Going once, going twice: How Trump’s cash and properties would be garnished and auctioned to pay his NY fraud debt
Laura Italiano – March 23, 2024
AG Letitia James plans to go after Trump’s cash and property if he doesn’t pay his civil fraud debt.
Trump’s bank accounts could be garnished and his properties sold at sheriff’s auction.
One of New York’s top judgment enforcement attorneys explains how that process would play out.
Don’t expect to see a gold-plated toilet dragged to the curb outside Trump Tower. Nor will there be padlocks summarily clapped on the glass revolving doors of 40 Wall Street or Trump Plaza.
Donald Trump’s March 25 deadline for showing Attorney General Letitia James the money — the now $457 million civil fraud judgment he owes New York — will likely come and go without any outward signs of tumult.
But if Trump doesn’t come up with the cash, bond, bankruptcy, or appellate stay that he needs to stop her, James has promised to immediately begin “enforcement,” a process that includes the potential seizing of his bank balances and the sheriff’s sale of some of his New York City and upstate New York properties.
And the estimated $3 billion he’s expected to reap six months from now, from taking Truth Social public, may come too late to ward off the auctioneers.
Bernard D’Orazio is a veteran Manhattan judgment-enforcement attorney who one city Sheriff’s Office insider calls “the best collection lawyer in New York.”
Here is D’Orazio’s myth-dispelling, step-by-step guide to what likely happens next.
Trump doesn’t have to do a thing
Trump is not legally bound to do anything on March 25, said D’Orazio, principal attorney at Bernard D’Orazio and Associates.
“He’s fully within his legal rights to do nothing, and if he fails to pay, he cannot be put in jail,” D’Orazio said.
“We don’t jail debtors anymore. We only jail them, in rare cases, if they don’t comply with court orders and are found in contempt of court,” he said.
“But the burden to do anything falls squarely on the winner, meaning the judgment creditor, which is what we call whoever won the lawsuit,” he added. “It’s their burden to seek enforcement of the judgment.”
So it’s all up to Letitia James?
It’s up to the attorney general to start enfocement, but she will have lots of help from New York’s Civil Practice Law and Rules and the sheriff’s offices of New York City and Westchester County. That’s where Trump has the bulk of his properties and where D’Orazio expects James would focus her efforts.
“The burden is on Letitia James to find Trump’s assets” and decide what she wants garnished or auctioned, he said.
That’ll be the easy part.
After five years of investigating and suing Trump — and regular updates from a court-ordered fraud monitor who’s been watching Trump Organization’s finances these past 16 months — James knows a lot about the worth and location of the GOP frontrunner’s cash and assets, something D’Orazio said will save her a lot of time.
But regardless of whether she decides to target Trump’s cash, his real estate, or a combination of both, it would be the county sheriffs who would actually garnish Trump’s bank balances and auction his real estate, he said.
Trump posed outside the 55-story Trump Palace, at 69th Street, between Second and Third Avenue, in 1990.AP Photo/Mark Lennihan
“It is old school,” said D’Orazio. But we’re not talking about old-timey western movie sheriffs with cowboy hats and stars on their chests, he joked.
“Our legal system comes out of the British system, where ultimately, the enforcement of a civil judgment comes down to the sheriff,” he said.
So what happens first?
D’Orazio predicts James would first target the cash that Trump and the Trump Organization keep in New York-registered bank accounts.
“There may be a quick path forward in seeking to freeze his liquid assets,” he said.
“That can be done by the Attorney General sending a letter to the banks where his accounts are located. That doesn’t put the money in your hand yet,” he explained. “It’s just the first step in the process.”
Once the banks confirm to James that the funds are frozen, she’ll then direct the city sheriff’s office to “garnish” — meaning take — that money, he said.
“The sheriff sends a legal document called a ‘levy’ to the banks, demanding that the bank deliver the money to the sheriff,” he said.
“The sheriff then takes the money and takes his fee. The sheriff by law is entitled to 5%,” he said, money that goes into the city’s general fund.
“It’s called a ‘poundage fee,’ and he’s entitled to that by law,” he said.
Say the sheriff collects $100 million cash from Trump’s bank accounts. He would then remit $95 million to the Attorney General’s Office, and that would go toward paying Trump’s judgment.
The other $5 million would go into the city coffers, D’Orazio said.
But when’s the auction?
James probably wouldn’t drain Trump’s corporate bank accounts entirely, D’Orazio predicted.
“How’s he going to meet payroll?” he said. “I don’t think the Attorney General wants to put all the building porters and doormen out of work or close all these businesses.
Instead, she’d need to go after some of his real estate assets to reach her grand judgment total.
James would start by choosing which assets she wants to be sold. She told ABC last month that she already has her eye on 40 Wall Street, AKA “The Trump Building.” Trump owns a ground lease with a net value of around $80 million to that skyscraper, according to Forbes, which James can literally see from the windows of her financial district offices one block north.
The real estate assets James pursues could be physical properties, like 40 Wall, or Trump’s penthouse apartment in Trump Tower.
They could also be intangible assets, like his 30% stake in 1290 Avenue of the Americas, a skyscraper a block north of Radio City Music Hall. Forbes estimates the net worth of this stake alone at $287 million.
James would inform the sheriff’s office of her choices. The sheriff’s office would then serve Trump with notice that it will be selling the assets.
“This is the ancient process of an execution of sale, a live auction where third parties would attend and bid on the property to be sold,” D’Orazio said.
Again, the sheriff’s office would collect its 5% poundage fee on any auction sale.
All told, the fee on the sales to cover a $500 million judgment could top $25 million, a boon to city coffers that would come straight out of Trump’s wallet.
Could they sell his Manhattan penthouse?
Trump’s Manhattan triplex penthouse — high atop Trump Tower, his flagship Fifth Avenue skyscraper — would be fair game, said D’Orazio.
Forbes estimates the penthouse is worth $52 million free and clear.
“That unit is owned by Trump personally and is not mortgaged and is not his primary residence,” making it a likely target, D’Orazio explained.
“If it were his primary residence, the Attorney General would need to get a court order in order to sell it,” he said.
“But it’s a secondary residence. So the attorney general could try to go after that asset pretty quickly. But pretty quickly means many months.”
Many months? Like, almost Election Day?
A lot has to happen before an actual sheriff’s sale, and Trump can be counted on to try to throw legal monkey wrenches throughout the process.
“The debtor can slow things down,” D’Orazio said.
Trump is already appealing the judgment to a Manhattan appellate court. He’s asking that the court reduce the judgment or to stay — meaning delay — its enforcement while the appeal progresses.
But there are additional monkey wrenches Trump can fling.
“There’s a safety valve feature in judgment enforcement law,” D’Orazio said.
“You can petition the judge for what’s known as a protective order, designed to prevent unnecessary harassment or abuse by the judgment creditor,” meaning by James, he said.
The civil fraud trial judge, state Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, would likely reject a protective order, but that rejection, too, can be appealed by Trump.
