This has been a blog with my opinions on politics, psychology, and pop culture using the Google Blogger platform with the address halbrown.org. As of Oct. 10, 2023 it has been renamed Hal Brown's Stressline and moved to the WordPress platform with the new address Stressline.org - Posts are sometimes serious and sometimes snarky.
Showing posts with label Donald Trump prison. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Donald Trump prison. Show all posts
Today this is a top story on Raw Story decribing what was discussed on Morning Joe in their first hour (and is still being talked about as I write this):
Above: Opnion on the decision to indict Trump o Jan 6 case
Up until recently Trump has been even more slippery than my bag of Teflon furniture sliders.
He has been able to slide out of trouble, whether legal entanglements or his crude misogynist Access Hollywood comment and having extra-marital sex with a porn star just after Melania gave birth, like an egg on a Teflon frying pan.
Trump's demise has been predicted before. The covers of The New York Daily News depciting him as a loser clown are a good example.
The Daily News featured this story on their front page on July 4, 2018. More than five years later it may finally be true.
Trump was considered a loser clown on these fromt pages duriing his first primary.
The only issues I have with the depictions of Trump as a clown in the illustrations above is that they merely show him as a sad or smiling clown.
In fact while Trump was clownish he was anything but benign. He was the clown of nightmares. He was like a classic scary clown in movies like Pennywise from "Stephen King's It" and all the other scary clown moviesonly in a suit and ridulously long red tie.
The clown who was the president/king and tried to overthow the "bedrock values" the United States were founded on during his presidency and ever since he lost this bid for reelection he has continued to do so.
The Constitution was a joke book, more a book of cartoons for the man notorious for not reading anything more complex than simple words on notecards. He not only ignored the Constitution but took pleasure in doing so and getting away with it. Kings, emperors, and dictators write their own rulebooks.
Hopefully one or more juries of citizens treat him like any other citizen who is not above the law, and will prove he has lost his Teflon protection. If he is found guilty he'll be cooked. He will slide out of the frying pan into the fire where Teflon won't do him any good. He'll need a fireproof suit.
Addendum 1:
Trump and the clown references and imagry, below about a clown car with Trump as the driver honking sadly on the oversized horn, keep coming up. This is from
My comment and drawing: One way to put it is that he's skating on thin ice in a heavy suit of armor. Another is that Trump thinks he can jump into shark infested waters wearing his super-suit of armor will it protect him without realizing it would assure that rather than being eaten alive he'd sink quickly to a watery grave.
You know who Judge Tanya Chutkan is. Judge Scott McAfee (left above) is a name you probably aren't familiar with. He's set to be the judge in the Georgia case. You will soon be hearing a lot about him.
...the conventional wisdom is echoed in former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani's comments to Salon: "Is a judge actually going to jail Donald Trump in the middle of a presidential campaign? Probably not."
To which I say: Why not? Trump is a human being, approximately speaking, with a physical body that would fit quite nicely inside a jail cell. The only reason Trump is perceived as invincible is because he's managed to hex almost everyone into believing that he'll get away with everything, every single time. All we need to do to change that is to stop believing in the collective fiction of Trump's impunity. It's not a law of physics. Donald Trump can go to jail. The only thing that's required is the will to make it happen.
While many of us have been wondering what it will take for Judge Chutkan to decide that Trump has gone far enough for her to incarcerate him for polluting the jury pool or intimidating witnesses. Remember that she instructed Trump not to make “even arguably ambiguous statements” about the case “if they can be reasonably interpreted to intimidate witnesses or to prejudice potential jurors.”
Whether it will continue to be Judge McAfee or federal judge in Georgia, Trump is already breaking the Georgia law against witness intimidation (see above).
I don't care which judge orders Trump to be incarcerated pending trial. Who knows, they both may do it thus leaving the question to be answered only whether he goes to jail in Washington, DC or in Georgia.
In some ways I'd like it to be in Washington because this is the city where he once played at being the emperor. There are federal prisons in the area but they are pretty far away (see map) so I assume that he could be held at the DC jail:
This is the jail where Trump and the other Georgia defendants will be booked.
This is the jail in Atlanta:
It appears likely that Trump's being booked at the Rice Street jail will be televised and be must see TV for many of us.
It is likely that Jack Smith's federal case will be tried before the Georgia case. If he's in jail in Atlanta an arrangement will have to be made to house him in Washington. I am sure Georgia officials will be able to figure out how to do this.
