SoHo Condominiums, and GOP Senators Acting Badly

 #New York prosecutor Cy Vance's office learned that condominiums owners at the Trump SoHo believed that they had been cheated by Trump's children, Donald Jr. and Ivanka, who were managing the project for the family business, the Trump Organization. The lawyers claimed that the Trumps had lied to them by inflating the number of apartments that they had sold, thereby misleading them into thinking that the condominiums were better investments than they were. 

Mary Trump said that "Vance left two of my cousins off the hook. If he hadn't, he may well have kept Donald Trump from running for President when two of his children were indicted for fraud." 

As for prosecuting a head of state, Anne Applebaum, author of 'Twilight of Democracy,' noted that "it's not uncommon for heads of state to be prosecuted." She warned that the lesson from democracies under strain elsewhere around the world is that failing to lay down the law "is dangerous -- it creates long-term feelings of impunity, and incentives for Trump and those around him to misbehave again."

#Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-Georgia) has said that when he called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, he only wanted to find out how the state evaluates signatures on mail-in ballots; however, as Raffensperger has pointed out, Graham wanted him to find out how tens of thousands of ballots could be thrown out. He recommended to Raffensperger that all the ballots from the district -- or the county -- that had the highest number of unmatched signatures, should be thrown out. Throwing out all the ballots from Fulton County -- which incudes Atlanta -- would ensure that no Democrat vying for a high office would be elected in Georgia.

#Sen; Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said that he wasn't concerned about the Capitol rioters, because they had high respect for law enforcement and they loved this country. He would have been concerned, however, if it had been Black Lives Matter and antifa people who were rioting. It is a great tragedy that Wisconsin voters had one of the best senators  to ever grace the U.S. Senate in Russ Finegold, and they twice elected Johnson, once a Tea Partyer. Johnson's only service to the Republican Party is that of a conspiracy theorist.

#Sen. Mitch McConnell has warned of a "earth-shaking" outcome if the Democrats eliminate the filibuster, or even significantly modify it. What this portends is that lawmakers representing a significant minority of the U.S. population can defeat a bill supported by a significant majority of the U.S. population. The 50 U.S. Democratic senators -- including the two Independents who vote with them in the same caucus -- represent far more persons than do the 50 Republican senators. So  even if 90% of adults support expanded background checks for firearms, 41filibustering GOP senators can defeat any action.

ADDENDUMS: 

*The U.S. Supreme Court has established the standard of "one person-one vote." The GOP is intent on burying the standard.

*Donald Trump appeared on Fox News recently, and said the Capitol rioters represented "no danger."