The Opportunity Costs of Conspiracy Theories about Merrick Garland
You have a choice.
You can spend the next few weeks laying the groundwork for making a big stink about the fact that the aspiring FBI Director tried to help Trump steal classified documents.
Or you can spend it clinging to false claims about Merrick Garland so you can blame him for the fact that Trump won reelection rather than blaming the guy directly responsible for preventing a trial (and the guy who’ll remain responsible for Trump’s license going forward), John Roberts, to say nothing of the failed Democratic consultants and voters themselves.
Sadly, Democrats and lefties — from random people on Bluesky to TV lawyers to the President himself — are choosing the latter path, the path that will guarantee they remain maximally ineffective.
They’re rolling out all the tired false claims: Merrick Garland waited before investigating people close to Trump, they claim. According to NYT, Garland approved an effort to follow the money in his first meeting with prosecutors — an effort that turned out to be a dry hole, but nevertheless was precisely the approach that people like Sheldon Whitehouse and Andrew Weissmann demanded.
After being sworn in as attorney general in March 2021, Merrick B. Garland gathered his closest aides to discuss a topic too sensitive to broach in bigger groups: the possibility that evidence from the far-ranging Jan. 6 investigation could quickly lead to former President Donald J. Trump and his inner circle.
At the time, some in the Justice Department were pushing for the chance to look at ties between pro-Trump rioters who assaulted the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, his allies who had camped out at the Willard Hotel, and possibly Mr. Trump himself.
Mr. Garland said he would place no restrictions on their work, even if the “evidence leads to Trump,” according to people with knowledge of several conversations held over his first months in office.
“Follow the connective tissue upward,” said Mr. Garland, adding a directive that would eventually lead to a dead end: “Follow the money.”
In June 2021, they focused on the Willard, precisely the people everyone wanted investigated.
In late June, Mr. Garland, Ms. Monaco and several aides decided they needed to take a dramatic step: creating an independent team, separate from Mr. Cooney’s original group, tasked with investigating the Willard plotters, with no restriction on moving up the ladder to Mr. Trump if the evidence justified it.
They did not want too many people knowing about it. So they gave it a vanilla name: the “Investigations Unit.”
NYT misses — as everyone else has, too — one of the most opportunistic things DOJ did to accelerate the investigation. It used the existing warrant for Rudy’s devices obtained on Lisa Monaco’s first day on the job, April 21, 2021, to do a privilege review of the January 6 content at the same time. The Special Master prioritized the phone Rudy used on January 6 — 1b05A, which appears throughout Rudy’s privilege log for January 6 related material — and started turning over that material to DOJ starting on November 11, 2021. That effort yielded at least one key document that shows up in Trump’s January 6 indictment but not the January 6 Report, as well as encrypted content not available anywhere else.
DOJ started with Rudy, Co-Conspirator 1, the guy through whom the entire fake elector plot got pitched to Trump, and people are whining that DOJ didn’t start at the top of the conspiracy. They did. You just didn’t notice.
Those are not the only things DOJ was doing in 2021. The plodding DOJ IG started investigating Jeffrey Clark on January 25, 2021. DOJ appears to have figured out a way to solve a difficult problem — how to get waivers of Executive Privilege without violating White House contact policies — in July 2021. DOJ sent overt subpoenas pertaining to Co-Conspirator 3, Sidney Powell, in September 2021. DOJ was also working to fill out the encrypted communications the militias exchanged with people like Roger Stone (who first showed up in a court filing in March 2021) and Alex Jones, but it took even longer, over a year, to exploit Enrique Tarrio’s phone, than it did Rudy’s, nine months, and that process necessarily requires working phone by phone.
You can complain that investigations take too much time. You can gripe that investigators did precisely what everyone wanted them to do — follow the money and investigate the Willard. But they were pursuing precisely the angles people were demanding, and long before virtually everyone understands.
That 2021 focus is inconsistent with other conspiracy theories people are floating, too: None of this started until Jack Smith was appointed (or that Jack Smith gave it new life), they say. Nothing happened for two years, they say.
As far as I know, every phone that went into the indictment and immunity brief (which added information from Boris Ephsteyn and Mike Roman’s phone) was seized before Smith’s appointment. The onerous 10-month process of obtaining Executive Privilege waivers for testimony from Trump’s top aides, without which you couldn’t prove that Trump held the murder weapon — the phone used to send a tweet targeting Mike Pence during the riot — started on June 15, 2022, five months before Smith’s appointment. Jack Smith looks prolific to those who don’t know those details, because 10 months of hard work finally came to fruition in the months after he was appointed.
The claim nothing happened for two years? The only major investigative step that happened after the two-year anniversary of Merrick Garland’s confirmation was Mike Pence’s testimony.
The claims people are using to blame Merrick Garland that Trump was reelected — all of them!!! — are easily falsifiable. (I’m happy to entertain arguments that Garland’s grant of Special Counsel status to David Weiss affected the election, but the decision to keep Weiss was one Biden made.) The single possible action from DOJ (likely either Brad Weinsheimer or Public Integrity) that could have created a delay would be pre-election limits on what prosecutors could including the August 2024 superseding indictment. But it’s just as likely that prosecutors believed a narrow superseding indictment was tactically smart.
This is the point, though. This is not about Merrick Garland. I’m happy to criticize him for things he did. I’ve written more critical of his picks and handling of Special Counsels than anyone.
I could give a flying fuck about Merrick Garland.
What I care about is that at a time when we need to start establishing means of accountability for a second Trump term, much of the Democratic world has chosen instead to wallow in false claims about the Trump investigation in order to make Garland a scapegoat, rather than the guy directly responsible, John Roberts. It’s classical conspiracy thinking. Something really bad happened (Trump got elected), it’s not entirely clear why (because almost no one bothers to learn the details I’ve laid out here, to say nothing of considering the political work that didn’t happen to make Trump own this), and so people simply invent explanations. Every time those explanations get debunked, people double down on the theory — it’s Garland’s fault — rather than reconsidering their chosen explanation.
And those explanations have the effect of distracting attention from Roberts. Rather than talking about how six partisan Justices rewrote the Constitution to give the leader of the GOP a pass on egregious crimes, Democrats are choosing to blame a guy who encouraged prosecutors to follow the money in March 2021.
It’s a choice. And it’s a choice that guarantees maximal impotence. It’s a choice that eschews actual facts (and therefore the means to actually learn what happened). It’s a choice that embraces irrational conspiracy thinking (which makes people weak and ripe for manipulation by authoritarians). It’s a choice that distracts from Roberts’ role.
And there is a better, more urgent, option.
We have every reason to believe we’ll get a report from Jack Smith (though I would be unsurprised if Trump tried to enjoin its release). Given David Weiss’ great rush to sentence Alexander Smirnov on January 8, I suspect we’ll get a report from Weiss too. My guess (given Weiss’ January 8 sentencing day) is we may get both reports at the same time — maybe January 10 or so. That’s a wildarse guess.
And so rather than in wallowing in conspiracy theories, Democrats would do well to prepare a messaging plan for those reports.
I expect David Weiss’ report to smear up not just Hunter but also Joe Biden, for pardoning Hunter. I expect he’ll suggest that Kevin Morris’ support of Hunter (a loan Hunter would have had to pay back after the election, but which he had no means to pay) has amounted to a massive campaign contribution to Joe. I wouldn’t even rule out Weiss pushing for Republicans to impeach Biden over that.
I spoke with Harry Litman back in November about what a Jack Smith report might have. Remember, his mandate is to describe both charging decisions (the two indictments he filed) but also declination decisions (the people and crimes he didn’t charge).
That means the report — if Trump doesn’t thwart its release — should answer a lot of questions that have people spun into conspiracy theories. Why didn’t Smith charge all of Trump’s co-conspirators (probably because the Mueller investigation showed how futile it would be to charge anyone before Trump, which the Florida prosecution seems to confirm)? Why didn’t Smith charge any members of Congress (undoubtedly because their actions would be covered by Speech and Debate, as confirmed by a DC Circuit opinion written about the exploitation of Scott Perry’s phone)? It likely will even provide more fulsome descriptions of the documents Trump refused to give back.
But there are three possible or likely aspects to the report that may become important for the confirmation of Trump’s appointees (which is one reason he might try to enjoin the release) and the pardons he plans shortly thereafter.
First, prosecutors had investigated how Trump used money raised on a promise to spend on election integrity to instead pay everyone off. That’s how he paid Deputy Attorney General nominee Todd Blanche, Solicitor General nominee John Sauer, and PADAG Emil Bove (Bove does not need Senate confirmation). Trump’s incoming Chief of Staff (who also does not need Senate confirmation), Susie Wiles, managed much of that process. DOJ did not charge this scheme, but we may get an explanation for what it entailed and why Smith didn’t charge it. While Blanche, et al, have no legal exposure themselves in the way Trump paid them, if we learned more about it, it would further highlight the wildly inappropriate conflicts all these men would have in running DOJ. That is, there’s the distinct possibility that a report would provide tangible explanation for why Blanche and Sauer have grave conflicts.
