Tag Archives: Trump indictment

crime news, legal news

GOP governor puts brakes on anti-DA bandwagon

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a dedicated Republican to be sure, has intervened in fine fashion against an effort by fellow Georgia Republicans to clip the wings of a district attorney who has engineered an indictment against Donald J. Trump.

Fulton County DA Fani Willis has become public enemy No. 1 in the eyes of Georgia Republicans who want her booted out of office. They are acting on a law that gives the state legislature the power to strike back against a prosecutor who is doing her job.

Not so fast, said Gov. Kemp, who today put the kibosh in any notion that the state constitution allows such punitive action against an elected district attorney.

Georgia’s General Assembly GOP caucus said it believes Willis has politicized the judicial process by indicting Trump on charges that he sought to defraud the federal government in an effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

What utter horsesh**!

Kemp said he will not allow the legislature to act on this specious notion. He said Willis has followed the law and the state constitution. Therefore, her decision to ask the grand jury to indict Trump will stand.

And the trial will proceed.

crime news, legal news

Four for four for Trump

Well … it looks like the Donald J. Trump indictment parade has reached its end, or maybe there’s more to see down the road.

Fulton County (Ga.) District Attorney Fani Willis has delivered yet another gut punch to the ex-POTUS, indicting him and 19 co-conspirators on 10 counts of conspiring to defraud the government and overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

This fourth criminal indictment against the 45th POTUS presents a most interesting turn of events, don’t you think?

Those who are indicted and then convicted in a state-run criminal trial cannot be pardoned by a future POTUS; Georgia law prohibits it. Willis’s announcement is thorough and comprehensive and it includes several individuals who worked with Trump (allegedly) to overturn the results of the election; special counsel Jack Smith chose to limit his indictments to just Trump, seeking to ensure a speedy trial.

What just blows my noggin to bits is Trump’s announcement that on Monday he is going to provide proof that the 2020 election was rigged. Really! That’s what he said. Why wait, dude? Give us the goods now, man!

Well, he won’t prove anything. Why? Because experts on these matters have concluded already there was no fraud in the election, which means Trump is blowing this all out of his overfed a**.

Meanwhile, the criminal defendant who once served as POTUS continues to defy U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan’s warning against popping off. She said Trump’s continuing challenge could force her to schedule the trial on the D.C. indictment handed down even earlier.

Donald Trump’s in a heap of trouble. He knows it. He is acting like the desperate criminal I believe he always has been.

legal news

Is a deal possible?

What you are about to read from this blogger isn’t an original thought; it comes from a former Republican governor and one-time GOP presidential candidate.

That said, I want to reveal what he expressed.

Former Ohio Gov. John Kasich has tossed out a possibility that — upon some reflection — isn’t nearly as goofy as some observers might suggest it is. Kasich was careful to stipulate that he isn’t “predicting” this would happen, but believes it remains a distinct possibility.

It is that Trump’s lawyers, who must defend him against multiple indictments on multiple fronts, might want to cut a deal with federal special counsel Jack Smith. Kasich suggests that Trump’s lawyers well might determine that Trump cannot win the classified documents case or the 1/6 insurrection matter.

What does he do? Well, Kasich said it might be that Trump’s legal team could suggest he cuts a deal with prosecutors that would include a guilty plea and his dropping out of the 2024 race for president.

He’s already pleaded not guilty to all the federal indictments, and to the New York indictment over the hush money payment he made to the adult film star. He’s likely to plead not guilty to an indictment that everyone on Earth believes is coming from the Fulton County, Ga., district attorney on another case involving election tampering.

However, criminal defendants have changed their pleas before. The alternative might be serious prison time if he’s convicted, say, of obstruction in the case involving the 1/6 assault on our government.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a one-time U.S. attorney, said recently that prosecutors would rather refuse to bring a case than bring one they cannot win. Jack Smith, therefore, well might have the goods on Trump to all but guarantee a conviction.

It makes me go “hmmm.” Is there an alternative, therefore, to prison for the former president? Looks like it to me.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Another first-time event …

It’s always been clear to me that if you live long enough you are likely to see damn near everything and anything.

When I entered this world more than 73 years ago, I never imagined I would see: a presidential assassination, the eruption of a volcano, the resignation of a president. But … I have witnessed all of that.

Now comes a former U.S. president indicted by the federal government — the same government he vowed to “defend and protect” — who stands charged with committing crimes while still serving as president.

I am merely left to shake my head in disbelief.

The ex-POTUS is going to stand trial eventually on four indictment counts. I want to join those who hope the federal trial will be televised so that Americans can see with their own eyes what is transpiring in the courtroom. I don’t want conspiracy crackpots to allege the ex-POTUS is being railroaded.

Indeed, a televised federal trial would be yet another event I thought I’d never see. Here’s hoping for some courage by those empowered to make that call.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com 

legal news

Smith ‘fan club’ forms

First things first: I must stipulate that I am not a member of any Jack Smith Fan Club, nor do I intend to join one or form one in my North Texas neighborhood.

That all said, I now shall declare that Jack Smith’s standing among those of us looking for accountability and justice in the conduct of a former POTUS has shot into the stratosphere.

The meme that showed up on my social media feed suggests that there might have been a chance that special counsel Jack Smith might “fear” Donald Trump. Not … a … chance!

The good news about Smith, though, is that he isn’t going to seek affirmation for doing his job. Attorney General Merrick Garland selected Smith to lead this investigation because the AG didn’t want to become entangled in a case involving the current POTUS, Joe Biden, and the man he defeated in the 2020 election.

Smith has done his duty with zero leaks, with little fanfare and with a maximum degree of professionalism. Yet those aspects of the job he has done has elevated the special counsel to hero status. Go figure.

The former president has managed to get Republicans in Congress to knuckle under to his threats. Not so with Jack Smith, who in reality has no more cause to stand firm against Trump than the sycophants who kowtow to Trump within the GOP House caucus.

Yes, I get that House GOP members face the prospect of losing their seats in primary elections. But they take oaths to defend the Constitution, not to march in lockstep behind a cult leader.

Jack Smith took a similar oath when he took on the role of special counsel. His loyalty to his oath, therefore, has given him an exalted status only because he is doing the job he signed on to do.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

Smith: strategic thinker

Jack Smith is about as strategic a thinker as I can imagine, given the nature of the indictment handed down this week by the federal grand jury involving Donald Trump’s role in the 1/6 assault on our nation’s government.

Consider this: The grand jury indicted Trump on four counts of conspiracy to defraud the government, to obstruct justice, to overturn the results of an election and to deny the people’s right to have their votes counted. A conspiracy necessarily means others are involved, but no one else is indicted.

Instead, they are “unindicted co-conspirators.” Most of the names have been made public and they include some big hitters.

Yet, Trump stands as the sole indicted criminal defendant. Smith’s goal? It is to grant Trump a “speedy trial,” which an individual who proclaims his innocence as vehemently as Trump does should welcome … correct? But he’s not welcoming it.

Trump’s foot-dragging tells me he has plenty to hide from the special counsel, who in turn has compiled several mountains of evidence that I believe well could produce a conviction.

My hope is that the results of this pending trial come far sooner than later to enable voters to decide whether this country is on the way toward the abyss or is set to climb to new heights of greatness.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

‘Law and order’ party? A mirage!

Whatever happened to what we once called the “Law and Order Party”?

I think I have solved the mystery. The Law and Order Party never existed in the first place. It became a catchphrase coined in the 1960s for Republicans to get tough with (a) anti-Vietnam War hippies, (b) Blacks who were angry at the illegal and immoral indignities they were suffering and (c) anyone else who sided with them.

Many of us, me included, have been wringing our hands over the Law and Order Republicans who suddenly now want to “defund the FBI,” who accuse the Justice Department of “weaponizing” itself” and who — in the words of the dimwit GOP U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, believe we now are a “communist country” because a former POTUS has been indicted for criminal charges.

An actual Law and Order Republican would never stand still for the behavior that the ex-POTUS has done during his time in office and the period after he lost re-election.

I have concluded that the term “Law and Order Republican” is a fabrication. It meant nothing when they coined it in the late 1960s and it means even less than that now that the nation’s leading Republican pol is under indictment for crimes he allegedly committed after he got drummed out of the White House in 2020.

The former POTUS’s GOP pals are making a mockery of law and order — and the insistence at DOJ that every American is subject to the same standards and the same laws.

It is yet another slimy, stinking and sickening example of the hypocrisy that has infected a once-great political party.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Please be right, Mooch

Anthony Scaramucci once served as communications director — briefly, I must add — during the Donald Trump administration.

