patrick.net

It's not Trumpism when we do it

Politico headlined it: “Letitia James pursued Trump. Then she was indicted.”

Long before New York Attorney General Letitia James “pursued” Trump, and long before she had any idea what Trump might have done wrong, Mx. James promised progressive voters to find something—anything!. That’s why Politico’s headline earned four cabbages on C&C’s “journalistic malpractice” scale.

The accurate headline should have been, “First Letitia James ran on Getting Trump. Then she was indicted.”

In her delirious 2018 election night victory speech, Mx. James put an exclamation point on her get-Trump pledge, promising not to stop looking until she found a crime: “As the next attorney general of his home state, I will be shining a bright light into every dark corner of Trump’s real estate dealings.”

It took a while, but she finally found one. With enthusiastic assistance from corpselike judge Arthur Engoran, Mx. James obtained a record-smashing half-billion-dollar fine in a highly technical case with no identified victims and extremely debatable real estate valuations.

Anyway, New York’s appalled Court of Appeals promptly scratched the fine, as every lawyer not taking antipsychotics had predicted would happen. BBC:

Appeals court throws out Trump's $500m civil fraud penalty
21 August 2025

Though stubbornly continuing to claim victory, Mx. James has appealed the decision to New York’s high court, which is expected to promptly render its decision sometime in early 2037. Anyway, the point is, after all that falderol, James’s historic fine was erased like a child’s sand drawing of a Falstaffian DA washed away by the incoming tides.

While the total spent is not yet known for certain, New York’s legislature reportedly budgeted $10 million taxpayer dollars to James’ get-Trump case. She recovered zero dollars in fines, and Trump got elected anyway. So.

New Yorkers, I hope it was worth it.

Yesterday, the Department of Justice issued its criminal indictment of Mx. James for mortgage fraud. It is a simple, one-count charge. Unlike James’ case against Trump, it is based on straightforward law. It is neither novel nor creative. Many ordinary Americans have been convicted for doing the exact same thing.

The short indictment alleges that James obtained a mortgage on a small house. She confirmed in writing —under penalty of perjury, on multiple forms— that it was a personal residence and definitely not a rental, thereby obtaining a lower interest rate on her mortgage. But then she regularly reported rental income from the property on her tax returns anyway.

It’s not a lot of money, not relative to the Trump case, anyway. Over the 30-year life of the loan, James only stood to benefit by about $20,000 dollars.

But it’s enough.

Nearly all lawyers who’ve examined it, including TDS-infected ones, have concluded that, unless the DOJ has its facts wrong, the DOJ has the Trump-prosecuting DA dead to rights. Open and shut. Do not pass go.

James now faces a maximum penalty for federal bank fraud (18 U.S.C. § 1344) and making false statements to a financial institution (18 U.S.C. § 1014) of up to 30 years in prison and up to $1 million in fines. She is also subject to possible forfeiture of any “improperly gained” assets— presumably the house. (The DOJ helpfully included a forfeiture notice in the indictment.)

Ironically, James tried to forfeit all of Trump’s New York assets.

Assuming she is convicted, James’ sentence will be decided by Judge Jamar Walker (Biden, 2022). Judge Walker, 37, has been described as Virginia’s “first openly gay federal judge.” On the other hand, before taking the bench, Walker was a federal prosecutor specializing in financial and public corruption crimes. So.

Ironically, in a video statement yesterday, James claimed that her indictment was just “weaponization of the justice system” and a “blatant perversion of the system of justice.”

Folks are also starting to notice the decided lack of enthusiasm from people who, until ten minutes ago, were willing to risk jail to protest the continuing Gaza war. They wanted a ceasefire and they wanted it now. They camped in tents on college campuses, occupied libraries and admin buildings, marched in protest rallies, and generally made odious nuisances of themselves to the point it required a federal response.

Now, having achieved what they insisted they wanted, they’ve suddenly become as quiet as teenagers sneaking out a bedroom window after their parents went to sleep. And from viral posts on social media yesterday, many normal people are noticing. What were all those protests really about?

You have probably not failed to notice the incessant recital of the phrase “our democracy” by Democratic Party field marshals starting with “Joe Biden” in the final months of his, uh, late performance. “Our democracy” has nothing to do, really, with citizen participation in governance. The phrase is a cover for their desperate power-seeking — for instance, the “nomination” of Kamala Harris with zero democratic voting procedure — in the service of preserving a vast empire of rackets that siphon taxpayer dollars into multitudinous NGOs and countless government programs that provide jobs and free stuff to an ever-growing class of parasitic dependents in the party’s thrall. ...

