The Trump indictment and the audio: has Ahab finally caught the Great Orange Whale?

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s a lot to digest today, all of it incomplete. So I’ll start with a little discourse on law.

No system of law can be perfect or anything close to it. In the end, justice – or any approximation of it – rests on the people who implement the law. I’m talking about those who draft statutes, judges who interpret law and make rulings, professors who teach it, students who learn it, lawyers who practice it, pundits who write about it, and juries who decide about guilt.

And, of course, prosecutors who decide which people to prosecute. That is of the utmost importance, and one of the potential weak points, because not everyone who violates a law can be prosecuted. That would take way too much time and effort, because there are so many laws on the books. As lawyer Harvey Silverglate states in his book Three Felonies a Day (from the summary at that Amazon link):

…federal criminal laws have become dangerously disconnected from the English common law tradition and…prosecutors can pin arguable federal crimes on any one of us, for even the most seemingly innocuous behavior. The volume of federal crimes in recent decades has increased well beyond the statute books and into the morass of the Code of Federal Regulations, handing federal prosecutors an additional trove of vague and exceedingly complex and technical prohibitions to stick on their hapless targets. The dangers spelled out in Three Felonies a Day do not apply solely to “white collar criminals,” state and local politicians, and professionals. No social class or profession is safe from this troubling form of social control by the executive branch, and nothing less than the integrity of our constitutional democracy hangs in the balance.

The subtitle of Silverglate’s book is How the Feds Target the Innocent. But that’s hardly the whole story. An important part of the story is also whom among the guilty they target and whom they spare, and why.

I don’t know whether Trump is innocent or guilty of the letter of the statutes he is accused of violating, but I know that a Democrat would never be charged if he or she were in Trump’s shoes. And I know that, so far, Trump has been the target of many accusations based on lies, and Biden and so many other Democrats have not been charged despite all the evidence of their suspicious and arguably criminal behavior. For example, we have the Biden bribery allegations that the investigators have sat on for many years, including right before Biden’s election. Not to mention the coverup of the entire Hunter Biden laptop story.

It is the differential application of the legal system depending on politics, as well as the obvious willingness of government agencies to lie, that is so infuriating, outrageous, depressing, and frightening.

We have known for quite some time that Trump would probably be indicted for something connected with the supposedly classified documents at Mar Al Lago. I can’t recall when I first read it, but long ago – perhaps a month or so after the raid – but we’ve heard rumors that the documents in question were papers he had taken in order to exonerate himself in defense against some mendacious accusations against him. We also learned – and again, I’m not sure when I first heard it, but probably within the last month or two – that the DOJ had an audiotape of Trump admitting that the documents in question were classified and that he had not declassified them while he was president.

Today we got more information about both of those things (the link is to a CNN article, so make of that what you will):

Former President Donald Trump acknowledged on tape in a 2021 meeting that he had retained “secret” military information that he had not declassified, according to a transcript of the audio recording obtained by CNN.

“As president, I could have declassified, but now I can’t,” Trump says, according to the transcript.

CNN obtained the transcript of a portion of the meeting where Trump is discussing a classified Pentagon document about attacking Iran. In the audio recording, which CNN previously reported was obtained by prosecutors, Trump says that he did not declassify the document he’s referencing, according to the transcript.

I’ll pause here to note that this is both very strange and difficult to interpret, perhaps because CNN means it to be. I don’t think the entire transcript is available, at least not as I write this. So, why would Trump say something as strange as “here’s a document that’s classified, and although I could have declassified it I didn’t do so”? And was he speaking in general of other documents, or of the particular one concerning attacking Iran?

More:

CNN first reported last week that prosecutors had obtained the audio recording of Trump’s 2021 meeting at his Bedminster, New Jersey, resort, with two people working on the autobiography of Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows as well as aides employed by the former president, including communications specialist Margo Martin.

