This is Why No Other DA Volunteered

11/26/25 CNN:

A Georgia prosecutor on Wednesday officially dropped the historic racketeering case against President Donald Trump and others for attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election, closing the chapter in a legal effort once seen as a grave threat to Trump’s political future.

The move means that Trump has dodged criminal legal jeopardy for his attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden. The federal cases against Trump from special counsel Jack Smith on election interference leading up to the January 6, 2021, US Capitol riot and on mishandling classified documents were previously dropped.

“Given the complexity of the legal issues at hand — ranging from constitutional questions and the Supremacy Clause to immunity, jurisdiction, venue, speedy-trial concerns, and access to federal records — and even assuming each of these issues were resolved in the State’s favor, bringing this case before a jury in 2029, 2030, or even 2031 would be nothing short of a remarkable feat,” Peter Skandalakis, the prosecutor on the case, wrote Wednesday.

Trump is 79.  In 2031 he will be 85.  Will he still be alive?  The Presidency is very hard on the health of those who take the job.

 

But I Only Robbed a Newsboy!

 Count on the New York Times to miss the point.  10/10/25 New York Times:

James Indictment Mirrors Her Civil Case Against Trump in Miniature

The president and New York’s attorney general accused each other of real estate fraud. But the sum involved in her case is $18,933, while millions were at stake in his.

The point was misuse of the criminal justice system to attack an individual for a political purpose.  She even ran for A-G on that platform.  This showed that equal protection of the laws did not matter.  She did not even claim that she was going after white-collar criminals.  Now, the left is butt-hurt that what goes around, comes around.

 

And This is a Bad Thing?

 12/17/24 CNN:

President-elect Donald Trump is escalating his legal campaign against media outlets by suing renowned pollster J. Ann Selzer, her polling firm, The Des Moines Register newspaper and its parent company Gannett.

Unlike many of Trump’s legal actions against the press, which often allege defamation, this case alleges violations of the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act, which prohibits deception when advertising or selling merchandise.

While the nontraditional claims are unlikely to succeed in court, Trump is using the lawsuit to wage a broadside against what he perceives as left-wing media, mainstream press coverage of elections and the role of pollsters during campaigns. Though he won the 2024 election, Trump alleges the news coverage of Selzer’s poll — published days before the election showing Vice President Kamala Harris with a surprising lead in Iowa that didn’t materialize in the vote — was intended to artificially help Democrats during the campaign.

Media experts warned the lawsuit could have a further chilling effect not just on news reporting, but also on political polling. Selzer didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from CNN....

The case reflects Trump’s anger at the final Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll of the 2024 election season. It was conducted at the end of October by Selzer’s firm, Selzer & Co., based on telephone interviews with 808 Iowa likely voters. The poll found Harris with 47% support and Trump with 44%, a shocking result since Trump was universally expected to win the state.

And indeed, he did – by a margin of 13 points – which is key to Trump’s argument that Selzer committed “election interference.”

It would be interesting to see if Selzer can defend her prediction as being legitimately in error.  If so, use of a fraud statute would be a losing effort.  An error that large needs a heck of an explanation.

 

This Scheme Was the Worst Possible Example of Privatization Ever

 Some years back, a judge privatized juvenile corrections for profit: his profit.  12/14/24 WHYY:

A judge who helped orchestrate one of the worst judicial scandals in U.S.history — a scheme to send children to for-profit jails in exchange for kickbacks — was among the 1,500 people whose sentences were commuted by President Joe Biden this week.

Biden’s decision to commute the 17-year prison sentence of Michael Conahan angered many in northeastern Pennsylvania, from the governor to the families whose children were victimized by the disgraced former judge. Conahan had already served the vast majority of his sentence, which was handed down in 2011....

In what came to be known as the kids-for-cash scandal, Conahan and Judge Mark Ciavarella shut down a county-run juvenile detention center and accepted $2.8 million in illegal payments from a friend of Conahan’s who built and co-owned two for-profit lockups.

Ciavarella, who presided over juvenile court, pushed a zero-tolerance policy that guaranteed large numbers of children would fill the beds of the private lockups. The scandal prompted the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to throw out some 4,000 juvenile convictions involving more than 2,300 children.

Lose a swing state and the results can be ugly.

From 12/11/24 WGN:

"Crundwell pled guilty to stealing millions dollars from taxpayers in the largest municipal heist in U.S. history. Covid sent her home from prison early; but now Dixon residents have learned she won’t go back.

"Crundwell was a humble public servant by day, but lived large in almost every other part of her life. A 20-year fraud on her hometown of Dixon, Illinois total $54 million.   

Now, another gut punch for the people of Dixon. Crundwell’s name is on the list of people granted clemency means her punishment is over."

Why?  Professional courtesy?

More Gloating

 NBC News is showing Trump with 50.9% of popular vote.  Just to irritate leftists whining about electoral college unfairness.

Why Did Trump Win?

 The Left is going to blame Harris being a weak candidate (so why did they pick her?); Trump's use of mind control rays; media bias in his favor; America is a racist, misogynist nation (especially all those black and Hispanic men who voted for Trump).

