Rude Pundit: The Gnawing Anxiety That Trump Will Get Away With All of It

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2022/09/the-gnawing-anxiety-that-trump-will-get.html

I can't get past something when it comes to the multiple crimes of Donald Trump, who really was president (something I still can't fucking believe happened - I mean, I know it happened. I'm not denying the existence of facts, like Trump and his braindead legions do. I'm just always gonna be like "Fuck us that we let that happen&quot . And it's really simple, one of those elegant confluences of circumstance that should have complete clarity. It's this:

The law is intensely clear: With a few exceptions that need to be approved, the records of a presidential administration belong to the nation, not the president. All of it, classified, unclassified, and declassified, go to the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, an office set up to take care of those records that are, again, by law, the nation's. There's no wiggle room on this. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals made it crystal-fuckin'-clear in its decision this week in favor of the Justice Department when it comes to the hundred or so documents found by the FBI at Trump's shitty fake castle, Mar-a-lago. "They are ‘owned by, produced by or for, or . . . under the control of the United States Government,'" it wrote.

And this is what bugs the shit out of me. I get that rich people are treated differently when it comes to legal matters. I get that presidents are treated with kid gloves for some goddamn reason. But Trump and the people around him took those documents that don't belong to him. Then NARA gave them the benefit of the doubt (or pretended to) and said, "Hey, you took these documents that by law don't belong to you. Please give them back." Then, not only did they not give them all back, they lied and said they did, which means they fucking well knew they had shit that didn't belong to them. Under the most generous of definitions, that's theft. They fucking robbed the country.

So I cannot wrap my brain around the idea that Trump and everyone involved in keeping the documents were not immediately arrested when the FBI fucking caught them with stolen fucking property. As just about everyone sane who has commented on this, from across the political spectrum, has said, if anyone else had been caught hiding government documents, let alone super-duper Top Secret Classified documents, the FBI would have sealed them in concrete until trial.

*snip*

[dalton99a]

1. Kick

And it's not just that Trump's gotten away with so much throughout his life. How many regular, working and middle class stiffs does he have to dick over before the rest understand they're being conned? How the fuck did it take so long for some entity in New York to seriously go after his entire ass? And why do they always stop short of actually arresting someone who has blatantly flouted the law? I'm honestly pissed as hell at Cyrus Vance and every AG and DA who allowed Trump and his shit children to remain free to fuck over more people. The only explanation that makes sense is that they have been corrupted in some way. It's why Letitia James's actions have been so stunning and relieving to many of us up here. You can sit there in another area of the country and think it was wrong for her to be so open about her desire to bring Trump down. But you don't understand how much we genuinely fucking hate him. She could be so brazen in her contempt for Trump because Trump's been so brazen in his contempt for the law.

I don't fear that Trump will get away with all of it simply because he has, though. His lawyers are shit, but they are good at the one thing that they can get away with: delaying the gavel coming down as he's dragged away, screaming about "fake judges" and "rigged jury" into the prison abyss he so richly deserves (a moment that would give me a thrill that would not be unlike an explosive orgasm). It's obvious that the gamble is that the GOP takes over the House of Representatives and then shuts down any investigation or prosecution through the power of the purse. I've said before that we're talking about a cabal of barking mad, rabid animals defending their pack leader. It's a gamble, sure, but even as Democrats are polling better, the gerrymandered-to-death map still favors Republicans. And when Republicans win by even one, they act like they just slaughtered their enemies and left them in a heap in their burnt cities as they hump the ashes in triumph.

"But what about Georgia and New York?" an imaginary reader might ask. Those cases would go forward, but then we're into what happens in Georgia in 2022 and we're into the delays until 2024. The New York case is going to take years because that's the way financial bullshit works. Then the gamble is that Trump or someone Trumpish is gonna win the presidency. Then we're all so fucked that we're gonna have to head into the streets to stop the Christian nationalists from forcing us into the "Love Jesus or Die" camps.

I hope I'm wrong. I hope that this is just that typical Democratic anxiety about winning. I honestly hope that by the time I hit "Publish" on this, we'll at least have an indictment. But an indictment is just the beginning of the process. So many things need to go right. So many people need to not fuck it all up. And there are so many others who will be trying to knock any prosecution off the rails, up to and including perhaps a majority of the Supreme Court.

Yeah, fucking enjoy Trump's shitty week. Enjoy the shitty weeks to come. But we're not playing a fair game here. Or that dull orange motherfucker would be sitting in a cell, awaiting trial.

[Justice matters.]

5. "the power of the purse" ... v. The Power of a Presidential Veto. eom

[Genki Hikari]

9. This!

She could be so brazen in her contempt for Trump because Trump's been so brazen in his contempt for the law.

So much this!

[Genki Hikari]

10. How do I get that grayed blockquote thing?

Is there some magic trick for it?

[Jade Fox]

2. The last paragraph here says it all...

Trump and Co. should have been arrested immediatly.

[AKwannabe]

3. AND all this comes out AFTER Jan 6

The MAIN REASON THE MOTHERFUCKER SHOULD ALREADY BE IN JAIL.




FUCK

[Scrivener7]

4. I agree totally with EVERY DAMN WORD of that.

[Blue Owl]

6. K&R

[uponit7771]

7. K&R, I'll put money in it TFG is another Whitey Bulger. DOJ has enough evidence to charge him 10 x

The classified docs he took are his get out of jail free card

[Hermit-The-Prog]

8. That thing should've been just getting out on parole by the 2016 election.

His crimes date back to the '70s.

[Genki Hikari]

11. The only people who benefited

From trying to do business with TFG are the contractors who got outbid.

My grandfather once withdrew a bid for a high-end project, much to my grandmother's consternation. He had to do it because he knew from the rumor mill that he couldn't go low enough to do a good job at the rate some of his competitors were willing to reduce to, to get the work.

But he was the one who came out looking like a genius after several of the contractors on the project got stiffed, one way or another. Nobody made any money off it except the developer. Several good men went out of business, and my grandfather wound up helping some of them get back on their feet again.

Guys like TFG can destroy whole economies or communities with their avarice and venality. That one developer nearly destroyed ours. New York is lucky that it's big enough to withstand such a monster.