From today’s news:
U.S. President Donald Trump is seeking the dismissal of a lawsuit claiming he defrauded his niece out of an inheritance worth tens of millions of dollars, accusing her of embracing “conspiracy theories” in her quest to consume him with lawsuits after he leaves the White House.
Conspiracy theories? Hmmm. And that’s just the beginning:
Trump faces several other legal actions. These include a criminal probe by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, a civil probe by New York Attorney General Letitia James into whether he inflated asset values to obtain loans and tax benefits, and a defamation lawsuit by the writer E. Jean Carroll, whose allegation of rape he has denied.
And what about all the crimes he committed while in the White House? We were told he couldn’t be prosecuted because he was president. OK, but what about after January 20th?
According to (conservative) David French, the recent phone call to Georgia may also have been a crime:
The chief law enforcement officer of the United States is raising the possibility of prosecuting the Georgia secretary of state unless the secretary of state changes the outcome of the vote without any factual or legal foundation for making the change.
Now, on to the relevant federal and state criminal statutes. First, 18 U.S.C Section 241 makes it unlawful for two or more persons to “conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States.”
On January 21st, the Senate should again demand his tax returns, and throw him in prison if he refuses to comply.
It looks like the Dems won both Senate seats, and stock futures fell about 0.6%. This is another example of how elections don’t have much impact on the stock market. I recall people claiming that Trump somehow caused a huge stock market surge in late 2016, only to fall silent when stocks also soared after Biden was elected (as they also did under the Obama administration.)
I think we’ve learned that the prospect of receiving $2000 checks is a big motivator when it comes to election turnout.
Over at 538 I found the following:
Want to see what a realignment looks like? Cobb County (94 percent of the expected vote reporting) and Gwinnett County (98 percent reporting) — both in the Atlanta suburbs — voted for Mitt Romney by 12 points and 9 points respectively. Tonight, they are voting for Warnock by 16 points and 21 points, respectively.
Wikipedia says Cobb County is full of skinny smart people:
The U.S. Census Bureau ranks Cobb County as the most-educated in the state of Georgia and 12th among all counties in the US.[6] It has ranked among the top 100 highest-income counties in the United States.[7] In October 2017, Cobb was ranked as the “Least Obese County in Georgia”.[8]
Of course that’s a low bar.
Trump sabotaged the GOP in two ways. First, by pushing for the $2000 checks, a proposal that ended up helping the Dems. Second, by his attempt to steal the election. And don’t tell me that “most people don’t care, blah, blah, blah.” In a really close election “most people” don’t matter. The people who matter are the 2% to 4% who are potential swing voters. Perdue beat Ossoff by 1.8% just two months ago. He seems to have lost tonight be about 1.1%.
I don’t think Trump is on Mitch McConnell’s Christmas card list.
Nor Judy Shelton’s. Her nomination is finished.
So why did he do it? With Trump the answer is always the same—because he thought he’d benefit. But why? Was it Lenin’s “The worse, the better”? Because chaos in the GOP will help him regain power in 2024? Or a Hitlerian thirst for armageddon once America had rejected him?
