Tag Archives: Trump

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.

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.

Trump’s Attack on Higher Education-Go on Offense

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I have made a habit through my adult life of, when possible, avoiding talking about my education. When asked where I went to college, I have usually just said, “in the east.” I did this because disclosing that I went to Yale would often lead to uncomfortable statements about things about which the inquirer usually knew little. I was certainly not ashamed of having attended Yale, but I also didn’t want to be seen as bragging about having an Ivy League education and conversations about it were often awkward.

The same was true of my law school experience at Harvard. Truth be told, my attendance at both Yale and Harvard were the product of teachers who cared enough to intervene on my behalf, to encourage me to reach high, to achieve way beyond what I imagined was possible for me. The result was an enriched life beyond anything I ever dreamed of. I became a life-long learner, driven perhaps beyond what was healthy at times, but determined not to fail. Yale, in particular, taught me that working hard, and harder still, was the key to success.

My Yale experience, in the early 1960s, was extraordinary in many ways. I will not detail them here. My purpose is different. The Yale of today is, I think, quite different and more imposing than the school I attended. I am certain that Harvard College has also evolved well beyond what was already back then a world-class education and research institution.

The current Trump administration’s attack on these and other major research and institutions of higher learning reflects a view of the world that is alien to everything these schools represent. I have just read that the President of the University of Virginia has resigned to avoid damaging conflict with the federal government under Trump. While the details of President Ryan’s situation at UVA are perhaps unique (he says he was doing to step down next year anyway), the fact remains that the Trump assault on higher education will have profoundly damaging consequences throughout our society.

Since I know Yale the best, I will focus on it. Yale has produced a website entitled Yale’s Impact on America. https://www.yale.edu/yales-impact-america

Did you know, for example, that “Yale’s large-scale clinical trials – 38,000 patients are currently enrolled in over 2,000 clinical trials – are yielding key discoveries that translate into life-saving therapies.” The health issues involve patients with heart issues, Alzheimer’s, and diabetes among other life-threatening maladies.

Did you know that chemotherapy was developed at Yale and is used to help about one million people each year? And the first insulin pump was developed at Yale as well, now helping 350,000 patients a year. The first U.S. artificial heart pump was also produced at Yale and helps six million people suffering from heart failure. And “Yale research led to the discovery of esketamine as a therapy for major depression, which the FDA approved in 2019 as the first new medication in decades for people suffering from treatment-resistant depression.”

I subscribe to Yale Today, a daily publication of the University. It is a rare day that some remarkable achievement in science, medicine or other discipline is not detailed there. On June 27:

Yale School of the Environment researchers have pioneered a novel method for measuring how urbanization is affecting biodiversity in cities, a tool that will help scientists and officials better manage human-wildlife interactions around the world.

On June 23:

Cutting-edge lab technique hints at new era for neuroscience

In a new study, Yale researchers unveil a more efficient method of simultaneously capturing the electrical activity of large numbers of neurons — an advance that opens doors to understanding and treating neurological diseases.

Yale is not alone in this. Harvard makes similar discoveries through original research constantly, as do the other major research universities. Trump and his goons don’t know and don’t care about the potential loss of these benefits as they attempt to reshape the country into a low-education, all-white society.

Yale needs to wake up to the reality that defensive posturing is not going to solve the real problem Trump poses. Yale, like Harvard, has massive resources, including obviously the law school’s cadre of brilliant lawyers. It needs to make clear to the administration that if it does not back off completely, Yale will lead/join a coalition of universities across the country to litigate the administration to death, including, I suggest, asserting personal liability against the perpetrators of these obviously unlawful actions.

Trump and his drone followers (male and female) have shown that they believe they can act as they wish without consequence to themselves. It is no loss to them personally if they disregard the First and Fifth Amendments and other laws by demanding submission to their will and then lose in court. They’ll just come back with something else as bad or worse. The universities should test that, I think. Make the bastards work hard. Put them on defense.

It’s not good enough to talk or call Senators. Even if victorious today politically, Trump will be back tomorrow with another outrage. Having been attacked as Harvard has and as have all the others with tax increases on their endowments, the universities need to recognize this is not a one-off situation. Trump is coming for them. Prepare for the end game and go on offense. Trump and gang are not doing normal politics, and the defense must not be based on the premise that they are.

