A Suggestion for the Governor of Minnesota

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An army of 3,000 federal “troops” under the command of the Secretary of Homeland Security and the President of the United States has entered your state, uninvited and allegedly for the purpose of removing persons whose presence in the United States is unlawful. These men typically wear masks to obscure their identity, are heavily armed and wear substantial protective gear. The labels on their uniforms typically say “ICE” and “Police.”

In the past few weeks these men have indiscriminately arrested and detained without explanation persons who were American citizens. They have violently entered homes and businesses to arrest individuals suspected, for unknown reasons, of unlawful presence in the country based on physical appearance and/or use of language. Their entries into homes and businesses typically are not based on judicially approved warrants authorizing searches of private property. Their leadership has asserted that they can, in effect, self-warrant, notwithstanding the clear language of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The inevitable result of these practices and the hostility of the people of Minnesota to them has been three shootings of Minneapolis residents, two of whom died. One was shot at least three times for the apparent offense of driving away after having been ordered to “get out of the f*cking car.” The other, a nurse, was shot at least seven times after being pepper sprayed and taken to the ground by a group of ICE agents, for the apparent offense of trying to protect a woman who was being assaulted by those ICE agents.

In both cases, as you are aware, the ICE leadership, including the President, have without the benefit of any forensic analysis immediately and publicly declared that these two people were terrorists intent upon doing serious bodily harm to the ICE agents on the scene. They have no evidence to support these claims. If they had to make those claims under oath, they would be guilty of perjury.

These tragedies are only the beginning. ICE believes it has full authority to do whatever it wants whenever it wants. ICE will clearly not abide any form of resistance to its demands, with the result that not only has it murdered two residents of Minneapolis, but it has harassed, arrested, detained, and almost certainly deported US citizens. It has violated the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution countless times. The lives of more Minneapolis residents are at serious risk.

Many words about these practices have been uttered by members of Congress and by you and other local authorities. None of them have changed anything. Nor will they. Unfortunately, more forceful action is required to bring an end to the unlawful occupation of the state by a federal force. Here is my suggestion.

First, you declare a state of emergency covering the entire state, based on the presence of an uninvited military force operating with the apparent approval and direct command of the Department of Homeland Security which force has murdered two Minnesota citizens and violated the U.S. Constitution in its dealings with those and other citizens of the city and state.

I understand you have activated the state National Guard under your direct command although its precise role is somewhat unclear. My proposal to you eliminates any ambiguities.

The declaration of emergency must order the ICE force to depart the state within some very brief period measured in hours rather than days, failing which they will be subject to arrest by the National Guard and such local law enforcement forces as are available to assist.

Given the state law on carrying arms, deputize as necessary any private citizens willing to serve and assist in the state’s effort to restore order and protect its citizens from unlawful detention by ICE.

Using the proper state procedures, you should initiate such legal processes as are appropriate to charge the ICE members who participated in the killing of Renee Good and Alex Pretti with murder in the first degree. Those same charges should be brought against the Secretary of Homeland Security and all other federal persons with line responsibility for the conduct of ICE personnel in Minnesota. I am fully aware of asserted limitations on the ability of the state to charge federal personnel with local crimes. Let the courts sort that out.

You and your advisors can work out the details of these recommendations to assure, to the maximum extent possible, that as little violence results as possible. It is, however, critically important that the state assert itself and bring to a prompt end the occupation of the state by an uninvited and out-of-control federal force that is willfully ignoring the Constitution and state and federal law, even to the extent of murdering state citizens.

I understand that one objection to my proposal will be the claim that the President will use the state’s resistance as a justification for invoking the Insurrection Act. If so, so be it. The use of ICE to deprive U.S. citizens of their rights cannot be allowed to continue. The President clearly does not believe he is bound by the Constitution. He has explicitly said so. Given the conduct of ICE in Minneapolis, it is time, indeed past time, to call the question and find out whether we will continue to have a democratic government or whether Trump and his Republican cronies will not run the country as the dictatorship he has promised.

 

Government Sanctioned Murder in Minneapolis

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I have written on a couple of other occasions about government use of deadly force against citizens. See, e.g., Kenosha – The Shooting of Jacob Blake https://shiningseausa.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=1652&action=edit and When Do We Take a Stand? – Injustice in Georgia https://shiningseausa.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=1517&action=edit

The specific situation in Minneapolis lacks the racial component of the other cases I have addressed but is no less troubling. Many words, including grotesque lies by the President and the head of Homeland Security, have already been devoted to trying to justify his actions as “self-defense.” I have looked at most, if not all, the videos of the events leading up to and the actual shooting, so I will not repeat the arguments on either side of those.

I am disturbed by aspects of the situation that have received little or no attention in the media or the hysterics about the “threat” to the ICE agent. Ultimately, despite the government’s efforts to tilt the story in favor of their agent, the truth will almost certainly come out. Sadly, getting there will exact a further emotional and financial price from the people who should not have to pay more than they already have.

My perspective:

I have no idea what was in the mind of Renee Good and her wife when Good parked her car across the path of travel on the street in Minneapolis. Some accounts indicate they were “heckling” the ICE agents. Others emphasize that Good was waiving other vehicles to pass by and that there was ample room to do so. ICE agent Ross’s own video, curiously using his personal cell phone, indicates Good was not engaged in a threatening move against ICE or trying to impede whatever work they were performing there.

That was true at least until ICE agents approached her vehicle and screamed at her: “get out of the f*cking car!” At that point it is reasonable to suppose that Good’s relatively relaxed demeanor would have changed. She would, reasonably, have felt threatened by the masked, armed men trying to force their way into her car. She may or may not have noticed that the ICE officer filming her while circling her car had arrived in front of the vehicle. Her wife was yelling for her to “drive, drive.” She reversed briefly, then turned the wheel to the right to enter the proper direction of travel on the one-way street.

Whether ICE agent Ross’s presence in front of her registered in Good’s mind will never be known.  But what can be known is whether attempting to drive away after suddenly being told in an angry and threatening voice, “get out of the f*cking car!” (while another masked/armed agent tried to force his way into her car) constituted a crime punishable by death. I have seen some attempts to make that case, but they all fail miserably on both the facts and the law.

It is entirely reasonable to believe that the sudden change in circumstances led to a degree of panic. Ms. Good’s worse crimes were, (1) failure to obey an ICE agent’s order to open her door and step out of the car, an order delivered in an angry and threatening tone; she likely had seen what has happened to many other people who obeyed angry orders to “get out of the f*cking car; and (2) attempting to escape a lawful arrest (although no ICE agent ever said “you are under arrest” and based on events leading up to that moment, her self-assessment of the situation could well have been, “they’re just after me for blocking traffic; I’ll just leave”).

So, she tries to drive away. Agent Ross has positioned himself off her left front and has, apparently anticipating that she is not going to get out of the car, switches his cell phone to his left hand and draws his Glock 9 mm pistol, firing three shots, one through the front window and two through the still-open driver side window. At the range involved, Ross can only intend and expect that his firing will result in mortal wounds to Renee Good.

A physician offers to provide aid to her and is rejected in favor of ICE medics who don’t arrive for several more critical minutes. Would the immediate medical help have saved her? We will never know.

And what of ICE agent Ross? Was he struck by Good’s car? Opinions differ. My assessment is that he managed to avoid meaningful contact with Good’s left front fender. The government says otherwise. It claims Ross, despite his being heavily protected by vests and other items, suffered internal bleeding requiring medical treatment in a hospital, though no corroborating records have been released.

What I know is this: in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, Ross was filmed walking briskly and unaided, and in no apparent distress, up the street. Someone off camera apparently said or shouted something at him, and he waived them off with his right hand, then adjusted his mask as he continued up the street. The video has apparently been taken down.

Given the government’s rush to vindicate Ross and make him the victim in this situation, the video of his walk back from Good’s car suggests, though it does not prove, that the government’s claim that he shot Good in self-defense is a false claim. His demeanor walking away from Good’s car is that of someone fully satisfied with himself and his conduct.

Obviously, much process and evidence is yet to be developed before final conclusions can be drawn. One thing seems clear, though: the manner in which ICE officers conduct themselves is almost certain to lead to more unnecessary deaths. I believe that what happened to Renee Good in Minneapolis was unnecessary and entirely avoidable if the ICE agents on the scene had behaved responsibly. The last update to the use of force policy at DHS/ICE was promulgated in 2023 and as best I can tell, it still governs the use of force by ICE officers. If so, Officer Ross violated that policy in multiple ways that led to the unnecessary death of Renee Good. Right now, her killing surely looks like murder.

 

 

That Flushing Sound You Hear

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… is the credibility and the last scrap of integrity of the Washington Post’s Editorial Board being flushed down the toilet of history.

I was stunned this morning to read this morning that the Post’s Editorial Board has undertaken to undermine former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s argument that (1) Trump’s knowingly false claims about the 2020 election were not First Amendment protected speech, and that (2) Trump’s attacks on the prosecutor and his staff, which led to multiple death threats, were not First Amendment protected speech. Adding to that gross distortion of First Amendment jurisprudence were the snide and facially absurd claims that Smith was “seeking to muzzle a candidate for high office” and that his efforts “probably helped Trump win the 2024 election.”

No mention of the Post’s decision to withdraw its endorsement of Kamala Harris, forced on it by Post-owner, Trump supporter and financial beneficiary thereof Jeff Bezos. One cannot help but wonder what role Bezos is playing in directing the positions of the Editorial Board now.

In my semi-skilled understanding of the First Amendment and a fair reading of what Smith actually said in his deposition, the Post’s Editorial Board has deliberately misread and misstated what Smith said and what he did as Special Prosecutor to try to bring Trump to the justice that he has now, once again, completely escaped.

The EB says, “the indictment accused Trump of lying so pervasively about the election that he committed criminal fraud.” What Smith actually said, in response to a question suggesting Trump’s knowing lies about the election were protected by the First Amendment, was that the fraud exception to First Amendment immunity was well-established law, a statement that is unquestionably correct. The fact that other politicians in the future might try to claim such protections for their own make-believe versions of events in the future is no reason to exempt an out-going president/candidate from a knowingly-false and frequently pressed version of events designed to prevent the application of constitutionally-sanctioned actions are/were at the core of the peaceful transfer of power on which our government system is based.

If the Post’s EB has its way, future politicians will not only be able to press phantasmagorical versions of events on the public at will, but they will be able to do so in the cause of preventing the electoral process from functioning as it was intended (let’s not forget Trump’s fake electors scheme that, as Smith recounted, proved to be even a bridge too far for some of Trump’s devoted acolytes).

The EB labels Trump’s multiple knowingly false statements about the 2020 election as only “odious” and in keeping with the claims of other politicians who, not unusually, “take factual liberties” that constitute mere “misdirection” that should be addressed by “public scrutiny” rather than prosecution.

Perhaps equally preposterous is the EB’s claim that while “of course fraud is a crime,” it’s usually just about lying to get money, “not political advantage.” “Most political speech is aimed at influencing government functions.”

Maybe that was true before Trump but prosecuting a politician for what the EB backhandedly admits were “brazen and destructive falsehoods” will “inevitably” lead to exploitation by some future prosecutors “with different priorities” has already occurred and has nothing to do with what Jack Smith thinks. In case the EB is unaware, given Trump’s disposition to disregard court decisions, Trump, armed with the criminal immunity protection awarded him by the Supreme Court, Trump’s Justice Department is now serving as Trump’s personal counsel in trying to prosecute his “political enemies.” It is entirely a function of the collapse of democratic guardrails under a president who has no idea about and no interest in complying with the United States Constitution. The Post’s EB cannot be aware of what has happened since Trump took office. But with Bezos calling the shots now, it doesn’t seem to matter.

It was especially interesting, I thought, that the EB thought Smith’s efforts to obtain gag orders against Trump’s attacks and personal threats would simply “interfere with the legal process.” While Smith no doubt believed that was true, his argument was that Trump’s attacks were jeopardizing the safety of the people working on the cases and that such attacks needed to be restrained because they could, in ways obvious and not, to influence how the prosecution was conducted.

