What did Donald Trump do today?

He fired every federal election watchdog he could.

The Election Assistance Commission is an independent federal agency whose function, as the name suggests, is to assist states in the conduct of elections. Under the Constitution, states, and not the federal government, conduct elections. The EAC tests and certifies voting machines, coordinates the distribution of federal funds in support of elections, and maintains the national mail voter registration form. It was created in 2002 as a bipartisan organization that was supposed to be insulated from White House interference.

Trump, who conspired with a hostile foreign power to influence the 2016 election and then coordinated a violent riot in an attempt to overturn the result of the 2020 election, fired the two Democratic members today, and accepted the resignation of the sole remaining Republican. This leaves the organization with no members, which means it can take no actions in support of the 2026 midterms. 

Trump's abysmal approval ratings are widely expected to cost Republicans the House of Representatives in those elections, and possibly even the Senate.
 

Why does this matter?

• Nobody does this kind of stuff who intends to honor the results of free and fair elections if they can possibly help it. 

What did Donald Trump do today?

He threatened state election officials with prosecution, just in case he needed to.

Via the Department of Justice, which is now run in an acting capacity by one of his former criminal defense lawyers, Trump issued a veiled threat to state election officials today about the possibility that he would try to have them prosecuted after this November's elections.

The letter listed dozens of specific federal statutes regarding the conduct of elections, and emphasized that state officials could be prosecuted under those laws if Trump-appointed prosecutors weren't satisfied with their efforts to, for example, keep noncitizens from voting.

The statutes cited have not been used to prosecute state officials in decades, if ever. No official at any level of American government, down to the smallest municipality, has ever been accused of conspiring to allow noncitizens to vote, much less convicted.

The DOJ also demanded that officials "respond to this letter within five days informing us how
the state of Michigan intends to ensure it is complying with these federal laws." There is no such legal requirement. The United States Constitution gives states full authority to conduct elections.

In reality, people intentionally casting fraudulent ballots is almost completely unheard of. For example, the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation conducted a study of reported voter fraud in past elections. In just one of the states they examined, Pennsylvania, they found 39 individual reports of voter fraud out of more than 100 million votes cast, meaning that 0.00004% of ballots cast over the course of three decades might have been illegally cast. 

Thanks in large part to Trump himself, Republicans stand a good chance of losing control of the House of Representatives in November's elections, and possibly even the Senate. 

Many things are against federal law. For example, it's a crime to use the powers of a federal office—like a federal prosecutor role—to mistreat people for unlawful purposes, like political revenge. It's also a crime to submit a false instrument—like a declaration by a slate of fraudulent electors that Trump had won their state in the 2020 election—with the intent to defraud the federal government. And, of course, it's an extremely serious federal crime to commit acts of insurrection or sedition.

Why does this matter?

• This is not what you do if you intend to abide by the results of a free and fair election.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He accused his political opponents of doing what he's on tape trying to do to the 2020 elections.

Today, addressing a conservative political group, Trump said this about the Americans who conduct state elections, whom he believes are engaged in a conspiracy against him:

And you know what they do, they cheat. "How many votes do we need, how many votes?" That's why they take their time. "How many votes do we need? Okay, here they are." Honestly, it's terrible. We're a third-world country with elections.

Trump does know something about dragging out elections to determine a precise number of "votes we need." 

On January 2, 2021, Trump called Georgia's Republican secretary of state Brad Raffensberger and Ryan Germany, a lawyer representing that office. Raffensberger, as head of the state election process, had tabulated votes showing that Joe Biden had won the state by a margin of 2,473,633 votes to Trump's 2,461,854. The margin of 11,779 votes made it a close call, within a quarter of a percent of the total votes cast, but by then every vote had already been hand-recounted in accordance with state law, and all of Trump's legal appeals had been dismissed. 

During the call, which was recorded by a Raffensberger aide (transcript), Trump veered between bluster and desperate pleading. Most of it was a rehashing of absurd claims already rejected by state and federal courts. (Trump lost every election lawsuit filed on his behalf in Georgia, not counting those he voluntarily dropped for lack of evidence.)

For example, he promised Raffensberger that he would soon release alleged evidence of a "tremendous number" of fake votes cast for Biden, emphasizing the exact margin by which he trailed Biden.

Trump: Another tremendous number. We’re going to have an accurate number over the next two days with certified accountants. But an accurate number — and that’s people that went to vote and they were told they can’t vote because they’ve already been voted for. And it’s a very sad thing. They walked out complaining. But the number’s large. We’ll have it for you. But it’s much more than the number of 11,779 that’s — The current margin is only 11,779. Brad, I think you agree with that, right? That’s something I think everyone — at least that’s’ a number that everyone agrees on. 

He insisted that votes from a Biden-leaning precinct had been counted three times.