The transcript of the audio recording suggests that Trump is showing the document he’s discussing to those in the room. Several sources have told CNN the recording captures the sound of paper rustling, as if Trump was waving the document around, though is not clear if it was the actual Iran document.

“Secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this,” Trump says at one point, according to the transcript. “This was done by the military and given to me.”

So, it appears that CNN is reporting on a transcript and did not hear the audio themselves. Who prepared the transcript, and who gave it to CNN? How accurate is it? Was anything left out or changed? We’ve seen excerpts of previous conversations that seemed very bad for Trump, and yet when the full story was revealed it was not especially bad at all. Is this one of those cases? Or is this the time Ahab finally will strike Moby Trump with his harpoon?

More:

Trump was complaining in the meeting about Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley. The meeting occurred shortly after The New Yorker published a story by Susan Glasser detailing how, in the final days of Trump’s presidency, Milley instructed the Joint Chiefs to ensure Trump issued no illegal orders and that he be informed if there was any concern.

“Well, with Milley – uh, let me see that, I’ll show you an example. He said that I wanted to attack Iran. Isn’t that amazing? I have a big pile of papers, this thing just came up. Look. This was him,” Trump says, according to the transcript. “They presented me this – this is off the record, but – they presented me this. This was him. This was the Defense Department and him. We looked at some. This was him. This wasn’t done by me, this was him.”

Now we have come to something that seems relevant to the rumor that Trump’s allegedly classified papers had to do with protecting himself from false allegations against him. I think what he may be saying here is that Milley had made some false accusation against him about something that was contained in the papers. This thing may have been plans to attack Iran, which he said were actually Milley’s plans and not his. So why didn’t Trump declassify the papers before he took them? Again, we don’t have a full transcript, but there’s this:

Trump continues: “All sorts of stuff – pages long, look. Wait a minute, let’s see here. I just found, isn’t that amazing? This totally wins my case, you know. Except it is like, highly confidential. Secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this.”

“Secret” and “confidential” are two levels of classification for sensitive government documents.

Did he fail to declassify it because he had just found it among some other papers he took? And now he knew it was too late to do so? Possibly. That at least makes a certain amount of sense.

So now we can construct a tentative timeline. Perhaps the DOJ or FBI received the audio of this meeting first. Who made the recording? Who gave it to them? Was Trump aware he was being recorded? And then I would imagine that the DOJ and/or FBI decided to subpoena the document in question – whether or not they knew exactly what it might be – and it wasn’t delivered. That’s what they were searching for, apparently.

More:

In March, prosecutors subpoenaed Trump for the document referenced in the 2021 recording. Trump’s lawyers provided some documents related to Iran and Milley in response to the subpoena, but they could not find the document itself.

Maybe it doesn’t exist, at least not exactly as described in the audio, and that’s why the documents didn’t match what they thought they were looking for. Or maybe it does exist, and Trump kept it, because he thinks it exonerates him and implicates them in wrongdoing.

It somehow makes me think of a snake swallowing it’s own tail. If I have the scenario right, they’ve tried again and again to frame Trump, and in his effort to avoid one of those attempts, he actually may have committed a criminal act for which he will be prosecuted, perhaps successfully.

What a terrible terrible mess.

[NOTE: In CNN’s earlier report on the audio recording, they wrote that they had not listened to the audio but that “multiple sources described it.” It doesn’t name those sources, although it does say that prosecutors have the audio. Who gave the information to CNN? Was it someone from the prosecution? Is that misconduct (I have no idea what the answer is to that)? And who made the recording? The article says that “multiple people were making recordings” during that period of Trump’s life.

The article also indicates that Trump said that “if he could show [the document] to people, it would undermine what Milley was saying” (Milley had been accusing him of planning to attack Iran). To me, this would suggest that Trump did not show the contents to anyone in the room but was just describing its existence in order to assert his innocence.]

