I can't get past something when it comes to the multiple crimes of Donald Trump, who really was president (something I still can't fucking believe happened - I mean, I know it happened. I'm not denying the existence of facts, like Trump and his braindead legions do. I'm just always gonna be like "Fuck us that we let that happen"). And it's really simple, one of those elegant confluences of circumstance that should have complete clarity. It's this:
The law is intensely clear: With a few exceptions that need to be approved, the records of a presidential administration belong to the nation, not the president. All of it, classified, unclassified, and declassified, go to the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, an office set up to take care of those records that are, again, by law, the nation's. There's no wiggle room on this. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals made it crystal-fuckin'-clear in its decision this week in favor of the Justice Department when it comes to the hundred or so documents found by the FBI at Trump's shitty fake castle, Mar-a-lago. "They are ‘owned by, produced by or for, or . . . under the control of the United States Government,'" it wrote.
And this is what bugs the shit out of me. I get that rich people are treated differently when it comes to legal matters. I get that presidents are treated with kid gloves for some goddamn reason. But Trump and the people around him took those documents that don't belong to him. Then NARA gave them the benefit of the doubt (or pretended to) and said, "Hey, you took these documents that by law don't belong to you. Please give them back." Then, not only did they not give them all back, they lied and said they did, which means they fucking well knew they had shit that didn't belong to them. Under the most generous of definitions, that's theft. They fucking robbed the country.
So I cannot wrap my brain around the idea that Trump and everyone involved in keeping the documents were not immediately arrested when the FBI fucking caught them with stolen fucking property. As just about everyone sane who has commented on this, from across the political spectrum, has said, if anyone else had been caught hiding government documents, let alone super-duper Top Secret Classified documents, the FBI would have sealed them in concrete until trial.
This is the kind of shit that plagues my brain at 3 a.m. when the whiskey is wearing off and the drugs just aren't holding the bullshit at bay anymore. Right now, a plague of lawsuits and investigations ought to be making Trump wonder if he'd rather live the rest of his miserable life in the UAE, Russia, or Indonesia when it comes to places without extradition treaties. And I know, I know, I fucking know that you want to be optimistic, even gleeful, thinking, "There's no fucking way he gets out of all of this." I mean, c'mon. If nothing else, E. Jean Carroll's lawsuit accusing Trump of raping her has to bring him down. She's got DNA evidence, after all.
It's not just that we've been burned before (although I'll brag that I stopped leaping at every "We got him!" moment a long time ago). It's that when Trump gets away with it, the story shifts. The Mueller Report has become nothing more than a failed witch hunt (which it wasn't). The impeachment over Ukraine has become part of the "Russia hoax" (it's not a hoax and the phrase has become so broad as to encompass anything that even mentions Russia and Trump). Trump prances all around his red state yahoo fests, lying about this shit with extravagant abandon as he pushes closer and closer to simply saying, "Kill everyone not like you."
And it's not just that Trump's gotten away with so much throughout his life. How many regular, working and middle class stiffs does he have to dick over before the rest understand they're being conned? How the fuck did it take so long for some entity in New York to seriously go after his entire ass? And why do they always stop short of actually arresting someone who has blatantly flouted the law? I'm honestly pissed as hell at Cyrus Vance and every AG and DA who allowed Trump and his shit children to remain free to fuck over more people. The only explanation that makes sense is that they have been corrupted in some way. It's why Letitia James's actions have been so stunning and relieving to many of us up here. You can sit there in another area of the country and think it was wrong for her to be so open about her desire to bring Trump down. But you don't understand how much we genuinely fucking hate him. She could be so brazen in her contempt for Trump because Trump's been so brazen in his contempt for the law.
I don't fear that Trump will get away with all of it simply because he has, though. His lawyers are shit, but they are good at the one thing that they can get away with: delaying the gavel coming down as he's dragged away, screaming about "fake judges" and "rigged jury" into the prison abyss he so richly deserves (a moment that would give me a thrill that would not be unlike an explosive orgasm). It's obvious that the gamble is that the GOP takes over the House of Representatives and then shuts down any investigation or prosecution through the power of the purse. I've said before that we're talking about a cabal of barking mad, rabid animals defending their pack leader. It's a gamble, sure, but even as Democrats are polling better, the gerrymandered-to-death map still favors Republicans. And when Republicans win by even one, they act like they just slaughtered their enemies and left them in a heap in their burnt cities as they hump the ashes in triumph.
"But what about Georgia and New York?" an imaginary reader might ask. Those cases would go forward, but then we're into what happens in Georgia in 2022 and we're into the delays until 2024. The New York case is going to take years because that's the way financial bullshit works. Then the gamble is that Trump or someone Trumpish is gonna win the presidency. Then we're all so fucked that we're gonna have to head into the streets to stop the Christian nationalists from forcing us into the "Love Jesus or Die" camps.
I hope I'm wrong. I hope that this is just that typical Democratic anxiety about winning. I honestly hope that by the time I hit "Publish" on this, we'll at least have an indictment. But an indictment is just the beginning of the process. So many things need to go right. So many people need to not fuck it all up. And there are so many others who will be trying to knock any prosecution off the rails, up to and including perhaps a majority of the Supreme Court.
Yeah, fucking enjoy Trump's shitty week. Enjoy the shitty weeks to come. But we're not playing a fair game here. Or that dull orange motherfucker would be sitting in a cell, awaiting trial.
