The quote of the day does not *directly* come from either of the books seen above. I just like posting vintage book covers. I am the Pulp Fiction guy, after all.
It comes from the opinion in the Trump deposition case by Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron. The New York state court system is weird. What they call a Supreme Court, the rest of the country calls a trial court.
It’s still subpoena season. The judge upheld subpoenas issued to Trump and his spawn by New York AG Tish James. I like calling her by her nickname. She’s a more likeable NY AG than Chuck Rhoades on Billions. In fact, she reminds me of his longtime right-hand woman, Kate Sacker. Kate sacked Chuck on the last episode by quitting.
Enough about Billions on to a real-life judicial opinion about fake billionaires.
That background information must have made you curiouser and curiouser as to what the Judge wrote. Here it is:
The idea that an accounting firm’s announcement that no one should rely on a decade’s worth of financial statements that it issued based on numbers submitted by an entity somehow exonerates that entity and renders an investigation into its past practices moot is reminiscent of Lewis Carroll (‘When I use a word, Humpty Dumpty said…it means just what I chose it to mean — neither more nor less’); George Orwell (‘War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength’); and ‘alternative facts.’
<SNIP>
To proclaim that the Mazars red-flag warning that the Trump financial statements are unreliable suddenly renders the OAG’s longstanding investigation moot is as audacious as it is preposterous.
I like this judge. Preposterous is one of my favorite words. It punctures pomposity and piffle.
I wish I had been a fly-on-the-wall of Engoron’s courtroom. Trump’s lawyers trotted out all sorts of absurdities even claiming that the Impeached Insult Comedian was a member of a “protected class.” In a word: preposterous. He is, however, the only twice impeached American president*. I’d make a twice-cooked pork joke at this point, but Trump’s goose increasingly looks cooked in this case.
It will be fascinating to watch this play out. Eric Trump was deposed and took the Fifth over 500 times. The way the Fifth Amendment is supposed to work is that the witness asserting the privilege must do so for *every* question. Depositions are different beasts neither fish nor fowl to extend the animal analogy. As the author of Animal Farm, Eric Blair d/b/a George Orwell, would have approved.
Back to the Kaiser of Chaos. Can he be as disciplined as his dumbass son? I’m skeptical. He’s the chatterbox’s chatterbox, the blabbermouth’s blabbermouth. He’s not only preposterous, he’s prolix.
Judge Engoron’s ruling will, of course, be appealed. Kicking the can down the road is Trump’s eternal legal strategy. This time, his opponent is the dogged Tish James who according to Judge Engoron has produced “substantial evidence of fraud.”
This is not the first time that Trump has been compared to Humpty Dumpty and it won’t be the last. This doggerel has had its day:
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.
That goes for the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers as well.
For the last word, we circle back to the featured image with songs from Mott The Hoople and David Bowie: