The meme is that Everything TFG touches dies… but it’s not as though his ‘victims’ are lambs led astray. Giuliani was a two-bit bent pol back in the 1980s, when he and his crony Donald Trump were livin’ large at Studio 54 & carousing on SNL, and he’s still a two-bit bent ex-pol now that he’s old and broke.
Rudy Giuliani must turn over a variety of his assets to two Georgia election workers who won a $148 million defamation judgment against him, including his New York City apartment, sports memorabilia and a 1980 Mercedes, a federal judge ruled Tuesday. https://t.co/96PB0lBijJ
— The Associated Press (@AP) October 22, 2024
They can’t touch his pension but beyond that I genuinely think he’s indigent. Have you seen him in public? https://t.co/SkMJs1JGvO
— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) October 23, 2024
(CNN) — A federal judge has ordered Rudy Giuliani to turn over all his valuable possessions and his Manhattan penthouse to Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, the Georgia election workers he defamed and to whom he now owes $150 million.
— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) October 22, 2024
If it were me winning all rudy giuliani's worldly possessions in a lawsuit my social media would be absolutely insufferable
— Hemry, Local Bartender (@bartenderhemry.bsky.social) October 23, 2024 at 1:11 PM
MTV cribs but it's ruby freeman and shaye moss showing off all the shit they won from rudy giuliani's dumb fascist ass
— Hemry, Local Bartender (@bartenderhemry.bsky.social) October 23, 2024 at 1:16 PM
2025 calendar with pictures of them in a different room with a different valuable belonging for each month. https://t.co/OUsb8nYxVu
— Barbara Smith (@nanaslugdiva) October 22, 2024
Hayes Brown at MSNBC — “Rudy Giuliani’s downfall feels downright karmic”:
… Since helping orchestrate former President Donald Trump’s failed attempt at election theft, Giuliani has lost his law license in New York and Washington, D.C.; been charged criminally in Arizona and Georgia; and faced a slew of other defamation lawsuits for the lies he told after the 2020 election. It’s a turn of events that feels downright karmic given the scale of the damage he’s caused, part of a chain of consequences and repercussions that have hounded him over the last four years. And as Trump and his allies prepare to challenge a loss next month, Giuliani’s downfall should serve as a reminder that their actions can have a steep cost.
Given his meteoric plummet from grace, it can be easy to forget that Giuliani was living a lavish lifestyle between his time as mayor of New York and serving as Trump’s personal lawyer. He was earning millions of dollars each year in fees from consulting and spending it almost as quickly. The number of legal troubles he’s faced and bills he’s left unpaid sent him to bankruptcy court last year — which promptly dismissed his filing, allowing Moss and Freeman to resume asking for what he owed them.
In the opinion from U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman, Giuliani is ordered to turn over two pages worth of valuables within the next week. At the top of the list are the co-op shares and lease to his condo on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, which was listed on the realty website StreetEasy for $5.175 million within the last month. The list also includes 26 luxury watches, a 1980 Mercedes-Benz once owned by actress Lauren Bacall, and the contents of several checking accounts (minus any amounts the court deemed exempt)…
The trinkets Morgan and Shae will be receiving are valuable, but the most interesting thing they now possess is intangible: roughly $2 million in debt Giuliani is still owed from Trump’s 2020 campaign and the Republican National Committee. Incredibly, Giuliani requested that the debt not be turned over until after Election Day, since the plaintiffs could use it to spread confusing lies and stir up a media frenzy. “The profound irony manifest in Defendant’s alleged concern is not lost on the Court,” Liman wrote. “By his own admission, Defendant defamed Plaintiffs by perpetuating lies about them.”…
Concerningly, Trump-supporting billionaire Elon Musk repeated the Dominion lie in recent days without any seeming worry about drawing costly litigation. It’s for that reason that there is a limit to how much schadenfreude Giuliani’s pending impoverishment can bring me. Being poor in a system like America’s is not a moral failing, despite what the rich and powerful have continuously claimed. But the same reasoning that will wrest these funds from Giuliani will much more easily strip a working-class person of their few assets.
