Raging bull.

Trump’s trashing the Court, tainting the jury pool, and playing Americans. What to do?

Ed. note: On Friday Aug. 11, the federal judge overseeing Donald Trump’s trial over his involvement in the Jan. 6 attempt to overthrow the 2020 presidential election issued this warning to Trump’s attorneys: “I will take whatever measures are necessary to safeguard the integrity of these proceedings.” Judge Tanya Chutkan went on to specify that one such measure would be to move up the trial to an early date, so as to minimize the possibility Trump’s aggressive speech may intimidate witnesses or prejudice potential jurors. It was a shot across the bow to Trump and his lawyers the defendant must be restrained.

In direct defiance, early on early Monday morning, Aug. 14, Trump on Truth Social assailed Judge Chutkan as “highly partisan” and “very biased and unfair. She obviously wants me behind bars,” Trump wrote, then posted her picture underneath the rant. He also disparaged Special Counsel Jack Smith, calling him a “low life.”

It’s clear now that Trump’s game plan is one he’s practiced throughout his life, in politics and in earlier New York court appearances: rough up the “ref” — in this case, a federal judge — and politicize the trial with his supporters. The gamble of being thrown in jail — by revoking his bail for which he made promises about behavior, and which he’s routinely violating —seems acceptable, even desirable. A jail stint could raise him to martyr status and tempt rabid followers to take to the streets, as if to taunt a sheriff in the Wild West to open the jailhouse doors. His devil-may-care speech and actions suggest the former president’s thinking as: If the imagined protests reach the point of another insurrection, so be it. Been there, done that.

Trump’s taunting the system raises the stakes of this trial beyond the already high ones it had with his August 3 arraignment.

For a broader understanding of what the former president is doing, read below. If anything, my original Aug. 4 posting remains current and informative as to how Donald Trump chooses to behave, even as we speak.)

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Donald Trump has been on a rampage since being called “Mr. Trump,” not “Mr. President,” when he was arraigned last week on four counts for orchestrating and participating in the attempted overthrow of the 2020 presidential election.

Since then, he’s been roaming around, “running for president,” which in his view gives him wide latitude to trash everything and everybody who threatens his return to the Oval Office.

In this, Trump reminds me of the “hormonal musk ox” – a descriptor of the then-president from a New York Times column in the summer of 2018. That was when Trump was storming through Europe before, during, and after attending the NATO summit in Brussels. 

Trump did not win many if any European friends as he offended pretty much everyone in his path – especially U.S. allies – as he came within a hair’s breadth from pulling the U.S. out of the North Atlantic treaty. 

Wafting around London
Trump’s Ugly American shtick was so bad it inspired humor as counterbalance. At the end of the trip upon his arrival in the U.K., the Brits greeted him by hoisting the 19 foot “Baby Trump” balloon that wafted around London, staying up the entire time he was there. 

Times columnist Maureen Dowd described Trump’s blitzkrieg in her July 14, 2018 column, “Having a Bawl in Europe.” I remembered the analogy as we’re watching him do the same thing here.

Five years later, everything has changed or nothing has, depending on what day it is or how you look at it.  Trump’s no longer president but still sucks up all the oxygen, putting many Americans on “exhaustion alert.” 

While it’s been nice to have a return to normalcy with the election of Joe Biden, Trump still hangs around … and over the nation like a Sword of Damocles, ready to do damage at a moment's notice. We can also only imagine, nightmare like, how our fear and fatigue would further escalate were we required to endure a Trump
presidency 2.0.  

Fatal vision
Either Trump’s gut instincts or a little bird must have told the former president that launching another grasp for the golden ring should be done quickly. 

So it was surprising when on Nov. 15, 2022 Trump announced his run, which was early by about three or four months in comparison to when most presidential candidacies are announced.  Former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley launched hers in February 2023, and was one of the first well known candidates to do so, aside from Trump.

As for Trump, his early bid — ostensibly to garner publicity and, as a presidential candidate, to discourage prosecution — turned out to be a fateful and flawed decision.