Sadness

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “stan” writes:

I got a real bad case of the sads this morning. Oh, I’m angry. I’m ready to fight. But for a few moments I felt grief.

America is dead. It’s been dying since 1993 and the finishing blow was likely in 2016. And it’s sad. I’m sad for my kids. I’m sad for what might have been. I’m sad when I fully contemplate the overwhelming amount of hate that has driven the destruction.

Agreed.

But I’d change that last date. I think the finishing blow was actually Obama’s election. I believe it was Obama’s successful implementation of the Gramscian march through the DOJ and other federal agencies that finally cemented our current abysmal situation. After his eight years in office everything was in place, and Trump was a mere blip on the radar screen and a temporary obstacle to be gotten rid of.

More from stan:

Biden, Obama, the Clintons and the rest of Big Brother’s politburo have made it perfectly clear. Soros and the dark money crowd, The NY Times, WaPo, the big tech censors — they aren’t fooling around. They intend to crush dissent. Crush.

…Their behavior makes it absolutely clear that they no longer believe they will ever be out of power again. The masks are off. It’s ugly. It looks more and more like they seriously want to provoke violence. And violence may be the only recourse that remains to save us.

The do want to provoke violence, but only because they believe – correctly, I think – that they will be able to crush it easily and to use it to further implicate and imprison those who oppose them. So I don’t think violence would save anyone or anything. I see something more like the Canadian truckers protest – but then again, look at what the government of Canada managed to do to them. The computerization of finance and just about everything else has enabled people to organize protests more easily, but it has extended government’s reach to disempower them even without using violence to do it.

More:

This is about dictatorial abuse of power. This is about that which EVERY moral, patriotic American should be united in opposition. Regardless of their policy preferences.

Indeed, they should be, but they are not. If they were, none of this would be happening and/or attempts at it certainly wouldn’t be successful. But for such a long time the public has been subjected to so much propaganda from the left, and education in civics and government has been so lacking, that close to half of America doesn’t see it that way. And even if they did, what would they be able to do about it?

So I’m sad. But I have been sad about this now for years. And I haven’t utterly given up hope. Just because I don’t see the way forward doesn’t mean that there isn’t a way forward. Life is unpredictable, and history unforeseeable for the most part.

Trump indicted versus Biden coverup

The New Neo Posted on by

Virtually everyone on the right has known for quite some time that our system of justice has become wholly political. There have been so many reasons to think that, but today we got what is probably the biggest one of all so far: the utterly asymmetrical mirror-image legal treatment of Trump versus Biden. It is not surprising but it is profoundly depressing.

I almost certainly will be writing more about this, probably tomorrow. For now I suggest you read this post at Ace’s about the Biden bribery allegation coverup that’s been going on for years, and this at Legal Insurrection concerning the Trump Mar-Al-Lago indictment. You might also want to take a look at this one about Biden’s chortling response to a question about the bribery allegations.

I had a lovely few hours today away from the news. I visited a friend whose son – someone my own son grew up with – was visiting her, along with his wife and small children. So much fun, laughter and a good meal. And then I came home to this news.

I’ll close with this:

“This story contains details some readers may find distressing”

The New Neo Posted on by

That quote in the BBC article is actually an understatement. The story is exceptionally distressing, and probably nearly 100% of readers would find it distressing.

Here’s what happened:

Four young children have been stabbed in a park near Lake Annecy, in France’s south-east.

Police overpowered and arrested the attacker, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said.

Authorities said the children were aged three or younger and most were in a critical condition…

Police have confirmed that the suspect is a 31-year-old Syrian, who had refugee status in Sweden.

The attacker has no criminal or psychiatric history. The fact that he is a refugee from Syria suggests terrorist activity, although authorities deny it. But it’s also possible he just went suddenly psychotic. The article also says he has a child in Sweden about the age of the children he stabbed. That to me seems potentially significant:

Police say the suspect has refugee status in Sweden and recently came to France, leaving behind a wife and three-year-old daughter. In an unsuccessful asylum application last year for refugee status in France, he said he was a Syrian Christian.