Trump: I’m telling you, “Where’s [name] ” was one of the hot items …[name] They knew her. “Where’s [name]?” So Brad, there can be no justification for that. And I you know, I give everybody the benefit of the doubt. But that was — And Brad, why did they put the votes in three times? You know, they put ‘em in three times.

Raffensperger: Mr. President, they did not put that. We did an audit of that and we proved conclusively that they were not scanned three times.

At several points, Trump demanded that Raffensberger change the vote totals because, he said, his rallies in the state had been better attended than Biden's.

Trump: We won very substantially in Georgia. You even see it by rally size, frankly. We’d be getting 25-30,000 people a rally and the competition would get less than 100 people. And it never made sense.

…And I could tell you by our rallies. I could tell you by the rally I’m having on Monday night, the place, they already have lines of people standing out front waiting. It’s just not possible to have lost Georgia. It's not possible.

He threatened Raffensberger and his office's attorney with criminal charges if they didn't do what he wanted:

Trump: And you are going to find that they are — which is totally illegal, it is more illegal for you than it is for them because, you know what they did and you’re not reporting it. That’s a criminal, that’s a criminal offense. And you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer. And that’s a big risk. 

And, finally, he told Raffensberger exactly what he expected him to do:

Trump: So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state. 

…So what are we going to do here folks? I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break.

Trump was impeached for this and other attempts to illegally overturn the results of the election, which Joe Biden won in the electoral college by 303-232, and in the popular vote by just over seven million votes. Trump was also criminally indicted in Georgia, and as the case was not brought to trial before he was elected in 2024, remains liable for prosecution there if and when he leaves office again.

Accusing other people of things he himself has done is a very, very common tactic for Trump. It's one he's used to try to distract attention away from impeachment-level scandals, like colluding with hostile foreign powers to interfere in elections, to trivial things like the embarrassing fiasco of his Reflection Pool renovations.

Why does this matter?

• This one doesn't really need any explanation.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He bragged about political interference in an election he probably didn't even bother actually doing.

Trump told an audience in Pennsylvania today that he had called the US Attorney in California and asked him to "take a look" at the primary election for governor in that state. "Do me a favor, take a look" Trump said he asked Bill Essayli, adding that "about an hour later" Republican Steve Hilton had "won." “Had I not made that call, Steve Hilton would be watching the election from home,” Trump claimed. 

There's really no way to know if Trump actually did make such a call. If he did, it would be a blatant abuse of his power to try to interfere in a sovereign state election where nobody actually involved—including Hilton—has suggested federal laws were being broken.

If Trump was lying, it was probably to suggest that he has the ability to influence state elections or disregard results he doesn't like. That was, in effect, what got him indicted in Georgia, when he alternately threatened and pleaded with state election officials there in a recorded phone call in early January 2021, asking them to "find" 11,780 votes for him—the number he trailed Joe Biden by. 

It's worth noting that Trump was trying to sell bizarre conspiracy theories about the California elections on the night of the primary too, even after it was quite clear that Hilton would have enough votes to finish in the top two. 

In reality, neither Trump nor the DOJ has any ability to dictate the results of California elections, or to pressure officials there to "find" that the right candidates have been selected. 

Hilton didn't "win" the primary, but he did come in second, which in California's system means he and the top vote-getter, Rep. Xavier Becerra, will advance to the general election in November. 

 

 

Why does this matter?

• Americans don't need Donald Trump's permission to hold elections or vote for the candidates of their choice. 

• Using state power to make sure the leader's candidates win elections is what dictators do.  

What did Donald Trump do today?

He nominated still yet another of his personal criminal defense attorneys to a top DOJ post.

Today, Trump announced that he was nominating James M. McDonald as the next US Attorney for the powerful Southern District of New York. McDonald is currently a member of Trump's legal defense team trying to appeal his conviction in the New York state fraud case. He was found guilty of 34 felonies relating to his attempt to launder an illegal in-kind hush money payment to Stormy Daniels, the adult film actress he had a brief sexual encounter with shortly after the birth of his youngest son.

Trump may be the only president in history to have personal criminal defense lawyers on retainer at the time he took office. Prior to Trump, no incoming president had ever been indicted on state or federal felony charges, much less convicted. 

McDonald joins a long list of Trump defense attorneys who are being put in sensitive positions in the DOJ and the federal bench. Trump's first attorney general, Pam Bondi, was part of his impeachment defense team. His current nominee for that position, Todd Blanche, defended Trump and other people in Trump's circle after they were indicted for their roles in the conspiracy to keep Trump in office after 2020. (Blanche is also the person Trump trusted to "interview" Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted child sex trafficker and associate of Jeffrey Epstein, after which Maxwell received an upgrade to a minimum-security federal "resort" prison.) Trump appointed yet another of his criminal lawyers, Emil Bove, to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. Matthew Schwartz, another lawyer on his criminal appeals team, was nominated by Trump as a judge on the Second Circuit. Trump named D. John Sauer, who secured for him a Supreme Court ruling making him all but invulnerable to criminal prosecution for crimes committed while in office, his first Solicitor General.

