I’ve been writing about crime a lot lately.
And I’m not done, because as I’ve said in earlier columns, crime – what causes it, how to punish it, how we should balance the rights of criminals vs. law-abiding citizens – is one of several key issues (along with taxation and how the courts should view the Constitution, maybe?) that most clearly distinguishes conservatives from liberals.
While I think there are weighty, even philosophical issues at stake re: crime – to what extent does free will play a role when people are brought up in a debased criminal environment; in what circumstances can rehabilitation work for some criminals – the vast majority of crime raises much more basic questions.
Questions like, “How stupid is the average criminal?” (Spoiler alert: Very, very stupid. Thankfully.) or “Why are nationally elected politicians, and especially Democrats, so comically inept at it?”
Taking the first question first, I can usually get some much-needed comic relief from the hilariously pathetic bungling of most criminals.
If you’re a regular reader, you’ll remember stories about dip-Schiffs who crawl under a car on a sloping driveway and use a rusty, wobbly bottle-jack to lift it so they can steal its catalytic converter…only for it to fall on them and crush their dumb arses.
Unexpectedly!
Or the stories about rappers who confess to their crimes in their terrible “music” videos, or post social media pictures of them flashing a stolen pistol with a clearly visible serial number on it.
Or the story about the rapper 4XTRA, who recorded a video flaunting his possession of illegal M1000 fireworks, and shortly after a brilliant monologue about his plans for them – “You think I won’t blow schiff up wit’ dese, my narwhal? Don’t friend with me, Imma blow a motherfriendin’ narwhal UP!” – that crazy narwhal blew two of his mother-friending fingers off.
(I’d say, “Cue the sad trombone,” but no rappers play the trombone. And I don’t think you can make a sad record-scratching sound on a turntable.)
In the movies, criminals are slick professionals. They create elaborate distractions to draw away the police, and devise multiple pre-planned escape routes. They wear disguises, and stash different clothing near the crime scene to change into. They have multiple sets of identification papers in various aliases, and they stay off law enforcement’s radar.
In real life, criminals get prison tattoos that advertise their gang affiliations and their past crimes, so that cops can recognize them from a block away. (“I’m a Gangster Disciple and I’ve killed 9 people, all of whose gang names I’ve inked on my body.”) Even before they go to prison, they get a prominent tattoo on their face or neck, so that if they’re ever in a line-up – spoiler alert: they will be! – they can be easily identified.
And it’s always something memorable, like “Born to Lose,” or “No Regerts!”
Movie criminals drive non-descript panel vans with a magnetic business sign and multiple sets of plates that can be quickly switched out, or else fast cars that they drive up a ramp into the back of a semi-truck, or a hidden garage within a mile of the scene of the crime.
Real criminals drive 100 pounds of meth and six illegals from the Texas border to New York in a car with two mis-matched doors, one working headlight and two broken taillights. And a gaudy adhesive memorial stretching across the rear window that says, “RIP Chuy! MS-13 Forever!” And they don’t have insurance or registration, but they do have an expired Guatemalan driver’s license.
And they speed and change lanes without signaling for the entire trip.
And their car is full of pot smoke, as if it were 1981 and they were Kilmar and Chong. Or possibly Cheech and Kilmar.
Sure, those mouth-breathing low-life criminals provide us some easy laughs. But what about the high-level masterminds, those who reach the peak of their profession, and should therefore have their criminal act together?
Nope! I give you three quick examples: New York Attorney General Letitia James, Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, and CA Senator Adam Schiff.
On the surface, Tish James might appear to be fairly smart. She has three degrees, including a Master’s from Columbia and a JD, and she managed to get herself elected to multiple public offices, culminating in the top enforcer spot in New York state.
Alas, degrees are often not worth the paper they’re printed on, and the majority of voters in New York state are imbeciles. And Tish James is as dumb as a bag of hammers.
Because she publicly went after Donald Trump on flimsy charges that he had committed mortgage fraud. Other than wrongly listing a NYC penthouse of his as having 30,000 square feet when it was only 11,000 – an easily proven error on his part – her whole case came down to his valuation of Mar-A-Lago. He said it was worth a ton of money, and Tish said it was worth $28 dollars and an expired bus pass.
