Once More, With Feeling

Seems like someone is starting 2024 hangry. @realDonaldTrump - you and your lawyers have had the J6 cmttee materials (linked below) plus the grand jury info & much more for months. Lying about the evidence in all caps won't change the facts. A public trial will show it all. https://t.co/9IlGWIviey

— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) January 2, 2024

I don't give a flying fuck what Trump says he will "prove" in court; or how fraud and deceit are cheating him again of legal victory. Or his opinion of the prosecutors and judges.

It's worth remembering that while Trump gets focus in a relatively small subset of folks, he has not actually been front and center for the public since the J6 hearings. That will change in a general election. Via @IsaacDovere https://t.co/pFQh5E1m8G

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) January 2, 2024

There's a lot of truth in that; and a pivot point that will not serve Trump well because, once people start paying attention, Trump will have been in criminal court for months, if not already convicted in one case or another.

Cheney is referring to this post by Trump, on New Year's Day (Happy New Year's from the leader of the GOP!):

"Why did American Disaster Liz Cheney... ILLEGALLY DELETE & DESTROY most of the evidence, and related items, from the January 6th Committee of Political Thugs and Misfits," Trump wrote on Monday. "THIS ACT OF EXTREME SABOTAGE MAKES IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR MY LAWYERS TO PROPERLY PREPARE FOR, AND PRESENT, A PROPER DEFENSE OF THEIR CLIENT, ME."

Here's the factual history behind Trump's claims (minus the conspiracy theory nonsense):

“Based on guidance from House authorities, the Select Committee determined that the written transcripts provided by nonpartisan, professional official reporters, which the witnesses and Select Committee staff had the opportunity to review for errata, were the official, permanent records of transcribed interviews,” -Jan 6 Committee Chair Rep. Bernie] Thompson wrote in a July letter to Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), who has raised questions about the completeness of the committee archive. In other words, the text of any video interview is still available for review.

Thompson also said that some materials gathered by the committee contained “law enforcement sensitive operational details and private, personal information that, if released, could endanger the safety of witnesses.” That material was sent to the White House and the Department of Homeland Security for archival purposes because the Jan. 6 committee dissolved before a full review of the sensitivity of this material was completed, Thompson wrote.

However, according to special counsel Jack Smith, who is prosecuting Trump, those sensitive materials from the White House and the Secret Service were provided to Trump months ago as part of pre-trial discovery.

When Trump claimed in a filing that the materials were missing, the special counsel countered that they were already in his possession. “Prior to filing the present motion, the defendant did not seek additional information or clarification regarding the Government’s production of these materials, nor did he ask whether the production included the sensitive, non-public Select Committee interview transcripts that he now seeks — which it did,” Smith said in an October filing.

Judge Tanya Chutkan in November denied Trump’s request to subpoena members of the Jan. 6 select committee in an effort to find the allegedly missing materials. 

That last sentence means the subject is a dead issue.  Trump screaming about it on-line does not resurrect it from the dead.  It will not be an issue in the trial because Chutkan won't allow it to be an issue.

"Lying about the evidence in all caps won't change the facts. A public trial will show it all." Frankly, if that's all you know about Trump's legal troubles, that's all you need to know.  The trials are going to chew him up and spit him out, despite his claims he's being railroaded (though I expect he'll be subject to an even more stringent gag order during trial, so he won't be able to go on TeeVee or his cellphone and tell the world how mistreated he is everyday after the day's proceedings.)

Experts fear pro-Trump radicals could spark 'mass casualty event' if he's jailed: reporthttps://t.co/VwXuZ7KZXi

— Raw Story (@RawStory) January 4, 2024

And a pox on all “experts”. Who the hell is gonna organize this “mass event”? The Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers are non-existent, their leadership in jail for seditious conspiracy. Trump? Trump doesn’t organize, he just howls to the pitiful handful who listen to him, but won’t soon again gather in public so they can be identified. Yes, there were multiple bomb threats against multiple states (all false, thankfully), but the threats were made anonymously. “Is our children learning?” Apparently.

Mobs are not a self-organizing mechanism. They need a rallying point and an organizer. Trump spoke at the last Trump riot. That wasn’t an accident.

How does he speak from jail?

I suppose some “experts” won’t be satisfied until Trump is in solitary confinement with a ball gag that is only removed at meal times by deaf prison guards.

Honestly, people, get over it. Trump’s biggest danger now is to himself. Let the courts have him. He’s completely caught in their machinery, and he doesn’t know what to do about it. It’s certainly never occurred to him to hire competent counsel and leave matters to them. That will be his undoing, and not the fretful warnings of “experts.”