The next time we chat it’ll be August and there’ll be just five months left in 2021. What does that tell us? Who knows, maybe nothing. Time continues to pass, the world continues to turn, and things stubbornly insist on refusing to make any damn sense.
Anyhow. The Former Guy has had a bad day. As much as we’d all like him to go away and take up painting or building houses or something like other ex-Presidents, he stubbornly refuses to shut up and sit down. Anytime the United States government does something, he’s got to stick his nose in because a vanishingly small group of delusional fenderheads think he was robbed.
Perhaps since he insists on continuing to draw attention to himself when he really, really shouldn’t, days like this keep happening. First off, the House Select Committee on the Great American Temper Tantrum got some awful interesting – and entertaining – evidence today. According to notes taken by Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, Trump tried to pressure him and Acting Attorney General Jeffery Rosen to claim the Department of Justice considered last year’s election to be “rigged” regardless of the lack of evidence.
You’ll recall that after Trump’s crushing defeat by now-President Joe Biden, even the most loyal rats started abandoning ship. One of the biggest rats was then-AG Bill “The Pope” Barr, which came as something of a shock to people who’d followed the pair’s relationship, as Barr was Trump’s most fiercely loyal consigliere after TFG ran off racist elf Jeff Sessions for insufficient loyalty back in 2019.
Regardless, he vacated the chair on December 14, and by December 27, the now-infamous call with replacement Rosen took place. Donoghue’s notes say, and I quote, that Trump told the pair, “Just say that the election was corrupt [and] leave the rest to me and the R. [Republican] Congressmen.” The notes were turned over to a House Oversight Committee that’s looking into Trump’s unverified claims of a rigged election and have now been made available to the House Select Committee on the January 6 GATT, which is looking into just how responsible Trump is for those wacky shenanigans his slap-happy followers pulled.
Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was rigged against him has no basis in reality, despite his whining or his cult’s deranged claims. Recall he’d been claiming before Biden was even the nominee that the only way he could lose is if the election was somehow rigged against him. Despite what can only be assumed are their best efforts, the True Believers have never come up with even a whiff of wrongdoing. These notes, however, add to the testimony of Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who was commanded to “find” votes that would’ve given him the Peach State, a brief moment of party disloyalty that will probably cost him a second term. Ironic, or funny one.
This also falls in with Trump’s attempts to lean on then-Vice-President Mike Pence, who with a rare display of backbone, refused to go against the Constitution and halt the process of verifying the already-settled Electoral College vote. This all opens up not only Rosen and Donoghue to being subpoenaed to testify in front of the House Select Committee, but it’s also considered by some enough of a “smoking gun” to require a subpoena to Trump himself. Committee head Bennie Thompson of Mississippi has indicated he’s inclined to call Trump in to testify if possible. Never underestimate how mean someone from Mississippi can get when the time comes. Trump will probably try to duck it, of course, but that’s the kind of man he is.
That went down this morning. After naptime, we learned that the same Department of Justice Trump tried to get to lie about the election for him has said the IRS is allowed to turn over his tax returns to the interested parties. After his election, Trump broke precedent by refusing to release his tax returns even claiming he was prevented because he was under audit. The IRS said, yes, he is being audited, but that in no way prevented him from revealing said taxes. He eventually did release a page’s worth of stuff from one year back 20 years ago, but it remained a bone of contention for his one term as president.
This all takes on a new color after the indictment of Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg at the beginning of the month. The long-time Trump employee pled not guilty to different tax-dodging schemes wherein, basically, people were paid under the table and apartments were given out without disclosure or the proper taxes being paid. The general consensus is he’s guilty as sin of running the scheme since 2005 and the suggestion is, as CEO, Trump knew enough about it to make things bad for him.
Under the auspices of current AG Merrick Garland, the DOJ reversed a Trump-era ruling that said he didn’t have to turn over taxes to the House Ways and Means Committee, which requested them back in 2019. While the Executive Branch isn’t required to automatically respond positively to such requests, the new ruling argues the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel went astray in recommending the president refuse the request. Only “extraordinary circumstances” warranted refusal, the 39-page report said, and Trump’s didn’t meet that.
Now. It’s far too soon to claim this is what will finally bring him down, as many on Twitter are crowing because things simply do not work that way. Indeed, it’s entirely possible he’ll skirt the whole tax issue with a slap on the wrist at the very most. Regardless, it’s satisfying to know the corrupt old fraud’s weekend will be miserable.
Yes, I am that petty. Enjoy your weekend, stay cool and/or dry, and get vaccinated if you haven’t.
Dear Y'all 