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William Barr

Epstein and The Donald: What Will He Do?

October 14, 2020
by Peter Feinman
The Ghosts of Christmas Past and Christmas Future

On August 10, 2019, Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide in his prison cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Manhattan. When I heard about it, I immediately thought of THE DONALD. What would he do when it was his turn?

Think of the life Epstein had been living excluding the criminal actions that landed him in jail in the first place. Think of the places he had visited. Think of the places where he had stayed. Think of the people he had met. Truly he had lived the lifestyle of the rich and famous.

And then he wasn’t. Rather abruptly. Everything changed. Now he was confined to one small sparse space. His menu selection was limited and the quality of food was to die for. The less said about his new wardrobe the better. And no more girls. What did he have to look forward to? Nothing so he took the only way out he could.

THE DONALD

How does THE DONALD handle being restricted to small spaces? When he was confined to the White House during the lockdown, he commandeered the coronavirus press conferences. When he was in the hospital he was chomping at the bit to get out. When he was restricted to the White House living area, he was chomping at the bit to get out. When he was alone in the White House, he invited crowds to join him. Now he has launched a non-stop last-ditch effort to salvage his campaign by returning to states he won in 2016. He needs the big crowds. His needs that energy. He needs that adulation. He needs them as much as Epstein needed young girls. Take that away from him and he would go bonkers.

As a loser, he will face different circumstances after January 20, 2021, than he does now. If the fading reality-TV star goes on a nostalgia tour, who will pay for it? Who will give him free media time? Who will push him off the stage so Trumpicans can begin planning for losing in 2022 and 2024?  And, of course, if he lacks the mobility he has now because he is confined to his residence in New York and his hotel in Washington, DC and is wearing an ankle monitor, he won’t be able to go on tour anyway.

The more the real world closes in on him, the more erratic his behavior becomes. As Mary Trump just suggested, he has nowhere to turn. There is no one to bail him out this time of the mess he created for himself. The pressure is mounting as V-DT Day approaches and the world gets ready to celebrate.

His ability to cope in an adult manner is nonexistent. He has become the proverbial teenager who is invulnerable and immortal, throwing caution to the wind. His only options are to lash out, to have a hissy fit, to yell and to scream. His managerial incompetence makes herd immunity the best fit for his shortcomings. His enemies must be prosecuted now. The miracle vaccine must be released now. The polls are fake news. But nothing is working.

THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

Barr knows what he has to do and is not delivering. He is going down in history “as very sad, sad, situation” if he does not indict Biden and Obama for the greatest political crime in the history of our country.

He’s got all the information he needs. They want to get more, more, more, they keep getting more. I said, “You don’t need any more.”

Consider the past ventures into the absurd. Remember Seth Rich? Nothing. Remember how the Fox triplets salivated over the Horowitz report? Nothing. Remember how the Fox triplets salivated even more over the Unmasking as the “biggest abuse of power, corruption scandal” in American history?

“The unmasking is a massive — it’s a massive thing. It’s — I just got a list. It’s — who can believe a thing like this?”

Nothing. No Obamagate. No spying. No nothing. No report even issued. Good thing Trumpicans have no memory or awareness of Hannity’s perfect .000 batting average!

There will be no indictments of Biden, Obama, or “Crooked Hillary” either. No matter how much the embattled President demands it of the Attorney General, no matter how many emails Pompeo (“I’m not happy about him.”) releases and no matter how much Hannity demands it, it’s not going to happen in the real world. There will be no indictments of the Deep State either. Apparently Durham knows what he was tasked to do, knows that there is no “there” there, and decided it is in his best interest to wait until after Biden wins the election to announce the results. What can anyone do against him then?

THE RED WAVE

Back on June 19, 2019, I wrote about some early polls:

The results are worth noting. The polls show a slew of Democratic candidates who would win a national election based on the popular vote. The polls range from a high of 57% for Joe Biden to in the 40s% for a variety of figures. One key to interpreting the meaning the polls is the relative constancy of the vote for the incumbent. He consistently polled at 41-42% of the vote.  These numbers put him 5-6% below the 2016 vote and suggest that no matter who the Democratic candidate is, that is the best he will do. The range for the Democratic candidates probably reflects how well known these candidates are. My prediction would be that as they become better known, the undecided in the polls will swing Democratic and the 50s to 41/42% will become the norm…unless more revelations from the investigations drive them even lower or events in the real world expose him as a con artist even to Trumpicans.