And yet there is still a righteous satisfaction in seeing someone like Giuliani brought low, given the depth of his crimes. As Moss and Freeman testified to the House Jan. 6 Committee in 2022, his false claims that they had handled suitcases filled with ballots lead to death threats against them, forcing Freeman to flee her home. He did so despite knowing Trump had lost the election and has shown no remorse for the way he uprooted their lives. It is easy then to see the justice in Giuliani’s former home being turned over to Freeman after driving her from hers.
rikyrah
I love this for him😂😂😂😂
Citizen Alan
Now do alex jones.
rikyrah
The 2025 calendar is a great idea
Shalimar
My mom had a story about Giuliani. She was writing a newspaper article for the Birmingham News about indicted oil billionaire Bart Chamberlain in 1981 and he flew her to his island so she could interview him. The room she stayed in was occupied by Rudy the previous week. Giuliani was United States associate attorney general at the time, 3rd in command at the Department of Justice. The people who were prosecuting Chamberlain. He was corrupt even before he got famous.
eclare
Good for Ruby and Shaye.
Yutsano
Bye Rudy.
TS
And people still give it all up for trump – what has he done for anyone?? They are broke, in prison, divorced from family & won’t accept who is to blame.
I have zero sympathy & just want the same to be cast at their hero, as soon as possible
Aussie Sheila
@eclare:
Yes, I’m very glad for them. Some sliver of justice for a great crime against two innocent women. They deserve every cent from that corrupt arsehole and more.
However I remain gobsmacked at the lack of accountability for the great crime itself. Lumpen middle class arseholes who engaged in violence that day have been banged up. Not all, but a goodly number and it goes on, as it should.
But the real masterminds and criminals who designed the whole conspiracy?
Nada.
This is unsustainable if a democracy is to survive.
The US appears to be unable and unwilling to bring the rich, powerful and well connected to justice. This is bad for US citizens of course.
But because of the US position as a global power (although not the hyperpower dreamed of by early 2000s neocons), the lack of powerful and direct punishment for the ringleaders of this crime against the democratic will of the people sends a baleful message across the world.
It’s still shocking to me that the real ringleaders still haven’t faced severe justice, in a polity where young kids get banged up for 20 yrs for possessing the wrong drugs. It’s an outrage .
And it’s one that the rest of the democratic world is noticing.
Cheryl from Maryland
I hope Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss can find some peace. A swank apartment sounds swell, but Rudy, corruptly serving Trump and all those other liars, took away their lives, their community, and their homes. I teared up listening to Ms. Freeman discuss her business and the pride and joy she felt at being known as Miss Ruby. All gone.
Chet Murthy
@Aussie Sheila: Many of us have noticed that too. It’s what bothers me the most: that Justice has been denied. We are the wronged party, and we have had no justice.
Aussie Sheila
@Cheryl from Maryland:
I agree. Their testimony moved me to tears, and I’m not one easily moved to such.
They deserve every cent and more and peace and restful plenty with that mafia turned Leo arsehole Giuliani’s ill gotten gains.
But I await the justice deserved by every citizen who voted in 2020 who had their vote debased and derided by the very worst elements of the US Right. It’s an outrage that continues as those same elements continue to try and deprive US citizens of their right to vote and to have their vote honestly counted.
’World’s oldest democracy’ is an international joke.
Chet Murthy
The worst part is how goddamn proud we are of it.
Ishiyama
The world’s oldest democracy is Iceland. The Althing.
Aussie Sheila
@Chet Murthy:
Not so much justice denied, as ignored altogether. It’s an outrage. And when US elites moan about how the ‘global south’ ignore US foreign policy imperatives, they might like to reflect on how US elites have behaved in exactly the same way as the countries they have long derided as ‘third world’.