During the incident, the attacker invoked the name of Jesus Christ.

I find that last sentence difficult to believe. But if a person is bona fide insane – as in schizophrenic, for example, and hearing voices – anything is possible.

The man was apprehended by police after they shot him in the legs.

Prayers and hopes for a full recovery for all the victims.

Mark Judge ponders what happened to Bill Kristol – and so do I

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s the piece on Kristol by Judge. It’s interesting, although Judge doesn’t really come up with an answer to the question.

But I didn’t expect him to. I’ve long pondered what happened to Kristol, and haven’t really come up with an answer either. Yes, the facile answer is “Trump happened,” but to me that’s no answer at all. Why did Trump’s advent on the scene cause previously sane and thoughtful people to go over to the dark side – that is, supporting the left, which is what Kristol now does? It’s also easy to say that he was always shallow and only in it for notoriety or whatever downputting explanation you can devise, but as Judge writes:

I wrote for the Weekly Standard for the first couple years of its existence in the mid-1990s, and in those days Kristol was a serious yet kind man who saw that the threat of political correctness and academic Marxism was real. One of the first pieces I did for him was about the radicalism that had taken over Georgetown University. That radicalism has now metastasized into wokeness, which has destroyed lives and crushed free speech.

On his Twitter feed recently, Kristol posted a video of Ron DeSantis condemning this neo-Marxism. Kristol’s comment? “This is the way the American conservative movement ends—not with a bang but a whimper.”

I have my own experience with Kristol, too. I met him a couple of times, once at a medium-sized gathering where he gave a talk and then there was a dinner where I happened to sit at the same table of around eight people. We have a mutual friend who had known him for decades and thought highly of him, and this person now can’t explain his change either. I wrote a number of articles for the online Weekly Standard (you can find them here at the Washington Examiner, which seems to have taken over the Weekly Standard’s archives) and he was always kind and smart and seemed quite principled. So I am deeply puzzled by his behavior.

Why do I even care? I care because it is a case of political change, which is a special interest of mine, but also because it surprised me that it was such an extreme change after all those years, as well as change of the more rare right-to-left variety. You can say, “Oh, he never was really a conservative because he was a neocon,” but Kristol certainly appeared to hew to conservative principles in most things except foreign policy for most or perhaps all of his life. Was he also one of the world’s best actors? I don’t think so. And he had plenty of fame and I doubt he was ever hurting for money.

Others say that Kristol and others made their change in order to keep on going to the parties with the in-crowd. But that just seems like weak tea to me, if a person seems to be guided by principle in the first place. And his repudiation of the right was far more global than merely a rejection of Trump himself, which would be more understandable. For Kristol, it has involved a fairly full-fledged embrace of the left at a time when the left has become even more pernicious, dangerous, and powerful.

I think Judge comes closest to an answer when he writes this:

Lacking the experience of life change—Kristol inherited punditry from his dad…

I have long thought it’s incorrect to call Kristol a “neocon.” The claim is based on his truculent and interventionist foreign policy stances, but the reason it doesn’t seem quite right to me is that the original definition of the term (and the one I prefer) is someone who had a political change from left to right. Kristol never had that change; as Judge writes, he inherited his politics – and even his profession – from his father Irving Kristol. And his father was a bona fide neocon, a leftist turned conservative who was described by The Daily Telegraph after his death as “perhaps the most consequential public intellectual of the latter half of the [twentieth] century.” Those are big shoes to fill, to say the least. Irving Kristol died in 2009, before Trump became a large political figure, so we don’t know how he would have felt about him. But Bill always stood in his shadow and perhaps never quite freed himself from his influence. Perhaps this recent anti-Trump pro-left position is the son’s adolescent rebellion, long-delayed.

I admit I have no idea if that’s the case or not. But simple Trump-hatred really doesn’t explain how far Kristol has gone.

