The Sword of Damocles

"The Sword of Damocles is hangin' over my head. And I've gotta feelin' someone's gonna be cuttin' the thread!" - Rocky, Rocky Horror Picture Show

But is it over T****'s head or ours?

We're reaching the point in our history that courts are busting open with T**** cases left and right, and more than one of these cases could have major implications to the future of our country. Between the lawsuits themselves and motions and appeals, a lot has been happening. We've got a lot to dive into. Let's take a peek at the seven court cases that have been filing up our newsfeed. SEVEN!

Case #1. That f∩¢*(g Constitution. The Supreme Court heard arguments about eligibility based on the issue brought up by Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution, which apparently disqualifies T**** from holding office. You remember Section Three. It reads:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Colorado and Maine have ruled that he is ineligible to appear on their ballots, and other states have the issue in limbo, pending the decision from the Supreme Court. 

Before they met to hear arguments in the Colorado case, I thought that SCOTUS may decide in T****'s favor in one of these ways:

1. Section Three prevents him from holding office not running for office. OK good, but what happens if he is elected? Do we bar the door to the White House?
2. The Section does not explicitly name "president" as an officeholder worthy of disqualification, or the holder of the office of president is not an "officer" of the United States. Sure, go ahead - he is eligible to lead the nation even though he failed to protect the very Constitution that he wants to protect him.
3. He didn't commit insurrection nor did he aid and abet those who did. There has been no legal finding that he actually committed insurrection. Even though the statute does not say he has to be convicted, SCOTUS may rule that it is necessary before he can be disqualified. A majority of both houses of the United States Congress said he did in when the House indicted him for "Incitement of Insurrection." That should count in the effort to send him packing!

Seems, though, that this wasn't how it would go. By some of the questioning, there may be other justifications to not disqualify him: one is the states' differing treatment of candidate T****, and by extension, candidate Biden.

Justice Kagan: "Why should a single state have the ability to make this determination, not only for their own citizens but for the rest of the nation? ...That seems quite extraordinary, doesn’t it?"

Chief Justice Roberts chimed in: "Surely there will be disqualification proceedings on the other side. I would expect … a goodly number of states will say, whoever the Democratic candidate is, 'You’re off the ballot.'"

 So, #4. It's not a state's place to decide the issue. Um, are you nine missing the point? Duh, you guys. YOU are to rule on the Law of the Land. The whole land. That's why this case is being brought to you. The Constitution applies to all the states, dum-dums! YOU are the ones deciding for the whole country. Isn't this your job?

Justice Alito seemed to be concerned with what will happen in the states after the decision: "There will be conflicts in decisions among the states, that different states will disqualify different candidates, but I -- I'm not getting a whole lot of help from you about how this would not be an unmanageable situation." 

Justice Alito, did you think about how different states will react to your decision to rip healthcare rights away from women? How about back in 2022 when you said, "We cannot allow our decisions to be affected by any extraneous influences such as concern about the public’s reaction to our work. We do not pretend to know how our political system or society will respond to today’s decision overruling Roe and Casey. And even if we could foresee what will happen, we would have no authority to let that knowledge influence our decision."

Or, #5 reason to not disqualify him. By Kavaw-nawwww's and Barrett's questions, SCOTUS may invoke a 1869 case which suggested that an act of Congress was needed to enforce this type of disqualification. But the Section does not say it's Congress's place. The whole point is that it is self-executing, like the other qualifiers such as being a natural-born citizen or being 35 years old. 

Or they may find some other nitpicky reason to keep him on and avoid having to be held accountable to the Constitution. By hook or by crook, they'll find a way to let him be.

It's a fascinating moment in history, but I'm supremely pessimistic that they will disqualify him. 

Indeed, the pundits agree, most indicate that the justices are leaning toward not disqualifying him. Sadly I was not able to listen to the proceedings myself, but here is the transcript, and we have lots of smart people to analyze. 

After reading some analyses, it seems like the justices only touched on the most salient aspects of the Section, but focused on the states aspect and the Congress aspect. They didn't really delve too deeply into the question of whether the president is an "officer" or that he actually committed insurrection. 

Yanno, a lightbulb went off for me: I now realize that SCOTUS can say and do anything they want to. They don't have to follow the Constitution at all. They can just make it up as they go along; after all they are the Supreme Court of the United States. Sadly, it's looking like they are just another political body.