Yes, she managed to get a verdict against him from a transparently corrupt far-left judge, and a judgement for half a billion dollars, which was just thrown out by an appeals court as ridiculously excessive. The judgment itself will almost certainly be overturned too, because James’ valuation of Mar-A-Lago was laughably low; Deutsche Bank assessed Trump’s properties and net worth to be sufficient collateral for his loan; and he paid that loan back with interest.
But all of that is beside the point, because James made one of the most crucial blunders of morons: she falsely accused someone of doing what she was actually doing herself.
She claimed that Trump was able to get lower interest rates on his loans by lying about the property he was borrowing against. But she has a long history of doing exactly that, involving several mortgage applications and mortgages on which she perjured herself to receive preferable interest rates. Most brazenly, in August 2023 – when she was going after Trump – she lied on a mortgage application in Virginia, claiming that house as her principal residence when it was not, and when NY law required her to live in NY to be AG.
Lisa Cook made the same corrupt move. In the summer of 2021 she bought a home in Michigan by swearing on mortgage documents that it was her principal residence. Two weeks later, she bought a condo in Atlanta, claiming that IT was her principal residence. Unless it turns out that she has a third “principal residence” somewhere else, it looks like the Michigan place is her actual residence, since she is renting out her Atlanta condo.
Again, the brazen stupidity of her fraud is hard to understand. She’s a governor of the powerful Federal Reserve, which is charged with setting national interest rates that control mortgage rates, and she committed mortgage fraud?!
A masked crack head who robs a convenience store and then immediately removes his mask in front of a security camera is not acting any dumber than a mortgage regulator cheating on her mortgages!
Even better was her response when called on it. Here’s what an honest and innocent person would say:
“These charges are false. I did not lie on any mortgages, ever. I’m immediately releasing both of the mortgages and applications in question, and they prove that I didn’t claim both properties as my principal residence, which would be fraud. I demand an apology.”
Here’s her statement:
“I have no intention of being bullied to step down from my position because of some questions raised in a tweet. I take any legitimate inquiries about my financial background seriously and am compiling accurate information to address them.”
Really, Lisa? You’re “compiling accurate information?” That shouldn’t be hard, since all you’d have to do is hold up the second mortgage and application, and point to the many spots in the documents where you identified the Atlanta condo as NOT your principal residence, but a rental or a second home.
What’s that? That’s not what the documents show?
Keep compiling, sweetheart.
Finally we come to Adam Schiff, one of the sleaziest corrupticrats in Washington, DC.
Schiff did manage to avoid the temptation to get a tattoo of his nickname (“Pencil Neck”) inked onto…well, his pencil neck. But sadly, he was unable to resist the siren song of fraudulently obtained lower interest rates, just like Cook and James.
In 2003 Schiff bought a house in Maryland that he declared as his principal residence. In 2009, he bought a condo in CA, which he identified as his principal residence, and for which he took a homestead exemption on his CA state taxes. In 2020, after falsely claiming two principal residences for over a decade, he finally declared his Maryland house as his second residence.
Last month, a Fannie Mae financial crimes investigation concluded that Schiff had engaged in “a sustained pattern of possible occupancy misrepresentation” on five Fannie Mae loans over the years.
I don’t know what that “possible” is doing in there, because you can’t have two “principal residences,” and he clearly claimed that he did.
To top it off, the DOJ has now found that he’s been paying a 3% interest rate on both properties, well below any legitimate second home mortgage rate at any time when he financed or refinanced both properties.
Did I mention that he also failed to disclose his mortgages on required annual financial disclosure forms until 2011? Or that he’s now accused of wire fraud, mail fraud, bank fraud and making false statements to financial institutions?
If I did, it’s only because it’s hard to make all of those points when you’re giggling uncontrollably.
Looking back, Tish James ran for AG on a repeated promise to get Trump, and when she’d gotten her corrupt judgment against him, she gloated about how she was looking forward to foreclosing on Trump Tower and Mar-A-Lago and everything else Trump owns. And with the possible exception of James, nobody cut more ethical corners in pursuit of Trump than Schiff did.
I guess it’s true what they say – it’s always the ones you most suspect.
Ironically, the one truthful thing that Pencil Neck and Tish James said over the last several years – and they said it a lot! – might now be coming back to haunt them:
“No one is above the law!”
In the words of Nelson Muntz…
HA HA!
Hamas delenda est!
Martin Simpson 