Far more important is the point I made here. FBI Director nominee Kash Patel may figure in both sides of Jack Smith’s report, the January 6 and the documents side. With Christopher Miller, Kash engaged in what Barry Loudermilk treated as insubordination by refusing Trump’s order to get him 10,000 troops for January 6; this post talked about how that might be a more productive way to make Loudermilk’s Liz Cheney referral a problem for Kash. That’s a way to raise distrust of Kash among Republicans.
But Kash’s involvement in the other side of the investigation (which appears at 19:00 in the video above) is more important. A key prong of the investigation into Trump’s treatment of the documents found at Mar-a-Lago involve disproving Kash’s public claim — made just before DOJ subpoenaed the documents — that Trump had declassified everything.
Patel did not want to get into what the specific documents were, predicting claims from the left that he was disclosing “classified” material, but said, “It’s information that Trump felt spoke to matters regarding everything from Russiagate to the Ukraine impeachment fiasco to major national security matters of great public importance — anything the president felt the American people had a right to know is in there and more.”
Someone whose potty mouth resembles Eric Herschmann (Person 16) debunked this claim just before Patel (Person 24) testified.
What Kash said in his immunized November 2022 testimony didn’t show up in either of the Florida indictments (and we only got reports of what he thought he’d say beforehand). We don’t know whether he backed off his unsworn comments. We don’t know whether he gave testimony debunked by five other people. We don’t know how much Kash had to say about efforts to take the Crossfire Hurricane binder home.
But all that is highly likely to show up in a report.
If we get the report, it is highly likely that we’ll get evidence that the aspiring FBI Director lied to help Trump take classified documents home from the White House.
If we get the report, it is highly likely that, shortly before his confirmation process, we’ll get evidence that the aspiring FBI Director helped Trump commit a crime.
Now, the Republicans don’t care. That’s not going to affect their willingness to rubber stamp Kash’s nomination. But if Democrats do their job well, then they can use this information to dramatically raise the costs of the Kash confirmation.
Or Democrats can continue to wallow in conspiracy theories about Merrick Garland.
Finally, I think it highly like a report — if we get one — will talk about how Trump’s call to the rally motivated certain key rioters to conspire to obstruct the election. We’ll learn about how his exhortation to Stand Back and Stand By had an immediate effect on Proud Boy membership. We’re likely to learn about how Danny Rodriguez immediately responded to Trump’s targeting of Mike Pence in his January 6 speech to make slitting motion at his throat, naming Joe Biden, and then proceeded to almost murder Michael Fanone, pretty close to meeting the Brandenberg definition of incitement. We’re likely to learn how the guys who helped breach the East door, then broke into the Senate gallery, then rappelled down to the Senate floor and let others in believed that Trump ordered them to come to DC on December 19, 2020. Trump has been desperate to prevent just this evidence from being submitted at trial.
But it will also raise the stakes of his pardons. If this information comes out, then it will make it clear that Trump isn’t just pardoning his fans, he’s pardoning people who believed they were responding to his orders to attack Congress.
Democrats can spend the time between now and confirmation hearings making ever-evolving conspiracy theories about Merrick Garland, something that makes them as weak as possible, something that makes them more susceptible to authoritarian manipulation.
Or they can spend the time making it clear just how corrupt Trump’s appointments and pardons are.
Democrats seem to be struggling even to chew gum without faceplanting. They can’t do both.
It’s just my opinion. But I think Democrats would be far better served focusing on the facts that we do know from the twin investigations of Trump rather than inventing false claims about why they didn’t go to trial. This is the work Democrats didn’t do in 2023, when Trump was making unchallenged false claims that these investigations were witch hunts. The failure to do that work is a more direct explanation why the indictments didn’t disqualify him with voters than anything Merrick Garland did or didn’t do. And until Democrats do this work, they’ll be politically sunk.
Our justice system is too slow, it’s corrupt, and Merrick Garland sat at the head of the Justice Department and allowed an insurrectionist to run for office and win. He had a responsibility to stop that. He failed. You can point to all the things he tried to do, the plans he followed, the institutional blocks and legal hurdles. But he was in charge, the buck stops with him. Merrick Garland took the job, and he failed at his biggest, most consequential task.
You’ve gotten so wrapped up in batting down conspiracy theories (and there are multitudes, and you are right), and by being exhasperated at people ignoring the incompetence and outright corruption of other actors (Roberts, etc), that you seem to have lost sight of the goal of the Justice Department, and are defending Merrick Garland, the man who let Trump get away. Perhaps our corrupt, slow system kept Merrick from succeeding – if so, he has a duty as an honest man to say as much. But no, he, like many Democrats, are institutionalists. And now, having failed in stopping Trump, they are all falling in line. You’re a good person, Marcy, and an upright one – the people you defend are not worth it.
Phaedrus
I am THIS CLOSE to starting to ban people here for bragging that they have not read the post. I’ve got zero tolerance for conspiracy theorists nor for people who want prosecutors to do magical pony work that POLITICS must do. Among other things it confirms GOP claims that the prosecutions were merely political.
The goal of DOJ is not to do YOUR work of politics for you. Claiming it is a snivelling excuse for Democrats political failures.
“I am THIS CLOSE to starting to ban people here for bragging that they have not read the post.”
Simply false, you’re better than this.
The purpose of the Justice Department is justice. If you suspect someone has lead an insurrection, then it’s incumbent upon you to bring them to justice. If you don’t bring that justice, you’ve failed. I won’t pretend to have your grasp of the law or the facts in this case – but after watching Trump’s behavior leading up to Jan 6, how can anyone say that justice has been done?
I read your writing religiously, am awed by your determination, thoroughness and complete dedication to the truth.
But if you can take a step back from your constant correction of the mainstream media (your critiques are correct and I find them invaluable) and ask yourself – was justice done? Was allowing Trump to run for office in-line with our laws or did it break them? If you feel that Trump’s behavior leading up to and after Jan 6 was all legal, then we disagree greatly – and I have a lot to learn. But if, as I suspect, you agree that Trump engaged in an insurrection – then Merrick failed our country by not bringing him to justice.
The politicians failed as well. The American people also failed. There’s blame to go around, but Merrick shouldn’t be excused simply because the mainstream media sucks at their job or because the system is flawed.
You need to go read the history of the Justice Department. “Justice” is a label all the functions of law enforcement and civil rights protection fell under over time. “Justice” isn’t obtained solely through law enforcement but through the courts as well. You should be bitching just as loudly about the courts especially the Roberts SCOTUS for failing to ensure justice.
You also need a refresher on the oath EVERY federal employee swears because frankly, more than half of Congress failed to defend the Constitution and thereby ensure justice. More than half the SCOTUS aided and abetted Trump’s criming by obstructing prosecution through lawfare. They ignored their oaths and the public owns the largest portion of responsibility in a democracy for failing to remove these failures.
ADDER: Marcy is not the only one ready to apply the ban hammer. There have been an unusual number of concern troll posts by first time and infrequent commenters *on this post* who have clearly not been reading along for the last 4-plus years including today.
LOL Nice try, Phaedrus, but not even worth buying the popcorn.
To paraphrase the great Jesse Stone, the FBI and the DoJ are not in the right and wrong business: they’re in the legal and illegal business. Your criticisms seem more properly directed at the political system and the press.
How, exactly, was Merrick Garland supposed to prevent Trump from being reelected, except by acting in ways we fear Pam Bondi won’t hesitate to do?
Well said. I agree.
I have learned a lot about the law and how the Justice System works in America from watching Merrick Garland off and on over the years. His prosecution of the Oklahoma City Bombing crystallizes how the system attempts to get justice. That prosecution only told part of the story of that bombing as Merrick Garland chose to focus on the main perpetrator of the act because bringing in other potential conspirators without providing sufficient evidence of the roles they played might enhance “reasonable doubt” in the jurors that would decide Tim’s fate. The prosecution got the justice it could get, but did it tell the whole story, of course not, and the story it did tell focused on the guy that did the most .
Merrick Garland attempted to get the person that did the most, but this time half the country and more than half the SCOTUS were not interested in prosecuting the guy that fomented insurrection.
Do Democrats destroy their own to maintain power is the question one should ask and based on my view of history certainly. John Roberts would not be on the SCOTUS had Gore been elected and more recently the evisceration of Al Franken is the reason why will still have Schumer as our main Senate Dem instead of him. Democrats are responsible for allowing those two events to occur IMHO.
