I’m so tired of people who should know better saying that investigating Trump in relation to Jan 6 is political.
Even this NYU Law Forum with Andrew Weissmann and Mary McCabe (embedded below) was annoying at times because the moderator was essentially positing that it’s one thing to indict Trump for document retention, but it’s political for the DOJ to indict Trump for his behavior as President.
It’s all I can do to not yell at the recording: “What is wrong with you? Trump fomented a fucking coup, for god’s sake!”
The moderator also lamented that there is no one in the DOJ to help the DOJ in evaluating the political considerations when they consider indicting someone. Oh my god, you idiot, that’s what would be political!
Luckily, there’s an impressive guy who gave a 3-minute speech last week (embedded just below) who seems to agree with me.
We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone. Applying those laws, collecting facts, that’s what determines the outcome of an investigation. Nothing more, nothing less.
He’s a busy guy! I guess he forgot to include the part where the fucking DOJ decides whether it would look political if they indict a powerful person for a crime. (Jack Smith starts speaking 45 seconds in.)
In case you want to spend an hour or so watching the NYU forum…
Apparently I’m not the only person who is tired of this, because Allison Gill (Mueller She Wrote) put up a twitter thread, which I will share here in the hopes that it will help all of us push back on this nonsense.
Mueller She Wrote twitter thread:
THREAD: Oh, but let me tell you how UN-politicized Garland’s DoJ is.
People on the right are crying foul, saying Joe Biden and Merrick Garland are going after trump for political reasons.
Are they though?
Not even close. 1/
First, it was Acting Attorney General Rosen – left over from the trump administration- that OPENED the non-partisan DoJ IG investigation into former DoJ officials’ potential interference in the peaceful transfer of power. That probe was opened BEFORE Garland got there. 2/
Then in October of 2021, Garland swore under oath to congress that he would accept the recommendations of that DoJ IG probe – meaning that probe was still ongoing in the fall of 2021. 3/
Then between his testimony and January of 2022, Garland must have gotten those NON PARTISAN recommendations. And he then appointed Thomas Windom to investigate the top of the coup. 4/
THEN, they waited for the 1/6 BI-PARTISAN select committee to finish their work so DoJ could ensure consistency among testimony they got from the federal grand jury and testimony from witnesses to the committee. 5/
THEN, once Donald announced his candidacy, Garland appointed special counsel Jack Smith to take over the 1/6 probe from Windom and the documents probe from Garland’s Public Integrity Unit. THEN a GRAND JURY of Donald’s peers voted to indict him. 6/
So, no. This isn’t political. This was the most a-political (and therefore slowly-moving) set of investigations in history. Non-partisan IG, bi-partisan committee, independent prosecutor, and grand jury. So sit down, republicans. You’re way out of your league. END/
Oh, and as long as I’m complaining, can someone explain why the fuck the MSM is quoting “former AG Barr” and his thoughts on the indictment and possible pending indictments? Barr was in it all up to his neck, protecting Trump – at least up to the last minute where the coup planning got serious – and they are treating him as though he is someone important who should be listened too. Barr flushed the reputation of the DOJ down the toilet; that’s where Barr’s reputation needs to stay, too.
Open thread.
Baud
Outrage justified.
Media people are not our friends.
Bupalos
Well I’d say it is “political…” in the sense that whether a society concieves of itself as a rule of law state and defends itself as a rule of law state is in fact a question of politics.
The whole point here is that Republicans are suggesting that this is fundamentally not a rule of law state, and that their guy is being uniquely subject to law. I think we have to define that framing correctly in order to prevail the way we need to prevail. It’s important to point out the nature of the argument they are actually making.
RevRick
They haul out Barr, because he’s Trump’s AG condemning him on the documents case. It gives them cover.
Jerzy Russian
Isn’t Barr saying something along the lines that Trump is guilty and deserves to be indicted? If it was a binary choice, I think it is better that Barr is saying Trump should be indicted than saying that Trump should not be indicted. Of course, if we had a sane society, Barr, Trump, et al. would have not been allowed anywhere near positions of power, and would instead be in jail somewhere. Given that we don’t have that sane society, I will go with the binary choice as outlined above.
MattF
So… criminal indictments alleging treasonous behavior, might, possibly, in some political fashion, be cited as a reason to oppose TFG. And that’s a no-no? How dare I think that!
patrick II
One of their arguments is that it is unprecedented to prosecute an ex-president for crimes. However, it would also be unprecedented to not prosecute an ex-president for a crime when enough evidence points to the fact that he was the leader of an insurrection against the U.S. government. Not prosecuting in that circumstance is just as precedent-setting. It is a forced choice for a decision between two chocies, each of which can only set a new precedent.
Baud
@patrick II:
Agreed.
NotMax
Quasi-obligatory?
