Jack Smith, Unlike Robert Mueller, Knows What He Is Doing

The nation is waiting for the DOJ to respond to Trump’s request to indefinitely delay his Federal trial. While we wait, I just want to point out how competent Jack Smith has been in his first 8 months on the job as Special Counsel. In just 8 months, Jack Smith has put together an airtight indictment of Donald Trump in Florida, with probably two more to go in New Jersey and DC. He has spent just $10 Million. His office hasn’t leaked one bit of information. And his persecutors have done things by the book. No one has frightened him away from where his investigation has led. No one has commandeered his conclusions. In short, Jack Smith is doing what Robert Mueller should have been doing towards the end of his two year investigation.

And what did Robert Mueller’s weakened report get us? It got us nothing but trouble. It gave Donald Trump a full 4 more years in which to commit more serious crimes. From his shakedown of Volodymyr Zelenskyy in August of 2019 to the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago in August 2022, Donald Trump was free to commit crimes far more serious than the obstruction that should have resulted in an indictment from Mueller.

Think about that for a moment. Donald Trump can be compared to Mohamed Atta. We had multiple opportunities to stop him, and we failed. Actually, that’s not a fair comparison. Atta only committed one giant crime against humanity. Donald Trump has been committing crimes of escalating seriousness since 1973 - as long as I have lived. Particularly since November 2021, Donald Trump has been a raging criminal, responsible for the deaths of several Americans. Right now, as things stand, the only person who can stop him is Jack Smith. This is out last chance to stop Donald Trump. If he breaks free from this, the fire burning our Republic today will become a raging inferno.

The Limited Modified Hangouts Of Rudy Giuliani

Mister Sterling believes that the White House counsel will have to become Trump’s primary legal team once the Muller report is released. Well, that report might not arrive until August 2019. So until then, Trump is relying on his personal, private lawyers.

Rudy Giuliani had been lying low for most of the fall of 2018. But by mid-December, he was back on television and speaking to the press. And in these last 33 days or so, he has been even more unhinged. He has unleashed more limited hangouts, and he even has a outrageous request from the DOJ and the Mueller team.

When Rudy was trotted out to defend Trump in early 2018, most journalists, anchors and pundits treated him as a joke or comic relief. But Marcy Wheeler wonders if Giuliani is intentionally being ineffective to assist with a future Trump conviction appeal. She was corrdect about something else as well. Mueller has taken another look at both Cohen and Manafort based on Rudy’s “haywire” news media appearances.

In one of his nutty hangouts since Thanksgiving, Rudy asserted that Trump’s crimes aren’t so bad because no one was killed. Remember the broken windows theory of crime suppression? If you nip bad behaviour in the bud, this perverse theory said, you'll stop criminal activities before they start. This quickly morphed into the assertion that if we stop and frisk young men, especially young men of color, we'll get guns off the streets, reduce the crime rate, and send a powerful message to the "bad guys", that the crack down on anti-social behaviour is real. Oh, it violated the rights of hundreds of thousands of innocent, mostly black men? It amounted to the humiliation of people whose only crime was being black in New York City? Well, you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette.

And then this disgusting man came round again in a historically bad week for Trump, with a new limited hangout. And what do you know? There was collusion? So there was a conspiracy involving a quid pro quo? And so Don Jr. lied to Congress, then?

Hoo boy.

Will Outside Counsel Soon Move Inside?

A silly legal question from an armchair law aficionado: At what point does the wall between the White House counsel and the president's private, outside legal team come crumbling down? When will this firewall fail or be breached? Is it when Robert Mueller produces his report? Or could it be sooner, such as when the White House becomes involved in a cover-up or tries to obstruct the Special Counel's investigation?

Surely, it has to be when the White House gets involved in the cover-up of the 2016 Trump campaign's foreign collusion conspiracy?

We have heard the White House communications office use the phrase "outside counsel" quite a lot. Reporters are referred to Trump's private legal team for any questions relating to the Special Counsel investigation. But what happens when the White House Press Secretary lies in an effort to cover-up a detail in the alleged conspiracy between the Trump campaign and multiple foreign governments? Far more serious was the sighting of a White House lawyer at a classified DOJ briefing on the progress of the Special Counsel's investigation.

The White House counsel hasn't gotten much attention throughout Trump's first term, since most of the action has been conducted by his private legal team. But no matter how invisible or ineffective the White House team is, I think trouble is coming to them. Surely at leaast one of the fires Trump has set has gotten into our house. 

Sanders' lying at the podium, and Republican efforts to obstruct justice should bring the Mueller investigation into the White House. "Outside counsel" is going to have to become White House counsel. There can't be a wall between Mueller and the White House any longer.

Chances Are Brad Parscale Is A Criminal

Brad Parscale has been officially named the manager of Donald Trump's 2020 reelection campaign.

I do not know much about him. I know that he's an aryan-looking dude from Kansas who got economics and business degrees from a regional university in Texas that doesn't have particularly strong business programs. I know he's a bit of a marketing hustler who reached out to businesses offering to improve their websites and overall internet presence. One of those companies was the Trump Organization in 2011. That would be around the time that Trump was thinking of running for president for the second time, and leading the allegations that Barack Obama was foreign-born and performed poorly at Columbia and Harvard. Trump even accused Obama of never attending either school. Who has a chip on his shoulder?

But back to Parscale. Given that he has been highly paid (tens of millions, apparently) by the Trump Organization since 2011, and was the Facebook marketing and advertising manager for the Trump 2016 campaign, and that campaign was full of criminals, I'd say that there's a very good chance that Parscale is a criminal as well. I have no evidence. But now there's going to be a spotlight on him given today's announcement. Investigative journalists are going to be informing us who this guy is soon. Was he really paid over $90 Million to run Trump's online presidential campaign? Wasn't that nearly one-third Trumps' entire campaign budget? That's going to be re-examined.

There is an easy pattern with the Trump Organization. It engages in blatant nepotism and richly rewards those who are loyal to it. And in order to be loyal to the Trump Organization, one has to be comfortable with the fact that it is a criminal enterprise. Therefore it is no surprise that its top people, past and present, are criminals themselves. People like Donald Trump Jr, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Corey Lewandowski, Anthony Scaramucci, Ivanka Trump, Hope Hicks, Eric Trump, Allen Weisselberg, George Papadopoulos, Michael Cohen, David Pecker, Carter Page, Roger Stone, Jared Kushner and Michael Flynn. Chances are Brad Parscale is also a criminal like them. Let's see if I'm correct.