Of course Trump will make the FBI into his Gestapo, they raided Mar-a-Lago. Between this, Stormy Daniels, and E. Jean Carroll he's had his pants pulled down in public. By Hal M. Brown, MSW

The highest American military rank is a Five Star General. I wouldn't be surprised if as Commander in Chief he starts wearing a uniform with six stars.

The following blog has adult language.

With Trump his self-worth is all about his self-image as Mister Macho the Lord High Pussy Grabber Emperor of the Manosphre and star of the MAGA Mega hit Phantom of the Phallocentric Opera.

He now has his Himmler in Kash Patel who he's decided will be able to turn the FBI into his personal Gestapo.

Currently the agency's mission is to "protect the American people and uphold the Constitution and it's top priotiries are as follows:

• Protect the United States from terrorist attacks
• Protect the United States against foreign intelligence operations, espionage, and cyber operations
• Combat significant cybercriminal activity
• Combat public corruption at all levels
• Protect civil rights
• Combat transnational criminal enterprises
• Combat major white-color-crime
• Combat significant violent crime

In case you haven't noticed there's nothing above about punishing a president's political enemies.

The appointment of Kash Patel is yet another decoration on the icing already on the Trump kakistocracy cake he has been belligerently baking to usher in his version of an American Nazi country.

Trump is on a malevolently manic quest to prove what has obssessed him since he came of age.  He has based his self-image on being a tough guy who could dominate women and have them fawn over his masculine magnificence. This is where Stormy Daniels and E. Jean Carroll come in to understanding why he is intent on turning the government into a retribution army with himself as the Commander in Chief with the newly minted rank of Six Star General. He wants to be actively engaged in the war against his enemies so he might as well has an outfit to fit the part.

Some psychology

First it was Stormy Daniels mocking his manhood by likening it to a toad character in the game Super Mario Kart.

As a Google News search (here) shows this was a widely reported story. If Trump, the business mogul, reads Business Insider he may have seen this article.

As if this wasn't enough, Trump ended up having to sit through the E. Jean Carroll sexual abuse and liable trial where he had to make sure he conveyed a combination of boredom, disgust, and anger all the while knowing full well he was guilty and would have negative press coverage including unflattering drawings of him published.

He managed one small victory out of this with his mug shot photo being on t-shrts and posters,  but he still had to spend time he'd rather be using to hold rallies and playing golf sitting in an unfamiliar and uncomfortable courtroom in a city that had long since turned against him.

You can look up Trump emperor has no clothes on Google News (here) but you already know how this comparison of the delusional narcissistic emperor and Trump became a meme. It even let to an artist making these statues Below: From the Wikipedia page with this name:

Is it any wonder that Trump is out to prove that he has to rise above both Washington, the country, and the world as the biggest, meanest, most manly manly man ever to emerge from between his mother's loins causing the obstrectics nurses who are now Trump voters to swoon.

Addendum: I would add that Patel has said that he will use the FBI to go after the members of the media who enabled Biden to win illegally. He said this would be both criminally and civilly. As far as I can tell, the FBI doesn't investigate civil crimes unless they involve civil rights violations. Is he going to say Trump's civil rights were violated? That would be a precious piece of prevarication.

Personal: When I was a reserve police officer in Mason Michigan I was on the area muti-agency hostage team because I was also a psychotherapist and the director of the Mason Mental Health Center. We met once month with ranking police officers from the larger departments, the State Police psychologist, and FBI agents. Once we met at the Lansing Airport where FBI agents passed around types of equipment they would use in hostage situations on airplanes including firearms. On another occasion an FBI agent made an unannounced social visit to my house in an unmarked red mustang which had been confiscated in a drug raid. He showed me what he had in the trunk. Not only was there an assortment of firearms but all kinds of electronic gizmos for surveillance. I can't image any of the agents I met ever doing what Kash Patel and Trump want them to do.

 Previous list of blogs here.

Primary Hal Brown's Blog website is halbrown.org (if you are reading this anywhere else any additions or corrections will be at this address)

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Double Take on seeing that the House Ethics Committee reaching out to witnesses in revived Matt Gaetz probe. Did I read this right?

 

Middle: Rep. Michael Guest

Load only this page, includes Disquis comments.

By Hal Brown

This news came after Matt Gaetz's attempt to make FBI Director Christopher Wray look like a ciminal who is trying to protect a nefarious crime family: see 

Rep. Matt Gaetz Grills FBI Director About Hunter "Shakedown" Message: "Are You Protecting The Bidens?"

Links to article, not to Twitter

I did a double take when I saw that the House, the GOP House and home not only to Gaetz but the Freedom (to be Conspicacy Spinning Lunatics) Caucus which he's a member of, was reviving the ethics probe of Gaetz which began when the Democrats were in control.

From the CNN article:

Now chaired by Republican Rep. Michael Guest of Mississippi, the panel quietly restarted its investigation earlier this year without publicly laying out its targets anew. The decision to begin reaching out to witnesses, made by Guest and ranking Democratic member, Rep. Susan Wild of Pennsylvania, is the first formal step the committee has taken since the ethics investigation resumed. 

