Master of disaster
The best way to thwart a conspiracy theorist is to demand they back up their claim with proof. What they will typically do instead is regurgitate some specious nonsense they watched on YouTube or read on some crack-brained website. Actual hard proof will come any day now, they will insist, what disgraced and soon-to-be-disbarred lawyer Sidney Powell means when she promises to “release the kraken.”
But actual krakens seldom get released in courts of law, let alone real life. For instance, when Donald Trump attempted to use the only court tactic his lawyers seem to know — delay, delay, delay — his handpicked special master for the Mar-a-Lago stolen classified document imbroglio demanded that he release the kraken by Friday or shut up. The kraken in question is that Trump must back up his claim that the FBI planted evidence. They didn’t, of course, and such krakens won’t be showing up in court — not by Friday, not ever.
As you no doubt know, Donald Trump has been claiming that some of the classified documents that he stole from the White House and brought back to his crummy little golf club were in fact planted by the FBI during the peaceful execution of their lawful search warrant. That claim has found its way into court, where even old fashioned conservative or handpicked MAGA judges sometimes require evidence. Judge Raymond Dearie is just such a judge, and he’s in no mood for Donald Trump’s crap.
This episode and others are examples of a fundamental flaw in Donald Trump’s (if you’ll pardon the pun) “master” plan. Many in the MAGA crowd are depending on conservative and other judges Trump peppered the judiciary with, including many federal judges and his three SCOTUS picks. The problem is, unlike members of Congress, judges don’t need Trump in order to keep their jobs. As a consequence, many of them are going to do whatever they want and not act in accordance with the Trump playbook.
Judge Dearie is a classic instance of the breed, and to Donald Trump’s infinite sorrow, that breed is more common than you might think. To be fair, Dearie was appointed not by Trump but by Ronald Reagan. But even so, he was thought to be someone sufficiently conservative as to be relied upon.
Sometimes it goes the other way, where old school judges are willing to help Trump and his appointees are not. Recall, for example, that Trump’s Supreme Court cleared the way for Trump to turn over his White House papers to the January 6 Committee. Trump’s three nefarious appointees — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — each voted against Trump’s wishes. The only holdout in that case was Clarence Thomas, a George HW Bush appointee.
The bottom line is, unlike the current Congress, the judiciary is sometimes independent of Donald Trump and his agenda because they don’t need to be re-elected by the MAGA crowd. It is often said that judges shouldn’t be appointed for life. Perhaps in their wisdom and for reasons observed above the founding fathers got this right as well. Trump’s handpicked selection of a special master has, for him, turned out to be a master of disaster. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.