Trump Derangement Syndrome

Donald Trump has de facto secured the Republican presidential nomination for the election in November. He has done this facing a storm of open hostility from his political adversaries. Much of that hostility has been centered around the report from the January 6th Congressional committee, which purported to find evidence of Trump inciting an insurrection after the 2020 election.

From that committee to increasingly absurd court cases against the former president, the political establishment has been doing everything it could—or dared—to keep Trump from making a presidential comeback.

Former President Donald Trump on Saturday night forecast a financial “bloodbath” awaits the U.S. motor industry if he is not elected and China is enabled to swamp the country with their products.

Speech with full context
pic.twitter.com/7ly7Cf3fEG

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 17, 2024

It is a painful duty for me, once again, to take issue in these pages with the Globe and Mail. Because of the competition between these newspapers, there is a natural element of rivalry. But that has never diluted my acceptance that the Globe and Mail is an important and distinguished national institution. (I was a founding columnist with its future editor William Thorsell in the ROB magazine until my late friend Norman Webster genially fired me on Christmas Eve, 1997, because of my role in the founding of the National Post). I have had many friends there over many years including in the Webster and Thomson families, which between them have owned the Globe and Mail for about 65 years. In 1979, I joined with the late John Bassett and George Gardner in an effort to buy the Globe and Mail and affiliated publications in 1979 but we were outbid by Ken Thomson. The following comments on that newspaper’s lead editorial on Tuesday, March 12, are accordingly made from a perspective of respectful concern that the Globe and Mail not deviate from being a source of reliable information and enlightened and sensible comment.

Okay, I’ll admit it: I didn’t have Tennessee Williams on my reading list today. But I did read Judge Scott McAfee’s opinion that scathes Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis while nevertheless allowing her to continue running the RICO prosecution against former President Donald Trump and 18 others. I would thus observe, as a former prosecutor, that if a judge is talking about you when he describes the “odor of mendacity” wafting through the courtroom, you ought to leave the proceedings voluntarily . . . and maybe start thinking about your next career move. Your useful time on a case is over.

Judicial Watch announced today it received 88 pages of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) records from the Department of Justice in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit that show the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) deployed personnel to Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021.

h/t Mauser

A Georgia judge has ruled that embattled Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis must either step aside from the case against former President Donald Trump or fire special prosecutor Nathan Wade.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee issued the ruling after hearing evidence presented by lawyers for the co-defendants in the sweeping 2020 election interference case. Four co-defendants accused Willis of having an “improper” affair with Nathan Wade, whom she hired to help prosecute the case.

Lawfare is bad; lawfare without law is worse. Today, a small blow was struck against lawless criminal charges, and in favor of the idea that people can be prosecuted only for violating laws that have been written down somewhere.

Former President Donald Trump has had three charges in his Georgia election case thrown out by the judge considering whether to disqualify Fani Willis.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee wrote Wednesday in an order that six of the charges in the indictment must be quashed, including three against Trump.

But the order leave intact many other charges in the indictment and the judge wrote that prosecutors could seek a new indictment on the charges he dismissed.

h/t DS

Judge Scott McAfee’s decision on whether to disqualify the district attorney of Georgia’s Fulton County, Fani Willis, from the racketeering case she charged against President Trump and 18 others will likely turn on the legal standard Ms. Willis is forced to meet.

If Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis were prosecuting citizen Fani Willis and her former boyfriend Nathan Wade for perjury, conspiracy and obstruction of justice, she would have an extremely strong case. The evidence of perjury is overwhelming; many individuals have been convicted on far less evidence.

Recall that Willis and Wade testified under oath to the material fact that Willis did not hire Wade as special prosecutor while they were having a romantic relationship. They both testified that the romantic relationship began after the hiring decision was made. If that was a deliberate lie, it satisfies all the elements of perjury.

Were they deliberately deceiving their audiences, or themselves?

Much of what passes today for news analysis is anything but.

Let’s take a recent example: the legal discourse surrounding Colorado’s efforts to remove former President Donald Trump from the state’s ballot.

Their “rage” is an existential “threat to American democracy.”

As this critical 2024 presidential election draws closer, the panicked left finds themselves without a candidate even remotely capable of defeating Donald Trump – an inexorable, MAGA juggernaut that the Democrat Party cannot seem to stop no matter how many trumped-up (pun intended) lawsuits and investigations they throw in his path to a second Presidency.

The top of the Wednesday New York Times offers quite a contrast in headlines: a whiny piece on how Donald Trump may be gaining because of America’s “collective amnesia,” next to a puff piece “White House Memo” on “Campaign Shifts Strategy to Let Biden Be Himself.” As if he isn’t authentically fumbling and bumbling?