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It started with a ride down an escalator in 2015, and escalated rapidly. From the first cries of "rapists" invading our country to dog whistles like "Stand back, stand by," Donald Trump's dangerous delusions of power and control brought this country to the brink of collapse, and everyone who allowed that to happen is an enabler and a collaborator.

From White House cronies and sycophants who shared in Trump's power fantasies and deep contempt for large swaths of Americans, to his equally evil children and Republicans in the Senate led by Mitch McConnell, to America's attorney general, to the doctors at Walter Reed who agreed to lie for the president and to sign non-disclosure agreements, thereby violating their Hippocratic oath, to the ICE bullies who separated infants and children from their parents and incarcerated them in cold, filthy camps, to the former heads of the CDC and FDA who caved after White House pressure, to irresponsible media moguls, they are all responsible for the terrifying threat of autocracy we faced, and the increase in violence that culminated at the U.S. Capitol on Jan.6.

Together, they are responsible for militias that felt emboldened in their militarism and for bad cops who mercilessly shoot to death Black and brown men and women. They are responsible for the resurgent KKK and groups like the Proud Boys. They are responsible for federal courts being packed with ultra-conservative lifetime judges, and a Supreme Court that saw the demure but deadly Any Comey Barrett added to its ranks. In short, they are responsible for the near-demise of democracy.

Adding to why we are on the edge of another Great Depression, and responsible for America's damaged standing in the world, Donald Trump's enablers and collaborators aided and abetted the disasters in our health, educationand infrastructure systems, the filth in our water and the comeback of chemicals in our food. They are responsible for the deaths of almost half a million Americans who died needlessly because the super-spreader in chief just didn't give a damn.

Indeed, they are responsible for the Mussolini moment" we witnessed on the balcony of our dictator's palace, and they, like him, bear the guilt of negligent homicide and crimes against humanity.

They also exemplify the "banality of evil" that philosopher Hannah Arendt warned us about when she reported on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a major architect of theHolocaust. Eichmann was, he insisted to the court in Jerusalem, simply following orders.

So were White House staff, Secret Service officers who vowed to give their life for the president (but not in a hermetically sealed vehicle),employees of government agencies who didn't speak up or quit their jobs in order to save the country, business moguls who didn't end their major donations to a corrupt fraud, and Fox News, which wouldn't stand up to a lunatic when he blamed everyone else for our disasters and incited violence. So too are the voters who inexplicably still stood with their man in greater numbers the second time around even though everything he does hurts them the most.

Every one of these people is the banality of evil personified. Every one of them became what Arendt called a "leaf blowing in the whirlwind of time." Now every one of them bears responsibility for what could lie ahead.

Of course, some brave souls did stand up to the president. And every one of them did it knowing that they would be punished mightily.Think about those who gave testimony beforeCongress, the lawyers and doctors who wrote letters and petitions, the activists who marched and were willing to suffer the consequences, including injury, arrest and jail time, the Capitol Police who tried to stop a violent coup. They are our national heroes, the ones for whom new monuments should be built.

As for the rest of us, we must remember and own the fact that a great malignancy metastasized within our national body and many of us let it happen. We watched it ravageus and slowly terrorize us. We let it kill people we knew and loved. We looked the other way, always sure that it couldn't get worse.

Now we need to understand that the "silence of one good man" can spell disaster for all good people. Each of us who remained passive as our impending disaster continued might have been the one "good man" who didn't act, didn't speak out, didn't resist, while men like Jeff Sessions, Stephen Millerand Donald Trump insisted that infants be ripped from their mothers' breasts. Men who didn't care that innocent people were dying from gun violence, a plague, hungerand violence, which they fostered. Men who didn't care about pre-existing conditions or elders who rely on Social Security to survive. Men who didn't care that women would be catapulted back to the Dark Ages.

The question is: Why didn't we stop them? Why didn't we act in larger, more effective, timely ways? Why did we let them continue for four devastating years, like the blind, chained inhabitants of Plato's allegorical cave, unable to escape their isolation because, trapped by ignorance and darkness, they couldn't know the truth?