Yes, the courts limited the scope of the protections Smith sought. That’s what courts are for. Only the most willfully blind and/or indifferent observer could not see that Trump had and continues to have the support of the courts for most of his most egregious conduct. Of course, Trump can, and always could, claim he was being unfairly prosecuted, but that is not what he was doing. The EB’s claim that Smith had a “cavalier attitude toward constitutional safeguards” is the height of hypocrisy, given Trump’s total disregard for the Constitution that he has expressly stated he does not support notwithstanding his oath of office to the contrary.

The EB’s final swipe is to criticize Smith for seeking what it calls the “phone records” of Republican members of Congress, including House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (does the EB think the Speaker of the House is also immune from criminal conspiracy?) Smith addressed the issue of those phone records in detail during his deposition. The records sought were toll records, showing who was calling whom but nothing about the content of the conversations.

Apparently, the Washington Post is perfectly fine with members of Congress conspiring to break the law and defy the Constitution. I, on the other hand, am delighted that we had an experienced prosecutor aggressively seeking justice and enforcement of the Constitutional principles that have sustained our country since June 1788. Our democracy now hangs by a thread. It is past time to take it back from Trump and his fascist fanatics. Trump/Vance must be removed.

The Deposition of Jack Smith, Special Counsel

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The House Judiciary Committee has released a 255-page transcript, as well as an 8 hour and 20-minute video, of its closed-door deposition with Jack Smith. Smith, you recall, was appointed by President Joe Biden to investigate and, if warranted, prosecute Donald Trump for his attempt to overthrow the 2020 election by violently preventing Congress from executing its responsibility to peacefully transfer the executive power on January 6, 2021. Smith’s work was inexplicably delayed by then Attorney General Merrick Garland so that, when Trump was elected the second time, all the prosecutions were stopped and eventually dropped entirely.

Thus, Donald Trump, once again, escaped justice.

On January 6 my wife and I watched on TV from our apartment at Pennsylvania Avenue and 24th Street NW in Washington in disbelief as the attack on the Capitol unfolded, arranged and spurred on by Donald Trump. Surely, we thought, this will be the end of Trump. This is simply a bridge too far. We were wrong. Today, the anniversary of the attack on the Capitol, is an appropriate time to review Jack Smith’s deposition.

You are not likely going to read the entire deposition transcript. I have done so in your place and excerpt it here. The version on which I have relied is reproduced at: https://thenationaldesk.com/news/americas-news-now/house-judiciary-committee-releases-255-page-transcript-of-jack-smiths-deposition-former-special-counsel-president-donald-trump-criminal-investigations-probes-prosecutions-classified-documents-2020-presidential-election-joe-biden.

I begin by noting that the Republican politicians who led the questioning were partisans, determined to exonerate Trump regardless of the evidence. The transcript thus begins with this:

Chairman Jordan has requested this deposition as part of the committee’s oversight of the Biden-Harris administration’s weaponization of the Justice Department and its misuse of Federal law enforcement resources for partisan political purposes.

You may recall that immediately upon taking office the second time, Trump pardoned all the hundreds of convicted people who attacked the Capitol on January 6. That action speaks for itself.

The deposition began with Mr. Smith’s counsel noting that the deposition was being conducted with Volume Two of the special counsel’s report withheld per demand of Donald Trump:

… that amounts to gagging Mr. Smith today and preventing him from telling this committee about his investigation into President’s Trump’s crimes. And, specifically, these crimes include stealing and lying about classified documents he kept in the ballrooms and bathrooms of his Mar-a-Lago clubhouse. And there is no reason at all to continue to keep Volume Two under seal — besides, of course, the fact that Mr. Trump doesn’t like what it says.

A second major limitation, in place at the behest of the Department of Justice, was described this way:

This morning, just over an hour ago, the Department of Justice sent us an email affirming its view that Judge Cannon’s order applies to Mr. Smith and that it precludes him from disclosing any nonpublic information that may be contained in Volume Two, including but not limited to interview transcripts, search warrant materials, business records, toll records, video footage, records obtained by grand jury subpoenas, attorney-client communications, and potential for Rule 404(b) evidence. This restriction significantly limits Mr. Smith’s ability to discuss the classified documents case.

My summary of the deposition must be read in light of these Republican-imposed restrictions obviously intended to protect Trump from incriminating disclosures. Further, despite an express invitation, the Department of Justice declined to have a staff attorney present during the deposition to facilitate the prompt resolution of any questions that might arise regarding the proper scope of questions asked.

Semi-finally, in keeping with Trump’s general approach to the January 6 and document theft issues, he publicly called for the arrest of the special counsel. It was noted on the record that,

Yesterday the President’s chief of staff is reported to have confirmed in interviews that the President is indeed pursuing criminal prosecutions against his perceived adversaries as part of a retribution campaign.

And, finally, to put to rest the slanting of the narrative by the media, Smith’s clear and unequivocal opening statement began with:

Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power.

Our investigation also developed powerful evidence that showed that President Trump willfully retained highly classified documents after he left office in January of 2021, storing them at his social club, including in a ballroom and a bathroom. He then repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents….

The timing and speed of our work reflects the strength of the evidence and our confidence that we would have secured convictions at trial. If asked whether to prosecute a former President based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that President was a Republican or a Democrat.

And so on to the merits, as Republicans tried to frame the issue as one of infringing on Trump’s First Amendment rights to complain about the election outcome. Jack Smith speaks:

There is no historical analog for what President Trump did in this case. As we said in the indictment, he was free to say that he thought he won the election. He was even free to say falsely that he won the election. But what he was not free to do was violate Federal law and use knowing — knowingly false statements about election fraud to target a lawful government function. That he was not allowed to do. And that differentiates this case from any past history.

