Growing more frantic, mob boss Deposed Donald Trump (DDT) threatened Republicans if they don’t impeach President Joe Biden. At a Pennsylvania rally this weekend, he said:
“Any Republican that doesn’t act on Democrat fraud should be immediately primaried and get out—out.”
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is leaning toward impeachment to satisfy the far-right members of his caucus, and the less right-wing GOP House members realize that there is no case for any impeachment. The 18 House members in districts that Biden won in 2020 are particularly concerned about supporting his impeachment.
Former New Jersey governor and 2024 GOP presidential candidate Chris Christie called DDT’s indicted allies the “the Corleones with no experience.” He added that the defendants were sent to Mar-a-Lago to delete surveillance tape on the day after a grand jury subpoena asked for it. DDT withheld “confidential classified information from the government for 18 months” after he was asked to return it voluntarily and then lied about having it.
Before DDT’s weekend demand, he sent a video for the fourth begging attempt to House Republicans since April, demanding they remove all his legal problems.
DDT’s latest loss came when a federal DDT-appointed judge dismissed his defamation lawsuit against CNN in which DDT said the network connected him to Adolf Hitler. Using the term the “big lie” about DDT’s accusations that the 2020 election was stolen, the network supposedly employed the term repeated by Hitler and Nazi minister of propaganda Joseph Goebbels to make the public believe it:
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”
DDT had wanted $475 million from CNN. New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964), however, ruled a statement about a public figure must be made with “actual malice” to be considered defamatory. DDT’s attorneys asked that the 1964 Supreme Court be reviewed, an idea that two justices have suggested.
Meanwhile Special Counsel Jack Smith continues to interview numerous witnesses and discovered that DDT privately ridiculed his allies for their “crazy” conspiracy theories about a “stolen” election while he pushed them to use the lies to put him back into the White House. In loyalty to DDT, they made frivolous lawsuits and came up with absurd ideas about calling out the military to college voting machines. Rumors of his perfidy dribbled out at the end of his time in the Oval Office, and many of his employees couldn’t determine what he “believes.”
The news that all the media loved this week, however, was the additional indictments handed down by the grand jury about surveillance tapes on the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. While the country was on a watch for a new indictment, Smith added a “superseding” indictment with three more charges to the 37 in southern Florida about the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
Specifically, the three new criminal charges include two obstruction of justice charges, for “attempting to alter, destroy, mutilate or conceal evidence,” and inducing someone else to do so. DDT also faces another new count of violating the Espionage Act by showing the classified material to people without security clearances. Allegedly, he was part of a scheme to delete security: a newly charged defendant, identified as his Mar-a-Lago property manager, told another employee that “the boss” wanted the server deleted. Carlos De Oliveira, a Mar-a-Lago maintenance supervisor, is charged with obstruction along with DDT and his valet, Walt Nauta.
New charges may force DDT’s pet judge Aileen Cannon to permit the audio recording from DDT’s resort in New Jersey into evidence. Initially, the taping at Bedminster (NJ) may have caused a venue issue, but the document in question apparently moved from New Jersey to Mar-a-Lago in Florida where the case is being heard.
DDT’s legal fees, already over $40 million in the first half of 2023, have been paid by donations to his PAC, added to $16 million legal costs in the two previous years. Last year, the RNC also ponied up millions for the fees. In addition, the PAC is paying the fees for almost everyone in the investigation who asks for help from DDT and his advisers. DDT now offers to pay De Oliveira’s attorney after Nauta assured DDT De Oliveira is “loyal,” but the newly indicted man can’t find a Florida attorney. His arraignment is on July 31.
Legal fees are hitting DDT’s Save America PAC so hard that it requested the return of $60 million from another DDT-supporting organization. DDT had moved over $100 million he raised after losing the 2020 election but otherwise spent over $26 million for investigations into him and personal fees. Save America started the year with $18 million cash on hand. Campaign finance authorities are questioning whether DDT can use the PAC for his personal legal bills after he became a candidate last November.