Democrats and others who believe in preserving democracy must wake up and fight the fight that’s in front of them, not some policy-based game of old-fashioned politics. Those days are over probably forever. Just look at the contents of the bill the House just passed by one vote. One of the two political parties is off the range. and we must fight the fight that is staring at us with dead eyes before it’s too late.

Take the offense and use the considerable communications resources of the universities to inform the public of what they stand to lose if Trump’s no-nothings succeed in suppressing the vital work that the universities perform in addition to teaching some of our best and brightest future leaders. Time is short.

A Legal Primer – It’s Not Complicated

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There has been much coverage of the arrest and immediate deportation of alleged “criminals” and “illegals” by the Trump administration. These actions are apparently part of the Republican plan to “make America white,” although in recent days Trump has pulled back the aggression as to certain workers. Why? Because he has realized that his shoot-first-think-later approach to domination may be offending some of his supporters whose businesses depend on immigrant labor. But from day-to-day Trump’s erratic approach to governance, largely made up on the fly, can change radically.

This primer is not, however, about our national immigration policy. It is instead about elementary constitutional and legal processes that are an essential part of our legal system. These principles apply to immigrants as well as citizens, and one day they might apply to you, as when Trump’s masked and armed men who refuse of identify themselves pull your car over or visit you at home or work.

First, the Constitution itself.

Fourth Amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Fifth Amendment:

….  nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Sixth Amendment:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence. 

To keep this manageable, we’re going to focus on the text that I have bolded. But first we must include the function of magistrates. Virginia law is typical:

A principal function of a magistrate is to provide an independent, unbiased review of complaints of criminal conduct brought by law enforcement …. Magistrate duties include issuing various types of processes such as arrest warrants, summonses, search warrants, emergency protective orders, emergency custody orders, and certain civil warrants. Magistrates also conduct bail hearings in instances in which an individual is arrested to determine under what conditions the arrestee should be released from custody prior to trial.

Finally, there is the Supreme Court decision in Miranda v. Arizona (1966) that applied the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the arrest phase of a criminal case. The Court held that any person in custody must, before being interrogated, be informed of the right to remain silent and the right to assistance of an attorney.

One other thing –no evidence has been produced that the armed masked men working for ICE and conducting what amount to kidnappings for the government have any meaningful training in the legal principles that govern what they are doing.

Now, the facts: let’s say you’re in a park with your two young children. An unmarked van pulls up and several masked men jump out. They are heavily armed. They tell you that you are under arrest for violating you immigration status, and that you must come with them. Or maybe they don’t tell you anything except to get the van, NOW!

You protest that you are an American citizen. You demand they explain the basis for the charges and that they identify themselves. They refuse. You are then handcuffed and forced into the van. You protest that your children are with you and have no one to care for them because your spouse is away on business. The men ignore you.

The next thing you know, you are on an airplane headed to an unknown destination but that soon becomes clear is not in the United States.

In my hypothetical case, you are in fact an American citizen and the men are wrong about who you are. They have been misinformed by someone in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Your rights have been violated in multiple ways. No warrant for your arrest has been issued, you are not given your Miranda warnings, and you are not taken before a magistrate who determines whether your arrest is proper. You are given no opportunity to consult counsel who can present your defense that you are a U.S. citizen and not subject to deportation. Your right to a trial has been ignored. And you have been prevented from caring for your children who have been left in the hands of, hopefully, kind strangers.

This scenario has happened many times under the Trump administration’s “deport the criminal immigrants” policy. It is not complicated. The Constitution’s due process requirements refer to “persons,” not to “citizens.” It means what it says.

The reasons for the various “rules” and “principles” are straightforward and obvious when you think about it. The legal process, while slow, is designed to prevent mistakes. It is designed to assure that every person accused of a crime has a fair chance to understand the charges, to seek professional help, and to avoid mistakes that could impose criminal penalties on the wrong person. While Trump has complained by providing due process may require thousands of trials, that does not negate the rights of individuals to the protections of the Constitution.

The Trump administration’s unleashing of masked men who refuse to identify themselves and whose approach creates strong possibilities for mistaken arrests, and which imposes extreme penalties (removal to other states or, worse, deportation to foreign countries) with no opportunity to consult counsel, or to understand the charges, is certain to deny constitutional protections to the accused.

