This guy will be haunting MAGA for a long, long time
It’s going to be a fun time in January, and the MAGA leadership is beginning to sweat as the consequences of this week’s elections begins to sink in.
As the Washington Post noted on Monday, Democrats “are laying the groundwork for an array of inquiries into President Donald Trump, his family and his administration.” Various business and political leaders are meeting with their lawyers, worried about what Democrats could uncover with this new power.
“I haven’t seen this much investigative activity in anticipation of a change in control of a house of Congress ever,” Michael Bopp, who runs a congressional investigations division for the law firm Gibson Dunn, told the Post.
There are plenty of signs that it’s dawning on people around Trump that he will be out of office in two short years and that, as the latest Epstein report indicates, the statute of limitations has not run out on many possible crimes committed under the White House’s protection. A recent Zeteo profile of Stephen Miller showed that the White House deputy chief of staff is worried about going to prison if a Democrat wins the presidency in 2028. Congressional Democrats keep talking about impeaching Pete Hegseth, and the defense secretary is clearly anxious, reportedly making calls and begging Sen. Marsha Blackburn to appoint him to her Senate seat if, as expected, she wins the Tennessee governor’s race this week. Having a Senate seat would not only prevent impeachment; it could make prosecuting him for alleged war crimes much harder as well.
Miller is worried about going to prison…I hope he is sleeping poorly right now. Hegseth is aware that he is guilty of war crimes — that he is a murderer — and is frantically looking for an escape hatch.
Another major target for investigation is the richest man in the world, Elon Musk. He threw so much money at Republican candidates, because he knows they are his only buffer sheltering him from prosecution. But they all lost.
On Monday, Trump himself also told the New York Post that widespread pardons are on the table, not just for his staff, but for allies like Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Musk has good reason to be worried. His brief tenure running DOGE has raised a whole host of questions about what laws were broken by him or by staff carrying out his orders. He’s also under suspicion of messing with Ukraine’s Starlink access, crippling its defenses against the invading Russian military. This may explain why Musk spent nearly half a billion dollars — more than any single donor in history — trying to tilt the elections in the GOP’s favor.
We really need to put massive constraints on presidential pardon power. The current corrupt president is demonstrating that the pardons can be massively abused, and it definitely needs to be throttled (I don’t understand why our constitution gives the president a power that belongs more in the hands of an absolute monarch).
It would be delicious to see a man with hundreds of billions of dollars stripped of all his wealth and getting tossed into prison, even a luxurious country club prison. That’s got to make all the people worth mere tens of billions of dollars worry.
And don’t forget the entire goddamn Trump family!
Trump and his family members should also be sweating. Trump has often interpreted the Supreme Court’s grant of presidential immunity as all-encompassing, but as Raskin told the New Yorker, he doesn’t see it that way at all. He outlined how the president has made billions in office, roughly $1 million a hour, and that there’s a great deal to learn about where that money is coming from. The Supreme Court’s decision technically only covers crimes committed during the commission of official presidential duties. By definition, Trump’s external money-making enterprises aren’t that. His children are deeply involved in the family business as well. And as the Epstein report made sure to note, some of the crimes Trump and his associates have been accused of committing with his old friend Epstein carry no statute of limitations.
Epstein is still looming over this whole rotten dynasty. We can hope that will all be finally split open and exposed.
My one worry is that the Democrats will continue to be timid — no, cowardly — and fail to take advantage of this opportunity. Let’s hope they notice that the electorate is getting feisty. We’re looking for justice, and if the Democratic leadership is unwilling to deliver it, they’ll be next in the crosshairs.
Hold everyone’s feet to the fire. We want results.
We aren’t looking for retribution or revenge.**
We are looking for justice, Rule of Law.
The GOP fascists and criminals will be treated just like us and myself except a whole lot better.
They will get lawyers and fair trials in front of real judges and juries.
Of course, that is why they are scared silly right now.
**Well, many of us are but we don’t need it.
Seeing them arrested and in court would be enough.
Yeah, that pardon power was massively abused by Trump.
He seemed to be selling pardons to anyone who could pay a few tens of millions of dollars.