“You seem to have lost sight of the goal of the Justice Department . . .”
Marcy’s arguments and evidence have long been strongly suggestive of Garland running a clean ship, but, anyway, none of that’s material because you have given us all convincing arguments Garland is responsible for the corruption of the DOJ going forward, through his inaction which caused the American people to vote for Trump. If only Garland had directed his department to go after Trump properly, we would not have to fear Patel starting a process like Garland should have done, which will corrupt the DOJ in just a few months, when they are going after people like Lynne Cheney, at first.
While Patel’s DOJ are setting time-tables and disposing of “enemies of the people”, please come and remind us again that Garland should have started this process earlier, when we had the power! It would have been favorable for “justice” (the goal of his department! dang him!), I think you are arguing, because corruption of the DOJ is going to happen now through Garland’s inaction. Stupid Garland. Garland could have done that proactively, in a way that would somehow be more favorable, but Garland is not stupid. That’s the point, I guess, so that’s where his trickery lies. It’s a “conspiracy theory”, but it’s true. Garland could have corrupted DOJ by acting the way you would have liked, or refusing to act the way you liked, which makes him responsible for what’s coming next. The buck stops with him, but see how his tracks are covered.
Way to mansplain dude. Good one. /s
I share the frustration and rage. The issue of law is one of boundaries and technicalities. If your AG is hamstrung by a SCOTUS cabal of bootlicking apparatchiks, its hamstrung. If you have to wait for a judgement, you have to wait. If you are obligated to follow procedure, you are obligated by procedure. That is the game played on the field between by the DOJ.
Elections are politics. The problem is political. The issue is MESSAGING MESSAGING MESSAGING and the Dems (and the media) absolutely SUCK at it. SUCK. SUCK. SUCK. SUCK. and yes, one more time; they SUCK at MESSAGING. (sorry to yell).
There is no way in hell anyone in this hemisphere should think that Trump had the election stolen from him (FOR STARTERS!!), or that waltzing off with TS/SCI docs and being in VIOLATION of a subpoena for their return is even within the realm of non-criminality; that what took place on Jan 6th was anything short of a coup; that having multiple slates of FAKE ELECTORS and a loony “green bay sweep” theory of electioneering is non-criminal.
These should be POLITICAL layups. Instead the Dems face-planted right into a 2nd term of Orangemania.
You’re right. Garland didn’t get his job done. Because he couldn’t. Because there are rules. (that maybe should be changed) But it’s not Garland’s fault for doing his job in the only way in which he could.
I share your anger at where we find ourselves and I wish you a happy new year. We all need a day off from this exasperating merry go round.
“Elections are politics. The problem is political. The issue is MESSAGING MESSAGING MESSAGING and the Dems (and the media) absolutely SUCK at it. SUCK. SUCK. SUCK. SUCK. and yes, one more time; they SUCK at MESSAGING. (sorry to yell).”
Okay, we hear you, we’ve heard others, and I’ve even said myself that Dems suck at messaging.
Which comes first, though: corporate-owned media fuckery skewing toward the GOP, or Dems suck at messaging?
Which is more problematic?
The media’s fuckery, IMO, because even when Dems get messaging right, when they shove it in the face of media, the media STILL engages in fuckery to destroy the messaging. The media is supposed to report facts and allow the public to decide but it doesn’t — too many outlets report cherry-picked material when not erroneous material and fail to correct reporting when called out on it. The media can’t manage to find the story unless it’s a blazing bleeding scandal lying on their door step.
Examples: the work of Pete Buttigieg and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as examples of successful Democratic messengers.
Example: 59% of Americans wrongly believed the country was in recession this summer, and likely still do, because the media has utterly botched reporting and made little effort to correct the misperception it created.
Exactly right on the media and the messaging. It’s like if a bear drops one in the woods, but noone is there to see it, did it really happen? Who knows? There is no report
No one is addressing the unfortunate fact that the election was decided by people who ignore messaging of ANY kind, good bad or indifferent. 70% of newspaper readers voted for Harris. This suggests that, for all their faults, the Times, WaPo, etc. gave their readers enough information to reject Trump. On the other hand, it seems that last-minute deciders–overwhelmingly for Trump– consisted largely of people who had no evidentiary basis for making a choice, one way or the other: they habitually ignore all news, even Fox. I don’t see how improvement in the quality of “messaging” could arouse any interest among people who don’t care. Let’s hope that, when the mid-terms are held, these bozos will be in a bad mood.
“Which comes first, though: corporate-owned media fuckery skewing toward the GOP, or Dems suck at messaging?”
Which is more problematic?
The media’s fuckery, IMO..”
YES. YES YES YES! Rayne, I agree with you 100%.
But…. (and now for the lousy part)
The issue is we have NO control over “the media”. None. We only have control over ourselves. Our messaging. Our voices. Our going to rallies or going on strike or our cancelling our media subscriptions or cable packages etc.
I’ve had to stop thinking of the media as the ally for truth and accountability they’re supposed to be. This happened a long long time before Trump. They ain’t us. They’re “corporate “people”. (If they were indeed people they’d be classified as psychopaths.)
While “the media’s” fuckery has indeed been worse than unhelpful but actually destructive we STILL remain ineffective in crafting a common narrative. Ain’t nobody comin’ to the rescue. I’m preaching to the choir.
“The media can’t manage to find the story unless it’s a blazing bleeding scandal lying on their door step.”
Like “they’re eating the cats they’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the pets of the people who live there”. The scandal doesn’t even have to be true!!! There just needs to be outrage, apoplexy, fear of danger, revulsion etc etc.
The Dems and Never-Trumpers need to make their case and it should (rightly) scare the living bejeezus out of the public about what happens when democracy is defeated. Well annotated policy or thoughtful discourse or salient points do not move the needle. People aren’t rational; they rationalize.
I think the Dems and allies need a simple, clear, uncomplicated and moving narrative; not individual factoids or policies or easily disproven narratives.
How about this:? (I’m going to try to make a case)
Trump is a fascist. The Republicans are fascists. That’s a good start. Calling him Hitler is self defeating, because he’s obviously NOT Hitler. Even if he wanted to be. He’s not. And blatantly bad arguments (he’s Hitler) render anything you have to say moot as soon as it escapes your lips.
The fascism works because it’s framing, but I’m still not scared because there’s no narrative.
We spent 4 years “moving forward” and not even a single fucking week showing people how dead Americans are because of Trump’s Covid policies and his demands for accolades and “ratings” rose above the lives of people’s now DEAD family members. He gave not a single fuck. He refused to even tout his own “warp speed” vaccine undertaking while people continues to die.
Those DEAD American parents, grandparents, sisters and brothers are the direct consequence of his concern ONLY with losing his upcoming election vs. our very lives. He had the my pillow huckster at his Covid press conferences!!! WTF was going on here.
Even his outright criminality, his civil rape conviction, tax evasion, business record falsifying, wife cheating, pu$$y grabbing, TS/SCI document stealing didn’t rise to the sick selfish way he chose to handle a national crisis.
That’s a narrative. That’s part of what’s missing. The media are vultures. They can’t help themselves; untreated psychopaths never can.
It’s up to us. It’s ON US. There is no one else.
thanks for letting me rant.
Wishing you and yours a happy and peaceful New Year.
“We only have control over ourselves. Our messaging. Our voices.”
Which is why Harris-Walz avoided corporate-owned media and used alternative approaches to reach Democratic voters. They upended traditional approaches to campaigning to break past corporate media’s chronic fuckery. But the limited amount of time they had to campaign worked against them as marginal Democratic voters didn’t make the shift fast enough, and the fuckery still caught up with them.
The Democratic Party as a whole also failed to make that same shift at the same time. They’d already failed their own president, who’d become the most streamed in history with thousands of videos across YouTube and C-SPAN alone. They didn’t encourage their base to move to follow him mirroring corporate media’s rejection of the same.
It is definitely on us. We failed as well because democracy rested on our efforts and we simply didn’t do enough to get out in front of the white supremacist organized crime syndicate operating under Trump’s brand.
(No problem with your rant but do keep an eye on length in the future.)
“Which comes first, though: corporate-owned media fuckery skewing toward the GOP, or Dems suck at messaging?”
My take is that it’s the corporate-owned media. The Dems rarely have the same opportunities to freely advance their talking points in the same ways the GOP has for years.
A good place to re-recommend Steve Benen’s Ministry of Truth, which eviscerates the idea that “Democrats suck at messaging” by showing how the GOP has enlisted their corporate-media allies in a long, ongoing project of plowing under reality and replanting the ground with lies favorable to moneyed interests–aka the GOP and their corporate-media allies.
