Garland doesn’t need to name anyone to be investigated or indicted. He needs to reassure the nation that he will pursue all involved, no matter their current or past position.
Oh my. Navarro is manic.
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If things aren’t resolved by December 2024, then today’s inaction will create a Constitutional Crisis in Jan. 2025 when the GOP will attempt to unlawfully take over the Presidency. The problem is that, during the transition, Biden is still the POTUS, and he has sworn an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. That means that IF the GOP has deliberately stolen the election and the “winning” candidate took part in such a fraud, AG Garland and POTUS Biden will be duty-bound to indict and arrest everyone involved in such a fraud and then turn the Office of the Presidency over to the Speaker of the House and the Deputy AG at the end of their respective terms.
If AG Garland wants to avoid the stink THAT action would cause, then he needs to hold those responsible for the 2020-2021 insurrection accountable. He CANNOT walk away from this one and that is why I suspect he will not ignore his duty to act.
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I find the reactions here interesting.
In Garland We Trust?
I recall Josh saying a year ago what a mistake it would be to bury the details of the coup plot in a lengthy legal case that might never see prosecution, how important it was for our democracy that the truth of everyone’s involvement be exposed. Yet here we are a year later, with the Garland DOJ a black hole with no evidence that they will ever prosecute the bigger fish. In fact, we have plenty of evidence (Fitzgerald, Mueller) that the big fish will be left untouched,
Without the House committee, we would know nothing, yet they are facing increasing intransigence from potential witnesses, thumbing their noses at subpoenas, the failing judicial system slow-walking any legal action, the principals clearly running out the clock until Trump 2.0 (who may well be someone like DeSantis) is in a position to absolve them of any legal responsibility.
It is frighteningly close to midnight.
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Fitzgerald was stymied by a commutation of Scooter Libby’s sentence the day before he would have entered prison. Mueller’s indicted and sentenced perps (eg. Manafort, Stone, Flynn) got pardoned. Who’s gonna pardon now?
Doom, much?
yet they are facing increasing intransigence from potential witnesses, thumbing their noses at subpoenas, the failing judicial system slow-walking any legal action,
Utter bullshit. Bannon’s the only one who’s thumbing his nose, all the other resisters are squealing like scared stuck pigs.
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Fitzgerald was stymied by a commutation of Scooter Libby’s sentence the day before he would have entered prison. Mueller’s indicted and sentenced perps (eg. Manafort, Stone, Flynn) got pardoned.
It’s not reassuring when your “counterexamples” just prove my point. Libby’s commutation was to protect Cheney. Manafort et al’s pardons were to protect Trump. Ford pardoned Nixon “to end the country’s pain.”
I realize this may be a hard point for lawyers to grasp, but when the perps do not believe they will suffer long term consequences (cf examples above), pursuing legal investigations that end up ultimately going nowhere, while in the interim cloaking everything in secrecy, may not be the best approach to pursuing restitution.
all the other resisters are squealing like scared stuck pigs.
Oh. Right.
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Never mind the estimated Nixon/Kissinger body count of at least 5.5 million civilians.
Totally me then brah.
To all those despairing of the possibility of justice for the insurrectionists:
Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.
Engage people with what they expect; it is what they are able to discern and confirms their projections. It settles them into predictable patterns of response, occupying their minds while you wait for the extraordinary moment — that which they cannot anticipate.
Sun Tzu, The Art of War
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I’m pretty fkn tired of these DEMOCRATS that treat the DOJ and other governmental agencies as if they are a game and that their investigations should happen as quickly as the pundits on TV change their lies. Lots and lots of slow moving congresscritters out there criticizing others for doing their jobs. Why don’t they do their own.
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And by your own logic, no one should ever charge murder in the first degree, with manslaughter is so readily available for the same conduct, and so much easier to prove. Right? No, wrong. What is correct is that if what occurred actually constituted sedition (and it does), the proper charge should be sedition and interference with an official governmental function.
What absolute bullshit.
I made no such claim, nor would I.
You are obviously a total stranger to actual logic.
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I realize this may be a hard point for you to grasp, but there’s no pardons available until at least January 20th, 2025.
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None of that has been through DOJ action.
So much nonsense in this thread. DoJ has already charged at least seven different 1/6 conspiracies, has flipped defendants in each conspiracy, and is only one link away from Trump on multiple cases—Stone, Bannon, Giuliani, and more. Just one of those one-link-away guys flips and they have Trump.
All offenders are charged with obstruction, and all of the judges to rule on this to date — even the Trumpiest judges —have upheld it. The charges for the most serious offenders contain terrorist enhancements, which gets you the same sentencing range as seditious conspiracy but with a lower evidentiary bar. This is actually an elegant and ingenious move.
You geniuses whining about lack of action are woefully uninformed.
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LOL, dude I’ve been reading TPM since 2003 and a founding TPM Insider.
My question to you, did you actually watch and listen to Gallego’s interview linked here? It’s so incredibly even handed. I believe people are reading the HEADLINE of this article and espousing their opinions from that. Watch it, he’s right.
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Adam Schiff puts it nicely that he is very concerned about Garland. Video starts at Schiff’s comments:
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Here we are 6 months later and Representative Schiff continues to sound the alarm over the DOJ handling:
I would like to see the Justice Department investigate any credible allegation of criminal activity on the part of Donald Trump or anyone else. The rule of law needs to apply equally to everyone, and there are certain actions, parts of these different lines of effort to overturn the election that I don’t see evidence the Justice Department is investigating.
The Garland paradox tells the story of his magnanimous service. His most vocal critics in government have been Democrats.
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The Associated Press reports:
Members of the House committee investigating the Capitol riot said Sunday they have uncovered enough evidence for the Justice Department to consider an unprecedented criminal indictment against former President Donald Trump for seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Additional evidence is to be released in hearings this week, Democrats say, that will demonstrate that Trump and some of his advisers engaged in a “massive effort” to spread misinformation, pressured the DOJ to embrace his false claims, and urged Mike Pence to reject state electors and block the vote certification on Jan. 6, 2021
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From Elie’s tweet:
The January 6 committee seems to recognize that
Garland will need to be pushed to do his job. Representative Raskin states this in gentler, though no less compelling, ways:
I suppose our entire investigation is a referral of crimes both to the Department of Justice and to the American people, because this is a massive assault on the machinery of America democracy when you have a sitting president who tries to overthrow the majority in the Electoral College of his opponent who beat him," he said.
Going to and from the local courthouse, I often had to walk past defense attorneys proclaiming the reasons their clients were not guilty and the nearby reporters and cameramen recording their version of events. Prosecutors don’t generally present the details of cases outside a courtroom.
Trump and his acolytes have had years now of making proclamations about stolen elections to justify a failed coup-autogolpe. These hearings lay out a DOJ case in a way that wouldn’t have been so effective if the trial phase had commenced back when the Dump on Democrats Every Day That Ends in “Y” group started their incessant bashing of Biden and every facet of his administration, including DOJ. The glee with which they trash DOJ’s timing of indictments, because they know so much more about trials than actual trial lawyers, is laughable.
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