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told CNN this week he doesn’t “know anything about” the investigation, noting that he’s barred by House rules from discussing it with committee members. The Republican-led investigation into Gaetz comes as the Florida congressman finds himself repeatedly at odds with his party’s leadership. 

“I never know anything on (the) Ethics Committee,” McCarthy told CNN. “I don’t know what investigations they have. I don’t know anything about it.” 

Asked to comment on whether he thinks the investigation should move forward, McCarthy declined to do so and referred questions to the committee.

I'd never heard of Rep. Michael Guest so, of course, I checked him out on Wikipedia (here).

He was born in the Woodbury, New Jersey which is in the southern part of the state and a suburb of Philadelphia. I don't know how he ended up living in Mississippi although his official website tells us that he graduated from high school there and went to college and law school in the state:

Congressman Guest is a Rankin County resident and a graduate of Brandon High School. He and his family are members of Brandon Baptist Church, where Congressman Guest serves as a Sunday school teacher for young men in high school. He received a degree in accounting from Mississippi State University and his law degree from The University of Mississippi. Congressman Guest is a member of the Rankin County Bar Association and the Mississippi Bar Association. He is married to the former Haley Kennedy of Brandon, and they have two sons, Kennedy and Patton. The Guests' newest family addition is their dog, Winston Churchill.

What may be the most relevant aspect of his chairing this committee as it investigates Gaetz may be in the second paragraph (highlighted) about his tenure in the House (below from Wikipedia):

In December 2020, Guest was one of 126 Republican members of the House of Representatives to sign an amicus brief in support of Texas v. Pennsylvania, a lawsuit filed at the United States Supreme Court contesting the results of the 2020 presidential election, in which Joe Biden defeated^[9] Trump. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case on the basis that Texas lacked standing under Article III of the Constitution to challenge the results of an election held by another state.^[10][11][12]

On May 19, 2021, Guest was one of 35 Republicans who joined all Democrats in voting to approve legislation to establish the January 6, 2021 commission meant to investigate the storming of the U.S. Capitol.^[13]

In June 2022, after a leaked decision by the Supreme Court of the United States to revoke the right to abortion in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, Guest wrote to the Department of Homeland Security to demand action in the wake of attacks by Jane's Revenge, which Guest called an "anarchist extremist group" that targets crisis pregnancy centers and other anti-abortionorganizations.^[14]

In August 2022, Guest was named ranking member of the House Ethics Committee upon the death of former ranking member Jackie Walorski.^[15]

Guest was among the 71 Republicans who voted against final passage of the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 in the House.^[16]

Considering that there are 222 GOP members of the House being one of 35 crossing the aisle in this controversial vote may prove to be an indication he is will to put poltics aside and risk retribrition from hard right members of the House GOP who consider Gaetz to be one of their own.

As far as justice prevailing, Trump is a giant orange rockfish and Gaetz is a baby shrimp. 

Even so, frying him with a finding that he violated House ethics would barely whet the appetite for holding people accountable, but it would be satisfying to see that something came of it. 

The Documents cases: When taking your work home for good reasons can be a bad thing

 The main blog story today is here:

 ...While we wait for justice to catch up to Trump, let's see that Bill Barr gets his just rewards...

The Documents cases: When taking your work home for good reasons can be a bad thing

By Hal Brown

In learning about the FBI was searching yet another Biden residence (update: none were found) it occurred to me that another huge difference between the reasons Trump took confidential documents home and why Biden and Pence did hasn't been reported on, at least not that I've seen.

This is that both Biden and Pence, I am quite sure, took documents home to work on them. As public servants working overtime, whether from home or at the office, this is frequently considered part of the job. Except for Trump who probably never worked a 40 hour week unless you consider golfing and frittering his time away watching TV and tweeting as work, public servants often work in excess of the time they are getting paid for.

Most people, with the possible exception of the spouses of those who feel their husbands or wives are workaholics and are both taking time away from family activities and/or jeordailzing their mental or physical health, consider this to be an admirable example of dedication to their job.

Some people do this for money. I visited a high school friend in New York who was a top executive at a major investment company who not only worked from the office but was up in the wee hours of the night working from his home office following stock market exchanges around the world. This earned him a Park Avenue apartment but I don't know what it did to his personal life.

Others do it as a public service.

Biden and Pence took documents home as a public service. There was just not enough time spent physically in the office to do their job. There's no time clock for senators, vice presidents, and presidents to log in and out on.

Nobody know why Trump took documents home, secret or otherwise. What we can be sure of with a high degree of confidence is that the notoriously lazy, ill-informed, and reading adverse president didn't take documents to any of his residents to actually work on them.

I believe that the motivations for Biden and Pence taking secret documents home to work on were laudable, but to put it bluntly were worse than ill-considered. They were, to use a three letter word, bad.