“The appellate court doesn’t hear appeals during the summer,” D’Orazio said. “So unless Trump somehow gets on the June calendar, which may be impossible, the next time the appellate court could hear the case would be September.”
Former president Trump owns the $80 million lease for 40 Wall StreetJeff Greenberg
An auction also takes time
Even without these litigation delays, it still takes three or four months to schedule, advertise and then hold an auction, D’Orazio said.
The sheriff’s office must publish a notice of the auction in a public newspaper four times before it can be held, he said.
Auctions are only held once a month in each of New York City’s five boroughs. James can seek to auction multiple properties at a single auction.
Trump’s Manhattan properties would be auctioned in Manhattan. Anyone could attend, but the logistics could be tricky given that there would be huge media and public interest once word gets out.
Whenever such a sale happens — if it happens — Trump would get to keep any proceeds that rise above what’s needed to satisfy the judgment.
But, as he himself has complained, the forced sale of his properties would be at “fire sale prices,” whether a sheriff does it or if he sells it himself to pay for an appeal bond.
“I would be forced to mortgage or sell Great Assets, perhaps at Fire Sale prices, and if and when I win the Appeal, they would be gone,” Trump said in a Truth Social post this week. “Does that make sense?”
Trump’s dark ‘retribution’ pledge at center of 2024 bid, but can he make it reality?
Alexandra Hutzler – March 23, 2024
Donald Trump, in his third run for the White House, has made “retribution” central to his agenda if elected.
“For hard-working Americans, Nov. 5 will be our new Liberation Day,” Trump said as he headlined this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference. “But for the liars, and cheaters, and fraudsters, and censors and imposters who have commandeered our government, it will be their Judgment Day.”
Potential targets include former Rep. Liz Cheney and other individuals critical of his efforts to overturn his 2020 defeat. He recently said Cheney and fellow members of the House committee that investigated him “should go to jail” despite the fact they’ve not been accused of any crimes.
Last year, as he complained of “weaponization” of the Justice Department after being indicted, Trump said he would appoint a special prosecutor to go after President Joe Biden and his family.
“Donald Trump’s campaign strategy has been to say that everything is chaotic, that the world is a dangerous place and the nation is falling apart, that Joe Biden is an incompetent leader and the only way to save the nation is to vote for Trump,” said Jennifer Mercieca, a historian of political rhetoric at Texas A&M University. “That’s not unusual for him. He has been saying that since 2016. But the strategy has been darker this time around.”
“He really wants to avenge his loss in 2020,” she added, “and he is very good at using language as a weapon.”
PHOTO: Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump arrives at a campaign rally, Mar. 9, 2024, in Rome Ga. (Mike Stewart/AP)
But how far could Trump go, if elected, in carrying out such a vision? Or how much is it just designed to rile up his supporters, many of whom appear eager to embrace his message.
“The answer is, it depends,” said Bruce Green, a Fordham Law ethics expert who examined this exact issue back in 2018.
At the very least, a retribution campaign as Trump has described would require a significant reshaping of the modern-day Justice Department, which has a tradition of independence dating back to the post-Watergate era.
Internal policies enacted at the department after the Richard Nixon Watergate scandal sought to separate politics from law enforcement, and presidents of both parties have since abided by that construct — until Trump, according to Green.
But those policies aren’t codified by law, Green noted, and if Trump were to appoint an attorney general who embraced his theory of sweeping presidential power and discretion, investigations could be launched into perceived enemies.
PHOTO: Supporters of former President Donald Trump stand outside of the Alto Lee Adams Sr. U.S. Courthouse as they await his arrival on Mar. 1, 2024, in Fort Pierce, Fla. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Even then, there are still backstops in place to deter Trump’s more pointed threats. DOJ officials and prosecutors who are not politically appointed could threaten revolt, as has happened in the past. Evidence of wrongdoing would still need to be presented, and courts could reject politically-motivated cases that lack sufficient proof of a crime.
“So, you’d have whatever the traditional limitations are created by our judicial process, including the Constitution and statutes, but you wouldn’t have the gatekeeping function that we’ve counted on the Justice Department to exercise,” Green said.
It’s also worth noting Trump tried to target his political foes during his last administration and faced resistance.
He fumed at Jeff Sessions, his first attorney general, when Sessions recused himself from the DOJ’s investigation into Russian meddling into the 2016 election. In various social media posts, he named people Sessions should go after, including then-FBI Director James Comey, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
After firing Sessions, Trump found what many believed to be a friendlier ally in Bill Barr. Barr framed special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia report in what many said were more favorable terms for Trump than the findings warranted. He also drew scrutiny for intervening in the government’s case against Trump’s first national security adviser Michael Flynn and for suggesting a lighter sentence for longtime Trump ally Roger Stone. The actions led many Democrats and former DOJ officials to decry the politicization of the department under Barr’s leadership.
PHOTO: President Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr step off Air Force One upon arrival at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, Sept. 1, 2020. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
But when Trump urged Barr and the Department of Justice to push a narrative of election fraud after his loss to Biden in November 2020, the attorney general and others declined to fall in line. Then-Vice President Mike Pence, a loyalist to Trump, also resisted his demands to unilaterally reject the election results during the certification on Jan. 6, 2021.
Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow of governance studies at the Brookings Institution, said she believed Trump would be stopped again if he tried to use his office to go after enemies or other acts of retribution.
“The Founding Fathers anticipated a Donald Trump,” Kamarck said. “They built a system of checks and balances, and it’s working so far. If Donald Trump won, what would it take to dismantle that checks and balances? It would take a clean sweep of the Congress — 60 senators in the Senate and an overwhelming majority in the House of Representatives — and the courts to start the dismantling. And I don’t see that happening at this time and I don’t see it happening within the four years that he has to do it.”
“In other words,” Kamarck said, “we’re not a banana republic yet even if he’d like to make us one.”
Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung, in response to expert comments that retribution would require never-before-seen politicization of the DOJ, told ABC News, “As President Trump has repeatedly said, the best retribution is the overall success of the American people.”
Donald Trump KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/AFP via Getty Images
The Trumpocene is not normal. If you accept that it is normal or otherwise become habituated to it, the neofascists and other enemies of democracy have won.
For at least the last eight years I have been writing several times a week about the rise of Trumpism and the deep cultural and societal rot that birthed the monstrosity. I view this work as a type of chronicle, an ongoing account of America’s surreal misadventure. As Hannah Arendt and other truth-tellers have shown, fascism and other forms of authoritarianism are an assault on reality, the facts, and the very idea of the truth. Chronicling and otherwise documenting these events and their meaning is a way of trying to ensure that the facts are preserved, as public memory is under assault and organized forgetting spreads rapidly.
On this, Arendt famously warned, “the ideal subject of a totalitarian state is not the convinced Nazi or Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (that is, the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (that is, the standards of thought) no longer exist.”