… the evidence here made clear that President Trump was by a large measure the most culpable and most responsible person in this conspiracy.  These crimes were committed for his benefit.   The attack that happened at the Capitol, part of this case, does not happen without him.  The other co-conspirators were doing this for his benefit.   So in terms of why we would pursue a case against him, I entirely disagree with any characterization that our work was in any way meant to hamper him in the Presidential election.

… our evidence is that he in the weeks leading up to January 6th created a level of distrust.  He used that level of distrust to get people to believe fraud claims that weren’t true.  He made false statements to State legislatures, to his supporters in all sorts of contexts and was aware in the days leading up to January 6th that his supporters were angry when he invited them and then he directed them to the Capitol.   Now, once they were at the Capitol and once the attack on the Capitol happened, he refused to stop it.  He instead issued a tweet that without question in my mind endangered the life of his own Vice President.  And when the violence was going on, he had to be pushed repeatedly by his staff members to do anything to quell it.   And then even afterwards he directed co-conspirators to make calls to Members of Congress, people who had [sic]were his political allies, to further delay the proceedings.

Regarding Smith’s moving for gag orders against Trump’s threats:

… with respect to D.C., both the district court and the court of appeals, a panel of judges, found that his actions were, in fact, causing what we said they caused.  They were causing witnesses to be intimidated and endangering people.   And I believe it was the court of appeals also found that in addition to intimidating or chilling witnesses who existed, it would chill witnesses who had not yet come forward because they were afraid that they would be next.

Regarding the question of the Congressional committee reviewing the special counsel’s case files from the investigation:

Mr. Goldman.  If the case files were released, would they include any political considerations by you or your team as you investigated and charged these cases?

Smith:  We did not consider politics.  I did not consider politics, anyone’s politics, in charging these cases.

Mr. Goldman.  And that would be borne out presumably by the case files?

Smith:  I’m not aware of anything in the case files that would contradict that.

Mr. Goldman.  Because it never happened?

Smith:  It never happened.

Smith:

The right to vote in a presidential election is one of the most sacred rights that America has – Americans have, and in this particular case, we had strong evidence that the defendants in this case sought to interfere with, obstruct, injure that right. We had evidence, and just a couple of examples, where President Trump was asking local officials to find 11,000 votes. When you find 11,000 votes, you’re diluting other people’s votes. We had evidence they were targeting other states and particularly certain parts of other states, generally urban parts of States, to have those votes thrown out with no factual basis whatsoever.  I believe we cited this in our final report, but there is even statements of the co-conspirators in this case, at least one that’s coming to mind now, specifically saying, “We want to get rid of these votes.  We want to subtract them.”   And, diluting the vote count in that way, there is strong precedent for that being a violation of the statute that we charged.

Mr. Goldman.  Did you ever prosecute someone that you did not believe was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt?

Smith:  Never.

When Committee Chairman Jordan resumed questioning Smith, he pressed on the question of why Smith sought the toll records of members of Congress from January 6 when he, Smith, could simply have asked for them. Smith’s response:

… you say now that nobody is disputing, but my experience in criminal investigations is that people often at trial dispute things that you never thought were going to be in dispute during the investigation and so, when I conduct a criminal investigation, I don’t assume there will be no disputes.

Having a record that is a hard record about a time, and the timeline about that particular afternoon was important because the violence had started. The President refused to stop it. He endangered the life of his Vice President, and then he’s getting calls, and not just – not calls from Democrats, not calls from people he doesn’t know – calls from people he trusts, calls from people he relies on – and still refuses to come to the aid of the people at the Capitol. That’s very important evidence for criminal intent in our case.

Name of questioner deleted:

So do you recall any evidence, when you were talking to Mr. Giuliani, that he truly believed all the voter-fraud claims that he was putting out around the country?

Smith:

Our evidence was, he did not.  And, in fact, when we interviewed him, he disavowed a number of the claims.  He claimed they were mistakes or hyperbole, even the claim about Ruby Freeman, where he, you know, basically destroyed this poor woman’s life by claiming she was a vote scammer.  President Trump did the same thing in a recorded call with the Secretary of State; he disavowed things he’d said in that interview.

Smith:

Another example I can give is that Sidney Powell, who’s alleged as one of the co-conspirators, was part of his team at the beginning of this conspiracy.  Shortly after, she began making statements that really nobody could credit, that were facially false.   And at some point, Giuliani made a statement that she wasn’t on the legal team anymore.  And Trump at one point was on a call, President Trump, where he, if I recollect it right, he muted the call and said she was crazy.   But then, after that point, he continued to promote her fraud claims and lawsuits.  He considered putting her as a special counsel, even though he’d admitted — you know, he used the word “crazy,” and the statements she was making couldn’t by any reasonable person be viewed as true.   And so I think that sort of, like, claims that were so outlandish and so just fantastical, continuing to push those sort of claims after they’d been disabused, was strong evidence of our case.

Mr. Lofgren:

What did Donald Trump want Vice President Pence to do to overturn the election results?

Smith:

Well, ultimately, he wanted him to just hand him the election, to say he won.  There were different proposals that President Trump and his co-conspirators put to Mike Pence, but, in essence, he wanted Mike Pence to impose his own choice about who should be President over the will of the American people who voted in the election.

Mr. Lofgren:

Was one of those ways that Donald Trump tried to pressure Mr. Pence was to reject the lawful elector certificates of their votes during the electoral counting process?  Was that one of the ways that you recall?

Smith: That’s correct.

Questioner redacted:

Can you help now bring us full circle on how you analyzed the First Amendment claims with the knowledge of the fraud that Mr. Trump was putting out to the American public in 2020 and 2021?

Smith:

Sure. From a legal perspective, this is really quite clear.  I think all of us want to make sure people’s First Amendment rights are not abridged in a way that they shouldn’t be.  I think I certainly feel that way.  I’m sure everybody in this room feels that way.   But there is a very clear carve-out for fraud in our case law.  The Supreme Court — I think there’s — one case is the Stevens case, talks about that, and there are others.   And so when you’re committing a fraud, meaning you’re not just saying something that’s untrue, you’re saying it knowing it’s untrue or with reckless disregard for the truth, that’s not protected by the First Amendment.   People commit crimes all the time using words.  And when someone commits a fraud, an investment fraud, or someone commits an affinity fraud, where you try to gain someone’s trust, get them to trust you as a general matter, and then you rip them off, you defraud them, that’s all words, but it’s not protected by the First Amendment.   And in a lot of ways this case was an affinity fraud.  The President had people who he had built up — who had built up trust in him, including people in his own party, and he preyed on that.   Some people wouldn’t do it.  Others would.  We’re lucky that enough wouldn’t that the election was upheld.

