‘Springtime for Fraudsters’ - Martin Sheil on Trump’s Path to Unfreedom
Ex-fed Martin Sheil breaks down the legal cases against Trump
I pulled an all-nighter preparing my next investigation for Byline Supplement and one of our Bette community members asked if I ever sleep. Truly, I haven’t slept since November 9, 2016.
My previous Byline investigation focused on biological warfare by proxy, and the upcoming report I wrote through the night is terrifying. If we do not fight in our statehouses for the rights of everyone, we will be writing our own democratic dirge. That is fact.
This is your call to action - get busy. We are in a post-Roe world, and the authoritarian right and their tankie toadies will not stop unless defeated.
The good news is, we can defeat them. Provided we - in America - prove we are still a rule of law country and other Western nations do same.
Consider the week we just had - Putin outed for being a child trafficker; Trump caught trying to stir another insurrection before his first potential perp walk as he cries ‘witch hunt’, ‘victim’, and ‘gimmie’; Boris Johnson getting grilled for Partygate while crying ‘witch hunt!’
I am happy to report that more journalists showed up today in New York than Trump supporters, and as I’ve been saying for more than a year, ‘Day Old McDonald’ Trump is toast.
As I started piecing together my next Byline report, I reached out to Martin Sheil for his clear-headed take on Trump’s legal entanglements, and what might be his quickest path to unfreedom. Marty, as a former IRS criminal investigator spent his career following the mob money and helping put away guys with names like ‘Fat Larry.’
Marty will be our featured guest at the next Bette Dangerous ‘Speakeasy’ Zoom on Sunday, March 26, 4 pm PT. If you are not yet a paid subscriber, please join here and enjoy our Spring Fling annual discount.🌷🌿
Marty - who is also RadPod’s financial correspondent - gave such a brilliant response to my query, I am printing it verbate.
Here goes:
‘Springtime for Fraudsters’ - Martin Sheil on Trump’s life of crime
According to Marty:
A new season starts today and one can only hope that Spring has spawned a season of criminal indictments with the former President's name on them to finally bring accountability to the mob chief who has delayed justice so long that even his most fervent admirers have tired of his denial of justice, longing for closure to his weary screed of grievance and victimhood in the face of mounting evidence of his late life of crime and moral turpitude.
The irony of the coming fate of the Don should not be lost on those that followed the downfall of Al Capone who went to jail for tax fraud based on his maintaining a double set of books for his rackets. The Trumpster is looking at a possible conviction from the Manhattan DA whose case is centrally based on the falsifying of company books and records with the intent of concealing the hush money payments to Stormy Daniels that therefore constitute campaign contributions and Election fraud.
It's the books and records that always get Mob chiefs. The paper trail has been a lethal one to those who rule the rackets or live a life of grift. The Trumpster can even now begin to regret his sloppy and illegal book-keeping and lack of self discipline when it came to extra marital self-gratification with the ladies. Perhaps not Capone like, but there does seem to be some karma here.
‘Thug Life’
Al Capone died after prison, ravaged by a venereal disease. The former Prez is looking at dying in prison from a loss of hubris and a broken ego. No amount of lying will save him from the documents that comprise the false invoicing scheme he concocted and enacted to reimburse his former fixer - the disgraced attorney Michael Cohen. It is in prison that 'the Donald’ can contemplate his overuse of the Roy Cohn taught strategy, to exploit attorneys to shield mob chiefs from investigation and indictment. And it will be the Trumpster's over reliance on attorneys that will likely contribute to his pending Georgia indictment by DA Fani Willis for projected racketeering charges involving 'the Don's’ desperate election fraud solicitations and phony legal justifications in the great state of Georgia.
‘Supercilious Legal Theories’
Donnie will no doubt throw Rudy and Eastman and Clark under the bus when Fani comes after him with her Georgia indictments. He will claim he made perfect telephone calls soliciting phony votes that never existed and further claim legal justification based on supercilious legal theories perpetrated by his attorneys.
Sad.
Speaking of attorneys - the chief judge of the federal court in Washington DC Beryl Howell issued a ruling on her final day as chief judge requiring Trump's attorneys to turn over their notes to the Special Counsel and ordering at least one of the former president's attorneys to be responsive to questions of the grand jury. The Special Counsel - Jack Smith had motioned the court that the crime fraud exception to the attorney - client privilege had been pierced in at least one if not more instances regarding Trump and his lawyers.