;)
Parfigliano
Barr’s always AG to cover GOP Presidential crimming. Hi Iran-Contra. They cant stand that for once their secret part of the Constitution about its OK for a GOP President to do whatever is inoperative.
patrick II
I say this often, but the Republicans say we are criminalizing politics, I say they are politicizing criminality. And we really can’t let that happen.
Splitting Image
Because Henry Kissinger is getting on in years and they need to groom his replacement.
bbleh
I guess it’s “political” in that an investigation that involves a former President and current candidate for a Presidential nomination will become a political issue and thus have political ramifications, and it would be grievous incompetence for the AG not to be aware of that and in that sense for politics to be part of his thinking, but that’s very different from it being driven by politics to any degree. Apparently, though, it’s expecting too much of the MSM to draw that distinction.
As to Billbarr, I’m all for them letting him waggle his jowls ponderously on talk shows from now until Election Day, because every time he does it’s “even Trump’s own Attorney General thinks he’s a criminal!” Waggle on, say I!
patrick II
Barr’s in with the in crowd
He goes where the in crowd goes
He’s in with the in crowd
And he knows what the in crowd knows
Brachiator
This kind of crap plays into Trump’s hands. Trump has always abused the office of the presidency by declaring that he should not be investigated for any crime while he is president or while he is running for office. Not even for crimes commited before he became president.
ETA. Defenders and loyalists of former UK prime minister Boris Johnson are using the same phony “it’s political” claims to try to aid their dear leader and to prevent Johnson from being punished for lying to Parliament and other offenses. This is not just an American thing.
NotMax
@Splitting Image
Occam’s Razor says because Barr has a book to shill.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
My incendiary take on Barr: he thinks trump is a GE loser and wants to leave his bloated corpse on the side of the ’24 road because there are three SC seats they don’t have yet
Personally, I think it’s not a bad thing to be able to say “Even his own attorney general says….
JaySinWA
@Jerzy Russian: If I heard him correctly, Barr is mostly in favor of the pursuit of the documents case, but mostly opposed to the J6 and Georgia investigations, decidedly against the NY indictment.
raven
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’m witcha
Scout211
We have both DeSantis and President Biden in NorCal today.
Compare and contrast:
jonas
@RevRick: Fucking Bill Barr. The other day it was all I could do to keep from throwing my laptop out a window when I was watching a clip of him on some Sunday morning show claiming that Jan 6 was basically a big nothingburger because it was just a bunch of yahoos who had no idea what they were doing and nothing really happened (Narrator: “Actually a lot happened, people died, and people have been convicted in federal court on conspiracy charges because it was in fact a well-thought-out, planned raid on the Capitol). Barr went on to explain that the *real* threat to America is from DFH’s and Antifa. Seriously.
Goddamn that asshole.
patrick II
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Agreed.
rikyrah
@patrick II: truth
smith
A day or so back, I mentioned my ongoing anxiety that there would be an argument made that a president can’t be prosecuted for any actions taken while in office. Other commenters here apparently believed that the answer was self-evident and not a problem. Yet, here we are. It’s pretty predictable that some people will just simply accept Nixon’s statement, “If a (Republican) president does it, it’s not against the law.”
Nixon is the precedent, and the fact that people at the time, including Nixon, believed that a pardon was necessary to avoid prosecution indicates the consensus was that a president can be prosecuted for his crimes while in office. If that were not the case, no pardon would be required.
This issue will undoubtedly reach the “Supreme” Court, and I hope they think long and hard about whether to give a president carte blanche to do whatever he wants. After all, it will be difficult to formulate a decision that only applies to Republican presidents.
rikyrah
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
No lie told
PAM Dirac
@bbleh:
I am also interested in knowing whether Barr’s babblings are representative of Federalist Society thinking. It has seemed to me that the FS has always had a pretty strong element of snobbery. They of course where perfectly happy to tell drumpf who to nominate, but they always seemed to regard him as a useful idiot. It looks like at least part of that crowd has decided the idiot is no longer useful. The only really interesting question is whether the FS hack presiding in the documents case is part of the drumpf is no longer useful crowd.
kalakal
@patrick II:
Nicely put
JaySinWA
@NotMax: Ah yes his book is either out or forthcoming (not the content, the book)
Ugh “INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “
I wonder who is fronting the money.
different-church-lady
These are the same people who want to prosecute Biden on the testimony of an invisible dead witness.
different-church-lady
@Brachiator:
When you’re
famousPresident, they let you do it.James E Powell
Barr is a darling of the Village. How he got there & why he stays are a mystery to me.
Redshift
@Bupalos:
You’re not wrong, but, when they say political, they’re really complaining that it’s partisan, that is, it’s being done for partisan advantage. Which is of course bullshit.