Can we now remove our blinders and see clearly the dawning truth in time to break our silence, reject the banality of evil, refuse to be a leaf blowing in the whirlwind of time?

What awaits us if we do not?

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Escaping the "Mussolini moment": Trump's enablers and the banality of evil - Salon

Donald Trump has been acquitted by the Senate in his second impeachment trial for his role in the 6 January attack on the US Capitol a verdict that underscores the sway Americas 45th president still holds over the Republican party even after leaving office.

After just five days of debate in the chamber that was the scene of last months invasion, a divided Senate fell 10 votes short of the two-thirds majority required to convict high crimes and misdemeanors. A conviction would have allowed the Senate to vote to disqualify him from holding future office.

Seven Republicans joined every Democrat to declare Trump guilty on the charge of incitement of insurrection after his months-long quest to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden and its deadly conclusion on 6 January, when Congress met to formalize the election results.

The 57-43 vote was most bipartisan support for conviction ever in a presidential impeachment trial. The outcome, which was never in doubt, reflected both the still raw anger of senators over Trumps conduct as his supporters stormed the Capitol last month and the vice-like grip the defeated president still holds over his party.

Among the Republicans willing to defy him were Richard Burr of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.

The swift conclusion of the Senate trial, only the fourth presidential impeachment in American history and Trumps second in just over a year capped one of the most tumultuous chapters in the nations political history. Still shaken by the deadly riot that threatened Americas commitment to a peaceful transfer of power, senators of both parties were eager to turn the page.

Trumps acquittal came after grave warnings from the nine Democratic House impeachment managers, serving as prosecutors, that Trump continued to pose a threat to the nation and democracy itself.

If this is not a high crime and misdemeanor against the United States of America then nothing is, congressman Jaime Raskin, the lead manager, pleaded with senators in the final moments before they rendered their judgments as jurors and witnesses. President Trump must be convicted, for the safety and democracy of our people.

From the outset, Trumps allies in the Senate made clear they had no intention of convicting him. Though many Republicans explicitly supported or implicitly indulged Trumps baseless claim of a stolen election, few defended his actions during the trial. Instead, they relied on a technical argument, advanced by his attorneys and rejected by a majority of the Senate as well as leading constitutional scholars, that the proceedings were unconstitutional because Trump was no longer in office.

In a floor speech after the vote, Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, said Trumps conduct preceding the assault on the Capitol amounted to a disgraceful dereliction of duty by the former president, who he held practically, and morally, responsible for provoking the events of the day

But McConnell concluded that the Senate was never meant to serve as a moral tribunal and suggested instead that Trump could still face criminal prosecution.

President Trump is still liable for everything he did while hes in office, McConnell said. He didnt get away with anything yet.

At a news conference after the vote, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, denounced as cowardly the Republicans who voted to spare Trump on procedural grounds and said she would refuse to entertain their calls for a censure.

We censure people for using stationery for the wrong purpose, she said, her voice rising in indignation. We dont censure people for inciting insurrection.

Moments after the not guilty verdict was announced, a defiant Trump thanked Republicans who stood by him and decried what he called yet another phase of the greatest witch-hunt in the history of our country.

In his statement, Trump expressed no remorse and made no mention of the violence that unfolded in his name, but signaled his desire to remain a political force within the party.

Our historic, patriotic and beautiful movement to Make America Great Again has only just begun, he declared triumphantly.

Trump was the first US president to be impeached twice and is now the first president to be twice acquitted. The decision leave him free to pursue another tilt at the White House in 2024, though polling suggests the violent end to his presidency left his reputation badly damaged.

The House impeached Trump in his final days in office, on one charge of incitement of insurrection of the siege on the US Capitol. He invited supporters to Washington on the day electoral college votes were being counted, told them to fight like hell and encouraged them to go to the US Capitol, Democrats charged.

Once the attack on the Capitol turned deadly, placing Vice-President Mike Pence, members of Congress and Capitol Hill employees in danger, Trump violated his oath of office by failing to defend the US government against an attack, the impeachment article alleged.

