Is FPOTUS Taking a Page From General Sickles' Playbook?

Beginning Note: This week’s essay is both speculative and meant to be taken with a grain of salt. Since no one knows when or if the FPOTUS will be indicted by the DOJ . . . or the state of Georgia . . . or the State and/or City of New York . . . any discussion about what trial strategy his “legal team” (the makeup of which seems to change with every passing hour) is pure fiction. The appearance of General Daniel Sickles - a real historic character - is meant to be used as a dramatic prop . . .

In going through the literally hundreds of classified, top secret and sensitive compartmented information documents stashed away at the FPOTUS’ Mar-a-Lago residence, D.O.J lawyers and investigators came across other miscellaneous items which at first glance, seemed to be of questionable value: “love letters” from North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, as well as communiqués and birthday wishes from the likes of Vladimir Putin and Hungarian strongman Viktor Mihály Orbán. One of the items which at first seemed to be totally inconsequential was a long overdue novel borrowed from the Library of Congress written by the acclaimed Australian author Thomas Keneally (Schindler’s List, The Dickens Boy, The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith) entitled American Scoundrel: The Life of the Notorious Civil War General Daniel Sickles. The fact that there was any book - let alone a novel - in the vast Trump treasure trove was weird. After all, the man has never been known to be much of a reader . . . unless it’s one of his own ghost-written best-sellers.  Precisely who it was that brought the Sickles biography to FPOTUS’s attention will likely remain a mystery.  What FPOTUS ultimately found so compelling about Sickles, a former member of Congress, Union General and U.S. Ambassador to Spain (among many other things) will be surmised further down in this post.

Ever since FBI agents in casual clothes and without their guns spent nearly nine hours at Mar-a-Lago on August 8 searching through the club’s storage room, FPOTUS’ residential suite and offices, Donald Trump has been making an unglued spectacle of himself. According to a property receipt they left behind, the FBI team collected more than two dozen boxes of documents, including 11 sets of documents with classification markings. A more detailed accounting in a later court filing indicated that the FBI seized more than 100 documents marked classified, from the confidential to top secret level. Seventy-six were found in the storage room. Others were found in Trump’s office, including three documents found in desk drawers .

Trump and his team - comprised of the latest incarnation of his “inner circle” and legal advisors - have come up with more than a half-dozen excuses, accusations and weaker-than-water strategies for once again portraying him as the victim of a conspiracy masterminded by President Biden, A.G. Garland and the F.B.I. to destroy him. He and his followers have accused the F.B.I. of planting top-secret documents in the boxes they removed from the Mar-a-Lago store room; of illegally “storming” his residence(they had a legally authorized warrant) and proclaiming that the people they should be investigating are Hillary (“Lock her UP!”) Clinton and Hunter (“We’ve Got His Laptop!”) Biden.

Say what you will, but ‘45 has been getting some truly rummy legal and political advice; with the exception of his hardest of hardcore followers, his optics are worse than execrable. Increasingly, many Republican office holders and candidates who have worked oh so hard to gain his endorsement, have begun maintaining a growing silence when questioned about the whole Mar-a-Lago imbroglio. FPOTUS is obviously becoming progressively fearful of just what the future may bring; possible indictments for obstruction of justice, tax evasion, and even treason. As he sees many of his circle receiving subpoenas and thinking twice about destroying their lives and reputations on his behalf, he is becoming even more unhinged . . . and thus laughable.

One of his latest and most breathtaking demands is that he be retroactively declared the 2020 presidential election winner or be allowed to hold a "new election," for which he has been mercilessly mocked. Of course, the chances of this ever happening are absolutely none . . . or less than that. Just the other day, FPOTUS began including QAnon conspiracy theories on his “Truth Social” website. NewsGuard, a media watchdog that analyzes the credibility of news outlets, found 88 users promoting the QAnon conspiracy theory on FPOTUS’ Truth Social, each to more than 10,000 followers. Of those accounts, 32 were previously banned by Twitter . . . as was Donald Trump.

Make no mistake about it: with each passing news cycle, Donald Trump is feeling more and more cornered; his many, many years of acting, evading and avoiding laws concerning his various businesses, paying taxes, and telling the truth are about to crush him. And, since he is changing lawyers like most of us change socks, his “moral albinism” (a term I coined many years ago meaning, roughly, a belief structure completely devoid of moral pigmentation), he is just about at the end of his rope. What legal strategy is going to keep him out of Leavenworth, Danbury or Ft. Dix?

Which leads us back to sordid life of Major General Sickles. . .

In his 94 year, the high-born Daniel Edgar Sickles (1819-1914) read law with former U.S. Attorney General Benjamin Butler, and became a highly successful attorney-at-law; served as a member of the United States Congress from New York; a Major General in the Union Army who lost a leg and was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions at Gettysburg (the Battle of Cemetery Ridge); was the American Ambassador to Spain; and, became a favorite of two of the worst Presidents in American history: James Buchanan and Franklin Pierce. In addition to all this, he was a notorious womanizer who, in 1859, killed United States District Attorney Phillip Barton Key the son of Francis Scott Key, author of the “Star Spangled Banner.” The younger Key was having an affair with Sickles’ wife Teresa Bagiolii (1836-1867), whom Sickles had married when she was all of 15years old.  Sickles found out about the affair, and on Sunday, February 27, 1859, intercepted Key at the corner of Madison Place N.W. and Pennsylvania Avenue, across the street from the White House. There, Sickles shot the unarmed Key twice, one shot directed at Key's groin. Key died about an hour later in a nearby house.

And here is where the story of Daniel Sickles may wind up playing a role in the future of Donald J. Trump: Sickles was actually acquitted of first-degree murder by a jury of his peers (all male, all white). How? He was the first person in U.S. legal history to plead innocent due to “temporary diminished capacity.” During the trial, his defense team repeatedly hammered home the fact that Key was "a confirmed, habitual adulterer" and stated that a cuckholed (a husband whose wife is unfaithful to him) has a God-given right to vengeance. Chief Defense Counsel John Graham brought up the notion of temporary insanity in his opening statement, which lasted two days, by claiming that "Sickles' provocation was so enormous that he was, from a legal point of view, insane." The jury bought it, and shortly after his acquittal, Sickles miraculously “regained” his sanity and continued living a life of privilege for another 56 years, eventually dying of a cerebral hemorrhage on May 3, 1914 in New York City.

Perhaps the mystery of why a copy of writer Thomas Keneally’s American Scoundrel wound up being amongst all the top-secret documents seized at Mar-a-Lago is as simple as this: FPOTUS and his legal team, running out of all rational options, are putting together a “diminished capacity” or “innocent by reason of insanity” defense for their celebrated client. Goodness knows, there are miles and miles of video and hundreds of thousands of journal inches to prove that for the past 40-50 years, Donald Trump has been madder than a hatter; has felt that he is completely immune from paying any and all debts . . . whether they be financial, judicial, political or the result of utter mendacity. Were he alive today, Sigmund Freud would be in a state of utter stupefaction contemplating the likes of Donald Trump.

Watch out DJT: the padded walls are closing in on you. And your legal team (whom you may or may not pay) are no match for the one that General Sickles paid most handsomely compensated; his was headed by no less a legal giant than Abraham Lincoln’s future Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton. And believe me, your most current team - Alina Habba, Lindsey Halligan, and Christina Bobb - are already way over their heads.

I hope they insisted on an enormous retainer. If not, this could be the first trial in history in which both the accused and the attorneys entered joint insanity pleas . . .

Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone