It’s The William Tell Show.  I call myself William Tell; you can call me Bill.  Thank you for including me in your world; I just love to be included.

When I was locked up, one of the men who was locked up with me had a bail of four hundred thousand dollars.  That meant the bond, to get him released until trial, would have cost someone forty thousand dollars, that the person would never get back.

We happened to both have trial dates the same day.  We were there in the holding cell, waiting to be taken to court, with shackles on and this thing around your forearms that keeps them immobile; and the A.S.A. comes and tells him they’ve dropped the charges.  Four hundred thousand dollars bail, and on the day of trial, they dropped the charges.

Whether to charge a case, whether to try a case — the phrase they use in the legal world is, “Facts and law.”  If the facts and law in a case are such that you can’t win in court, you either don’t charge it or don’t try it.

What people want, what anyone wants, has nothing to do with it.  What people believe has nothing to do with it.  It’s all about facts and law.

In the O. J. Simpson trial, where he was charged with murdering his ex-wife Nicole — a lot turned on these gloves, with blood on them, that detective Mark Fuhrman had found.  Turns out Fuhrman had a vendetta against O.J., and he completely fabricated that evidence.  Apparently, he planted one glove in one place, the other glove in another place; and he got some of O.J.’s own blood, and put that on them.  But that was not made known to the jury.  They had to find O.J. guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and in the end, they did not.  It’s all about facts and law.

We’ll come back and talk about Donald Trump after the break.

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Donald Trump is facing legal troubles on half a dozen different fronts.

First, there is the case in New York concerning his business dealings.  The details are too arcane for me to understand.  But he took the Fifth four hundred times during his deposition, and now is calling Letitia James a racist.

Second, there is the question of the classified documents he took to Mar-A-Lago.  He may be prosecuted, here, under the Espionage Act.  It is beyond me to understand how he did this stupid thing, that no other President has ever done.  Whether or not he will face charges remains to be seen.

Third, there is the January 6^th inquiry, which to my mind has gone far afield from its proper focus.  Trump either did or did not incite a riot; to me, it’s that simple; and it is debatable, and it’s a judgment call.

Finally, there is the inquiry in Georgia concerning his phone call to Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia Secretary of State, in which, among other things, he asked him to, quote, find 18,000 votes, end quote, to overturn the Presidential election results in that state.  Was this election interference, or not?  To my mind, this is also a judgment call:  if Raffensberger did not follow through on what Trump asked him to, can Trump be said to have interfered in the election?

Facts and law.  Not public opinion; not what anyone wants; not what a significant portion of the people want; not what the pundits want; not what the vocal, strident partisans want — none of that deserves to determine whether or not Trump gets charged in any of these situations.

Any outcome will please me, that keeps him from ever holding office again.  But I’m not the one making the decisions; it’s not my judgment that matters.

All that matters are facts and law.

I could not think of any music related to today’s topic, so today’s music is completely unrelated.  It used to be said that rock and roll was invented by Chuck Berry, specifically with the song, “Johnny B. Goode.”  A few years ago, I began hearing that rock began instead with a black lesbian woman in the 1940s, someone I’d never heard of before, Sister Rosetta Tharpe.  I’ve also never heard this song before.  But she sang gospel and blues, and was an accomplished guitarist; and this is the song, “Strange things happening every day,” wherewith she supposedly invented rock and roll.