31 December—Donald Trump is an absolutely horrible person and deserves the very worst. He’s off the hook for the moment because the farcical United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack has withdrawn its subpoena for him to testify.

One of Trump’s shysters crowed that the committee had “waved the white flag” because Trump was pretty sure to win in court. Trump himself blustered on his own flop of a social media platform—erroneously as usual—that the committee “probably [withdrew the subpoena] because they knew I did nothing wrong, or they were about to lose in court.”

The fact, however, as everybody knows, is that the committee is going out of business with the Democrat-majority 117^th Congress and isn’t likely to be renewed by the Republican-majority 118^th Congress. The Republicans have their own vindictive agenda.

The 6 January committee, while providing some third-rate entertainment, has screwed up from the get-go and the Trump forces have taken full advantage of the committee’s manifest and manifold shortcomings. And, I regret to say, good for them. While Trump certainly doesn’t deserve to get away with anything, the Democrats certainly deserve what they’ve ended up with: bupkes.

The rules of the Senate, in which the Democrats have managed to retain a minuscule majority, make it unlikely that chamber of horrors and whores will continue where the House left off. So the only hope to give Trump what he deserves would appear to rest with the Department of Justice—while a Democrat is President.

So let’s not count on Trump getting his just desserts. But hope springs. Eternal and leaks.

On the other hand, take Trump’s taxes, such as they may be. His refusal to release his personal and business returns certainly whetted our prurient curiosity. Their publication, on the other hand, is kind of anticlimactic: no real surprises, just what we expected.

When you think about it, have Trump and his confederates and their tax accountants really done anything that other high-end personal and institutional taxpayers haven’t done and don’t do to avoid (lawfully) and evade (unlawfully) paying what the rest of us and/or the tax code consider fair taxes?

The tax code invites abuse because that’s precisely how it’s intended by the Senate and House of Representatives, the whores who make the tax (and other) laws to favor the special interests that pay them off. So you can’t blame Trump for simply doing what hordes of wealthy but facially honest and less notorious nabobs do. How many of those nabobs are willing to release their tax returns?