Chronicling the Trumpocene and America’s democracy crisis and other struggles in this era is also a type of witnessing, which means not just recording the facts but testifying and feeling the pain of others. As psychohistorian Robert Jay Lifton teaches, “One bears witness by taking in the situation — in this case, its malignant nature — and then telling one’s story about it, in this case with the help of professional knowledge, so that we add perspective on what’s wrong, rather than being servants of the powers responsible for the malignant normality. We must be people with a conscience in a very fundamental way.”
It is not just those of us with a public platform who should be carefully chronicling and documenting the Trumpocene and these aberrant events. Everyone who claims to care about democracy and a free society should be doing the same thing. Moreover, this should be done not just online or in some other digital form but in print. The digital is so ephemeral and can easily be disappeared or otherwise altered. Paper is much more real and permanent — and thus dangerous. That is why fascists and other enemies of truth and democracy censor and burn books.
When reality and truth are under siege, doing this type of intellectual and spiritual work is a way to remain sane. As I tell many of the people who reach out to me about escaping the Trumpocene nightmare and who feel exhausted and confused, “You are not crazy, the Trumpocene (and late capitalism, the culture of cruelty, pandemic politics and trauma, environmental collapse, and future shock etc. etc.) is just making you feel that way.”
During the Trumpocene there have been many days when I feel like Charleston Heston in “Planet of the Apes” screaming “It’s a Madhouse!” or Peter Finch as Howard Beale in “Network” bellowing, “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” And there have also been moments, especially as I watch Trumpism nakedly morph into some version of American Hitlerism where I truly wonder if I am Peter Weller in David Cronenberg’s film “Naked Lunch,” and if I have been exposed to that damn “bug powder.”
I know I am not alone in these feelings.
But I realized some months ago that I had made a fundamental error in my assumptions and method in how I have been chronicling these very bad times. The Trumpocene, like other forms of fascism and such malign forces do not exist in a finite space or in a linear relationship to time; it and they really have no concrete beginning and/or end. Such political formations are a type of force that is like a book or story that continues to have chapters added to it in real time. The challenge then, is how to document and intervene against such a force that is dynamic and not static.
To better orient myself, I have been returning to how the Trumpocene (the Age of Trump, the MAGAverse, TrumpWorld or whatever moniker one applies to these years) as a type of malignant normality. Focusing on that constant wrongness has ironically helped me to keep perspective and reinforced how this state of affairs cannot last forever because such systems almost always collapse inward on themselves. And of course, when the collapse takes place, it will not be without great pain and that euphemism for mass death, “collateral damage.”
When insanity becomes the norm, it ceases to be insane. As a practical matter, it is impossible for a society to spend a decade listening to an unwell man say crazy, disassociated, garbled words for hours at a time, almost daily, and maintain the position that he is unhinged. At some point, society decides that the man they once regarded as unhinged, simply is. It’s like sitting in a room that stinks of sulfur. At first the smell is intolerable; but after a while you can’t even notice it if you try. This is more than human nature: It’s how our brains are wired to adapt to environmental conditions. That’s one of my big worries about the next eight months: That it will be biologically and psychologically impossible for a crucial percentage of voters to perceive what the Republican candidate for president actually is.
At the New Yorker, Susan Glasser offers this description of Trump’s recent speech in Rome, Georgia, noting how he embodies and projects malignant normality as a type of patient zero and the main character in a twisted politics reality TV show that he is making up as he goes along:
Trump’s appearance in Georgia, by contrast, reflected a man not rooted in any kind of reality, one who struggled to remember his words and who was, by any definition, incoherent, disconnected, and frequently malicious. (This video compilation, circulating on social media, nails it.) In one lengthy detour, he complained about Biden once being photographed on a beach in his bathing suit. Which led him to Cary Grant, which led him to Michael Jackson, which led him back to the point that even Cary Grant wouldn’t have looked good in a bathing suit at age eighty-one. In another aside, he bragged about how much “women love me,” citing as proof the “suburban housewives from North Carolina” who travel to his rallies around the country. He concluded that portion of his speech by saying:
“But it was an amazing phenomenon and I do protect women. Look, they talk about suburban housewives. I believe I’m doing well—you know, the polls are all rigged. Of course lately they haven’t been rigged because I’m winning by so much, so I don’t want to say it. Disregard that statement. I love the polls very much.”
Makes perfect sense, right?
Echoing Glasser’s concerns about Trump and his disconnect from reality, chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security in the Trump administration, Miles Taylor, who I recently spoke with here at Salon, told MSNBC last Thursday: “The man that I interacted with years ago was very visibly unwell, was observably unstable, and he was the president of the United States then. I can only imagine what’s happened to him since. We’ve witnessed it, we all see it as an American public. But I can’t imagine how unstable he’ll be behind that resolute desk again.”
In another example of how none of this is normal and America’s elites and those so-called guardians of democracy and “the system” have normalized Trump’s deviance and evil, the corrupt ex-president, traitor, Jan. 6 coup attempter, defendant who is facing hundreds of years in prison for serious felonies – which include stealing classified and other top secret documents – will soon be getting intelligence briefings. Why? Because of “tradition” as he is the Republican Party’s presidential nominee. On this perilous absurdity, Tom Nichols warns in the Atlantic:
The decision rests, as always, with the sitting president, and Joe Biden is likely to continue this practice so that he will not be accused of “politicizing” access to intelligence. Such accusations need not be taken seriously; they would only be more meaningless noise from a GOP that has already stumbled in a clumsy attempt to impeach Biden after leveling charges of corruption at both him and his son. And although denying Trump access to classified briefs would produce squawks and yowls from Republicans, it would also serve as a reminder that Trump cannot be trusted with classified information.
The risks of denying Trump these early briefings are negligible. As we learned from his presidency, Trump is fundamentally unbriefable: He doesn’t listen, and he doesn’t understand complicated national-security matters anyway. The problem with giving Trump these briefings, however, isn’t that he’s ignorant. He’s also dangerous, as his record shows.
Indeed, if Trump were a federal employee, he’d have likely already been stripped of his clearances and escorted from the building. I say this from experience: I was granted my first security clearance when I was 25 years old—Ronald Reagan was still president, which tells you how long ago that was—and I held a top-secret clearance when I advised a senior U.S. senator during the Gulf War. I then held a clearance as a Department of Defense employee for more than a quarter century.
Government employees who hold clearances have to attend annual refresher courses about a variety of issues, including some pretty obvious stuff about not writing down passwords or taking money from a friendly Chinese businessman wearing an American baseball cap. (No, really, that’s a scenario in some of the course materials.) But one area of annual training is always about “insider threats,” the people in your own organization who may pose risks to classified information. Federal workers are taken through a list of behaviors and characteristics that should trigger their concern enough to report the person involved, or at least initiate a talk with a supervisor.
Trump checks almost every box on those lists. (You can find examples of insider-threat training here and here, but every agency has particular briefs they give to their organizations.)
Continuing with this betrayal of America’s pluralistic multiracial democracy, Trump recently met with Hungary’s neofascist leader, Viktor Orban. This meeting is part of a much larger pattern where today’s Republican Party and larger “conservative” movement are forging an international alliance with malign actors and other enemies of democracy.
