If Larry Householder and his co-conspirators are as clever as they obviously thought they were, they would try to speed up the wheels of justice by immediately pleading guilty to all counts of the corruption charges they are facing and then beg Attorney General Bill Barr to use his influence to get the court to immediately sentence them, so they can get a pardon from tRump before he’s voted out of office. After all, he’s pardoned bigger crooks in the past.
Now I realize how much of a long shot such a scenario has of playing out successfully, but the odds of pulling it off are not as long as the odds of them beating the charges that have been lodged against them in federal court. The feds have a 98% conviction rate at trial, which rises to winning 99 percent of the time on appeal.
The problem for this group of clowns is they are most likely still in the “fighting” phase, having just gotten past the stage where their bladders and bowels might have betrayed them when the FBI came knocking upon their doors. Will someone please teach crooked politicians (I know, that sounds like an oxymoron) either the proper way to take a bribe without getting caught, or, failing that, at least how to “hold their mud.” There’s nothing more embarrassing (for all involved, even the FBI agents) than a dude soiling his boxer shorts while doing the perp walk.
The fact is, getting slapped with a federal indictment triggers something akin to the “five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance.” All of those indicted are in the denial phase at present, attempting to screw up their courage by telling themselves and anyone else willing to listen, “Man, I’m going to beat these bullshit charges.”
And it certainly doesn’t help to have their lawyers blowing the same kind of smoke up their asses. How else are defense lawyers going to fleece their clients for the maximum amount of fees? Having a client conserve their money by taking a plea deal early on (and thus perhaps having some funds to start over with upon their release from prison) is not in the best financial interest of any criminal defense mouthpiece. They maximize their profits by convincing clients to fight, no matter how dim or remote the chances of winning.
Then comes the “anger phase” with arguments like: “Why are the feds wasting time and resources prosecuting me for this bullshit when they could be chasing down members of Mexican drug cartels or catching perverted hillbillies that traffic in exploited children?”
Sounds kinda logical, right? Wrong.
After that comes the “bargaining phase,” which by then has come too late to do them any good since one of their smarter co-defendants has already cut a deal to rat them out so the federal prosecutors no longer have need of their cooperation or testimony. This teaches them the lesson there is two types of criminals: The quick and the screwed. They fall into the latter category.
Following quickly behind this is the “depression phase” which is characterized by thoughts of suicide, coupled at last with a bit of remorse — unless of course the individual is a sociopath, a personality type to whom the term “remorse” is not even in their vocabulary.
Finally, upon being given the date on which they are to report to prison, the “acceptance phase” begins to at last kick in. They should carefully pack their little kit bags so when they arrive at the joint and select which of the huge weight-lifting dudes is going to be their prison protector — even if said protector is a black dude named Bubba — they can say, “Look, Daddy, I brought my own K-Y Jelly.”
From CoolCleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author at http://NeighborhoodSolutionsIn