Now here we are two weeks from Election Day and the polls consistently show a double-digit lead with Biden in the 50+% range.

I also suggested back on June 8, 2020, that Mitch McConnell had a decision to make (Mitch McConnell: Howard Baker (Time to Go) vs Stay the Course [Go Down with the Ship]). It turns out he did make a decision in August, just not the one the country needed him to make. He hasn’t been to the White House since August 6 due to its mismanagement of the pandemic. WEAR A MASK! However, he made no decision to preserve the majority status in the Senate. Now it may be too late. The red you see on the political maps is not the vaunted red wave that has been predicted. It is the Trumpican Senate seats that are burning up. When you have to fight for your life to hold South Carolina, you know you are in trouble.

JANUARY 20, 2021 CHOREOGRAPHY

Back on September 17, 2018, I wrote:

Suppose the very stable genius is wrong about 2020 (assuming he is still in office and chooses to run again)? Will the President honor the election results? Will the President leave the White House voluntarily? Will he demand a full investigation into the rigged results? Will he remain in the White House until the investigation by his Attorney General (not a stupid Southerner) is completed? (Can he go without playing golf for that long?)

While there is a lot of effort to scope post-Election Day scenarios, the post-Inauguration Day actions remain undefined.

Who Will Be Biden’s Attorney General? (7/29/20): If Joe Biden is sworn in as the new President, where will the former President be at that moment? He will not be there to watch the sleepy-creepy-corrupt person who has lost his mental faculties take office. It will be difficult enough for the current President to accept the concept that THE DONALD is a loser. Especially if he is a loser to someone who received more than 306 Electoral College votes. The loser will not participate in a public ceremony before a crowd bigger than his own inaugural crowd in 2016. He will not have the image of him as a loser become a defining one for him.

What will he do if white suburban women don’t save him or like him even though he saved their neighborhoods?
What will he do if he loses to the worst presidential candidate in the history of the United States?
Why did he set himself up with words that will come back to mock him?

Coping with reality is not his strong point. There is no Plan B if he has to give up his fake world for the real one. Just ask Epstein.

When Did You First Know Individual #1 Would Reject the 2020 Results If He Lost?

May 6, 2019
by Peter Feinman
Will Robert Mueller Be Our John HancocK? (Image via Everett Historical / Shutterstock)

Eight months ago on September 7, 2018, I posted:

Suppose the very stable genius is wrong about the red wave. Suppose the Democrats win control of the House. Suppose the Democrats act on that basis and investigate all the items on the Republican hit list of potential problems where they are at risk. Will the President honor the election results? If a blue wave puts Democrats in charge will the President of the United States honor the results or will he demand a full investigation into the rigged results?

Suppose the very stable genius is wrong about 2020 (assuming he is still in office and chooses to run again)? Will the President honor the election results? Will the President leave the White House voluntarily? Will he demand a full investigation into the rigged results? Will he remain in the White House until the investigation by his Attorney General (not a stupid Southerner) is completed?

The big change since that prediction has been the replacement of the Attorney General with His Roy Cohn (HRC). With HRC in position, the chances of an aggressive assault on the rule of law increased substantially (Rule of Law: George Washington, Nimrod, and Today).

Then on March 17, 2019, I posted the following after the testimony of Michael Cohen (with a change to “Individual #1):

INDIVIDUAL #1 WON’T LEAVE THE WHITE HOUSE VOLUNTARILY

Back on September 7, 2018, I wrote [see above]

Those of you who read this blog, may I have thought I was off my rocker. I am pleased to note that five months later the Fixer, who well knows the personality of Individual #1 and what he is capable of, raised the exact same concerns in his Congressional testimony. There was not the chance to resolve this issue in the 2018 elections since the Democratic tidal wave was so huge. Even for someone living in an alternate reality there are limits as to how many Congressional districts can be contested. The situation is quite different at the presidential level.