Within three days, Attorney General Merrick Garland on Nov. 18 blazoned the appointment of Jack Smith as special counsel to start shaping a possible case against the former president for his Jan. 6, 2021 actions. If Trump had waited to jump in even several months later, there’d be no time for Smith to have ramped up to where he is now (thebeat.MSNBC.8.9.23). 

Back to the arraignment
As if it weren’t enough on August 3 to sit alone with no stalwart wife or loving children behind him, Trump had to endure the presentation of the four-count indictment that resulted from Smith’s work. 

The charges: conspiracy to defraud the U.S. in its lawful function of Electoral vote certification; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding (the certification), obstruction of an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights guaranteed by
the Constitution. 

Then the presiding judge magistrate asked him to do one more thing – listen closely and respond to this warning:

“It is a crime to intimidate a witness or retaliate against anyone for providing information about your case to the prosecution or otherwise obstruct justice. Do you understand these warnings?” she asked solemnly.

Trump nodded in agreement, but did not say “Yes.” 

That was apparently a legal-enough answer, but one reflective of what was to come once he left the courtroom and headed home to Bedminster: a refusal to fully buy into the promise he made before the judge.

Hail to the musk ox
The next day, Trump’s apparent refusal to commit to that promise resulted in the now infamous all caps shot across the bow from Trump’s social media platform:  "IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I'M COMING AFTER YOU!"

Then began the ugliest communications putsch ever generated by an American president – flaunting the judge’s authority and threatening every key figure associated with the case – Judge Chutkan, Prosecutor Smith, and key witness Mike Pence. 

About Chutkan, Trump asserted: “No way can Judge Tanya Chutkan, as ‘assigned’ to the case, give me a fair trial!” 

Mike Pence, who had been a faithful vice president for four years, except for his refusal to engage in Donald Trump’s Jan. 6 criminality, was savaged with the kind of taunts more typical of a 5th grade lunchroom:
Pence was “liddle” (sic) and “delusional” for daring to say Trump had no moral or Constitutional right to ask his help in overturning the vote from six key
swing states.

Saving an extra degree of venom for Special Counsel Jack Smith, Trump described him as a “deranged human being”, “sick puppy,” and said he looked “deranged and “ridiculous” in his “purple robe.”  Here Trump was referring to the black judicial garment with purple panels on the front that’s required by the Court of the Hague of all its special prosecutors.  

Smith wore the garment while successfully prosecuting Salih Mustafa, a head of state and military commander who authorized the torture of anyone who disagreed with him in his native Kosovo.  Mustafa is currently serving 26 years behind bars. 

Heilemann on what Trump’s really saying
Political commentator John Heilemann says Trump’s insults say more about him than his targets: with Trump it’s either “confession” or “projection.”

Confessing
For example, Trump’s berating Hillary Clinton for using a private server for State Department business could be seen as a confession, as Trump also later became reckless about national secrets as president, but to a much higher degree that anything Clinton did. 

For example, The Washington Post recently reported an August 2019 incident where Trump was briefed on an Iranian attempt to launch a rocket that exploded on
the launchpad. 

“An American surveillance satellite passing overhead snapped high-resolution photographs of the damage, and the next day the photo was shown in a briefing to Donald Trump.

“Trump thought this was very neat, and asked if he could keep it...And after some hesitation, the intelligence briefer said, ‘Yes.’ An hour later, it was on Twitter” -- telling all the world about our satellite – where it was and what it was likely finding out via its coordinates, day, and time.  

Trump’s subsequent taking and refusal to return sensitive documents from Mar-a-Lago coupled with his casual treatment of top secret information ultimately posed greater threats than the server goof that has inspired eight years of “Lock her up!”

Projecting
Projection, a close cousin to confession, happens when someone says things about another person that reveals a subconscious description of him- or herself.

One dramatic example occurred recently when Trump was talking about President Joe Biden.  In a scathing rant filled with stylistic errors to add to its disgusting content, unlike anything I’ve seen or known about from an American president past or present, Trump said:

“What a Crooked Joe Biden, who can’t string two sentences together, has done to our once great Country through his Open Borders CATASTROPHE, may go down as the greatest and most damaging mistake ever made in USA HISTORY. It is not even believable that such incompetence and stupidity could have been allowed to happen. OUR COUNTRY IS BEING DESTROYED BY A MAN WITH THE MIND, IDEAS, AND I.Q. OF A FIRST GRADER. THIS INVASION OF OUR COUNTRY MUST STOP IMMEDIATELY. IT CANNOT BE ALLOWED TO CONTINUE!”

