Dear Mr. Trump,

With Roger Stone’s indictment, there’s virtually no one left from the people you’ve kept around you who hasn’t lied about their contacts with Russians, their attempts to obtain from Russia information damaging to Hillary Clinton, and your attempted business dealings with Russia.

Flynn, Gates, Papadopoulos, and Cohen all pled guilty to lying. And let’s not forget that Paul Manafort, your campaign chairman, pled guilty to conspiracy against the United States and conspiracy to obstruct justice due to attempts to tamper with witnesses.

Back to Stone. Although an indictment doesn’t necessarily mean a defendant conviction, Special Counsel Mueller cannot obtain an indictment unless he has sufficient evidence to present to a grand jury. Because the grand jury indicted Stone, we know there’s a ton of documentary evidence that convinced a 23-member federal grand jury. So Stone obviously did as alleged: lied to Congress and engaged in witness tampering.

When Mueller goes to court to say that Manafort lied to the FBI about his contacts with Russians, we know there’s a ton of documentary evidence and must likewise assume that Manafort did as alleged.

And you lied as well, early and often, e.g., when you drafted a false statement about the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in which your campaign chairman, son, and son-in-law participated with the expectation of getting more Russian dirt on Clinton.

Why did everyone close to you lie about contacts with Russia? Because you wanted them to, and because you lied, repeatedly, yourself.

People don’t lie to hide their conduct when they feel their contact is legal and above-board. People lie to hide their conduct when they know that conduct is illegal, perverse, undemocratic, and morally barren. That’s why people of your ilk lie.

Very truly yours,

Bruce J. Berger

Dear Mr. Trump,

You think you’ve solved the problem of the Trump shutdown by reopening the government for another three weeks and then threatening a second shutdown?

You obviously haven’t learned anything from your first Trump shutdown. You haven’t learned how you hurt federal workers and their families. You haven’t learned how you endangered lives, wrecked businesses, put a damper on the economy. You haven’t learned that the Democrats will not negotiate with an unconstitutional gun held at its head.

Nor is your threat to exercise “emergency” powers legitimate; it would be unconstitutional and unenforceable.

If you don’t understand, I guess you need a refresher course in the Constitution.

I will put it simply: You can’t steal money from one government coffer and put it in another toward a use that Congress hasn’t approved.

In other words, the power to spend the taxpayers’ money requires legislation. “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States …” Art. I, Section 1. This means what it says. If you want money for a wall, you need to convince Congress to pass providing the funds for such a law, not threaten Congress into caving in to your demands or going around Congress.

So, if Congress doesn’t send you the law you want, you lost. Walk away. Bring it up some other day.

And, by the way, this is probably a good time start your memoirs. You’ll have a lot of time on your hands soon, between shifts on the line for stamping out license plates.

Very truly yours,

Bruce J. Berger

Dear Mr. Trump,

It’s been 231 years since the adoption of the United States Constitution, and the Constitution has worked reasonably well. The Constitution got us through the secession of Southern states and the Civil War, and it got us through two world wars and the Cold War. From time to time, we amended the Constitution to enlarge our national concept of equality, although we still have far to go. Until you became president, there was every reason to think that our Constitution would continue to work.

You have turned out to be the one president intent on destroying the Constitution, the government upon which it was founded, and this great country. This sad conclusion is obvious, because, from every indication, the Trump Shutdown will continue as long as you’re president. With the Trump Shutdown, our national security is greatly at risk, and we will be attacked on many fronts.

Brave Americans still working for the Department of Homeland Security are not being paid, and morale is down. Heroic FBI agents, who risk their lives to fight terrorism, are not being paid, and their morale is down. Dedicated Justice Department lawyers who prosecute drug dealers and gangs and tax dodgers like you aren’t being paid, and their morale is down.

The Constitution was not adopted to give a president the power to shut down the United States government. The Constitution was adopted for exactly the opposite reason: to make government function. The Trump Shutdown, if it continues, will bring down the Constitution and the United States of America.

What is our only hope for survival? The end of the Trump presidency. #TrumpBeGone!

Very truly yours,

Bruce J. Berger

Dear Mr. Trump,

It’s no surprise at all that you directed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress. As an inveterate liar yourself — please see my earlier letter about your hundreds of Pinocchios – it would make perfect sense that you’d direct others to lie, particularly others that had been doing your dirty work for years.

Nor does it surprise me that you directed Cohen to lie to Congress, because you clearly have no respect for the rule of law or the role of the other branches of government.

