Category: Politics

On the First 2024 Republican Candidate Debate

First, full disclosure:  We won’t be able to watch the first Republican Party presidential debate this Wednesday.  Quite a while back, we opted to go to a reduced cable station package, and elected not to include Fox News because I saw no reason to put such an unnecessary strain on my aging heart 😉 .  (I’m shocked that the Republican National Committee hasn’t offered me a seat in the Milwaukee debate hall; after all, I am just down the road 🙂 ).  That said, a few pre-game observations (based on the understanding that even candidates refusing to pledge to support whomever is ultimately the GOP nominee will be allowed to participate):

The easiest first:  former President Donald Trump is obviously making the wise strategic move to skip the debate.  Aside from the most important point – he would almost certainly say something that could be used to incriminate him in one of his upcoming criminal trials – in skipping the debate he’s avoiding a clash with former NJ Gov. Chris Christie, who would be gunning for him (please excuse the old reference) and is even better at slugging it out than Mr. Trump is.  (Mr. Christie has assumed the mantle of Overt Trump Adversary that I have previously indicated in these pages that I thought former U.S. WY Rep. Liz Cheney might play.)  At the same time, even though Mr. Trump will not be on the stage, my guess is that he will still sustain some political damage.  Mr. Christie is going to repeatedly call the former president a coward for not showing up – at least when he’s not calling Mr. Trump a liar, a loser, and a traitor.  This will probably shave no more than a point off Mr. Trump’s core Republican support, but I’ll venture that it may have a significant impact upon the moderate conservatives tuning in who are tired of Mr. Trump.  These citizens may never vote for President Joe Biden, but Mr. Christie’s verbal assaults will be the first in a continuing barrage that may start to dampen these moderate conservatives’ willingness to turn out for Mr. Trump in November if he is the GOP nominee.

FL Gov. Ron DeSantis has clearly been employing what I will call the “Rotting Redwood” strategy.  By this time, Mr. DeSantis and his advisors must realize that he can’t beat Mr. Trump, one-on-one; they are trying to “hang around” so that if the prosecution worms eating at Mr. Trump, now seemingly an impregnable political redwood, suddenly cause him to topple over, Mr. DeSantis, as the tallest sapling, will be in position to scoop up the nomination.  The trouble with this strategy is:  Mr. DeSantis is boring.  The only thing worse than an autocrat is a boring autocrat.  Everyone on that stage is going to be attacking him, because they are all aware that their only hope for the nomination is to be “the best of the rest.”  Although Mr. DeSantis handily beat former FL Gov. Charlie Christ to retain his governorship in 2022, I saw clips of their debate in which Mr. DeSantis simply froze when challenged by Mr. Crist in some pretty predictable areas.  Up against Mr. Christie and former SC Gov. Nikki Haley – who also knows how to throw a punch, as long as Mr. Trump is not the target – Mr. DeSantis has the most to gain or lose.  If he shines, he remains the Great Anybody But Trump Hope.  If he stumbles – and thereafter falls to third or fourth among Republican candidates – he’s finished.  Recall that Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign started to slide when then-U.S. HI Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (put aside what we’ve since learned about Ms. Gabbard) hit Ms. Harris during a candidate debate with questions about Ms. Harris’ record as San Francisco District Attorney that Ms. Harris simply froze on.

Ms. Haley and U.S. SC Sen. Tim Scott will be engaging in a fascinating exchange.  Both have reportedly stirred interest among Iowans for the first Republican caucus, and each needs to sidle past Mr. DeSantis, but both will have to use some of their air time taking shots – perhaps veiled – at the other (if not this week, soon); each is undoubtedly aware that whoever loses to the other in their home state South Carolina primary will be effectively eliminated, no matter what Mr. Trump’s situation is.  Their candidacies also raise a question I have, which I’ve not heard spoken of elsewhere:  Is the Republican Party ready to award its presidential nomination to a person of color?  I have always felt that if the late U.S. Gen. Colin Powell had run for the Republican nomination in 2000, he would have beaten former President George W. Bush for the Republican presidential nomination and former Vice President Al Gore for the presidency, and we’d have a much different – and much better – world today; but he didn’t, we don’t, and the Republican party is chasms from where it was in 2000.  If Ms. Haley or Mr. Scott secure the nomination, I’m sure Republican stalwarts would vote for either rather than a despised, diabolical, demented, Godless, rabidly progressive crime boss like Mr. Biden 😉 , but  I just don’t see the party nominating a black man or an Asian woman when there are plenty of good ol’ white men available.  

Which brings us to the third candidate of color:  Vivek Ramaswamy.  Of all the candidates on stage – save, perhaps, Mr. Christie — I will most miss seeing him.  If my Twitter feed – a highly, highly unreliable source — is to be believed, Mr. Ramaswamy seems to believe that there is a path to the nomination for a person of color, as long as s/he is willing to out-fascist Messrs. Trump and DeSantis.  I’d start with an open mind and see whether he actually voices some of the positions that I’ve seen attributed to him.  Alas, an opportunity which will be sacrificed to protect my cardiovascular system.   

Whether or not you agree with their policy views, former Vice President Mike Pence and former AR Gov. Asa Hutchinson are good men who have proven themselves determined to safeguard our republic.  I fear that they’re too mild to stand out in this field.

