Former President Donald Trump has been indicted for a second time, this time on federal charges in relation to his handling of classified information while out of office, sources familiar confirm to ABC News.
The former president faces at least seven charges, sources tell ABC News, which include willful retention of national defense information, conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding a document or record, corruptly concealing a document or record, concealing a document in a federal investigation, scheme to conceal, and false statements and representations.
Maximum sentences for the respective charges, per their statutes, range from five up to 20 years, although any eventual sentence should Trump be convicted would likely be much lower.
This is a sad and solemn time for our republic but I can't say he didn't have it coming. He played every angle with the classified documents in his possession, thumbed his nose at the law and the Justice Department was evidently not amused. Laws and rules are supposed to apply to everybody and guys that try to start insurrections when they lose elections get no special favors or dispensations in our country.
When I was sixteen I dropped out of school and went hitchhiking. I ended up in Spokane, Washington at the World's Fair. Now I had no money to get into the fair but I watched as kid after kid hopped the fence and got in for free and I decided to take the plunge myself.
Unfortunately there was a cop waiting for me on the other side of the wall. I was arrested for tax evasion (there was a 25 cent state admissions tax) and thrown in jail for five days, it was Thursday and the judge showed up on Mondays.
I tried the everybody else was doing it defense (Donald Trump's favorite) but neither the cops nor the judge was buying it. I did my time and now thoroughly repentant, can attest to never having jumped over a fence at a World's Fair again. We can change our behavior, some of us anyway. Anyway, the defense didn't work for me and my guess is that it won't work for Trump, we all have to do our time when we do the crime.
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I was thinking, perhaps to spare a divided country more national grief it might make sense to send him into exile with one of his dictator friends. In the last couple weeks he has swooned over Kim Jong Un, Erdogan, Putin and Orban. Surely one of these guys could spare an idle dachau for the Donald until the heat cools off?
It is the height of narcissism to quote yourself in your own blogposts but I once wrote what I consider is a doozy of an article on the birth of democracy in ancient Greece. Ah yes, here it is, Hail Kleisthenes. I shan't bore you with a lot of copying and pasting and dull Greek history that you will soon forget but will skip to the pertinent passage.
Every year at an assembly of 6000 citizens, the Athenian people would be queried if, in their opinion, there was a leader whose power was too great and a threat to democracy.
If the vote was affirmative that person would be exiled from Athens for a ten year period, without loss of property or civil rights, nor with any dishonor to his family. This power was called ostrakismos, which we now know as ostracism.
This would be perfect, Donald. Exile. Spend ten years with your pal at the Kremlin or Elba or maybe hole up with Melania's kin in Slovenia and then come back when everything is copacetic in 2033. You will be, what, 88? Your peeps will still love you and who knows, maybe you run again for the fourth time? We Americans have a very short memory and it might be the perfect time to mount the grand retrenchment.
I don't see you in the slam for more than two or three years tops anyway. Donald you could do that standing on your perfectly coiffed head. You can get through this.
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