Nor does it surprise me that your telling Cohen to lie was intended to hide your involvement with Russia. It’s the same reason so many others who have worked for you – who have presumably also followed your orders — have admitted lying.

Yes, I know you and your lawyer are saying that Cohen is not credible. But, come on. Do you think such a story would leak if there wasn’t tons of documentary evidence to back it up? Apparently, there are interviews with multiple people from your organization, emails, text messages, and other documents. See CNN.com summarizing the Buzz-Feed report.

All this documentary evidence is why Cohen is now apparently willing to tell the truth about your subornation of perjury. He can’t do anything else with the documents staring him in the face.

What’s next? Is Rudy going to say that all the emails, text messages, etc., are fabricated? Are you going to tell your rabid fans – rabid in the sense of virus-deranged – that they should ignore the documents? That it’s all “fake”?

Nixon resigned in shame when there was a lot less out there against him. You now are – or soon will be – shown to have aided and abetted in a serious act of perjury, clearly the kind of crime that merits impeachment.

Be gone!

Bruce J. Berger

Dear Mr. Trump,

It’s time to declare victory!

End the shutdown now, and you can become famous! Here’s all you have to do:

1. Claim that you won! Your base will believe anything, so what do you have to lose?

2. Claim that your shutdown of the government did its main job: it made the entire country conscious of the need (or lack thereof) for a wall and for stronger border security. Say that this was always your objective, right from the start, i.e., merely to generate a conversation.

3. Claim that your shutdown of the government did its other important job: it illustrated the difficulty you have dealing with the Democrats in Congress. Say that this was your subsidiary objective right from the start, i.e., to demonstrate that divided government doesn’t work, that we should never again have a Republican president and Democratic House of Representatives. The people who know you for what you really are will get the message loud and clear.

4. Claim that, by ending the shutdown, you demonstrated once and for all that you are caring person, that it troubles you greatly when those who are inferior to you – everyone, in your estimation – have to struggle to put food on the table and pay their bills. Someone out there, surely, in a nation of 330 million people, will believe you.

With so many excellent reasons for saying that you won, how can you not want to stop the shutdown immediately?

Time to declare victory and get out of Cambodia!

Very truly yours,

Bruce J. Berger

Dear Mr. Trump,

The only national crisis evident after you speech last night was the crisis we’ve known about for a long time: the crisis of the Trump presidency.

You are the crisis.

You are the cause of “intense difficulty, trouble, or danger” (Google Dictionary) and not the border. As yesterday’s New York Times aptly states, “the crisis is in the Oval Office.”

The crisis today is that a perpetual liar and con-man was elected as our chief executive. Your speech simply reaffirmed what very Americans already know: that you cannot open your mouth without lying. As today’s Washington Post makes clear, you have “a well-established record of thousands of exaggerations, falsehoods, and outright lies.”

One example: You claimed that a wall would stem the flow of illegal drugs into the country and avert heroin-related deaths. But everyone knows that the vast majority of such drugs (80%) enter our country through lawful border crossings; even if the wall stopped some drugs, the smugglers would just bring through the lawful crossings. Why don’t you work on that problem with Congress if you’re so concerned about drugs?

You say this is a crisis of “the soul.” What soul? You’ve not demonstrated that you have a caring soul yourself. You are the sole soul keeping 800,000 federal workers from being paid. Tell your lackey Mitch McConnell to let the Senate consider the House funding bills, passed with bilateral support.

You say you can “relate” to those harmed federal workers who live paycheck to paycheck. That’s the biggest lie of all. You never had to worry about having shelter or food placed in front of you or clothes to wear or how you’d pay for daycare or how you could afford car payments. You “relate” to nothing, except our continuing disgust.

Very truly yours,

Bruce J. Berger

Dear Mr. Trump,

You say that you’re willing to keep the government shut down for years.

The man who’s helping you do this is your puppet in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, because he stands in the way of the Senate’s consideration of the House bill that would reopen the government. Until you told him otherwise, McConnell was willing to keep the government open. He and all other senators voted unanimously to do that.

You’re using McConnell in a way that hurts Kentuckians as well as the rest of the citizens in our great country. The harmful effects of this shutdown that you’ve created pervade every state.

The government shutdown prevents Kentuckians – and all other Americans – from getting their tax refunds. That’s right: by shutting down the government, you’re stealing from Americans their right to get their own money back for overpayment of taxes.

The government shutdown prevents Kentuckians – and all other Americans – from receiving SNAP benefits (Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program) from the Department of Agriculture. That’s right: by shutting down the government, you’re taking food out of the mouths of hungry children.

