At 3:20 p.m. Mountain Time Oct. 13 in the ballot drop box at the Larimer County Courthouse, Fort Collins, Colo., I solemnly cast my vote to consign Donald Trump to the criminal justice system.
The most corrupt president in U.S. history knows that the only thing that separates him from any number of people with numbers on their jumpsuits is the office he holds.
Prosecutors in New York have made a bead on criminality affirmed by Trump's longtime attorney, Michael Cohen before Congress: tax fraud, bank fraud, insurance fraud.
That doesn't even include the use of campaign dollars to try to keep a porn star silent.
At these revelations and more, I've thought of an indignant lady I heard on a sidewalk four years ago.
What got her going was a "Hillary" button.
She supported Trump, she huffed, and offered: "Better someone coarse than someone corrupt."
Yes, she was concerned about corruption, apparently the Clinton Foundation's dealings with foreign governments. What is she saying now?
Is she concerned about Trump's businesses raking in millions of dollars as corporations, lobbyists and – yes, foreign governments – have lined up to put a coin in the tin at Mar-a-Lago and other Trump properties?
A New York Times investigation of the avowed "swamp drainer" finds "Trump didn't merely fail to end Washington's insider culture of lobbying and favor-seeking. He reinvented it, turning his own hotels and resorts into the Beltway's new backrooms."
What is Corruption Lady's read on this?
What does she say of that alleged trifecta of fraud explained by longtime Trump fixer Michael Cohen? Trump inflated property values for insurance and collateral purposes and deflated them for tax purposes.
Corruption Lady may consider that all-American wizardry, business smarts, particularly the part about paying almost no taxes. New York County District Attorney Cyrus Vance has a criminal angle he wants to explain to a jury.
Michael Cohen will be happy to testify, having gone to prison for things he did for The Boss, known in court documents as Individual One.
In his book "Disloyal," Cohen writes, "I'm certain that Trump knows he will face prison time if he leaves office." Yes, he said "if."
Cohen attributes Trump's rise as a businessman and politician to "rat-like cunning."
He describes how Trump paid for bots to vote in an online TV poll ranking business titans.
He describes how Trump paid for people to populate his coming-out event as a presidential candidate.
He describes the utter baloney and connery that was just about anything to do with Trump University.
He describes how Trump ingratiated himself with evangelical mullahs like Jerry Falwell Jr. and Franklin Graham, righteous hands laid upon him, only to turn around later and say, "Can you believe people believe that bullshit?"
Cohen describes Trump's overtures toward Putin and Russia about a Trump tower in Moscow.
No collusion? Whatever the case, writes Cohen, Trump "wanted to do all he could to enable him to borrow money from people in Putin's circle."
We now know Trump owes someone somewhere $421 million. Who and where might those debtors be?
Ah, yes, corruption.
Back in 2018 when the state of New York shut down the Trump Foundation and a judge ordered Trump to pay $2 million for using the so-called charity as a personal and political slush fund, I thought of Corruption Lady and those accusatory claims about the Clinton Foundation -- its efforts to prevent disease, educate children overseas and generally improve the planet.
What is she thinking now?
Probably that we need to know more about Hunter Biden.
Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.
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