I predict that the justices will be unanimous and will craft a carefully worded decision to present a united fraud, I mean front. A decision is expected within a few weeks.

To get takeaways from the day's arguments, read from CNN, Politico, or The Los Angeles Times.

And finally, here's a nifty piece on the 91-year-old Republican former Colorado lawmaker, a woman, who pushed the case: Norma Anderson.

Ann Telnaes

Case #2. $88 million dollars, baby! Pay up! E. Jean Carroll won a second defamation award. In May 2023 she had been awarded $5 million in her defamation suit against T**** after he disparaged her and damaged her reputation. She had written a book detailing the sexual assault he committed against her in the '90s. And he didn't like that. So he started talking shit about her. Asshole. 

After the first trial for defamation where he lost to the tune of $5 mil, he just couldn't stop his vile insults and disparagements of her character. She sued him again. This time, the jury awarded her a whopping $83 million, which included $65 million in punitive damages! So far, it has shut him up. But she is willing to sue again. It must be killing him to hold his tongue ...errr, his thumbs.

Case #3. The other civil trial: The nation has been waiting with bated breath for Judge Engoran to rule on what punitive damages he will mete out for the massive fraud that T**** and his business committed in the state of New York. Engoron decided there was ample evidence of fraud before the trial even started; the trial was simply to decide what the penalty would be. Speculation is that he will strip the business license from the T**** Organization and order $350 million in restitution. Ooooh dem millions are slipping away.

There was a bit o' drama when it was revealed that one of the witnesses may have committed purjury during testimony. And this revelation may be why Judge Engoron has not ruled yet (he had said he'd have a ruling by January 31, and here we are 10 days later). It turns out that Allen Weisselberg, the former chief financial officer of the T**** Organization, is working out a plea deal with the Manhattan district attorney's office for his perjury during the Engoran trial.... before that outcome has made itself known. What the what?!

Read more about the ins and outs of the perjury in Forbes.

 

Case #4. Immunity forever and ever? No, sir. Not in the U.S.A! T**** has claimed that presidential immunity, which shields a sitting president from having to deal with lawsuits while leading the free world, protects him from any and all crimes he committed as president (or, in the classified documents case, after he stopped being president). He is using an absolute immunity claim to hold off the federal insurrection case against him brought by Special Prosecutor Jack Smith. A three-judge appellate panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit firmly denied his immunity claim in a strongly-worded unanimous opinion. This, after the judge overseeing his case, Tanya Chutkan, denied his claim of immunity but put the trial on pause so the appeals can move forward.

T**** plans to appeal this latest decision, of course. He may take it to the full D.C. Circuit Court or leapfrog directly to the Supreme Court. 

It was clear from their questioning last month which way the trio on the appellate panel was leaning. For example, Judge Florence Y. Pan asked, "Could a president ask SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival? That is an official act, an order to SEAL Team Six." T****'s attorney's didn't have a very good answer, hemming and hawing about having to be convicted in an impeachment trial first. 🙄 Listen to that bit of audio here.

Based on their strongly written unanimous (written per curiam, which means no primary author; they are all in full agreement) opinion, I am hopeful that the Supreme Court will decline to hear the case. If they do the right thing and let the decision stand, the federal insurrection trial (and by extension, the Georgia trial, which is also grappling with immunity, as is the federal documents case) can go forward immediately. If SCOTUS takes up the case, there will be more delays in the start of the trials, and justice may very well be denied. ("Justice delayed...." and all that).

Case #5. Darn you, Fani Willis! Every member of every prosecution team in each one of the myriad lawsuits against T**** must be impeccable in their behavior. Fani Willis, District Attorney for Fulton County, Georgia, sadly, was not impeccable. Rumors started swirling that she was embroiled in an affair with a special prosecutor that she had appointed to assist in Georgia's case against T**** which changed him for his conspiracy to lead a criminal cabal to attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. 

Willis finally admitted that the affair was happening, but said it will not affect her ability to work the case, blah blah blah. Conflict of interest much? You can't do this kind of shit, Fani! Shape up! Let's hope that it hasn't damaged her case against TRUMP too much. Legal experts in Slate write that it probably won't harm the case in a great way. Still, not good optics, Fani. Be better.