The US has always seemed to me to be more like Latin America in politics than the rest of the democratic world. This episode proves it, except that Brazil moved far more swiftly and effectively against its own wannabe Bonaparte.
Chet Murthy
@Aussie Sheila: During TCFG’s reign, a number of commentators made that exact same remark: that we had displayed our similarity to Latin American countries, with their weak institutions and penchant for dictatorship. A-yup.
Aussie Sheila
@Ishiyama:
Yes, from one perspective. But from the perspective understood by most people, the Industrial Revolution produced a much more complicated and difficult experiment in the right of the people to govern themselves.
Aussie Sheila
@Chet Murthy:
US institutions are strong imo. It’s just that they produce outcomes that shock the conscience in the 21stC.
Chet Murthy
@Aussie Sheila: Many of us would disagree. Our courts, universities, press, are all hopelessly compromised by the wealthy and elites. We’ve seen that the rich and powerful get a special class of service from all these institutions, that the rest of us cannot get.
NotMax
“I’ve been forced to switch to Swisher Sweets. Isn’t that punishment enough?”
//
Aussie Sheila
@Chet Murthy:
I think that’s the point I made.
US exceptionalism isn’t so much any more. That’s what you get when the rest of the world gets richer and the democratic world gets more confident in their own institutions which measure up better than the creaky 18thC jalopy that the US continues to believe is unique in all the world.
They aren’t and it isn’t.
Being surrounded by two oceans away from any risk of invasion has led US elites to think it is uniquely good’.
It’s not.
It’s uniquely lucky in its geography.
Like my country. Which is surrounded by oceans and has a land mass the size of the US but a population barely one twelfth of the US.
But we don’t pretend that our geography lends us a uniquely moral purpose in the world other than to survive and be as responsible as we can be in the circumstances in which we find ourselves.
Dangerman
I hear if you click Rudy’s Slippers three times, you go to the Four Seasons.
Ruckus
@rikyrah:
He’s earned every bit of his downfall. Well actually he’s earned more of a downfall than what this is costing him, but then one can’t squeeze gold out of an asshole. Maybe from an asshole’s bank account, but not from whatever the hell Rudy is, which in the overall seems quite a bit worse than just plain asshole.
m.j.
The guy is bad luck.
One cosplay as a McDonald’s worker and E. coli comes calling.
Baud
@Aussie Sheila:
Kudos to Australia
NotMax
“So I told the genie for my last wish I want to be f*cked by two women simultaneously….”
//
Ruckus
@Aussie Sheila:
I agree that the price they will pay is not in total, near enough. However – both of the seeming ring leaders, shitforbrains and rudy are giving up a lot, and likely to be reduced to paupers. May they live out the rest of their lives poor and not admired by a single soul.
Aussie Sheila
@Baud:
Yes indeed. If there’s one thing we don’t need it’s the unique US talent for finding fame and fortune from beating up on vulnerable minorities. This may come as a surprise, but Australia is the most ethnically diverse democratic country in the world.
Our gutless politicians may sign up to garbage like AUKUS, but our polity will never sign up to the garbage represented by Candace Owens and her cheap lumpen simulacrum of politics from a polity where politics has been the plaything of elites for over two centuries.
David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch
Giuliani could have had class, he could have had style, he could have been a contender. Now he’s just a bum with a one way ticket to Palookaville.
Aussie Sheila
@Ruckus:
I will be very surprised if the elites that designed that outrage against democracy ever really pay the price they should. Garland should be sacked.
When Harris wins she should demand his resignation, stat. And she should appoint an absolute partisan Rottweiler in his place.
Aussie Sheila
@David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch:
He’s a drunken bum one degree away from the lumpen mafia garbage from which he comes. Every cent he has should be given to those women. And then he needs to be sent to prison.
For crimes against democracy, and to ‘encourager les autres’.
TS
@Baud:
I loved this comment
No doubt the Australian far right will be screaming about the injustice of it.
