Dem
51
GOP
49
As we note above, Donald Trump had a really lousy day on Tuesday on the legal front, such that maybe he didn't have enough fury left to be angry about the Georgia U.S. Senate race. To start, the jury has reached its verdict for each of the 17 counts of criminal tax fraud that were charged against two Trump Organization companies. And it was a clean sweep; the company was found guilty on all 17.
Trump was not personally on trial, at least not yet. However, his company could end up paying $1.6 million in fines. Further, the convictions will forestall any contracts with the state or municipal governments, and may also make it hard to get loans from banks, assuming there is a bank out there still willing to do business with the Trumps. Further, this is clearly just the opening moves of the chess game. In his closing, prosecutor Joshua Steinglass insisted that the former president "explicitly sanctioned" the fraud and that "This whole narrative that Donald Trump is blissfully ignorant is just not true." The Donald is going to be on the hot seat next year, and the DA is clearly ready to go after him with both barrels.
Trump's lawyers said the verdicts were nonsense and that appeals are coming and yadda, yadda, yadda. Trump himself flipped his lid, and took to his social media platform to say exactly the things you would expect him to say in exactly the way you would expect him to say them: "It is a continuation of the Greatest Political Witch Hunt in the History of our Country. New York City is a hard place to be 'Trump,' as businesses and people flee our once Great City!" He also said that the prosecution was "unprecedented." Surely that's true, we are sure that New York City has never, ever gone after corporate tax cheats before. No, sir!
That's not the end of the bad news, either. After arguing about it for many months, the 1/6 Select Committee has decided it will indeed make criminal referrals, according to chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS). The Chair did not say exactly which people would be the subject of these referrals, but it would be something of a surprise if the former president wasn't on the list.
Of course, those criminal referrals are purely symbolic, and have no legal significance. They're just suggestions for what the Committee thinks special counsel Jack Smith ought to do. But maybe he doesn't need the "motivation.' He appears to have hit the ground running; yesterday, he sent grand jury subpoenas to election officials in Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin. Those would be three of the states where Trump and his team fraudulently tried to replace the real electors with Trump electors. And what Smith wants is copies of any communications between those officials and the Trump campaign (and its allies).
What it amounts to is that the guy whose political career began with "Build the Wall" has now moved squarely into "the walls are closing in" territory. (Z)