Within a 24-hour period, the 2024 presidential campaign kicked off in a way that could not present the choice before the American public more starkly.
Joe Biden stood before the Congress and, in his State of the Union address, made a powerful case that he would fight with every fiber of his being to preserve American democracy and the fundamental freedoms of all Americans.
Then, late Friday, Donald Trump hosted Hungary’s authoritarian ruler, Viktor Orbán, in the kind of pro-Putin, anti-democracy summit that perfectly captured the true nature of today’s MAGA Republican Party. The dinner reception was so important that even Melania Trump made one of her rare appearances at her husband’s side. Trump said, “There’s nobody smarter or a better leader than Viktor Orbán. He’s the boss. He’s a non-controversial figure because he says, ‘This is the way it’s going to be and that’s the end of it.’ He’s the boss. He’s a great leader.”
A day earlier, Orbán—Vladimir Putin’s man in Europe, his acolyte and champion—met behind closed doors with the leaders of the new American right at the Heritage Foundation.
There it is, America. Biden is running to preserve America’s traditional values and institutions. Trump and the GOP have openly embraced autocracy, celebrating the virtues of “strong man” government.
If Donald Trump had actually been put on trial, and properly punished for the crimes of Jan. 6 and his other violations of American democracy, civil society and the law, the Trumpocene and this state of malignant normality would be closer to dissipating. Of course, and in an anti-climax because it confirms what has long been obvious, the Washington Post is reporting that Attorney General Merrick Garland delayed investigating Trump for his obvious crimes of Jan. 6 and the larger coup plot for more than a year. The result of that choice is that Trump will likely not be tried and sentenced before the 2024 Election. If he defeats President Biden, Trump will then ignore the verdicts against him and seek revenge on all people who dared to hold him accountable for his crime spree.
Investigative reporters Carol Leonnig and Aaron Davis detail how:
Hours after he was sworn in as attorney general, Merrick Garland and his deputies gathered in a wood-paneled conference room in the Justice Department for a private briefing on the investigation he had promised to make his highest priority: bringing to justice those responsible for the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
In the two months since the siege, federal agents had conducted 709 searches, charged 278 rioters and identified 885 likely suspects, said Michael R. Sherwin, then-acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, ticking through a slide presentation. Garland and some of his deputies nodded approvingly at the stats, and the new attorney general called the progress “remarkable,” according to people in the room.
Congressional staffers barricade doors while taking cover during the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Amanda Voisard for The Washington Post)
Sherwin’s office, with the help of the FBI, was responsible for prosecuting all crimes stemming from the Jan. 6 attack. He had made headlines the day after by refusing to rule out the possibility that President Donald Trump himself could be culpable. “We are looking at all actors, not only the people who went into the building,” Sherwin said in response to a reporter’s question about Trump. “If the evidence fits the elements of a crime, they’re going to be charged.”
But according to a copy of the briefing document, absent from Sherwin’s 11-page presentation to Garland on March 11, 2021, was any reference to Trump or his advisers — those who did not go to the Capitol riot but orchestrated events that led to it.
A Washington Post investigation found that more than a year would pass before prosecutors and FBI agents jointly embarked on a formal probe of actions directed from the White House to try to steal the election. Even then, the FBI stopped short of identifying the former president as a focus of that investigation.
A wariness about appearing partisan, institutional caution, and clashes over how much evidence was sufficient to investigate the actions of Trump and those around him all contributed to the slow pace. Garland and the deputy attorney general, Lisa Monaco, charted a cautious course aimed at restoring public trust in the department while some prosecutors below them chafed, feeling top officials were shying away from looking at evidence of potential crimes by Trump and those close to him, The Post found.
Ultimately, malignant normality through Trumpism, neofascism, white supremac(ies) racism(s) or whatever other type of vessel it uses to inject its poison is a threat to a humane society and a real social democracy. The language and labels we use to describe this reactionary revolutionary project must not distract us from that basic and foundational truth.
The cruel language and practices of human degradation and destructiveness now feed a growing fascist politics in the U.S. Fascist demagogues now boast about their racial fantasies, unchecked adoration of violence, and their aggressive lawlessness. What Ingmar Bergman once called “The Serpent’s Egg,” a metaphor for the birth of fascism, is about to hatch.
In a world shaped increasingly by emerging authoritarianism, it has become increasingly difficult to remember what a purposeful and substantive democracy looks like, or for that matter, what the idea of democracy might suggest. Democracy as an ideal, promise, and working practice is under assault, just as a number of far-right educational, market, military, and religious fundamentalisms are gaining ascendancy in American society. Increasingly, it becomes more challenging to inhabit those public spheres where politics thrives—where thinking, speaking, and acting subjects engage and critically address the major forces and problems bearing down on their lives. In this new moment in history, which too often resembles the nightmares of a fascist past with its banning of books, erasing of history, attack on trans people, and support of white nationalism and supremacy, the question of how society should imagine itself or what its future might hold has become more demanding given the eradication of social formations that place an emphasis on truth, social justice, freedom, equality, and compassion.
Historical and social amnesia have become the organizing principles of U.S. society. Lies morph into the celebration of violence, and language becomes part of the machinery of social death, relegated to the sphere of consumer culture, and devoid of an ethical grammar that is banished to zones of political and social abandonment.
Here, Giroux focuses in on how malignant normality reflects a failure of imagination:
What’s happening in this country is a failure of imagination.
Many of us take our freedoms for granted. We can’t envision a day when our rights would disappear, leaving us at the mercy of a dictatorship that’s accountable to no one.
Human beings are basically optimistic, and many of us haven’t considered the possibility that 248 years of democracy could end on a single election day. But they can, and they might.
Today I’m asking you to be alarmed – to be deeply afraid. But not crippled by that fear. I’m pleading with you to become motivated to avert a national disaster….
That’s right. The Nazi agenda was inconceivable to decent people – and that’s part of the reason it became a reality.
There was a failure of imagination.
But with today’s MAGA fascism, we don’t have to exercise our imagination very much. We just have to fight the temptation to downplay the dangers that Trump and his gang display in public, for all of us to see….
Whatever you do, don’t ignore what’s happening. Be part of the patriotic rescue of your country – something you can take pride in for the rest of your days. Consider it your gift to your children, your grandchildren, and future generations that you’ll never know.
Fight fascism now, while you can. Be a hero to your country.
I often use therapeutic language to describe the Trumpocene because fascism and other such evil forces are not “just” about politics but are an attack on our collective mental, spiritual, and physical – and intellectual – health. Applying that framework, Donald Trump is abusing the American people.
In an abusive relationship, the horrible and wrong becomes normalized and the victim often ends up celebrating those days when there is no abuse. In essence, what should be every day and a baseline becomes something special and “proof” that the relationship can somehow work or is “healthy.” Unfortunately, too many Americans have internalized the abuse, believe they deserve it, and as shown by public opinion polls want Donald Trump back in the White House to punish them (and the people they hate) some more.