Trump hasn't really made any secret as to why he only seems to trust lawyers who have a track record of shielding him from prosecution. He was infuriated when both of his Attorneys General from his first term eventually reached a point where they refused to act as his personal lawyer: Jefferson Sessions, when evidence of Trump's collusion with Russia to influence the 2016 election became undeniable, and William Barr, when Trump was in the throes of trying to attempt a coup to toss out 2020 election.

When Sessions appointed a special prosecutor, Trump reportedly wailed, "Where's my Roy Cohn?!" That was a reference to Trump's disgraced former lawyer and notorious political dirty trickster Roy Cohn, who died in 1986. Trump publicly distanced himself from Cohn when it was revealed that Cohn, a closeted gay man, was dying of AIDS—but publicly praised him for his "loyalty" above all else. 

Trump replaced sessions with Barr, a political brawler who showed none of Sessions' respect for the traditional separation of legal and political matters. But when Barr told reporters that there was no evidence of voter fraud (or at least none against Trump), which by then had become undeniable, Trump was so enraged he threw his lunch plate at the wall.

McDonald, if confirmed, would have prosecutorial jurisdiction over the city in which the Trump Organization is based. He would also be responsible for prosecuting, or choosing not to prosecut, white-collar crimes like corporate fraud and insider trading committed there.

Why does this matter?

• The Justice Department is supposed to serve the interests of the people of the United States, not Donald Trump personally. 

• A president who wasn't afraid his crimes, past or present, would catch up to him probably wouldn't be so worried about "loyalty" from prosecutors.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He tried to create a slush fund to pay tax dollars to insurrectionists who tried to help him cling to power after 2020.

The Department of Justice, which is led by Trump's personal defense lawyer Todd Blanche, announced today that it was creating a $1,776,000,000 fund to make payments to for "victims" of the Biden Administration's "weaponization" of government. This is apparently part of a settlement of Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS for "negligence" against him personally while he himself was in charge of it.

In practice, the creation of an almost $2 billion slush fund would mean that Trump could make payments at his sole discretion to anyone who had been prosecuted for committing crimes on Trump's behalf, whether by rioting at the Capitol to disrupt the certification of President Biden's election on January 6, 2021, or trying to cast fake electoral votes, or any of the other criminal acts that Trump and his supporters committed for his benefit. 

Divided up equally among the roughly 1,500 January 6 criminal defendants, that would mean that they would be paid nearly $1.2 million dollars each by taxpayers of the country whose elections they were trying to invalidate. That would include Jake Lang, who was thrown out of Washington Nationals game yesterday for unveiling a white supremacist banner. It would also put that same million-dollar payout in the hands of at least 78 people who have been convicted of other crimes since 2021. That includes people convicted of two murders, three rapes, and nine cases of child sexual abuse.

One of those convicted sexual abusers, Andrew Paul Johnson, tried to keep his middle school-age victims quiet by promising to share the money he said Trump would be paying convicted January 6th criminals—which is, of course, exactly what Trump is now proposing to do.

  

 

Trump has already pardoned most of his criminal co-conspirators, and has dabbled in settlements that pipe money to them. Trump's DOJ, which has refused to prosecute federal agents who killed protestors, turned against the police who shot a January 6th rioter who was about to breach the lines of police defending retreating members of Congress and paid out $5 million to the survivors. 

Congressional Democrats immediately vowed to block the fund in the courts. The most obvious objection is that Trump has no legal authority to pay billions of taxpayer dollars to a private militia. Congress would have to authorize that like any other spending, and given how politically toxic Trump's desperate attempts to stay in power are, that would never happen. 

By Trump's logic, he could spend any amount of money on anything he wanted by calling it a "settlement" for some other imagined government wrongdoing. That violates the Constitution, which gives Congress the sole power to appropriate money through legislation. But Trump's attempt to shovel taxpayer money with no oversight to people who committed actual crimes on his orders is so far out of the realm of the law that it's almost certainly unconstitutional on entirely different grounds. The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified after the Civil War, has a clause that dictates that

neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States.

In practice, this was meant to ensure that the United States government would not be obliged to pay debts incurred by the Confederacy. It has sat dormant ever since, but Trump's attempt to prevent the duly elected President Biden from taking office (conduct for which he was impeached and indicted, and is still liable for prosecution if and when he leaves office) would likely count as an insurrection for these purposes, meaning no "debt" owed to the people who participated in it would be valid.

Incredibly, Trump claimed today that he didn't know about the fund and "wasn't involved" in it, despite it being linked to his $10 billion lawsuit.