How soon we forget the NYT’s campaign to implant the “Joe Biden Old” story, replete with lies about Parkinson’s, in the nation’s mind; the myth of the Hunter Laptop; the truth of the “Russia Hoax.” There’s a reason for our amnesia, and it ain’t Democrats.
I hear Reynolds Wrap is having a New Year’s sale.
I certainly blame Garland. Forget Jan 6 for a moment. When Garland took office in March 2021, he had the Mueller report at hand and could have indicted Trump for numerous acts of obstruction of justice. Doing so would not have precluded a vigorous investigation of the attack on Congress. Since when does the DOJ give a criminal a pass on crimes that have been established by an investigation simply because he committed worse crimes later.
And he could also have indicted the unindicted co-conspirator in the SDNY case against Michael Cohen. All just for starters. Garland wasnˋt up to the job that was handed to him on a silver platter.
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How did it get to Smith will be submitting his report (to Garland?) to, if I counted correctly, three mentions of “If we get the report”?
Jan 20th is the inauguration. 22 days if I counted correctly including holidays and weekends. How does it not get released redacted or in full?
That would be pulling an inside straight of epic proportions, but with Trump not unheard of.
Serious question.
Did you see in the post where I wondered if Trump would try to enjoin it?
You see–the explanation was in the post.
OK. My bad. Let’s play that out.
Is this one of those District, Circuit, Supreme Court e-ticket rides that runs out the 20 Jan clock so Trump’s DOJ can kill it?
I don’t know. I’m trying to think that through. I believe Garland will do everything he can to release it.
Marcy: What would be the impediment(s) to him ordering its immediate release, assuming Smith has it compiled and ready (only after which Trump could attempt to enjoin him from doing so)?
So Trump is seeking an injunction against the release of Smith’s report? Might that request seek a gag order too?
I would have thought a ruling favoring that was impossible.
But may they jurisdiction shop and ask Aillen Cannon?
He is not yet. I wouldn’t be surprised if he tried.
Do you expect that when Trump tries to stop the release of the report, it would end up through delay and appeal in the Roberts court?
After reading above your excellent Garland/Roberts real blame comparison, and then re-reading the summary of the Roberts led potus immunity decision, led to a greater realization of how surgical the Roberts decision was.
I dream of a un-redacted full J Smith report, but that would cause empire problems.
Not sure what you mean by “surgical,” but your use of that word instantly conjured an image of John Roberts in scrubs holding a saw, standing over a patient whose body he had just amputated in order to “save” a gangrenous leg.
Because as near as I can tell, that’s what he/they did.
Biden should order Smith’s report released. He’s immune. And pardon the person releasing it.
Enough.
The fact that we haven’t seen it yet worries me we won’t.
Geez, just fire Weiss now. It should have been done long ago. Fire him now so he cannot continue to unfairly damage the Biden family through his glaring combination of partisanship, animus, and incompetence. It might be the only positive thing Garland does during his tenure as the worst AG in history.
A coordinated community response. And truth. That’s the path to cornering an authoritarian, now our government. No amount of monsterizing him or others will matter.
Eventually all will see the truth. But it won’t matter by then. More and more will stop willing cooperation. As it gets ugly the only participants will be unwillingly going along out of fear, or true sociopaths so mentally ill they do not care.
Trump administration will have to keep escalating the power and control in his ranks. Like the zombie apocalypse creating more and more victims.
The only solace is that power and control is exhausting. And anxiety producing, for the user. The batterers are never truly chill people.
We all know that calm mobster at the top who looks calm, isn’t really calm. It’s a necessary facade. But it rots from within because it originates with a break from reality. “I can control”.
Listen to those who used to follow him. They followed and it made them sick.
Marcy is right. Coordinated responses to Trump. Led by the undeniable facts blasted to the public. Continued coordinated action.
Focusing on Garland only reinforces powerlessness. What we focus on grows. We need to move together to create another force, led by truth. One that moves. What did Jack smith learn? That’s power.
The USA needs a protection order and the world needs to help us enforce it. Coordinated. Dems need to come together. Stop infighting and stay focused on the most dangerous people in the world running our country. We are in peril and need to respond at that level.
Going to work on the toughest DV cases always meant watching the abuse continue for a period of time. It’s like a moving car. It won’t stop on a dime.
Protect our brains and stay focused on facts and coordinated movements, solutions to problems. . We need outside help. Once again this blog becomes a corner stone to mental health.
Blaming will always be the same people. It won’t matter. Like the cartel in Nexico. It’s not what they did and who did it, the knowledge of that information that will stop it. We know. It’s the tolerating it.
Trump is a criminal. He will violate our morals and values repeatedly. He will abuse as much as he needs to for control.
Now we need to be focused on the power we do have. And work together. There is no other way. Focus on solutions over blame. We know who is guilty. We know what they did. We will see what they do. We have to focus on proactive coordinated solutions. Literally to save lives.
“Eventually, all will see the truth?” Wow. Neither religion nor politics offers much support for that view.
Keynes’s comment from 1923 seems sharper. “The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run, we’re all dead.”
What I mean is this…people will collude against their will. It’s happening now. They know. But feel they cannot fight against it. Power and control breaks people. They go along even though they don’t agree. They see the truth but are not strong enough or have valid fear about retaliation. Eventually every one surrounding someone like this knows it’s wrong but cannot run away. Welcome to domestic violence and why people stay.
PeaceRme
December 30, 2024 at 11:12 pm
None of that is an entirely apt or complete description of the current discord amongst pro-democracy inclined people, nor a sufficient explanation of its causes.
The vituperation towards MGarland is but one instance of that discord.
Marcy and others correctly point out that the attacks on Garland are largely self generated delusions, the product of visceral disappointment, an urge to scapegoat, and finding validation in the hostile crowd stoking the sensation of grievance, in preference to engaging in clear eyed rational analysis.
All of us are prone to misinformation and disinformation, because we each have our blind spots. That is the truly pernicious nature of the current discordant predicament
Otherwise rational people fall prey to delusional thinking and fail to recognise they are doing so.
Moreover, such prior experiences of confronting and rebutting conspiracy theories of the right that such people may have, also works against rather than for them; it generates within them false confidence that their pet tropes about Garland are the consequence of insight; it further arms them with a rhetorical tool kit, which they deploy to buttress their delusions against rationally based challenges – frequently accusing the challengers of engaging in illegitimate arguments, gaslighting, denying them the evidence of their own eyes etc.
The BlueAnon phenomenon is alive and metastasising, feeding on our faces.
Small typo on the Home page: “so you can blame him won rather than John Roberts for the fact that Trump won.”– one too many won
Garland sets the tone and pace for the DOJ. It’s important to analyze how the DOJ handles high-profile political case as Emptywheel does here.
The timing and pace of the investigation was notably slow, given the gravity of the alleged offenses. Early efforts were marked by insufficient urgency given the likelihood that Trump would rerun for President. The Washington Post reported that for a full year after the insurrection, Garland’s under resourced the team investigating Trump’s role in Jan 6. It consisted of just four prosecutors, supplemented by some U.S. Postal Inspection Service agents.
Garland and his deputies continued to drag their feet until shamed into action by the work of the House Select Committee. The House voted to establish the Jan. 6 committee in May of 2021, with public hearings beginning on July 27. The explosive testimony from these hearings forced Garland to respond, leading to the appointment of Jack Smith in November (667 days after the insurrection). One might speculate whether Jack Smith would have even been appointed at all if not for the work of the Jan. 6 committee.
While there are certainly many problematic issues beyond Garland’s control there is no denying that Garland’s approach yielded no results in terms of actual charges or even public revelations. This lack of results fuels public frustration and undermines confidence in the justice system.
“The timing and pace of the investigation was notably slow”
You have not read the work here regularly, and you disregarded what Marcy wrote in this post.
Really sick of people with zero technical knowledge insisting the investigation was slow. They clearly have no goddamned clue what it takes to crack encrypted communications and cell phone services designed to be secure.
Also equally sick of the insistence the public should have known more earlier when disclosure of investigative means and methods would have further jeopardized the work. The criming didn’t stop on January 6; the obstruction continued apace.
Democrats failed to explain all of this to its base and the wider public — a total fail evident in your comment.
Mark
As noted upthread, I am very close to banning people who comment on posts that debunk false claims, only to have people come in and repeat them.
That WaPo story was a piece of shit sourced to people with hostility to the investigation (including the J6C people who were frivolously delaying the release of the transcripts for 3-7 months). The journalists exhibited little awareness of basic facts about the attack or the investigation, such as the import of the Proud Boys.
I’m SORRY you have a false understanding. As this post notes, those who cling to those false understandings are little better than QAnoners at this point.
Just please don’t do it in my living room. I’m tired of people choosing to be willfully impotent.