Apparently, ND Gov. Doug Burgum will also be on stage.  I’ve seen clips of Mr. Burgum, and he might be plain-spoken and sensible – as U.S. CO Sen. Michael Bennet was an interesting, plain-spoken and sensible Democratic presidential candidate in 2020 – but it’s hard to see how Mr. Burgum is doing anything but running for the Republican Vice Presidential nomination.

My greatest fear about this debate is substantive.  While our citizens’ respective positions on certain issues – the best course for American democracy and women’s abortion rights, to name two – are fairly solidified, their foreign policy preferences are always more fluid.  Recall how a few 2020 Democratic candidates’ very expansive positions on southern border immigration drove the whole party’s position further left than the country was as a whole.  I am deeply concerned that any Republican candidates’ dramatic isolationist declarations could ultimately significantly weaken Republican – and thus American – support for Ukraine.  We as a world can’t afford that.

Stay tuned – if you’re able  🙂 .  

Pick Any Door

As the furor mounts around the grand jury’s recent indictment of former President Donald Trump for his alleged role in an insurrection-related conspiracy, I would suggest that those focused on whether he will be found guilty are in a sense chasing a red herring.  As long as the former President remains the clear frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, the most important question facing our citizens with regard to Mr. Trump – since he currently holds no office, has no federal power — is how what he is either alleged to have done or admits that he did in the past reflects upon his fitness to be President of the United States in the future. 

Start with the indisputable fact about the 2020 election results, repeated ad nauseam here and elsewhere:  Mr. Trump and his acolytes lost every significant lawsuit (many decided by Republican judges who voted for Mr. Trump) challenging the election results (many reported by Republican election officials who voted for Mr. Trump) in the states that determined the election’s outcome.  As the grand jury succinctly summarized in the first paragraph of its indictment: “The Defendant lost the 2020 presidential election.”

I will venture that the fate of Mr. Trump’s 2024 presidential candidacy will rest not upon the diehard opposition of Democrats or other voters unalterably opposed to him, nor upon the rabid allegiance of the voters slavishly dedicated to him, but upon those voters uneasy about President Joe Biden – his age, the economy, whatever – who are seemingly willing to entertain the notion of voting for Mr. Trump.  I would suggest that there are only three conclusions regarding Mr. Trump’s fitness for office – two of them actually urged by Mr. Trump’s defenders – that one can draw from the insurrection-related charges Mr. Trump now faces:

Door No. 1:  The Criminal Door.  Mr. Trump knowingly engaged in a conspiracy to steal the presidency and overturn our democracy. 

Door No. 2:  The Free Speech Door.  All Mr. Trump did was falsely declare that he won the election.  Such false assertions, even if they were made knowingly, are protected by the First Amendment.

Door No. 3:  The Witless Door.  Mr. Trump really believed that he had won the election, and thus, he was neither conspiring to overturn our democracy nor knowingly misleading his supporters.

I would offer this to those uncommitted citizens open to voting for Mr. Trump:  Put aside whether he’s found guilty or beats the wrap, a villain or a martyr.  Think about Mr. Trump purely as a candidate, and … pick any door.  Either he’s a traitor … or a liar … or a delusional fool unable to distinguish reality from fantasy.  Whichever door you pick:  Is this a person who should be … President of the United States?

Those Were the Days

This past weekend, we were poking through one of the countless antique establishments in central Wisconsin and I came across an edition of the Milwaukee Sentinel dated July 4, 1976.

I can place myself exactly on that day – not only because of the Bicentennial, but because it was a little more than a month before we were married.  I was on the east coast visiting family that Holiday weekend, but am confident that the Sentinel edition I found lying on the antique store shelf is identical to the copy delivered to my in-laws’ stoop on the morning of July 4, 1976.

I was first struck by the size and weight of the paper – a paper, mind you, that was only one of two major daily papers then published in Milwaukee (the other being the Milwaukee Journal; the papers thereafter merged into the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel) — at a time when America had a limited number of national nightly news telecasts (CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS – no Fox) and regional network affiliates broadcasting local news.

Amid the Sentinel’s extensive reporting about Bicentennial celebrations and a section on the Founding Fathers’ declaration of our independence, I saw little reference to politics.  By that holiday, former GA Gov. Jimmy Carter had clinched but not yet formally won the Democratic Party’s 1976 presidential nomination, while President Gerald Ford was locked in a tight contest in which he ultimately defeated former CA Gov. Ronald Reagan for the Republicans’ presidential nomination.

I well recall that there were sharp policy differences among the candidates, but there was no indication that any of them had any reason to worry that our republic would come to an end if one of their political opponents prevailed.

Later that year, Mr. Carter narrowly defeated Mr. Ford.  When Mr. Ford lost, he left.  Four years later, Mr. Reagan defeated Mr. Carter.  When Mr. Carter lost, he left.

Although many parts of American life are better today, obviously many need attention.  We cannot go back; we can only hope to make tomorrow better.  Even so, as I looked over the old edition of the Sentinel, the theme song of perhaps the most renowned television comedy series of all time – which on that long-ago July day had just concluded its fifth consecutive season ranked at No. 1 in the Nielson ratings — actually came into my head: 

Those Were the Days.

