For all the powers given to federal prosecutors — including grand jury access and FBI cooperation, to name a few — a House committee increasingly appears to have them beat.
FRIST!
Shut up discobot, body IS clear.
If you follow the law you 1) can’t get an abortion or 2) hang Mike Pence, but 3) can carry an automatic rifle in public, 4) bear spray members of the capitol police, and 5) commit seditious conspiracy.
The biggest criminal in our history inhabited the WH and directed armed mobs to march to the Capitol.
If we can’t get beyond all the hundreds that illegally went into the Capitol and get to the real problem, we are screwed.
Over a year spent on rounding up, prosecuting, slapping hands on what I know looked like the major crime at the time, but it wasn’t. Go after the ones that count.
With a little help from the Jan 6 Committee, maybe DOJ can see where the real criminality was.
The rioters have been telling prosecutors Trump told them to go to the Capitol and fight like hell from day one. It’s not a mysterious riddle wrapped in an enigma. It’s the whole enchilada.
Seems to me that better leadership is required. I don’t care if all Garland says is that there will be equal justice under the law. Or all crimes found will be prosecuted. Hiding doesn’t cut it. People need to hear those words, and Garland needs to mean them.
The Secret Service issue further degrades lawfulness. The Secret Service deleted communications after Congress asked for them? Outright obstruction. Cover-up. Equal justice needs to come down hard on Secret Service and any other coup-loving dead-enders still being paid by my tax money.
Yesterday, my wife and I had a conversation out of which could have emerged this article (which, by the way, I find very even-handed and fair-minded). She’s clearly of the “What’s taking so long???” mindset; my own position is that a) Few people outside the DOJ know what’s going on and so, basically, we can only know what we don’t know; and b) DOJ wants and NEEDS to get this right–and that requires a deliberate process.
In my heart, I’m baying for Trump’s head right along with her. In my head, though, I understand that what’s being investigated is unprecedented and difficult to imagine, and certainly something the Framers had not anticipated. But the system we have is the only one we have. GOPers, some of them, are saying even that one is illegitimate; it does no one any good to come up with a new one mid-stream.
Maybe I seem overly cautious myself but I continue to feel I don’t have enough expertise in this to confidently pronounce judgment on the DOJ here. Trump, yeah. He did a lot of bad things, because that’s what he does. Do any of them provably fit the formal definition of any kind of serious crime? I don’t know. I DO NOT KNOW. If you do, say why. I don’t know everything the DOJ has done, is doing, or will do. I do know the DOJ has constraints the committee does not. I’m not sure how useful it is to compare them. I know this is not a terribly satisfying sort of comment. Sorry about that.
I am a defense attorney but have also been a prosecutor. I also practice criminal law in the federal courts. The sloth the Garland Justice Department has displayed is both breathtaking and dispiriting at the same time. Lots of small convictions but little effort— compared to what is done in drug and organized crime cases— to get to the top. How could Garland not have back-ups of the Secret Service records, not just text messages, of everything happened leading to and on January 6? Is he the only one who does not know that all law enforcement is seeded with dedicated Trump followers? (Most if us in the system know the FBI is a joke when it comes to critical or original thinking and its white male agents are on the whole not very bright. The others had to work real hard to get where they are so they are generally smarter and more energetic.) Who knows what else has been shredded, erased, or tossed into Chesapeake Bay? It is depressing, and, I believe, characteristic of the Biden administration’s gerontocracy.
Need more and hotter fire burning the Republican co conspirators in Congress. They are the ones most in danger of getting power to make our lives worse.
This is where I am.
Politicians say they want to “fight” all the time, that they’re fighting for us/ideas/laws, and they want their supporters to fight on their behalf. Some GOPers, as you know, made this argument in support of Trump’s Ellipse speech (and Mo Brooks made it in support of his own speech) by pointing out Elizabeth Warren’s similar language . . . without, though, noting whether any Warren supporters have attacked Capitol police in response to that language. Now, of course, it’s becoming much much clearer that at least certain elements in the Trump crowd that day had been planning for some time to make fighting not mere political rhetoric, and that Trump was approving of it at some level. From a legal standpoint, the question now is whether and the extent to which Trump was the actual, proximate cause of that fighting. Based on what we know publicly, we don’t know whether the DOJ has made that determination. I do think they’re getting close, though.
“At that point, I didn’t think it would have been appropriate to open an investigation,” Rozenshtein told TPM.