Drinking water in US prisons may contain dangerous levels of ‘forever chemicals’: Study
Sharon Udasin – March 21, 2024
Nearly half of American prisons are located downstream from water sources that are likely contaminated with cancer-linked “forever chemicals,” a new study has found.
Due to insufficient water quality testing in and around such sites, officials have only found that 5 percent of U.S. carceral institutions are situated in watersheds that definitively contain these toxic compounds, according to the study, published in the American Journal of Public Health. But tens of thousands of people are incarcerated at those facilities — and presumptive sources of exposure were found near many more sites.
When it comes to toxins like forever chemicals, also known as PFAS, incarcerated populations are of particular concern because they have minimal ability to reduce their exposures and are therefore especially vulnerable to acute health effects, the researchers stressed.
“If you think of the incarcerated population as a city spread out over this vast archipelago of carceral facilities, it would be the fifth largest city in the country,” senior author Nicholas Shapiro, a medical anthropologist the University of California, Los Angeles, said in a statement.
That figurative “city,” he continued, has “potentially very high levels of toxicants in its water and no ability to mitigate exposure.”
Notorious for their ability to persist in both the human body and in the environment, PFAS have been connected to a variety of illnesses — including kidney cancer, thyroid disease and testicular cancer.
There are thousands of types of PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), found in industrial waste, certain types of firefighting foam and household products, such as nonstick pans, waterproof apparel and many cosmetics.
To draw their conclusions about prisons’ potential exposure to the substances, the researchers assembled a list of the country’s 6,118 carceral facilities from the Department of Homeland Security and conducted a geospatial data analysis to pinpoint which sites were situated in watersheds with known or likely PFAS pollution.
They also considered whether watershed boundaries were at higher elevations with respect to the carceral institutions, as such positioning increases the likelihood that pollutants are infiltrating the facility’s water supply.
Ultimately, they identified 310 sites — or 5 percent of the total facilities — situated in such watersheds, at a lower elevation than at least one known source of PFAS contamination.
At least 150,000 people, of which at least 2,200 are juveniles, live in these facilities, according to the study.
But the reality may be far worse. The authors found that nearly half of all U.S. carceral institutions — 47 percent — have at least one presumptive source of PFAS pollution at a higher elevation than the facilities and within their watershed boundaries.
More than half of U.S. juvenile facilities — 56 percent — meet that description, per the findings.
These potentially polluted prisons, jails and detention centers — the majority of which are state- and county-run institutions — house about 990,000 people, including at least 12,800 juveniles, the authors noted.
Many carceral facilities may be contending with multiple PFAS exposures, with 31 percent of U.S. institutions located in areas with more than one presumptive source of contamination, according to the study. About 13 percent have more than five presumptive sources.
Because about a third of the carceral facilities were missing complete population data, however, the total number of individuals exposed could be much higher, the researchers warned.
Co-author Lindsay Poirier, an assistant professor of statistical and data sciences at Smith College, emphasized the challenges the researchers faced in conducting the study due to the “substantial data gaps” in water quality monitoring and population numbers.
“We’re trying to draw attention to areas that have been underassessed,” Poirier said in a statement.
In addition to the lack of transparent information available, the authors pointed to potential environmental justice issues, as the residents of U.S. prisons “are disproportionately Black, Latinx, Indigenous, low-income, and LGBTQ+.”
Incarcerated youths are also disproportionately adolescents of color, with Black youths more than four times more likely than white youths to be held in a juvenile institution, per the study.
U.S. prisons, they explained, are therefore “an important window into how the justice system advances public health inequities,” the researchers stated.
Although the authors could not test whether the polluted water was for sure entering the prisons, they stressed a need for further research, as these toxins can have lifelong health impacts.
“The most rigorous and consistent water testing is done in well-resourced or particularly engaged communities,” Shapiro said, noting that these same communities are best equipped to reduce their exposure.
“Incarcerated populations have a lot in common with marginalized populations elsewhere in the country that lack the resources and political clout to get their water cleaned up,” Shapiro added. “That needs to change.”
Russia launches likely largest-ever attack on Ukraine’s energy system, Ukrainian official says
Andrew Carey, Yulia Kesaieva, Victoria Butenko, Olga Voitovych and Radina Gigova – March 22, 2024
Russia launched one of its biggest missile and drone barrages on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure overnight into Friday since the start of its full-scale invasion more than two years ago.
Ukrainian officials said at least 10 of the country’s regions were struck in an attack targeting power supplies in multiple towns and cities, including Kharkiv in the east, Odesa on the coast and Kryvyi Rih in the center.
The attacks have left well over 1 million households without electricity Friday morning, according to reports from multiple regional authorities. Only Kyiv and the northwest of the country were spared.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said it had “launched a massive strike” on Ukraine’s “military-industrial complex” in response to recent strikes on Russia’s territory. Ukraine’s military – as well as pro-Ukrainian groups of Russian fighters – have this month targeted Russia’s border regions of Belgorod and Kursk, forcing schools to close and residents to evacuate.
“All the goals of the massive strike have been achieved,” the ministry said.
Among the major targets was Ukraine’s largest hydroelectric power complex, situated on the Dnipro river in the southern Zaporizhzhia region.
Ihor Syrota, chief executive of Ukrhydroenergo, the site’s operator, said both electricity generating plants there had suffered massive damage and that it was unclear when or if the plants would be able to resume operations.
The dam itself was currently not in danger of being breached, however, after workers opened the dam’s gates to allow water to flow downriver, another senior Ukrainian energy executive, Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, told national television.
Kudrytskyi said the missile and drone barrage was likely the largest-ever single attack on Ukraine’s energy system.
The energy company operating in Dnipropetrovsk region, DTEK, said more than 1,000 miners were working underground when coal mines in the region lost power due to the strike.
The miners were evacuated above ground and no one was injured, DTEK said, adding that coal production would resume once the mines had been repaired.
At least three people were killed in the nationwide strikes, with two reported dead in Khmelnytskyi region, in western Ukraine, and one in Zaporizhzhia. Several people are reported missing and more than a dozen have been injured.
Mykola Oleshchuk, commander of Ukraine’s air force, said 151 missiles and drones had been launched, including 12 Iskander M ballistic missiles, 7 Kinzhal (Kh-47M2) ballistic missiles and 5 Kh-22 cruise missiles.
Over two years of war, these missile types have proven among the hardest for Ukraine’s air defenses to shoot down. According to Oleshchuk, all 24 of these missiles evaded attempts to intercept them.
Elsewhere, the air force commander said 63 Shahed drones had been fired, of which 55 were intercepted.
He said 40 cruise missiles of type Kh-101/Kh-555 were launched, of which 35 were shot down, while two Kh-59 guided missiles were launched and intercepted.
Finally, 22 S-300 and S-400 missile types – originally designed as anti-aircraft interceptors but commonly used by Russia as attack weapons – were also fired. These are usually left alone by air defense systems because the possible interception time is too short.
