Rule of Law No More
(Door Hugo Kijne te Hoboken USA)
After his acquittal in the impeachment trial Trump went into full vengeance mode. Lt. Col. Alex Vindman and his brother Yevgeny, a lawyer who had nothing to do with the Ukraine case, were removed from their positions with the National Security Council and perv-walked out of the White House. The fact that Alex had obeyed a congressional subpoena – and thus disobeyed a presidential order – only made things worse for Trump, who insisted that the Pentagon should investigate him. Gordon Sondland was next, and after his removal as US Ambassador to the EU everybody who testified to the House Intelligence Committee had retired, been fired or left their positions. A final victim, at least for now, was a female Pentagon employee who had questioned the withholding of money for Ukraine and whose nomination for comptroller was withdrawn. At a rally in New Hampshire the president, with his whole mob family minus Melania present, read Al Wilson’s ‘The Snake’ to discredit asylum seekers, confused Concord NH with Concord Mass, called for Obama’s impeachment and engaged in some virtual incest with his daughter Ivanka.
When prosecutors, following guidelines, recommended a 7-9 year sentence for Roger Stone for lying to and obstruction of Congress and witness tampering in the Russia investigation, Trump tweeted furiously that the sentence would be a miscarriage of justice, and within a few hours the Department of Justice, apparently after an intervention by Attorney General Barr, withdrew the recommendation, just like it had earlier reduced the recommendation for Michael Flynn from a prison term to probation. The president declared that he never communicated with Barr about the recommendation, which may very well have raised his number of lies to over 17,000. In addition to interfering in Stone’s case Barr issued a new policy that all politically sensitive investigations have to be approved by him. All four prosecutors who had been involved in the Stone case quit the case in protest, and one of them resigned from DOJ altogether. A new victim of Trump’s wrath was the DC District Attorney who oversaw the Manafort, Flynn and Stone cases and had resigned to take a top position with the Treasury Department that was subsequently denied to her.
Still not able to let go the president told reporters that prosecutors should apologize to Stone, who will be sentenced next week. When asked if he would pardon Stone Trump said that he didn’t want to talk about that now, but since the judge has full discretion with regards to the sentence and she and Stone have duked it out quite a bit during the trial a stiff sentence, followed by a pardon, might be forthcoming. In a new development, according to Lindsey Graham a line to Barr has been opened for Rudy Giuliani, who is under investigation himself, to relay dirt about Hunter Biden.
Next to the dismantling of the rule of law the week was full of the usual idiocies. At the New Hampshire rally Trump announced without any proof that the Corona virus would be gone by April because of the rising temperatures, and said that the EU had been created to rip off the US. With the text ‘Tough Guys for Trump’ he tweeted a clip from HBO’s show ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ with Larry David wearing a MAGA hat, clearly not realizing that David was making fun of his deplorables.
After a line-up of Senate Republicans, led by bobblehead Susan Collins, fantasized that the president had learned ‘something’ from his impeachment trial their hopes and dreams were put to the test yesterday. In answer to reporters’ questions Trump said that he had learned that Democrats are ‘crooked and vicious’ and that his impeachment was ‘a disgrace that should never have happened.’
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