Daily Archives: September 22, 2022

Donald Trumps legal perils have become insurmountable and could snuff out the former US presidents hopes of an election-winning comeback, according to political analysts and legal experts.

On Wednesday, Trump and three of his adult children were accused of lying to tax collectors, lenders and insurers in a staggering fraud scheme that routinely misstated the value of his properties to enrich themselves.

The civil lawsuit, filed by New Yorks attorney general, came as the FBI investigates Trumps holding of sensitive government documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and a special grand jury in Georgia considers whether he and others attempted to influence state election officials after his defeat there by Joe Biden.

The former US president has repeatedly hinted that he intends to run for the White House again in 2024. But the cascade of criminal, civil and congressional investigations could yet derail that bid.

Hes done, said Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University, in Washington, who has accurately predicted every presidential election since 1984. Hes got too many burdens, too much baggage to be able to run again even presuming he escapes jail, he escapes bankruptcy. Im not sure hes going to escape jail.

After a three-year investigation, Letitia James, the New York attorney general, alleged that Trump provided fraudulent statements of his net worth and false asset valuations to obtain and satisfy loans, get insurance benefits and pay lower taxes. Offspring Don Jr, Ivanka and Eric were also named as defendants.

At a press conference, James riffed on the title of Trumps 1987 memoir and business how-to book, The Art of the Deal.

This investigation revealed that Donald Trump engaged in years of illegal conduct to inflate his net worth, to deceive banks and the people of the great state of New York. Claiming you have money that you do not have does not amount to the art of the deal. Its the art of the steal, she said.

Her office requested that the former president pay at least $250m in penalties and that his family be banned from running businesses in the state.

James cannot bring criminal charges against Trump in this civil investigation but she said she was referring allegations of criminal fraud to federal prosecutors in Manhattan as well as the Internal Revenue Service.

Trump repeated his go-to defence that the suit is another witch hunt against him and again referred to James, who is Black, as racist, via his Truth Social platform, also calling her a fraud who campaigned on a get Trump platform, despite the fact that the city is one of the crime and murder disasters of the world under her watch!

But critics said the suit strikes at the heart of Trumps self-portrayal as a successful property developer who made billions, hosted the reality TV show The Apprentice and promised to apply that business acumen to the presidency.

Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University, noted that the civil component involves things of particular significance to Trump and his family and his organisation, namely their ability to defraud the public, to defraud banks, to defraud insurance companies, and to continue to subsist through corruption. Without all of that corruption, the entire Trump empire is involved in something like meltdown.

Tribe added: Trump is probably more concerned with things of this kind than he is with having to wear an orange jumpsuit and maybe answer a criminal indictment As a practical matter, this is probably going to cause more sleepless nights for Mr Trump than almost anything else.

No previous former president has faced investigations so numerous and so serious. Last month FBI agents searched Mar-a-Lago and seized official documents marked Top Secret, Secret and Confidential. Trump faces possible indictment for violating the Espionage Act, obstruction of a federal investigation or mishandling sensitive government records.

As so often during his business career, Trump sought to throw sand in the legal gears. He bought time by persuading a court to appoint a judge, Raymond Dearie, as a special master to review the documents. But so far Dearie appears to be far from a yes-man. On Tuesday he warned Trumps lawyers: My view is you cant have your cake and eat it too.

Start the day with the top stories from the US, plus the days must-reads from across the Guardian

The ex-president also faces a state grand jury investigation in Georgia over efforts to subvert that states election result in 2020.

The justice department is investigating his role in the deadly January 6 attack on the US Capitol by a mob of his supporters intent on preventing the certification of Bidens election victory. Its efforts have been boosted by the parallel investigation by a House of Representatives committee, whose hearings are set to resume next week.

In addition, the Trump Organization which manages hotels, golf courses and other properties around the world is set to go on trial next month in a criminal case alleging that it schemed to give untaxed perks to senior executives, including its longtime finance chief Allen Weisselberg, who alone took more than $1.7m in extras.

