Mind Melds 🌻🌻🌻

Dynasty?  Welcome to Autumn, the Former Guy is still acting out, wielding his sledgehammer at our democracy but at least his week was worse than most, if not all, of ours.  Though she got off to a delayed start likely because her planned starting time overlapped with President Biden’s Putin slamming United Nations speech, NYS Attorney General Letitia James’ presentation was worth the wait.  She announced that’s she suing the FG, his company and the three of his adult children not named Tiffany for fraudulently and misstating the values of numerous properties bigly to obtain favorable loans and tax benefits. One example of that fraudulent behavior includes claiming that his NYC triplex, the one in his namesake tower that he claims has 68 floors even though it only has 58, measured 30,000 square feet when it is “only” 11,000 square feet while asserting its value was $327 million at a time when only one other apartment in the city had sold for $100 million, that apartment in a super modern skyscraper with sleek finishes but no gaudy gilded toilets and the like. Other examples include substantially over valuing another name emblazed NYC apartment building by ignoring that a significant number of its apartments were rent stabilized, including never to be collected club membership fees as well as never zoned and thus never to be built luxury homes in NY and Scotland in valuations, vastly overstating the value of several commercial properties in NY and Florida and fully counting cash in the accounts of partnerships in which he only held small minority interests.  Though real estate folks are famous for puffing up values, the scope of the FG’s inflation appears unprecedented. Though it’s unlikely that James will get everything she’s wants and may end up settling out of court, she’s seeking $250 million in damages and is trying to bar the FG, Junior, Eric and Ivanka from serving as an officer of a company in NY and from doing business in the state. She’s also asked federal prosecutors in NYC and the IRS to investigate the family for federal crimes.  Naturally,  the FG responded by slamming James, her political ambitions, and calling her out as racist.  At the very least he’s not wrong about her political ambitions but the racist part, that’s a bit of a self-own.  Equally predictable, former Attorney General Barr, that paragon of nothing good, said it wasn’t fair for James to go after the FG’s kids, because at 44, 40 and 38, no one should expect them to know anything even though two of them supposedly ran the family business for four years and the other negotiated a few of the family’s leases including one for his DC hotel, not to mention her closed fashion line and failed jewelry business.  

ButHerEmails: Moving on to the purloined document caper, the FG took a bigly hit in that case this week too on two fronts.  Three 11^th Circuit judges, two that he appointed, rebuked his pocket Judge Aileen Cannon’s widely questioned ruling, the one where she granted him almost everything he asked for.  They basically eviscerating her faulty and obviously biased judgment. She responded by amending her decision which might make impeded the FG’s teams ability to appeal to a higher court.The bottom line is that the DOJ and only the DOJ, not the Special Master or the FG’s legal team, can now go review the 100 classified documents taken from Mar a Lago.  Those are the documents that the FG told Fox’s Sean Hannity that he declassified by mind meld or Samantha nose twitch or something like that and that the FBI found when they were really there to scour his premises for Hillary Clinton’s emails.  The 11^th Circuit judges weren’t up to date on the #ButHerEmails claim but said that they didn’t believe the documents found at Mar a Lago had been declassified and that it wouldn’t matter if they had been because they still wouldn’t be the FG’s to keep or show to others at Mar a Lago, as a guest on MSNBC suggested he had. If that show and tell assertion is true, we’ll probably hear more about it shortly because that would be bigly big.  And because Judge Dearie, who the FG’s team thought would lean their way but isn’t, is not much for suffering fools, late yesterday he asked the FG’s lawyers to provide him with a list of the documents that had been at Mar a Lago so he can determine what was “planted” by the FBI during their “raid,” basically saying that we know nothing was planted so if you are going to make that claim, put it in writing.  That’s something the FG’s lawyers won’t do just like they have failed to put anything about the FG’s assertion that he declassified documents by nose twitch or otherwise,  in writing because they’d prefer to keep their law licenses and probably don’t look all that fetching in orange jumpsuits.  Speaking of jumpsuits and lawyers, Sidney Powell of kraken fame failed to show up for a subpoenaed appearance in front of Fani Willis’ Fulton County Georgia Grand Jury yesterday.  #LockHerUp time?  

Overseas:  Things aren’t going well in either Iran or Russia. In Iran protesters have been engaging in anti-government demonstrations over the death of a 22 year-old Kurdish Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini who died while being held for a violation of the country’s ultraconservative dress code, reports are that she was taken into custody and beaten for failing to adequately cover her hair. In Russia, despite Putin’s assertion that everyone is fully supportive of his war against Ukraine “aggression,” they’re not, especially the men who’ve just been called up to fight. There have been demonstrations in the street, something that like in Iran comes with dire consequences in Russia and planes and roads out of the Russia are filled with men fleeing the country to avoid Putin’s draft.  That Putin is calling up untrained troops to fill his ranks is a sign of how bad things are going in his war with Ukraine. There was a time when Russia sending overwhelming numbers of troops to fight and die in wars was effective but nowadays it takes more than volume to overtake well trained technologically armed opponents so his strategy isn’t expected to end well for the drafted, their families or him.

And: The House just passed its version of legislation intended to make it more difficult to overturn the results of an election.  The legislation passed 229 to 203 with the support of only nine Republicans, all of whom are either retiring at the end of this term or who have lost their primaries to members of the FG’s fan club. That’s sad and doesn’t bode well for the next Congress if the GOP wins back the House. The Senate is working on a bi-partisan though narrower piece of legislation so something might pass by year end.  

Shanah Tovah

Wishing all a Happy, Healthy, and Sweet New Year