We've all seen Trump boarding Air Force One or his Trump airplane. What I'd like to see is Trump having to boarding one of these to fly from Atlanta to Washington:
I hear that RACIST Fulton County (Atlanta) District Attorney “Phoney”Fani Willis, who weakly presides over one of the deadliest communities in the U.S., with thousands of murderers, violent criminals & gang members roaming the streets while going untried, free, & are treated with “kid gloves,” is using a potential Indictment of me, and other innocent people, as a campaign and fundraising CON JOB, all based on a PERFECT PHONE CALL, AS PRESIDENT, CHALLENGING ELECTION FRAUD - MY DUTY & RIGHT!
So far Trump hasn't been attacking Judge Tanya Chutkan or ranting about his DC case. It appears that for the present he has been hesitiating to vent his rage in his usual way because he isn't certain how much he can get away with before Chutkan moves to the next level. I doubt he believes she'll actually hold him in contempt and put him in jail but he may have been told that she could schedule the trial to begin sooner (see article)
He also doesn't want her to score anything that may be construed as a victory against him. This is a better safe than sorry strategy that is, to state the obvious, very un-Trumplike.
Yet he can't shut up (it's not in his nature, blah, blah, blah) so he does the next best thing and attacks Fani Willis. He's a pressure cooker and he has to vent or he'll blow his lid off.
While these attacks are not aimed at the DC case is he so stupid to think that since Judge Chutkan is monitoring all his Truth Social posts she won't see these and know what he is doing in the Georgia case? He isn't violating her order but he is demonstrating why she issued the order.
A judge hasn't been selected to try the case in Atlanta, but when one is posts like these could (and probably will) prompt Fani Willis to ask for some kind of gag order because they are an attempt to influence the jury pool at the least.
The only sure way to lock Trump's jaws or his manic Truth Social typing fingers is to literally make sure that he's sitting in a cell behind a literally padlocked door.
Top: A man's head seen from the front and backshowing large ears and a deformed scalp byGeorge Edward Shuttleworth, 1842-1928. Both images public domain
By Hal Brown, MSW, Retired psychotherapist
It should be becoming clear to Trump's lawyers that the First Amendment defense just won't fly. This seems to leave him with two viable defenses.
There was no conspiracy to overturn the government. Trump is just a delusional old man babbling at people! And empty chatter ain't no crime!
Trump himself is leaning hard into the argument that he's too big of an imbecile to take seriously as a threat.
There are two words above, delusional and imbecile, which alone or together can be used and indeed have been used successfully to keep people either from being tried for a crime or on being convicted from being sent to a regular prison.
This has to do with laws about competency to stand trial:
It is a denial of due process to try or sentence a defendant who is “insane” or incompetent to stand trial.1When it becomes evident during the trial that a defendant is or has become “insane” or incompetent to stand trial, the court on its own initiative must conduct a hearing on the issue.2Although there is no constitutional requirement that the state assume the burden of proving a defendant competent, the state must provide the defendant with a chance to prove that he is incompetent to stand trial. Thus, a statutory presumption that a criminal defendant is competent to stand trial or a requirement that the defendant bear the burden of proving incompetence by a preponderance of the evidence does not violate due process
The term imbecilewas once usedto denote a category of people with moderate to severe intellectual disability as well as a type of criminal.[1][2]The meaning was further refined into mental and moral imbecility.[7][8] (Wikipedia)
We all remember stories like "Tensions escalate after Tillerson calls Trump ‘moron’" from 2017 using another old medical term now slang for to insult someone either with low intelligence or who may be smart but who does something stupid.
Trump's bet is to avoid being tried at all with the claim that he's too incompetent to particpate in his own defense. If found guilty of felonies and sentenced to incarceration The Federal Bureau of Prisons can accommodate him and provide apropriate treatment and programs:
This Program Statement provides policy, procedures, standards, and guidelines for the delivery of mental health services to inmates with mental illness in all Federal Bureau of Prisons (Bureau) correctional facilities.
For the purpose of this Program Statement, mental illness is defined as in the most current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders:
“A mental disorder is a syndrome characterized by clinical significant disturbance in an individual’s cognition, emotion regulation, or behavior that reflects a dysfunction in the psychological, biological, or developmental processes underlying mental functioning. Mental disorders are usually associated with significant distress or disability in social, occupational, or other important activities.”
Classification of an inmate as seriously mentally ill requires consideration of his/her diagnoses; the severity and duration of his/her symptoms; the degree of functional impairment associated with the illness; and his/her treatment history and current treatment needs. Mental illnesses not listed below may be classified as seriously mentally ill on a case-by-case basis if they result in significant functional impairment. Reference.
