Some people never learn. Despite being found liable for sexual assault and defamation last year, in a civil action brought by writer E. Jean Carroll, who sued him for slanderous statements attempting to rebut her claims of rape, Donald Trump continued to defame Carroll, post-verdict. And Carroll continued to sue him. And Trump continues to defame her. Will she sue again?
Not hardly, right? By no stretch of the imagination is the disgraced, twice impeached, four times criminally indicted ex-President an appealing figure, at least not to most folks. No, the title here applies to Trump’s latest legal gambit, appealing a lower court’s ruling that denied his claims of immunity for his 2020 election interference shenanigans, in the case brought against him by the Justice Department. The trial date is set for March 4, but will likely be postponed due to delaying tactics such as these.
On December 19, 2023, the Colorado Supreme Court handed the Trump Campaign perhaps its most significant defeat to date. In a 4-3 decision, the Court ruled that the former president was ineligible for inclusion on the state’s 2024 Primary ballot, due to a clause in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which provides that persons who previously took an oath to the Constitution, then supported insurrection or rebellion against the US government, are barred from holding political office again in future.
In the “It’s about time!” category, Washington watchers were pleased to note the ouster from Congress of Representative George Santos (R-NY) on December 1st, removed from office less than a year after his swearing in. The noted, notorious fabulist and fraudster was finally ejected by a resounding margin of 311-114, after a House Ethics Committee report revealed numerous, egregious, staggering lapses of judgment, ethics and morals, as well as probable infractions of the law and campaign finance rules.
Two conservative icons recently passed within days of each other, as November rolled over to December 2023. On November 29th, Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State, propelled from academia into international prominence by Richard Nixon, instrumental in ending the Vietnam War and reestablishing diplomatic relations with Communist China, died at the age of 100. Two days later, on December 1st, former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, a Reagan appointee and the first woman to sit on the US Supreme Court, passed at age 93. While neither would recognize today’s Republican Party, so focused on grievance and retribution instead of policy, and both have serious blots on their legacies, each reminds us that there were once two viable political philosophies vying for control of the country, in a comparatively congenial and collegial atmosphere.
Late on 14 August 2023 Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis finally issued her long-awaited indictment against former US President Donald J. Trump and 18 cohorts in the 2020 election interference case. The 98-page indictment contains 41 counts of alleged criminal activity, mostly charged under Georgia’s RICO racketeering laws, created for dealing with organized crime groups. In addition to the codefendants, 30 more individuals are mentioned as unindicted coconspirators, making it one of the largest such cases on record. Also charged with Trump are former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Trump lawyers Rudy Guiliani and Sidney Powell. Willis alleges in the indictment that rather than abide by Georgia’s legal process for election challenges, the defendants engaged in a criminal racketeering enterprise to overturn Georgia’s presidential election result, including the now-infamous taped phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger where Trump asked him to “find” the number of votes needed to flip the state his way.