Here’s the thing: Trump’s characterization of Joe Biden as “crooked,” someone responsible for “the most damaging mistake in our country’s history,” showing “incompetence” and “Stupidity” with the “mind, ideas, and I.Q. of a first grader” etc. are all terms that can be and have been applied at various times to Donald Trump. 

A great threat
They’re reflective of what Psychology Today contributor Noam Shpancer describes as “someone who is both a great threat to some and an attractive promise to others.” 

Such a person fails to possess “psychological maturity,” one characteristic of which is the “capacity for self-insight – the ability to see yourself objectively from the outside” (psychology today 5.12.17).

Forensic psychiatrist Bandy Lee, president of the World Mental Health Coalition, sees Trump’s psychosis as being particularly effective when “placed in an influence position.”  Then “a person’s symptoms can spread through the population through emotional bonds, heightening existing pathologies and inducing delusions, paranoia, and propensity for violence – even in previously healthy individuals.”

Trump’s ability to heighten pathologies and induce delusions was front and center at his Monday August 7 rally in Windham, NH. His aggressive rhetoric entertained an appreciative audience of about 2,000, shown by their repetition of some of its most vulgar words while Trump showed no attempt to rein them in. 

Sweaty in the Granite State
On that hot summer night with a visible anger boiling up and reaching increasingly red-faced and sweaty proportions, Trump said – falsely and unclearly, due to imprecise phrasing:
“I’m sorry I won’t be able to go to Iowa today, I won’t be able to go to New Hampshire today” (while standing on the podium in Windham).  Because I’m sitting in a courtroom on BULLSHIT (sic – he forgot to add “charges”) because his (Biden’s) attorney general charged me with something. Terrible!

Following Trump’s cue, the crowd repeated BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT!, etc. (At that point, I couldn’t listen any more.)

The Granite Staters haven’t done anything wrong yet, judging by an ongoing check of the headlines. But yesterday, another MAGA follower made news in a tragic standoff with FBI agents in Utah, creating an object lesson on just how far some disturbed followers will go in their fealty to Donald Trump. 

Standoff
On Thursday, Craig D. Robertson, a 75-year-old Utah man and MAGA devotee, was killed in a confrontation with FBI agents. They arrived at his home intending to serve a warrant and pick him up for making imminent threats about assassinating the President who was visiting Utah that day.

The complaint included screenshots of Facebook posts reportedly made by Robertson, one of which read: “THE TIME IS RIGHT FOR A PRESIDENTIAL ASSASSINATION OR TWO. FIRST JOE THEN KAMALA!!!”

A federal law enforcement official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Robertson was armed during the standoff, but could not yet offer additional details. 

Before the FBI’s August 10 visit, the Utah man had been involved in several quarrelsome run-ins with Bureau agents. Earlier, Robertson admitted his username had been the same one that posted a threat to kill Alvin Bragg, the New York prosecutor in the Stormy Daniels hush money case slated for a March trial.

But when an agent asked about the Bragg post, Robertson responded: “I said it was a dream!” before adding, “We’re done here! Don’t return without a warrant!”

In the complaint cited in the warrant, agents had written that Robertson appeared to be referencing a “dream” detailed in a Feb. 4 post on Facebook.

The post begins with the exclamation, “WONDERFUL DREAM!!!” before describing his standing with “SMOKE WAFTING” from his gun over the body of U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, “AS SHIVERS OF LIBERTY AND FREEDOM SWELLED IN MY HEART FOR OUR AMAZINGLY GREAT COUNTRY."

Other posts boasted he was arming up and “getting ready for the 2024 election cycle,” and repeatedly taunted Utah FBI agents investigating him. In other posts, Robertson also threatened to kill New York Attorney General Letitia James and California Governor Gavin Newsom.

Growing extremism
According to FBI and other statistics, Robertson is just one example of a growing menace of violence in the U.S. from the extreme right.