“One might speculate whether Jack Smith would have even been appointed at all if not for the work of the Jan. 6 committee.” One might, but one would be misguided.
Jack Smith was appointed in response to Trump formally announcing he was seeking the nomination for President. More evidence that these investigations were not political witch hunts.
Moreover
May 7, 2018, Smith was named to a four-year term as chief prosecutor in The Hague, and took up the post on September 11, 2018; he was appointed to a second term on May 8, 2022, before stepping down on November 18, 2022.
Which suggests that 1 he was tapped up to be SC well in advance of being appointed as SC
2 the second term as chief prosecutor was taken up anticipating that he would leave at short notice to be SC
Trump teased his announcement of his candidacy for a long time prior to his announcement, and Garland knew that he would need an SC from that point.
For myself I see 1 no reason for appointing an SC prior to Trump declaring himself a candidate, and 2 good reasons not to.
The ‘Garland should have appointed an SC sooner’ trope IMHO has no more substance than any of the other anti Garland tropes, and is perhaps no more than a re packaging of the same tropes.
Steve: A suspect or defendant doesn’t need to be an acknowledged or presumptive Presidential candidate to warrant appointment of an independent counsel. Witness former VP Pence and Hunter Biden. However, appointing a SC removes much of a principled AG’s ability to control what happens next. Maybe Garland should have acted sooner in the case of both Trump and Hunter Biden.
Franktoo
There was no Special Counsel for Pence.
Weiss only got SCO with Hunter when Joe became a target. So both disprove your point.
Franktoo
December 31, 2024 at 5:35 am
You have been given the short and accurate answer.
Now try and explain how you might comply with the relevant provisions
28 CFR § 600.1
§ 600.1 Grounds for appointing a Special Counsel.
The Attorney General, or in cases in which the Attorney General is recused, the Acting Attorney General, •will appoint• a Special Counsel when •he or she determines • that criminal investigation of a person or matter is warranted and—
(a) That investigation or prosecution of that person or matter by a United States Attorney’s Office or litigating Division of the Department of Justice would
-•present a conflict of interest for the Department •
or •other extraordinary circumstances•; (emphasis added)
and
(b) That under the circumstances, it would be in the public interest to appoint an outside Special Counsel to assume responsibility for the matter.
You might like to take into account Department Historical practice and precedent
And consider also what your decision does to the body of precedent.
Emptywheel and SteveBev: Thank you both for the useful information. I wasn’t aware that Joe had become a target of the Weiss investigation or that Weiss had any authority to investigate Joe. IIRC, the stories I read implied that Weiss had been made a Special Counsel to give him the authority he needed to direct other US attorneys to indict Hunter. More recently, Weiss has been dealing with Smirnov and I can understand why Joe might have been a target in that investigation.
As for the text of CFR 600.1, this appears to be “regulation” that governs the internal working of the DoJ. And Garland appears to have “violated” CFR 600.3 by appointing someone from within the DoJ – Weiss – as a Special Counsel. This is a decision that I thought made sense at the time, but has been a disaster for Hunter.
I know this blog doesn’t exist to address all of the misconceptions of your readers, so if this reply is trying your patience, please delete it.
Franktoo
I agree that dick pic sniffing journos didn’t bother to look close enough to figure out why Weiss got SCO. But it happened when he started the pursuit of Smirnov, which was on its face an allegation against Joe, as much as Hunter.
I don’t defend Garland’s choice to appoint Weiss SCO. Weiss is a witness to the crime Smirnov committed. Someone truly independent should have been appointed, to allow for possibility of implicated Scott Brady.
Did you borrow that comment from a WSJ editorial?
I’m with you on Democrats’ failure in messaging. That’s been a problem since 2010. If the report is buried, however, that’s a message: Democrats are too weak to protect the country.
And, of course, Roberts (and the rest of the six) are a bigger problem than Garland could ever be. Nonetheless, Garland and Biden have been weak (on messaging and followthrough).
I think now is the time, if it wasn’t before, to toss aside business as usual. Release the report as soon as it’s complete (or sooner if all the i’s aren’t dotted soon) with Biden pardoning anyone who touched it along the way.
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Regarding January 6 pardons:
I hope that Joe pardons/commutes all misdemeanor offenders who did not commit acts of violence and (selectively) maybe some more severe offenses. In other words, the “normies” who got caught up in the Q-Anon nonsense, the false claims of election fraud, etc.
But NOT: any felons who assaulted law enforcement, initiated or enhanced the break-in, were strongly involved in planning, etc. And especially not insurrectionists and militia leaders. If Trump wants to pardon that subset, well, let him do it.
This will prevent the truly egregious pardons from being obscured by a host of pardons for “tourists.”
And how will he know which of the thousands were “normies”? Because they ALL were trespassing. The fences they knocked down were there to keep out people who had no business at the Capitol that day.
I mean, people who were primarily trespassers and acting like idiots at a sports riot. People who may have received relatively light sentences to begin with.
Not people who were assaulting cops, breaking down doors, etc.
And beyond the possible tactical utility (small, remote and doubtful at best) what legitimate purpose would be served by such pardons?
This is craven and silly.
Further and in addition to PJE’s point, which is unassailable
‘This will prevent the truly egregious pardons from being obscured by a host of pardons for “tourists.”’
Will prevent?!?
And even if it might have such an effect, is this a sound exercise of the pardon power?
Doesn’t it just give a propaganda coup to MAGA and open the door to further pardons for the more egregious offenders.
This is a terrible idea, from every conceivable angle.
Well, yes, “prevent” obscuration, because a Joe pardon wave of “normies” would be obviously distinct from a DJT pardon wave of cop assailants, conspirators, and insurrectionists.
Try this angle: DJT is going to pardon all of them anyway. There will be much rejoicing from various “regular folks” who are very grateful, and the really bad ones will just drift off (for now).
Where do you hide a leaf? In a forest.
Putting the really bad ones in a select category will make it clear what DJT is doing if he pardons them, and them alone. He may, conceivably, decide it isn’t worth the blowback.
the really bad ones will just drift off (for now).
Maybe. My suspicion is “the really bad ones” will become members of Trump’s private militia (i.e. American brownshirts) if he can’t count on members of the regular U.S. military to do his bidding.
Also, think about Stewart Rhodes’ wife – she couldn’t be too happy about him being pardoned…
None of that makes any sense to me on any level.
If Biden pardoned the tourists it would only justify Trump pardoning the rest. Maga supporters won’t know the difference because they will watch Fox and get what fox presents. A Biden pardon would serve no purpose and may convince the pardoned of their innocence. Fox will present it as exoneration.
Most of the people given prison sentences, and essentially all of those given long sentences, committed violence against people, property, or both.
“the vast majority of those prosecuted for nonviolent offenses either never went to jail in the first place or had such short sentences that they are already out.”
Above statements are based on a HuffPost analysis of the convictions and sentences. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-pardons-police-assaulters-jan-6_n_676d685de4b05de1fe06963c
You missed the word “substantial.”
A lot of tourists did go to jail. Most cycled through quickly.
Justice rides a slow horse.
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I applaud your effort to set the record straight, but the Legend of the Feckless Coward Merrick Garland, who Didn’t Even Try (and did you know he’s a Republcan?) is carved in graite by now. People deperately want The System to take care of their Trump problem, while ignoring that The System was designed to protect people like Trump (rich white men with a strong political following and the undying support of the Republican party), and while Trump is completely uninterested in anything outside his worldview, staying out of jail is definiely in it, and he has a lifetime of practice at it, trained by one of the greatest fixers of all time, Roy Cohn. But no, Merrick Garland should have used the Ring of Power to vanquish Trump. I disagreed with Bmaz about most things, but he was correct that no hero will save us fromTrump. That’s our job in a democracy.
This set of tropes is also being used to feed a despair with and disdain for the Rule of Law eg “We should adopt the Republicans methods and use any means necessary”.
I suspect that these narratives are being amplified by malign actors for malign purposes. In the first instance an acceptance of “anything goes” as the norm for politics, is a gift to the right wing nut jobs.
Exactly! Well said! This is a big fear of mine, too.
Garland was the perfect person for the AG job and he used every tool available him to prosecute Trump and the others to the fullest extent of the law.
Garland simply ran out of time as, apparently, 75 million voters preferred giving Trump the presidency instead of Harris. Too bad for me as I voted for Harris.
“This set of tropes is also being used to feed a despair with and disdain for the Rule of Law eg”. It is also, unwittingly or not, useful to undermining faith in democracy in general. It is just what Pukin wants to see.
Not as many things are set in granite as you might think, but my view of that comment is.
It may be because my lack of knowledge in the cases you referenced but your use of the word: “Fact” is what I’m having trouble with. Unless something is adjudicated ~ found by the normal legal process in court by a jury or a judge, then it’s character is something other than “THE TRUTH”.