Mid-Summer Impressions

Summertime celebrations, activities, and responsibilities have afforded little time during the last month to keep abreast of current events, and brought about what is by far the longest interval between entries in these pages since they began in 2017.  I am confident that everybody has survived just fine 😉 .  A few impressions as we round the corner into the last month of real summer, at least in the upper Midwest:

As all who care are aware, in mid-July, former President Donald Trump received a so-called “Target Letter” from Special Counsel Jack Smith’s prosecutorial team, indicating that Mr. Trump is the subject of the federal investigation into the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack.  It almost certainly portends an indictment of Mr. Trump for his part in inciting the insurrection. 

I was obviously never a judge; I never did criminal law; I did very little courtroom work in my career.  While I stand ready to be corrected by any of those reading these notes who have oceans more trial experience than I have, if I was the District of Columbia federal judge hearing the insurrection case against Mr. Trump, I’d have to think pretty hard about whether to grant the Trump team’s inevitable motion to significantly delay the trial date.  A criminal defendant should be given a fair opportunity to defend him/herself, and since Mr. Trump is now scheduled to defend himself in New York in March against authorities’ state law charges that he criminally falsified business records, he is now scheduled to defend himself in Florida in May against Mr. Smith’s team’s federal charges that he misappropriated and mishandled classified documents, and he is reportedly facing an August indictment in Georgia by Georgia authorities for his efforts to overturn the 2020 Georgia presidential results – a case that will be on its own state court scheduling track – it’s perhaps becoming problematic as to how, in fairness, a trial dealing with insurrection charges against Mr. Trump could be scheduled prior to the 2024 presidential election.

Next:  The most recent edition of Foreign Affairs Magazine is entitled, “Tell Me How This Ends – Is there a Path to Victory in Ukraine?”  I haven’t read all the pieces, but one addresses all the ways that the war could end up destabilizing Russian President Vladimir Putin and lead to peace.  I consider the authors’ premises closer to pipedream than reality.  If Putin was going to be deposed, it would most probably have resulted from Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group’s short-lived and quickly-quashed revolt (which arose, as far as I could tell, not from any wish by Mr. Prigozhin to end the war but because Mr. Prigozhin didn’t think Putin was providing his Group sufficiently aggressive assistance).  Another essay declared the war “unwinnable,” noting that even as Ukraine has launched its counteroffensive, “Russian forces are heavily dug in on the most likely axis of advance in the south.”  Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt echoed in the Wall Street Journal earlier this month, “Between the two armies, there are at least 3 miles of heavily mined territory followed by rows of concrete antitank obstacles, with artillery pieces hidden in nearby forests.  The Russian military has amassed so much artillery and ammunition that it can afford to fire 50,000 rounds a day – an order of magnitude more than Ukraine.  Traditional military doctrine suggests that an advancing force should have air superiority and a 3-to-1 advantage in soldiers to make steady progress against a dug-in opponent.  Ukrainians have neither.”  (Mr. Schmidt is obviously an expert in technology, not military tactics, but I quote him because he summarizes sentiments I have heard expressed in other quarters.)

Although some have deplored the Biden Administration’s agreement to provide Ukraine with cluster bombs due to the devastating impact that such launched but unexploded devices can have on civilian populations, I tend to give the Administration the benefit of the doubt:  other available artillery may be dwindling, and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy seems best able to determine whether or not his people are better served by deploying such weapons on his soil.  

One can hope but it seems optimistic to expect that the Ukrainians will make significant headway with their current counteroffensive.  (As reported above, the Ukrainians have been directing their efforts at the southwest areas of the conflict zone, presumably in an attempt to obtain secure access to the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea that seems essential if the nation is to survive economically when the conflict ultimately ends.)  Current accounts are rife with seemingly eerily-apt references to World War I; Barbara Tuchman noted in The Guns of August that after Germany failed to secure a quick military victory by early autumn 1914, “[Then] came the slow deadly sinking into the stalemate of trench warfare. … [L]ike a gangrenous wound across French and Belgian territory, the trenches determined the war of position and attrition, the brutal, mud-filled, murderous insanity known as the Western Front that was to last for four more years.”

The general consensus among commentators is that the parties should be looking for a negotiated settlement.  Various options for achieving such a result have been offered:  immediately making Ukraine a member of NATO; having Ukraine and Russia agree to an armistice such as exists in Korea; or having America provide defense assurances to Ukraine such as it provides to Israel.  The difficulty with these and any other proposals is plain:  even if Ukraine was ready to negotiate a peace arrangement – and it’s not – Putin isn’t going anywhere and he isn’t interested in negotiations. 

I’m confident that the Russian President sees what we all see:  Russia can’t conquer Ukraine militarily, but it can still win – if former President Donald Trump is re-elected.  Putin won’t make meaningful overtures for peace with Ukraine unless and until he sees that neither Mr. Trump nor any other isolationist MAGA has a realistic opportunity to win the U.S. presidency.  It is what it is.  If counseling President Joe Biden, I’d advise him to continue explaining to the American people why Ukraine’s fight is also a fight for our freedom and begin messaging that it is unlikely that there will be a meaningful opportunity to achieve a negotiated settlement until at least 2025.