Regarding the Supreme Court’s decision that Trump was absolutely immune from accountability for crimes committed while executing the president’s executive powers:

Smith:

All of those witnesses … would still be available to us. The heart of our case would still be available to us.

And I think it’s important to know that … our view was that he abused his authority in the Justice Department to as one way, to effectuate this scheme. This was about him as a candidate trying to say he won an election he didn’t win, and so, having to frame this in that matter, obviously, it limited some of the evidence. That’s why we had to supersede the indictment.

But I don’t think it was an exoneration because I still believed that there was substantial evidence that would allow us to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.

The balance of the deposition relates to the indictment and related search of the Mar-a-Lago premises for confidential documents that Trump removed from the White House, stored in insecure facilities where many people without security clearances could have seen them, and about the efforts of Trump and his aides to conceal the documents from the attorneys searching for them. Smith notes in the deposition that the judge (a Trump appointee) who decided the challenges to the search of Mar-a-Lago had stated that “the defense motion does not even meaningfully challenge the presence of probable cause in the affidavit.” Smith also noted that “President Trump kept these incredibly highly classified documents in boxes with all different sorts of things of all different sorts of shapes and sizes — clothing, memorabilia, newspaper clippings, things of that nature.”

Near the end of the deposition, a redacted questioner posed these questions:

Q:  So, Mr. Smith, you spoke earlier today about threats and attacks against — made by Donald Trump against witnesses, prosecutors, judges who had challenged him, including threats against yourself. Do you remember that?

Smith: Yes.

Q : So did President Trump target you personally in posts on Truth Social?

Smith: Yes.

Q: Are you aware, for example, that he called you a, quote, “deranged lunatic,” unquote; quote, “Trump hater,” unquote; and, quote, “psycho”?

Smith: Yes.

Q: Do you recall that, on October 15th this year, President Trump, speaking to reporters, standing next to the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General, said,  quote, “Deranged Jack Smith, in my opinion, is a criminal,” unquote? Then he also talked about investigating Lisa Monaco, Andrew Weissmann, and Adam Schiff, saying, quote, “I hope they’re looking at all these people. And I’m allowed to find out. I’m, in theory, the chief law enforcement officer,” unquote.

Smith: Yes, I’m aware of that.

Q: And are you aware that President Trump posted on Truth Social on October 29th of this year that, quote, “these thugs should all be investigated and put in prison. A disgrace to humanity. Deranged Jack Smith is a criminal!!!” with three exclamation marks, unquote?

Smith: That may be. I know there were several posts like this.

Q: Okay. Do you think those were a direction, potential direction, to Department of Justice to retaliate against you because of your role as special counsel in 1 the investigation of him?

Smith: Yes.

Q: You are joined by your counsel today from Covington & Burling. Is that right?

Smith: Yes.

Q: And did President Trump or the White House take any actions against your attorneys due to their relationship with you?

Smith: Yes.

Q; And what action did they take?

Smith: They filed an executive order against the law firm and sought to withdraw the security clearances of my attorney.

The deposition concludes with a discussion of the fact that President Trump pardoned all of the convicted men and women who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021, injuring and killing police officers, and then pardoned the 77 people involved in seeking to overturn the 2020 election.

 

Trump Presidency — It’s Only Going to Get Worse

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I have been reading four books dealing with authoritarianism, a doctrine the Donald Trump, among others, is trying to use to overturn American democracy. The books are:

Autocracy, Inc by Anne Applebaum, who has a Pulitzer Prize to her credit.

How to stand up to a dictator by Maria Ressa, who has a Nobel Prize.

Fortress America-How we embraced fear and abandoned democracy by Elaine Tyler May.

Strongmen by Ruth Ben-Ghiat.

I have only finished Autocracy, Inc., which is subtitled The Dictators Who Want to Run the World. It describes Donald Trump and those like him around the world with frightful clarity:

Modern autocrats differ in many ways from their twentieth-century predecessors. But the heirs, successors, and imitators of these older leaders and thinkers, however varied their ideologies, do have a common enemy. That enemy is us.

To be more precise, that enemy is the democratic world, “the West,” NATO, the European Union, their own internal democratic opponents, and the liberal ideas that inspire all of them. [Autocracy, Inc. at 10]

This should look familiar. It is Donald Trump’s agenda to the letter. And, to the dismay of many Americans, it is the goal of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, an outrage that Trump supports. For its part, Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov summarized it this way in 2022:

This is not about Ukraine at all, but the world order …. The current crisis is a fateful, epoch-making moment in modern history. It reflects the battle over what the world order will look like. [Autocracy, Inc. at 14]

Trump, of course, has not intellectual grasp of any principles related to any of this. His understanding of the world centers around his image and his money. They form the basis for his approach to almost everything.

***

My original plan had been to accumulate news stories about the horrors of the Trump presidency and lay them out in bullet format, but I simply could not keep up with the daily dose of outrages.

But just when you think you’re done, sometimes something good happens. Meidastouch that publishes extensively on substack.com has more resources than I do and has done the job for me. It has published in two sections thus far, appropriately titled: 500 Worst Things Trump Did in 2025 It is authored by Ron Filipkowski, Editor-in-Chief of MeidasTouch Network:

https://www.meidasplus.com/p/500-worst-things-trump-did-in-2025?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3078900&post_id=182695550&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=34np5m&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

This is a comprehensive list documenting 500 of the worst things Trump and his admin did just this year. The list is in chronological order beginning on January 1, 2025, to the end of the year. This is not merely a list of the things Trump did personally – it is an accounting of the worst things his administration has done this year.