“EVIDENCE” that “Weighs” in that metaphorical balance; equals Justice in its “Finding” but not before nor by any other means.
If Mr. Garland failed to try those cases, for whatever reasons he had, then the presumption of innocence remains untroubled and it’s possible that the subjects, at al, would entertain and forward a theory of “Double Jeopardy” if another attempt was made about the same questions.
I’m sure you are aware of the case: “Marbury versus Madison” and how that changed our understanding of the nature of the Supreme Court from one hearing contests between the executive and legislative to deciding the character of legislation which was the province of The People Only, the self-evident foundation of their collective sovereignty!
Madison, in The Federalist Papers, tells us that in cases where the government is acting outside of its constitutional constraints then THE PEOPLE ARE NOT OBLIGATED TO OBEY IT!
Let’s hope the Republican party sees that the only way to save the Republic will be to act against their own best interests.
R.W.
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Thanks for mansplaining.
If a judge issued an order saying, “this is what the Special Master review will do” and the Special Master issues an uncontested status report saying, “This is what I did,” I’m going to take that as a pretty good indication that both are telling the truth about what the Special Master review did, ESPECIALLy if everyone agrees the device ID is the same as appears in other court filings (even those submitted by Rudy).
I take those as FAR MORE USEFUL to determine what DOJ did than people who’ve not covered an investigation saying, “I feel like this didn’t happen.”
A little reading is a dangerous thing. Facts are determined in many ways. You attempt to describe how they are determined in court. They don’t necessarily have much in common with the truth.
Your double jeopardy argument is flawed. If the DoJ chose not to prosecute an alleged crime the first time, jeopardy cannot attach a second time.
I wouldn’t spend a lot of energy on that canned description of Marbury v. Madison. Your hopes that this Republican Party will put country above party are not likely to bear fruit.
Garland will always be a lightning rod for the left because of his personality. He is not a grandstanding gasbag ala Bill Barr. He gave few press conferences and fewer (any?) interviews. We don’t know all his inner thoughts and almost none of us have any idea of what was going on in the background except through reading EW. And Trump walked. The recriminations and finger pointing will continue, especially after a report comes out, if it comes out. But what was the alternative? Should he have been Fanny Willis or Laticia James calling press conferences, and sparring with Fox News reporters? Would that have made people happy? Histrionics with few results? Cool. Then what? It seems what some people really are pining for is political theatre and the pursuit of justice doesn’t, or shouldn’t, work that way.
In some ways Garland is the Jimmy Carter of AGs. Probably a good guy trying to do the right thing the right way but got dealt some shitty hands at the John Robert’s Resort and Casino.
Letitia James actually did get results. I don’t know what you mean by her “grandstanding”; to me it looked like she was doing her job. And Fani Willis might have gotten somewhere too, if she hadn’t been hamstrung by a white male Georgia GOP conclave who caught her being uppity by having sex with a colleague, something they had not granted her express permission to do.
The South has always been funny when it comes to Black people’s sex lives. This is just proof that powerful white folks still have ways of using it to keep Black folks from establishing power outside their own so-called “race.” (We are all the same race.)
Wouldn’t it be nice if a contemporary version of Daniel Ellsberg and Neil Sheehan were to step forward in the absence of Smith’s final report before the inauguration? One can hope.
Thank you Marcy and Rayne.
Again, I have every expectation the report will be released. I wouldn’t rule out Trump trying to try to enjoin it. But I have every expectation it’ll be released.
As an American citizen I am upset that Trump wasn’t frog marched out of the WH on 1/20/21, even if only on charges of election interference and intimidation based on the call to Brad Raffensperger caught on tape. Additional charges stemming from Jan 6th could have followed. That did not happen. Instead, every one of the safeguards intended to protect us failed. Senators refused to follow their oath and convict on the articles of impeachment that would have prevented Trump from ever holding office again. Our free press abandoned their duty and allowed the events of Trump’s Big Lie to get memory-holed after a coordinated gaslighting campaign received zero pushback. The DOJ misjudged their own timelines while SCOTUS aided and abetted all of Trump’s efforts to delay. Instead of private citizen Trump being criminally tried in the DC district, we now have President Elect Trump systematically quashing every act of accountability and plotting his revenge crusade.
It is not just Garland, or Roberts, or Cannon, or McConnell to blame. (Personally, I blame corporate media.) And we should not attack each other over our anger at certain elements. We need to focus on how the entire structure we believed in allowed this to happen.
“Frog marched” out of the White House on the day of Joe Biden’s inauguration? How Red Queen of you.
“Look up, speak nicely, and don’t twiddle your fingers! Turn out your toes. Curtsey. Open your mouth a little wider, and always say ‘yes, your majesty’!”
This Red Queen coming in late January.
In Trump’s case, it’s more like finding the Queen of Diamonds, while playing solitaire, than the Queen of Hearts.
Do you understand that they required evidence they did not have on 1/20/21, and still may not have?
They had a taped phone call that was authenticated by the parties involved. Trump requested an act of election fraud by use of threats and bribery. It was enough for a jury to decide.
Um, Donald Trump is about to return to the WH and discredit the 1/6 Commission and the only evidence against him – with the full cooperation of the MSM and the GOP. Just like what happened with Mueller.
In what multiverse is that a preferable outcome to seeking a quick DC grand jury indictment based on the Georgia phone call recording? The absence of aggressively swift accountability was all Trump needed to get McCarthy, McConnell, and the RW media to flip flop back to his corner. And a man who lied about stolen elections, and organized a deadly failed coup attempt, was allowed to waltz back into power stronger than before.
All because of the naive belief that the system would protect us as long as we stuck to protocol. It didn’t.
The part of the GA indictment that got thrown out, which wouldn’t be a federal charge by itself anyway? We know that wouldn’t work bc it didn’t in GA, where there’s venue.
Adding, it was years before they knew who was on that call. So they would have been charging something with the possibility that someone like Christina Bobb would come in and give Trump an alibi.
” It is not just Garland, or Roberts, or Cannon, or McConnell to blame. (Personally, I blame corporate media.) And we should not attack each other over our anger at certain elements. We need to focus on how the entire structure we believed in allowed this to happen.” Ultimately I think there is no way to place the blame on anyone except the voters that voted for TFG for any of many reasons that I find unforgivable: naive, racist, misogynist, authoritarian, brainwashed…
Random blue sky person here. First – thank you Marcy for your continued public service. I had no idea why Garland seemed to “take so long”. This makes sense. A corrupt or weak Garland is a dark timeline. Glad we’re not there.
Next, by all means we need to maximize the MAGA pain of a Patel appointment. In fact, Josh Marshall might say throw sand in ALL the gears!
But Patel is a freak and a pawn. What still has me concerned is that we didn’t extract a high enough political price on the Red Court for their interference. Why? Out of the respect of norms? Because it’s to obscure? Am I wrong on this? The Court’s obvious rot grows all the way through Cain to Crow to their authoritarian buddies.
The MAGA Big-Lie kayfabe helped make Robert’s interference seem more acceptable no? Our Dem lead up to the SCOTUS interference was… “trust the process?”
If this blog does not advocate for a Democratic “Bill Bar” I can fully accept that and thank Garland for his service. But no doubt the courts ARE politicized, and I believe our political party failed to prep our voters with the spectacle that the Robert’s interference deserved. We seemed blindsided. Was everyone surprised?After Bush v Gore how could you be?
Even now our reps seem reluctant to make a villain of Herman Cain for accepting millions in gifts from Crow including a free trip to Russia!
I also think the “no kings act” is terrible branding. A lot of people are saying that Herman Cain is taking millions in bribes.
This very blog remarked how we are failing the basic test of villainizing Elon.
It’s our apparent reluctance? refusal? Incompetence? to go after the billionaires bribing our SCOUTS and interfering via Xitter that makes fertile ground for conspiracies against Garland.
But this is a political point. Not legal. And hopefully this full entry above will settle the legal questions to help us all force our reps to show some spine and “welcome their hatred”.
Thanks again for explaining the full legal history of this asymmetric war.
We follow rules, unlike the GOP and MAGA.
That means we can’t do whatever we’d like to do.
Um, Herman Cain died in 2020. If he’s taking bribes still, well, then we have bigger issues.
Clarence Thomas?
Kash Patel is a lot of things, but he’s not a freak. He is a pawn, a gofer in my preferred usage. To paraphrase Churchill’s description of Attlee, Patel is not a modest man, but he has much to be modest about.
Apart from Patel’s willingness to shill any rightwing meme, his patrons find his gofering supremely useful, principally because he’s a superb conduit for information. What political or business interest in America or the rest of the world would not pay great sums for such information from the FBI?
