COMMANDER-IN-THIEF
by Cash Michaels
A whole lot has been going on lately. There, of course, is the never-ending war in Iran, with Trump mocking the Islamic deity of a country with 92 million people thinking he can get away with it. Talk about stupid!
There’s the untimely passing of South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham, providing a very important health cautionary to us older folks in particular to regularly monitor our blood pressure, or else. Graham died of aortic dissection, the same condition that took comic actor John Ritter’s life years ago.
Untrained ICE agents are still killing innocent people during traffic stops, the latest (we know of) were in Maine and Houston under, as always, suspicious circumstances. And then Trump gets involved, and orders that the traffic stops continue regardless of the loss of life.
Finally, there’s this nonsense about Trump revealing newly discovered “intelligence” about how the 2020 presidential election was allegedly “stolen.” Once again, where’s his proof? NOT made up stuff, but the real deal?
So like I said, a lot is going on. Yet the one story that caught my eye was about the federal judge in Miami, Florida who caught Trump and his Acting U.S. Attorney General trying to pull a fast one on the court with that crazy “anti-weaponization fund” scheme based on Trump filing a phony lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, which ultimately answers to him. That means he was effectively suing himself, for $10 billion in damages, which the judge ruled Monday he just can’t do because he is the federal government.
In fact, Trump’s personal attorneys and the suits from DOJ were so nice to each other, willing to settle without much argument, Federal District Court Judge Kathleen M. Williams instantly smelled a rat. A big fat one with blonde hair, no less.
The Obama-appointed federal judge nailed the attorneys’ “too slick by half” act with serious possible sanctions that have caught everybody’s attention.
But first, let’s take note of something that is absolutely true no matter what political party you are. Stay with me here.
If Vice President Kamala Harris had won the 2024 presidential election, and was serving in office now instead of you-know-who, there is no doubt in my mind that a year-and-a-half into her term, there would naturally be problems.
Sure there might be some inflation, some battles with the Republican-led Congress over keeping the government open, protecting Obamacare and DEI. You know, the regular Republican versus Democrat kind of stuff, and based on how the economy was going, “President” Harris would sink or swim accordingly.
That would be considered a normal presidency under most circumstances, and that’s what we would have had if she had won in 2024 instead of Trump.
What we certainly would NOT have had with a President Harris was ANY criminality, any nefarious schemes to defraud the government, any postering to pay tribute to herself with millions in taxpayer money, any causing of bad relations with foreign partners or starting wars for highly questionable reasons, or an administration chock full of extraordinarily unqualified people.
So when you look at what we passed up, compared to what we're stuck with now, there can be no doubt that the American people screwed themselves thinking that reelecting a convicted criminal and felon in 2024 was going to end well for anybody but him and his family.
But now comes the scheme of schemes, coming from our exulted Commander-in-thief, when he angled to make off with $1.776 billion dollars of our money, PLUS make sure that the Internal Revenue Service would never investigate him or any member of his family for their tax returns, past or present, ever again.
I wish I was making this stuff up. I really do. NY Times, help me out here:
A federal judge ruled on Monday that President Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service was an improper exercise in self-dealing and barred him from claiming that the extraordinary tax protections he received were part of a legitimate settlement agreement.
In the 56-page order,the judge, Kathleen M. Williams, also referred the lawyer who brought Mr. Trump’s case against the I.R.S. to the Florida bar for potential disciplinary proceedings. She added that she would forward her decision to the New York bar for its continuing investigation of the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, who faces a Senate confirmation hearing this week.
And in that “scathing” court decision, Judge Williams did not spare the rod:
“The nature of the suit itself and the conduct of the parties and counsel from its filing make plain that this was an attempt to use the court to provide some legitimacy to an agreement to confer immunity to people and entities affiliated with the president.”
The grift here was Acting U.S. Attorney General Blanche (who once served, you’ll recall, as Trump’s personal attorney), coming up with those two stunning self-serving settlements for Trump, instead of doing his job and staying the hell out of it. Or at least tell his boss that he couldn’t sue his own administration just because his tax returns were leaked.
No, Blanche, obviously at the direction of Trump, created a $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization fund” so Trump could payoff convicted traitors for attempting to overthrow the U.S. government on January 6th, 2021, and beat up Capitol police officers in the process.
Then, according to The N.Y. Times, Blanche “…signed a separate order granting the president, his family and their businesses wide-ranging and unprecedented immunity from tax inquiries. He directed the I.R.S. to stop any ongoing audits of the Trumps and also told the agency to not conduct any new investigations of tax returns they had already filed.
Folks, “acting” or not, Todd Blanche doesn’t have the authority to pull this stuff. In fact, The Times states that there is a federal law against the White House doing anything to control the I.R.S..
Oh, then there’s this part, where Judge Williams makes clear that the gig is up:
“Whether executive branch actors can privately agree to give themselves and their former clients blanket immunities and billions of dollars in tax moneys for legally undefined grievances was never an issue advanced to this court,” the judge wrote. “The question is whether the parties could do so by claiming to be adverse and engaging the legitimacy of a court proceeding. The answer is a resounding ‘no’: The lead plaintiff and the government are one, a fully realized unitary interest.”
If I had written this excellent piece of jurisprudence, I would have added, “Y’all should be ashamed of yourselves trying to pull this crap in my court room. Mr. Trump, watch yourself now. I got my eyes on you!!!
According to CNN, Judge Williams’ pulling the sheets off the bull in this case is “… part of a growing trend of judges saying rather bluntly that Trump and his Justice Department aren't operating in good faith — and even that they're misusing the legal process for Trump's personal and political benefit.”
Great, and we all want to see more of it. Which brings me to this final point.
There is no giant tidal wave coming to wash the crooked Trump Administration away, folks. It’s going to be a painfully slow process, brick by brick, in fact. Apparently the courts are doing their part, and we should be grateful judges of integrity, like Judge Williams, are taking center stage.
But we have to do ours by voting this November in large enough numbers to change Congress in order to take much of Trump’s power away from him, and return it to the people.
Our voting may not immediately oust the Commander-in-thief, but it will make him more toothless until he leaves in 2028.
And that’s when the law in the states that are after him, get to grab him once and for all!
By the way, let’s stop blaming our friends, Mr. and Mrs. Lettuce Leaves, for what’s happening now across the country. Everybody knows it’s Trump who’s really making us sick!!!
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