A remarkable ruling just released in a civil suit against Trump finally removes the focus from Rudy Giuliani and others, and places the potential blame squarely where it belongs – on Trump himself.
To quote today’s Washington Post article about the ruling:
“In a searing, 112-page opinion that quoted repeatedly and at length from the former president’s own public statements, U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta refused to dismiss three lawsuits against Trump by Democratic House members and police officers seeking damages for physical and emotional injuries they incurred in the assault. The judge did or said he would drop as defendants Donald Trump Jr., attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani and Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), who joined Trump in addressing rallygoers at the Ellipse before they marched to the Capitol that day. However, Mehta said Trump’s own words and conduct in falsely alleging a “stolen” election were not immune on separation-of-powers grounds because they served only his personal aim of retaining office, falling beyond the “outer perimeter” of a president’s official responsibilities.
“ ‘The President’s actions here do not relate to his duties of faithfully executing the laws, conducting foreign affairs, commanding the armed forces, or managing the Executive Branch. They entirely concern his efforts to remain in office for a second term. These are unofficial acts,’ Mehta wrote.”
I posted in December that the courts have gotten too much credit for holding the line against the threat of Trumpism, in part because of their failure to act in a timely manner to reassert the rule of law in response to Trump’s lawlessness and contempt for equality under law by letting him get away repeatedly with victory through delay.
I also had in mind the earlier refusal of a federal district court sitting in New York to apply the constitutional prohibition against emoluments to Trump’s multifarious, obvious, and outrageous violations of that clause of the constitution during the ‘Trump Administration’. (I put the term “Administration” in suggestive quotations since, based on the Mueller Report, that ‘Administration’ never had full legitimacy because of the critically important and strategic use of Russian intelligence disinformation via Facebook and other social media to swing the 2016 election in key swing states.)
Maybe the ability of the third branch of the federal government in our constitution, The Courts, and their ability to focus on actual evidence as a way to best determine truth, will be our salvation after all.
Get back to me in — say — 2026.
I hope that in 2026 the notorious Trump family will all be incarcerated and will have had all their assets confiscated. I hope that today’s GOP will have been categorized as a criminal enterprise and dissolved.
I think there’s at least a 50% likelihood that one of them will be in the Oval Office, that anyone convicted of federal crimes will have been pardoned, and that a long and growing list of officials who pursued state charges (such as Letitia James of NY) will themselves be jailed pending prosecution for various manufactured “crimes”.
My confidence in the Courts and the US judicial system has been seriously damaged by the steadfast refusal to investigate or prosecute ANYBODY with actual power and control. There are still dozens of people still imprisoned in GITMO without charges or trials because they were tortured by US authorities nearly 20 years ago. That torture was ordered by a sitting president, and there have never been any consequences for the many war crimes perpetrated by the George W. Bush administration.
Powerless people from the hinterlands who have no money and no power — and who make the mistake of allowing themselves to be filmed in funny costumes — are quickly arrested and prosecuted.
The white supremacists who organized, funded, and orchestrated the insurrection remain un-named and un-bothered.
I’d like to see the rule of law prevail. It takes more than yet another lower court opinion to convince me.
And as to criminal prosecution, no one could say it better than this:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/02/18/trump-prosecute-risk-law/