The attack came after Trump spent weeks trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Five people died as a direct result of the assault, including a police officer, and scores more were seriously injured.

During their two-day presentation, prosecutors played harrowing and never-before-seen security footage of the attack to bolster their case that Trump had deliberately fomented insurrection by whipping up his followers, who believed they were acting on his instructions.

Crucially, they argued, the Capitol siege was not just a result of the speech Trump gave on 6 January but a foreseeable result after he spent years sanctioning violence among his supporters.

In a chamber protesters breached, the Democrats case was by turns emotional and visceral. It offered new insight into the scope of the violence that transpired, and senators learned for the first time how close the nations political leaders came to the mob that hunted them.

The striking evidence presented was a notable contrast to Trumps first impeachment trial, which was built around documents and testimony regarding his effort to pressure Ukrainian officials to help him politically.

After Democrats concluded their arguments, Trumps lawyers used just a fraction of the 16 hours allocated for their case. They used a smattering of approaches, arguing Trump could not be tried because he had already left office and that his speech did not amount to an incitement of violence and was protected by the first amendment.

During their brief presentation on Friday, Trumps lawyers argued that he was using the same kind of rhetoric politicians frequently use and said the trial was a political witch-hunt and that Trump a victim of constitutional cancel culture.

Those arguments largely seemed to be an effort to distort the case against Trump and obscure the unique context under which he encouraged supporters to disrupt the activities of the US government as it facilitated the peaceful transfer of power.

The vote on Saturday came after the proceedings were briefly thrown into chaos when the House managers unexpectedly moved to call witnesses, in an effort to shed light on Trumps state of mind as the assault unfolded. Caught off guard, Trumps legal team threatened to depose at least over 100 witnesses, and said Pelosi was at the top of their list.

After a frantic bout of uncertainty in which it appeared the managers request could prolong the trial for several more weeks, Senators struck a deal with the prosecution and Trumps lawyers to avert calling witnesses. Instead, they agreed to enter as evidence the written statement of a Republican congresswoman who had been told that Trump sided with the rioters after the House minority leader pleaded with him to stop the attack on 6 January.

Embracing Trumps combative and fact-bending approach, his lawyers declared him innocent of the charges against him and denounced the trial as a final, desperate attempt by Democrats to disqualify their most despised opponent from public office.

You do not have to indulge the impeachment lust, the dishonesty and the hypocrisy, Michael van der Veen, one of Trumps lawyers, told senators.

With the result a foregone conclusion, the Democratic managers summoned the weight of history, reminding senators of the consequential votes taken by their forebears in the same chamber from abolishing slavery, to passing the Civil Rights Act and imposing sanctions on apartheid South Africa. Difficult in the moment, the managers said, these votes defined their legacies and changed the course of American history.

There are moments that transcend party politics and that require us to put country above our party because the consequences of not doing so are just too great, said one of the managers, Joe Neguse. Senators, this is one of those moments.

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Donald Trump acquitted in second impeachment trial ...

Donald Trump spent the last four years committing numerous crimes big and small, the most serious one being his incitement of the violent mob that attacked the Capitol on January 6. Unfortunately, because of his inexplicable stranglehold on the Republican Party, hes gotten away with all of it. That has unsurprisingly left millions of people feeling variously disappointed, confused, and angry, with few ways to channel their feelings (aside from hoping hes hit with a never-ending tide of lawsuits and/or a prison sentence). Luckily, this week has fortuitously brought with it some much-needed catharsis, in the form of a Trump property being literally blown to smithereens.

