Saith the king
“To Me!” cried Donald Trump, brandishing stacks of news clipping during his Manhattan criminal trial. His Republican supplicants rushed to their king dressed like him.
It is supreme irony how readily MAGA Republicans abandon their own heritage of freedom, of democratic self-rule, of the fundamentals of law dating from the Magna Carta, British common law, and William Blackstone. They’ve replaced it all with the Law of Trump. Their patriotism, like Trump’s business prowess, is a sham, disposable if power is on the line. And commitment to the principle of equal justice under law? As the expression goes: For my friends, everything, for my enemies, the law.
Half a dozen of his businesses have gone bankrupt, including casinos. Trump’s charitable foundation was a sham, dismantled, and its assets distributed to genuine charites. Trump University was judged a fraud, sued and shuttered. The Trump Organization is banned from doing business in the state of New York. Trump has been civilly judged for sexual assault. Last week, Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts of business fraud.
Trump could (in theory) be in jail by the time of the Republican convention in July. He has three other federal cases pending and possibly more state and federal cases being assembled.
Trump’s greatest achievement in bankruptcy is the moral bankruptcy of the Republican Party.
Yet MAGA Republicans hope to re-elect the convicted leader of a crime syndicate to the White House. Now a felon, Trump cannot possess a gun. They want to hand him the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
That’s not all bankrupt Republicans want to hand him.
Trump promises in a second term to weaponize the Department of Justice to punish his enemies while, as is his M.O., claiming it is payback for what was done to hold Trump the Remorseless, like a commoner, accountable to the rule of law Republicans have abandoned like American democracy.
His lackeys in Congress now hope to restructure the law to enable their liege lord to escape further punishment:
In the wake of Donald Trump’s felony convictions, House Speaker Mike Johnson told his GOP conference this week that he has a “three-pronged approach” in mind to respond to the former president’s prosecutions. The first involves “the appropriations process” — Republicans want to defund prosecutors they don’t like — and another prong relates to “oversight,” which refers to another round of partisan, conspiratorial investigations.
But the Louisiana congressman also vowed this week to make use of “the legislative process, through bills that will be advancing through our committees and put it on the floor for passage.”
Axios provides more detail:
- Conservatives want a floor vote on a bill that would allow current or former presidents to move any state case brought against them — such as the one in New York that resulted in Trump’s conviction — to federal court, according to multiple House Republican sources.
- Meanwhile, Johnson told Republicans in a conference meeting Tuesday that the House GOP will target DOJ through attempts at increased oversight, funding cuts and other means, according to a source in the room.
Moving state cases to federal courts would enable Trump, if reelected, either to shut down his prosecutions or pardon himself if convicted. The president has no pardon power in state cases. Sneaky bastards.
Oh, and the hissy fits they’ll throw now that former Trump adviser Steve Bannon is headed to jail. Greg Sargent explains:
A judge just ordered longtime Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon to surrender to prison on July 1st after his conviction for defying the Jan. 6th committee’s subpoena. Not surprisingly, Trump and MAGA have already exploded in rage. Making this worse, Bannon is one of the leading pro-Trump figures calling on Trump to jail Democrats without cause if he wins the White House—and Bannon’s jail time will only fuel that mania. We talked to Eric Columbus, a lawyer who represented the Jan. 6th committee, about the alarming signals this sends about the perils of a second Trump presidency. Listen to this episode here.
Meantime, Bannon blustered like Baghdad Bob outside the courthouse on Thursday that his going to prison means MAGA is winning.
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