All I Want for My Birthday Is to See Trump in Court

It’s indictment watch time, have your popcorn ready

The chattering class went full on coo-coo yesterday when it was learned that former president Donald Trump's lawyers (James Trusty, John Rowley and Lindsey Halligan) attended a two hour Justice Department meeting that included special counsel Jack Smith. 

There is no way of knowing what actually transpired behind closed doors, but that hasn’t stopped ‘experts’ and ‘whack-a-doodles’ alike from speculating that an arrest is near. 

In big cases, a pre-charging conference with defense lawyers happens with some regularity. In this instance, Trump’s team sent a letter two weeks ago demanding a sit down over what they said were instances of prosecutorial misconduct.

Trump’s lawyers got their chance to run those accusations up the flagpole today, and the (unconfirmed) scuttlebutt is that Jack Smith invited them to address their complaints with the Department of Justice Inspector General. If the complaints had any substance to them, I’m presuming one of Trump’s lawyers would have already contacted the IG office. 

It would appear as though the lawyers didn’t deem anybody worthy of hearing Trump's tales of woe besides the special counsel and the Attorney General (who did not attend the meeting).

In other words, the meeting was performative nonsense designed to keep the ex-president’s loyalists engaged. The Guardian’s coverage included this sentence: "DOJ is said to have found the meeting as rather unproductive."

The fringe media of MAGAland is frothing at the mouth, running story after story about how the justice department is doing their hero wrong.

Here’s my personal favorite, courtesy of Media Matters:

• On May 31, Gateway Pundit published an article titled: “SMOKING GUN? Latest Leak by Jack Smith Involves Ridiculous War Plan by Dummy Mark Milley to ‘Deploy Massive Numbers of Troops’ into Iran – Something the White House Scoffed At.” The article claimed that “dirty Special Counsel Jack Smith” had leaked the information to CNN.

I’m gonna say here that Trump knows he’s about to be charged with something, based on his ALL CAPS social media rant on meeting day – in case you haven't noticed, the ex-president lies a lot.

“HOW CAN DOJ POSSIBLY CHARGE ME, WHO DID NOTHING WRONG, WHEN NO OTHER PRESIDENT’S WERE CHARGED, WHEN JOE BIDEN WON’T BE CHARGED FOR ANYTHING, INCLUDING THE FACT THAT HE HAS 1,850 BOXES, MUCH OF IT CLASSIFIED, AND SOME DATING BACK TO HIS SENATE DAY WHEN EVEN DEMOCRAT SENATORS ARE SHOCKED. ALSO, PRESIDENT CLINTON HAD DOCUMENTS, AND WON IN COURT. CROOKED HILLARY DELETED 33,000 EMAILS, MANY CLASSIFIED, AND WASN’T EVEN CLOSE TO BEING CHARGED! ONLY TRUMP - THE GREATEST WITCH HUNT OF ALL TIME!”

The federal grand jury considering the matter will reportedly meet this week, after a lull in activity.

Side Note–This weekend, San Diego County Republicans played a special message from the ex-president at their annual Lincoln-Reagan dinner. In his list of all the terrible things San Diego and California have become, Trump called out the region as “a garbage dump.”

The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson penned a column outlining the government case relevant to the mishandling classified documents:

• What is hard to understand — and, to my mind, illegal — is for a departing president to deliberately take thousands of documents that belong to the American people, including some classified at the highest top-secret level, and then spend over a year obstructing efforts by the Archives and Justice Department to retrieve those papers.

He ended by saying it would be wrong to celebrate a felony indictment.

• Do not be joyful at the prospect. It is sad that a former president might soon face federal charges of mishandling classified information — or worse. It is sad that a former president already faces state charges of falsifying business records to hide a hush money payment to an adult-film star. It is tragic that a former president might soon face more state and federal charges for trying to overturn the result of a presidential election.

• May justice be done, without fear or favor. And may the nation never again entrust such power and responsibility to such a small, craven, supremely unworthy man.

I beg to disagree. 