Part Two of the series, covering the worst things Trump’s administration did between late February and early April, may be read here:

https://www.meidasplus.com/p/500-worst-things-trump-did-in-2025-4d7?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3078900&post_id=182764313&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=34np5m&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

His related column, the ‘25 Worst Villains of the Trump Admin’, can be read here: https://www.meidasplus.com/p/25-worst-villains-of-the-trump-admin?r=9qw74

If you want to continue reading Filipkowski’s pieces, and you should, simply go to substack.com and sign up. It’s free, although there are paid subscriptions with benefits available. Parts 3 and 4 of the series have been published.

***

It is now 2026. If democracy in America and around the world is going to be saved, this is the year in which it must happen. We can only save ourselves. No one is coming to our rescue. The Republican Party, likely with the concurrence of the Supreme Court, is doing everything it can to rearrange the voting districts to make it impossible for Democrats to regain control of the Congress. This effort must be defeated or we are lost. The last chance to resist is NOW!

We Interrupt This “Program”

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Of the many inappropriate and often illegal decisions Donald Trump has made since his second election to the presidency, adding his name to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Art ranks as one of the worst, least justified by history, and one that blatantly violates a statute governing the name of the institution. Not that we would expect Trump to honor the laws of the United States that he generally regards as inconveniences unless they produce revenue for him and his family.

Trump couldn’t wait to add his name to the Center. To get the job done, he fired the managing board and replaced it with people who would do his bidding. An immediate response was that many artists decided they could no longer perform at the Center because doing so would be seen by many as endorsing or at least supporting Trump’s decision to rename the iconic arts center.

So, when Chuck Redd, a well-known local musician, cancelled the Christmas Eve performance he had led for some 20 years, the Trump-designated “President” of the Center, Richard Grenell, threatened Redd with a lawsuit, claiming damages of $1 million. https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/2025/12/27/trump-kennedy-center-chuck-redd/

According to Wikipedia, Mr. Grenell has never attended law school and the identity of the attorneys advising him has not been revealed. So we have the following situation: Grenell, a non-lawyer but Trump sycophant, has claimed Mr. Redd has damaged the Kennedy Center (I will never refer to it with Trump’s name) by engaging in “classic intolerance” and a “political stunt” that was “costly” to the ”non-profit Arts institution.”

In law school I paid pretty close attention in torts and contracts classes. I did not fail to note that there is no legal “cause of action” [grounds for suit] based on “class intolerance” and “political stuntery.” There is a cause of action for breach of contract, of course, and I suppose it’s possible  Mr. Redd signed a contract binding him to perform his holiday show. If so, he will have to deal with that. If he had bound himself that way, however, I would have thought Mr. Grenell, armed with the expert advice of the Trump-loyalist attorneys we have come associate with Mr. Trump’s finest legal work (Habba, Giuliani, Ellis, Halligan, Pirro, Chesebro, Eastman, Powell, Mitchell ….),  would have chosen his words more carefully.

The Washington Post reported that:

Roma Daravi, the center’s vice president of public relations, added in an emailed statement to The Post: “Any artist cancelling their show at the Trump Kennedy Center over political differences isn’t courageous or principled — they are selfish, intolerant, and have failed to meet the basic duty of a public artist: to perform for all people.”

Who is going to tell Ms. Daravi that slavery went out a very long time ago and that performing artists do not have a “basic duty … to perform for all people?”  Name calling is, of course, standard practice for Trump and his associates, which brings to mind that Trump may be the “real party in interest” on the plaintiff’s side of the threatened litigation. If so, he is subject to having his deposition taken. Wouldn’t that be a stitch? Chuck Redd takes the Trump deposition that Robert Mueller never did.

Of course, these threats also face the fact that the artistic community that normally works the Kennedy Center has from the outset made clear it will not support Trump’s perversion of the Center to his ego-maniacal purposes. As the Post reported, Mr. Redd is not alone in his refusal to accept Trump’s officious renaming of the Center:

The Kennedy Center has experienced a steep decline in ticket sales since Trump’s takeover of the institution compared with the same period last year …. Sales for orchestra, theater and dance performances are the worst they have been since the coronavirus pandemic, according to a Post analysis.

In the weeks after the February board changes, at least 20 productions were canceled or postponed, with names such as comedian and actor Issa Rae pulling out of planned performances at the center, and musical artist Ben Folds and opera singer Renée Fleming announcing they were stepping down as artistic advisers.

This is all very sad. My wife and I bought a subscription to multiple programs this year because we have a compelling need to see and support groups like American Ballet Theater and New York City Ballet both of which are slated to appear this season. Our subscription included Spamalot that we thought was pretty awful as entertainment. It’s worth noting that the audience for the show was so reduced that the Center moved the event to the smaller Eisenhower Theater. There were still many empty seats.

Trump’s determination to honor himself at every opportunity is not going to go well and once he is gone, all of these outrages will be reversed. It can’t happen too soon.

WAPO, Your Bezos Is Showing

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It didn’t take long for the Washington Post to launch a hysterical attack on the choice of the voters in New York City who, apparently tired of the way things have been run, chose convincingly between the options presented to them by the democratic process there. Zohran Mamdani drops the mask  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/11/08/zohran-mamdani-class-warfare-new-york-mayor/  I suppose this is not surprising after Jeff Bezos stopped the paper from endorsing Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race. Still, this is the Washington Post, once venerated as one of the leading independent (remember Watergate?) news sources in the country and, indeed, the world.

No more. It’s now apparent that its owner has completely coopted the so-called Editorial Board and revealed his and its acquiescence in the fascist model of government promoted by Donald Trump. Bezos has a lot of money, so he probably doesn’t care much what happens to the paper as it is abandoned by many of its leading thinkers and many also of its subscribers. It is interesting how individuals who amass vast fortunes become indifferent to the needs and wants of the people whose patronage created those fortunes.