Trump could go down in history as the most famous felon who ever served his time in a prison psychiatric hosptial. He'd be on the list with John Hinkley (who tried to assassinate Presdient Reagan and spent 34 years as a prisoner being treated at St. Elizabeth's Psychiatric Hospital) and Boston Strangler Alberto DeSalvo who spend years in the DOC psychiatric facility Bridgewater State Hospital before he escaped and was sent to the maximum secutiry Walpole Prison.
Addendum:
Recommended reading for Trump if this happens to him:
How and why do people end up in forensic psychiatric hospitals?
All the patients have committed crimes and have been sent there by a judge, but they’re not actually criminals—they’ve been judged not responsible for their crimes.
Some are there because they’ve committed serious felonies and are being held for competency evaluations, to see if they have the capacity to stand trial. Some are inmates who come from other state psychiatric facilities because their behavior has been violent or aggressive and they meet the criteria for involuntary commitment. Most, however, have been found incompetent to stand trial or convicted of a crime that was committed when they were under the influence of a mental illness, like Brian.
Can they ever get out?
They’re sent there until they have recovered or are considered stable enough to gradually return to the community—no matter how long that takes. For some of them, this never happens, and they stay in the hospital until they die. There’s no federal agency charged with monitoring them and no registry or organization that tracks how long they’ve been incarcerated or why.
A Republican is elected president. It could be Trump or anyone else. There's a high likelyhood that all the GOP primary candidates with the exception of Chris Christie will have promised to pardon Trump if they are elected. Of course this only applies to federal crimes.
If Trump ends up in a Georgia prison, instead of everyone in his residence complying with his every wish he'd be taking orders from people like this:
If Trump is convicted of a Georgia crime and imprisioned even if the the State Board of Pardons and Paroles wanted to give him a get out of jail card it wouldn't be a get out of jail free card. According to Georgia law he'd have had to had served five years of his sentence before even being considered.
Where things could get murkier is if Trump wins the 2024 election before his expected case goes to trial in Fulton County. It’s unclear if Willis could continue to pursue a pending case against a sitting president without running into constitutional questions.
This only would apply if the trial wasn't concluded before Trump became president. If he was in a Georgia prison and still was elected president what seems to me as a non-lawyer, let alone an expert on the Constitution, to be the gray area is that there is a time span between being elected president and being inaugurated.
If he's in prison, elected president, presumably it would be impossible for him to have his cheering crowds at his second inauguration let alone get permission to be under house arrest at the White House and have all travel approved by the Georgia Department of Corrections. I suppose he'd have to execute the duties of the presidency from a Georgia prison. The state would have to determine how this would be done. Perhaps they repurpose an existing struture just to serve this purpose.
Convicted NAZI war criminal Rudolph Hess was sent to Spandau Prison (above) which was desgined for 600 inmates. When he went there it had six prisoners but five died so he ended up as the only prisioner there between 1966 and 1987 until at the age of 93 he committed suicide.
No matter what happens in federal cases a Georgia indictment and subsequent guilty verdict in a trial resulting in prison time is undone by a Republican president.
Even if the Georgia governor wanted to pardon him he couldn't.
Georgia is one of the few states to not give its governor broad pardon powers and instead shifts that power to the State Board of Pardons and Paroles, an independent board with five members appointed by the governor.
And even if all five of the governors' appointees were hellbent on pardoning Trump, they would be restricted in their actions by the state's pardon regulations.
"To be considered for a pardon, a person must first complete all prison sentences at least five years before applying, have lived a 'law-abiding life' in the intervening years, have no pending charges against them and have paid all their fines in full," notes the AJC. (Link to article)
Kemp might not even support a pardon for Trump. Consider this from 2021 in a CNN article:
Donald Trump is escalating his fight against Republican Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, and state Republicans fear it will give Democrats a stronger foothold in the key swing state as next year’s midterm elections loom.
The former President’s criticism of Kemp now includes hyping Democrat Stacey Abrams as a preferable alternative to the GOP governor, whose crime against Trump was staying out of his attempt to overturn the Georgia 2020 election returns.
“Having her, I think, might be better than having your existing governor, if you want to know what I think,” Trump said Saturday at his rally in Perry, adding later, “Stacey, would you like to take his place? It’s OK with me.”
Trump could be indicted for 10 crimes, including racketeering, in Georgia. (Reference). I can't find what the prison senteces for these crimes are. My impression is that he'd be sentenced to more than five years but of course I could be mistaken.