Tony Jay
Pretending that prosecuting Trump for his persistent and obvious criming is unprecedented, unorthodox and arguably political is a narrative that sells eyeballs and outrage while simultaneously giving the Infotainers lots of skirts to hide behind when people ask why they didn’t notice or report on any of this as potential crimes that should be investigated back when they had scores of reporters breathlessly gossiping about every move Trump & The Worst Family made for four whole years.
These are not very good people.
matt
If you criminalize coups then only criminals will stage coups.
NotMax
@Redshift
All politics are local. All Republicans are loco.
Tony Jay
@patrick II:
Short and very to the melonfarming point.
Betty Cracker
Sort of on topic — WaPo has a lengthy investigative piece in today’s edition:
Here’s a gift link. From the reactions I’ve seen, it’s a Rorschach test that confirms everyone’s priors.
different-church-lady
@Betty Cracker: Oh there’s no question it proves the FBI was in the tank for Hillary!
schrodingers_cat
This is a corollary to white people can do no wrong. Republican party is the white people’s party and hence a R president can do no wrong. This is what many members of the MSM believe.
They won’t even admit it to themselves and will deny it if you confront them but that’s how they behave.
Westyny
@Betty Cracker: Drives me crazy that this is published on a holiday.
Old Man Shadow
Gotta remember how the puke funnel works.
Redshift
DOJ has guidelines about initiating investigations or taking significant actions close to an election. The reason is to avoid influencing the outcome (if the target doesn’t end up getting prosecuted or is acquitted) and to avoid the appearance of impropriety, not because candidates are immune from prosecution.
And the OLC opinion that a sitting president can’t be indicted (however questionable that is) is about the idea that a prosecution would interfere too much with his important duties, not that presidents are above the law.
Neither of these support the idea that prosecuting a former president for alleged crimes committed while in office makes us a banana republic.
patrick II
@Betty Cracker:
I got ripped pretty good here in comments by Garland fans for saying, with much less detail, exactly what the article says. We blew a year while the Republicans and Trump were downplaying the travesty of that day and pretending it was just a political demonstration. Which leads into the “it’s just politics” trope now. And now we will be well into the election cycle for any judicial consequences that will be headed their way, giving them even more reason to claim “Political” prosecutions to stop a popular president and his supporters.
postscript:
And I will just add, not going after someone who has broken the law because you are afraid of the political consequences is more political than going after lawbreakers.
laura
I’m so old that I remember that trump was impeached while in office for his shake down of president Zelinsky and impeached out of office for fomenting a coup and each time Republicans refused to convict and remove or bar from future office. And I even recollect that the House investigated portions of the J6 attempted coup but wouldn’t share information, evidence and testimony with the DOJ contemporaneously, so that any parallel investigation was smothered in the crib. Maybe I’m not a fancy federal investigator, so I’m hardly in a position to criticize the decision to start with the little fishes and roll up to the big sharks. I’m not willing to be cajoled into the Do Something chorus.
schrodingers_cat
@James E Powell: They are comrades in arms, with a single goal to preserve Republican hegemony.
wenchacha
Seeing the tweets about the WaPo piece. Everyone hating on Garland. Jen Rubin and others. I really don’t know what to think, but I have been relying on Garland being a good guy.
Burnspbesq
ICYMI, the State Bar of California is live-streaming tomorrow’s Eastman disbarment proceeding.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Betty Cracker: it confirmed my priors that this is an extremely complicated case, and several high-powered, smart lawyers disagree on what was/is the correct way to proceed
also, federal bureaucracies are large and unwieldy
StringOnAStick
I just sent my monthly requests to my Senators to increase support for Ukraine, including advanced fighter jets. Let’s all do the same and hope it helps.
smith
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Also, there were undoubtedly TFG holdovers at DOJ who were perfectly happy to gum up the works to the extent they could.
Redshift
@Betty Cracker:
I’ll have to read it. Off the top of my head, it would make more sense if the failure to get contemporaneous statements from higher level officials was the result of bureaucratic infighting, which is something I hadn’t really thought about before.
NobodySpecial
Funny, I thought trying to replace the elected government in a coup was political, too. But these folks never say that. Allies of fascism are really tiresome.
MattF
@Betty Cracker: They’re all lawyers, they’re all law enforcement bureaucrats, they’re all politically motivated one way or another. IMO, it’s gone farther and faster than I expected— certainly farther and faster than TFG expected. I doubt that there’s any specific, visible thing that Biden did to move it along. I’ll guarantee that Biden doesn’t have any problem getting his pants on in the morning and anyone who seriously believes otherwise is… ah… mistaken.
Doc Sardonic
As an old man long departed once told me about making important decisions. “ You can straddle the fence on it as long as you want, but all ya gonna get ‘till you come down on one side or the other is sore balls.” Garland and Monaco finally got sore enough balls to climb down off the institutional integrity fence and make a decision. Smith probably should have been appointed 6 months earlier because a blind man could see without his cane and dog and the brain injured person sitting next to him could verify that Mango Mussolini was going to run for another term.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
Was the fact that Vice President Aaron Burr never went to trial for killing Hamilton while serving as Vice President political? Dueling was a capital offense in New York and New Jersey at the time, but the charges were never acted on.