Mr. Bezos has aligned himself, and his newspaper, with Donald Trump, a man who has no respect for the Constitution he swore to uphold, no respect for anything that does not serve his personal interests. The Post’s Editorial Board (EB) has now gone full Trump by attacking the choice made by the voters of New York City. The EB apparently no longer believes in democracy. Maybe it’s time for the Post to change its name to reflect what it now represents. The paper’s motto still says, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” But the lights are out at the Post now, and it is dark indeed.

Consider what the EB has said about the choice of New York City’s voters.

They opened by calling him “Generalissimo,” a reference typically applied (though not exclusively) to fascists and dictators. Donald Trump loves to call opponents names and the Post’s EB has apparently gone full in on Trump’s approach. The Post’s EB must be terrified. I watched the same acceptance speech that it did. I saw a young man relishing his hard-earned victory (you don’t win in New York politics the easy way but remember the wisdom of Sinatra: if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere).

I am not going to waste a good Monday with chapter-and-verse discussion of the Post’s new-found discovery that less government is the solution to New York’s (and presumably everyone’s) problems. Note, however, that whoever watched the acceptance speech at the Post failed to note how often Mamdani smiled, how often he spoke of using the power of government to help the general population of the city. Now, suddenly, the Post’s EB has become the voice of the “small government is the best government” crowd while whining that Mamdani mentioned Donald Trump eight times but didn’t utter “growth” even once. The people at the Heritage Foundation must be ecstatic. And it is a fundamental mistake to believe that Donald Trump is an adherent of “small government.” Trump’s “philosophy” is that of the prototypical dictator: “the government is me.” Size is irrelevant.

It is a fundamental truth that humans often hear what they want to hear. That principle applied to the Post’s EB as it listened to Mamdani’s speech. What seems most clear in all this is that the Post editors are terrified that the people of New York City have chosen someone whom the editors don’t trust because they don’t know him. They apparently have not been paying enough attention and now that the people of New York City have spoken, the EB is panicked.

The ”observers” at the Post apparently missed the part of Mamdani’s acceptance speech in which he spoke eloquently about his election being a victory for those “so often forgotten by the politics of our city.” He spoke the importance of keeping hope alive, a vital tenet at a time when hungry people are being cut off from their daily bread by a hostile president who is now threatening the city and Mamdani personally. Trump threatens to punish NYC over Mamdani. Will he arrest new mayor and block funds? https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/11/08/trump-threat-nyc-mayor-mamdani/87133111007/?utm_source=usatoday-newsalert-strada&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsalert&utm_term=hero&utm_content=usat-mclean-nletter01

Trump’s blather aside, perhaps hope comes first and growth follows.

The only real alternative was former governor Andrew Cuomo. I happen to appreciate some aspects of Cuomo’s service as New York’s governor. I wrote about it here: https://shiningseausa.com/2020/05/01/governor-andrew-cuomo-presents/ but also here: https://shiningseausa.com/2023/06/04/appalling-failure-great-city/ It is also true that I was deeply disappointed to learn of the accusations against him from multiple women whose complaints I fully credit. It’s too bad, but it is what it is. Cuomo created his own trouble and paid the price. If the same principles were applied to Donald Trump, he would be sitting in a prison cell right now.

Mr. Cuomo lost the Democratic primary to Mr. Mamdani, ran against him as an independent, and lost again. The people of New York City made their choice in a free and fair election, something that should be respected. Instead, the Post’s EB chose to suck up to Jeff Bezos and, make no mistake, to Donald Trump whose last-minute endorsement of Cuomo failed badly. What the Post’s EB hopes to achieve from this hatchet job on the voters of New York (Mamdani was their clear choice), I can’t imagine.

Finally, compare the approach taken by the New York Times in an opinion piece more appropriately entitled: 6 Ways Mayor Mamdani Can Improve New York https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/04/opinion/mayor-mamdani-new-york-election.html

Anyone who has lived in New York City (I did for three glorious years [including the decidedly inglorious pandemic year 2020]) and who was paying attention understands the enormous challenges the city presents to anyone trying to engineer major changes. But change is possible if bold thinking is supported. It won’t be easy, but little worth the effort is easy. Instead of whining about Mamdani’s “class consciousness,” the Washington Post would do well to remove its collective head from Donald Trump’s hindquarters and join the parade that the Democratic victories on November 2 suggested were now within reach.

Which Side of the Boat Should We Run To?

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The Washington Post continues to be a national embarrassment. The latest example is the Editorial Board’s fall-all-over-itself to find ways to praise Donald Trump even as he continues to establish his fascist fantasy of a United States in which he is above the law, above the Constitution, free to deprive Americans of their liberty without risk and to enrich himself and his family by stealing from the public treasury.

On October 9, the Editorial Board took it upon itself to assume that Trump’s announced Gaza peace plan “may actually hold,” in which case, the Post says, “The president’s unorthodox deal-making style deserves credit.” Maybe. If, if, if….. But “ifs” are not enough. The paper goes on to address the peace “plan” on the eve of the Nobel Peace Prize award announcement and proclaims that “if the deal holds, Trump can legitimately bolster his claim to be a peacemaker worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize.”

Wow.

Of course, we now know that the Nobel committee had better sense and awarded to prize to someone with a legitimate claim to it. And the Gaza so-called “peace plan” if unraveling faster than a defective yo-yo.

The Post article goes on with more both-sides-ing than I care to count. And if you’ve been following the news from Israel/Gaza, you know that there was yet another of the usual mutual declarations and denials of violations with the result that Israel killed more Palestinians and then said, yet again, “we’re done now … unless….”

In another story, also dated October 9, the Post said: “Details of the deal, the first phase of which both sides signed earlier Thursday, remain unclear, and Israeli strikes continued Thursday. President Donald Trump said Thursday that the hostages would be released Monday or Tuesday and that he would travel to Egypt for a signing of the plan.” Well, of course he would. Trump always, always needs to be at the center, claiming his brilliance as a negotiator is responsible for whatever good appears to be happening. Having reduced the federal government to a shambles, he is off on a multi-country tour where foreign leaders are fawning all over him with praise and gifts.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, Trump, in his brilliance, has ordered the immediate resumption of nuclear weapons testing. How about that Washington Post? Here’s today’s report:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/10/29/trump-nuclear-test-plans/  Chaos reigns.