The Special Counsel is spearheading a two headed investigation of the former Prez. One has to do with the fact that Trump is alleged to have stolen classified government documents from the White House and left them strewn around his Mar-a-Lago country club like so many spare golf balls or signed Celine Dion pics mixed in with his golf shirts and other less than important personal accoutrements. One likely count in this Federal indictment shortly coming down the pike surely has to do with the fact that one of the former President's attorney's prepared and signed a sworn statement likely at the direction of the former President, that all government docs under the former purview of Trump had been returned to the National Archives where they properly belonged. The gnarly looking Special Counsel is not likely to look kindly on the false document forwarded to the prosecutor by attorneys for the ex-Prez that obstructed his investigation.”
‘Seditious Conspiracy’
The second of the two investigations directed by Special Counsel Jack Smith with regard to 'the Donald’ will encompass compiling evidence of potential Seditious Conspiracy charges pertaining to Donald Trump inciting the January 6 Insurrection when he solicited his base by tweet to come to Washington DC on January 6 whereupon he then implored the crowd to ‘fight like hell’. The Trumpster evoked that battle cry shortly after Rudy Giuliani - America's mayor - titillated the crowd now verging on a mob, by urging said mob on to the Capitol that fateful day - ’to have trial by combat!’
It was a reportedly intoxicated Giuliani who on election night, after it was announced that Trump legitimately lost the election - urged the President to just tell everyone he won.
‘Shambolic Day’
And from there, the conspiracies unfolded. The infuriated fringes of the right were solicited by tweet to come to Washington DC on January 6 and then, incited on that shambolic day to disrupt Congress from their Constitutionally mandated duty to certify the election.
Trump's attorneys rented a war room at the Willard Hotel across the street from the White House to hatch plans fabricating tales of phony vote getting by Trump's opponent, dreaming up a false legal basis for the VP to deny signing off on the Congressional certification, soliciting alternative slates of electors from key states, attempting to get Congressmen and Senators to delay the certification proceedings on that fateful night of January 6 after all the insurrectionists had been cleared from the nation's Capitol and the site of the far right's failed attempt at trial by combat.
‘He Was a Loser’
Donald Trump never made it to the Capitol despite his false promise to do so. He did beat on a Secret Service agent. And let's not forget he threw ketchup against a White House wall in a temper tantrum of frustration more suitable to a nine year old - that ‘the fight like hell’ directive had blown up in his face. He was then confronted with the existential reality that his supporters had lost on January 6 just like he had lost an election on that memorable first Tuesday in the previous November and that miserable reality could not evade the master of self delusion and prevarication.
Trump had lost the White House.
Trump had become that person that his father most despised.
He was a loser!
But that did not stop the grievance driven fund raising. Once a grifter - always a grifter.
His attorneys had failed him.
Fox News had failed him.
So he took his toys and souvenirs and love letters from Korea home to Mar-a-Lago in order to impress his fellow country club members around the Sunday brunch buffet.
His political career was realistically in all likelihood terminated, but the Special Counsel wasn't finished.
Donald Trump had tried to steal an election and Jack Smith was going to indict him for that along with all the conspiring attorneys that aided and abetted his failed and sorry attempt to take what wasn't his which would likely be reflected in a legal filing titled something like - Defrauding the U.S. or Conspiring to Defraud the U.S. That count of the indictment should go nicely with the other Federal indictment Smith will generate relative to the master grifter's stealing of classified government documents.
And it is the documents’ case that Trump will likely plead guilty to since it contains the lowest amount of prison time.
So what can we conclude from the coming Spring time of indictments for fraudsters?
As noted above - Mob chiefs and grifters beware.
It's the documents that always get you.
Marty Sheil
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Save the date! The next Bette Dangerous ‘Speakeasy’ Zoom for paid members is Sunday, March 26, 4 pm PT. As noted, I have invited retired IRS criminal investigator Martin Sheil, who will answer your questions about Trump. If you are not yet a paid subscriber, please consider joining. You will receive invites, access to all archives, and author chat threads. Please subscribe here:
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