Aussie Sheila
@TS:
Tony Burke is a national treasure.
He also represents a very large Muslim electorate in Sydney’s western suburbs, which he has served honourably and well.
He is also leader of Government business in the Parliament.
If the US lumpen right think they are going to come here with their lumpen grifting garbage they have another thing coming.
If we can’t do anything else we can at least prohibit the international right wing scum spawned by the US Right an entry visa.
NotMax
@Aussie Sheila
It may be a geographic linguistic divergence but in the U.S. that would be “another think coming.”
;)
Aussie Sheila
@NotMax:
Could be, but in my family it’s always been ‘another thing coming’.
Probably linguistic divergence, but who cares? If the gist is got, the meaning is transmitted.☺️☺️
Baud
@NotMax:
It’s both ways here now. “think” is more historically accurate, but I’d say “thing” is more widely used these days.
p.a.
I’m sure they’ll cash out for the $$$, but if they were to treat it as AirBNB, I’d look into it for a few days for shits & giggles, and since the $$$ would go to deserving people. Not that I could afford it, not that NYC laws haven’t (deservedly) stomped the industry, not that the building rules probably preclude it. ETA: back to having to be in “text” tab to copy/paste.
https://wibx950.com/take-a-peek-inside-rudy-giulianis-6-million-new-york-city-apartment-photos/
Aussie Sheila
@p.a.:
Very nice. I hope Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss find it to their liking.
If not, they can sell and buy somewhere else with a better climate.
TBone
@Aussie Sheila: well said, and your words echo loudly to this citizen of the U.S.
TBone
@Baud: 😆😍
TBone
Dark Brandon lives.
lowtechcyclist
Um, who and Shaye??
This would be Ruby Freeman, not Morgan Freeman. Hayes Brown must’ve had a brain fart in the midst of writing that piece.
TBone
@lowtechcyclist: that confused me too, thanks for clearing up the fog!
TBone
Tomorrow night Donold is getting the Bund back together. Buckle up.
https://digbysblog.net/2024/10/26/a-night-at-the-garden/
Those who cannot learn from history are doomed…
Geminid
Yesterday Turkish journalist Ragip Soylu posted about the election in neighboring Georgia. Witb 70% of precincts counted, the conservative, pro-Russian Georgia Dream party was leading the pro-Western opposition 53% to 47%. Soylu added:
In May of last year, Turkiye’s Presidential and National Assembly elections showed a comparable pattern, with the more liberal coalition led by Kemal Kiliricdoglu carrying most cities and R.T. Erdogan doing better in the countryside and smaller towns. Erdogan ended up winning the runoff by 5 percentage points.
A few weeks later, Turkiye saw the release of Barbie the same week as the release of Oppenheimer, and this created an intriguing social science experiment. Analysts made a map showing the movies’ relative box office success and placed it next to a map of the Presidential election results. It turned out that Barbie did better in the areas Erdogan carried, while Oppenheimer did better in Kiliricdoglu’s strongholds.
Baud
@Geminid: I blame the Dream Party for poor messaging.
TBone
In lieu of morning music, I’m digging this again today as I look forward to a future including President Harris, former prosecutor. Listen up, Rudy and the rest of your haphazard criminal gang:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lMalvNeJFLk
EarthWindFire
@TBone: Now take away Musk’s government contracts and let’s see what a great businessman he is then.
gene108
A wealthy man, Rudy, lost a portion of his wealth.
If Moss and Freeman could garnish his pensions, I’d feel better about justice being served against Rudy.
He has $43k a month in pensions, plus whatever fancy place he has in Florida.
I feel like the verdict in favor of Moss and Freeman doesn’t go far enough to fulfill the $148 million they are owed.
TBone
@EarthWindFire: ❤️ I like your style.