On Wednesday morning, the derelict Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City was blown up before an audience of paying guests, after demolition crews placed approximately 3,000 sticks of dynamite around the structure to send its 34 stories crumbling to the ground. Its an end of a not-so-great era, Jennifer Owen, who bid $575 to win a front-row seat to the show, told The New York Times. If you werent able to make it down to A.C., dont worry, you can watch the implosion over and over and over again at your leisure:

Trump Plaza was one of a trio of casinos the ex-president owned before his gambling business went belly up and filed for bankruptcy, leaving, per The New York Times, a trail of unpaid contractors and suppliers. Opening day on May 14, 1984, reportedly involved malfunctioning slot machines and left two women injured when a faulty fire alarm caused a rush of gamblers trying to leave the building. In 2009, Trump resigned as chairman of the company, retaining just a 10% stake, and on September 16, 2014, the Plaza shuttered for good, closing out a run as the worst-performing casino in Atlantic City. After that, NJ Advance Media notes, the building sat vacant, sending pieces of debris flying onto the boardwalk every time noreasters traveled up the coast, which is clearly a metaphor for something. During his first State of the City in January 2020, Mayor Marty Small said it was his goal to tear Trump Plaza down, adding: Its an embarrassment, its blight on our skyline, and thats the biggest eyesore in town.

Trumps old casino wasnt the only thing getting the boot this week though. His Mar-a-Lago helipad is also in the process of getting the heave-ho. Per the Daily Mail:

Demolition crews have arrived at Mar-a-Lago to rip out Donald Trumps helipad after his exemption from Palm Beachs helicopter-free zone rule was revoked when he left office. Construction workers were seen at the former president's sprawling estate Tuesday with a red digger and concrete cutting equipment, demolishing the concrete helicopter landing pad set among the towering palm trees. Its removal, handled by contractor Pyramid Builders of Palm Beach, from the western lawn of the 17-acre property will cost in the region of $15,000, the permit shows.

Palm Beach does not allow helipads in its town but made an exception for Trump while he was president, on the condition it only be used for presidential business and be removed again when he left the White House. The town of Palm Beach issued a permit for the helipads demolition on February 2. Town Manager Kirk Blouin said there had never been any question that it would be removed as soon as Trump was no longer president, according to Palm Beach Daily News.

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Watch Donald Trumps Old Casino Be Blown to Smithereens, If Youre Into That Sort of Thing - Vanity Fair

House Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) the chair of the Committee on Homeland Security filed a lawsuit on Tuesday accusing former President Donald Trump of conspiring to incite the deadly attack on Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol.

The filing marks the latest in a slew of lawsuits and probes that center on a range of allegations, including efforts to influence election officials in Georgia, defame women who accused him of sexual assault, and manipulate the value of his assets for tax and loan purposes.

In a new interview, Laurence Tribe one of the nation's top constitutional law scholars, who briefly served at the Justice Department during the Obama administration told Yahoo Finance that Trump faces a "a huge number of lawsuits" that will occupy his attention for the remainder of his life.

It remains unclear whether Trump will end up serving time in prison, Tribe says, predicting that no matter the outcome of litigation Trump will "gradually fade away," in part due to the grueling demands of his legal defense.

"He is fully subject to civil and criminal lawsuits both state and federal across the land," says Tribe, a professor emeritus of constitutional law at Harvard University Law School who taught there for more than 50 years.

"It's a panoply of charges," he adds. "So [Trump] is going to be busy defending himself from now until the end of his life."

The Senate on Saturday acquitted Trump of an impeachment charge that alleged he had incited the Jan. 6 attack, falling 10 votes short of the 67-vote threshold necessary for a conviction. But many of the Republican Senators who voted to acquit, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), said Trump could face charges in the criminal justice system for his actions.

The lawsuit filed by Thompson on Tuesday follows a criminal probe opened by prosecutors in Georgia last week over Trump's attempt to overturn the outcome of the election. Trump also faces defamation lawsuits filed by former Elle columnist E. Jean Carroll and former "Apprentice" contestant Summer Zervos, who allege Trump wrongfully described their sexual assault claims against him as false.

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Plus, Trump faces separate probes from New York Attorney General Letitia James and Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance over alleged financial impropriety tied to his corporate and personal conduct. The investigation from James, which is civil and not criminal, focuses on whether Trump improperly inflated the values of his properties.

