There are primaries in four states today — Connecticut, Minnesota, Vermont, and Wisconsin. Here is Steve Benen’s preview.
This happened today: Trump tax returns must be given to Congress, federal appeals court says in new ruling. The tax returns and related entities must be turned over to the House Ways and Means Committee, the court said.
There is all kinds of speculation sluicing around regarding yesterday’s FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, including an opinion that the search was really about January 6. I would rather not speculate but wait until we get some solid information.
On the other hand, between the FBI search and the tax return decision, I’m speculating whether Trump will suddenly think up some excuse to be in some other country for a while. If I were him, I’d have lawyers looking up places with nice weather and amenities and no extradition agreements with the U.S.
In his recent speeches, Donald Trump has taken to saying that he is “the most persecuted person in the history of our country.” The millions who lived and died in slavery? Native Americans who endured the Trail of Tears? Sure, they suffered. But did they get kicked off Twitter?
Now that the FBI has executed a search warrant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club, the former president can indulge what has become his most important impulse, his driving motivation, his very reason for being: to whine and complain.
Heh.
Dick Cheney called Trump "a coward" in an ad he made for his daughter, and so I have little doubt that TFG has one or more countries picked out, and his 757 gassed up with the pilot's number on speed-dial. In same fashion I would hope the FBI is ready to swoop in and cuff this guy at the airport before he escapes. Peter Navarro was arrested this way.
It has been a while but it used to be that any pilot taking someone out of country like that might lose their pilots license.
For republicans, there is no higher aspiration than victimhood, the Holy Grail of the wingnut existence, and Trump will milk this for all its worth. The dust barely settled on the search before he sent out a fundraising whine, begging for money to help him "fight" this latest unwarranted attack. And they all shed bitter tears, from the "poorly educated" gathered outside their Fuhrer's palace, to the slimiest Fox toadies like Jesse "Dirty" Watters, to Marco Rubio, McCarthy and other establishment republican leaders.
The wingers are out today. At the local rural hardware store, where old farts like me frequent, there was another old codger really, really, really, explaining to the cashier how we are losing our republick over the persecution of orange julius. It was like a third grade fan-boy having a temper-tantrum over the discontinuation of an action figure. They had no idea what an embarrassment it was to be weepy over this.
Oof. Watching the old codger in the hardware store tell the cashier "what the story was, I tell you !!!" … the drivel is embarrassing and they dont care that you dont want to hear it.
Interesting that you saw my Congressional Rep in your local hardware store.
Hilarious! Perfect reply.
On a scale from one to ten, Doug's mission to hand deliver truth to power was a ten on the scale of prosecutorial overreach and Trump's victimhood over a legal and warranted search as close to a perfect 0 as one could get. No reason for Civil War II. This is his narcissistic personality disorder and unfortunately a problem he won't seek treatment for, so, unfortunately, is our problem. Another episode of tantrum based justified retribution by a child in the form of an adult. He is a one trick pony. He is out to incite his usual batch of domestic terrorists, and we are all at risk of being, for what the army terms, collateral damage. So CYOA. Biden and company certainly weighed the inevitable response. So did the judge issuing the warrant.
They and the judge issuing the warrant knew what was coming and still made the decision to go ahead. It had to be done. Trump is not a victim he is a victimizer. I am sure this decision to intervene was not made capriciously. It was an informed decision with known bad consequences. The people making the decision knew inaction was the poor option with bigger bad consequences. They went ahead. They went ahead when every I had to be dotted and every T crossed.
I fear here what I don't know, because there must be solid evidence of continued detrimental activity by Trump which is viewed as extreme enough to warrant this intervention. The 1/6 commission has already show he was willing and complicit in trying to throw our democracy under the bus. We know the lengths he went to (in part) to what he did toward that end, we can only speculate over the extent of his corruption. We know for sure there were victims' of 1/6 actions. We also know that he was not deterred, is not remorseful or even admitting to any error of judgement on that issue. I hate to agree with Dick Cheney, but Trump just may be the single biggest current threat to our democracy.
“Trump will suddenly think up some excuse to be in some other country for a while”
I think he’d have to climb down tied beds sheets and evade the Secret Service detail. He will never again step on foreign soil.
Next? tRUMP in Russia?
He can rebuild his Merde-DUH!-Lardass near The Black Sea.
Putin would welcome him. At until tRUMP started to whine too much/often over there.
And after he gets on Putin's last nerve, tRUMP can rebuild Merder-DUH!-Lardass above the Arctic Circle.
Or else Putin would send Trump a nice gift basket of uranium cookies.
I was occupied with hernia surgery today. No more lifting aircraft engines, I'm afraid. So I'm late to the party with a few observations – Trump can leave the country UNTIL he's charged and his passport pulled, which is not automatic. A trial can not begin when the defendant is missing but it can conclude it the defendant skips.
IN January this year, Trump said: “If these radical, vicious, racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protest we have ever had in Washington, D.C, in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere,” (Guess who gets to decide what's "wrong or illegal?)
Trump loves to appeal all the way to the USSC but generally with a criminal trial, appeals are filed from jail. By that I mean, you start serving time with a criminal conviction right away UNLESS prior arrangements with the court have been made. (This is common in a plea bargain, but unlikely if Trump's defense has been hostile to the court.)
IMO, based on Trump's comments above, Trump will invite riots BEFORE charges are filled to cause the prosecutor to back down. Trump's lawyers will NOT like this strategy as they are preparing (and they are now.) I'd expect a bunch of turnover w/ Trump lawyers.
I do not think Trump will risk even 30 days of jail time but I don't think he'll bug out this week. I think he'll test a violent coup, first to back off GA and NYC before charges are filed, and I think Trump will stay in the US until a trial starts. I think Trump will leave (illegally) and see what happens. If he's convicted, he'll never return.
But it might not be over, even then. If Trump can't be kink, he might declare his own political party for the most violent insurrectionists. He'll try to put traitors in positions to topple the government and this might rupture the Republican party.