Why were Burr’s multiple indictments not inherently qualifying to anything he did later?
Ishiyama
That horse left the barn when LBJ didn’t arrest Nixon & Kissinger in 1968 for plotting against the Paris Peace negotiations.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Another Scott
@wenchacha: Twitter people aren’t going to get clicks by saying “Garland knows what he’s doing, and the law is slow.”
Eyes on the prizes.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jay
@Splitting Image:
f’n groomers,………
Another Scott
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: Personally, I blame the Old Testament God for not putting Cain to death for killing his brother. It set a bad example, and everything was down hill from there.
//
Cheers,
Scott.
Edmund dantes
@Parfigliano: Barr as AG also was involved with putting a second special counsel on the whitewater case after the first failed to find anything.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Another Scott:
Right? Its not like It couldn’t have just whipped up another set of claymation playthings to fuck with for Its sick amusement (which really describes the Chuck/God character in the “Supernatural” universe).
Old Man Shadow
@Another Scott:
Unless you happen to be poor and/or a certain skin color. Then it’s remarkably fast. Sometimes so fast they kill you before you even get an arraignment.
...now I try to be amused
@Bupalos:
I think Wilhoit’s Law provides the frame. (“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”) The Republicans’ real protest is that Trump is in the group the law protects but does not bind, but they can’t come out and say that.
...now I try to be amused
@Doc Sardonic:
Another way to look at it is that Trump’s announcement gave Garland the political cover to appoint a pit bull on two legs as special counsel and expedite the prosecution.
Edmund dantes
@Another Scott: the law isn’t slow. It can be slow for the right people or it can be slow to inconvenience the wrong people that can’t make bail (see the guy in GA jail for 10 years with no trial yet and his cosefendemts already acquitted). The law often works to the advantage of the needs of the powerful.
it’s not inherently slow.
Frankensteinbeck
@schrodingers_cat:
Got it in one. I will at least give the MSM that very few are absolute on this, unlike Republicans for whom this is exactly it, period. The national press just… lean to this, without realizing it.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
@Frankensteinbeck:
Thirded.
Baud
If Garland had balls, he’d have treated Trump like a poor black man.
raven
I’m Tired Madeline Kahn Blazing Saddle
“I’m not a wabbit”!
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: I don’t know if Garland has a gun.
Geminid
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: And then Justice John Marshall let Aaron Burr skate when he was tried for treason in 1807!
I knew that was gonna be trouble down the road.
raven
and did you know she was a trained opera singer??
Madeline Kahn in Opera travesty – Indian Love call
Another Scott
@Edmund dantes: History says otherwise.
Aaron Burr was mentioned upstream.
Yes, there are examples of the politically connected putting off prosecution for years, or being freed without charge. And examples of the innocent rotting in jail for years.
As a general proposition, though, the law is slower than we’d like in case that seem to us (and fair-minded people) to be cut-and-dried. It’s much better for the government prosecution to work slowly and carefully and try to address every reasonable possible criticism to ensure conviction than to rush things.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ksmiami
@patrick II: Agreed. Garland was the wrong man for the AG job. Fucking pathetic.
patrick II
@Baud:
I don’t think Garland weighs enough to kneel on his neck without being thrown off.
WaterGirl
@Doc Sardonic: The investigation was proceeding apace in the 6 months before Jack Smith was appointed.
The investigations didn’t start when Jack Smith was appointed, there was just a new person at the top of the existing investigation.
raven
@Ishiyama: Fuck LBJ
Omnes Omnibus
@Ksmiami: No one was going hang Trump from a White House balcony five minutes after Biden was sworn in, so you could never have been satisfied.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: It’s a lost cause.
Ksmiami
@Omnes Omnibus: I never wanted that but things should have moved a lot quicker
Doc Sardonic
@WaterGirl: My contention is that Garland and Monaco were moving but the continued straddling of the institutional integrity fence slowed the opening of additional areas of investigation. Once Smith was appointed those areas were opened are have moved relatively quickly. While I don’t advocate the running willy nilly putting together many half baked indictments, I do have nagging sense that we are under a time constraint here and 6 months were wasted.
bbleh
@PAM Dirac: Yeah they’ve always seemed pretty solidly in the “country club” wing, and there’s a lotta those people starting to wrinkle their noses at that crude grifter from Queens and his unwashed supporters.
I doubt they could ever get solidly enough behind an alternative nominee, but my hope is that some of them — it won’t take many! — will withhold their votes come the general because they just can’t bring themselves to vote for him again.