Elect a fool and this is what you get.

 

How Long Before the American Kristallnacht?

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For those not familiar with the term Kristallnacht, it is German and means the Night of Broken Glass, a pogrom against Jews executed by the Nazi Party’s paramilitary forces along with Hitler Youth and some German citizens in November, 1938. As described in the Wikipedia article:

Jewish homes, hospitals and schools were ransacked as attackers demolished buildings with sledgehammers. Rioters destroyed over 1,400 synagogues and prayer rooms throughout Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland. Over 7,000 Jewish businesses were damaged or destroyed and 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and incarcerated in concentration camps. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht]

This was in many ways the logical and inevitable step in resolving what Hitler and other Nazis thought of as the “Jewish question.”

In the United States now, we have a related spectacle developing. The stories are multiplying daily of ICE kidnappings and assaults on the streets in various cities. Masked and armed men appear and snatch people walking on the street or at work in various, generally low-level, jobs. The men travel in packs, refuse to identify themselves, and are sometimes aided by local law enforcement. The chain of command, if there is one, is entirely opaque, as are their orders. There is no due process for their victims.

Contrary to the public claims of the Trump administration, the victims are almost never the “hardened and violent criminals” that were supposed to be the targets of the forced deportation program. In fact, there are multiple instances of U.S. citizens being taken, snatched away from children and other dependents, taken to undisclosed locations and detained in extremely harsh conditions sometimes for weeks.

The administration doesn’t care. In fact, I believe it is fair to say that these incidents are the logical and inevitable step in resolving what Trump and other Republicans think of as the “immigrant question.” So what if U.S. citizens are mistakenly swept up in the dragnet? The key is to instill fear in the immigrant population, a goal immeasurably aided by the majority of the Supreme Court that has allowed the deportation to countries from which the deportees have no historical relationship and which in some cases are on “do not travel” lists issued by our own State Department.

There is an internal logic to this type of activity. The longer it is allowed to occur, the more we will see. You get what you tolerate. The history of ethnic cleansing in other countries as well as our own strongly supports the likelihood that the conduct we’re seeing from ICE is only going to get worse. At some point someone is going to react violently to their activity and that will become the pretext for a hyper-violent response. Once it starts, it will not stop by itself.

Democrats making denunciatory speeches in Congress or on podcasts won’t stop it. ICE’s budget under the new Republican budget just passed is many multiples of the budgets of the other federal law enforcement agencies and larger than the funding of the FBI, IRS, Secret Service, DEA, SEC, and ATF combined. ICE is preparing for the time when it has a sufficient excuse to unleash its full force against the country, to eliminate people Trump considers to be either his enemies or who don’t fit his conception of “proper Americans.”

The capper to my prediction is the two-fold cleansing operation reflected in (1) the due-process-free-rapid-arrest-and-deportation to foreign prisons of whomever ICE “decides” should be summarily removed from the United States, and (2) the building of domestic concentration camps like the one publicly relished by Trump/Noem in the Everglades. Add to that the use of the military to assist ICE and otherwise suppress dissent in places like California and you have the perfect storm.

When the United States establishes concentration camps and the federal government celebrates their creation, the country is in the deepest trouble. The problem is compounded by the remarkable behavior of the Supreme Court that is writing both due process and the separation of powers out of the Constitution. The John Roberts Court is doing just what the Republicans want – facilitating the rapid transition of the country to a dictatorship.

So, I ask how long, absent a game-changing intervention, it will be before Trump concludes: “I am no longer restrained by law or the courts, and, as I have said many times before, I can do whatever I want?”

Donald Trump – America’s Mussolini

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I have finished reading a series of books that purport to explain what has been happening in the politics of the United States and the larger world. The books are:

Age of Revolutions: Progress and backlash from 1600 to the present (2024) by Fareed Zakaria

Fortress America: How We Embraced Fear and Abandoned Democracy (2020) by Elaine Tyler May

Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World (2024) by Anne Applebaum

And, finally, the most recent is one I have just begun: Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present (2021) by Ruth Ben-Ghiat. The book was published before Trump fully manifested as the malignant fascist that he has become, but it was after he had been elected the first time and gave his infamous “American Carnage” inaugural speech in 2017 that prompted former Republican President George W. Bush to exclaim: “That’s some weird sh*t.”

The compelling opening of Strongmen lies in the description of one “strongman” in particular, perhaps the model for those that would follow: Benito Mussolini. Ben-Ghiat writes:

The disaffection with conventional politics and politicians after a ruinous war created yearnings for a new kind of leader. The cults that rose up around Mussolini and Hitler in the early 1920s answered anxieties about the decline of male status, the waning of traditional religious authority, and the loss of moral clarity…. Out of the crucible of these years came the cults of victimhood that turned emotions like resentment and humiliation into positive elements of party platforms…. Mussolini prepared the script used by today’s authoritarians that casts the leader as a victim of his domestic enemies and of an international system that has cheated his country.

That is Trump’s and the Republican Party’s 2025 legislative and other agendas in a nutshell.

Aside from the parallels between Trump’s raison d’etre and Mussolini, one other thing caught my eye in the early going in Strongmen:

Two-thirds of dictators were removed by coups between 1950 and 2000.

Not all, of course; several remained in power for decades. Still, I was reminded of the line from Shakespeare’s Henry IV: “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.”  While the line generally is taken to refer to the burdens of leadership, I have also seen it as a reference to the risks that the leader faces from those who would take his power by force. In that sense, it suggests the leader had best be a light sleeper if he wants to survive.

In Trump’s case, however, I doubt that he is restless out of concern for his health. The fears and anxieties that must ravage his mind every night likely relate more to his insecurities and lust for more money and power.

That aside, the parallels between Mussolini’s messaging and Trump’s are unmistakable. They lend compelling weight to the proposition that Trump is a fascist with a fascist message. Those who seek ways to resist Trump and separate his cultish followers from him might do well to study Mussolini’s rise to power and eventual downfall.