Next:  Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s recent mental “freeze” – some months after he sustained a head injury in a fall – is extremely troubling.  Even putting aside human kindness, the possible reminder to some of President Joe Biden’s potential frailty (the men are the same age), and despite Mr. McConnell’s deplorable manipulation of Senate procedures to achieve an aggressively conservative U.S. Supreme Court (efforts which, ironically, have so far backfired on Republicans politically), I would submit that those concerned about American democracy should hope that Mr. McConnell remains sufficiently possessed of his faculties to continue to lead Senate Republicans through 2024.  He clearly has no regard for Mr. Trump, and has used his position to limit MAGA influence in the Senate and to support the Administration’s efforts in Ukraine.

Finally:  This week, Mr. Smith filed a superseding indictment in the classified documents case against Mr. Trump, and added Carlos De Oliveira, a Mar-a-Lago property manager, as a defendant.  The superseding indictment alleges, “De Oliveira told Trump Employee 4 that ‘the boss’ wanted the server deleted. … De Oliveira then insisted to Trump Employee 4 that ‘the boss’ wanted the server deleted and asked, ‘What are we going to do?'”

Mr. Smith’s team is clearly attempting to pressure Mr. De Oliveira to turn state’s evidence.  If Mr. De Oliveira does elect to cooperate with prosecutors and his testimony supports their charges, it will seemingly directly implicate Mr. Trump in a criminal conspiracy.  The indictment’s allegations regarding Mr. De Oliveira reminded me of a reference posted here in February, 2018, relating to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Mr. Trump:

“As aptly noted in the movie, You’ve Got Mail, The Godfather is … the I Ching; the sum of all wisdom; the answer to any question. 

Not specifically called out in the film, Mario Puzo wrote in the novel:

‘[The fictional Don Corleone] … put layers of insulation between himself and any operational act.  When he gave an order it was to [the Consigliore] or to one of the caporegimes alone.  Rarely did he have a witness to any order he gave any particular one of them …

Between the head of the family, Don Corleone, who dictated policy, and the operating level of men who actually carried out the orders of the Don, there were three layers, or buffers … each link of the chain would have to turn traitor for the Don to be involved …’

If Mr. Mueller and his team are seeking high-level corroboration of evidence against the President, whether they secure it may come down to whether Mr. Trump read The Godfather, or merely saw the movie …”

If Mr. De Oliveira ultimately confirms the Special Counsel’s allegations, I’ll no longer need to wonder; it will be clear that Mr. Trump only saw the movie.  😉

On Robert F. Kennedy

As all who care are aware, the first week in June marked the 55th anniversary of the assassination of U.S. NY Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.  Obviously, Mr. Kennedy is best known as the right hand of his brother, President John F. Kennedy; he managed his brother’s successful 1960 campaign for the presidency and thereafter served as U.S. Attorney General in the Kennedy Administration.  His memory is closer to mind at present due to the recent declaration of his son, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.

I was about two months into my first after-school job when Mr. Kennedy was assassinated, and a political junkie even then; thus, I actually have a somewhat clear personal memory of him – much clearer than I have of his brother, who had died five years before.  I would submit that he is one of the most arresting Americans of the second half of the last century, evolving:  from working for the Committee of the Communist scaremonger, U.S. WI Sen. Joe McCarthy in the 1950s; through his years as campaign ramrod for his brother; through his years in the Executive branch, during which he was the president’s closest advisor; to his years after his brother’s assassination, when he reconsidered the American Vietnam policy he had helped fashion and became the most politically potent opponent of the war.  It was because he was a Kennedy, and viewed as a tough guy, that his opposition to the war had particular credibility; no one considered him “soft.”  President Lyndon Johnson only announced that he would not seek another term after Mr. Kennedy declared for the Democratic Party’s 1968 presidential nomination (the two men despised each other). 

During his years as Attorney General and thereafter, Mr. Kennedy had become increasingly aware of and then outraged by the mistreatment of blacks he saw in America, and became African Americans’ most politically powerful advocate.  (Dr. Martin Luther King was obviously their most notable advocate, but Mr. Kennedy had greater influence with America as a whole.)  No white politician since 1900, with the possible exception of President Franklin Roosevelt, has been as intensely loved in African American community as Mr. Kennedy.

By all accounts, Mr. Kennedy wore his emotions on his sleeve – in contrast to his brother, who (similar to comments I’ve read about President Barack Obama) projected warmth on camera but reportedly was coolly analytical in private.

All that said:  I would submit that any commentators you now hear intoning that we would have had a different world had Mr. Kennedy lived may well be missing the mark.  Despite winning a string of 1968 Democratic party primaries after he declared his candidacy, it was a different era; he would have needed significant support of Democratic Party bosses across the country to win the nomination.  The Kennedys, who derived their power from their charisma and their money, were never the favorites of the Democratic machines, who were much more comfortable with organization-dependent candidates such as Vice President Hubert Humphrey. At the same time, by entering the Democratic presidential primary contest after U.S. MN Sen. Eugene McCarthy had just scored heavily on an anti-war platform against Mr. Johnson in the New Hampshire primary – when liberals had turned to Mr. McCarthy only after Mr. Kennedy had rebuffed their earlier pleas to run against Mr. Johnson — he outraged Mr. McCarthy’s supporters [then considered the (Adlai) Stevenson wing of the party; they are today’s progressives].  In The Unfinished Odyssey of Robert Kennedy, David Halberstam wrote: “In the spring of this crucial year [1968, Mr. Kennedy] had managed, because of his delayed entrance, to be at once too ruthless and too gutless for the liberals and the students, too radical for the middle class, too much the party man for some of the intellectuals, and too little the party man for most of the machines.”

