Saturday, June 10, 2023

"The Godfather, if it was re-enacted by a five-year-old"

How it started: How it's going: 


Here is the link for the indictment and here is an excellent article from the Lawfare blog about what it means- United States of America v. Donald J. Trump and Waltine Nauta
TL;DR? Here's The Business Insider summary - Trump Used Bumbling "Godfather"-Like Tactics To Hide Docs From FBI:
...The Justice Department's indictment against the former president depicts blundering, incompetent attempts to cover up clear violations of the Espionage Act, as well as obstructing justice by "suggesting that his attorney hide or destroy documents," along with other alleged crimes.
To veteran national security lawyer Kel McClanahan, it brought to mind "the Godfather — if it was reenacted by a five-year-old."
"I found it hilarious that some of his most incriminating things were recorded by his lawyers," McClanahan told Insider. "Beautiful."
..."Everything in here was designed to craft the narrative that this is a kingpin who knowingly broke the law, endangered national security, endangered nuclear weapon security, endangered other countries' national security — and his faithful butler carried this all out for him and is going to go down with him because he refused to come clean about his boss's criminal dealings," McClanahan said. "You can't write this in a plot of a procedural."
Trump could have easily avoided criminal charges by simply handing over the documents in the first place, Jon Sale, a former federal prosecutor, told Insider.
If you're wondering about what those confidential documents are, Matt Tait is investigating exactly this on his substack What Are The Classified Documents?
Here's more comment: Here's an hysterically funny tweet thread about the indictment: And Fooler continues with more, oh so much more! 
 So now Trump thinks he can orchestrate Miami version of Jan 6

3 comments:

Cap said...

Reality Winner got 5 years for one classified document. Trump had box loads classified way above Winner's pay grade that he was showing to Kid Rock! I hope there's some federal prosecutor on this case that'll do to Trump what Trump's hero Roy Cohn did to the Rosenbergs. As David Frum said, any hostile foreign intelligence service that didn't get US secrets out of Mar-a-Lago owes its taxpayers a refund.

Cathie from Canada said...

Oh, good line from David Frum - I hadn't seen that one! And very true, too.

e.a.f. said...

great line by Frum!

It would have been the smart thing to do, give the documents back but Trump is one of those people who not only thinks they are above the law but also has the personality defect that they think no one can make them do anything and to comply is to "cave".

Saw the picture of all the boxes in the bathroom. This wasn't an accident of having a few documents in with others, this looked like whole sale theft to me. Why take them? Who would need all those documents in their retirement. First thing which comes to my mind, sell them, use them as black mail or a version there of. It is rather amazing that Trump didn't think the "law" wouldn't come after him over this.

The sooner this is over, the better off the U.S.A. will be. Trump is a danger to his country and a number of others.