The possibility that confusing and mutilating children horrified most Americans; Drag Show Library Hour; terrifyingly transgender officials; a collapsing weconomy from inflation and loss of jobs; subsidies to billionaires that injured most Americans; weaponization of the legal system like a Third World nation; suppressing free speech that exposed a corrupt influence purchasing scheme by the First Pervert, Hunter.  None of those could explain why they lost.

Are They Idiots or Corrupt?

 My son-in-law says, "Never ascribe to malice what might be explained by idiocy."  This first one might fit that category.  10/25/24 GoErie:

"Not every mistake is nefarious."

That's the message the Democracy Defense Project, which includes former Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell and former Republican U.S. Reps. Jim Gerlach and Melissa Hart, is telling voters concerned about a printing mishap that led to nearly 300 Erie County voters being mailed both their own mail ballot, and the mail ballot of another voter.

“We were concerned to learn that nearly 300 Erie County voters received duplicate mail-in ballots," the group said in a statement Thursday. "This is an issue that must be corrected quickly, and we are confident that the Erie County Board of Elections is doing just that.

Maybe not nefarious but certainly it can have nefarious results.  This next one could be idiocy but why would you create a spreadsheet with such private information, then hide the tab, before putting it online?  10/29/24 9News:

DENVER — The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office inadvertently posted a spreadsheet to its website with a hidden tab that included voting system passwords.

In a statement to 9NEWS, a spokesperson for the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office said that “the Department is working to remedy this situation where necessary.”

“The Department took immediate action as soon as it was aware of this and informed the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which closely monitors and protects the county’s essential security infrastructure,” the spokesperson said.

On Tuesday morning, Colorado Republican Party Vice Chair Hope Scheppelman shared the hidden tab discovery in a mass email, along with an affidavit from someone who claims they had downloaded the Excel file from the Colorado Secretary of State’s website and discovered the hidden tab by simply clicking “unhide.” The name on the affidavit was blacked out in the Republican Party email.

9NEWS left a voicemail with Scheppelman on Tuesday afternoon.

The passwords that were in the hidden tab are known as BIOS passwords and are one part of the security process for Colorado’s voting machines.

They are passwords needed to configure system settings.

“There are two unique passwords for every election equipment component, which are kept in separate places and held by different parties. Passwords can only be used with physical in-person access to a voting system,” a spokesperson for the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office said.

"To be very clear, we do not see this as a full security threat to the state. This is not a security threat," Colorado's Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold told 9NEWS Tuesday. "There are two passwords to get into any voting component, along with physical access. We have layers of security, and out of just an abundance of caution, have staff in the field changing passwords, looking at access logs and looking at the entire situation and continuing our investigation."

 

Advantages of Trump Appointees to the Court

This should have been a no-brainer (and I guess it was, for all judges involved).  Virginia decided to remove aelf-described non-citizens from the voting rolls.  A Biden judge said they could not.  After a bit of movement up the ladder, the Supreme Couirt allowed Virginia to enforce the law about non-citizens voting.  Unsurprisingly, Sotormayor, Kagan, and Jackson, appointed by the party warning us that democracy was in danger, voted with the non-citizens.

You Are Registered to Vote?

With the level of engagement that my readers have, I suspect that my reminder to register and vote is unneeded, but this may be our last chance to stop the billionaires who hate us.  Yes, Trump is very New York City and unpleasant but we are electing a president not Prom King.  He is not arriving at the door to take our daughter on a date.

If Americans Will Do this, Why Won't Haitian Refugees?

 9/13/24 [U.K.] Telegraph:

Police have released video footage of an American woman being arrested for eating a cat – 170 miles away from Springfield, Ohio where Donald Trump claimed Haitian immigrants were devouring pets.

The arrest took place in Canton on August 16 after police received several calls from the public.

According to a police report Allexis Ferrell, 27, smashed the cat’s head with her foot and then started eating it.

Police said they saw fur on the woman’s lips and blood on her feet.

Please Tell Me the Secret Service Is Really Not This Incompetent

 7/17/24 Yahoo News:

Law enforcement officials investigating the assassination attempt on Donald Trump told lawmakers Wednesday that 20 minutes passed between the time U.S. Secret Service snipers first spotted the gunman on a rooftop and the time shots were fired at the former president, according to several law enforcement officials and lawmakers briefed on the matter.

Officials said the snipers spotted the suspect, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, on the roof of a building outside the security zone at the rally Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania, at 5:52 p.m. ET. The shooting happened at 6:12 p.m. ET, 20 minutes later, the sources said.

In the days since the shooting, the Secret Service has come under scrutiny for its response to the assassination attempt and the agency's director, Kimberly Cheatle, has been subpoenaed to testify before Congress. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said she "welcomes the opportunity to testify."

"Gee, I see a guy with a rifle over there.  Is he hunting?"

"Who knows?"

"Should we tell Trump not to go on the stage?"

"That's a hard decision."

This is Both Sad and a Poor Statement About the 2000 Voters

2/8/24 NBC News:

The Special Counsel decided not to charge Biden in the classified documents case because his memory is so bad that he would hard to convict of knowingly doing something wrong.

“He did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended (‘if it was 2013 — when did I stop being Vice President?’), and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began (‘in 2009, am I still Vice President?’),” the report said