It’s The William Tell Show. I call myself William Tell; you can call me Bill. It’s great to be back, recording now from inside MY OWN APARTMENT! How great is that?

I conceived this episode some months ago, when Donald Trump finally got indicted in the Stormy Daniels matter.  It’s a disappointment to me that trial in that case isn’t set to begin until May 2024.  More recently, a grand jury has been convened in the question of his possible election interference in Georgia.  I’m more excited about that; this is the case I’ve been hoping for; since it may come down in a way most certain to bar him from ever holding office again.

The tangled web of criminal charges surrounding Donald Trump right now is reminiscent of the similar web of charges surrounding the R&B singer, R. Kelly.  Actually, I wind up having compassion for Robert Kelly:  he was molested as a child, and biologically cursed with abnormally high testosterone levels that would be hard for anyone to manage.  Well, he is meeting his karma now.

I wonder what will become of Donald Trump.

Many of these cases could go either way.  It’s largely a question of judgment calls, as to whether or not a crime occurred.  And that brings us to the question of balls and strikes.

Please notice how I use pronouns in the following discussion.

In baseball, everybody knows that if a batter swings at a pitch and misses, it’s a strike.  Three strikes, and you’re out.  It’s also a strike, however, if the batter fails topi swing at a pitch that travels through what’s called “the strike zone.”   The strike zone is an invisible rectangle that floats in the air.  Horizontally, it is exactly as wide as home plate, and hangs directly over home plate.  Vertically, it extends from the batter’s elbows to the batter’s knees.

If a pitch travels through the strike zone and the batter fails to hit it, the umpire will call it a strike even if the batter didn’t swing.

The batter may not like that call, or may not agree with it, and there are very frequent arguments that ensue between a batter and an umpire over whether or not the pitch was in the strike zone.  Maybe it was close.  Maybe someone has a different notion of where the strike zone was.  You might could see things either way.  Then it becomes a judgment call.

After the break, we’ll look at how this applies to Donald Trump.

[Commercial break]

Judgment calls often come up in sports, as in questions of whether a pitch was in the strike zone, or whether a football receiver was in bounds when the receiver caught a pass.  Judgment calls often come up in the question of who was at fault in an auto accident, when both drivers may have made mistakes.

They come up in a prosecutor’s decision of whether or not to pursue charges against a given defendant, based on the facts and the law and the likelihood of obtaining a conviction.

It seems to me that judgment calls come up in many places in the current or pending charges against Donald Trump.  Also in charges that may yet be filed.

How much responsibility does he have for the riot that occurred at the Capitol on January 6?  Is he criminally responsible?  Seems to me you could look at it either way.

I don’t know how he’ll escape penalties for the secret documents he took to Mar-a-Lago.

A judgment call seems to me to be involved in the election interference charges that may yet be filed in Fulton County, Georgia.  If Donald Trump’s phone calls to various Georgia officials asking them to overturn the election had no effect, then did he actually interfere?  But he sure tried.

In the Stormy Daniels matter, Trump is charged with 37 felonies.  These don’t pertain to his having cheated on his pregnant wife, and then lying about it, but instead to technical details of exactly how the hush-money payment to the sex worker was carried out.

I’m not sure those involve any judgment calls.  As to each charge, the facts and law may be clear.  And it is according to the facts and law, that the court proceedings must occur.

But Trump has made it a matter of balls and strikes.  When a batter and an umpire dispute a call, it needs to be the facts about the pitch, that they dispute.  It may happen that, but it’s out of bounds if, the batter turns away from the facts, to insult the umpire’s family, for example.

Yet this is just what Donald Trump did in the Stormy Daniels case.  Turning quite aside from the facts and law, and court proceedings, he took to social media to insult the judge’s daughter.  Is that going to strengthen his case?

It amazes me no end, that many Americans think it did.