Follow the Boxes

 Today could be a very important day for whether democracy has a future in America. It’s the first time in our history that a former President is to be charged by the federal government with crimes.

Reading the 49-page filing indictment of Donald Trump and his aide Waltine Nauta by the Justice Department is sort of like playing a mystery game that might be called Follow the Boxes.

The evidence is overwhelming that Trump knew what he was doing as he directed Nauta and others to move the boxes around in an effort to prevent the FBI from locating and reclaiming the classified documents they contained.

But Trump’s efforts failed and in retrospect they seem clownish and stupid. Almost as of he wanted this indictment to happen. Almost as if he were leading the Biden administration into a trap.

Think about it. Trump could have avoided this entire mess simply by returning the documents, as Mike Pence and Joe Biden did with the secret files they took with them after serving as their terms as Vice-President.

But this one is different. It looks like an open-and-shut case against Trump for concealing what he’d done. The big question is why did he do it? And that hangs over the entire drama unfolding in South Florida this morning.

I am terribly afraid that he did it to force a day like what today may turn into to happen. And that is another January 6th.

I hope that I am wrong.

LINKS:

• The latest on the federal indictment against Donald Trump (CNN)

• Trump’s Miami court date brings fears of violence, rally plans (WP)

• Fox News’s Turley: Trump could face ‘terminal sentence’ if DOJ proves even one count (The Hill)

• Legal experts agree former President Donald Trump, who is set to appear in court tomorrow, is in a tough spot after he was indicted by a federal grand jury on 37 counts. Even Trump's former Attorney General Bill Barr said he was "shocked by the degree of sensitivity." "If even half of it is true, then he’s toast," Barr added. [Reuters]

• Will the Judge in Trump’s Case Recuse Herself—or Be Forced To? (New Yorker)

• Trump Indictment Shows Critical Evidence Came From One of His Own Lawyers (NYT)

• What’s next for McCarthy’s fight with the far right (Politico)

• Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is seeking the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, has signed a flurry of bills targeting LGBTQ+ people in all aspects of public life, including banning gender-affirming care for trans youth and adult Medicaid recipients. But many trans people in his state are fighting back. "Ron DeSantis accidentally created the most powerful resistance that he could ever imagine," said an LGBTQ+ advocate. [HuffPost]

• Georgia is likely next ground zero for Trump’s battle with law enforcement (WP)

• The U.S. says it wants to rejoin UNESCO after exiting during the Trump administration (NPR)

• Indigenous knowledge, bravery, vigilance: how young siblings survived in Colombia’s perilous jungle (Guardian)

• It’s time to talk about the real AI risks (MIT Tech Review)

• Another Warning Letter from A.I. Researchers and Executives (New Yorker)

• Hyperdimensional Computing Reimagines Artificial Intelligence (Wired)

• Four Bay Area students designed an artificial intelligence device to detect gunshots and instantly alert people in the school’s vicinity (Bay Area News Group)

• How Could AI Destroy Humanity? (NYT)

• The AI feedback loop: Researchers warn of ‘model collapse’ as AI trains on AI-generated content (VentureBeat)

• From Thought to Text: AI Converts Silent Speech into Written Words (NeuroscienceNews)

• Tech rolls out two revolutions at once (Axios)

• Doctors Are Using Chatbots in an Unexpected Way (NYT)

• Visionary report unveils ambitious roadmap to harness the power of AI in scientific discovery (LLL)

• AI researchers face higher risk of loneliness, insomnia and drinking: research (The Hill)

• AI: How Good Is Good Enough? (Forbes)

• UN chief backs idea of global AI watchdog like nuclear agency (Reuters)

• The case for bottom-up AI (AlJazeera)

• AI-powered church service in Germany draws a large crowd (ArsTechnica)

• ‘Wedding or a funeral?’ Taliban bans music at Kabul wedding halls (AlJazeera)

• Thousands of Afghan refugees in UK set to be made homeless (Guardian)

• Hotel Owners Start to Write Off San Francisco as Business Nosedives (WSJ)

• Linguists have identified a new English dialect that’s emerging in South Florida (The Conversation)

• Nation Kept Up All Night By Sound Of Creaking Infrastructure (The Onion)