Why does this matter?

• Glorifying and rewarding people who use violence to keep the leader in power is what dictators do. 

• Neither Trump nor people who attacked police, ransacked the Capitol, threatened Congress, falsified evidence, or committed any other crime on his behalf are victims. 

• The money in the Treasury, which comes from Americans who actually pay their taxes, is not Donald Trump's personal piggy bank.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He called for jailing journalists covering protests, spreading misinformation in the process.

This morning, demonstrators entered a church in St. Paul, Minnesota to protest the ongoing campaign of terror by ICE agents in the Twin Cities. For the most part, clergy have been leading anti-ICE protests—and getting shot, arrested, and gassed for their troubles—but this one was aimed at the pastor of Cities Church, David Easterwood, who is also an ICE agent.

The demonstrators had alerted media, and a number of reporters followed them in to cover the protest, including CNN's Don Lemon. Neither Lemon nor any other member of the press took part. The Trump administration responded today by calling for Lemon's prosecution as part of a "conspiracy" and said he was "on notice" for federal charges, including a violation of the Ku Klux Klan Act.

Lemon, who is Black, responded in a statement: 

It’s notable that I’ve been cast as the face of a protest I was covering as a journalist — especially since I wasn’t the only reporter there. That framing is telling. What’s even more telling is the barrage of violent threats, along with homophobic and racist slurs, directed at me online by MAGA supporters and amplified by parts of the right-wing press.

If this much time and energy is going to be spent manufacturing outrage, it would be far better used investigating the tragic death of Renee Nicole Good— the very issue that brought people into the streets in the first place. I stand by my reporting.

Conspiracy, which is one of the crimes Trump is still liable to be prosecuted for when he leaves office, involves making a plan to commit a crime and then taking an action in furtherance of that plan. It is not a crime to know that a nonviolent demonstration will take place, or to see it happening.

For his part, Trump reposted a tweet by a small-time "influencer" who goes by MoniFunGirl, in which she claimed that anti-abortion protestors had gotten "40 years" for violating the same law Trump's DOJ was threatening Lemon with. 

 

 

After Trump's repost, the original poster corrected herself to "40 months."  

 

Trump's post remains up and uncorrected. 

Why does this matter?

• It's not a crime to protest or report on protesting. 

• Threatening and prosecuting reporters is what dictators do.  

• Presidents shouldn't spread disinformation and should care if they get caught doing it.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He launched an attack on Venezuela in furtherance of a plan he hasn't come up with yet.

In the early hours of Saturday morning, the United States launched an aerial attack on Caracas as an apparent distraction for the apprehension of its president, Nicolás Maduro. At least forty civilians are reported dead so far. Relatively little else is known about the attack almost a full day later.

At a press conference this morning, during which he struggled to stay awake when others were talking, Trump made perfectly clear that this his motivation was not the Maduro's supposed involvement in drug trafficking, or the questions around his legitimacy, but rather Venezuela's oil industry. (Venezuela produces a moderate amount of low-quality crude oil.) Trump claims to believe that the oil in Venezuela belongs to the United States by right, because Venezuela nationalized its oil industry fifty years ago and expelled American companies. He also claimed that those same American oil companies would participate in the takeover of the Venezuelan oil industry, saying that the United States was "in the oil business." He said, "We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies – the biggest anywhere in the world – go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure and start making money for the country." 

Asked for comment, no American oil company was willing to validate Trump's claim. 

Trump also insisted that the United States would "run" Venezuela in the meantime. How this was possible was immediately unclear: there are no American troops on the ground (that Trump has acknowledged, anyway), although he didn't rule out the possibility of American forces being deployed to Venezuela, which is roughly the size of the eastern seaboard of the United States. Trump and his administration seemed to genuinely believe they would have the cooperation of Venezuela's vice-president and now acting president, Delcy Rodriguez. But Rodriguez immediately and passionately denounced the capture of Maduro as a "barbarity," calling him Venezuela's "only true president," and vowing that there would consequences for the United States.

It's not clear why Trump believed Rodriguez would support what amounts to an external coup. She is generally regarded as an integral part of Maduro's administration, and is under personal economic sanction by the United States. Confusing matters even further, Trump specifically rejected the idea that the Venezuelan opposition—widely regarded as having a legitimate moral claim on the Venezuelan presidency after the disputed 2024 elections—could now form a government. 

In other words, based on what is known tonight, Trump launched an attack that killed at least 40 Venezuelans in order to apprehend Maduro, then confidently but wrongly claiming he had the support of the second-in-command of the same regime—the one who was supposed to allow him to "run" Venezuela. 

The official justification for Maduro's apprehension was an indictment in U.S. federal court for his alleged involvement in cocaine trafficking. This is the same offense for which Trump pardoned a different former head of State, Juan Orlando Hernández. 

