Pass the Popcorn

I still don't think that Donald Trump will ever see the inside of a jail cell, or face meaningful sanctions for fraud and tax evasion, but the the January 6 Committee subpoenaing him to testify, the Supreme Court refusing to come to his rescue with regard to his document mishandling at Mar-a-Lago, and the New York State Attorney General seeking an injunction to prevent his shifting assets away from their fraud investigation, it is amusing.

I say this understanding that the well being of the republic, and of our society, is largely orthogonal to my entertainment needs:

The House committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, voted Thursday to subpoena testimony and documents from former president Donald Trump, a dramatic culmination of its year-and-a-half-long investigation, and a sign that the committee wants to continue its work beyond this Congress.

“This is a question about accountability to the American people,” Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) said ahead of the vote. “He must be accountable.”

The unanimous vote came at the end of a meeting that also revealed new details about warnings from the Secret Service that armed supporters of Trump would go to the Capitol, with one agent describing that morning as the “calm before the storm.”

The question is whether Trump's need to be the center of attention overrides his self-preservation instinct.

The Supreme Court on Thursday refused to reinstate Judge Aileen M. Cannon’s order that a special master review classified documents taken in an FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s Florida home and private club.

There were no noted dissents to the court’s unsigned, one-sentence order. It amounted to a quick and sharp rejection of an emergency request by the former president to intervene in the high-profile document review, which is part of an ongoing criminal investigation of the potential mishandling of classified material after Trump left the White House.

The review is being done by special master Raymond J. Dearie, a federal judge in Brooklyn who was recommended for the job by Trump’s legal team. Trump’s lawyers asked for a review of all of the approximately 11,000 documents seized by the FBI to see whether any should be shielded from investigators because of attorney-client or executive privilege.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit put on hold Cannon’s order that 103 of the seized documents that bore classified markings should be part of Dearie’s review. It also reversed Cannon’s finding that the Justice Department could not continue its use of the classified documents in a criminal probe.

Notably, the 11th Circuit's justice is Clarence Thomas's circuit, and even he thought that there was no "there" there.

It's also possible that one of Thomas' clerks told him that if he intervened, then his wife Ginny would be subjected very deep scrutiny if he cut the Trumpster Fire some slack.

Days before the New York attorney general filed a lawsuit accusing Donald J. Trump and his company of fraud and seeking to shut down some of their business in the state, Mr. Trump’s lawyers created a new company in Delaware.

The new company’s name had a familiar ring to it: the Trump Organization, the same name as his old company, now threatened by the lawsuit. And on Sept. 21, the day the suit was filed, the new Delaware company filed paperwork in New York, seeking to be recognized there as the Trump Organization II.

Those maneuvers were detailed for the first time in a court filing on Thursday from the attorney general, Letitia James, who raised the prospect that Mr. Trump was seeking an end run around some of her lawsuit’s harshest potential punishments. By forming the new company, her filing said, the Trump Organization “now appears to be taking steps to restructure its business to avoid existing responsibilities under New York law,” raising concerns that the business might shift assets out of state.

But her filing acknowledged that Mr. Trump’s lawyers had explicitly said they had not taken any steps to avoid the potential consequences of the lawsuit. Mr. Trump’s lawyers, according to the court filing, also offered to provide “assurances and advance notice” to address Ms. James’s concerns.

………

Ms. James, however, remained concerned about the company’s motives and sought intervention from a judge. Her Thursday filing requested an order from the judge that would prohibit the Trump Organization from transferring its assets without court approval.

“Since we filed this sweeping lawsuit last month, Donald Trump and the Trump Organization have continued those same fraudulent practices and taken measures to evade responsibility,” Ms. James said in a statement. “Today, we are seeking an immediate stop to these actions because Mr. Trump should not get to play by different rules.”

Yeah, Trump is trying to weasel out of his liability.  

This is, after all, a guy who has filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy six (and still counting) times.