Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

The Northeast is getting hazier ... but when it comes to Donald Trump's legal standing things are getting clearer.

I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, ’ absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality. If you were sent this email or are a free subscriber and would like to become a paid subscriber, you can sign up here.

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The Bell Tolls For Trump?

It appears increasingly likely that former President Donald Trump will be indicted (and soon).

Federal prosecutors have informed the legal team for former President Donald J. Trump that he is a target of their investigation into his handling of classified documents after he left office, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The notification to Mr. Trump’s team by prosecutors from the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, was the clearest signal yet that the former president is likely to face charges in the investigation.

It remained unclear when Mr. Trump’s team was told that he was a target of the special counsel’s inquiry, but the notice suggested that prosecutors working for Mr. Smith had largely completed their investigation and were moving toward bringing an indictment.

Assuming Trump is indicted, it will represent a true before and after moment in American history. Yes, Trump was indicted a few months ago in New York, but that was a local NYC charge. An indictment by the same federal government that Trump used to helm is something else altogether. That the charges could run the gamut from mishandling classified information to obstruction of justice to, potentially, the Espionage Act would represent a political earthquake. It’s not just that it would be the first federal indictment of a former president, but it’s possible, even likely, that Trump will be a candidate for president at the same time that he is not just under indictment but potentially on trial.

From a political perspective, I’m honestly not sure what it will mean. Trump’s poll numbers improved after he was indicted in New York City. But that charge was easy to dismiss as a partisan investigation by a Democratic District Attorney (and the charge of falsifying business records is not as weighty as obstruction of justice et al). A federal change cannot be so easily waved away, and while I suspect an indictment will not hurt Trump in the eyes of Republican voters, once the theoretical becomes real, voters may take a slightly different view about nominating Trump for president again. We will be in uncharted territory.

One thing is certain, though, Republicans will assail a prosecution of Trump. I was very struck by the comments of former Vice President Mike Pence yesterday at a CNN town hall in Iowa about the looming indictment.

I think it would be terribly divisive to the country… This kind of action by the Department of Justice I think would only fuel further division in the country. And let me also say I think it would also send a terrible message to the wider world. I mean, we are the emblem of democracy. We’re the symbol of justice in the world. And the serious matter, which has already happened once in New York of indicting a former president in the United States sends a terrible message to the world.

While I agree with Pence that a Trump indictment would be divisive, everything else he says here is dangerously wrong. What has long made America an emblem of democracy around the world is the notion, embedded, in our founding documents that all Americans are equal under the law (even if that’s never been a reality). What Pence is saying here is that Trump, because he’s a former president and because he’s a divisive figure (I wonder how that happened), should be treated unequally under the law. Indeed, only moments later Pence said “We’ve got to find a way to move our country forward and restore confidence in equal treatment under the law in this country.” Giving Trump a pass for criminal acts would have the exact opposite effect. Even for Pence it’s astoundingly hypocritical.

So as difficult as it will be for Trump to be federally indicted, it will nonetheless represent a great moment for American democracy. It will provide legal confirmation that in America, no man or woman — no matter how powerful or how popular — is truly above the law.

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

A typical day’s AQI reading is between 0 and 50. Yesterday, New York City had the worst air quality in the world.

It’s hard to describe accurately what it’s like in New York right now, but it is as if someone turned on sepia mode for the entire outdoors. As another friend said to me, you want to get a bottle of Pledge and clean the sky. Everything has a glossy, yellow-tinged sheen. Breating deeply feels like you’re inhaling by a campfire. Your eyes water, your throat clenches, and there’s a slight feeling of nausea in the pit of your stomach. I’ve talked to friends who have persistent headaches or who feel exhausted or morose.

Here’s the worst part: the last few days are a preview. From David Wallace-Wells in the New York Times:

Across the country, the number of people exposed to what are sometimes called extreme smoke days has grown 27-fold in just a decade, and exposure to even-more-extreme smoke events has grown 11,000-fold. Since 2000, growing wildfire pollution has reversed significant gains from the Clean Air Act, and over the coming decades, it is poised to become the country’s main source of particulate pollution. In this way, the haunting gray glow of the sky this week was both a throwback to a more contaminated past and a portent of a future clouded more regularly by airborne toxic events such as these.

…. Globally, all forms of air pollution are responsible for perhaps 10 million deaths each year, and, short of mortality, contribute to respiratory disease and cardiac disease, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, dementia, cancer, mental illness and suicide, miscarriage and premature birth and low birth weight. According to some recent research, of all forms of particulate pollution, wildfire smoke may be the most toxic.

The increase in wildfires is a direct result of climate change. As temperatures dramatically rise, more moisture evaporates from the ground, leaving trees, brush, and grasses drier, fueling potential fires. Indeed, the smoke hovering over New York City is from wildfires thousands of miles away in Canada. This, unfortunately, is our global future — and a direct result of years of inaction by the federal government to tackle this issue. On climate change, America and the rest of the world has made its bed. Now we’re going to have to sleep in it.

SCOTUS Does The Right Thing