As an aside, the tankie left site I read has been strangely silent about all things having to do with that fucking guy.
bjacques
Umm, yeah. Before we go further in dumping on the Great Satan, I think some of the comments here strongly imply the US as uniquely corrupt—the inverse of American Exceptionalism. I have an acquaintance, British Sikh, non-observant who regularly engages in bashing the US on social media as a champion of other dark-skinned people, from the comfort of his regular holiday home in Lisbon, and a former friend who never left the Reagan ‘80s behind and similarly thinks America needs to be humbled by a second Trump presidency. (I reckon both will be taken behind the chemical sheds and shot before my turn comes.)
We already had a frustratingly slow justice system, as do all democracies of various stripes, only now aggravated in the last few decades by actors openly defying it (and even that’s happened before). Well, so do other western countries. I’ve read an Oxford English Dictionary of Private Eye issues going back ten years about various government and industrial crooks getting away with at most a slap on the wrist. Here in NL, the people who enabled the 1992 El Al crash and the Srebrenica massacre were allowed to retire before any serious inquiry was as launched. I imagine BHP Billiton get away with murder and the ALP governments look the other way. Garland may deserve to be sacked, but it won’t make the problem go away. NYAG (?) Cyrus Vance Jr could also have stopped the resistible rise of Donold and taken Rudy down sooner. It’s the price we pay for not having kangaroo courts like in Russia or China. Rudy is owned by two Black women, just like the Ku Klux Klan. Life is better for now.
Our talent for beating up on minorities is certainly not unique, as Jay reminded us about Canada. White Australia. One Nation. France and the Harkis. The UK. Italy. Germany. Greece. But we also have a diverse polity. People have always come to the US for its promise to be better than it is then or now. Oligarchs park their untaxed wealth here because they know it won’t be taken off them without due process (which takes a long time)—enjoying the benefits of democracy for free. Nobody owns democracy, even if everyone’s looking to us now. If we lose ours, the other countries will still work to keep theirs, though it will be a harder lift.
10 days and we’ll likely know the outcome. Can we tone down the gratuitous America bashing until then?
Frank Wilhoit
Everyone knows this story, but Mark Twain went bankrupt at one point, due to the malfeasance of a business partner. His assets would have given the creditors something like 20¢ on the dollar. He went out on the lecture circuit and earned the rest, so that everyone was paid off at 100%. He did this as a matter of honor: but, in the state of the law at that time, he probably could have been compelled to. Draw your own parallels.
Baud
@bjacques:
People who root for fascists are not morally superior to fascists.
The only saving grace is that he realizes that America would be stronger and more successful under Democratic leadership.
TBone
@Frank Wilhoit: 💙
“First, they came for the journalists. Nobody knows what happened after that.”
Aussie Sheila
@bjacques:
The trenchant critiques here of US elite coddling pales somewhat in comparison to the fire and fury the US has rained on any and every polity that even remotely stood in the way of US interests as conceived by its government in my lifetime.
I’m tired of it.
Above all, I’m tired of a hegemon that can’t even get its own house in order while lecturing the whole world on what an orderly house should look like, based on a ramshackle 18thC response to the English Civil War.
The US isn’t the ‘great Satan’ . It’s just another imperial power near the end of its ‘soft power’ tether.
Ken
@Frank Wilhoit: Interesting. Unfortunately for Moss and Freeman, even if those older laws were still in effect, I can’t see them getting $148 million from any labor Rudy Giuliani might be compelled to do. Maybe $148.
pajaro
@Aussie Sheila:
Any replacement of Garland will need to be confirmed by the new Senate. In order to even get to 50-50, we will need to win two seats in red states–Ohio, Montana, Nebraska and Texas, and even if we do, any controversial nominee will have a difficult time being confirmed. In other words, we may need to continue with what we have.
gene108
@bjacques:
Countries that are committed to democracy aren’t going to stop because of a second Trump presidency. Every country operates in its own self-interest and maintaining some level of democratic norms is the best interest of many nations.