Tony Jay
@Geminid:
Aaron Burr? But how could anyone want to prosecute the greatest Emperor that America never had for a victimless crime like amateur duelling?
Oh, it was the treason, wasn’t it? I always forget the treason.
Chief Oshkosh
@smith:
Hahaha! Pull the other one. Bush v. Gore comes to mind.
Geminid
@Tony Jay: “What the hell was going on at Blenerhasset’s Island?!!”
Omnes Omnibus
@Ksmiami: Meh, if it had been faster you would be bitching because the case fell apart at trial. Probably saying Garland tanked it on purpose.
Another Scott
Short thread:
+1
(via https://law-and-politics.online/@Teri_Kanefield/110572095083388536 )
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Chief Oshkosh
@Redshift: and events have proven that both DOJ and OLC policies are profoundly flawed and should be revised.
Tony Jay
@Geminid:
“Nothing. Real estate stuff. And those chats with the British? They were perfect. Perfect chats. Wilkinson? Never heard of him. I think he brought me tea once. And muskets. For farming.”
Chief Oshkosh
@wenchacha: I’ve thought Garland was a good guy since the Oke City investigations/prosecutions. That doesn’t mean he’s perfect, nor does it mean I agree with all of his decisions and actions. In the case of the J6 insurrection, I think he got it partially wrong. But, I can’t always get egg in my beer.
twbrandt
@Another Scott: I remember the utterly incompetent prosecution in the OJ Simpson case. That happening in this case would have been absolutely disastrous.
cain
@patrick II:
Meh. They are always going to use that excuse regardless.
I do think that the Jan 6th hearings were pivotal in getting the DOJ to respond.
Regardless how we got here we are at last here and we will apply the rule of law.
Jay
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Tony Jay:
“I really wasn’t trying to sell off and rule the Trans-Appalachians. It was a perfect letter.”
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud: You go too far, sir!
japa21
Since, AFAIK, nobody on this almost top 10,000 political blog actually works for Garland or has been in on any strategy sessions, anything stated one way or another is merely an opinion without actual knowledge to back it up.
From my non-lawyerly perspective, the DOJ has been making sure there are no possible loopholes that any potential indictees can take advantage of. From my perspective the only close to slam dunk case against Trump is the document case and it is obvious that Smith was being very careful and cautious about that.
Any evidence that would make Jan 6 a slam dunk case has not been made public and, quite honestly, may not exist.
And everything I have said is just conjecture, as is everything everybody else says.
eversor
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/19/us/politics/russia-spy-assassination.html#:~:text=A%20failed%20plot%20to%20assassinate,his%20Russian%20counterpart%20in%20Washington.
A failed plot to assassinate a C.I.A. spy in 2020 in part led to expulsions of the agency’s chief in Moscow and his Russian counterpart in Washington.
The Thin Black Duke
Tell me again why I should be unhappy with Garland again. Me confused.
trnc
It’s simpler than that. It’s political because republicans made it political. Every accusation is a confession, part the infinity.
There’s nothing political about applying the rule of law to someone credibly accused of breaking the law. The accused and his supporters have explicitly used politics to try to get around this. That includes timing the announcement of his candidacy for president based on the likelihood that he would be charged, making accusations of politics while this completely justified investigation and prosecution take place, and explicitly fundraising off of the same.
As others have pointed out, the only thing democrats have done that could be even remotely seen as political was the deferential treatment given to DT. While frustrating to anyone who REALLY wants to see the law evenly applied, it is entirely justified by the reality of the political and media environment in which we live.
Kathleen
@schrodingers_cat: You nailed it. I still maintain media’s visceral hatred of Democrats is due to the fact that Black people wield so much power as voters, and as party officials and elected officials. Media hate that.
Gin & Tonic
@Omnes Omnibus:
So *now* you tell me this.
James E Powell
@schrodingers_cat:
Exactly. And even though every member of the MSM can see that white supremacy has been at the core of every Republican campaign since Reagan, they not only refuse to say that but instead attack anyone who does.
Betty Cracker
@japa21: I agree with your last point 100%. My opinion of Garland’s handling of the J6 investigation is about the same as it was a year ago, i.e., we don’t know enough to reach a firm conclusion yet, but it’s not stupid or disloyal or whatever for people to be concerned.
The most baffling thing to me is the certainty of his hard-core detractors and champions. Their opinions, like yours and mine, are based on speculation.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Washington Post, Jan 15, 2022, about six months before the first public J6 committee hearing
Jay
@Gin & Tonic:
They were going to hang Pence,……..
Kathleen
@The Thin Black Duke: The Political Propatainment/Podcast Complex needs gigs, subscribers and book sales. Outrage – especially when triggered by Democrats/Democratic administrations – is very lucrative.