I don’t know what a freak is exactly— but all the leather is at least *a little* freaky
Reading On Revolution by Hannah Arendt recently, I came across a word new to me:
Isonomy – the principle that all citizens or subjects of a state are equal before the law, or that they have equal civil or political rights
As Arendt writes, “The equality of the Greek polis, its isonomy, was an attribute of the polis and not of men, who received their equality by virtue of citizenship, not by virtue of birth.”
My understanding is that the Supreme Court ruling giving the President immunity from the Law means that there is no isonomy in USAmerica. We have a ruler if not a full tyrant. Given the chicanery of Nixon, Reagan, and both Bushes used to get into office, I have no illusions that we have a democracy either.
The equality of the Greek polis was limited.
Limited yes, kind of like only property owning white dudes can vote circa 1800, but it was a good start…
Oh, no worries. It’s still murder if he shoots us on 5th avenue Un-officially.
Thanks, Marcy. I was polishing weapons and laying out black PJs. You restore some hope in intelligent action.
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maybe it is too late, horse long gone out of the US barn:
but it seems to lead back, at least in part, to the fascism of corporate personhood and the “Citizens United ” decision.
(isn’t this too a section of 14th amendment ? i am informed that the RR case DID NOT find that corporations were persons, but that a later decision incorrectly cited the case as having made that ruling.)
thus, we can never get corporate money out of politics. politicians needing corporate money to win elections come to elevate corporate values over values of our civic society, or to conflate them .
but Democrats can still hammer on weakening or eliminating the fascism of corporate personhood and to strengthen civic society.
It was in the court clerk’s notes/introduction. Dicta, not ruling, yes.
Thank you, Marcy. These are the sentences that stand out to me.
“You can spend the next few weeks laying the groundwork for making a big stink about the fact that the aspiring FBI Director tried to help Trump steal classified documents.”
“If we get the report, it is highly likely that we’ll get evidence that the aspiring FBI Director lied to help Trump take classified documents home from the White House.”
“If we get the report, it is highly likely that, shortly before his confirmation process, we’ll get evidence that the aspiring FBI Director helped Trump commit a crime.”
“Rather than talking about how six partisan Justices rewrote the Constitution to give the leader of the GOP a pass on egregious crimes, Democrats are choosing to blame a guy who encouraged prosecutors to follow the money in March 2021.”
Is it not true that until there was a way to work up the chain to Trump, he had the right to free speech at each turn? That there was nothing to link him to the crimes but his free speech? All of his exhortations and appearances saying whatever, none of that was illegal until underlying crimes were prosecuted and evidence procured to link him to a conspiracy or a plan, which required all the exploitation of the “devices.”
And now Kash. He has to be stopped.
As for Roberts, is THIS what he wants to be remembered for? What is his end game? Theocracy? Destruction of the foundation of the USA? To die rich (not “Fake Rich)? I want to know.
They didn’t work up the chain. They started with CC1.
The fake elector stuff was pretty illegal. Some of Rudy’s lies were illegal. But there’s no law on the book that made this easy to charge.
“This is the work Democrats didn’t do in 2023, when Trump was making unchallenged false claims that these investigations were witch hunts.”
Nailed it. That’s the very very very bottom line.
When Trump takes office on Jan. 20 his coup will be complete.
In October, when Trump told a town hall that January 6th was “a day of love”, there was virtually zero pushback from the media. He said: “There were no guns down there. We didn’t have guns. The others had guns, but we didn’t have guns.” No media member bothered to get clarification on whether the “others” included law enforcement.
At that point, America was doomed.
Yep!
Anybody with 1/2 a brain knew what was going to happen on Jan 6th. I knew. I was only surprised by the success they had. It’s how “antifa” knew not to show up. It’s how some Congresswomen ended up in running shoes that day.
We all know who “the others with guns” were. Because they also had badges!
The media is horrible. NO pushback. NO hard interviews. Feckless timidity. They live in fear of lack of access.
Re: your post about the police response:
Yes organized by the POTUS for the POTUS.
To echo Rayne’s point…
If the crowd had been “super predators of the urban variety” in kangol hats and baggy jeans I’m pretty sure that next to nobody would’ve gotten much past those bike stand barriers.
When I saw them break over the barrier that was my first thought. If it had been BLM they’d be dead. Just all dead. No commission. No inquiry. You were trying to lay siege to the Capitol of the United States as elected representatives prepared to certify the election. The END. Sayonara. Goodbye. RIP. Don’t F’ with the Police.
I said to myself that the first a-hole over the barrier should’ve been shot right in the face and the whole thing would’ve ended right then and there. That may be very wrong in hindsight seeing as they had an armory squirreled away across the river. We’ll never know. But I do know that cops too often handle crowds differently based on race.
I’m also not saying that killing someone for trespassing or even “rioting” is the right thing to do. I’m not comfortable with that. These people are also victims of Trumps and right wing lies in their own way. Even Ashley Babbit was a victim; not of the secret service, but of Trump.
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The story of Henny Penny is a folk tale, not breaking news. Like DOGE, there is no “antifa” that magically knew not to show up at the Capitol on Jan. 6th, and your foreknowledge of what was going to happen at the Capitol seems a tad exaggerated by hindsight.
I’ll have you know that I have a personally autographed skywatch thingamabob handed down from directly from Henny Penny’s great great great great great great greatish grandson! It’s blue, with golden bells that chime!
s/
To the best of my recollection, people who self identify as supporters of “antifa” (a POV not a group) specifically chose not to protest the Jan 6th rally because they believed it would be extremely violent and they didn’t want to get hurt or be set up for blame. I believe I saw this sentiment on the application formerly known as Twitter. Mandela effect? I hear you. That’s not impossible.
As to firmly believing there would be a riot in the name of Trump ahead of time? Absolutely. Directed at the Capitol? Absolutely. That they would gain the type of access they did and that is would be as destructive as it was? No. I thought the police would be better able to handle it than they were.
I’m also the only one I know that foresaw the massacre at Tiannamen square in 89. I had spent the past few years reading about China (and more in relation) and all I can say is that in my gut I KNEW what was going to happen. I KNEW how the regime would respond. Maybe I was lucky. But,sometimes when you spend years studying a movement you come to understand how it responds and what it’s leaders demand.
Now I’m going to have to learn solitaire so I can understand you quip about Queen of Diamonds.
Have a Happy and safe New Year Sir EarlofHuntingDon.
My theory is that the reason police weren’t as proactively aggressive on Jan 6th as cops were at George Floyd protests is because the Floyd protests weren’t personally organized by the President of the United States.
Not to mention [white president inciting white supporters] versus [Black man killed by a cop].
No, you’re absolutely right. The calls to stay the F away from the Capitol were resounding among the Democratic side of Twitter. And I know it’s been a popular theory that this was not exactly what Trump or his cronies were hoping for. Because according to that scenario, pro- and anti-Trump protestors fighting each other would’ve allowed him to declare an emergency and somehow suspend the constitution. However that would’ve worked exactly I don’t know and I’m not sure they knew either but only pro-DT people showing up and then committing random acts of violence against law enforcement and vandalism probably wasn’t *quite* what Trump wanted.
(Reposted with a different name because my username was too short, sorry.)
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Guts and crystal balls don’t usually make it to the business end of the bowling alley, let alone to a conviction in court.
The Tiananmen Square killings may have been likely, predictable is a bit much. Your claim that you were the only one to predict it is…humorous. I was in Beijing before and after it in 1989, so spare me the certainties of your after-the-fact reading.
In point of fact, Earl, most left activists WERE warning their friends and allies to stay clear of the Capitol, days before the event. It was only the SIZE of maga, not the fact that they were planning violence, that surprised even the left.
Not magic—plenty of online talk that BLM and other antifa took seriously.
Maga knife attacks against antifa people in DC cafes preceded jan6.
But the mainstream ignored these ‘canary in the coal mine’ events.
Apparently, you did too.
I was in the same information bubble as earl seemingly but my partner was not as she had signed up to get texts from Trump and the magasphere. She said there was going to be problems on January 6th and while she worked I watched it all play out on YouTube.
I find things do not seem to fit when my partner calls it but the FBI and the media, not a whiff.
Let’s avoid getting personal.
There was ample reason to avoid DC on Inauguration Day based on experience in 2017 when hundreds of protesters were arrested. It took 18 months for the last of the charges to be dropped against them.
ref: https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/inauguration-2017/washington-faces-more-anti-trump-protests-after-day-rage-n709946
Any rational lefty aware of this recent history wouldn’t count on DC cops handling them fairly as counter-protesters.
Let’s also not forget the increasing presence of agents provocateur during protests from Ferguson MO 2014 through Floyd/BLM 2016 also communicated serious risks to leftists from cops including DC cops in 2016.
ref: https://www.congress.gov/116/meeting/house/110775/documents/HHRG-116-JU00-20200610-SD019.pdf
Discussed, in Congress, on the record — who wasn’t paying attention?