Trump himself was indicted in two different federal districts and remains liable to prosecution—and presumably capture by the United States military—when and if he leaves office. 

Why does this matter?

• The skill and capability of the United States military does not make up for this kind of incompetence at the executive level. 

• Innocent people died today for a plan that Donald Trump hasn't bothered to think through.   

• The American people were overwhelmingly opposed to exactly this happening, and Trump knew it. 

What did Donald Trump do today?

He pardoned two turkeys and, as it turns out, an unknown number of real human criminals.

Today, Trump took part in the White House tradition, "pardoning" two turkeys from the upcoming Thanksgiving feast. He used the occasion to make jokes at the expense of people like Gov. J.B. Pritzker he regards as political threats, but also victims of human rights abuses and the refugees he illegally deported to a notorious torture prison in El Salvador. 

Bizarrely, but not entirely unexpectedly, he also took a swing at Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Standing in what used to be the Rose Garden, which the former First Lady designed, he insisted that attendees would be standing in mud if he hadn't paved it over (and if he'd chosen to hold an outdoor event in the rain in a literal garden). 

"Joking" aside, there was other news on the pardon front today. As a rule, Trump has issued pardons to three kinds of people: those who can pay him for it, those who have committed the exact crimes he himself is known or suspected to have committed, and those whose crimes were done on his behalf. Earlier this month, Trump issued what was supposed to be a mostly ceremonial pardon for people in that last category: the loyalists who presented themselves—falsely—as the legitimate electors from states Trump claimed to have won. 

But the language of the pardon now appears to be so broad that it may cover everyone who committed any crime related to elections in 2020—and the first criminal defendant in such a case is using it in court. That defendant, Matthew Laiss, voted for Trump twice in two different states. (He was caught because, contrary to Trump's wild claims about mail-in voting, it is very easy to determine when someone votes twice in two different jurisdictions.)

In other words, in pardoning members of his inner circle who committed a very specific kind of crime in an attempt to keep Trump in power in spite of having lost the election—a kind of "voter fraud" he strongly approves of—he may have also unintentionally pardoned an unknown number of other people who committed the rare but more garden-variety form of illegal voting. That kind of voter fraud is extremely rare, accounting for less than one vote in a million, according to one study, but Trump routinely tries to get people to believe that the 2020 election he lost involved millions of such illegal ballots.

This is the second time this month alone that Trump has gotten confused over what he was doing with pardons. That may explain why he has been trying to claim that it was his predecessor, President Joe Biden, who didn't know what pardons he was signing. 

Why does this matter?

• Needing to believe that other people have the cognitive issues you yourself are struggling with is called projection, and it's not a sign of good mental health. 

• This isn't the sort of thing that would ever happen in a competently run administration. 

• Giving your supporters a license to commit crimes is what dictators do.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He made an empty threat to have his political enemies killed.

Earlier this week, six Democratic members of Congress who have served in the military or intelligence services posted a video. They reminded servicemembers that they have sworn an oath requiring them to refuse to obey unlawful orders, and urged them to "stand up" for themselves and the Constitution. 

As a legal matter, this is correct: anyone serving in the United States military or as a federal agent not only may refuse an illegal order, but is committing a crime if they don't.

The video didn't mention Trump by name, but it's clear he was its target. One of the first things Trump did on returning to office was to purge the senior officers who serve as the military's legal branch and strip the chain of command of any ability to advise on the legality of his actions. These have included threats to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy the military against American citizens directly—something a JAG officer would likely say was illegal, as no part of the country is in open rebellion against the government. 

Trump, who dodged the Vietnam War draft, has also made attempts—not to say particularly successful ones—to demand the personal loyalty of the military leadership. American military personnel swear an oath to the Constitution, not the president or Trump personally.

Trump, who is a convicted felon, responded to the video this morning on his private social media network by calling it "SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!" among other threats. He also reposted followers who urged him to have the Senators and Representatives in the video killed.

It is not sedition, or in any way illegal, to accurately summarize the Uniform Code of Military Justice that Trump is sworn to uphold. It is sedition to "conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States… or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States," although in the January 6th case against Trump, he was indicted under slightly different charges. (Those charges remain "live" against Trump if he leaves office for any reason, although he would probably have to be re-indicted.)

Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), one of the lawmakers in the video, responded later in the day to Trump's threats.

Why does this matter?

• There's a reason the United States military doesn't accept "I was just following orders" as an excuse for breaking the law. 

• Making empty threats to kill people who oppose him just makes Trump look weak. 

• The United States Armed Forces are bound by their oath and honor to serve the people of the United States and the Constitution, not Donald Trump.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He floated the idea of just taking $230M directly from the Treasury for himself.

The New York Times reported today that Trump was considering demanding a $230 million "settlement" from the Department of Justice to compensate him for its investigations into his theft of classified materials and his illegal attempts to cling to power after losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden. 