TBone
@Ken: I was thinking of the stark contrast presented by Samuel Clemens’s moral superiority and his ‘get up and go’ in merely wanting to pay those who lost out even though he didn’t cause that loss. Also, he left us with an invaluable record/picture/snapshot of the America of his day, painted with the strokes of an expert quill.
No whining was heard.
zhena gogolia
@Aussie Sheila: Assuming Harris gets the opportunity to do this, whoever she appoints will be just as meticulous and observant of the law as Garland. I’m afraid you’ll all be very disappointed.
Baud
@gene108:
I think the point is that Trump serves as an inspiration to awful people everywhere, which makes it harder for other countries to keep their commitment to democracy.
Kay
ABC has Harris up 4 based on a “return” of Latino and Black men, which is my bet, that they come home in the end.
Nice. If I could stand purchasing Bitcoin I would literally bet on her – I like the odds.
I canvass in Toledo today with my son, which I’m looking forward to. Not canvassing, which is bearable at best, but spending the afternoon with my son.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
It’s more about spin than facts. Any new thing that Harris’s AG does could be portrayed as something Garland would never do.
Doesn’t matter. Cabinet usually turns over after four years, and unless a GOP Senate prevents it, it will happen again.
Baud
@Kay:
Thanks, Kay. It’s awesome that you get to do it with your kid.
TBone
Some great Rogan-Dotard memes out there! Someone posted the transcript of that “interview” here, but I got lost during a particularly egregious “weave” and Rogan is wearing the same facial expression I had while trying to read and follow along 😆
Ramalama
@Ruckus: Firm handshake of agreement… Rudy worked his arse off at his own downfall.
Also per this clip from the front page, I mean who’s going to be reminded? Nobody. Every pro-Trump thug thinks he’s or she’s so unique. Rudy, bad luck. Those 1000 or so J6 in jail, conspiracy against them. I mean they’re all a bunch of wanking whining feral dogs.
Kay
@Baud:
We meet at the IBEW hall to get lists so I’m hoping it’s mostly men, for once.
pajaro
@Aussie Sheila:
Actually, our civil justice system is doing a bang-up job of providing accountability. Trump was adjudicated as having committed sexual assault and defamation and is facing a more than $100 million judgment; his foundation has been closed and his business has been found guilty of fraud. Rudy has been stripped of most of his assets; dominion won a huge judgement against FOX news, to name three rich and powerful folks and institutions. A number of the participant in the stop the steal movement have been disbarred. It’s the criminal system that’s been slow to get the conspirators, but the problem of getting accountability for would-be authoritarians is a pretty wide-spread difficulty.
Kay
The funniest part of Rudy, to me, is how bad he is with money.
He has been a full time Right wing grifter since 9/11 and yet he doesn’t have two nickels. Mortgaged to the hilt, in contempt on unpaid spousal support, every penny he will ever earn is already tied up with judgments on damages to all the people he smeared – he’s a deadbeat.
Baud
@Kay:
/r/IBEW on reddit has been on fire for Harris. Best union out there based on reddit presence.
Ramalama
@Kay:
Rudy might have learned a thing or two from teh Donald to use Other People’s Money to buy things.
And now he’s learned the coin flip to this: his money has literally become Other People’s Money.
gene108
@Baud:
I think the U.S. overestimates the number of countries that look to it for any kind of political or moral guidance.
Baud
@gene108:
I don’t know what “estimate” is out there. I think the dynamic exists.
Geminid
@Geminid: I never paid much attention to Turkiye until the Russia/Ukraine war. Turkiye’s role interested me, and in researching it I became fascinated by the country and its people. Turkiye sits at the intersection of Europe and what used to be called Asia and now is referred to as the Middle East.
Turkiye is probably the most “Western” of Muslim countries. It’s also a substantial military power, with Nato’s second largest Army and 3rd largest Air Force. With a population of 85 million Turkiye is tied with Germany for second biggest Nato country by population.