Two things I’m not clear on though.
.1. Don’t you have to be guilty of a crime and convicted to be pardoned?
I don’t see how it works pro-actively.
“You are pardoned from any crimes you might have committed or any crimes you will commit.”
If this is the case, arrest and try them anyway. At least their crimes will be on the record.
.2. If the criminals are pardoned, then they lose their right to the Fifth Amendment.
They have to testify to congress or in court or they are guily of contempt and obstruction of justice among other new crimes.
.3. There is a massive loophole in the whole pardon power.
It only works for Federal crimes.
Really, most of the crimes of the GOP fascists are also state crimes.
Investigate them, arrest them, and hand them over to the states.
To take one example, the ICE killers can and should be charged by the state of Minnesota and other states.
re raven@3:
Biden pardoned Fauci proactively so that The Orange Turd and his cronies could not convict him of anything.
Excerpted in the Infinite Thread.
Liz Oyer – Trump’s pardons might be worthless
(Former US pardon attorney fired on 2025-03-07)
It is now time for Congress to stand up to Putin. No more attacking Ukrainian civilians. No more missile attacks on hospitals or schools. No more sending Kushner and Witkoff to Russia to give Putin’s ass a warm tongue bath. Send weapons to Ukraine. No more Putin threats to Poland, the Baltics et al. No more leaving all of America’s response to Putin up to Trump. That has been a big failure.
raven @2:
Dump’s administration is so corrupt top to bottom that Rule of Law and retribution/revenge are functionally equivalent. For a lawyers take on this see Devin Stone’s (LegalEagle) Wednesday YouTube video. He and his associates have been exposing the administration’s malfeasance for years.
Don’t forget the ballroom. They should charge him for all the costs (all of them, not just the $400 million he “promised” would be paid for with private funds), of demolition (his demolition, and the re-demolition of his ballroom), his build, and the rebuild. Sue his ass for all costs. This all needs to come from his private funds, every last penny.
The Democrats need to announce that they will spend the next several years erasing this shit-stain from our institutions and our memory, and he is going pay for all expenses involved in getting rid of his ticky-tacky and putting things back in order.
Don’t forget the ballroom. They should charge him for all the costs (all of them, not just the $400 million he “promised” would be paid for with private funds), of demolition (his demolition, and the re-demolition of his ballroom), his build, and the rebuild. Sue his ass for all costs. This all needs to come from his private funds, every last penny.
The Democrats need to announce that they will spend the next several years erasing this sh**stain from our institutions and our memory, and he is going pay for all expenses involved in getting rid of his ticky-tacky and putting things back in order.
Having Trump pay for the demolition of the border-wall with Mexico? Chef’s kiss
We shall see.
I am really hoping that all lawbreakers will be prosecuted, which means more or less everyone from the orange turd down. There have literally been state-sanctioned murders in the street so the courts should be working overtime, and for once the US carceral system put to good use.
It would do a world of good to our very many trump-lickers in Europe too.
But holding my breath, I am not.
There’s a lot on the new congress’ plate, but while they can “chew gum and walk at the same time” they’ll need to set priorities. Plus, without a supermajority overturning vetoes could be difficult.
However, there’s one thing coming out of this election that is very important, but easily overlooked: White men lost. White male privilege has been the bedrock of the Republican party since Barry Goldwater. The GOP’s long embrace of racial bigotry and misogyny crippled their candidates this time… finally.
As The Nation puts it in an article today titled, “Women Are the Real Story of the Midterm Elections”:
Lots of women won in surprising places, and that includes the first Black woman governor of Georgia…and apparently a lot of other Black women in prominent state positions in Georgia, as we’ll as the first Native American governor, and the first Latina governor…in Texas. Ethnic women are the group most affected by restrictions on women’s healthcare.
According to one commenter I heard, there were also a lot of measures for and against the right of women to safe healthcare on state ballots. Anti-abortion measures tended to lose, while pro-abortion measures tended to win. This commentator noted that one reason Susan Collins lost was because she voted for Kavanaugh, who voted to overturn Roe v Wade.
Women’s rights could be the real tsunami of this election.