Rocket debris is scattered by a strike near a residential building in Zaporizhzhia. – Kateryna Klochko/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Friday’s attack came a day after Kyiv was struck with a salvo of 31 missiles, in an attack targeting facilities belonging to the Defense Intelligence Directorate, a Ukrainian source told CNN.
That strike included just two ballistic missiles, possibly North Korean-made. All 31 missiles fired were intercepted, officials said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky posted a video on Telegram showing firefighters responding at one of the badly damaged energy facilities, and issued a plea to his allies to provide Ukraine with more support.
“Russian missiles do not suffer delays in the way aid packages to our country do. Shahed drones are not affected by indecision like some politicians are,” Zelensky said.
“Our partners know exactly what is needed. They can definitely support us. We need these solutions. Life must be protected from these non-humans from Moscow,” he said, adding that Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia in particular needed US-made Patriot air defense systems.
For months, Republicans in the US House of Representatives have blocked a military aid package valued at $60 billion, as the issue of support for Ukraine has become embroiled in the political debate surrounding Donald Trump’s campaign to regain the presidency.
US President Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan visited Kyiv on Wednesday and insisted he remained confident the House would eventually pass a new assistance package, though he could not say when he thought this might happen.
Ukraine war: Five dead and a million without power after wave of Russian strikes
Lipika Pelham – BBC News – March 22, 2024
A million people are without power across Ukraine after Russian missiles targeted energy infrastructure.
There is no electricity in the second-largest city of Kharkiv, the regional head says, and more than 53,000 households in Odesa are without power.
Ukraine’s energy minister, German Galushchenko, accused Russia of trying to provoke “a large-scale failure of the country’s energy system”.
Russia said it was revenge for recent Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory.
At least five people have been reported killed and 14 wounded.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said the latest wave of attacks showed that Western allies must give more military aid to Ukraine, including additional air defence systems.
“There are no delays in Russian missiles like there are in assistance to our country,” he wrote on Telegram.
Some 90 missiles and 60 Shahed drones were launched into Ukraine during the wave of overnight attacks, he said.
Among the targets was Ukraine’s largest dam – the DniproHES in Zaporizhzhia, which was hit eight times according to Ukrainian officials. Video footage appeared to show the dam on fire, but authorities say there is no threat of an imminent breach.
Officials also say that a trolleybus which was crossing the dam at the time caught fire after a missile strike, killing the driver.
“At 04:30 all hell broke loose. Terrible fireworks and explosions. At one point, our house tilted,” Valentyna, an eyewitness whose house overlooks the dam told the BBC.
The UN’s nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, said the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant lost connection to the main power line for almost five hours on Friday following the Russian attacks.
This highlighted the “ever-present dangers to nuclear safety and security during the conflict”, it said.
The plant, however, continued to receive external electricity for reactor cooling from its only remaining back-up power line.
Regional head Ivan Fedorov said seven buildings in Zaporizhzhia had been destroyed and 35 others damaged.
Strikes were also reported in President Zelensky’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih and in Vinnytsia, both in central Ukraine. They damaged a “critical infrastructure object”, said Ukrainian officials.
Russia’s defence ministry said the assault on Ukraine’s power grid was part of a series of revenge attacks against Kyiv for its earlier incursions into Russian territory.
Local officials in the Russian region of Belgorod, near the border with Ukraine, said on Thursday that a woman had been killed and many other people wounded by a Ukrainian strike.
The fresh attacks come a day after Russian forces launched one of their biggest air strikes in weeks on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. At least 17 people, including a child, were injured by falling debris.
Attacks on the energy grid has been part of Russia’s warfare against Ukraine since 2022.
Moscow has previously carried out strikes on Ukrainian power infrastructure plunging millions of people into darkness and depriving them of heat, power and water.
Attacks during the autumn and winter of 2022 left 17 million Ukrainians without a regular supply of electricity for extended periods.
But the head of the Ukrainian grid operator, Volodymyr Kudrytsky, said Thursday night’s attacks were worse.
“Even last winter, attacks on our energy system weren’t so bad as last night. Dozens of grid facilities have been hit. This is on a global scale.”
Mr Kudrytsky added that the worst affected area was Kharkiv, where “Russia literally tried to destroy all the main energy facilities feeding the city”.
Firefighters at a power station in Kharkiv after Russian missile attack
President Zelensky has often described the Russian attacks on power stations as “energy terrorism”.
The White House condemned Thursday’s attacks and renewed its call for urgent additional air defences for Ukraine as soon as possible.
Russia launches massive air attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure
Patrick Reevell – March 22, 2024
Russia unleashed a massive aerial attack on Friday in what Ukrainian officials said was the largest and most destructive assault on its energy infrastructure since the start of the war.
Over 150 missiles and drones were involved in the bombardment, striking targets across the Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian air force, knocking out power to swathes of the country and badly damaging its largest hydroelectric power station. It was the second largest aerial attack on Ukraine since Russia began its invasion two years ago, the air force said.
At least three people were killed in the assault, and 15 others were injured, according to Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office.
Ukraine’s military said air defenses destroyed around 90 of the projectiles but more than a third still managed to get through.
The strikes forced emergency shut downs of electricity in at least seven regions, including Odesa, Dnipro, Poltava, Zaporizhzhia and Kirovohrad, according to Ukraine’s state energy company. Officials in Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, said it was entirely without power following the attacks.
“The morning attack by the Russians on the energy system of Ukraine was the largest ever,” Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, the head of Ukrenergo said in a statement.
Kharkiv’s mayor Ihor Terekhov said it was also the largest attack on the city since the start of the war, with at least 20 missiles fired into energy infrastructure, calling the damage “too severe.”
Missiles also hit Ukraine’s largest hydroelectric power station, the Dnipro dam in Zaporizhzhia, setting off a huge fire there and causing critical damage, according to Ukrainian officials.
“We are losing the station,” Ihor Syrota, head of Ukraine’s state hydro-power company, Ukrhydroenergo, told RFE/RL in a live interview, saying that two missiles had struck the power plant.
Ukrainian officials said the structural integrity of the dam itself was not in danger, but local authorities warned people to stock up on water in case of possible shortages.
Friday’s attack involved more than 75 missiles, including seven advanced, hypersonic Kinzhal missiles, according to Ukraine’s air force.
PHOTO: Smoke and fire erupt from an missile explosion on Ukraine’s largest dam, the DniproHES, in Zaporizhzhia (Denys Shmyhal/prime Minister Of /via Reuters)
The attack came as Ukraine is suffering increasingly severe shortages of air defense ammunition, amid delays in Western supplies and with more U.S. support blocked in Congress. A day earlier, Russia launched its largest missile attack on Ukraine’s capital Kyiv in months.
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday said the attacks showed the cost of the delays in Western support.
Russian drones “don’t have indecision,” Zelensky said in a video address. “It’s important to understand the price of delays and decisions put off. Our partners definitely know what is necessary. They definitely can support. These decisions are needed.”
A new $60 billion military aid package that would include funding for air defense is currently stalled in Congress, blocked by hard right Republicans close to former President Donald Trump. The bill was approved by a bipartisan majority in the Senate in December but Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson has refused to put it to a vote.