This is the shutdown you are “proud of” and, apparently, McConnell is proud too, as long as he listens to you and not to his constituents, as long as he serves you and not the country.

Tell McConnell to do his job and bring the House bill – which reopens the government – to the Senate floor. Or, if you won’t do that, perhaps my Kentucky readers will have something to say to McConnell. If he’s not more responsible to the country he’s supposed to serve, he will go down to defeat in 2020 when you do as well.

Very truly yours,

Bruce J. Berger

Dear Mr. Trump,

Stop playing games with people’s lives! More than 800,000 federal workers are not receiving their paychecks, even though many of them are forced to continue working. In 2013, a court found that the United States government violated the Fair Labor Standards Act by forcing its employees to work during a government shutdown without paying them as the law requires. You pledged to obey the law. Why don’t you?

In your misguided calculus, you think that prolonging the shutdown is to your political advantage. The facts are otherwise. Only one-third of Americans believe that the shutdown is the fault of the Democrats. So toss in your cards. You’re playing a losing hand.

If you wanted real border security, you would agree immediately to the $1.3 billion bipartisan-negotiated funding for the Department of Homeland Security. You would recognize, e.g., that drones are much more effective in securing the border than a wall that can be tunneled under or climbed over.

Supposedly, you’re a dealmaker. Make a deal that opens the government in return for an additional 100 new high-tech drones to add to our border’s security.

If you wanted real border security, you would’ve agreed in the past to get money for your stupid, useless, inefficient wall by agreeing, at the same time, to grant a path to citizenship for the Dreamers.

Supposedly, you’re a dealmaker. Make a deal that takes proper, moral, and compassionate care of the Dreamers in exchange for wall money.

Come on, Orange-Dream-Crusher. Get off you know what and open the government.

Very truly yours,

Bruce J. Berger

Dear Mr. Trump,

As we head into a new year, I thought you’d want to know of my 2019 resolutions, for myself and for our great country:

RESOLVED:

1. That I will use my letters to you to express the prayers of more than one hundred million Americans that your presidency comes to an end quickly, by impeachment if possible, by implementation of the 25th amendment if possible, and finally by the 2020 election if necessary.

RESOLVED:

2. That our country and the world will escape the threats of racial violence, nuclear war, and climate change, catastrophic events or conditions that you seem hell-bent on furthering; that despite your efforts, you will still have around you sufficient men and women of integrity, whose duty lies to the country, and not to its Infant-in-Chief.

RESOLVED:

3. That the Mueller investigation will end with a comprehensive report to the American people, one which outlines exactly what you and your family have done in terms of collusion, selling our country’s honor for personal profit, obstruction of justice, and violation of our country’s laws, including its fraud, tax, and election laws.

RESOLVED:

4. That American citizens of good faith, who have so far looked the other way at your lies, misguided policies, bigotry, and treason, will finally say that enough is enough, that you are the antithesis of democracy and our country’s ideals of freedom and equality, and that you must be put out of office by constitutional means.

RESOLVED:

5. To these ends, I will devote my energy and urge others to do likewise.

Very truly yours,

Bruce J. Berger

Dear Mr. Trump,

It’s no surprise that you tried as hard as you could to wreck a seven-year-old girl’s belief in Santa Claus. You are, at heart, a wrecker of dreams, if those dreams don’t center upon you. Santa Claus? He’s not you, so why should that little girl believe?

You take pleasure in wrecking other dreams as well.

You’ve wrecked the dreams of federal workers who hoped that they would be paid during the holiday season for the work that they’ve done and must still do.

If federal workers default on their mortgages while you play your political games, too bad, according to you. They’re “marginal” anyway.

If federal workers were unable to buy Christmas presents for their children, too bad, according to you. You can afford to give presents to your own children and grandchildren, and that’s all that matters. The others: “marginal.”

If federal workers can’t put food on the table while you lie to the American public about the benefits of a great big wall – one which experts say is totally useless and unnecessary – too bad, according to you. You’re the great dealmaker from hell.

As far as you’re concerned, let the people who guard our airports and guide our commercial airplanes, who patrol our borders, who maintain our government buildings, who prosecute crimes at the Justice Department, who enforce environmental laws at the EPA, and others – let them all drop dead! Or let them eat cake if they can’t eat bread!

Like you said in 2013, a government shutdown starts at the top. It proves that the president is weak. For someone who constantly lies, I have to grant you that you told the absolute truth in 2013.

Open up the government! End the Trump Shut-Down!

Very truly yours,

Bruce J. Berger