The film “Deadname”

The New Neo Posted on by

Last night I watched the documentary called “Deadname.” It’s about three parents impacted by their teenagers declaring as trans, the lack of traditional counseling for such children and its replacement by rubber-stamping on the part of the therapy and healthcare system as well as the pushing of medical treatment, and the negation of parental rights. It’s not a fancy film, and there’s a charge to view it. But I recommend it. I find these stories heartbreaking and infuriating in equal measure.

Speaking of rubber-stamping – and not just of teenagers – please read this post at Legal Insurrection. An excerpt:

The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh uncovered trans healthcare providers rubber-stamping approvals and lying about diagnoses so a patient can get sex-change procedures.

Lying about the diagnoses is a way for insurance to cover the procedure.

The investigation centers around Plume, which is “the largest healthcare provider to the trans and nonbinary community.”

Matt Walsh is the maker of the more well-known documentary “What Is a Woman,” recently watched on Twitter by millions of people.

More:

Daily Wire producer Gregg Re went undercover to request a letter of support.

Yes, for $150, you can get a letter of support to get life-changing operations.

Re got a letter after spending 22 minutes on a video call with a nurse at Plume. The letter was for testicle removal.

This thread is wild. Plume approved Re despite not passing any questionnaires.

It’s a farce.

Details at the link.

Coming soon to a theater near you – another Trump indictment

The New Neo Posted on by

Determined prosecutors can indict anyone. And they can convict anyone if they have judges and juries simpatico to their cause.

Whether or not this was always true I’m not sure. But it’s my impression – and I’ve lived a long time and observed a great many cases – that although it has been somewhat true for a long time, the problem has increased exponentially and more and more involves the prosecution of politicians on the right.

Trump is not the first politician to which this has happened; he’s just the first president or ex-president (as far as I know, anyway). Previously, they got rid of Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska by this method, and also House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. It’s no accident that both were prominent and important Republicans, because this technique is especially used by the left.

Both men were ultimately exonerated, but well after the left’s goal of ending their careers was accomplished. For example, DeLay was out of office by the time this happened:

In an 8-1 decision, the state’s highest criminal court backed a Texas 3rd Court of Appeals decision that reversed DeLay’s 2011 convictions on money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The court had ruled there was not enough evidence to prove that DeLay’s actions were criminal.

“We agree with the court of appeals that, as a matter of law, the State failed to prove facts to establish that the appellant committed either the object offense of money laundering or the inchoate offense of conspiracy to commit the same,” the criminal appeals court ruled.

That not reversal on some technicality. That’s a case without proper evidence. And Stevenson’s prosecutors were guilty of misconduct.

These days, if the correct leftist venue is chosen, even prosecutorial misconduct will not save the defendant.

Here is the impending case against Trump, according to reports:

Federal prosecutors have notified Donald Trump that he is a criminal target and likely to be indicted imminently in a probe into alleged classified documents – even as the Justice Department declined to delay charges to give time to investigate allegations of witness tampering submitted by the former president’s legal team, according to multiple people on Wednesday familiar with the case…

Trump has portrayed both cases as part of a broader “witch hunt” and dual system of justice designed to derail his 2024 presidential candidacy.

This week, Trump argued Smith is a partisan and the federal case against him is being treated differently than one against President Joe Biden, who also was found with classified documents in his possession from his time as vice president.

Trump’s portrayal of both cases is 100% correct, and any objective observer should be able to see that. But objective observers are few and far-between. In addition, I think many on the left see it and simply don’t care, because it’s perfectly okay to use the law in an unfair manner to get Trump the Enemy.

Much more at the link.

Some questions about self-publishing

The New Neo Posted on by

As many of you may know, I’m trying to publish a book of Gerard’s essays and also one of his poetry. The only avenue seems to be self-publishing; I’ve explored various conventional publishers and there aren’t any takers.