In a further setback on Wednesday, arguably Trumps worst-ever day of legal defeats, a federal appeals court permitted the justice department to resume its review of classified records seized from Mar-a-Lago as part of its criminal investigation.

The former president, meanwhile, insisted that he did nothing wrong in retaining the documents. There doesnt have to be a process, as I understand it, he told the Fox News host Sean Hannity. If youre the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying: Its declassified.

Even by thinking about it, because youre sending it to Mar-a-Lago or to wherever youre sending it ... There can be a process, but there doesnt have to be.

Despite it all, Trump has been laying the groundwork for a potential comeback campaign and has accused Bidens administration of targeting him to undermine his political prospects.

Asked by a conservative radio host what would happen if he was indicted over the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, Trump replied: I think youd have problems in this country the likes of which perhaps weve never seen before. I dont think the people of the United States would stand for it.

Kurt Bardella, an adviser to the Democratic National Committee, said: If the best defence you have for your conduct is: if you hold me accountable, there will be violence, that sounds like someone who has no business being either in public service or being outside of jail.

Bardella expressed hope that, at long last, Trump would be held to account. Everything about Donald Trump has always been about the grift. Its always been about the con. And now his unmasking is at hand.

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Hes done: how Donald Trumps legal woes have just gotten a lot worse - The Guardian US

Deference to the Constitution, as Trumps depredations make plain, is the indispensable foundation of American democracy. But deference is different than reverence. Constitution Day of 2022 arrived with more reasons to be frustrated by the defects of our national charter than at any time in generations.

The occasion underlined two related Trump-era paradoxes that likely will shape our politics long after Trumps shadow lifts.

First, Trump is properly seen as a constitutional menace, but from a progressive perspective many of the most offensive features of his tenure were not in defiance of the Constitution. Instead, they flowed directly from its most problematic provisions. He was in office in the first place because the presidency is chosen by the Electoral College rather than by the popular vote. His influence will live for decades because partisan manipulation of the Senates judicial confirmation power gave him three Supreme Court justices, who have no term limits and face no practical mechanisms of accountability. Like some other presidents, but more so, he used the Constitutions absolute pardon power for nakedly self-interested reasons. In short, Trump may be an enemy of the Constitution but he is also the president who most zealously exploited its defects.

That leads to the second paradox. Anyone who is not a Trump backer properly bemoans the breakdown in constitutional consensus that allows his supporters to tolerate or celebrate his election denialism, in addition to other efforts to insulate himself from rule of law. Long-term, however, the more bracing challenge to constitutional consensus is likely to come from the left, from believers in activist government.

Correcting or circumventing what progressives reasonably perceive as the infirmities of the Constitution, in fact, seems likely to be the preeminent liberal objective of the next generation. Progress on issues ranging from climate change to ensuring that technology giants act in the public interest will hinge on creating a new constitutional consensus. Trying to place more sympathetic justices on the Supreme Court is not likely to be a fully adequate remedy. There are more fundamental challenges embedded in the document itself in particular the outsized power it gives to states, at a time when the most urgent problems and most credible remedies are national in character.

To be clear, there is much that is wondrous and enduring in the Constitution. The things that are weak could be corrected by amendments that would easily draw majority support from a national electorate. In addition to the list above altering or abolishing the Electoral College, term limits for the Court, creating some check on abuse of the pardon authority there are other obvious targets. A constitutional renovation would clean up the infuriatingly murky language of the Second Amendment to make clear if effective gun control is allowed if the guns have nothing do with a well-regulated militia.

Here, though, is where the breakdown in constitutional consensus becomes potentially climactic as it did during the Civil War, and threatened to in the New Deal. Popular majority or no, most of those amendments would be opposed by conservatives which under the terms of the existing Constitution means they likely would not pass. It takes three quarters of the states to approve an amendment, a provision that gives many small, conservative states wildly disproportionate power over the fate of the nation.