Trump is the head of the executive branch, and all of the top officials at DOJ—the people who would, in theory, have to approve it—are his former defense lawyers. So in other words, Trump is floating the idea of simply giving himself $230 million out of the Treasury because he personally believes he's entitled to it. One legal expert cited in the NYT story called it a "travesty" and that "the ethical conflict is just so basic and fundamental, you don’t need a law professor to explain it.”

In fact, that's almost exactly how Trump himself put it when reporters asked about it.

REPORTER: —the Justice Department, are you asking them to pay you compensation for the federal investigation that happened to you, and how much are you asking for?

TRUMP: Oh, for the — I guess— they probably owe me a lot of money for that. Yeah, that's true, that's very interesting. …As far as the all of the litigation, everything that's been about, yeah, they probably owe me a lot of money. …And you know that decision would have to go across my desk, and it’s awfully strange to make a decision where I’m paying myself. In other words, did you ever have one of those cases where you have to decide how much you’re paying yourself in damages? But I was damaged very greatly. 

The DOJ does, on rare occasions, enter into these kinds of settlements—but only when actual wrongdoing has been committed against a genuinely innocent target. But in reality, Trump is still liable for prosecution for the extremely serious federal charges pending against him when he returned to office. The indictments were dismissed for technical reasons when special counsel Jack Smith resigned on the eve of Trump's return to office, but the vast amounts of evidence, ranging from the boxes of classified documents Trump hid in a Mar-a-Lago toilet to Trump's out-in-the-open attempts to thwart the certification of President-Elect Joe Biden, culminating in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.  

Trump also mused about donating the money to charity, or using it for the White House. Trump is legally forbidden from running a charity in New York state because of his fraudulent abuse of the now-defunct Trump Foundation, and in the past 48 hours he has illegally demolished almost the entire the East Wing of the White House.

Why does this matter?

• Even by Trump's standards, this is corrupt.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He demanded that someone who'd investigated his crimes be punished, this time in the private sector.

Trump continued his vendetta against anyone who tried to hold him to account for his criminal conduct after leaving office with a threat against Microsoft, demanding that they fire a recently hired executive. Lisa Monaco, Microsoft's newly appointed president of global affairs, is a former U.S. deputy attorney general and had helped investigate Trump's theft of classified documents and his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Trump made the demand at the instigation of Laura Loomer, who tweeted shortly after Trump's post that she was the one who told him to do it. Loomer is a ultra-right-wing conspiracy theorist and podcaster who has a direct line to Trump, to the alarm of many others in his orbit.

In a lengthy rant posted to his private microblogging website, Trump called Monaco a "menace to National Security" and insisted that she be fired. This came on the same day that he gloated over having forced the Justice Department—over the explicit objections of line prosecutors, who saw no credible case—to bring charges against former FBI Director James Comey. (Comey, whose last-minute but fruitless investigation of Hillary Clinton's handling of classified material tipped the 2016 election to Trump, was summarily fired after refusing to pledge his personal loyalty to Trump.)

Microsoft has not responded publicly, but Trump's attempt to jawbone them into firing someone he regards as an enemy is part of a bigger pattern. Trump, who inherited a vast real estate fortune just as New York City property values were skyrocketing, never had much luck in his independent business ventures. Aside from his infamous accomplishment of going bankrupt in the casino business, he lost money—his and other people's—in a variety of ill-fated acquisitions and product launches ranging from airlines to mail-order steaks. 

But forcing private companies to act at his behest gives him a chance to play CEO with a safety net, which may be the appeal. In his second term alone he's extorted the United States' only major manufacturer of computer chips for 10% of its stock, tried to get Coca-Cola to change its recipe, forced US Steel to operate a plant at a loss, prematurely celebrated getting Jimmy Kimmel fired for making fun of Trump's exploitation of a murder for political gain, and—in a move paralleling today's ultimatum to Microsoft—demanded that investment bank Goldman Sachs fire an economist who'd pointed out the basic economic fact that American consumers are the ones who pay for tariffs.

Trump has also systematically fired almost everyone in the public service who investigated or prosecuted cases related to his attempt to lead an insurrection to overturn the 2020 election results. In today's blog post, Trump referred to that insurrection, which was broadcast live as it happened and involved thousands of participants that Trump himself pardoned on returning to office, as the "January 6 hoax."

Why does this matter?

• The government of the United States is supposed to serve the people, not settle Donald Trump's private scores. 

• Businesses should be run by people who are not famously, provably, hilariously bad at running businesses. 

• Trump is not a god and reality does not change itself just because he says something never happened.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He tweeted out an order to prosecute specific political enemies, whether or not they'd done anything wrong.

In a post to his private microblogging site that may have been intended as a direct message, Trump directly addressed his Attorney General, Pam Bondi, and ordered her to take action to prosecute his political enemies. 

