he leaves a closed-door meeting with Vladimir Putin. Outside meanwhile, you had professional Trumpniks like Greene trying to raise support for their Messiah while getting drowned out by native New Yorkers. It was like the Bane speech to Batman in The Dark Knight Rises, only substitute “the darkness” with “obnoxiousness.” One thing we did find out from the arraignment is that while the Judge, Juan Merchan did not give Trump a specific gag order, he did direct him to refrain from inflammatory statements as the case proceeded to trial. But as soon as he could, Trump got in his motorcade to the airport, almost as if he hated the city that made him as much as it now hates him, then flew back to his fortress in Mar-a-Lago to give a prime-time speech that hardly any major network covered, bad-mouthing the judge and his family -once he was no longer in New York jurisdiction.
Or as the poets said in Ancient Rome, “Alligator Mouth, Hummingbird Ass.”
What did we actually find out during the event?
According to the statement of facts released Tuesday, the Trump Organization’s machinations centered on various attempts to shut down the never-ending scandals that had the potential to sabotage Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Much of it was with the assistance of National Enquirer/American Media Incorporated head David Pecker. These were called “catch and kill” deals, where Trump’s people would get Pecker to offer a certain amount of money for rights to their sleazy story, but instead of publishing the piece, the National Enquirer would sit on it and keep it from getting out. One thing we didn’t know until Tuesday was that a former doorman at Trump Tower had a rumor that Trump had fathered a child with a woman who wasn’t Stormy Daniels or Karen McDougal. AMI paid this guy $30,000 for his story. “When AMI determined that the story was not true, the AMI CEO [Pecker] wanted to release the Doorman from the agreement. However Lawyer A [Michael Cohen] instructed the AMI CEO not to release the doorman until after the presidential election, and the AMI CEO complied with that instruction because of his agreement with the Defendant [Trump] and Lawyer A.” Shortly after the Access Hollywood (‘grab ’em by the pussy’) tape, AMI’s editor-in-chief contacted Pecker about another woman, Stormy Daniels (listed in the statement as ‘Woman 2’, as opposed to Karen McDougal, who is Woman 1 – keeping up so far?) who alleged that she had a sexual encounter with Defendant Trump while he was married. AMI arranged a deal to keep Daniels quiet, giving her $130,000. Twelve days before the 2016 election, Cohen drew $130,000 from a home loan, put it into a shell account, and used that to pay Daniels off. After the election, Trump repaid Cohen in installments, but had his Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg double the amount to $260,000 so that Cohen could classify the payment as income on tax returns (for ‘legal services’) rather than a reimbursement, allowing Cohen to make a profit once he’d paid income tax on the payment, assuming a total tax liability of 50 percent. So, not technically money-laundering, but pretty close. Close enough for the law, anyway. Not only did Michael Cohen go to prison over this, it was known during his trial that Trump was in fact aware of the payments Cohen made and agreed to pay him back. It was also revealed in the statement that Trump tried to delay the payment to Daniels as long as possible, preferably after the election, “because by that point it would not matter if the story became public.”
So so much for the idea that Trump was just trying to protect Melania from being hurt by the knowledge he’d had an affair. I mean, Melania was dating Trump when he was separated but not divorced from Marla Maples, so I don’t think it would surprise her that he was cheating. I mean, not like Melania is less likely to leave Trump than Lindsey Graham is. On that score, given that the transactions occurred just after the Access Hollywood tape, the Trump team, and most observers, really thought Trump was on the ropes, and one more scandal might have been enough. I don’t know. People hated Hillary Clinton THAT damn much, and the Trumpniks were that damn fanatic. I mean, early in the campaign, Trump said, in jest, “I could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes.” And the Republican Party has proven him right, rhetorically, ever since, every chance they get. All he needs to do now is actually kill somebody on Fifth Avenue, and we’ll know for sure. You might scoff, but I can see Lindsey Graham on Fox News now: “Look Sean, that three-year old was PACKING!!”
The statement of facts says that the participants mischaracterized the nature of the payments “for tax purposes.” The specific details of this constitute 34 felony counts against Defendant Trump. Now, under New York law, falsifying financial records is just a misdemeanor, but there is provision to change the charge to a felony if the State believes the act was to facilitate another crime or frustrate investigation of another crime. Also, misdemeanors have a statute of limitations. However, the statement of facts does not specify what second offense would justify elevating the charges to felonies.
But even though there are weaknesses in the case that a competent lawyer could exploit, that would assume Trump had a competent lawyer. That doesn’t seem to be the case. Trump runs through lawyers like Spinal Tap runs through drummers, and for similar reasons. While there were a couple people on Trump’s legal team Tuesday who looked like members of Homo sapiens sapiens, his main lawyer is currently a guy named Joe Tacopina, who was probably most famous for his grappling match against MSNBC’s Ari Melber as he tried to pull a document from Melber’s hand during an interview.
Even funnier, this guy donated to a Democrat (then-Congresswoman Kathleen Rice) who called for Trump to be prosecuted over his pressure call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger to “find” enough votes to swing the state. Republicans have issued fatwas for less. Not only that, in 2018, when all this stuff with Cohen came out, Tacopina was a legal analyst on CNN where he said that he believed Trump had had an affair with Daniels because “it means it’s true if he hasn’t threatened to sue” and on another show said “this could be looked as an in-kind contribution at the time of the election.”