Under the candidate selection process in place at the time, after Mr. Johnson’s withdrawal it was Mr. Humphrey who had the inside track to the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, not Mr. Kennedy.

Even if Mr. Kennedy had won the Democratic nomination, I would suggest that it was by no means assured that he would have defeated then-former Vice President Richard Nixon in the fall.  While the nation’s grief about and warm feelings for his brother would have helped him, his opposition to the war would have cost him support among the then-core Democratic working class voters who have since morphed into Trump supporters, and he would have lost support among the liberal elites angered at what they perceived as his usurpation of Mr. McCarthy’s rightful place (a close parallel is the dynamic between the camps of U.S. NY Sen. Hillary Clinton and U.S. VT Sen. Bernie Sanders in 2016).  In their respective times, Mr. Kennedy and Ms. Clinton shared an unfortunate and crucial attribute:  a high Antipathy Quotient.  Most politicians need to get known.  In their cases, everyone in America already knew them; their problem was that a notable segment of Americans actively didn’t like them.  That said, perhaps — perhaps – the Kennedy nostalgia and charisma would have been enough to hold enough of the white working class and the African Americans and the Democratic Party machines and the liberal intellectuals (the latter two both detested Mr. Nixon) to win the White House; but it would have been close.

Of one thing I am as sure as I can be about the inclinations of someone I never met:  Mr. Kennedy would be distressed beyond all bounds by his son’s declaration for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.  It is patently obvious that any criticisms that Mr. Kennedy, Jr. makes of President Joe Biden in the coming months have the potential to ultimately redound to the benefit of the candidate of a Republican party that is now dominated by MAGA concepts of division and exclusion – diametrically contrasted with the positions his father was espousing the day he was shot.

If you have an opportunity, pick up The Unfinished Odyssey of Robert Kennedy, Mr. Halberstam’s account of his time traveling with Mr. Kennedy’s last campaign.  It is a short, easy read, published in early 1969.  Mr. Halberstam is as smooth a writer of public affairs as I have ever read.  A New York Times reporter who covered the Vietnam War – and whose reporting of the war incurred the wrath of the Kennedy Administration, including that of Robert Kennedy – he later authored The Best and the Brightest, a study of the tragic progression of America’s Vietnam policy.  (Mr. Halberstam noted years later that he found it ironic that “the best and the brightest” had found its way into the public lexicon as a high compliment, when he had intended the title as a wry reflection on the fact that the intelligent elites had led America so far astray.)  Mr. Halberstam also indicated before his own untimely demise in a car accident that despite some seemingly very positive descriptions of John Kennedy in The Best and the Brightest, he had never had any particular sympathy for the president; but at the same time he conceded that he had developed a deep affinity for Robert Kennedy by the time of Mr. Kennedy’s death. 

On Mr. Trump’s Indictment for Mishandling of Classified Documents: A Postscript

Amid summer chores, I’ve been reflecting further upon some of the comments in this original post.

Let’s start with a name game:  John Sirica.

Doesn’t mean anything to you?  In that case, I suspect that you’re a mere youngster 😉 .  I would venture that that name will ring at least a vague bell for all Americans born in 1960 or before, and is well known to virtually all American lawyers of any age.

Judge John J. Sirica presided over the Watergate trials in the early 1970s in Washington, D.C.  His administration of the trials was widely lauded then and since. 

Judge Sirica died in 1992.  The first sentence of his Washington Post obituary referred to the fact that he had presided over the Watergate trials.

I declared in this original post:  “Judge Aileen M. Cannon, whom [former President Donald] Trump appointed to the bench in 2020, has been assigned to hear his case. … [I]t seems that by her earlier rulings [in the same documents case] Judge Cannon has proven herself to be incompetent, a partisan hack, or both.  The judge’s ability to influence the trial’s course and perhaps outcome is obvious:  it takes no prescience to predict the coming wrangling between Mr. Trump’s attorneys and federal prosecutors over jury selection, admissibility of evidence, and scheduling (with delay obviously favoring Mr. Trump).”

We’ll get back to the ramifications of a prolonged trial schedule below.  As to Judge Cannon, I haven’t been able to find any rating by south Florida lawyers as to how ably she has performed in normal cases in her short judicial tenure – since she’s only been on the bench a couple of years, she obviously doesn’t have a lot of judicial experience – and she may indeed lack the competence to preside over such a high-profile matter.  That’s to be determined, and if she doesn’t feel she’s professionally up to it, she should recuse herself.  But as to predictions – including mine – of her pro-Trump leanings, I’m taking a pause.  It’s seemingly possible that Judge Cannon is more horrified than anyone else by her random selection to hear this case.  She’s in her early 40s – literally at the age of our children and of a number of those that read these pages.  She has a husband and two school-aged kids.  Federal trial judges don’t float upon hallowed pedestals.  She undoubtedly goes to the grocery store.  Her kids probably play soccer or engage in other like activities.  She has the bulk of her career in front of her.  She’s already been reversed in a rather humiliating fashion by United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Judicial Circuit, a conservative Circuit, for her earlier Trump-friendly rulings in this case.  She can’t escape into the curtained hush the way U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas does.  She may now believe that what looked like a sweet legal gig in 2020 has turned into a nightmare of being engulfed by the Trump Maelstrom.  If advising her, I’d counsel as I would one of our own kids:  You are where you are.  Be careful.  How you handle this case will literally be the first line of your obituary.  Do the best you can.  For your own good, play it straight.

