Stealing From Taxpayers, Charities and Voters…Trump is a Career Thief Who Must Be “Arrested”

In his multipronged efforts to sue states to halt Vote By Mail, prevent the use of ballot drop boxes, and by his own admission, installing his henchman in the U.S. Postal Service to sabotage and disable it to take the right to vote away from Americans, Trump has established himself as what he’s always been. A crook who shamelessly steals whatever he wants.

Sometimes he uses extortion as he did with trying to kill DACA to hold hundreds of thousands of virtual Americans as his hostages but often, he just outright steals from others.

Trump is The Commander in Thief.

There were his hotel building days and stealing from contractors he refused to pay, his stealing from banks by defaulting on hundreds of millions in bank loans, his stealing from cities by refusing to pay for the costs of his rallies. His spending an entire year of his three and a half year presidency at his own golf resorts and overcharging and robbing taxpayers of over $100 million, theft of taxpayer money in PPP loans and from other programs that shoveled money into the pockets of his buddies and his and his families’ pockets.

Some might also make the case that through his collaboration with Russia in the 2016 election, he stole the presidency.

Trump is an unrepentant and compulsive thief and the thing about such people is that they will never stop until or unless they are stopped.

Take this latest extortion plot by Trump to steal the election by destroying the constitutionally established U.S. postal service. It seems clear that Trump’s original plan to steal the election was hinged on voter suppression at the polls. With the willing cooperation of state Republicans to knock Democratic voters off the registration rolls and drastically shrink the number of available polling places in Democratic districts which would create hours-long waiting in line…and discourage many from voting due to concerns of contracting COVID-19.

And the final knife in the back of democracy, Trump and the GOP have employed a $20 million fund to hire “observers” to occupy polling places across the country on Election Day, especially in districts that are strongly Democratic and in swing states, who will officially lodge protests against black and likely Democratic voters, causing their votes to be held aside as provisional until or unless they prove their identity to officials before a deadline after election day. To top that off, Trump is preparing to protest and block any votes counted after election day, meaning that his game is to make those provisional ballots his toadies have forced, uncounted anyway. Robbing voters of their ballot point blank.

Trump’s devious plan to steal the election was undermined though by Vote By Mail which is why he’s been frothing at the mouth to denigrate it as “fraudulent”. How can you suppress the vote with 6 hour waits in line during the COVID-19 pandemic and rob people of their votes at polling places…if they vote by mail from home?

So, since states have the sovereignty to run their own elections and Trump can’t force them to conform to his plan for stealing the election, he was pointed to attacking and dismantling the middleman they have to use, the postal service.

Today, Trump revealed a new, bizarre reasoning of how his extortion and robbery plans could help his political image. Out of the blue, he now claims that the reason Americans should applaud Trump for disabling the postal service to steal the election is that he’ll return his hostage at least partially if Congress will buy into his lie that he wants to help Americans with a COVID relief package.

Uh…yeah. “I’ve taken your children hostage and I’m threatening to shoot them to extort money that I prevented going to you before but now will ‘give’ to you as long as I get credit for it going to you. I’m your favorite hero now, right? Oh, and I still may keep your kids hostage at gunpoint, I haven’t decided for sure about that yet.”

How do you deal with a thief and extortionist when he’s the POTUS? And he also controls half of another branch of government? The spineless and cowardly GOP are his henchmen, following his orders and never questioning his robberies, including one they are sworn to protect against, the theft of democracy.

On September 30th, the annual government funding bill is due. This is Congress’ obvious opportunity to “arrest” Trump and this thievery. Speaker Nancy Pelosi should lead Democrats in The House to refuse to fund the government (including the corrupt Department of Justice under Bill Barr) unless the USPS is fully restored and funded (and Barr and the DoJ answer for its apparently criminal behavior).

However, the initial response by Pelosi and numerous Dems in Congress to this crime-in-progress has so far seemed as misguided as not calling out Trump’s collusion with Russia in real time in 2016 as he worked to steal that election. What Dems in Congress are repeating is that the best way to stop this attempt to steal our democracy…is to vote out Trump.

Huh? If the voting process is being corrupted, isn’t that like trying to close the barn door after someone’s blown off the hinges?

While states are trying to navigate ways to work around this corruption, Dems in Congress should be suing the Trump Admin and the Postmaster General for violating the core constitutional rights of all Americans, to vote in a fair election and maintain a democracy. Other things they could do, instead of waiting until September to have Louis DeJoy, the Postmaster General, come before them (and no doubt lie since AG Barr approves of and protects Republicans who lie to Congress) as already scheduled, subpoena him to appear next week and if he doesn’t show, use their power of Inherent Contempt to imprison or hammer him until he agrees to appear. If he does not agree to restoring the USPS immediately, promise that Trump’s entire government will be defunded in September and it will all be on his head until he returns the USPS to how it was.

This is all or nothing, folks. If our elections are corrupted by Trump so he can steal the presidency, there will be no democracy left standing in 4 years. This nearly 250 year experiment in democracy is over.

Pelosi and Congressional Dems can’t “play it safe” and hope for the best in Nov. This theft-in-progress of Trump’s needs to be stopped now because it will be too late to moan and wail after he’s stolen the election, “It’s not fair! He stole it by ruining the USPS! Give it back! Please?”

If the use of Trump’s personal military in DC and Portland should have taught Pelosi and Dems anything, it’s that Trump won’t hesitate to use the power of his office to assault Americans that dare to stand up against him. That is the possible future we risk if Dems worry more about the political fallout from drawing a line in the sand on this.

Americans will support Dems if they stand up to Trump’s thieving like this. Veterans and other Americans aren’t receiving their prescriptions in the mail on time. Veterans and other Americans in the USPS are having their pay cut and/or being let go in the middle of an economic crisis. And as COVID-19 rages on and probably worsens before Election Day, the growing delays in packages and mail that Americans are depending on will become worse very destructive to people in the short term and to confidence in the election in the long term. Trump may succeed in suppressing turnout if voters believe their vote won’t be counted anyway.

I hope states move quickly to use the courts to stop this historic attempt at theft by Trump but everyone in power, especially Dems in Congress, need to “lock up” Trump ASAP from stealing this country’s most valuable possession, our democracy.