DDT has hired John Tate for his campaign strategist. In 2016, Tate was convicted for campaign finance crimes related to a 2012 bribery scheme supporting then-Rep. Ron Paul’s (R-TX) presidential campaign. DDT pardoned Tate. Another man pardoned by DDT, Eliyahu Weinstein, was again arrested for defrauding investors involving lies about humanitarian supplies destined for Ukraine. Weinstein had been sentenced to 24 years in prison.
DDT is trying to reverse court rulings in two other cases. After a judge in New York refused to move the 34 business fraud and hush money charges from state to federal court, DDT has appeared that decision. The judge determined that the allegations involve no questions of federal law. He wrote:
“The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the matter was a purely a personal item of the President—a cover-up of an embarrassing event. Hush money paid to an adult film star is not related to a President’s official acts.”
In a RICO lawsuit, DDT relied on Special Counsel John Durham’s report criticizing the FBI’s DDT-Russia probe to bring back his case against Hillary Clinton, the DNC, FBI officials, and over two dozen other individuals and entities. While the federal judge’s dismissal of the case is on appeal at the 11th Circuit Court, DDT’s attorneys also moved for an indicative ruling, allowing for a trial court to take back jurisdiction of a case already on appeal to consider new evidence or issues not appropriately resolved. DDT claimed a conspiracy among all defendants. Last year, the judge ordered sanctions against DDT’s attorneys because the pleadings “contained factual allegations that were either knowingly false or made in reckless disregard for the truth.”
Federal prosecutors are still investigating DDT for trying to overturn the 2020 election, possibly the subject of a third criminal indictment since March 2023. The target letter to him mentions a civil rights law used to protect elections from interference. The issues include DDT’s pressuring former VP Mike Pence to block the election’s certification before the January 6 insurrection, pushing state and local officials to change election results, and spreading lies about the election.
The law was a provision of the Enforcement Act of 1870, one of several Enforcement Acts nicknamed the Ku Kux Klan Acts, protected the new rights in the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments for violation by the KKK. Although poorly enforced since then, laws have been recodified in the past 150 years. Section 241 criminalizes conspiracies to “injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person” from freely exercising a constitutional right. The conspiracy doesn’t need to be successful for it to be a crime. DDT is accused of attempts to threaten the rights of millions of voters by trying to overturn a presidential election outcome, with many of the efforts against Black and Latinx populations.
The barricades going up outside the Fulton County (GA) courthouse indicates the indictments by the grand jury looms. Possible charges against DDT may be accusations that he tried to undermine Georgia’s 2020 elections. DA Fani Willis has announced August 15 as the deadline for the indictments. She may have evidence for racketeering based on influencing witnesses and computer trespass.
No one yet knows whether DDT’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows is rolling on his former boss, but other DDT allies may be helping the feds. Bernard Kerik has given thousands of pages to Smith’s office. He had worked with DDT’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to overturn the election. Giuliani appointed Kerik as New York City police commissioner in 2000 but was then sentenced to four years in prison for pleading guilty to felony charges, including tax fraud and lying to White House officials. DDT pardoned Kerik.
DDT is known for liking shiny objects, and the ancient Jewish artefacts at Mar-a-Lago for the past 18+ months are no different. According to the Israeli daily Haaretz, the ceramic oil lamps and coins, part of the country’s national treasures collection, were only borrowed for Hanukkah in December 2021. They were to be returned within a few weeks, but they were supposedly “stuck” in the U.S because of the pandemic. Saul Fox was to take responsibility for the items, but mysteriously they went to DDT’s Florida residence. Bad publicity likely was responsible for their return.
For years, DDT has bragged about his crimes, and MAGA have delighted in them. DDT’s problem now is his attempted cover-up. Like Richard Nixon, that may be what brings DDT down.
Nel's New Day 