This case involved charges of fraud made against Trump's company by the State of New York. This was a civil case, not a criminal case. The consequences were not supposed to be criminal.

The defamation lawsuits brought by E. Jean Carroll were also civil cases. She was not charging Trump with the crime of raping her many years ago; She was suing him (twice) for lying about whether he raped her many years ago. (She won both times.)

I think I get where you are coming from, though. When a person is rich enough to pay the fine, and also shameless enough to revel in the infamy of being found liable in a civil dispute, it can seem like that person doesn't end up suffering any significant consequence for their actions at all.

$355M is a lot of money. Add in the $83M owed to Carroll and these recent fines top $400M, which is an estimated amount of Trump's liquid assets. Trump is now likely running out of cash-on-hand, which could explain his recent takeover of the Republican National Committee -- the GOP's fundraising (and fund-spending) organization.

Criminal consequences come from criminal cases. Trump has invested most of his legal defense against the criminal cases he is facing. Pending criminal cases involving Trump include:

1.) A RICO ("Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations") case charged by the State of Georgia, against Trump and several others who allegedly conspired to steal the state's 16 electoral votes, including by having the President call (Republican) Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and ask him to "find 11,780 votes" for him. Four people in that case have already accepted a plea deal. This case is currently delayed by a motion to disqualify the DA because she had a romantic relationship with a lawyer her office hired to help prosecute the case.

2.) A federal case against Trump for retaining classified documents. A year or so ago, it was found that former President Trump and former VP Mike Pence had kept classified documents after they left office, and that when Joe Biden left the office of VP in 2017, he also kept some classified documents. Both Pence and Biden complied with federal investigation and surrendered the documents immediately when asked. Unlike Pence and Biden, Trump did not comply with federal investigation, and instead took action to conceal the classified documents in his possession. This case is being heard in a Florida courtroom, because Trump was storing these stolen national secrets in a spare bathroom at Mar-A-Lago. The judge is a Trump appointee, and has demonstrated a tendency to rule in Trumps favor whenever she can, but if she shows too much bias she may get taken off the case.

3.) A federal case against Trump for his involvement in the insurrectionist attempt to disrupt the electoral vote count in congress on January 6, 2021. Trump has been indicted on four charges in this case: "conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights." Trump's defense has been that he has "absolute immunity" for any actions he took while serving as President. This claim of immunity has been denied and appealed multiple times. Trump has now asked the SCOTUS to hear his appeal, but they haven't said if they will yet. Until they do, that case is on hold, but there's no one else to appeal to higher than them. If SCOTUS chooses not to hear Trump's immunity appeal, the lower court's denial of it will stand and the case will go forward.

We have a "voluntary" tax system in the U.S. -- that's always been the situation. "Voluntary" doesn't mean that that you can choose to not volunteer to pay your taxes. It mostly just means that the way we run things, by default, it is each citizen's responsibility to calculate and pay their taxes each April.

American taxpayers filled out 1040 forms in the days before computers, a lot like they do now. The IRS selected certain fillings for audits, just like they do now -- sometimes because of an apparent discrepancy, and sometimes just at random.

It would be a lot more work, take a lot more resources, and be prone to a lot more error and lawsuits, if the IRS tried to calculate everyone's taxes for them. Even now that we are in the days of computers, it is much more efficient for the IRS to only audit a fraction of the filings submitted each year.

I'm also pretty sure our "voluntary" tax filling system has something to do with the Fourth Amendment and other privacy concerns. A lot of Americans very strongly believe that it is not the government's place to be all up in their private business.

-- EDIT to add:

There is a difference between whether it would be possible for the IRS to calculate individual citizens' taxes and whether we should abandon our voluntary tax system for one in which the IRS simply calculates the taxes owed by every citizen and send us each a bill. My original response was intended to address the latter, but now I'll say something about the former:

For someone whose single source of income is a job working for someone else, of course it is possible for the IRS to calculate your taxes. You've already volunteered all the information the IRS needs to do so. Your employer has already told the IRS exactly how much income you've earned and exactly how much of it you've had withheld for taxes. Remember when you signed that withholding paperwork with the HR department on your first day? That was the moment when you personally volunteered your income information and payments to the IRS. You've literally already been reporting your income and paying taxes on it ever since.