I see it like this: The buck stops at the Supreme Court. They are ultimately to blame for the fact that Trump did not stand trial before the election, and they had the ability to make sure he received ‘a speedy trial.’ They rightly deserve most of the blame.
Secondarily, the buck stops with journalists. Why has anyone, ever, reported that Trump is anything other than an incompetent and malignant narcissist? Why has anyone reported that any legal theory his lawyers have espoused is something other than bullshit. Why has the press treated him as sane? No intelligent, educated journalist can possibly imagine that he’s competent either in terms of his abilities or his sanity.
Also, why didn’t Trump await trial in jail? (This is where I blame the DOJ.) Any ordinary person, facing the same accusations he faced regarding classified documents, would have been held without bail, probably in an oubliette.
Why didn’t anyone even attempt to deal with corruption at the Supreme Court? IIRC there was a little action in both the House and Senate, but it didn’t amount to much. I’d like to have seen Biden do something, even if it meant creating a constitutional crisis.
And so on.
and our Democratic Senators who never did any of the hearings and investigations they had the power and ability to do with control of the Senate…I actually blame them a lot, like Warner, one of my Senators
They had a lot less power than you think. The Senate has been 50/50 for years.
Your assumption that “any ordinary person” would have been subject to pre-trial detention is incorrect. Any attempt to reform the rules binding on the Supreme Court would have required larger majorities than the Democrats commanded – and a different Republican Party.
If I (a canonical ordinary person) had been caught with the number and type of classified documents possessed by Trump a Mar A Lago, there’s no way in hell I’d be out on bail!
Dear Empty wheel,
Great perspective on Garland, the report, and the Democrats’ strategic options. Now, do you think we will learn anything in the report about the investigation of the two Jan. 6 bombs? Why or why not? It’s baffling that nobody talks about the bomb investigation and the likely connection to either rioters or plotters. Love to hear your thoughts!
ScottL
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No. I don’t think so. Because this is about what Jack Smith did, not the larger investigation.
Granting for the sake of argument that Merrick’s DOJ did all they could, under “the Rules,” in a timely manner, regarding the January 6 insurrection-conspiracy, we’re still left with the questions: When did the DOJ know that the Russia-compromised, lifelong career criminal, illegally took sensitive classified documents away from White House, and for how many months did they send sternly-worded letters asking pretty-please for them back? Why did they allow SUV-loads of documents to be loaded onto a plane in broad-daylight and flown off to Bedminster and god-knows where else? Perhaps I am missing something, but it has seemed to me since that story broke that the DOJ hardly presented a picture of vigilance on our behalf (not to mention our spies’ behalf) or zeal for enforcement of the law. Such considerations may well color the general perception of the DOJ’s performance — and it remains to be seen (pending hypothetical report), if that coloration is unfair.
It is as if you had never heard of Steve D’Antuono, and his efforts to use his position as head of DC FBI field office and pathetic pretexts to slow walk the documents investigation.
See eg here for a flavor https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna169067
Also, “DOJ” is not a person but an institution girded by rules, among them that it could not just go after those documents on its own. I recommend that you read Jack Smith’s original Florida indictment, which describes the entire process clearly.
And yeah, Steve D’Antuono did nothing to help retrieve them. He’s not in Smith’s narrative. I wonder when or if that whole story will ever be told. If so, it will likely be by Carol Leonnig–whose reporting ranges from superb to (as in the piece referenced by EW above) dangerously verging on gossip.
You rattle off your preferred facts as if they were proven beyond a reasonable doubt four years ago. As Marcy has written about at length, it takes enormous resources to develop them, pierce various privileges, and piece them together into a persuasive pattern of illegality. Suspicion and “coloration” might be where you start an investigation, it’s not where you want it to end up.
They started their investigation in FEbruary, 2021, when they discovered the classified docs.
Perhaps the public you’re imagining is just too lazy to read the public record here?
Who was President when Roberts granted near absolute immunity to him?
Other than pardoning his son and commuting nearly all condemed Federal prisoners, what has Joe done with his immunity? Sending weapons to Ukraine was a decent thing but supplying Israel with the means of their genocide in Gaza showed the rigidity of his spine.
Who the fuck believes that Trump and his miscreants will follow the rules?
Joe Biden’s pardons had nothing to do with what you call “his” immunity. As president he has pardon power. Are you saying he should have immediately given the Roberts Court’s unconstitutional ruling his imprimatur by, say, having Seal Team Six assassinate his rival(s)? Or what?
The absurdity of blaming Garland or anyone supposedly involved in prosecuting Trump is that it implies that a US president could ever be held accountable for criminal acts.
A US prez was always above the law, Garland was always powerless, and Roberts and the Supremes confirmed it. It’s a hard pill to accept after expecting equal justice no one being above the law, but life ain’t fair and neither is the US justice system.
The blame is on the system itself, not any one person. Hopefully the silver lining in all of this is eventually improving the system and preventing the next Trump (or worse) from using the highest office in the land to crime.
4 years after a crime of the most critical importance was committed on tv in front of the world and that person was not held accountable.
That is a failure of politics the CJS the courts the DOJ and the voters
I said it a year ago. There are no short of responsible people
‘There’s no shortage of responsible people.’
This right here.
Happy New Year’s cheers, fireworks, drone shows and light shows are beginning to pour in.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/dec/31/new-years-eve-celebrations-2024-2025-live
Blwyddyn Newydd dda i chi
Ac i bawb syth yn i’r ty
Dyna yw’n dymuniad ni
Blwyddyn Newydd dda i chi
A Happy New Year to you
And all within your house
That’s our wish
A Happy New Year to you
https://youtu.be/2jw564uq6sk
“Stories – Big Little Lions”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sj4fHQxq8dE
An d the first illegal pyrotechnics in my neighborhood just went off. (They’re all illegal here. Fire hazards, at the least.)
NY Times:
Live Updates: At Least 10 Killed as Man Drives Truck Into New Orleans Crowd
At least 30 more people were injured when a man intentionally drove a pickup truck into crowds on Bourbon Street early Wednesday, officials said. The man died after a shootout with the police, two law enforcement officials said. [This happened on 1/1/25 at 3:15 AM local time]
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/01/01/us/new-orleans-vehicle-crash
Update from “2 hours ago”:
FBI statement and tips link and number:
FBI Statement on the Attack in New Orleans https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/fbi-statement-on-the-attack-in-new-orleans January 1, 2025
Non-paywalled coverage from NOLA[dot]com
https://www.nola.com/
More IED‘s, first reported by SEAMUS HUGHES[!] and then Alan FEUER at NYT links to him:
‘Largest Seizure of Homemade Explosives in FBI History’ made in Virginia DOJ is fighting the potential release of Brad Spafford, who was charged with having an unregistered short barrel rifle. Prosecutors say he harbors anti-government beliefs and wanted to “bring back political assassinations” https://www.courtwatch.news/p/largest-seizure-of-homemade-explosives-in-fbi-history-made-in-virginia Seamus Hughes December 31, 2024
Feuer’s article:
F.B.I. Says It Found Largest Cache of Homemade Explosives in Its History at Va. Farm Investigators discovered more than 150 devices, mostly pipe bombs, on a property outside Norfolk, court papers say. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/31/us/fbi-explosives-virginia-farm.html Alan Feuer Dec. 31, 2024
Here’s the NJ Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness report
linked in Feuer’s article:
No Lives Matter Updates Extremist Messaging and Publishes Tactical Guides https://www.njohsp.gov/Home/Components/News/News/1430/2 08/21/2024
harpie, thank you for these updates. Spafford came up in my research lately, but I didn’t have all this. You are nonpareil! Happy New Year to you and yours!
You’re welcome…I was able to link to those, because Feuer linked to them, and I am grateful to him for that…especially for finding Seamus Hughes again! :-)
He has a page there that links to ALL the docs!
Wishing all the best to you and yours for the coming year, Ginevra!
Marcy,
Emptywheel’s quote:
“What I care about is that at a time when we need to start establishing means of accountability for a second Trump term, much of the Democratic world has chosen instead to wallow in false claims about the Trump investigation in order to make Garland a scapegoat, rather than the guy directly responsible, John Roberts”. MAGanoner’s and anyone else connecting the dots blaming MG are stroking the air as if they’re planting a garden.
Unconscious! It is hard to touch grass, walk outside, sit with the ocean, when you are on the job 24/7.
Effective framing for an argument or a structure requires basic verifiable building materials or evidence. Phoning it in with anonymous sources won’t cut…..
Buckle up. Do the work. Democracy is built one vote at a time. We are in this together.