Judge Cannon need look no further than the other defendant in the case – Walt Nauta, Mr. Trump’s “body man” and alleged co-conspirator — to realize that abiding by Mr. Trump’s wishes does not necessarily auger a comfortable life.  Do I think that if Mr. Trump is found guilty by a jury, Judge Cannon will, as some wildly progressive pundits have suggested, disregard the jury verdict and issue a judgement of acquittal to Mr. Trump?  No.  Do I think that Judge Cannon will refuse to admit a lot of the government’s evidence now in the public domain?  Even if she is so inclined, with the Eleventh Circuit looking over her shoulder, I don’t.  (Although the evidence from Mr. Trump’s lawyers, obtained by the government through a piercing the veil of attorney-client privilege, is perhaps on the fence.)  Is there a likelihood that she will provide Mr. Trump more leeway in jury selection and scheduling than the government prefers?  Very possibly — these are areas in which appellate courts generally accord greater deference to trial judges — but the government’s case appears sufficiently strong to withstand these likely hindrances.  If Judge Cannon is savvy – or unless her career aspiration is now to become a Fox News legal analyst — I expect her to play it straight enough.

All those middle-of-the road notions now expressed, I well recall that in February of 2019, considering the Senate’s confirmation process for then-Attorney General Nominee William Barr, I declared in these pages:  “Partisans on both sides are currently all too-ready to impute ulterior motives to those with whom they disagree. … I am willing to believe, unless and until I have evidence to the contrary, that Mr. Barr will do what is necessary to protect the United States while conducting his duty.”  We all saw how those Pollyannaish sentiments fared 😉 .

As noted above, in the original post I also suggested that a delay in the trial helps Mr. Trump politically – a sentiment echoed by others.  I would now add a bit of a qualifier, at least in my own thinking.  A delay seemingly aids Mr. Trump’s campaign during the Republican presidential nomination process and it certainly helps him if he wins the election and the case hasn’t been resolved prior to Inauguration Day, 2025.  (I suspect that reelection is now at least as important to the former president as a way to avoid having jail be the final culmination of a 2016 branding exercise that went WAY wrong – from his perspective and our democracy’s – than it is for the actual return to power it represents.)  At the same time, I have come to believe that any still-pending charges against him for the mishandling of classified documents will weaken his support in the general election among swing and moderate Republican voters in swing states.

Enough.  The weekend is upon us.  May all Dads, and those of any gender who provide fatherly love and guidance to others, have a wonderful Father’s Day.

On Mr. Trump’s Indictment for Mishandling of Classified Documents

“For this man, who is basically a nihilistic moron, to go to jail, potentially for a long time – these Espionage Act charges bring very heavy sentences – to potentially go to jail for something so stupid and pointless and silly and useless is actually kind of fitting.”

  • George Conway, MSNBC’S Morning Joe, June 6, 2023

As all are aware, former President Donald Trump has been indicted by a grand jury of Floridians for criminal mishandling of classified documents at his Florida Mar-a-Lago estate.  The counts include violations of the Espionage Act and obstruction of justice.  In the past, Mr. Trump has gone so far as to famously declare that a president can declassify documents “even by thinking about it” – the first reliance on the Think System I can recall since that of the fictional Professor Harold Hill in The Music Man.  A few impressions, likely none you haven’t had yourself.

First, the Wall Street Journal was quick to note that the indictment “mark[s] the first time in history that the federal government has brought charges against a former president.”  While true, this is irrelevant.  Federal charges would almost certainly have been brought against then-former President Richard Nixon for his part in the cover-up of the Watergate break-in had he not been pardoned by then-President Gerald Ford.  (Mr. Ford presumably wouldn’t have subjected himself to what he knew would be the ensuing political firestorm if he didn’t think federal charges against Mr. Nixon were in the offing.) 

Next – and as anyone with the barest modicum of knowledge about our criminal justice system understands — Mr. Trump was not – as Republican Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy tweeted after the indictment was announced – indicted by President Joe Biden.  Mr. Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury of ordinary (an adjective which I concede sounds inaptly deprecating) Floridians who determined from the evidence presented by Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team that there was probable cause to believe that Mr. Trump committed the crimes for which he will be arraigned.  Mr. McCarthy and other Republican officeholders are shamelessly and gutlessly pandering to a rabid and willfully ill-informed political base.  Their assertions about the “weaponization” of our legal system are a despicable betrayal of their official trust.  For Mr. McCarthy to pronounce in the same tweet that he believes in “the rule of law” is execrable hypocrisy.

