Hump Day open thread: Oh, Dearie!
Well, yesterday was a bit of fun, and we all had a jolly good laugh.
No, I'm not referring to my ridiculously out-of-proportion reaction to my Omicron booster. (Although that was certainly more fun than a barrel of monkeys.) Oh no, Barflies. I'm referring to the interaction between Judge Raymond Dearie, the special master Donald Trump's crack legal team handpicked, and, well, Trump's crack legal team.
Let's go to Politico for a play by play:
NEW YORK — The senior federal judge tasked with reviewing the materials seized by the FBI from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate sharply questioned the former president’s attorneys Tuesday during their first hearing before his courtroom.
Judge Raymond Dearie pushed Trump’s lawyers repeatedly for refusing to back up the former president’s claim that he declassified the highly sensitive national security-related records discovered in his residence.
“You can’t have your cake and eat it,” said Dearie, the “special master” picked by U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon to vet Trump’s effort to reclaim the materials taken by federal investigators.
That's right. Even Tiger Beat on the Potomac couldn't put lipstick on this pig. Judge Dearie went on to say:
But Dearie bristled at the effort by Trump’s lawyers to resist his request for proof that Trump actually attempted to declassify any of the 100 documents that the Justice Department recovered from his estate. Without evidence from Trump, Dearie said his only basis to judge the classification level of the records was the fact that they all bear markings designating them as highly sensitive national security secrets — including some that indicate they contain intelligence derived from human sources and foreign intercepts.
Trump's lawyers expected, for whatever reason, that Dearie would rubber-stamp their arguments without requiring proof of said arguments. Now, that might work in the fever swamps of Fox News and OANN, but in the real world of federal law, that dog won't hunt. It still stuns me that Trump's cracker-jack legal team would have put his name forward, considering that as a FISA court judge he signed off on the Carter Page warrant. But one can never go broke on underestimating the stupidity of those around Trump, and Trump himself.
Now, no doubt Trump's lawyers will go running back to Aileen Cannon, crying that Dearie is being mean and not playing ball. And I know there's always a chance that Cannon will dismiss Dearie. But even if she were to do this, it would cement a successful appeal by the Department of Justice. As Bill Palmer, among others, say: There's no magic wand. It took Trump six years to find one judge who would rule on behalf of his corruption. No other judge will do so again. His charmed life is quickly descending into blood, devastation, death, war and horror—and soon we will meet a man who does gardening.
As I see it, we have misjudged Trump on two fronts. First, and I know I was guilty of this, we didn't take him seriously enough. I chortled when he won the nomination, just knowing that a nation which had elected Barack Obama wouldn't turn around and elect this buffoon. Of course, I was wrong. But that had nothing to do with Trump himself, but with an entire flock of black swan events converging into one really fucked up moment.
However, now we face a second misjudgment: Him having been installed into the White House by various actors, foreign and domestic, too many now think that he's indestructible, will escape punishment, and will usher in a Fourth Reich. No, he won't. I think people miss just how shattering to his image 2020 was. He's already been beaten. And those who put him into office serving in the GRU are a bit busy now staving off collapse of the Russian state. Russian President Vladimir Putin is no genius; he got lucky in 2016. The true measure of him is his strategically disastrous decision to invade Ukraine. Putin isn't a grand strategist; he's a petty secret policeman, and his lack of nous is now coming to the fore. He and the other assorted foreign actors just don't have the same materials to work with in putting Trump back in power. And they're not being helped by things like the Supreme Court handing down divisive decisions which spur Democratic voters to turn out in droves to the polls. Yes, always be vigilant; but let's not cower in fear.
Hang loose, kids. We have the wind at our backs.