This is hardly a new problem, but it is one that threatens to reach a breaking point. The political scientist Norman Ornstein has popularized an arresting statistic, one that is validated by demographic experts. By 2040, 70 percent of Americans will live in just 15 states. That means 30 percent of the population coming from places that are less diverse and more conservative will choose 70 senators. Already each senator from Wyoming, the least populous state, exercises his power on behalf of less than 600,000 people, while each senator from California, the most populous, represents nearly 40 million. This distortion of democracy, already hard to defend, could become the defining feature of national life.

This distortion, far more than Trumps vandalism, is the most likely the source of a true constitutional crisis in the years ahead.

But isnt this exactly what the Founders had in mind, with their conviction that the country was a union of states that retained ample sovereignty? One answer is that the current conflicts plaguing U.S. democracy may not be at all what they wished for. The great concern of the framers was creating a system of government with the capacity for self-critique and self-correction. Several features of the Constitution now interfere with that capacity.

Another answer, however, is: Who cares what they thought then? The Constitution was written at a time when states were indeed foundational a central part of peoples identity and way of life. This has not been true for nearly a century, as both national government and national identity have become stronger. States are still essential administrative units. But the rural conservative voter in California which had more Trump voters than any state, even as he lost it by nearly 30 points has more in common politically with a rural conservative from South Dakota than either have with urban progressives in New York or San Francisco.

The most effective leaders have not cleaved to constitutional understandings that have been overtaken by new moral imperatives. Abraham Lincoln used the exigencies of war to eradicate slavery, even as slavery until that time had been regarded as a protected constitutional right. By general law life and limb must be protected; yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb, Lincoln wrote in a famous letter. I felt that measures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful, by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the constitution, through the preservation of the nation.

So what will happen this time, when amending the Constitution seems improbable but living indefinitely with outdated provisions seems intolerable?

History suggests multiple possibilities. A decisive conflict is one answer the reason talk of a new Civil War is increasingly common. Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman (who gave his Constitution Day speech this year at Brigham Young University) wrote in last years The Broken Constitution: Lincoln, Slavery, and the Refounding of America that Lincoln did not so much save the Constitution as something more dramatic and more extreme: the frank breaking and frank remaking of the entire order of union, rights, constitution, and liberty.

But there are other ways short of violent rupture to survive those moments, as now, when the Constitution no longer reflects the imperatives of the moment. One of those ways is when artful improvisation creates a new consensus. The Supreme Court struck down much of FDRs initial program, but the New Deals core assumption that we live in a national economy with a robust and responsive national government prevailed, helped along by a dramatically new understanding of the interstate commerce clause. Another way to survive is good luck. In the Cold War, presidents had (and still have) a power never contemplated in the Constitution the ability to blow up the world with nuclear bombs on command, in minutes, with no approval by Congress or anyone else.

Conflict, improvisation, good luck likely all three will be required for the country to survive the coming constitutional showdown. If successful, we can someday go back to not paying much attention to Constitution Day.

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The Best Way To Save The Constitution From Donald Trump Is To Rewrite It - POLITICO

UN Secretary-General Antnio Guterres opened the first post-pandemic meeting of the General Assembly in New York this week warning that the world is in a dangerous place: more divided than ever, teetering on the edge of totalitarianism due to economic inequity and facing a mountain of problems due to climate change. "Divides are growing deeper. Inequalities are growing wider," he said. "And challenges are spreading farther."

We all know the source of the great divide in the United States: former President Donald Trump. He's the large rock thrown into the world's political ocean, causing tsunamis and ripple effects that can tear nations asunder.

God bless his pointed, dyed and empty head, he's still hard at it. A few days earlier, Trump held a rally in Youngstown, Ohio, before his faithful QAnon followers in a half-empty arena. They raised a one-finger salute to him at such an angle that for many it invited comparison to the Nazi salute. To me it looked more like something from a Three Stooges skit. And no, it wasn't "that" finger.

