Fani Willis Finally Drops the Indictment Hammer on Trump and 18 Others

It finally happened. I was thinking — and saying — Fulton County, Georgia D.A. Fani Willis was showboating, teasing  politics junkies and cable news pundits with the drip, drip, drip of unverified news about her ongoing investigation into the alleged crimes and misdeeds of ex-President Donald John Trump.

We all know Trump is guilty. We heard the recorded phone conversation between then-President Donald J. Trump and Georgia’s secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, in which the ex-president cajoled, berated and otherwise pressured Raffensperger. Trump said, infamously, “All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.”

And the news is the same that we have heard for more than a year: With people in his White House, his inner circle, telling the ex-president he lost the 2020 election, and he lost the state of Georgia — and Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada and several more battle ground states I had not heard about.

We know Trump is guilty because we heard about how Trump summoned Michigan Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey and House Speaker Lee Chatfield to the White House so he could twist their arms to subvert the will of the voters in Michigan.

We know all that, plus we heard and saw the hearings of the “Select Committee to Investigate the January 6^th Attack on the United States Capitol,” in short, the J6 hearings; how the lives of two former Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, mother and daughter, were destroyed by Trump and hist lackey, former D.A. in Manhattan and former New York City mayor, Rudy Giuliani, and maybe a few others of the 19 people indicted by Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis on Monday evening. Donald J. Trump and 18 of his closest insurrectionists.

Nineteen people in total, 41 counts of felonies by those 19 miscreants. Everyone on the cable news want to remind us that Trump is presumed innocent until proven guilty by a jury of his peers … no, that’s not right. A jury of Georgia residents.

Trump is already being treated differently from other indicted defendants. If any other person was attacking the prosecutors, judges and possible witnesses and jurors so publicly on the internet, they would have had their bail revoked and would be sitting in a jail cell  until their trial.

Remember where O.J. Simpson was in the months before his first criminal trial? The one in Los Angeles? From June 1994 to the start of his trial in October 1995 he sat in a Los Angeles jail cell. Of course Simpson was accused of the brutal murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. Those were incredibly brutal murders. Both victims stabbed and slashed multiple times. It was a very bloody crime scene.

Simpson and Trump are apples and oranges as far as comparisons go, but if Orenthal James Simpson can sit in a jail cell for more than a year, Trump can be detained in some fashion for a few months — or longer. I write “detained in some fashion” because an ex-president is unlike any other defendant in a felony criminal case. Secret Service and U.S. Marshal agents need accommodations, they need to be in very close proximity to the ex-president and that means Trump will get special treatment, that yes, we do have a two-tiered legal system..

After 28 years, it is still crystal clear: O.J. Simpson got away with two murders and now, Donald J. Trump will never be treated like any other defendant — ever.

Hopefully the judicial system in Georgia will grant Fani Willis’s wish to begin the trial within six months.

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This is connected to what is above that border, but slightly different. A few months ago I subscribed to the email newsletter put out by the Heritage Foundation, not to be confused with the Federalist Society. For many years a couldn’t keep the two straight, but I’m guessing the membership rolls include many of the same names.

Anyway, I get this newsletter and other emails from various people who consider themselves big time muckity-mucks in (allegedly) conservative circles. Sadly I deleted their emails after reading a little bit of them, but I do have The Daily Signal emails, like this one: “Trump Indictment Is a Perversion of US Political System. Nothing More, Nothing Less.”

Really? A perversion? The attached article is written by Hans von Spakovsky. He gets right into it, full-throated — or the digital equivalent — denunciation of Jack Smith’s indictments of Donald J. Trump, ex-president and current miscreant.

Spakovsky’s second paragraph is one unwieldy sentence that … well, see for yourself. “It represents the ultimate weaponization of the Justice Department, a transformation started by President Barack Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder, and completed by Garland, to take out a viable political opponent of Garland’s boss and political patron, President Joe Biden. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Well that proves it right there. “Nothing more, nothing less.”

There are other fear-filled headlines like “Who Will Say No More to the Current Madness?”

The Heritage Foundation, through its newsletter The Daily Signal, is just another fear-mongering, MAGA peddling mouthpiece of insanity in retro-politics. To think there was a time I considered the Heritage Foundation to be a legitimate think tank with views I disagreed with, but they were basically honorable men and women … I’m not sure if there are any women in their ranks, but it doesn’t matter.

The foundation was created on February 16, 1973 by Paul Weyrich, Edwin Feulner and Joseph Coors, the beer tycoon. They rejected Richard M. Nixon’s neo=liberalism and then directed the Ronald Reagan Administration. In their “Mandate for Leadership” they outlined Reagan’s policies to push America to the right.

The Democratic Party at the time, led by former Speaker of the House, Thomas Philip “Tip” O’Neill, wilted after Jimmy Carter’s loss in the 1980 general election, and they decided to try and be the Lite version of the Reagan-led GOP. They were not adversarial enough. They let the right stomp all over unions, the backbone of American industry.

All too often I start down some rabbit hole of a tangent and forget where it started. Anyway, I guess I never really had a high opinion of the Heritage Foundation — or the Federalist Society. Both helped destroy the Republican Party to become a cesspool of crackpots aligned with the Donald J. Trump MAGA Cult.

As far as we can tell, there are no Democrats in the witness lists of any of the prosecutors in the four felony cases Trump is facing. And there are a few civil cases against Trump that are pending. All the witnesses — like the defendants — are or were members of the Republican Party and all were involved in or with the es-president’s administration.

The Federalist Society … that’s another turd in the toilet. Well, they are a tangent for another day.

The Left needs to get as activated as the nut bars on the right, be as diligent and consistent locally, state-wide and federally. We have conceded far too much in these past 40-plus years.  That is why the minority is in control of so much of this nation. We have to ditch this idea of bipartisanship. Sure, President Biden got his Infrastructure and Jobs act signed into law, with the support of some Republicans, but to make peace with people who still deny Joe Biden won the 2020 general election fairly? No. We don’t negotiate anything with those unindicted criminals.

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On a sad note: Two of our colleagues in the Post-Examiner group have passed away this week. Jon Gallo, who we highlighted with a post by Tim Maier, and most recently Bill Hughes. He often had these incredible travel stories about his adventures throughout the world. Both of these creative men will be missed.