  

This comes the day after Trump forced the resignation of the US Attorney for Eastern Virginia for being unable to come up with a pretext to charge New York Attorney General Letitia James with a crime.

Whether or not Trump intended for this message to be seen, it is an open admission that Trump is trying to use the Department of Justice as a weapon against Americans who oppose him politically. (Trump is correct that he has been impeached twice: once for his attempt to blackmail Ukraine into creating a fake investigation against his political rival Joe Biden, and once for his attempt to incite an insurrection in order to cling to power after he lost the 2020 election. But he was indicted on 86 state and federal charges, not five.) 

Unlike any of the people he named, Trump is a convicted felon. He was found guilty by a New York state jury on 34 state charges related to illegal business practices, though he escaped punishment due to his election. He is still liable for prosecution on the federal charges related to his theft of classified documents, his role in the insurrection trying to overturn the 2020 election, and in Georgia for his attempts to coerce the state government to change election results on his behalf.

In what appears to have been a hastily-arranged press gaggle Saturday night, Trump tried to explain away the post, but ended up just reaffirming its central message—that his political enemies must be put in legal jeopardy, regardless of the facts.

It is unconstitutional and illegal for prosecutors to "act" against anyone if there is no evidence to suggest they have committed a crime. 

Until Trump, it was considered a major breach of ethics for the Justice Department to take any political cues from the White House, or even to have contact with it except on a need-to-know basis. President Nixon was forced to resign in no small part because he violated that basic principle.

Trump did not comment on the news of actual criminal behavior that came out of his administration today—the revelation that Tom Homan, his so-called "border czar," was caught on tape taking cash from undercover FBI agents last year in exchange for promises that he would influence policy if Trump were re-elected. In spite of this smoking-gun evidence of bribery and fraud, Trump's Department of Justice quietly closed the investigation earlier this year.

Why does this matter?

• In terms of the things that define a dictatorship, sending the law against people you know are innocent while protecting the ones you know are guilty is as bad as it gets. 

• Presidents who can't tell the difference between the "post" and "DM" buttons can't be trusted with phones or national security.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He ordered still more "criminal" investigations into his political enemies.

Trump has spent his entire political career vowing to use the power of the state to get revenge against the people he thinks of as his enemies. During his first term, his efforts were at least partially thwarted by career prosecutors at the Justice Department and political appointees who refused to completely abandon the DOJ's tradition of independence and political neutrality. But purging the Justice Department ranks of anyone who had shown even the slightest bit of "disloyalty" to Trump was a top priority on his return to office, capped off by installing his personal defense lawyers in the top three roles.

Today, news broke that he has succeeded in getting the DOJ to open investigations into at least two more of the people on his enemies list. New York State Attorney General Letitia James is being "investigated" for successfully suing the Trump Organization for nearly a third of a billion dollars in fraud. Trump has also ginned up an investigation against California Sen. Adam Schiff, whose criticism of Trump seems to get under the skin more effectively than most. Schiff supposedly claimed two different residences as his "primary" one for mortgage purposes, although this is not in and of itself illegal or unethical.

There's a not-too-subtle thread connecting Trump's attacks on James and Schiff: the suit that James won was over Trump's illegal and deceptive valuation of his properties—telling banks they were worth a great deal while at the same time telling tax officials they were worth less. 

Last week, Trump demanded and got an investigation into former Special Counsel Jack Smith, who investigated and brought federal charges against Trump for his theft of highly classified documents after leaving office, and his role in inciting a violent insurrection against Congress on Jan. 6th, 2021, in a last-ditch attempt to stay in power after losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden. (Trump remains liable for prosecution on those matters if and when he leaves office.)

As legal analysts noted today, essentially everything Schiff and James has done has been a matter of public record and, in the case of James's lawsuits, already approved by multiple courts. Neither is likely to result in any prosecution, but that is probably not the endgame. As a political matter, Trump benefits from any distraction from his own overwhelming association with the Epstein scandal. Ironically, given that he and those helping him break the law while in office remain liable for prosecution if and when he leaves office, he also benefits from promoting the idea that all prosecution of political figures is based in corruption. 

Trump is a convicted felon. 

Why does this matter?

• The leader using the justice system to settle personal scores is what happens in tinpot dictatorships. 

• Nobody is above the law in a democracy. 

What did Donald Trump do today?

He confused Canada with Ukraine.

Trump posted this to his boutique social media site this afternoon:

Justin Trudeau, of Canada, called me to ask what could be done about Tariffs. I told him that many people have died from Fentanyl that came through the Borders of Canada and Mexico, and nothing has convinced me that it has stopped. He said that it’s gotten better, but I said, “That’s not good enough.” The call ended in a “somewhat” friendly manner! He was unable to tell me when the Canadian Election is taking place, which made me curious, like, what’s going on here? I then realized he is trying to use this issue to stay in power. Good luck Justin!