So, I follow Turkish news and saw three big stories this week. On Tuesday, exiled cleric Fethulla Gulen died at age 82. He’d been living in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania since 1999. Mr. Gulen was a hugely controversial figure in Turkiye; a former Erdogan ally whom Erdogan and others blame for the coup attempt of July, 2016.
Gulen’s death was overshadowed the next day by a speech made in the National Assembly. Devlet Bahceli, head of the conservative party MHP, proposed allowing Abdullah Ocalan out of prison to address the Assembly.
Back in 1978, Ocalan founded the Turkish Worker’s Party, also known as the PKK, and in 1984 the PKK commenced a war against the Turkish state in order to vindicate the rights of its Kurdish citizens. The war has cost over 40,000 lives since then.
Bahceli’s party has been very hostile towards the PKK throughout this war, so his speech was remarkable. Bahceli and Erdogan are coalition partners and it’s assumed Erdogan is behind the move.
After Bahceli’s speech, word came out that Abdullah Ocalan had been allowed a visit from family members for the first time in over four years. He’s been imprisoned on an island in the Marmara Sea* since 1999, when Turkish intelligence agents kidnapped him in (I think) Nairobi.
So something is going on. Bahceli visited HPD party headquarters a few days before his speech. The HD Party is 3rd largest in the Nationally Assembly, and its voting base is composed primarily of Kurds and left-wing Turks. A lot of people assume HDP is a political wing of the PKK. It sounds like the Turkish government is trying to work out some sort of grand bargain with Ocalan and the HDP that would finally settle this 40 year-long war.
But not all PKK members are on the same page. On Thursday two PKK fighters hijacked a cab in Ankara and had the driver take them to the headquarters of drone-maker Turkish Aerospace Industries. When they got there there they killed the driver and stormed the entrance. The attackers, a man and a woman, killed 4 TAI emplyees and wounded more before security forces “neutralized” them, as they put it. This was the third big story.
* That would be Propontus for you Classical literature fans.
Chief Oshkosh
@zhena gogolia:
Ah, the old straw man rears his shaggy head. Nobody here is arguing that an AG should not be meticulous or no observant of the law. Nobody.
To the contrary, what I’ve seen argued here is that an AG (and all prosecutors) should apply the law to EVERYONE fairly, and more to the point, with better judgement about how to focus and expend resources, including the one we humans of the least of to waste: time.
David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch
@Kay: Is that up 4 nationally, or is that up 4 for a particular statE?
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud:So true, in my experience, anyway. Nothing against other unions, IBEW introduced me to useful political action and how it doesn’t have to be flashy (I know that many here know that, but I didn’t 30-odd years ago). Great union in that regard, and probably a great union, period.
brendancalling
My favorite part is when he lost grandpa’s watch. That one stung.
I still hope he winds up on the streets, begging. Prison would be too good for him, what with the 3 hots and a cot. Let him sleep under a bridge.
K-Mo
@Cheryl from Maryland: 100 percent this. WTF are they supposed to do with 20 watches? Reminds me of Manafort and his peacock leather coat.
zhena gogolia
@Chief Oshkosh: Explain in detail what Merrick Garland could have done that he hasn’t done.
Eolirin
@Chief Oshkosh: The problem with holding people accountable for Jan 6th hasn’t been with the Justice Department, it’s been with the Supreme Court and with right wing judges. All of the cases that have been brought would have been done by now if the courts hadn’t slowed the process down.
If the documents case hadn’t landed Cannon Trump would very likely be in jail already.
Geminid
@Chief Oshkosh: An IBEW local advertises a lot on Washington, D.C. all-news radio statuon WTOP. Their pitch is to electrical contractors servicing the area’s booming commercial construction industry. A typical ad will have a confident contractor explain how he can rely on the IBEW local to provide skilled, professional electricians for all his projects. The hourly national news is often “brought to you by IBEW Local 25, where electrical contractors come to grow.”