For all the times, starting with Trump’s original campaign announcement, myself and millions of people shared the sinking feeling that danger was ahead; for all the times he defamed democracy, for all the crimes we don’t know (yet) about, for all the people who suffered in his political gyrations, we deserve an emotional recompense. 

The odds are high that Trump will drag the legal process out for many years; it’s what he does to provide space between an accusation and a legal conclusion. Just ask the hundreds of contractors the man has stiffed over the years. Or even the lawyers still waiting for payment from litigation during his presidency.

Given his lifestyle, odds are that he’ll be deep into the abode of the damned before all the appeals of his criminal cases are settled. Here’s the sad part; many of the worst parts of his governance will live on and his legacy will start to get cleaned up before any judgements are reached. 

We have the example of Richard Nixon to prove that point. Nixon is now almost a comical figure in many people’s minds, waving his hands with the victory symbol and saying “I am not a crook.”

Meanwhile, five decades after the fact, the “war on drugs” continues and the racist Southern strategy continues to define American politics.

So Trump getting indicted (multiple times, I hope) is the closest to justice the American people will see. I am a lot older than when I celebrated with champagne in the streets by the White House in 1974, but in my heart the moments of joy will live on.

I'm kinda hoping the paperwork and arrangements for an arraignment delay the actual charging until next Monday. 

It would be a swell 74th birthday present.

Other News: I Didn’t Make This Stuff Up

INTELLIGENCE OFFICIALS SAY U.S. HAS RETRIEVED CRAFT OF NON-HUMAN ORIGIN ALL CAPS HEADLINE Via the Debrief. 

Before you write this off as a supermarket tabloid headline, realize this story has named and credible sources and was written by the ex-New York Times reporters who broke the front page 2017 story about the existence of a secret Pentagon program tracking questionable flying objects. 

• A former intelligence official turned whistleblower has given Congress and the Intelligence Community Inspector General extensive classified information about deeply covert programs that he says possess retrieved intact and partially intact craft of non-human origin.

• The information, he says, has been illegally withheld from Congress, and he filed a complaint alleging that he suffered illegal retaliation for his confidential disclosures, reported here for the first time.

• Other intelligence officials, both active and retired, with knowledge of these programs through their work in various agencies, have independently provided similar, corroborating information, both on and off the record.

***

A plethora of stories about Democratic fringe candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. just popped up. I’ll spare you the headlines, but you should stop for a moment to consider the amazing coincidence of all these stories coming at basically the same time. A sampling:

• At Twitter, Elon Musk broadcast a chat and won a surprise endorsement for the candidate from former Twitter bossman Jack Dorsey.

• The Washington Post published a deep profile of RFK, Jr.

• The New York Times ran coverage of the Musk/RFK chat. 

• Dan Fieffer at The Message Box focused on the MAGA/Kennedy courtship

• Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson featured Kennedy as a guest on his program

• (He’s been featured on Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and in a Fox Nation documentary on Kennedy's candidacy)

• CNN Business ran with a RFK Jr story about how Elon Musk is featuring candidates who align with his political views.

***

Watch: Republicans literally beg migrants not to leave Florida over DeSantis anti-immigration law via Raw story. A couple of state legislators met with migrant workers to explain that DeSantis' bill is really no big deal. Apparently they think these field workers are stupid.

• "This bill is 100% supposed to scare you," Roth told the group. "I'm a farmer, and the farmers are mad as hell. We are losing employees. They are already starting to move to Georgia and other states."

• "It's urgent that you talk to all of your people and convince them that you have resources, state representatives, and other people that can explain the bill to you," he continued.

***

Deadly heat index temperatures for Puerto Rico and British Virgin Islands as rare heat dome arrives. Via Daily Kos. (Get ready for similar news from a lot of localities this summer)

• Meteorologists have been left stunned by a record heat index for the Northern tier of Puerto Rico and the British Virgin Islands as a rare heat dome settles over parts of the Caribbean region. Heat-index temperatures could reach up to 127 degrees Fahrenheit today.

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