Meanwhile, Marjorie Taylor Greene was accused of kicking child activists, Matt Gaetz was reported to have sought a preemptive pardon for sex-crime charges he has yet to face and Ron DeSantis and his Texas confederate, Greg Abbott, are using asylum seekers as pawns, shipping them off to Northern cities like a pair of human traffickers in training. All of this highlights the growing sense that we are two nations, instead of the United States, while also showing the world how regressive, hateful and fear-mongering the Republicans have become.

I don't feel completely certain this reality isn't just the LSD flashback my college dealer promised before I took some bad blotter acid. Meanwhile, most who have a conscience and are conscious believe there will never be a reckoning for the loathsome, dehumanizing, racist, misogynistic, rage-fueled, empty-headed, divisive actions of politicians across the globe.

I don't feel completely certain that this reality isn't just the LSD flashback my college dealer promised me before I took that blotter acid.

There is a certain unity among the fans of authoritarianism, and today the American far right is replete with Vladimir Putin lovers. Putin is the ultimate strongman in today's world and wants to get the old Soviet Union band back together. He hates democracy and, with the exception of Donald Trump, has never gotten along with American presidents. He's funneled money into politics across the globe to try and destroy democratic governments even dumping money into the NRA to spread his authoritarian message to those Americans who worship guns before Jesus, while still claiming they are Christian.

Those gun-loving evangelicals are pushing hard to make sure women die or are forced to give birth, and don't really seem to care which happens. If women die in childbirth, they'll shrug their shoulders and say, "Whatever God wills." If unwanted children are born, those same so-called Christians will shrug their shoulders and refuse the mother and child sustenance, health care or infrastructure. But they'll happily support hiring those children a few years later to pick lettuce or work in coal mines, if only they can crush the unions that once pushed for child labor laws. They are eager to defend the right to choose when it comes to COVID vaccines, but not when it comes to women. They remain chattel.

The Democrats are struggling to hold onto both their sanity and a majority in Congress. They just can't seem to figure out why anyone would still support Trump, Abbott, DeSantis, Greene, Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, Jim Jordan, Mitch McConnell or the other rancorous horsefly larvae in the Republican Party.

Rusty Bowers, an Arizona conservative Republican who testified before the House Jan. 6 committee, recently lost the GOP primary for a state Senate seat to former state Sen. David Farnsworth, who said he had "no doubt" the 2020 election was stolen from Trump by a "conspiracy headed up by the devil himself." Hmm maybe he's the one who took the wrong acid and is now having his flashback.

At any rate, Bowers said "welcome to fascism" afterward, and that seems to be where we are just six weeks from the 2022 midterm elections. That's a significant timeframe: It was six weeks before the 2020 general election when Trump told me in the White House briefing room that he wouldn't accept a peaceful transfer of power. We all know where that ended. He has never accepted his defeat.

It appears we're still in the same boat, rowing toward the Trump-induced tsunami an existential horror show highlighted by crimes against humanity and underscored by an especially scary week in news.

But let's take some time to understand what we're actually seeing this week: It's the end of Donald Trump, the death throes of an anachronistic political party and the destruction of authoritarianism (if we choose) on a global scale.

Sure, it's frightening to see Donald Trump sucking up to QAnon supporters while continuing to beg for money in the dozens of daily emails sent out to his supporters. Those QAnon folks are batshit nuts. But if they're your core supporters, you're cooked. National polls show Trump's post-presidential popularity continuing to fade. Are those QAnon supporters violent? Sure, some are. But can Trump move the mainstream like he did in 2016? Not a chance. He's supported by a continually dwindling number of malcontents, morons and mavens of autocracy. He's losing his mojo.

Sure, it's frightening to see Donald Trump sucking up to QAnon supporters they're bats**t nuts. But if they're your core supporters, you're cooked.

This week's $250 million civil suit filed in New York by state Attorney General Letitia James against Trump, his company and his three adult children underscores how little time Trump has left as a grifter preying upon a gullible public. Trump had "violated several state criminal laws, including falsifying business records, issuing false financial statements and insurance fraud," James said. She added that Trump wasn't going to get away with it just because he was an ex-president. Thank God.

