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Revenge of the Kraken! [1]

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Date: 2023-10-23  

Stollen Election

Donald Trump decided to tempt fate once more this weekend. His co-conspirators in the Georgia election fraud trial have begun to weaken and fall as Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro grabbed generous plea deals from Fani Willis’s prosecutors. The calculations for both his election fraud lawyer team and the former president were immediately obvious. Powell and Chesebro must have determined that waiting for a Trump pardon in their Federal trials was too iffy to gamble away the rest of their lives. Their decision must also take into consideration the costs of a full-blown trial in Fulton County which they knew they could not win. And for what? To protect a quickly disintegrating Donald Trump, or to support the all-but-convicted Rudy Giuliani and trust in his loyalty? They had hired better lawyers than themselves and decided to take favorable plea deals in return for their testimony against the remaining 16 co-conspirators.

In an ungrammatical “twooth” this weekend, one in which Donald invoked the delicious holiday German fruit bread (filled with nuts and raisins) as he risked sanctions— attempting to thread a needle with thick rope:

“Sidney Powell was one of millions and millions of people who thought, and in ever increasing numbers still think, correctly, that the 2020 Presidential Election was RIGGED & STOLLEN, AND OUR COUNTRY IS BEING ABSOLUTELY DESTROYED BECAUSE OF IT!!! MS. POWELL WAS NOT MY ATTORNEY, AND NEVER WAS. In fact, she would have been conflicted...” — Donald Trump, Truth Social

Then he added the following offhand observation defending Michael Flynn, general to the insurrection and potential stand-in for Q, that is clearly a message to those who share space in his pickle-barrel:

“...Ms. Powell did a valiant job of representing a very unfairly treated and governmentally abused General Mike Flynn, but to no avail. His prosecution, despite the facts, was ruthless. He was an innocent man, much like many other innocent people who are being persecuted by this now Fascist government of ours, and I was honored to give him a Full Pardon!”

Oops! He Did It Again!

Stealing once-a-pop-tart, Britney Spears’ thunder after her book announcement this week (The Woman in Me), the statement was another example of asking for forgiveness rather than permission. Already fined $5000 last week for failing to remove a previously sanctioned post in his New York fraud case, his latest is far more desperate and obvious because it is both threatening and pleading. On the one hand, he praises Powell (...a valiant job) while distancing her from his inner circle, Then, he changes course and brings in the pardon he issued for Michael Flynn, as if to remind others what he is capable of doing if he gets reelected. It also reminds Powell to think again— squeal, if you must, but not on me. He seems to be hoping against hope that the damage is not yet done. It is a classic trumpian example of witness interference that will undoubtedly be followed by intimidation should she testify.

However, Trump’s invocation of the pardon he granted for Flynn is a strange and twisted addition to the former president’s oddly worded statement. As we all know, even if Trump were to be reelected he couldn’t pardon any of the defendants convicted in the Fulton County case. Those convictions would stand under Georgia's statutory regulations. Paroles and pardons in the state of Georgia are the jurisdiction of a five-member board:

...pardons are issued by the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles, a five-member panel authorized by the state constitution. The board considers applications beginning at least five years after an individual has completed his or her sentence. That timeline differs from the federal system, where presidents can issue pardons before a person has even been prosecuted. “A pardon in Georgia is for a conviction, so someone can’t seek a pardon on the front end of a matter,” said Erin Donohue-Koehler, pro bono coordinator for the Georgia Justice Project… — Politico, ”Georgia’s peculiar pardon system is bad news for Trump”, by Erica Orden and Kyle Cheney

This makes the “Flynn addendum” to his statement curious. Even with the stipulation that Trump is not a legal scholar, it is difficult to imagine that he is unaware of the constitutional limitations of his presidential pardoning powers. Some may choose to disagree with this reading of his intent, but what jumps to mind as I read the Trump quote is that this is a veiled attempt at threatening those who would consider testifying against him in any case and is an allusion to Powell’s own tactic when she represented Flynn during the Mueller probe and advised Flynn to withdraw his guilty plea before sentencing two years after he pleaded in the case:

Flynn’s current lead counsel, Sidney Powell, said the government essentially blew up the plea deal by retreating from an earlier statement that Flynn deserved leniency because of his “substantial assistance” to the government with various investigations it was pursuing. “The government’s stunning and vindictive reversal of its earlier representations to this Court are incredible, vindictive, in bad faith, and breach the plea agreement,” Powell and her co-counsel wrote. -- Politico, “Michael Flynn seeking to withdraw guilty plea” by Josh Gerstein

and,

(Powell) rose in Trump’s orbit thanks to her representation of Michael Flynn, the retired general who has become a star on the far right. Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his Russian contacts during the 2016 transition period as he was entering Trump’s administration as national security adviser. Powell fought to withdraw Flynn’s guilty plea and, after the Justice Department dropped the prosecution in May 2020, repeatedly argued that the judge in the case could not contest the government’s decision and had no choice but to dismiss the matter. Trump ultimately pardoned Flynn in the final weeks of his presidency. — Gerstein

“Recant!” is one of the messages that are subtext here. Trump seems to be implying here that “what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.”

In addition, Flynn is currently leading the Christian Nationalist ReAwaken America Tour during which his stated mission is to recruit an “Army of God.” Violence has always been close to the surface of much of Flynn’s efforts since he was forced to resign from his post under Trump as the Administration's National Security Advisor. Flynn also courts the QAnon crazies whose propensity to violence is evident in many far-right violent attacks. Flynn’s chosen political language is filled with allusions to violence and war which appeal to and are taken up by Q-followers attracted to Flynn’s cynical adoption of the movement for his own financial gains:

(Flynn’s) push to leverage QAnon’s viral popularity with the far-right coincided with his efforts to reverse his guilty plea for lying to the FBI in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe. The money-making virtual empire that Flynn, his lawyer Sidney Powell, and other Trump loyalists have built on the back of the QAnon phenomenon has long been hiding in plain sight. But in the wake of the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters, disinformation researchers began digging into the tangle of financial, legal, and business relationships that have fueled the growth of a far-right conspiracy theory the government has classified as a serious threat. — The Intercept, “The Digital General: How Trump Ally Michael Flynn Nurtured — and Profited From — the QAnon Conspiracy Theory”, by Candace Rondeaux

His General

In a world in which Donald Trump’s empty words mean so much to far too many, these words may have been calculated to send a message to all those who are facing the lawful and unrelenting pursuit of justice because of their association with him. It is an appeal to the lawless court of his public’s opinion for violence to end his jeopardy. He calls on the one general who remains truly his, the one he bought with a pardon and paramilitary commission to lead an irregular army of guerilla warriors, thugs, and losers whose purpose is to wage war on democracy with the sole purpose of saving his sorry ass.

He is the desperate image of the mob boss whose muscle has switched sides— the schoolyard bully who has been exposed as a fraud. The truth is that Sidney Powell was indeed his lawyer as were the legal team who lost over 60 cases claiming election fraud in the days before the January 6 insurrection. Powell’s plea, which included the provision that the disgraced attorney write an apology to the citizens of Georgia for her transgressions may finally be revealed as the Kraken she promised to unleash. But who will apologize for Donald Trump and his assaults on democracy and the rule of law? Who will ‘fess up and tell the American people the truth about Trump’s lawlessness and his willingness to resort to threats and violence to avoid imprisonment?

The irony implicit in the final sentence of Trump’s weekend rant begs a response. The only fascist regime Trump can point to is his own. As one of the right-wing apologists once posted in an internet blog defending Sidney Powell and her most famous quote in defense of her client’s fraudulent election claims:

“Sidney Powell is a brilliant woman… When ‘the kraken’ is released America will remember who sought the truth and who asked no questions.” — Austen Fletcher, Fleccas Talks

For what it is worth, Sidney may have misspoken when she made her giddy threat. Given the recent pleas gathered by the Fulton County DA, Fani Willis may have a few “Krakens” of her own to unleash. And to Mr. Trump’s dismay, Ms. Powell’s testimony could be the most fearsome.

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