On Trump's taxes, and the criminal referral

 So how was your week?  I had to finish grading, temperatures dropped from well-digger's-ass to witch's-teat (or maybe it was the other way around), and the grocery store was out of a couple of key ingredients.  What about Donald Trump?  We are finally learning about his tax returns, the January 6 Committee made a criminal referral to the Department of Justice, and it looks like maybe, just maybe, the Republican Party is done with his shit.

Granted, that last one has to hurt him, but on the other counts, I'm gonna say I had a worse week.  Have you ever had to grade before?  It sucks.  Trust me.  Also, it is fucking cold here.

Of course, my obligation to grade is my own fault.  As my students regularly remind me, I could just not assign anything, or give everyone As.  Maybe I'll try that.  Grade inflation is so out of control we're practically there anyway.  I cannot do anything about the weather, so those of us in these climes are stuck bundling up, guzzling hot tea, and asking more of our furnaces than they were designed to do.  We can improvise in the kitchen, I guess.

And then there's Donny.  We shall let the accountants and tax attorneys scour the documents, but it is, of course, fascinating to learn that the IRS was not doing those required audits of his taxes while he was President.  Raise your hand if you think this was just a random glitch.  Where does that go?  Biden can order an internal investigation, and we may find out something from that, but let's be honest about Occam's Razor.

Will Trump pay any consequence for telling the IRS not to audit him?  There would have to be a direct line to him, and an internal investigation will not find that.  How high will it go?  I have no idea, but they will not find a written statement from Trump saying, "don't audit me or I'll send you to a Russian prison."  That goes nowhere.  How much fraud will forensic accountants find in his taxes?  Metric fucktons.  Will it matter?  No.  If you could not tell that he is a fraud by two weeks ago, then a tax revelation two weeks from now will not matter.

Next, the criminal referrals from January 6.  It should be crystal clear that Merrick Garland really does not want to prosecute Donald Trump.  Yet, when he pursued and executed a search warrant on Mar-a-Lago for the documents that Trump stole and lied about withholding, he started down a road that does not have many exit ramps.  Trump is so indisputably guilty that to execute that search warrant, find all of the evidence legally proving Trump's guilt and then decline to prosecute would create a big problem for the DoJ.  Consider... Hillary Clinton.

Do you remember why Hillary Clinton did not face any charges?  It had to do with a comparison.  The FBI looked at the case and asked, what did the DoJ do in similar or comparable cases?  Their most recent case was that of General David Petraeus.  Petraeus was boning his biographer, and spilling secrets on to her.  He got a slap.  On... the wrist.  Which, OK, if you're into that, fine.  Point being, he leaked classified information, and faced no real penalty.  Clinton may have mishandled classified information, but there was no evidence that she put anything at risk because we don't know what got deleted.  In the absence of evidence that classified information was leaked, she could not be given a penalty bigger than Petraeus, who was only tut-tutted.  So, given precedent, she couldn't be prosecuted.

Consider what happens to that process-- consider how many people will be forced to go free-- if Trump doesn't get prosecuted after everything he did.  Clinton gets nothing because of the Petraeus standard.  If Garland lets Trump go, Trump becomes the new standard for what is permissible.  And what that standard becomes is literally anything.  And I detest misuse of the word, "literally."

So Garland has done everything possible to avoid prosecuting Trump, even on the Mar-a-Lago Papers, but he may not have much of a choice.

He does have a choice on January 6.  He has to ask a few questions.

Question The First.  Is the evidence so indisputable that Trump has no legal argument?

Question The Second.  Would Trump be acquitted?

Question The Third.  Does refusal to prosecute create a Petraeus/Clinton issue?

In answer to Question The First, no.  On any conspiracy charge, Trump still has the stupidity defense.  He can always claim to believe any batshit conspiracy theory, and being stupid, that claim is plausible.  Not the conspiracy theory itself, but the claim that he is stupid enough to believe it.  Charges such as incitement are damn-near impossible to prosecute because unless you call directly for violence, there's the First Amendment.  And yes, he did say, "peaceably."  He only said it once, but that's enough for a lot of jurors.

In answer to Question The Second, there is a 100% chance of acquittal, on all charges.  As I have said repeatedly, it's all about the jury pool.  You cannot block people from the jury just for being Republicans.  Prosecute, and you've lost from Day 1.

Question The Third.  This is more difficult.  The DoJ does have to prosecute people for mishandling classified information, so there would be a real problem if Garland didn't prosecute Trump on the Mar-a-Lago Papers, but the question is about related cases on January 6.  Will we see this again?  Unfortunately, I think so, yet the real issue is that it gets into a "none dare call it treason" problem.

However, there are not a lot of cases of lesser insurrection for which Garland would have to decline to prosecute if he declines to prosecute Trump.  Rather, it is a question of incentivizing future insurrections, but the incentive is there anyway, because, well, what if you succeed?

We're going down a dangerous road.  Trump may fade away on his own incompetence, if the NFT blunder is any indication of his future, while a failed prosecution reinforces the victim narrative that feeds his cult.

So really, how bad a week was it for him?

I mean, I had to grade.  Do you know pain?  I know pain.

Blind Willie McTell, "Painful Blues."

And goddamnit, here's Little Feat, "Cold, Cold, Cold."  The live version, from Waiting for Columbus.