The way taxes work in practice for a single-income employee does not reveal the potential complexity of tax accounting for individuals who are self-employed, who have multiple sources of income, and anyone who doesn't want to make regular fillings and withholding payments throughout the year. The tax situation for single-income American employees is not the situation for all Americans. Not everyone has an employer who calculates their taxes and pays installments for them throughout the year.

It is common for Americans to have a single job with an employer who calculates and pays their taxes for them. This makes it very easy for the IRS to know exactly how much the taxpayer owes (or is owed) at the end of the year. If it ends up feeling to like this is the same thing as the IRS calculating your taxes for you, however, I'm guessing it's because you forgot that it's actually your employer who's been doing that accounting job for you all along, with each paycheck.

There have been rumors about this for months now. We already know Meadows has met with Jack Smith, and that Meadows' testimony about his book was used in making the DoJ's federal cases against Trump.

So why is this story breaking now? Why are the rumors about Meadows' immunity suddenly newsworthy?

I think it's because Meadows is getting ready to flip in the Georgia case, too. His immunity deal with the DoJ doesn't help him at all if he gets convicted in Georgia.

Meadows was unable to move the RICO case to a federal court. Now Hall, Powell, Chesebro, and Ellis have all taken deals in Georgia. Those who flip first get the best deals, and I bet Meadows is looking to be looking to be number 5 out of 19.

There will be no going back from this for him, though. The next flip in the Georgia case will be just as public as the last four have been. It will be Meadows' Michael Cohen moment. The point of no return.

Hall --> Powell --> Cheesebro --> Ellis --> (?)

Flippity floppity. Who will be next?

It sounds like this Scott Graham Hall guy flipped on Sidney. So now who's Sidney going to flip on?

She was in a lot of meetings with a lot of people, including Trump and Giuliani. I bet she has a lot to say about that.

We have plenty of monuments and remembrances for military personnel who have given their lives for their country. We celebrate our veterans, at least as well as we take care of them.

We don't have the same opportunities to celebrate, or monumentalize, or even just remember the people in the intelligence community who given their lives for their country. One of the few places we do have for that sort of thing is the CIA’s Memorial Wall. Like all monuments to fallen patriots, it is intended to be a place of quiet reverence and reflection.

On the night of his 2017 inauguration, Trump and his wife stopped by to do a little dance and give a little speech, in which he bragged about himself and insulted the media and his political rivals. It doesn't sound like much now, after all we've been through, but back then it was still shocking.

It was shocking that anyone would act with such disrespect in that place. Moreover, it was profoundly disheartening that the person who was acting with such disrespect would be the same person who was now in charge of all the precious national intelligence that those fallen heroes had given their lives to obtain. Those fallen heroes with their stars hanging on the walls behind Trump, as blathered to the cameras on with one of his rehashed schticks about how smart he is.

--

Ex-CIA Boss Brennan, Others Rip Trump Speech in Front of Memorial [https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ex-cia-boss-brennan-others-rip-trump-speech-front-memorial-n710366]

--

At CIA headquarters, Trump boasts about himself, denies feud [https://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/trump-cia-langley-233971]

--

I remember this speech now, reading this article about Steele, because it sounds like Trump got at least two more people killed for the sake of his pathetic narcissism.

By declassifying the Steele report, for no reason except spite, Trump endangered the lives of every agent and every source even tangentially involved with its creation, across the globe. Two more sources in Russia suddenly disappear thanks to Trump, no suprise. And what else disappears? All of those networks of information, which cost thousands of hours of expert work and millions of dollars of taxpayer money to develop.

When we invest in an intelligence project, the information networks we develop are where we put all our money and resources. Those networks are the "principal." The intelligence we gain from the networks is just the "dividend."

Yet Trump is anxious to spend the principle, even if only as a gift to a foreign leader he's trying to impress. As if any of it -- principle or dividend -- was ever his to spend. (Or to store in an extra bathroom at his house in Florida.)

In the produce section, they have scales that print out barcoded price stickers. I look up the item I'm weighing (or enter the PLU) and it gives me a sticker I can scan.

In the bakery section, where you can pick out individual muffins or donuts, they have barcodes printed on the self-service case above each item. I can just scan the barcode for whatever I take.

