Our democracy is in jeopardy. Passing voting rights legislation through Congress would help stem the downward spiral, but punishment for those plotting democracy’s demise would be a more immediate tonic.
Nearly a full year after the Trump-inspired assault on the U.S. Capitol, a federal court last week sentenced a Florida man to over five years in prison for assaulting police during the breach. It is the longest sentence to-date for the nearly 700 charged in the attack:
By a little before 5 p.m., Mr. Palmer found himself amid the most severe fighting at the lower west terrace, where an almost medieval form of hand-to-hand combat had erupted. There, prosecutors say, he threw a wooden plank-like spear at the police, sprayed a fire extinguisher at officers and then hurled the empty canister at them.
Before his sentencing hearing in Federal District Court in Washington, Mr. Palmer, 54, wrote a letter to Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, saying that he had come to recognize that Mr. Trump and his allies had lied to their supporters by “spitting out the false narrative about a stolen election and how it was ‘our duty’ to stand up to tyranny.”
Palmer is still one of the small fry. If this country is going to put the brakes on the antidemocratic contagion spreading through the country like a coronavirus, bigger fish need to be brought to justice. A number the Trump White House’s bootlicks deserve serious scrutiny. Whether the Biden Justice Department will have the stones to prosecute them, if evidence warrants, remains in doubt. But if Texas believes it necessary to make an example of Crystal Mason for voting for president in error in a state where it would not count, justice demands punishment for those who plotted a coup to overthrow a national election. And it would be good for our collective mental health.
Before that happens, the state of New York could make an example of their boss.
“I anticipate they’re going to bring a racketeering charge against Trump,” investigative journalist David Cay Johnston told MSNBC host Yasmin Vossoughian Saturday afternoon. Johnston believes that will be the outcome of the Manhattan District Attorney’s investigation of Donald Trump and his family’s company. But there could be tax charges as well.
The charges will likely relate to Trump’s manipulation of his property valuations, inflating them to obtain favorable loans in some cases and lowering them to avoid taxes in others.
“So what they’re doing is showing that Trump knowingly, deliberately, with malice aforethought and intent to deceive, was manipulating the system,” Johnston said. “And when you take out a mortgage loan, in particular, you usually sign under penalty of perjury.”
“Certainly Trump’s team, when he’s indicted, and I’m certain he will be indicted, is going to try to lay the blame on everybody else, and so what the prosecutors want to show that is if (Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer) Allen Weisselberg phonied up documents, it was at the direction of Donald Trump.”
Are you sure about that? asked Vossoughian. Raw Story:
“Oh, yeah,” Johnston responded. “They would not have done all of this and know how much they know … if they weren’t going to do this. Yeah, they will indict him. Exactly when? I don’t know. I don’t expect it will be on a straight tax charge. I think there will be a tax charge, but the key charge will be racketeering.”
He added that the timing of the indictment will depend on how long it takes prosecutors to go through five million pages of documents that were handed over by the Trump Organization.
“Once he’s indicted, Trump will have to surrender himself to be booked. I’m sure he will be released on his own recognizance, and then we will see a campaign of trying to delay trial,” Johnston said. “You will see Donald say, ‘This is corrupt, the prosecutors are corrupt, the police are corrupt, the auditors are corrupt,’ because that’s what Roy Cohn taught him when he was a young man — accuse law enforcement, and then delay, delay, delay.”
Perhaps Trump’s current wife can give him tips on how to perp-walk like a supermodel.