OK, not appropriate to even begin investigating? What is their method for opening investigations? Who decides? Does someone need to come out and publicly admit they committed a crime with the disclaimer that they had full knowledge that they were indeed doing so? Is the j6 committee out in front of the DOJ or not? Sure seems so.
“The sign clearly says “keep off the grass” so we can charge the rioters, but…”
I will be happy to be proven wrong about this but virtually nothing I’ve seen says DOJ is on top of this in the manner to which I believe it should be and everything I’ve seen has indicated they are missing the boat.
What I don’t want tot hear at some future date is sanctimony from Garland about our sacred institutions regarding why he wasn’t able to prosecute to the full level he may have wished.
“Yes the investigation was sacked but that is unfortunately how our system of checks and balances…blahblahblah”. Like when you know there is a de facto statute of limitations involved but you’re still like ¯(º_o )/¯ hey whatev had to cross all my "t"s.
The DOJ is being pushed to do something unprecedented in U.S. history, that is investigate, subpoena, indict and bring to trial a former President. Their reticence is understandable. No doubt if it made it to a jury the standard for conviction would be beyond, beyond, and some more beyond a reasonable doubt Trump was guilty as charged. Failure to convict would certainly put Trump in the position to claim everything alleged as to his post-election activities had been vindicated as legal. And since 1/3 to nearly 1/2 the nation’s adults are in the tank for Trump how do you seat a jury with any confidence you can somehow vet all of them and prevent one loyalist from voting to acquit? Lacking an assured conviction is obviously no reason not to move forward, but putting him on trial and losing might have disastrous consequences.
DOJ’s tardy and lackadaisical approach to Trump’s attempted coup has been troubling for months to those paying attention. We saw DOJ blowing off easily provable obstruction & witness tampering claims in the Russia and Ukraine scandals. We also saw DOJ ignoring Trump’s criminal use of campaign money to buy silence from Stormey Daniels. These are cases that could have been brought in 2021, but Merrick Garland didn’t lift a finger.
How do we know DOJ is aimless and weak now? There is no sign of witnesses being compelled to testify before grand juries. People would talk if subpoenaed. They almost always do. Why aren’t they investigating the Georgia voting scandal? The feds can do it; not just local officials. Why aren’t they hauling in witnesses to testify on all of Trump’s coup? If they keep doing very little, future seditionists/traitors will know they can get away with it.
It’s mind boggling DOJ is dithering when our nation’s freedom is at stake.
I mean, to restate it differently, I’ve learned from our lawyer friends here that at least for certain types of crimes you have to be able to go down a list of conditions that need to be present to charge that crime. Morally, ethically, we can easily condemn Trump, I mean, there’s no question. It was wrong, it was deeply wrong, and it was unprecedentedly wrong. But whether it was criminally wrong, well, I cannot personally say. I’m off my turf, and I know it. I’m as eager to see Trump get what he deserves as anyone. But “stuff I want to see happen” is not, I’m pretty sure, a foundational legal principle.
Not saying; asking. When there’s a question mark we usually know.
I wish someone could explain to me why so many people assume that the DOJ is not doing anything just because they are publicly talking about it and/or it’s not leaking to the press.
Isn’t is possible - likely, even – that DOJ is effectively working in secret (i.e., no leaks) and will present their full case when they have it?
Three points.
The first is legal (based on my 30 years as an attorney with the government). In general, the rule is that every duck must be in its proper position in the row before a major prosecution can be brought (like a drug conspiracy).
The second is political. Trump will announce he is running again in the near future. If Biden announces he is not running again, then that takes much of the politics out of a prosecution, because it won’t affect the current President’s career.
The third is simply the old saying: “If you shoot at the king, be sure not to miss.” That is why in here civil case New York Attorney General James is having the Trump crime family testify knowing that they will take the Fifth at their depositions, effectively barring them from being able to explain their financial manipulations.
Regardless of whether the DOJ was surprised by Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony-- or not. As long as the DOJ has picked up the trail and is willing to follow the paved path offered by the J6C hearings to expedite their processes in coming up to speed-- and toward indictment and prosecution of the ex-president? In my mind, little, in terms of time will be lost.
In fact, if the DOJ is willing to pick up the J6C ball and run with it-- instead of reinventing the case?
Then travelling the the same route may prove extremely beneficial in reaching the same conclusions.
There’s benefit in the J6C sending criminal referrals to the DOJ. With the DOJ more swiftly bringing indictments and prosecutions based on the same set of publicly-known facts.