Let's face it, we all knew it was going to end this way. If you saw Trump make fun of a reporter with a disability, if you ever saw him on his TV show or if you ever met the man in person you had to know. If you didn't, then you were his mark.

For months I've said that all this ends with an indictment, and I see no reason to change my mind now. Trump's former fixer, Michael Cohen, who was thanked by James in her press conference, told me afterward that he was appreciative of the shout-out (after all, the original investigation began with him) but was surprised as well. "The last few years have been filled with sadness, pain and anger," he told me, but Wednesday's announcement by James "makes all that hell worth it." Cohen also believes Trump will be indicted, and still thinks he won't run for president again. "It's all about the con," he said.

And Trump's powers to run the con are waning. He convinced a judge (who he had appointed) to order a special master to review classified and other material seized after the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago in August, but that hasn't gone so well for Trump to this point. Judge Raymond Dearie of Brooklyn the guy Trump's team wanted told Trump's lawyers, "You can't have your cake and eat it," after they consistently declined to repeat Trump's public assertions that he had declassified all the documents taken from his home. (In an interview with Sean Hannity on Wednesday evening, Trump claimed that as president he could declassify documents "just by thinking about it.") It appears Trump is no longer the master of his domain.

The news got worse for him on Wednesday when a panel of judges on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals granted a Justice Department request that will allow prosecutors to continue investigating the former president while Dearie evaluates the materials taken by the FBI from Mar-a-Lago even if the agents refused to take their shoes off.

But Trump isn't the only racist, fear-mongering con man whose time is running out.

Ron DeSantis thinks he's a pretty smart guy. He's managed to limit press coverage and criticism of his more Mussolini-like tendencies. He also really likes to stick it to the Democrats, the Walt Disney Company and anyone else in Florida who doesn't bend over and take it. He is one of the biggest peddlers of fear in our country right now. His "stunt" in shipping immigration asylum seekers to Martha's Vineyard could actually be considered a criminal act and at the very least was irrational and hateful.

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Joe Walsh, the former Tea Party congressman who was Trump's only GOP opponent in 2020, pointed directly at DeSantis for creating fear where there should be none. "This needs to be said again: There are people every day who sneak across the border and enter this country illegally," Walsh wrote on Twitter. "But people seeking asylum are NOT entering this country illegally. And those people DeSantis put on a plane were seeking asylum. They were NOT here illegally."

Turns out some of those asylum seekers are now suing DeSantis. After that he reportedly backtracked from the chorus of hearty guffaws, allegedly saying he wasn't the architect of the plan to spend Florida's tax dollars on shipping asylum seekers from Texas all the way to Massachusetts. He'll be cooked before he can ever become another Donald Trump.

Matt Gaetz is on the outs, and apparently can't find a date on Tinder or Bumble. Ted Cruz can't find a Cancn cabana in which to hide. Jim Jordan is facing scrutiny for his role in a college sexual abuse scandal, the focus of an upcoming HBO documentary produced by George Clooney. Greene and Boebert are pariahs with little actual power, just big mouths. They gain attention like the kid in the sandbox who constantly soils themselves, through indiscriminate yelling. That leaves Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul, two devilish freaks of nature who must have a special ingredient in their Kentucky bourbon to keep them standing despite their fascist tendencies. Those two, along with Bill Barr, seem to have preternatural survival instincts.

That's on the domestic front. Guterres pointed out that the problem of totalitarianism is spreading across the globe. Trump, with his bombast and open disregard for the law, enabled petty dictators everywhere. That point was underscored this week as Putin announced he would call up 300,000 reserves for the war on Ukraine and threatened to retaliate against the West with nuclear weapons if he so chooses.

"He has 81 percent of his army committed in Ukraine," a source at the National Security Council told me. "He is losing and has no other play." This move shows both Putin's weakness and his danger. Much like Trump, he's a cornered rat the man behind the rise of global authoritarianism. He's a master of deflection, propaganda and the long con, and he's made the world much more dangerous. Still, there is hope.