So I’ve been researching the self-publishing options, and all I can say is “Arghhhh!” (actually, that’s not all I can say, but that’s my initial reaction). There are a great many of them. I’ve read many sites that purport to list the best ones and compare and contrast, but nevertheless it’s still very difficult to decide which would be best.

I don’t want to spin my wheels any further. The plus is that at some point I hope to do the same for some of my own essays, and at least I’ll have more experience then.

It occurs to me that some of you may know something about this process and which to choose, perhaps from personal experience or things you’ve heard from other people you know. So I invite advice in the comments. This is what I want from such a platform:

(1) relative ease of loading and formatting
(2) good customer support
(3) customer choice of e-book or hard copy, the latter probably print-on-demand, (ADDED: and I’d prefer both a paperback and a hardcover option if possible)
(4) good quality printing, especially of small photos which will accompany each essay or poem
(5) quicker turnaround
(6) royalties that are reasonably high
(7) book price for the consumer that isn’t sky-high to get a quality product

At the moment I’m leaning slightly towards a site called Lulu, but it’s early in the process.

The Palin-ization of Casey DeSantis

The New Neo Posted on by

Hate sells. Sneering, condescending hate sells. And of course, all conservatives are to be hated. So this sort of thing was inevitable (“Casey DeSantis is the Walmart Melania Trump”), and it’s getting a ton of clicks and attention. It reads like a parody of the left, but unfortunately it’s not.

Including attention from me. But you don’t have to click on the article itself, if you don’t want to. I’ll embed this clip in which Megyn Kelly reads excerpts in a suitably snarky voice:

And here’s none other than Piers Morgan – yes, Piers Morgan – discussing the Daily Beast piece:

Can you spot the difference between these two sentences:

1. Florida is where woke goes to die.

2. Florida is where the woke go to die.

Not difficult, right?

The first clearly refers to a pseudo-fascist ideology that most definitely needs to be killed off, as Florida Gov. and presidential candidate Ron DeSantis has been waging a successful campaign to do in his state.

The second, equally clearly, refers to actual woke people going to Florida to be killed….

Let’s be clear: Katie Baker [author of the Daily Beast piece] knew what Casey DeSantis’ coat statement meant.

Frankly, a lobotomized warthog knows she was talking about woke ideology, because that’s what Ron has been talking about incessantly all year, in unambiguous context.

Self-evidently, she doesn’t mean woke people go to die in Florida, because that would make her a horrendous human being who wants to kill people.

Yet that’s exactly what Baker wants you all to think Casey DeSantis is.

Expanding on her dangerously disingenuous theme, she wrote: “Florida under DeSantis has had one of the highest COVID death rates in the nation, even as he’s exulted in his anti-mask policies. And as the governor whips up anti-LGBT sentiment and bans books on race, Casey’s jacket and its message of death also bring to mind the horrific Pulse nightclub mass shooting in Orlando, not to mention the state’s shameful history of Jim Crow-era lynch mobs and the Rosewood massacre … the jacket, then, is a warning: Watch out, America.”

Again, wow.

I don’t have too many “wows” left in me for this sort of thing. The first time I noticed it going full bore was when Sarah Palin was running for VP in 2008, but it has a long antiquity. Arguably, Robert Bork was a male recipient, although for men it takes a different form and doesn’t usually involve appearance or garb. When this weapon is wielded against women, it especially originates with other women, and it takes the form of what used to be called “cattiness,” although it’s cattiness of an extreme nature.

And it works. Hate is apparently fun, and the internet and then retweets on social media are great ways of spreading it and ramping it up.

Snobbery is also apparently great fun. Hating Casey DeSantis is a twofer. It allows people on the left to spitefully look down on her as a classless Walmart-type shopper, and to feel superior, but then to get themselves off the guilt hook for being snooty snobs because that person they are looking down at with such classist condescension is actually a hateful Nazi herself. Win/win.