Gvg
It’s political, in that the Republican politicians publicly supported Trump, and will be harmed in their careers if he is convicted. If they had not given in to the obvious crook and no nothing in the first place, we could just give Trump a fair trial and they wouldn’t need to make it sound like Democrats were doing something unfair. Charging Trump and trying his what is fair and not doing it would be unfair.
They chose. I expect its because they are crooks and stupid too, just not as much.
Tony Jay
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
“Tennessee, Kentucky, they all love me there. Love me. Congressmen, big men, huge wigs, coming to me with tears in their eyes saying ‘Mister Vice-President, we know Jefferson stole that Election, Sir’. Sad. It’s sad. Hamilton’s satchel. They know what’s in there, but Saucy Tom Jefferson keeps it all covered up. Listen, I won’t even wait. And when you’re a Burr, they let you do it. You can do anything. … Grab Louisiana by the Delta. You can do anything.”
Apologies to Mister Burr. Treason or no, he was no Trump.
narya
@japa21: @Betty Cracker: I don’t think J6 was ever going to be a slam-dunk case, BUT having a number of people convicted of seditious conspiracy before you put your case together will be helpful. In addition, I suspect the discovery and evidence review for those cases would provide evidence of coordination that you’d need (if that evidence exists). The other thing, at least for me, is that the J6 case against TFG is going to look different than the cases of the yahoos, even though their conviction will help the case against TFG: in particular, I think the stronger case is one that can demonstrate all of the threads–the fake electors, the various other pieces, including the yahoos–are connected and that TFG knew they were connected. That’s a harder argument to prove than the PBs/3Pct guys’ cases, and even those weren’t exactly a slam-dunk.
I also would not be surprised if we see the grift case from Smith AND a documents case for Bedminster from Smith, and I like the latter more than the former. Plus, the latter could include some treason charges, if it can be proved that TFG was shopping/showing docs more deliberately than at MAL.
Gotta wonder what Mark Meadows has had to say . . . and the secret service agents. Some of them had to have been appalled by TFG, no?
James E Powell
@Betty Cracker:
Complete agreement. I find the arguments over whether Garland moved at the right speed to be tiresome. I get the frustration that people feel & I get the desire to defend Garland & the DOJ who have not been idle.
Arguing with each other about this on blogs or social media does nothing to get us anything we want. It does nothing to ensure the re-election of Joe Biden, holding the senate, and regaining the house. These are the things we can have impact on and they are really what matters most.
Jeffro
Hey…weren’t we all talking about this just a couple days ago?
trumpies know that 3rd-party-spoilers are trump’s only shot at victory in 2024
They can’t win without an all-out push to sabotage President Biden from “fellow Dems” and 3rd-party candidates.
Omnes Omnibus
@Betty Cracker: Some speculation is based on information and experience. Some is based on fear or cynicism. Some is simply in bad faith. It isn’t all equal.
gwangung
It occurs to me that evidence was and is all around…but none of it was up to standards of conviction under specific laws. And that the needed evidence wasn’t material evidence, but human witnesses who could testify as to motive and to thinking on the part of Trump. Getting THAT is time consuming in any case, but even more so when it is so advantageous and easy for witnesses to just shut up and not say anything. Putting credible pressure on witnesses takes more evidence and the timetable for that is far from predictable…maybe folks see where I’m going?
Jeffro
btw I’ve (gag) clicked on a couple clips of RFK Jr talking and…whew…Fox News might want to think twice about putting him on the air every other day. Even (some) Rs are going to figure out the obvious, that he’s N-U-T-S!
Ishiyama
It is very helpful if you can get the convicted ones to turn coat on the big boys. Also, does the 5th Amendment protect you against being compelled to testify about your crimes once you have been convicted and are no longer exposed to jeopardy?
japa21
@Omnes Omnibus: True that. But it is speculation none the less. But it is why I give your speculation more credence than others.
Jeffro
@Jeffro: Eugene Robinson is very clear about RFK Jr: he’s a MAGA candidate running in the Democratic primary
Omnes Omnibus
@japa21: Oh dear. You may want to rethink that.
Geminid
@narya: I am interested in what Meadows will say about all this. I think he has some prison time coming; maybe he’ll write a memoir then.
Meadows sure screwed up his life. He gave up a safe House seat to take that Chief of Staff job. Now he’s in the shit.
Baud
@Jeffro:
What I don’t get is he isn’t really going to do any damage to Biden in the primary. Is he going to run in the general after he loses the primary?
Kathleen
japa21
@Omnes Omnibus: “more” is a relative term.
Geminid
@Jeffro: The Libertarian Party will be in the mix. They consistently get on the ballot in almost every state.
Jeffro
@Baud: I think he probably will. This cycle’s Jill Stein
@Geminid: yup. They’ll ALL be in the mix, to the greatest extent possible. trump’s ceiling is absolutely baked in (and likely to get even lower over the next 16 months). this is his only way to win.