(I do also have the option of checking things out at the end, if I didn't scan them with the gun.)

==

EDIT to Add:

Ironically, the only time I remember taking something from that store without paying for it was a time that my self-scanned order had been flagged for an audit. I was trying to buy a watermelon on sale, but the sale price didn't come up when I scanned it, so I set it aside to figure out at checkout.

When I got to checkout, my order was flagged for an audit. (Maybe even precisely because I had scanned the watermelon but then removed it from my cart when it came up at the wrong price.)

The guy running the self-checkout saw the flashing light at my register. Without comment, he came over to perform the ritual of scanning the certain number of items in my cart to reset the transaction and allow me to pay and be on my way. He and I had both been through this procedure many times. He probably performed it several times each shift he worked there.

I was distracted by the audit, however, and I forgot about the watermelon. When he scanned enough items and punched in his code, the register came up with my total and asked me how I was going to pay. I stuck in my credit card, clicked "yes" to the transaction amount, and made my way out of the store with a pilfered watermelon.

The grocery store I shop at has handheld scanner guns for customer use. I check out a gun by scanning my loyalty card, then make my way around the store, scanning each item as I put it in my cart. When I'm done, the handheld scanner displays a barcode that I scan at the self-checkout scanner. My entire order shows up on the screen there, along with the total cost. I pay, take my receipt, and head out to the parking lot.

I like scanner-gun shopping a lot. I like it because it's efficient, but also because it puts me in control. I can see the real price of everything I take off the shelf, in real-time. If something doesn't ring up at the price it's marked, I know instantly. The device keeps a running total as I shop.

Most days, my entire grocery experience involves no direct interaction with any store employee whatsoever, except maybe to exchange pleasantries with a stockperson. I do 100% of the work of checking myself out. I imagine the money the store saves on me in labor might make up for a lot of the money it loses in shrink.

But the store gets something else from my use of its scan-as-you-shop service. It gets to collect a huge amount of data on the way I shop. Not only does it record everything I buy, but it knows when and where I buy it. It knows the patterns of how I move through the store. It can compare my patterns to the patterns of all the other shoppers who use store scanner guns. It can analyze these patterns for useful information about everything from store layout to shoplifting mitigation.

One of the ways the store mitigates shrink from scanner gun shoppers who might accidentally "forget" to scan an item they put in their cart is point-of-sale audits. Not usually, but every so often and on a regular basis, my order will be flagged for an audit when I go to check out. When this happens, the cashier running the self-checkout area has to come over and scan a certain number of items in my cart, to make sure they were all included in my bill.

My main point in all of this was to offer a narrative that runs counter to the narrative I picked up from the article. I prefer to have more control over my checkout experience, and I will willingly choose to surrender personal information about my shopping habits and check-out procedures in order to gain that control, every chance I get.

Trump became a god to that entire swath of willfully ignorant racist Americans, way back when he first attacked sitting President Obama for not being an American citizen.

Trump used the same tactic against Obama that he always uses. The same tactic he perfected in all his ridiculously public feuds with people like Rosie O'Donnell. It's simple: The more audacious the accusation, the more press coverage it gets. The bigger the lie, the more it gets repeated.

In a certain way, I still think of the entire MAGA movement as payback for America electing a Black man to be President in 2008. And I'm still shocked to think even before 2008, there must have always been that much anger and hate and fear there, among my fellow Americans. But the hate was quieter before Trump, and easier not to see unless you were looking for it.

But that's why I think Trump is so much more dangerous than DeSantis, or any other wannabe strongman autocrat). Trump's already tapped into all that pent-up American hate years ago, and Trump's completely owned it ever since. As demonstrated countless times already, he controls that hate and can use it to make his followers do or say literally anything.

How can Tuberville hold up all these nominations, all by himself? I had to look it up. The way Senate rules work, they figure out nomination approvals in committee and then pass them on the floor with votes of "unanimous consent." By withholding his consent, Tuberville forces all the committee work to be done on the floor of the Senate.

That is to say, he is hijacking the nomination approval process. This process has developed and become institutionalized in the Senate over many decades. Tuberville is hijacking this process for a largely unpopular, far-right political purpose that is, at best, only tangentially related to the services with vacant leadership positions, and that is in no way related to the actual nominations in question.