Well, the Mooch has this to posit from the peanut gallery: He says Trump is so stressed out over the indictment handed down this past week that he’s going to drop out of the 2024 presidential race.

A south Florida grand jury indicted Trump on 37 counts in connection with his taking classified documents from the White House and stashing them in his Florida house in Mar-a-Lago.

Oh, he didn’t exactly have them secured, either. They were stacked in boxes in a bathroom, on shelves in plain view of anyone partying at the glitzy joint.

“I know President Trump’s personality reasonably well. Remember it wasn’t just 11 days for me, it was 71 campaign stops and a full year’s worth of work,” Scaramucci said. “He does not like this, he is stressed about it.”

Part of me wants Mooch to be right. I want Trump out of the way. I want him removed from the public arena. Then again, he would be so badly flawed, so baggage-laden that he would be a sitting duck for his foes.

Scaramucci says Trump ‘stressed’ over indictment, predicts he will drop out of 2024 race (msn.com)

Whether the ex-POTUS is stressed enough to drop out remains to be seen, of course. We can assume with relative ease, though, that special counsel Jack Smith’s announced indictment has made Trump’s life very uncomfortable.

It couldn’t happen to a more deserving scumbag.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, national news

This is a big … deal!

1 Comment

Well, they’re going to fingerprint the suspect, take his mug shot and listen to him plead “not guilty” to 37 counts contained in a federal indictment.

That will happen later today. I won’t spend another ounce of effort commenting on the proceeding that will occur later today.

I do want to offer a brief critique on the importance of the criminal suspect. He is the former president of the United States. He once took an oath to “protect and defend” the Constitution and to follow the laws of the land.

The very government he once led has now charged him — and the accusations appear credible — for violating that oath, for breaking the law and for failing to protect and defend the government.

This is gigantic, man!

Almost as horrific, though, has been the initial response of this clown’s supporters. They hadn’t read the indictment and began accusing the FBI and the Justice Department of “weaponizing” the process. They don’t care what the indictment states, or about the immense amount of detail it contains.

So much of the evidence revealed in the indictment, which comes from a grand jury in south Florida (where the suspect lives) is the result of the suspect’s own words. He knew he kept classified documents illegally. He knew he had to turn them over to the National Archives. He knew his lawyers were hamstrung by all of that … but he kept them anyway and then lied to the feds about what he turned over.

Is this man fit for public office? No. He wasn’t fit when he got elected POTUS in 2016 and he damn sure demonstrated his unfitness during his term in office, as he was impeached twice by the House of Representatives.

He has little regard for the troops he commanded, or for the men and women who have given their lives in defense of our way of life.

And yet … he continues to command the fealty of those who follow him blindly into oblivion.

Sickening.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Our world is turned upside down

You all know by now that my world has been turned inside-out, upside-down and is presenting daily challenges as I seek to find my footing along this journey I have been taking.

Part of that footing involves my seeking some understanding to the political climate that is causing such angst, anxiety and apprehension. I don’t know, frankly, how to deal with all of that while trying to navigate my way out of the darkness that befell me with my dear bride’s passing from cancer.

A former president has been indicted for crimes that allege an astonishing, reckless disregard for our national security; they prove beyond a doubt (as if we need more proof) that this ex-POTUS is unfit for public office. He vows revenge against those who are following the law by indicting him.

This individual’s political opponents in the growing field of presidential candidates are oddly reticent in condemning him over the indictment that lays out a most convincing case against him.

A couple of them have spoken out, but they pull their punches just a bit. Other GOP officials point at other political leaders and ask, “Why don’t the feds indict them, too?”

The juxtaposition of this political maelstrom with my personal struggle to regain my emotional equilibrium is intentional. I mean to say out loud that my keen interest in public policy would be tested to its extreme even without my personal struggle. That I am seeking to find some sense to what I am reading and seeing in real time while waging war with my emotions offers to you an illustration of what I am talking about.

I know I am not the only person on Earth who at this moment is struggling with personal tragedy. Others who are going through it know of what I am speaking.

The consequence of this confusion? It now falls on special counsel Jack Smith to explain this to each of us clearly, in bold letters, the impact that this legal crisis will leave on our system of government … and on our own emotional health.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com