Geminid
@Baud: Maybe RFK Jr. will pass the baton on to the Libertarian candidate. I bet there will be overlap among the two’s donors. The policy positions could track also, especially if the war in Ukraine is still an issue next year.
Omnes Omnibus
@japa21: That’s fair but generous.
Bupalos
@Redshift: Yes, and.
I think there is a reason they mostly don’t phrase their argument that way, and we shouldn’t “fix it” for them. They actually intend this to be a bigger and uglier claim within the tent, but they want it to be mistaken outside the tent as something less radical. A big part of what they are doing is denying the validity of American law and the legitimacy and importance of American politics. They don’t say Trump is innocent, they point backwards and say all are guilty and thus none are guilty and it’s all a sham. There is a proto-fascist flavor that requires the broader language than just “partisan,” and requires them to skip over the question of Trump’s guilt or innocence. I think that can be lost and shouldn’t be lost.
Baud
@Geminid:
Maybe. But the libertarians tend to take from the GOP pool, not ours.
StringOnAStick
@gwangung: Right there with you.
Hey everyone,instead of arguing here about all this again, go send an email to your various representatives. Then come back and argue some more.
Another Scott
+1
Not that logic will have any impact on their attacks, of course.
Cheers,
Scott.
mrmoshpotato
Yes. These fucking sad sacks. He attempted to overthrow the government, you imbeciles! What part of that do these morons not understand?!
(All of it, Katie.)
UncleEbeneezer
Teri Kanefield has a thread about the WaPo piece where she explains how rushing to investigate Trump and others high up actually could’ve been a disastrous approach:
I have some big doubts about the WaPo piece, considering it doesn’t even agree with WaPo’s earlier reporting on the timing of investigative moves by DOJ with regards to 1/6. So far the only people I see claiming this is some smoking-gun proof that Garland Botched It!!1! are the same ones who said the exact same thing when we found out that he wanted DOJ to build the case(s) from the bottom up, and at every other turn.
Brachiator
@Geminid:
In the 2020 presidential election, the Libertarian Party candidate, Jo Jorgensen, gained 1.2 percent of the vote, less than half the party’s 2016 election result.
In 2020, the message even got to libertarians that defeating Trump was necessary, so third and fringe party candidates got very few votes.
We will need a similar effort in 2024. The Republicans will need to be crushed.
Bupalos
@trnc: I’m more talking about what the word “political” actually means, and why it is being used here instead of “partisan.”
Part of my reaction is an attempt to rehabilitate the word “political.” And I bristle when believers in democracy and defenders of democracy fall into this trap of accepting “political” as a dirty word that can be substituted for “partisan.” There is a basic facist-serving nihilism in that surrender of language.
Deciding whether or not you are a rule of law state is a political act of the highest order. Deciding you are not is the political act of authoritarianism, deciding you are is the political act of liberal democracy. That is a higher order decision than anything that can be described as “partisanship.”
Omnes Omnibus
@UncleEbeneezer: Starting at the bottom and working up is the procedure for organized crime cases. And those are really the closest analogue to what we have here.
James E Powell
@Another Scott:
Republican talking points never die.
Geminid
@Baud: There are Libertarian candidates who take votes from Republicans. One running for Senate in Georgia may have kept David Perdue from winning a majority in his race against Jon Ossoff in November, 2020.
I think that in 2016 the Libertarian candidate might have taken more votes from Clinton than from Trump. Some of them may have thought Clinton had the election won, and thought they had a free protest vote. That was an exceptionally high Libertarian vote, with a lot of one-time Libertarian voters. I bet a large majority of them were male.
But I think the Libertarians will take more voters from Republicans next year. Democrats are fairly unified, while Republicans have a lot of internal stresses.
WaterGirl
@The Thin Black Duke: I don’t think you should be unhappy with Garland! Or with Jack Smith!
Roger Moore
@Redshift:
That they really mean is that they see all this stuff through an exclusively partisan viewpoint. They assume any attempt to prosecute him must be a purely partisan exercise, largely because they’d prosecute Democrats for purely partisan advantage.
topclimber
@Jeffro: If he ran to Biden’s left on climate change, he might scoop up some of the young Dem-ographic in the primary and have some delegates come the convention. The zoom/Gen X/Millennials I know are not thrilled with the dystopian world coming so swiftly into view, nor much convinced that us legacies are doing enough about it.
Vowing to do more on the climate and exploiting dissatisfaction with rent and housing prices could get him their attention.
He would have to talk up his environmental credentials because his problem with this target group is that they are not impressed by the Kennedy name as much as much older voters.
Baud
@topclimber:
That makes some sense. The Bernie bros at the 2016 convention were a media distraction.
Kay
@topclimber:
Not if they actually listen to him. He just isn’t going to be able to dodge or hide the hours and hours of recorded lunatic rantings. Vaccines have “plunged us into a biosecurity dystopian hell”. Really?
