(Post) Weekend Open Thread: Trumpiman!

By
Greg Diamond
– December 19, 2022Posted in: Donald Trump, Fresh Juice

So many things going on, so many Weekend Open Threads forgot to post within the past three days! To the miscellaneous-happenings file we go!

1. “$99 Problems But a Joke Ain’t One”

Donald Trump’s former private attorney, unjustly convicted attorney and now joyously sarcastic author Michael Cohen, argues that the scornful laughter aimed at Trump for his Superhero Trading Cards (which he erroneously calls “NFTs”) misses the point. Trump will likely be laughing all the way to the bank — raking in money not only from domestic suckers, but also from foreign governments hostile to our democracy — most obviously Saudi Arabia and Russia.

Income from these “sales” is not only “emoluments” — essentially gifts — to Trump, but are essentially campaign contributions if he wishes to self-fund. They are gifts because he does essentially nothing for the money. He produces a produce with no intrinsic value and almost no production costs — Trump’s face is simply photoshopped into an existing image, which probably (but perhaps not certainly) comports with copyright laws permitting “derivative works.” That product can then be bought as many times as buyers wish, making a mockery of donation limits. We don’t know who is buying them; no traceable sale records have to exist. It’s literally just “give Trump your money!”

There is relatively recent precedent for this sort of scheme: the downfall of Democratic Speaker of the House Jim Wright in 1989. Explaineth Wikipedia:

In 1988 Wright became the target of an inquiry by the House Ethics Committee. Their report in early 1989 implied that he had used bulk purchases of his book, Reflections of a Public Man, to earn speaking fees in excess of the allowed maximum, and that his wife, Betty, was given a job and perks to avoid the limit on gifts. Faced with an increasing loss of effectiveness, Wright tendered his resignation as Speaker on May 31, 1989.

Three main differences between Wright and Trump are evident:

(1) Legitimate Product: Yes, Wright allowed people to seek influence with him by bulk-buying his book, but at least he wrote (or had a ghostwriter write) a book! Trying a transfer of money to a physical object with a cost of production puts some sorts of limits on it, in addition to leaving a paper trail of commerce.

(2) Domestic vs. Foreign Targets: Wright was probably getting his ill-gotten money from domestic interests. Trump is largely seeking money from untraceable foreign interests.

(3) Bribe vs. Corruption: Maybe Wright was simply fundraising for future campaigns (or, more likely given that he was in a safe seat in Ft. Worth, for other Democrats.) But it seems fair to suspect that there was a quo exchanged for the quid, in these days before the Supreme Court savaged campaign finance law, and that renders them corrupt. But Wright was working on a retail level: in face, person-to-person. What Trump seems to be doing is not only taking bribes (if he knows who’s doing the purchasing and it’s not all going to campaigning) but also doing so on a wholesale level, one tailor-made for bringing in money from foreign interests. This would be in violation of the Constitution’s “Emoluments Clause” — essentially “receiving gifts from foreign governments who want to undermine U.S. policy — which the House of Representatives chose not to impeach for in his term — most likely because they presumed that the Senate would not convict him and they didn’t want to essentially decide that the practice was acceptable. Call me sentimental, but while I hate bribes on a one-to-one retail basis — bribes, they are relatively small potatoes compared to foreign takeovers of U.S. policy using bribes rather than arguments.

So I think that Cohen is dead right on this one. Trump is engaged in Jim Wright’s scam, but updated and perfected. Congress should definitely investigate it, lest the Emoluments Clause be written out of the Constitution.

2. Keeping Track of the Criminal Referrals Against Trump

Referrals were made for his crimes of:

  1. LIE: conspiracy to make false statements
  2. CHEAT: conspiracy to defraud the United States
  3. STEAL: obstructing an official proceeding, and
  4. DESTROY: insurrection against the government
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About Greg Diamond

Somewhat verbose attorney, semi-disabled and semi-retired, residing in northwest Brea. Occasionally ran for office against jerks who otherwise would have gonr unopposed. Got 45% of the vote against Bob Huff for State Senate in 2012; Josh Newman then won the seat in 2016. In 2014 became the first attorney to challenge OCDA Tony Rackauckas since 2002; Todd Spitzer then won that seat in 2018. Every time he's run against some rotten incumbent, the *next* person to challenge them wins! He's OK with that. Corrupt party hacks hate him. He's OK with that too. He does advise some local campaigns informally and (so far) without compensation. (If that last bit changes, he will declare the interest.) His daughter is a professional campaign treasurer. He doesn't usually know whom she and her firm represent. Whether they do so never influences his endorsements or coverage. (He does have his own strong opinions.) But when he does check campaign finance forms, he is often happily surprised to learn that good candidates he respects often DO hire her firm. (Maybe bad ones are scared off by his relationship with her, but they needn't be.)