Russia has largely avoided striking Ukraine’s energy infrastructure for the past few months, instead focusing on military production targets. But Ukraine increasingly faces a choice of using its limited air defenses to protect large cities and civilian infrastructure or deploy it to the frontline, where Russia is regaining air superiority.
Ukraine has used the advanced handful of Patriot air defense batteries provided by the U.S. and European countries to shield Kyiv, but does not have enough to protect key cities elsewhere.
Ukrainian officials on Friday also defended recent Ukrainian attacks on Russia’s oil industry, following reports that U.S. officials have urged Ukraine to halt them over fears it is driving up oil prices globally.
Ukrainian drones have repeatedly struck major Russian oil refineries in recent weeks, in an apparent campaign to undermine Russia’s income for its energy sector, a crucial source of revenue for the Kremlin.
The Financial Times on Friday reported that U.S. officials have warned officials at Ukraine’s intelligence service the attacks should stop.
But Ukrainian deputy prime minister Olha Stefanishyna told a security forum Friday the strikes were legitimate.
“These are absolutely legal goals from a military point of view. We understand the appeals of American partners. At the same time, we are fighting with the capabilities, resources, and practices that we have today,” she said at the Kyiv Security Forum.
Russia launches ‘largest series of air strikes’ on Ukraine since start of war
Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy – March 22, 2024
Russia launched the largest wave of missiles and Iranian–supplied drones against Ukrainian cities since the start of the war two years ago, the White House said Friday.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the attacks, launched overnight, demonstrated how important it is for U.S. to continue providing air defense systems and capabilities to the Ukrainians to fend off Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Mr. Putin is not waiting,” Kirby said. ”He’s not sitting on his hands. He’s making lethal use of every single minute available to him. While our own Congress refuses to act, he’s not wavering.”
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby
President Joe Biden has been urging Congress to pass an emergency national security bill which was approved by the Senate with bipartisan support and includes $60 billion in assistance for Ukraine. The bill has failed to gain traction in the Republican-controlled House.
“The House of Representatives must pass the national security supplemental as soon as possible so that we can provide Ukraine with this vital equipment,” said Kirby. “And as we’ve seen in just the last couple of days, every single day the House delays is another day that the Ukrainians have to pay for it with their own lives.”
A Ukrainian officer from The 56th Separate Motorized Infantry Mariupol Brigade fires a multiple launch rocket system based on a pickup truck towards Russian positions at the front line, near Bakhmut, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Tuesday, March 5, 2024.
The attack left more than one million homes without electricity; the targets included power plants and energy supply lines, a hydroelectric dam, ordinary residential buildings and “even a trolleybus,” according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“Russia is at war with people’s everyday lives,” wrote Zelenskyy. “My condolences to the loved ones of those killed by this terror.”
Ukrainian officials say that at least 10 different regions of their country were struck.
Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy is a White House Correspondent for USA TODAY.
Factbox-‘Bloodbath,’ ‘vermin,’ ‘animals’: Trump’s rhetoric on the trail
Gram Slattery – March 22, 2024
FILE PHOTO: Former U.S. President Trump hosts a campaign rally, in Rome, Georgia
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has made a series of inflammatory and racist statements on the U.S. campaign trail since declaring his candidacy in November 2022.
In some cases, he has used violent imagery to lambaste immigrants and opponents. He has warned that the United States is on the verge of collapse, and his rhetoric has raised concerns that he might flout democratic norms by using the power of the state to target perceived enemies if he is elected.
Here are some of Trump’s more controversial statements to date:
BLOOD POISONING
Trump has said on several occasions that immigrants in the United States illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
Anti-Defamation League leader Jonathan Greenblatt called the language “racist, xenophobic and despicable.” The campaign of Democratic President Joe Biden compared Trump’s comments to those of Adolf Hitler, who used the phrase “blood poisoning” in his manifesto “Mein Kampf.”
Public opinion polls show that illegal immigration is a leading concern for voters, and Trump has consistently portrayed immigration as a major driver of violent crime and economic decay.
In past statements, Trump has suggested that Democrats are purposefully allowing migrants into the country to grow their political support.
This is a key element of the far-right “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, which asserts that leftist and Jewish elites are engineering the ethnic and cultural replacement of white populations with immigrants of color that will lead to a “white genocide.”
The debate over the economic effects of immigration is decades-long, though most researchers say immigration broadly boosts economic growth.
Some 33% of Republicans in a February Reuters/Ipsos poll cited immigration as their top issue, while 6% of Democrats said the same.
VERMIN
Trump pledged at a November rally in New Hampshire that he would “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.”
Those comments drew rebukes from congressional Democrats and some moderate Republicans. Some historians have traced the use of the word “vermin” to Hitler and Italy’s Benito Mussolini.
Political historians say the use of dehumanizing rhetoric – including words like “vermin” – makes it easier to strip away rights from residents and citizens as they are seen as less worthy of democratic or constitutional protections. Nazis, for instance, frequently referred to Jews as lice, rats and vermin.
The Trump campaign has dismissed those comparisons.
BLOODBATH
During a March appearance alongside a Republican Senate candidate in Ohio, Trump warned of a “bloodbath” if he fails to unseat Biden in November’s election.
At the time Trump was discussing the need to protect the U.S. auto industry from overseas competition, and Trump and allies later said he was referring to the auto industry when he used the term.
Trump’s campaign has sought to portray Biden as a threat to automaking jobs in Michigan, a key swing state, due to the Biden administration’s promotion of electric vehicles.
Biden’s campaign team rejected that characterization and condemned what it called Trump’s “extremism,” “his thirst for revenge” and his “threats of political violence.”
IMMIGRANTS ARE ‘ANIMALS,’ ‘NOT PEOPLE’
Trump has frequently referred to immigrants in the country illegally in subhuman terms, for example referring to them as animals who are prone to violence.
“In some cases they’re not people, in my opinion,” he said during his March appearance in Ohio. “But I’m not allowed to say that because the radical Left says that’s a terrible thing to say. “These are animals, OK, and we have to stop it,” he said.
During stump speeches, Trump frequently claims that immigrants crossing the border illegally have escaped from prisons and asylums in their home countries and are fueling violent crime in the United States.
While available data on criminals’ immigration status is sparse, researchers say people in the country illegally do not commit violent crimes at a higher rate than native-born citizens.
BLACK AMERICANS AND CRIME
Trump drew the ire of Biden’s campaign and civil rights leaders and groups in February when he suggested Black voters were more drawn to him because of his criminal indictments. He also said Black voters had come to “embrace” his mugshots.
“And then I got indicted a second time and a third time and a fourth time. And a lot of people said that that’s why the Black people like me because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against,” Trump said while speaking to a Black conservative group in South Carolina before the state’s primary election, which he went on to win.
Trump’s legal challenges, including federal charges over his alleged efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss and his handling of classified documents, among other state charges and civil lawsuits, differ greatly from the historic inequities Black Americans have experienced in the criminal justice system.