In Guterres' speech this week he made one thing exceptionally clear: If you can still speak out against the fascists, then there's still hope they can be defeated.

But it was Letitia James and the 11th Circuit Court on Wednesday who made that deliciously clear.

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It's a scary time in America but know this: Donald Trump is finished - Salon

Hewitt asked Trump what he meant by problems.

I think theyd have big problems. Big problems. I just dont think theyd stand for it. They will not sit still and stand for this ultimate of hoaxes, Trump said.

Its not the first time Republicans have hinted at potential civil unrest if the DOJ indicts Trump. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham made headlines last month when he said there would be riots in the street if there is a prosecution of Donald Trump for mishandling classified information. Grahams comments were slammed as irresponsible and shameful. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, without naming the South Carolina senator, said these comments from extreme Republicans were dangerous.

Hewitt appeared to see Trumps comments as a nod toward potential unrest, asking the former president how he would respond when the legacy media accuses him of inciting violence.

Thats not inciting. Im just saying what my opinion is, Trump said. I dont think the people of this country would stand for it.

On Capitol Hill, senior FBI and DHS officials briefed members of the Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security committees Thursday on the uptick in threats against federal law enforcement in the aftermath of the Mar-a-Lago search. Senators said the briefers didnt specifically pinpoint a politician or political party when it comes to the threats, but they said the trend was clear.

It was stunning the number of threats that have been cataloged since the Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago, Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said after the briefing, specifically mentioning the gunman who tried to enter an FBI building in Cincinnati, Ohio, in the days following the search. Its a much more dangerous environment because of the political statements made by some individuals since Aug. 8 its alarming to me.

Durbin said the threats ranged from explicit and specific to more generalized ones, most notably on social media. He also called out Trump for his rhetoric.

Inviting a mob to return to the streets is exactly what happened here on Jan. 6, 2021. This president knew what he was doing...and we saw the results, Durbin added. His careless, inflammatory rhetoric has its consequences.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), a Trump ally and member of the Homeland Security Committee, said after the briefing that the Justice Department needed to be more transparent about the justification for the search in order to push back against conspiracies.

You have to give people good information so these rumors dont continue, Scott said, condemning attacks on law enforcement. I dont know why they raided the former presidents house ... They know the conspiracy theories that are out there. So convince people that theyre not true.

The FBI search of Trumps Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida sparked a political firestorm last month. According to a Justice Department court filing released in August, prosecutors obtained a search warrant for the estate after receiving evidence there was likely an effort to conceal classified documents at the residence in defiance of a grand jury subpoena. Agents recovered highly classified records mixed among personal items, in addition to dozens of empty folders with classified markings.

The DOJ and Trumps lawyers are now in the midst of legal deliberations on an outside review of the seized documents.

Graham, one of Trumps staunchest Capitol Hill allies, echoed concerns that the Justice Department may have overstepped in its dealings with the former president. But he left open the possibility that the departments probe could uncover material that might justify an indictment.

Theres a belief from many on the right that the DOJ and the FBI have been less than unbiased when it comes to Trump. But having said that, nobodys above the law including the president, but the laws gonna be about politics, Graham said. So lets wait and see what they find. Ive got an open mind about what they find, but they need to have something that would justify what I think is political escalation.

Speaking with Hewitt on Thursday, Trump continued to use the defense that he declassified everything he took to Mar-a-Lago, a claim his legal team has thus far declined to make in court.

Rhetoric that could be seen as alluding to violence is not out of character for Trump. In his speech on Jan. 6, 2021, to supporters before rioters stormed the Capitol in an effort to block the certification of President Joe Bidens Electoral College victory, the then-president told the crowd to fight much harder against bad people and to show strength. His comments that day have been a focal point of Jan. 6 select committees investigation into the president and his inner circle, with investigators using one of their summer hearings to make the case that Trumps efforts to hold on to power resonated with extremist groups and brought them to the Capitol.

Nancy Vu contributed to this report.

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Trump warns of 'problems' like 'we've never seen' if he's indicted - POLITICO