I have seen liberal legal pundits bemoan the fact that the case has been brought in Florida, since the jury pool will be more favorable to Mr. Trump in Florida than in Washington, D.C.  I’m glad that it has been brought in the Sunshine State.  Since most of the allegedly illegal activities took place in Florida, Florida is obviously the more appropriate jurisdiction from a legal perspective (which is really what matters) but what will also make sense to the average citizen.  From a larger perspective, this prosecution must maintain credibility with the majority of Americans in the face of what will be a concerted effort by Mr. Trump and his cult to discredit it.  Mr. Trump not only has a right to, but America needs him to have, a trial in front of a jury that most Americans will consider balanced (presidents, present and past, have no “peers”).  Mr. Trump is entitled to the presumption of innocence until he is proven guilty.  I will venture that a notably larger percentage of our citizens would harbor doubts about the fairness of any guilty verdict issued by a Washington, D.C. jury than they will about one rendered by a Florida jury. 

Judge Aileen M. Cannon, whom Mr. Trump appointed to the bench in 2020, has been assigned to hear his case.  You may recall that Judge Cannon issued a number of rulings early in the documents investigation inappropriately favorable to Mr. Trump that were later sharply overturned by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Judicial Circuit, a conservative Circuit.  I find her selection highly unfortunate.  This case deserved the best that the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida had to offer.  While I saw one legal pundit opine that he considered her suitable, it seems that by her earlier rulings Judge Cannon has proven herself to be incompetent, a partisan hack, or both.  The judge’s ability to influence the trial’s course and perhaps outcome is obvious:  it takes no prescience to predict the coming wrangling between Mr. Trump’s attorneys and federal prosecutors over jury selection, admissibility of evidence, and scheduling (with delay obviously favoring Mr. Trump).  While some legal analysts have suggested that Judge Cannon might be “chastened” by the harsh manner in which the Eleventh Circuit dispatched her earlier rulings favoring Mr. Trump, I am pretty confident that Mr. Smith and his team were disappointed that she has been assigned to preside.

My greatest concern is for the safety and protection of the jury panel.  An article appearing on uscourts.gov, “How Courts Care for Jurors in High Profile Cases,” states, “Federal judges have adopted a wide range of precautions to ensure that juries are protected from threats or harassment in high-profile cases.”  All precautions ever taken to protect federal jurors – and I suspect some new ones – should be employed to provide the panel the most stringent protections in the history of the federal judicial system.  The trial judge should make clear at the outset of the process that anyone that publishes or facilitates the publication of the name of any member of the jury or jury panel will be held in contempt of court – and slapped in jail until the judge would see fit to release them.  (If I were the judge, that would be as long as I could legally justify.) 

Both Mr. Trump and the Republican propaganda machine are in high gear, claiming that Mr. Trump is being treated unfairly as compared to President Joe Biden, whose staff discovered classified documents from Mr. Biden’s days as Vice President at Mr. Biden’s Delaware estate and in his Washington, D.C. office.  I’ve noted earlier in these pages the likelihood that the average citizen will tend to conflate the actions of Messrs. Trump and Biden.  I think there is a substantive difference in the behavior of the two men, but my notions could not be any more irrelevant.  Since Mr. Biden’s activities are being investigated by Special Counsel Robert Hur, a former U.S. Attorney appointed by Mr. Trump, Mr. Biden’s circumstances should be left to Mr. Hur and his team.  I would submit that if Mr. Hur determines that there is evidence that Mr. Biden committed a crime and issues a report, similar to the Mueller Report, implying that he would seek a federal grand jury indictment against Mr. Biden if Mr. Biden was not president, so be it.  If evidence is presented to a federal grand jury after Mr. Biden leaves office and a federal indictment is thereupon issued against Mr. Biden, Mr. Biden will then face a jury.  That’s the way the system works.

But as to Mr. Trump:  Make no mistake; the game is now on.  While the Wall Street Journal declared in a weekend editorial that federal prosecutors “fail to understand what they’ve unleashed,” I – unlike Mr. McCarthy — do believe in the rule of law, and there was obviously enough evidence against Mr. Trump to bring this prosecution.  (On Fox News over the weekend, Trump Administration Attorney General William Barr, who unconscionably defended Mr. Trump in various ways for years, called the indictment “damning.”)  That said, I agree with the Journal that we have now entered a perilous period, but not for the reason it cites.  Assuming that Mr. Trump doesn’t enter a plea bargain – seemingly highly unlikely, given his character – there will ultimately be one of three outcomes here:  a conviction, which probably removes any possibility of his gaining the votes of a sufficient number of swing state swing voters to win the presidency; a hung jury, which I suspect will marginally help him – which, if it does, could be decisive in a close presidential contest; or an acquittal, which will afford him both vindication and seeming proof that the system was, as he has claimed, rigged against him.  The last of these could well win him re-election.  Mr. Conway’s wry observation aside, remember O.J. Simpson; now that Mr. Simpson is on parole after completing his minimum nine-year sentence for armed robbery and kidnapping, I am sure that we are all confident that he has resumed his search for the “real killers” of his wife, Nicole.      

Enough.  As Mr. Trump himself has probably already observed:  We’ll see what happens.   

Perhaps a Bungled Opportunity on the Debt Ceiling

I haven’t posted much in recent weeks about the growing debt ceiling crisis; it is what it is and we are where we are.  What prompts this note is a May 20 Politico report:

“Looking back on the first two years of [President] Joe Biden’s presidency, [U.S. VA Sen.] Tim Kaine has one big regret about a largely successful stretch of Democratic rule: That his party didn’t try to raise the debt ceiling on its own last year.