Trump has also described at least two Black prosecutors – Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and New York Attorney General Letitia James – as “animals.” He has repeatedly referred to James as “Peekaboo,” which rhymes with a racial slur.
Trump allies say his attacks are referring to prosecutors’ conduct, not their race, and they say he is working hard to win the support of Black voters.
APOCALYPSE NOW
Trump frequently leans into apocalyptic imagery on the campaign trail, telling supporters that if he does not win in November – or if he does not otherwise get his way – the country will enter into terminal decline.
At a March campaign event in North Carolina, Trump said Biden’s immigration policies amounted to a “conspiracy to overthrow the United States” through lax security policies that had allowed millions of migrants to stream across the U.S. border with Mexico.
Biden’s administration, Trump contended, seeks “to collapse the American system, nullify the will of the actual American voters and establish a new base of power that gives them control for generations.”
In response, Biden’s campaign pointed to a border security bill in Congress that Trump helped torpedo in February by urging Republicans to vote against it.
DICTATOR ON ‘DAY ONE’
During a televised town hall in December, Trump said he would not be a dictator “other than (on) Day One” of a potential second term. He said he would close the southern border with Mexico and expand oil drilling during the first day of his administration.
Biden’s campaign said the comments were explicit proof that he wants to be an autocrat, while Trump’s allies said he was joking.
Biden has centered his campaign on the contention that stopping Trump from returning to office is crucial, as Trump represents a threat to democracy.
Trump argues that Biden is a more serious threat to democracy, as federal law enforcement agencies under him are prosecuting prominent Republicans, himself included.
Some 44% of Democrats said extremism is their top election issue, according to the February Reuters/Ipsos poll, while 13% of Republicans said the same.
GRAPHIC: Where Biden and Trump stand on the issues.
(Reporting by Gram Slattery, editing by Ross Colvin, Kieran Murray and Howard Goller)
Man who helped drag police officer into mob gets over 5 years in prison for Capitol riot attacks
Michael Kunzelman – March 21, 2024
This image from police body-worn camera video, contained and annotated in the Justice Department’s government’s sentencing memorandum supporting the sentencing of Jeffrey Sabol shows Sabol at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington. During the course of an attack on police officers, Sabol ripped the baton out of the hands of a fallen officer, leaving him unable to defend himself against assaults by other rioters. Sabol then helped his co-defendants drag a second officer into the crowd, where that officer was also beaten by rioters. (Department of Justice via AP)This combination of images from police body-worn camera video, contained and annotated in the Justice Department’s government’s sentencing memorandum supporting the sentencing of Jeffrey Sabol, shows Sabol at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington. During the course of an attack on police officers, Sabol ripped the baton out of the hands of a fallen officer, leaving him unable to defend himself against assaults by other rioters. Sabol then helped his co-defendants drag a second officer into the crowd, where that officer was also beaten by rioters. (Department of Justice via AP)This image from police body-worn camera video, contained and annotated in the Justice Department’s government’s sentencing memorandum supporting the sentencing of Jeffrey Sabol, shows Sabol at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington. During the course of an attack on police officers, Sabol ripped the baton out of the hands of a fallen officer, leaving him unable to defend himself against assaults by other rioters. Sabol then helped his co-defendants drag a second officer into the crowd, where that officer was also beaten by rioters. (Department of Justice via AP)
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Colorado man who helped other rioters drag a police officer into a mob storming the U.S. Capitol was sentenced on Thursday to more than five years in prison for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack.
Jeffrey Sabol ripped a baton from an officer’s hands before pulling another officer into the crowd outside the Capitol, allowing other rioters to assault the officer with weapons.
Sabol, 54, told U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras that he knows he is “100%” guilty and would have apologized directly to the officers whom he attacked if they had attended the hearing.
“I accept whatever it is you hand me,” Sabol said. “I’ll be honest: I deserve it.”
The judge sentenced Sabol to five years and three months behind bars. He’ll get credit for the three years and two months that he has already spent in jail since his arrest.
Contreras said Sabol had mischaracterized his violent actions on Jan. 6 as efforts to be helpful.
“It’s hard to imagine how any of this was helpful,” the judge said after describing Sabol’s conduct that day.
Prosecutors recommended a prison sentence of 10 years and one month for Sabol.
Sabol told FBI agents who arrested him that he was filled with “patriotic rage” on Jan. 6 because he believed the 2020 presidential election was stolen from then-President Donald Trump and said he answered a “call to battle” because he was a “patriot warrior,” according to prosecutors.
Contreras convicted Sabol of felony charges last year after a “stipulated bench trial,” which means the judge decided the case without a jury based on facts that both sides agreed to in advance. Such trials allow defendants to admit to certain facts while maintaining a right to appeal a conviction.
Sabol traveled from Colorado to Washington, D.C., with other members of what he called a “neighborhood watch” group. They attended Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally near the White House on Jan. 6 before Sabol went to the Capitol, where lawmakers were certifying President Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory.
Sabol was wearing a helmet when he and other rioters attacked police officers on the west side of the Capitol.
“He entered the fray with the intent to halt the certification of the electoral college vote and to violently combat what he believed was a stolen election,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing.
On the Lower West Terrace, Sabol initially watched as another rioter beat a Metropolitan Police Department officer with a crutch and started to drag that officer down a set of steps. Sabol and a third rioter stepped in and helped drag the officer headfirst down the steps and into the crowd, where other rioters beat him with a flagpole and baton.
After Sabol stole a baton from another officer, other rioters dragged the officer into the crowd, kicked and stomped on him, struck him with poles and ripped off his gas mask before he was pepper sprayed.
Sabol tried to cover his tracks and flee the country after the riot. He microwaved laptops and hard drives, dropped his cell phone out a car window and booked a flight to Zurich, Switzerland, but he didn’t board the flight. Instead, he rented a car and drove to the Westchester, New York, area before he was arrested on Jan. 22, 2021.
Sabol worked as a senior geophysical manager for an environmental services company that fired him after his arrest.
“Jeff Sabol is not a violent man and regrets being caught up in his emotions and engaging in conduct that is not reflective of the law-abiding man and loving father that he has always strived to project,” his attorney wrote in a court filing.
Contreras previously sentenced several other rioters who were charged with Sabol and convicted of attacking the injured officers.
A former Tennessee sheriff’s deputy, Ronald Colton McAbee, was sentenced to five years and 10 months in prison. Florida resident Mason Courson was sentenced to four years and nine months in prison. Arkansas truck driver Peter Francis Stager was sentenced to four years and four months in prison. Michigan resident Justin Jersey was sentenced to four years and three months in prison. Michigan construction worker Logan Barnhart was sentenced to three years in prison. Kentucky business owner Clayton Ray Mullins was sentenced to two years and six months in prison.
Another co-defendant, Georgia business owner Jack Wade Whitton, is scheduled to be sentenced in May.
More than 1,300 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the Capitol riot. Over 800 of them have been sentenced, with roughly two-thirds receiving a term of imprisonment ranging from a few days to 22 years.
