Usually I finish a post with a limerick. This time I’ll start with one from February 23, 2017:
Since prison morale needs some bumps, I hope they convict a few Trumps. Then we can see A celebrity, And they can start taking their lumps.
The unimpeachable Donald has had the jury on his side again. What an object of wonder and envy he has become for the incarcerated, current and former. If any of us had been able to dodge so many legal bullets in our lifetimes, we’d be making regular and generous sacrifices at the altar of whatever being(s) might be watching over us. In fact, this second acquittal by the US Senate, justified largely by what might be deemed a constitutional technicality, is actually a fantasy scenario for the run of the mill (and duly convicted) inmate. Guys in prison are always willing to elaborate on how they are only there “because of a technicality” and how their own jailhouse lawyering is going to spring them once the appeals court sees the esoteric errors of its ways. Indeed, the acquittal is a kind of double fantasy as it basically amounts to a kind of jury nullification. Man, if just a few of our jurors had stood up and told the US Attorney to stuff his “evidence,” we’d be free today. Who needs proof when the people are on your side?
More than all that, however, the thing that caused me some head shaking were the politicians (Here’s looking at you Mitch McConnell.) and political pundits who want on to say that Trump might be subject to criminal prosecution in the future, and so maybe the technicalities and nullification of the Senate won’t save him after all. I don’t doubt the truth of possible prosecution, but I hesitate to speculate on outcomes. This past Saturday, one talking head went so far as to say that if Trump were convicted in Georgia on election tampering charges, he could face several years in prison. He then added that, of course, given Trump’s security situation, he’d probably serve his time on home confinement. Sign me up for those “consequences”!
Such legal insight produced genuinely disgusted laughter and this blog post. It reminded me of that limerick I wrote four years ago. As a prelude to the limerick, I was walking across the prison yard with another inmate, and we started hypothesizing what might happen in The Donald did, in fact, wind up in our prison with us. I wondered if maybe Trump might, indeed, have security problems. My companion scoffed. “No way, man,” he said. “People ain’t gonna threaten him. They gonna try to get next to him. It’s all ‘Wassup, Trump?’.” I was convinced. Wassup, Trump, to be sure.
Saturday’s celebrated legal mind believed in house arrest because he couldn’t imagine providing Secret Service protection in prison. But why would a convict get any protection at all? That’s not the way prison actually works, Esteemed Counsel. Notorious people are sentenced to time behind bars all the time. Hell, OJ Simpson, made it through. On the other hand, Jeffrey Dahmer and Whitey Bulger didn’t. That is the game of Sentencing Roulette all convicted criminals are required to play. If things were to get a little too hot for Donald he could always “check in.” That is, he could go ask to be placed in protective custody. Prison authorities might or might not grant him his wish. If he were to be treated like everyone else, authorities would be quick to remind him that whoever he was on the outside no longer grants him any privilege on the inside; this, they would opine righteously, is part of the “consequence” of his actions. Still, when you are blessed with favorable technicalities and nullifications, I suppose you can garner exceptions to the consequence cliché, too. At least with The Donald, jailers can be sure that they wouldn’t be asked to provide an organic diet. And in the furtherance of impartial justice, Trump could wait for home confinement at the end of his sentence, just like everybody else. Meanwhile, he’d have plenty of potential companions who would gladly help him file his pro se appeals. If he’s behind bars, he will probably have run out of lawyers to help him.