The slightly more charitable interpretation of Trump's claim that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau couldn't give him a date for the Canadian election is that the date has not been set yet, except that it will take place no later than October 20 of this year. This is normal for a parliamentary system like Canada. However, Trudeau has no power to delay the election past October 20, and has already resigned as leader of his party, effective later this month. 

The more likely and more troubling explanation is that Trump was conflating the upcoming Canadian elections with his talking point about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy being a "dictator." Ukraine is under martial law as a result of the Russian invasion, and cannot hold elections. The Ukrainian Parliament recently passed a resolution by a vote of 286-0 affirming the legitimacy of Zelenskyy's presidency while the emergency lasts. 

Trump himself was indicted for, and remains vulnerable to, criminal charges that he conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Virtually no fentanyl is smuggled across the Canadian border into the United States, although Trump has made clear he thinks that a return to the tariff-funded Gilded Age government would be a good thing. However, he doesn't appear to have the courage of his convictions: it took less than one day of stock market losses and tv spots with furious business owners for him to hastily backtrack on his Mexico and Canada tariff threats for the second time in a month.

Why does this matter?

• It's bad if the president can't remember which world leader he's talking to.

• People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

• Uncertainty, like whether goods will cost 25% more tomorrow, is bad for the markets.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He made one last desperate attempt to prevent the release of the report on his Jan. 6 activities (and failed).

As required by law, outgoing special counsel Jack Smith has compiled a two-volume report summarizing the results of his investigations into Trump. This was divided into two volumes. The first deals with Trump's actions in furtherance of his conspiracy to remain in office in spite of the results of the 2020 election, including but not limited to his role in the January 6th riot that nearly prevented Congress from acting to certify President Biden's victory. The second deals with the actions undertaken by Trump and several of his employees to, in effect, steal classified government documents and hide them in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom. 

The judge in his classified documents trial, Aileen Cannon—herself a Trump appointee—issued an injunction last week preventing either from being released, even though her case had nothing to do with the election interference case. Following a ruling by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals overturning that blanket order, she instructed that the election interference material (Volume I) could be released after three days—meaning midnight tonight.

With just a few hours to go, Trump made one last desperate attempt to keep the report secret long enough for him to take office and—presumably—bury it forever, or at least as long as he remains in power. His legal pleading called it an "attempt to interfere with an incoming Presidential administration in this manner, let alone on the very eve of inauguration by means of a false report issued by a discredited prosecutor who has now resigned in disgrace."

(It is true that Smith resigned—because his investigation was complete and the Department of Justice has acknowledged that Trump will never permit any criminal investigation into himself or his allies. Trump remains at risk of federal prosecution in both cases, though not while he is in office.)

At 11:30 PM, Cannon issued an order denying Trump's motion. It was couched in dry legal language, and suggests that she had no ability to rule otherwise, although that is not strictly true. At worst, she would likely have been overruled by the 11th Circuit again, something that has happened quite often since the man who appointed her became a criminal defendant in her court.

As of the time this post was published, it is not clear what—other than Americans being reminded of a coup attempt that played out mostly in full view of the cameras—Trump is so afraid of. He and his lawyers have seen the report, which may contain damning or embarrassing information not previously made public. 

UPDATE: Volume I has been released and is available here.

Why does this matter?

• In a democracy, government officials don't get to disappear evidence of their wrongdoing just because it might embarrass them or hurt them politically.

• In a democracy, nobody is supposed to be above the law—and if they are, that doesn't mean that some small measure of accountability is an "unfair attack."

• The American people might be interested in knowing who they've elected.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He got real electoral votes from people under criminal indictment for casting fake electoral votes.

Today was the day that state electors cast their votes for president. As expected, Trump won—but he did so with the votes of people under criminal indictment in at least three states: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Nevada. Those people pretended to be legitimate electors in 2020 and submitted forged documents casting "votes" for Trump, in an attempt to cause legal confusion and to give Trump sympathizers in Congress an excuse to delay or deny certification of President Biden's victory.

In other words, it was part of the larger conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 election and keep Trump in power by illegal means. Trump's personal attorneys and campaign officials were involved in coordinating the scheme. They were among those who were convicted of crimes as a result, not counting the fake electors in five states. 

Trump himself was indicted by a federal grand jury for his role in the conspiracy, although unlike many of his co-conspirators, he will escape punishment. While the case against him could still be revived after his term ends, he is widely expected to pardon himself—something he threatened to do even during his first term as evidence of his criminal actions mounted.

Why does this matter?

• It's bad if even ceremonial votes are cast by people who attacked Americans' right to free and fair elections.

• Criminal conspiracies to overturn elections are bad even if the perpetrators get away with it.