A brief word about the Mueller investigation

At this moment I’m listening to Rudy Giuliani yammer about how corrupt the investigation is.

I hear how he and other Trump surrogates are working the world of public opinion, trying to make people think badly of the Mueller investigation.

I hear about polls, and poll numbers about the Mueller investigation.

Thing is, it’s bullshit.

Because the results of the Mueller investigation will have nothing whatsoever to do with public opinion about the Mueller investigation.

It will have to do with facts, evidence, juries (both grand and petit), indictments, judges’ rulings…you know, like, big time criminal law stuff.

I became aware of the possible discrepancies between a criminal prosecution and what people think about that criminal prosecution, when I was — very peripherally — working on the O.J. Simpson case.

It had transmogrified from a legal procedure into a new form of public entertainment called reality TV. Every day I’d read statements by the prosecutors about a trail of evidence (there wasn’t any). It was, first, bewildering to me and then it was scary. After the verdict, I got the feeling that a large part of the populace thought the verdict should have been arrived at by a call-in 900-number. Everyone was expressing his and her opinions and shit! That L.A. jury hadn’t listened to ’em.

Well, sorry, “public opinion” and the polling thereof: that isn’t the way real life in law works. I really don’t care how you “vote.” It is highly unlikely you’ll be on any jury trying these many cases emerging from the investigation.

How does real life legal stuff work? I’ll copy and paste what I wrote above: It will have to do with facts, evidence, juries (both grand and petit), indictments, judges’ rulings…you know, like, real life.

I suspect there will be a massive load of evidence and facts because Trump has been throughout his life in essence a very small-time crime family boss. And a serial failure, even at that. A heavily indebted serial failure, surrounded by gilt furniture he bought on Grand Street in the 1960s.

But whatever he was doing with his life in previous years was ignored by most conscious New Yorkers because he was…a nothing. He wasn’t even on the periphery of our awareness, except for the instances when he shoved himself and his face onto the front of tabloids and wormed his way into their gossip sections. When he began to express his “political” opinions, he was brushed aside as a bloviating idiot, a fool. Oh, and yes, a racist.

When you run a tightly held family business, nobody pays attention to what you do. Well, people he cheated paid attention — and sued him — and the banks paid attention, when their loans to him collapsed in non-payment and bankruptcies.

But the only spotlight shining on Trump was the one he lugged under his arm, ready to plug in and shine on himself.

And the only people who eventually knew what he was up to were other crime bosses, the ones he had to borrow money from. Big, big crime bosses. Crime bosses whose wealth had been stolen from Mother Russia.

Can you imagine Trump’s rage, his panic? Here’s a guy who nobody but his family paid attention to, and he had the misfortune of winning an election to a role to which everybody pays intimate attention. Every miniscule detail of a president is revealed, analyzed, picked apart.

And he can’t hide it, he can’t control it. His entire failure of a life is going to be exposed to the entire world.

The Mueller investigation will do it and no amount of public opinion can change that, or change what will happen to Trump, in a country, our country, which is still governed by the rule of law and by majority voters.

Oh gee. I had no intention of writing all of that. I was on my way out to take a walk and pick up some milk on the way home.

This entry was posted in Politics, The Facts of Life, Trumpism and tagged , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.