Issue Two
This is NOT an essay about Ohio’s Issue 2, on the ballot next week. Issue 2 legalizes marijuana for recreational growth, sale and use here in Ohio. Medical marijuana is already legal, with access to edibles available to anyone who can get a medical card. That card doesn’t allow smokable weed. Issue 2 would legalize that, and would also guarantee income for the state through taxation on the sale. All and all, it legalizes what a large minority of Ohioans do anyway. 1.7 million adult used in the past year, one out of every seven Ohioans (Enquirer). And the Issue finds a way to gain tax money from the deal. I’m voting for it.
No, the legal weeds we’re talking about today are national – the legal weeds that Donald Trump finds himself entangled in.
Defend All Sides
For the record, Trump is currently in legal “troubles” in five different jurisdictions. There are two federal cases; January 6th indictment in Washington, DC, and the classified documents in Ft Pierce, Florida. There is election interference (RICO case) in Atlanta, Georgia. And there are two cases active in New York. The first indictment was the “hush money” case . The other is the civil case brought against the Trump Organization by the New York Attorney General.
His woes can be categorized in four “baskets”: election interference 2020 and January 6th (Atlanta and Washington, DC), personal business and election finance fraud from 2016 (New York), violating classified document security (Ft Pierce), and Trump Organization business fraud (New York).
A better analogy might be, he’s in a “swamp” rather than in the weeds. But swamps already have a bad name from Trump use; let’s not mix the metaphor.
Instead, let’s start in Atlanta.
In the ATL
The biggest (and possibly “baddest”) charges Trump and his campaign faces are state charges in Georgia. The former President face felony charges of election interference. And those charges are “enhanced” by a “RICO” charge. “RICO” is a charge of corrupt conspiracy to commit felonies, with a minimum penalty of five years in prison. RICO cases were made famous by – wait for it – former US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Rudy Giuliani. He used them to bring down the Mafia in the 1980’s. Rudy is now one of Trump’s co-defendants.
From the prosecutors’ standpoint, RICO cases allow them to pressure the “smaller fish” to “flip on the bigger fish”. Nineteen were charged in the original indictment. It’s already down to fifteen. Last month, Scott Hall pleaded guilty to breaking into election machines in an attempt to “prove” they were rigged to change Trump votes to Biden. Hall was the “man on the scene”, but he received his instructions from Trump attorney Sidney Powell (the “Kracken” lady). Powell then pled guilty, putting another Trump attorney in an “untenable” position at trial, Ken Chesebro. He also pled-out, leaving Trump attorney Jenna Ellis completely vulnerable to conviction. So she pled guilty to a felony, but not the RICO charge that would put her in jail.
Flipping and Talking
Hall, Powell, Chesebro and Ellis all must testify truthfully as a condition of their plea agreement. They have traded their testimony to avoid jail time, instead taking fines and parole as punishment. Should they fail to “tell the truth” (already guaranteed by sworn and videoed testimony to the Prosecution team), they’re headed to jail.
That leaves the “top” Trump attorney, Giuliani, “twisting in the wind” to use a Mafia expression he might remember. Powell was in the “crazy” meeting on December 18th, when she and Giuliani proposed that Trump use the military to confiscate voting machines in key states. Powell’s testimony could directly impact Giuliani, Trump, and Trump’s Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows.
January 6th
The Atlanta case is progressing, but the first election case scheduled to come to trial is the Federal case in Washington brought by Special Prosecutor Jack Smith. That case is specifically targeted against Trump, with six unindicted co-conspirators. Smith streamlined the case to get it to trial quickly, scheduled in April before the Republican nominating convention for the 2024 Presidential candidate. Unlike the Georgia case, Smith is aimed directly at the “top” without the “smaller fish” to build on.
Smith needs someone in the “inner circle” who has direct knowledge of what Trump knew, said, and did. While Giuliani has some of that information, the critical witness, the one person who heard and saw everything, is Trump’s last Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows. (We know what Meadows’ knows by testimony to the January 6th Committee by his direct aide, Cassidy Hutchinson).
While Meadows was indicted in the Atlanta case, he wasn’t even named as an unindicted co-conspirator by Smith. But all of the other witnesses put him at the center of the election fraud conspiracy, and the actual march on the Capitol on January 6th. Meadows was connected to the Willard Hotel “War Room”, Meadows was talking to election officials (and fake electors) across the nation, and Meadows was directly communicating with then-President Trump. Meadows is “set up” to take the fall – if – Donald Trump doesn’t.
Last week news broke that Meadows testified to Jack Smith’s Grand Jury investigation leading to the Trump charges. He received immunity for his testimony, allowing Meadows to tell the truth instead of using the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination (with immunity he can’t incriminate himself). What Meadows said remains a mystery, but he clearly is in position to directly incriminate the former President.
Entangled
And those are “just” the election cases. The former CEO of the Trump Organization is faced with huge civil fraud charges in New York, charges that may ultimately wipe out the Trump financial empire. And since Mr. Trump seems unable to keep his mouth shut about the Judge, his staff, and the New York State prosecutors, he may end up in legal trouble for being in contempt of Court. That same mouth is edging him closer to contempt in the January 6th case in Washington, where the judge just re-instated a “gag order” to keep the ex-President from contaminating the prospective jury pool.
He’s in the weeds. His financial empire is at risk, his personal freedom is at risk, and his behavior places him in immediate jeopardy of imprisonment. It’s hard to see a way out, short of winning the Presidency, pardoning himself, and staying out of the state of Georgia (and New York).
Maybe that’s why he’s so intent on winning in 2024.