Ironically, perhaps, the reason this glitch in the Senate rules allows one person to hold up all the nominations for everyone is itself just another institution. Senate "holds" have been around for decades as well. It wasn't until 2011 the that a bi-partisan group of Senators voted to change the rules to disallow "secret holds."

So Tuberville is exploiting one Senate institution in order to shut down another Senate institution, just to generate propaganda for his federally mandated forced-birth agenda.

It's like an echo of Gingrich in the '90s: It's like he's saying, "The interests of the people who elected me are more righteous than the interests of the people who elected all the rest of you all, so there will be no compromise from me on anything. We will run things my way or I'll use my position to shut it all down."

The only difference is that Gingrich shut down all the post offices for a few weeks. This asshole Tuberville is trying to shut down our military.

EDIT:

Maybe this could be McConnell's saving-grace swan song, before he gives up his GOP leadership position in the Senate. As the leader of Tuberville's party, I'm pretty sure rules allow him to end the hold that Tuberville requested.

Doing so would go against precedent and it would go against the spirit of the institution. But Mitch McConnell is no stranger to going against precedent and disregarding institutions when he thinks it serves his purpose.

It wouldn't earn him much forgiveness from people like me, but it would make him look a little better on his way out.

I agree with others here who point out that merely having a PoA in place is not a reason that Feinstein should resign. As to whether she should resign for other reasons, I tend think she probably should. But then I think about all the reasons that she shouldn't.

Feinstein is a high-ranking member of the senatorial judiciary committee. Back in April, she asked to be temporarily replaced in that position, but the Republicans blocked that from happening.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/republicans-block-temporary-replacement-for-sen-feinstein-on-judiciary-committee

The judiciary committee slot is important, because those are the guys who confirm all the federal judges. After sandbagging Obama's appointees for ~eight~ six years, the Republican-controlled Senate confirmed a flurry of judges under Trump.

To try to catch up now, the currently Democrat-controlled (by the thinnest possible margin) Senate Judiciary Committee wants to confirm as many Biden-appointed judges as it can while it still can. A year-and-a-half from now, who knows who will control what?

Sure, Feinstein should step down, and I think even she probably knows that, but she also knows that when she does so, the Democrats lose their razor-thin Senate majority, at least until Newsom can appoint a replacement.

No matter how quickly Feinstein could be replaced, the transition would offer Republicans easy opportunities to further delay nominations and block legislation of the very sort that Feinstein was elected by the people of California to pass. Nominations and legislation we have every reason to believe that she fully comprehends, regardless of any PoAs in place, and even despite her recent display of other age-related lapses in focus.

Anyway though, maybe her tragic act of hubris in all this was running for another term way back in 2018. If she had resigned back then, instead of next year, we wouldn't be here now. But now that we're here, I don't blame her for recognizing the no-win nature of the situation.

I think what they want is as many big-money donors as they can get, for which they require as many reliable Republican votes as they can get, for which they require Trump, for which they are required to give prima facia credence to whatever misinformation Trump is pushing on any given day.

It didn't always used to be like this, but that was a long time ago.

Trump didn't create his voter base -- he stole it, from Rush Limbaugh, Bill Reilly, Glen Beck, Alex Jones, and all those other millionaires who spent decades feeding working-class conservatives daily servings hate for huge profit.

And in all of history, who has been the conservative pundits' all-time number-one biggest and best favorite target for this hate? It has to be Barack Obama. (Our first Black president. Coincidence?)

Trump didn't create his voter base, but he has owned it outright for going on a decade now, starting way back with his entirely bogus claims against President Obama's citizenship. It didn't matter that the claims were bogus -- all that mattered is that they were against Obama, in an outright demeaning (and overtly racist) way. Dittoheads and O'Reilly fans ate that shit up.

Now here we are, eight or nine years later, and Trump still owns it. Only now, instead of feeding that voter base, and growing it with strongman posturing and punitive policy, he's using it exclusively to try to save his own skin. And at this point, the only way Trump saves himself is in an alternate reality, with alternate facts.

Now Trump lies to save himself, and half of congress has to play along or risk losing their own reelections. Thanks Obama.