Listeners are frequenty told that “the WTOP news desk is wired by IBEW Local 25, where electrical contractors…” etc. These ads strike me as effective beyond the target audience of contractors. They convey a good image of these union members and their work to WTOP’s larger audience as well.
K-Mo
@TBone: I would watch the hell out of a “Law and Order: GPU (Grifter Politicians Unit)”
artem1s
@zhena gogolia: Unfortunately the vengence hate machine on the Dem side has completely memory holed the mess that Garland inherited and has had to clean up in the wake of Bill Barr’s fealty to White Nationalism. Even Jeff Sessions walked away rather than be involved in TCF’s executive orders and what his lackeys were doing to the DOJ.
The DoJ has not only needed massive restructuring to weed out the bad seed, they’ve been working on one of the largest RICO cases and the largest domestic terrorism cases in the history of the US, non-stop since Garland was appointed in March 2021. In less than 8 months the DoJ had collected evidence and charged over 1000 with crimes related to J6 Capitol breach. To date over 1400 have been charged and over 900 convicted. These conviction would have likely never happened had Garland allowed public opinion to sway the DoJ to focus solely on TCF. In fact, trying these cases first has strengthened the case against the TCF, his staff and House Republican’s involved in the ‘fake electors’ scheme.
The ‘do somethings’ Dems willfully ignore that successful criminal prosecution is a much higher bar than in civil cases – moreso when trying to prove intent of a subject who was no where near where the crime occurred. It took approximately 2 years to collect the evidence and then the case was turned over to a special prosecutor. For a RICO case of this size, that’s unprecedented. Then the ‘do somethings’ cheered, assumed Smith was a superhero, and ignorantly celebrated that Garland was the sole obstacle for throwing Trump in jail. They assume it’s all Garland’s fault that it’s taken Smith almost two years to get these cases to court despite knowing that TCF appointees and elected MAGAt officials have been submarining the case at various points. Even a GOP appointed Supreme Court Justice attempted to have Smith removed as Special Prosecutor.
Yet somehow these cases against TCF are still grinding on. Maybe, just maybe it’s because Garland and his team (including Smith) are meticulous and prepared. Imagine if the ‘do somethings’ had gotten what they wanted and in less than a year a partisan jury got seated who had never seen the House Hearings on J6 or seen the convictions of over 900 insurrection cases or the Stormy Daniels case or the corruption of the Robert’s court. We’d have had a hung trial. But yes, let’s pretend that the brand of ‘do something justice’ isn’t just like what Rudy did to those BOE workers in GA – holding a trial in the court of public opinion in order to destroy someone.
Harris is just as meticulous and committed to proving guilt in a court of law as Garland is. I find it humorous that anyone would believe she would interfere with the ongoing DoJ J6 investigation (with or without Garland) or in the special prosecutor’s cases just to enact vengeance on her political enemies.
Another Scott
@artem1s: Thank you.
I understand the sentiment that “Tmurp should have been arrested on January 6!!11ONE We all saw what he did!! LOCK HIM UP!!ONE”
Justice is slow. It’s intentionally slow. It’s slow for important reasons. Yes, it’s infuriating, but getting it right takes time – especially (as you mention) when monsters are throwing up every roadblock they can to try to delay the inevitable.
People venting is fine. People demanding excellence is fine. People demanding impossible or unwise things is not a recipe for justice.
Forward!!
Cheers,
Scott.
stinger
@artem1s:
Thank you.
Weftage
@stinger: Co-signed.
Mousebumples
I initially read this post title as Rudy loses his shit. Also appropriate. 😂
High levels of schadenfreude today!
zhena gogolia
@artem1s: Thank you!
TBone
@K-Mo: me too! 😆❤️
brantl
@Aussie Sheila: From the first time someone spouted US exceptionalism, it was horseshit. It’s amazing how good those slopeheads are at looking down their noses at people who are smarter, work harder and act more decently than those arseholes ever did.
brantl
@NotMax: It’s actually both. Despite the fact that think is not a noun.