But apparently this guy wasn’t hired for his smarts or consistency, but because he’d been one of the guys who defended a January 6 rioter in court (unsuccessfully). Like Cohen or Anthony Scaramucci, he’s not really there to provide legal acumen but to be Trump’s mouthpiece to the mainstream media and present that New York Tough Guy attitude Trump loves to fake so much, but with the imprimatur of a law degree.
It’s going to be that much harder for Trump to defend himself, given that when he was interviewed by Sean Hannity and Sean said “I can’t imagine you ever saying, ‘bring me back some of the boxes that we brought back from the White House, I’d like to take a look at them” Trump said, “I would have the right to do that, there’s nothing wrong with it.”
Any lawyer who agrees to become Donald Trump’s defense attorney would have to be that much more stupid and gullible than he is, which would certainly explain Joe Tacopina.
Much of what Tacopina and Trump’s other legal minds have put together as a defense, prior to arraignment, was more ad hominem attacks against the various other parties, especially Michael Cohen. And certainly if Cohen wasn’t lying when he was first being investigated, he can be easily accused of not telling the truth now. Which is why I’m sure the prosecution is also relying on other sources, including Allen Weisselberg, who it seems has just switched attorneys.
But as Cohen himself said to Republicans in Congress when he was ordered to testify there, his job was to do what they’re doing now, support and defend Donald Trump. And if things keep going at this rate, they are all going to end up where he is now.
But all that being the case, it just comes back to the point that Michael Cohen is himself Exhibit A in the case. He was the instrument of the transactions, not the person who ordered them made. So if nothing Trump did rises to the level of a criminal offense, why was Cohen investigated on virtually identical charges, and why did HE go to prison for them and NOT Trump?
Which just leads to the other whine of the Church of Trump, that this is all “political” and none of these charges would be pursued if this wasn’t Trump. First, when the Republican Party’s entire agenda for the House of Representatives is “let’s get Hunter Biden’s laptop”, saying that the other side is trying to politicize the justice system is a bit rich. But frankly, none of this stuff would be happening if this wasn’t Trump, and if this wasn’t a particular moment in time. Because if it’s political to go after Trump now, it was no less “political” not to go after him when the transactions occurred. Because then he was a popular celebrity, the nominee of one of the major parties for president, eventually to be the president, and as far as his base was concerned, a sweet little boy who could never do anything wrong. To say that they’re going after Trump now because they can is to tacitly admit that they couldn’t go after Trump then, because the nature of the offenses has not changed, but the system was always acting on the basis of politics and optics and not the objective merits of the charges. So if the charges are the same as they were years ago, what has changed in regard to Trump since he became President?
Shall we review again?
Fired the FBI director who was in charge of investigating Trump’s activities prior to the election, telling Lester Holt that he did so specifically over the “Russia thing”, immediately thereafter gave intelligence to the Russian Foreign Minister while he was in Washington, had a press conference with Putin where he basically spread his cheeks and let Putin ream him in front of international cameras,
Played “both sides” to support white supremacists at the Charlottesville protest, including Richard Spencer and David Duke,
Gave his son-in-law a position of power in his Administration, basically as Minister Without Portfolio, since he was never approved by Congress, said son-in-law used that position to make money off the Saudis, and used that influence to pressure Qatar into refinancing his real estate deal, including a Saudi blockade of Qatar, said son-in-law was appointed to lead a coronavirus task force in 2020, and in that capacity shut down vaccine research, allegedly on the grounds that “the political folks believed that because [the virus] was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors and that would be an effective political strategy.”
And when refusing to deal with coronavirus somehow led to more Democrats voting and more Republicans splitting the ticket, he ran through various schemes such as appointing “substitute electors” in red states that went for Biden, personally called Raffensberger to swing Georgia by himself, and when all that didn’t work, tried to pressure his own Vice President, Mike Pence, into decertifying the vote, getting his people like Steve Bannon to organize mobs around the January event, and when Pence refused to go along, that mob broke through the doors of the Capitol, hunted legislators, smeared feces on the walls, and ran Confederate battle flags through the halls of the Capitol, which Robert E. Lee was never able to do.
Let’s just say any ONE of these should have inspired an appropriate response from authorities.
Oh, I didn’t even get into the weeds of Trump holding all those government documents at Mar-a-Lago just cause he says he can.
The outrage is not that Our Lord And Savior is being obsessively persecuted by the “deep state” (which prior to Trump was just ‘the state’) but that it’s taken them SO GODDAMN LONG.
And if this is the weakest case against Trump, look at all the other cases building up, like the Mar-a-Lago documents case and the Georgia case where it’s going to be extremely hard to prove that Brad Raffensberger didn’t catch Trump attempting election tampering on tape. Everybody’s waiting for the next shoe to drop, and Trump’s got more “shoes” than Imelda Marcos.
Happy Easter. Remember, Good Christians (TM), Trump can’t really be Jesus until he’s crucified.