Suppose in 2020, the Democratic candidate wins by the same small margin as the 306 electoral vote landslide in 2016? How many states would need to be contested to switch the national results? At this point it is impossible to know. Indeed we may never know if the margin is comparable to the Congressional vote in 2018. An almost 9% spread is difficult to finesse to an Electoral College victory.

There may be a preview of the 2020 crisis with his tax returns. Individual #1 will not voluntarily release his tax returns. It does not matter how the Democrats submit their requisition, he will not honor it. If his court rules in his favor, then the issue ends there. If the Supreme Court also has a traitor and the ruling is against Individual #1 he will not honor it. Instead he will claim Executive Privilege and that the Court has no authority over him. What will the Supreme Court do then? Or to update Andrew Jackson: “John Roberts has made his decision; now let him enforce it.”

Now we have the May 4, 2019, interview of Nancy Pelosi with the New York Times. It’s déjà vue September 7, 2018, all over again.

Let’s begin with the Congressional election. Pelosi’s concerns mirror what I had written.

Few people outside Ms. Pelosi’s inner circle were aware of how worried she was that Mr. Trump would try to stop the opposition party from taking control of the House unless the Democrats’ victory was emphatic enough to be indisputable.

It is mind-boggling that everyone in the Democratic Party and all their talking-head spokespeople could not figure this out for themselves. This failure to recognize what should have been taken for granted exposes that the Democrats still did not understand their adversary.

“If we win by four seats, by a thousand votes each, he’s not going to respect the election. He would poison the public mind. He would challenge each of the races; he would say you can’t seat those people.”

Exactly. If you do not understand this then you do not understand Individual #1. This realization should have been a no-brainer.

The same issues apply to the 2020 elections.

In recent weeks, Ms. Pelosi has told associates that she does not automatically trust the president to respect the results of any election short of an overwhelming defeat.

She said the victory in 2020 needed to be by a margin so “big” that it cannot reasonably be challenged.

“We have to inoculate against that, we have to be prepared for that,” as she discussed her concern that Mr. Trump would not give up power voluntarily if he lost re-election by a slim margin.

As it turns out, even with the 9% spread in the 2018 Congressional elections, the margin is quite thin. If those Congressional votes had been presidential votes then the Electoral College results would have been 329-206. Those numbers are deceiving. While Democrats won the House vote in Florida, they lost the state votes for Governor and Senator. That shift leaves an electoral vote even less than the landslide vote in 2016. It is reasonable then to anticipate the possibility of legal challenges in Florida, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and any other states the Democrats manage to flip including those with Republican governors in control.

Pelosi may only be thinking of the legal challenge. With HRC going full-speed to deny the validity of any such election results, we should recognize that the danger is far more than legal. Certainly HRC will drag out the challenges well beyond what happened in 2000. We can see now in Venezuela what can happen when there are two claimants to the presidency. In Venezuela, the military stands with the loser who rigged the game against democracy. In America, the military should not be expected to act on American soil against Americans. That still leaves open who will physically remove him from the White House, take back the nuclear codes, and prevent him from doing something really dangerous during the interim.

I also wrote on March 17,

Will Individual #1 unleash his muscle in his militias, military, police, and Second Amendment people to protect him from the greatest threat to the United States ever?

How long would it take the Supreme Court to adjudicate all the legal claims filed?

If his Supreme Court betrayed him, would Individual #1 honor its ruling?

Who would actually extract Individual # from the White House?

At that time, I thought his income taxes would be the moment of truth. In anticipation of the refusal to turn them over, I expected the legal battle to reveal whether or not the rule of law prevailed in the nation’s capital or not. Now it seems we may have a quicker example. Will Individual #1 order HRC to refuse to let Mueller testify? We may know the answer fairly soon. If Mueller is ordered not to testify what will he do? We may know that answer fairly soon as well. If Mueller disobeys a direct order from HRC will there be additional civil disobedience?

So exactly how will America celebrate the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution? What will the legacy of our birth be in the present? Who will favor the Patriots? Who will favor the Loyalists? After all, there were mighty fine people on both sides. Will We the People have the experience of directly participating in the revolt against King George III by having one of our own starting May 15 with Robert Mueller in the role of John Hancock? What will happen in 2020? Who knows for sure? But as Pelosi said we have to be prepared.