Case #6. The Federal Classified Documents Case: Special Counsel Jack Smith's frustration with the defendant and with the judge is growing. Smith made an unusual filing to the court a couple weeks ago. It was a routine filing, but the 64-page document apparently reads more like an opening argument for a trial. In it, he strongly rebuts T****'s falsehoods regarding the way the classified documents case unfolded. 

Smith is also becoming frustrated with Judge Aileen "Loose" Cannon. He has filed a couple filings with her, calling out some of her decisions, not the least of which was her decision to release the names of potential witnesses. It really is outrageous to expose witnesses to the Wrath of Khan't. Real harm could come to the witnesses from nut-job MAGAts. Witnesses who are just trying to do the right thing and tell the truth. Cannon should understand this abundantly. She herself has been subject to death threats from wackos. One nutter has recently been sentenced to three years. 

You can see Joyce Vance, a political analyst, talk about Cannon's decisions and Smith's reactions on MSNBC.

7. The hush-money case in Manhattan may move forward given stalls in other cases. The trial is scheduled to begin on March 25. Though it had been put on the back burner so other cases could move forward, the slow wheels of justice have all but ground to a halt in some of those other cases, paving the way for this one to possibly go ahead.

Other newsie bits:

Drew Sheneman

The Repug Party continues to crumble. They cannot help but put their head under directly under T****'s boot. You have probably seen the news about the border deal gone ka-blooey. For ages the MAGAts have been calling for a border bill to manage the crisis at the southern border. A deal was hashed out in the Senate in a bipartisan way, and the bill passed the Senate. 

Here we had a bipartisan bill with wide support, and President Biden was warming up his pen to sign. But the Orange Menace struck again: he doesn't want there to be any cooperation with the Left, so he instructed House Speaker Mike Johnson to kill the bill. So freaking frustrating. 

Here is a Guide for the Perplexed for further reading.

That fake T**** auto workers "union" event in Michigan back in September? Turns out he paid $20,000 for the privilege of duping The People by hiring non-union folks to pretend to be union members at the bogus event. Rachel Maddow can tell you more. 

There's more evidence of T****'s neurological disorder, such as mixing up Nancy Pelosi and rival presidential candidate Nikki Haley. But that's not new news.

And Biden's failings. Robert Hur, the special prosecutor who looked at Biden's mishandling of classified documents, released his report and did not find a prosecutable case. Hur did call into question Biden's memory, though, and those comments overshadowed anything else from the report. Biden was not happy with Hur's opinions on his memory, and many prosecutors, even conservatives, agree he crossed the line. The comments are indeed potentially politically damaging.

I don't want to be agist. People of advanced age can and do fill complex roles with heavy cognitive loads. The fact is that Biden's age is a political problem, even before this. People are concerned about his age. Yes, T**** is old, too, and definitely cognitive impaired, and he's not much younger that Biden. But somehow, that stink has not stuck on him for the MAGA crowd, but it's sticking like crazy on Biden. Mini Racker in Time Magazine has actually discussed that for us, suggesting that in large part, it's all about appearances.

Let's just say Biden is forgetful. OK, but he is still a solid president. He has been getting things done (the infrastructure bill not the least of it!). The almighty American economy is booming. He's a strong leader. Even with some memory issues and his advancing age, he poses nowhere near the risk to our nation that T****'s return to the Whitewash House would dish out. There are much bigger issues. We need to reelect him.

THE MAGAt crowd is losing their shit over Taylor Swift, her boyfriend in the NFL, and what they see as a conspiracy to *gasp* influence the election by *clutching pearls* getting more than a few of her millions of fans to register to vote. Here we are, it is Super Bowl Sunday, and she'll be in the stands cheering and being her subversive self. They really hate powerful women, don't they? And they really, really hate people who vote!

Here is a peek inside Tay-Tay's daily routine, courtesy of McSweeney's (and by way of Big Sister Resister Pagrs).

Your regular reminder: Do what they hate. Do what you can to get out the vote! November will be here sooner than you know! 

Register to vote; help a new voter register; vote in your primary; send money to a charity that works for voter rights; get your postcards ready, and contact Postcards to Voters to help elect blue candidates; or find a specific candidate and volunteer to get them elected. 

You know: RESIST!