According to an Anti-Defamation League-sponsored probe published by Reuters in February, 25 murders in 2022 were deemed "extremist-related," with 18 of those "committed in whole or part for ideological motives."

The report said that white supremacists commit the highest number of domestic extremist-related murders in most years, but in 2022 the percentage was unusually high: 21 of the 25 murders were linked to white supremacists, according to the ADL report. It added: "All the extremist-related murders in 2022 were committed by right-wing extremists of various kinds." (report).

Trump’s permission structure
Washington attorney George Conway lays much of the blame at the feet of the former president who “has created a permission structure that endorses and encourages people to do what they might not otherwise do.  He makes them part of an army.” (MSNBC 8.8.23).

Frank Figliuzzi, former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence, defines the new challenges FBI agents must face in an environment where a former president is stoking violence against the FBI and other government institutions – storied parts of the government he used to lead and wants to again.

Trump as “someone who tells him you’re bad”
“In this environment the FBI is charged with getting out in front of the domestic threat.  But at the same time, they’re also being a target of the threat.

Figliuzzi added: In addition to arriving at a suspect’s home, prepared with paperwork such as arrest warrants, ”You're going to have a subject who wants you dead because someone has told him, you are bad.”

Luttig: “Disqualifying”
Republican attorney Michael Luttig, who apprised Mike Pence he could not legally throw back or delay the Electoral vote counting by any Constitutional measure, sees all of Trump's offenses – past and present – as disqualifying for another chance at
the presidency, and doesn’t spare the Republican Party for going along.

In an August 9 Washington Post interview with reporter David Shipley, Luttig said:
“It (Trump’s latest rampage) concerns me gravely...that the former president and his allies have responded to the indictment in the way that they have. In particular, they have continued to attack and assail the institutions of American democracy and the institutions of our law and of the rule of law, in particular and notably, most recently by attacking the federal judiciary. 

Luttig added that the DOJ’s prosecution of Trump is critical to preserving American democracy: “This prosecution and this trial … had to be (unless) Donald Trump, in the end, be allowed to make a mockery out of America, the Constitution of the United States, and the rule of law.”

Courts and truth: the last bulwarks
If the future of the rule of law must be protected against Donald Trump, it’s also true that the rule of law must do its own protecting.

Neither the Legislative nor the Executive branches would do it, as the majority of Trump’s cabinet refused to invoke the 25th amendment to remove him from office even after the insurrection. If they had, the stain on Trump’s legacy from his own administration’s rebuke could have made it difficult to muster enough support for another presidential run.

The fear of helping
Instead, cabinet members such as Elaine Chao, Betsy DeVoss, and Bill Barr resigned. And Trump’s firing cabinet heads such as the Secretary of Defense and his deputies, replacing them with unqualified cronies, further staved off any 25th
amendment attempts. 

One of the two other branches of government, the Legislative, twice impeached Trump – after extorting Ukrainian President Zelensky to claim “dirt” on Joe Biden – and following the Jan. 6 insurrection, but fell short in the final stage given most Republicans’ unwillingness to provide the requisite 66 Senate votes to convict. A conviction either time would have prohibited another presidential run.

Up to the Courts
TRG believes it’s only fitting that it’s come down to the courts to adjudicate Trump’s future.  Unlike both the Legislative and Executive branches where truth in day to day work can be “relative,” that’s not so in the courtroom where a preponderance of facts must drive the bringing of charges, proving them in court, and considering them in jury deliberations, the final yes or no.

That message was drilled down to Trump lawyers Todd Blanche, John Lauro, and others in a meeting Friday with Judge Tanya Chutkan. Speaking sternly to the team that had allowed their client to run amok in the last week – doing and saying anything he pleased that could affect the sanctity of the court and its proceedings, Chutkan warned of grave consequences if their client continued in the same vein. To this observer of the news reports of that proceeding, she wasn’t playing. 

Given that the former president’s fate rests in the hands of Judge Chutkan, Special Counsel Jack Smith, and ultimately a jury whose job it is to deliver a fair verdict based on the evidence, there is more hope than there has been that Donald Trump will
see justice.

And that the truth that comes out of the DC and other legal reckonings will set us free, and not Donald Trump.

—trg

Who I write for…