The Virginia senator believes that if Democrats had tried to hike the debt limit before the House GOP swept into a majority, even Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) might have gone along with it. But Biden’s party never moved on the issue. And six months later, Democrats are stuck doing exactly what they said they wouldn’t — negotiating on the debt ceiling with Republicans.

‘If I could do one thing different,’ Kaine lamented this week, it would have been a late-2022 debt hike. ‘And I was saying it at the time … “‘hey, we got the votes.”’”

I noted in these pages on November 17, 2022:

“Given the paralysis and partisan histrionics that see overwhelmingly likely to ensue when Republicans take control of the House of Representatives, I would hope that for the good of the nation, during the upcoming lame duck Congressional session Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (due to the power of the filibuster) can agree to pass measures that have received or could garner bipartisan support to blunt some of the most destructive future MAGA impulses. … Below is a short list of such potential measures. …

  1. Raising the federal debt limit to an amount projected to carry the United States through to April 1, 2025.  Our citizenry will really decide the future direction it wishes the nation to take based upon whom it elects president in 2024.  In the meantime, the full faith and credit of the United States should not be held hostage to partisan rabble. …”

Since I don’t claim expertise in the nuances of the U.S. Senate’s filibuster rule, it’s not clear to me, given Mr. Kaine’s comments quoted by Politico, whether Democrats, as I suggested in my post, needed a number of Republican Senators’ support to have raised the debt ceiling in late 2022.  I’ve been assuming that they needed Republican Senate votes, and couldn’t get them.  One could infer from Mr. Kaine’s comments that they didn’t need Republican help.  If six months ago, I – an old retired Midwesterner —  could predict the debt ceiling train wreck we are now facing, it makes one blink to think that Democratic Congressional leadership didn’t see it coming.  If Democrats failed to raise the debt ceiling although they had the votes (alone or with Republican Senate help) to do so — a point I’d like to see definitively addressed – such failure can at best be characterized as shockingly naïve, and arguably more appropriately as startlingly obtuse legislative malpractice.

Break’s Over

I didn’t watch last week’s CNN Town Hall featuring former President Donald Trump; I knew I couldn’t stomach it.  Judging by the clips I’ve seen, the former president showed himself to be who he is:  a delusional, fascist megalomaniac.  Such characterization is obviously inflammatory, highly pejorative, and perhaps melodramatic; I leave it to you to decide whether you agree it is warranted.

While any number of liberal-leaning commentators have intoned that the CNN broadcast was a political gift to President Joe Biden – a claim which would seem to have some merit with regard to the disquieting effect that Mr. Trump’s obvious illiberal instability might well have on Republican-leaning voters in the metropolitan suburbs of swing states – I also sensed a bit of whistling past the graveyard.  The most disconcerting part of the clips I’ve seen isn’t what Mr. Trump said — he is, if nothing else, consistent – but rather the raucous approval his obvious lies and slurs received from a crowd that, while Republican, came from New Hampshire – a state generally considered to be populated by sensible, upright New Englanders who one would have thought would know better.  Although certainly not inconceivable that another candidate could yet wrest the Republican presidential nomination from him, it appears that Mr. Trump, to the enthusiastic alleluias of his cult, is resurrecting. 

We’ve had about 27 months’ respite:  27 months in which we had the luxury (?) of concentrating on the substantive global and domestic challenges we face; 27 months in which we could dream that the spell Mr. Trump has cast over a segment of our citizens would dissipate; 27 months in which we could hope that those who provide Mr. Trump lip service support either out of tribal party loyalty or fear would find the courage to denounce and disassociate themselves from him; 27 month in which we could wish that his legal problems would disqualify him.  We aren’t going to be that lucky.  [Special Counsel Jack Smith’s delay in bringing charges against Mr. Trump either for his part in the January 6th insurrection or for his misappropriation of classified documents has, given Mr. Trump’s maneuvering, now made any future indictment, no matter how strong the evidence, appear a political prosecution.  Mr. Smith – as Special Counsel Robert Mueller before him – has erred (and this is coming from a lawyer, mind you) by being too lawyerlike.  Now, I fear it’s too late.]

All who know me know my fondness for the television series, The West Wing, the account of a fictional President Josiah Bartlet and Mr. Bartlet’s White House staff.  At several points during the series’ multi-year run, the character Bartlet admonished his staff, when their focus had been diverted:  Break’s over.  Time to get back to work.

Mr. Trump has made his objective plain.  He and his supporters intend to institute an American Apartheid.  (I think the same can be said if Republicans nominate another MAGA, such as FL. Gov. Ron DeSantis, who, while lacking Mr. Trump’s animal magnetism, would have the same ultimate goal and carry less baggage to the race.)  They cannot be reasoned with, they cannot be persuaded; they can only be outvoted.  Although I concede unease about a second term for an 82-year-old president, and retain deep misgivings about Vice President Kamala Harris’ readiness for the presidency, these are the cards we’ve been dealt.  Any obvious physical diminishment by Mr. Biden, a deep recession, a perceived border crisis, a pivotal presidential debate moment, or some other notable event could tip a closely-divided electorate in key Electoral College swing states to Mr. Trump or another MAGA.  The crucible appears to be upon us.  It is time for those who believe in American democracy to get back to work.

Break’s over.