The Mueller Report: Paula Duncan, William Barr, and the American People

February 6, 2019
by Peter Feinman
A Real Lawyer (http://i2.cdn.turner.com)

The tone over the Mueller Report has changed. The incessant drumbeat to shut down the Mueller investigation has ended. The call to fire Rod Rosenstein has ceased. The attacks on Mueller have lessened. The fear the Matthew Whitaker would close the Mueller probe with a report that never would see the light of day has dissipated. All eyes now turn to William Barr.

The example of Paula Duncan should be remembered. She served as a juror in the Manafort trial. She was and presumably still is a Trump supporter. One might think therefore that she would have been an unwelcome juror from the perspective of the prosecutors. Instead she voted guilty on all 18 counts. How come despite the steady tweets that it was all a witch hunt and the relentless disparagement of the entire process by the Trump Propaganda Network (TPN), did she end up voting with the prosecutor on all 18 counts?

The answer is the evidence. The answer is that once she took an oath to serve as a juror that is precisely what she did. She listened as the prosecutors walked the jurors through the evidence. She listened as the defense attorneys sought to undermine that evidence. And when both sides were through there was no doubt in her mind: the evidence was overwhelming. So she voted to convict. Again and again and again until all the counts had been adjudicated.

Barr will experience something similar. The Mueller team gathered the evidence day by day, week by week, month by month, painstakingly following leads and sorting through the material until they were ready to prepare an indictment. That is not how Barr will encounter the evidence. He is not going to get it piecemeal. Instead he will be hit with a tsunami. What the Mueller team took months to prepare, he will be hit with all at once.

He will see what was redacted on those court filings.

He will see what indictments are in the process of being filed.

He will see what data has not yet been revealed to the public in any of the public filings so far.

How many indictments have there been based on the testimony of Michael Flynn? Why did he get immunity?

How many indictments have there been based on the testimony of Allen Weisselberg? Why did he get immunity?

How many indictments have there been based on the testimony of David Pecker? Why did he get immunity?

How many indictments of other people including Person #1 have there been based on the testimony of Michael Cohen?

Right now, Barr knows no more about the Mueller investigation than anyone else in the public arena. Then suddenly he is going to know everything.

We know how Paula Duncan reacted when she was exposed to the truth. What will Barr do when he has his OMG moment?  What will Barr do when he learns that the slimiest and sleaziest real estate developer in New York operated and operates identically when he moved his business to the White House? Barr is a career officer of the court who will have taken an oath to the Constitution to serve the American people. He knows that he will not have taken an oath to be loyal to the President. So when he has his OMG moment will he like Paula Duncan vote to convict, that is, release the report or will he put the wishes of the President first? There is no way to know for sure but I suggest that it is quite likely that when the OMG moment occurs justice will trump loyalty.

What about with the American people. We the people have been in the same dark as Barr has been about the full story of what has happened. Then suddenly when the report is released we will have our OMG moment. For some people it will be a moment of vindication. For others it will be “is that all there is?’ There will be a lot of guano to digest very suddenly,

One should expect the TPN to be fully activated and in high gear to combat and denounce the Mueller report once it goes public. It’s all process crimes. It’s not even criminal acts anyway. It’s poisoned fruit anyway and not admissible. So what if he did it? It’s the last gasp of the Deep State seeking to remove the legitimately elected President and to thwart God’s plan.

That approach probably won’t work with the American people. There are likely to be more Paula Duncans than Sean Hannitys in the country. There may be a clamor for the Democrats to impeach. There already is. The policy of not impeaching unless the Republican Senate supports removal may be overwhelmed by the OMG reaction to the Mueller report.

Think of Supreme Court Justice Merrick Garland. Oh, that’s right, you can’t because he never became one. He never became a Supreme Court justice because Majority Leader Mitch McConnell never allowed a vote to be held. He used the excuse that is was too close to the presidential election and it should be up to the people to decide. McConnell’s gamble worked. The Democrats did not hold the White House and the republicans prevailed in approving the next Supreme Court justice. Will he try again? Will he put the Senate in play in order to save the Republican President after the American people have had an OMG moment with the release of the Mueller report?

I don’t know but we will find out sooner or later.