The idea that persons in the United States may be removed from the street or their home or a job, without notice, by unidentified armed men, transferred to other states and then removed from the country to a foreign prison without any opportunity to consult counsel, without any opportunity to protect family members including small children dependent on them, is unconstitutional, unlawful, and un-American. It is almost certainly a human rights violation and is unacceptable in the U.S. system of law.

And under the Trump administration it is happening every day.

No Kings

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Two by two, ones, groups of all sizes, young, old, Black, white, whatever, the full diversity of American life – they came to Market Square in Old Town Alexandria to answer the call to rally against Donald Trump’s ambition to be a dictator, a latter-day king of the United States. Alexandria’s City Hall was built in 1871-74. Market Square was built in the 1960s. For the unfamiliar, the center of the Square is a large water feature. Whatever its other benefits, it has the effect of confining attending rally-goes to the seats around the edge and elsewhere in the Square.

The mob overwhelmed the capacity of the Square, and when we made our way out after an hour, the streets leading to the Square were still packed with people carrying their homemade signs and moving toward the Square. Regrettably, the city has not expended enough money to equip the Square with an adequate sound system, so the speeches could only be heard by the people in front who must have arrived an hour before the addresses began.

In any case, the attendance was huge and enthusiastic. Many carried signs or flags and shouted slogans in sync with the people in front. The mood was boisterous but also serious. The people want no kings in this country.

Trump, like the dictators and autocrats after whom he has styled his presidency, pays no real attention to the people who assemble in Alexandria and the millions who participated in No Kings Day rallies across the country. He believes he is above the law, based in part on the Supreme Court’s immunity decision and in part on his belief that he is politically and constitutionally immune from any accountability.

The question will be called, apparently, during the 2026 midterms, assuming there are elections at that time. If, on the other hand, Trump tries to suspend those elections, I predict Trump’s presidency will be ended. I hope it does not come to that. It would be better if the will of the people continues to be expressed by voting and the President honors the results. There are reasons in the recent past to question whether Trump will honor the result, but one can hope that the people around him will insist. There are reasons to question that too.

In any case, the massive No Kings rallies are a strong and clear indication that the will of the people is fundamentally inconsistent with the way Trump has conducted his second presidency. He would make a grave mistake by ignoring that reality.

Pardon Me ….

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I have had a belly full of “journalists,” “pundits” and “opinion writers” whining about Joe Biden’s pardoning of family members in the closing hours of his presidential administration. I have not read Jake Tapper’s book and never will. But every time I see a reference to Trump’s pardoning of the January 6 insurrectionists he directed to attack the Capitol in pursuit of a false narrative about the 2020 election, I see a reference to Biden’s pardon and how “history” will judge him poorly for doing it. Virtually everyone who addresses the pardon issue (Trump has now pardoned over 1,500 people, I have read, and more are in the pipeline as the payoffs keep coming) seems to feel they have to compare Biden’s family pardons to what Trump is doing.

What did they expect Biden to do? It was a no-win situation. He knew that Trump had vowed revenge against him and his family for the investigations that Trump still whines about. Should Biden have left his family to their fate at the hands of a lunatic bent on revenge and any form of pay-back he could produce? I think not. If Biden had abandoned his family to Trump’s revenge, what would the pundits have said then?

And we see this playing out as could be expected. Reuters reports “Ed Martin, the Justice Department’s pardon attorney, wrote in an email seen by Reuters that the investigation involves whether Biden “was competent and whether others were taking advantage of him through use of AutoPen or other means.” https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trumps-justice-department-examining-pardons-issued-by-biden-2025-06-02/ This will ultimately be a futile quest to exact revenge on Biden and his family, but that has never stopped Trump from trying. Trump sees the Department of Justice as his personal law firm. The Supreme Court has essentially ratified that idea in its immunity decision.

It’s clear to me at least that Biden foresaw correctly what Trump was likely to do. Rather than leave his family at the mercy of a revenge-obsessed Trump who is still rage-tweeting his claims to have won the 2020 election, Biden chose to protect his family. I see no fault in this. He had a difficult choice to make and made it. Surely the pundits can find something else to whine about.