Meanwhile, Vance is pursuing a criminal probe into possible insurance, tax, and bank-related fraud into Trump's business dealings, The New York Times reported in December. Progressives have also been urging Joe Biden's Justice Department to investigate Trump, as well though the current president has expressed reluctance to prosecute his predecessor.

Still, Trump no longer enjoys immunity from criminal prosecution that may have been afforded to him while in office, Tribe said.

"The only immunity that a former president has is for actions that are within the outer perimeter of his official power," Tribe says, suggesting that such protection likely does not apply to any of the lawsuits or probes he currently faces.

Tribe spoke to Yahoo Finance Editor-in-Chief Andy Serwer in an episode of Influencers with Andy Serwer, a weekly interview series with leaders in business, politics, and entertainment.

Over his career, Tribe argued 35 cases before the Supreme Court and wrote a number of books, most recently "To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment," which he co-authored with Georgetown University Law Professor Joshua Matz.

Tribe's list of former students includes top figures on both sides of the aisle: former President Barack Obama, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), and House Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the lead House impeachment manager who made the case against Trump.

Speaking to Yahoo Finance, Tribe expressed uncertainty about whether Trump would ultimately face conviction or liability in any of the current or prospective lawsuits. But Tribe predicted that the series of legal actions would diminish Trump's prominence.

"There may be political decisions by the Justice Department to turn the page," Tribe says. "I do think in the court of history, he will be convicted."

"He himself will gradually fade away, whether in an orange jumpsuit or not," he adds.

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Trump will be 'busy' with lawsuits for the rest of his life: Laurence Tribe - Yahoo Finance

DURING HIS first campaign for the American presidency in 2016, Donald Trump said he wanted to open up our libel laws to make suing news outlets easier. Those plans did not materialise. But in the aftermath of Mr Trumps extraordinary challenges to his re-election loss and amid his second impeachment trial, defamation law is back in the headlines.

Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic, both voting-technology companies, have sued or are gearing up to sue three right-wing cable news networks, some of their hosts and two of Mr Trumps lawyers for claiming their devices were used to steal the election for Joe Biden. Such claims are a central element of the false voter-fraud theory that fuelled the storming of the Capitol on January 6th, resulting in the deaths of five people. Dominion has launched a pair of $1.3bn lawsuits against Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, Mr Trumps legal adviserswith more to come. On February 4th Smartmatic filed its own 276-page suit against Fox and three of its commentators (Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs and Jeanine Pirro), as well as Mr Giuliani and Ms Powell, for $2.7bn.

Whether potentially defamatory statements are written (libel) or spoken (slander), the aggrieved party has to clear a high bar in America, where the constitutions First Amendment protects free speech and freedom of the press. In Britain defendants must usually show their utterances were true or amounted to fair comment. In America it is plaintiffs who have the burden of proof; they lose unless they can prove the defendants statements were false but presented as claims of fact. Establishing defamation also means showing the speaker was negligent and damaged the plaintiffs reputation.

Many defamation cases founder because the statements concerned turn out to be protected expressions of opinion or hyperbole rather than factual claims. Others fail because of uncertainty about the truth of the disputed statements. A prominent First Amendment lawyer who says he has a natural antipathy towards libel suits nevertheless thinks Dominion and Smartmatic have very strong cases because the claims in question are so clearly presented as factualand so clearly false.

The Smartmatic lawsuit cites dozens of allegedly defamatory statements. On November 13th Mr Giuliani said on Fox Business that Smartmatic was founded as a company to fix elections with technology that is extremely hackable. Two days later Ms Powell told Ms Bartiromo on Fox that her client won by not just hundreds of thousands...but by millions of votes that had been shifted to Mr Bidens column by Dominions and Smartmatics software which, she asserted, was designed to rig elections. She also suggested that Dominion had ties to Hugo Chvez, a Venezuelan dictator who died in 2013. On November 21st Mr Dobbs, host of the top-rated Fox Business show that was cancelled a day after Smartmatic filed its suit, said the companies had waged a cyber-attack on our election.