Meanwhile, the emerging scandal around the “Arctic Frost” scheme executed under “Joe Biden’s” DOJ to harass and persecute his admin’s political adversaries, takes shape as “worse than Watergate,” in the words of Senate Judiciary Committee chair Charles Grassley. Fresh evidence about this nefarious activity only reinforces the developing seditious conspiracy case that will be prosecuted out of the Southern District of Florida encompassing the entirety of treasonous acts from RussiaGate forward amounting to a long-running coup that never did manage to succeed, no matter how they keep at it.

You know the names of most of the major players involved, and ever more members of the supporting cast, lodged in the Deep State, are being revealed daily.

ELON TO JOE ROGAN: “THE LEFT CAN’T EVEN SEE THE CENTER WITH A TELESCOPE"

"I think I’m a centrist. But from the perspective of someone on the far left, we look right-wing.

Have you seen those videos people post online where they take a speech from Obama or Hillary and interview people on a college campus, asking, 'What do you think of this speech by Trump?'

And they’re like, 'Oh, I hate it. He’s a racist bigot.'

And then it’s like 'just kidding, that was Obama.'

No, actually, that was Obama or Hillary.

To your point, the left has gone so far left that they can’t even see the center with a telescope."

Yesterday, the New York Times ran a widely covered story under the dramatic headline, “Lawmakers Suggest Follow-Up Boat Strike Could Be a War Crime.” War crimes! Already! The sub-headline sneered, “Top Republicans have joined Democrats in demanding answers about the escalating military campaign the Trump administration says is aimed at targeting drug traffickers.”

The ‘controversy’ —if there is any— arose after an anonymous whistleblower (sound familiar?) told the Washington Post that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had ordered a “double strike” on a narco-terrorist boat. A first strike had disabled the decidedly non-fishing boat, and the second strike made sure that the boat and the terrorists on board were completely destroyed. ...

Democrats (and a few wobbly Republicans) are howling like wolves whose zookeeper has missed two consecutive feedings in a row. But how quickly they forget. Behold this headline from twelve years ago in 2013, under Obama, from the BBC:

Drones kill rescuers in 'double tap', say activists
22 October 2013

Here’s what sneaky Obama was getting up to: The military (or CIA) would launch a missile at a wedding or funeral where a terrorist was suspected of showing up. Then they would wait ten or fifteen minutes, and send a second missile, to kill all the rescuers and first responders who rushed in, hoping to capture a few more bad guys.

Needless to say, all this double-tapping caused an unpleasant degree of collateral damage. And I will give you one guess what Democrats said about Obama’s double-tapping at the time.

Nothing, that’s what. They were fine with it. They never demanded evidence, called for hearings, or threatened any war crimes investigations.

“President Obama,” the UK Times reported at the time, “claimed that the drone campaign in Pakistan was a ‘targeted, focused effort’ that ‘has not caused a huge number of civilian casualties.’” You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few Pakistani firemen.

Plus, it all depends on what you mean by huge numbers of casualties. “Research by the Bureau,” the UK Times continued, “has found that since Obama took office three years ago, between 282 and 535 civilians have been credibly reported as killed— including more than 60 children.” Remember, those figures were only as of April, 2012. Obama kept it up for years longer.

That’s not even counting double-tapped terrorists. Those figures just reflect the bloody tally of peaceable civilians. Now —I’m just saying— but under Trump, we’ve killed zero civilians and even fewer children. So.

We wonder whether, in 2012, Democrats demanded investigations into Obama for war crimes? Nope. No, they didn’t. Democrats defended Obama’s strikes and double taps. No less a rotten apple than John Brennan, then Obama’s ‘counterterrorism advisor’, claimed that killing terrorists was legal anywhere, anytime...

In other words, to the extent any legal ambiguity actually exists, that ambiguity was created by Congress. And Congress lets it continue, on purpose. Nor did they get particularly wound up when Obama was killing hundreds of kids and first responders as unfortunate collateral damage in double-taps.

So I really don’t care what they think about whatever Pete Hegseth said or didn’t say.