I look forward to this successful pivot to clean energy.
Geminid
@Brachiator: With Jorgensen, the Libertarian vote reverted to its norm. Gary Johnson did not do too much better in 2012. The Libertarian vote surged to ~3.5% in 2016, an exceptional performance in an exceptional election. It is arguable (but not provable) that Gary Johnson pulled enough votes from Hilary Clinton in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin to turn the election.
The Libertarian Party has been under new management since their convention last summer. The “Mises Caucus” flies the banner of libertarian economic principle, but I suspect their biggest principle is power hunger. There should be plenty of money out there to back their candidate. I’ll be interested in who they come up with.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Geminid: if power hunger is their motivation they’re in the wrong party.
Bill Arnold
@Jay:
Or, they were going to scare Pence enough that he got into That Car and was whisked away to a safe location for several hours while Sen Grassley did the deed of stealing the election (and starting a f-in civil war, non-violent at first) by decreeing that the electoral votes from certain states were to questionable to accept.
With an unfortunate gun discharge accident, if absolutely necessary and only as a last resort, for the Greater Good of The Country.
StringOnAStick
@topclimber: I know a Nissan Leaf driving late 50’s, normally D voting woman who is pissed at how old Biden is and thinks “Kennedy has some good ideas”. The next time she drops that load I’m going to unload on exactly what the Kennedy failson is all about and who his big supporters are (Bannon, Flynn and Stone). Fucking idiot.
Kay
Fascinating to me that all the bros ranting about incursions into their bodies and how no one is the boss of them never mention the fact that far Right religious justices just snatched away the right to bodily autonomy and agency for half the population.
Somehow that’s never on Joe Rogan and Elon Musk and “Jack” never mention it. Odd, right? That they’re still fucking screeching about having to wear a mask and yet the US lurched backwards 50 years on womens rights and they are completely unconcerned about that liberty issue. Tulsi Gabbard, Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibii – no worries about government pushing their way into the examining room with women. Do they even know it happened?
Jeffro
True…I don’t think anyone younger than me even has a sense of what a “Kennedy” is, LOL
Also, he sounds completely nuts, so there’s that. ETA: I see Kay just covered this at #142, double-LOL
Baud
@StringOnAStick:
Seconded.
ETA: She probably thinks she’s smart because she reads the NYT.
Betty Cracker
See what I mean about the WaPo story confirming everyone’s priors? From Teri Kanefield to Jason Overstreet, it’s got something for everyone! It’s a dessert topping and a floor wax! ;-)
Ruckus
@Baud:
Professional media people work for people who are rather wealthy and HAVE to get far wealthier because…..
It is rare to find even one of them to be a democrat who thinks that their customers are even close (as in a million miles close) to as important as their financial statements.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I didn’t read the story, but from the tweets posted here, it sounds like the WaPo has made some factual errors. If so, that goes beyond priors.
StringOnAStick
@Baud: She does indeed read the NYT.
Ruckus
@jonas:
Goddamn that asshole.
I know who you are directly talking about but that 3 word sentence covers a hell of a lot of ground.
Geminid
@Mr. Bemused Senior: That is true when viewed through the lens of political principle, and that is how many Liberterians see things (or used to). But in terms of raw political power, taking control of the Libertarian Party is a high leverage play, because there is a large cadre of loyalists who consistently put their candidate on the ballot in close to 50 states. Lenin would approve.
Brachiator
@Geminid:
They are still the same old bunch of idiots.
Maybe they can have some effect in really tight counties, but I don’t see them as more than an annoyance.
Geminid
@Brachiator: I am not so fearful either. I don’t think the Libertarians and other 3rd parties will be a factor next year because I don’t think next year’s election will be that close. A serious recession would change that calculus, but I do not think that is at all likely.
The Libertarian Party has seemed to change some though. I think they may have been captured by “alt-right” elements. At least, I’ve seen some disaffected Party members assert this.
dww44
@Bupalos: so agree with this. We need a while cadre of Democrats who will speak out and push back clearly and firmly. We need to make our own memes in the public spaces. We do not do that well imo.
MomSense
Jesus fucking Christ. The WaPo timeline is incorrect. As soon as the village senses Democrats are too happy about recent progress, in this case the brilliant and incredibly thorough indictment of the former President, they send out a flawed, inaccurate, gossip filled hit piece to make everyone mad again.
How many times are some of you going to fall for this?
Another Scott
Current thread at Teri K’s place:
+1
Just for context, there are around 115,000 employees at the DoJ.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Another Scott: a few people on twitter wondering what is to be gained, and by whom, by leaking all this in-house gossip to the press at this point?
I’ve been a big fan of Carol Leonnig for a couple years now, but the heavy slant of this piece made me wonder if she hasn’t been spending too much time on MSNBC, Nicolle Wallace’s show in particular
trnc
Fair point.