None of these allegations has been corroborated. But Dominion and Smartmatic say that, however baseless, the charges have severely damaged their reputations and are costing them business worldwide. Dominion says that Ms Powells claims are demonstrably false. The company was not created in Venezuela to rig elections for a now-deceased Venezuelan dictator but founded in Toronto for the purpose of creating a fully auditable paper-based vote system that would empower people with disabilities to vote independently on verifiable paper ballots.

The grandiose accusations against Smartmatic are particularly curious, because the company had no role in Americas recent election other than to assist with voting technology in Los Angeles Countywhere vote totals were never in dispute. The earth is round, Smartmatics complaint begins. The election was not stolen, rigged or fixed. These are facts. They are demonstrable and irrefutable.

Roberta Kaplan, a lawyer representing E. Jean Carroll in a defamation case against the 45th president, believes the lawsuits are likely to overcome the usual hurdles. She thinks Smartmatics claims may be harder to pin on Ms Pirro and Ms Bartriromo, though, because they largely handed the microphone to guests who made the outlandish claims and were careful not to voice the accusations themselves. Mr Dobbs was less circumspect, so he and therefore Fox may be, in Ms Kaplans eyes, on the hook, along with Mr Giuliani and Ms Powell.

On February 8th Foxs lawyer, Paul Clement, who was solicitor-general under George W. Bush, filed a motion to dismiss Smartmatics suit. (Similar filings on behalf of the hosts came on February 12th.) The network and its hosts, Mr Clement argued, were simply covering a major news event. An attempt by a sitting president to challenge the result of an election, he wrote, is objectively newsworthy. If hosts merely allow guests to state claims, without amplifying the ideas in their own words, that is a powerful defence against defamation. But Mr Clements motion did not attempt to refute each allegation in Smartmatics complaint, perhaps because some statements can easily be defended while others cannotand Fox has legal exposure if any of its employees comments prove defamatory.

Another point of contention is whether the voting companies are public figures, about whom American defamation law enforces a more rigorous standard that would make their claims harder to sustain. If so judged, the companies must prove that Foxs hosts and Mr Trumps lawyers acted with what the law terms actual malice, meaning that they either knew the statements were false or the speakers showed reckless disregard for the truth, as opposed to simply negligence. Mr Clement argues Smartmatic is clearly a public figure and should have to clear the higher bar. Ms Kaplan disagrees: dragging an otherwise obscure company into a cable-news controversy does not transform it into even a limited-purpose public figure, she says, especially since it had such a minor role in the 2020 election. The Supreme Court has held that only individuals who have thrust themselves to the forefront of particular controversies count as limited-purpose public figures.

But even if a judge sees Smartmatic as a public figure, the company may have enough evidence to proceed against Fox. And it may have the strongest case against Mr Giuliani and Ms Powell, as Mr Clements motion seems to acknowledge: If those surrogates fabricated evidence or told lies with actual malice, then a defamation action may lie against them.

Mr Trumps lawyers may face the most legal jeopardy, but the networks seem aware of their own vulnerability, too. After Dominion and Smartmatic warned Newsmax they might sue, its anchors read canned disclaimers on air and cut off Mike Lindell, a prominent businessman who advised Mr Trump late in his presidency, as he repeated claims of election theft. We dont want to relitigate the allegations that youre making, Mike, said Bob Sellers, the anchor, during the chaotic exchange, before walking off the set in mid-interview.

OANN has been alternately confrontational and conciliatory as lawsuits develop. In December it responded to Dominions request to preserve documents for a possible legal action by demanding that Dominion preserve documents, too, so OANN could attempt to prove the company engaged in election fraud. But when the network aired a film by Mr Lindell repeating his allegations, it prefaced the broadcast with a lengthy disclaimer.

The First Amendment grants plenty of room for robust debate; plaintiffs seeking damages for defamatory statements face an appropriately steep climb. On the rare occasions when libel or slander claims stick, the defamed entity is typically the only compensated party. These voting-technology suits may offer a wider public benefit: curbing the spread of disinformation that destabilises democracy itself.

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Lawsuits arrive for networks and lawyers who backed Donald Trump - The Economist