The news that the Justice Department’s Jan. 6 investigation is reaching beyond the Capitol rioters has added fuel to a long-running debate about the pace of the investigation.
Ah, better news at last; my headache is relieved, until tomorrow most likely.
“If it is a good morning, which I doubt.” - Eeyore
Patience grasshoppers. 
The relative lack of leaks from Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Justice Department, they contend, may actually be a sign of a serious, vigorous prosecutorial effort.
I don’t think that’s it. Sadly.
The fact that DOJ refused to charge a single crime delineated by Mueller (he interviewed over 500 people and issued 2500 subpoenas, so the investigation was obviously complete and those crimes could have been charged on Jan 7) and let the statute run on the Daniels bribe (again, a crime that could have been charged on Jan 7) is solid evidence that DOJ ain’t gonna do squat. Blind faith, otoh, is all the Garland apologists have in their corner.
“Hang 'Em High”
Indictments need to come out before the elections this year - which probably means July at the latest, to avoid Comey-ing up the election. Though a reverse Comey would be good. Otherwise it’ll just get memory holed when the GQP take congress.
I still thing if any of the key players (Roger Stone, TMFWWNBN, any of the demon spawn) had been subpeona’d or searched, they’d be screaming to high heavens to grift off it.
Key words, for sure.
The Grift is STRONG! with these f♧cks.
OT:
Tomorrow is a National Holiday for Trump and the RNC.
April Fools Day!
“One side has criticized the Justice Department for not investigating Donald Trump and his inner circle for subverting the 2020 election.”
No, one side has criticized the DOJ for not investigating: obstruction, tax fraud, business fraud, voting fraud, perjury, attempted bribery, receiving bribery, AND subverting the 2020 election.
People are really trying hard to memory hole all the other crimes that took place.
“Is The Justice Department Finally Going After The Insurrection’s Big Fish?“
Lordy, I hope so!!!
Oh my…Little Hot Wheels pal defends him!
Totally off topic, but this is big news in my view. I am happy to say that I, and my colleagues, were involved in some of these discussions in efforts to help the trans community in uniform and out of uniform. I think this is a big fucking deal, so I hope TPM gives it a nod at least.
You do understand that Garland was not AG during the Mueller investigation, and that Garland was not AG on 1/6/21, or on 1/7/21. And you do know that a certain fat orange carbuncle had one toady or another as AG during all of that time.
You do know all of that, don’t you.
I’m sure she was invited to a LOT of parties.
Can I please just cryosleep until someone gets indicted? Doesn’t even have to be Trump. Will settle for Gaetz or Rudy.
Child sex trafficking - she must be referring to Matt Gaetz’ parties.
There seems to be a line of thought that AG Garland is slow rolling his investigation. My bet is that this is a very misleading impression.
This is not a republican DOJ that is doing performance art for the RW “base” or a partisan publicity exercise. It looks more likely that these guys are doing a series of systematic, careful, and quiet investigations. Former MAGA office holders, and an evil clown named “Donald Trump”, should find this thought very scary, if not outright terrifying.
There are two schools of thought in legal land and social media on the cryptic nature of the DOJ’s statements regarding the organizers and planners of 1/6.
There are some legal experts (e.g., Daniel Goldman, Neal Katyal, Renatto Marriotti) who have expressed skepticism that the DOJ has really been doing much of anything on the higher ups/organizers until the most recent press story which the DOJ tacitly confirmed. They would argue that any action at all has been recent at best and that they’ve partially been led into it by opinions from Judges who are handling various 1/6 matters and the J6 Commission. They say that DOJ is a bit reluctant to go after higher ups right now because the cases are harder to prove than say some Trumper thug hitting a cop over the head with a crowbar and it being caught on tape. Ok. fair enough.
There is another school of thought (Marci Wheeler is probably the most consistent among them) who say that if you fully read the pleadings, the DOJ is actually building a case for conspiracy on the electoral count act and the actual riot that tie to the WH/Trump campaign higher ups and various other organizers, and that folks should shut up and be patient (and yes, many do scoff at those who raise doubts about Garland/DOJ). It is harder to establish and prove a conspiracy case (or multiple conspiracy cases) than it is to prove that a dude hit a cop with crowbar on live tv. So take a chill pill and give it time, yo. The pros are on it. (a very respectful mmmkay/partial eye roll).
I do need to re-read some of the pleadings, especially the one on the one against the Proud Boys/Enrique Tarrio, but I’d say there’s an element of truth to both. I do think the J6 Committee has gone right after the big names and higher ups and has uncovered a lot of info in a way that DOJ has not to date. That said, I do think DOJ has been looking at each case to see whether a larger conspiracy can be sustained and tied to the higher ups.
Where one side suspects the other is similar to the Alvin Bragg vs the other prosecutors approach in the Trump tax case in the Manhattan DAs office. Some suspect that DOJ under Garland will take a cautious approach, won’t push the envelope and won’t file charges unless they’re 100% assured of conviction. The challenge here is that we don’t have a lot of precedents for seditious activity to launch a coup so any reliance on norms or strict precedent inherently favors the Trump preferred position of ‘no prosecution’. The courts have repeatedly thrown shade at the DOJ for their apparent unwillingness to truly declare that this J6 investigation is the biggest thing in the history of the Republic. Some judges don’t feel the charges match the rhetoric or that DOJ is stepping up to the moment.
Others say, read the pleadings they’re solid and they do show some real work into uncovering the conspiracy, and that many of the prosecutions have provided evidence that led to the Tarrio indictment and will provide a solid foundation to scrutinize the higher ups.
I think where I have my doubts about the DOJ is that one could stop the conspiracy at the neo nazi groups like Tarrio/Proud Boys, Three Percenters and never reach Trump/Stone/Rudy/Meadows/the Kraken lady/Flynn/Jeffrey Clark/Bannon/Eastman et al. There’s that bridge between the Tarrio case and the Trump WH/campaign that is yet to be clearly identified.
However, that’s only if you look at the right hand and not the left hand. The left hand is all the evidence that J6 has uncovered which show a President obsessed and actively planning every possible angle to subvert the electoral count act and planning for insurrection in order to force the issue given Pence’s unwillingness to go all the way for Trump. When you look at the left hand (organizers) and identify their planning, intent, and what they did to set up the rally at the ellipse and put people there who would know how to act on the word ‘go’ (meaning execute a coup) the underlings matter less than the overall scheme. The underlings were simply spokes in the wheel that Trump, Rudy, Eastman, Bannon, Stone and others already built. There were different on ramps, off ramps and surge points. I don’t think DOJ has captured that. I think J6 has. The fact that the two are not coordinating gives some concern that they may never be in sync, which means Trump would be likely to skate…again.
The DOJ approach is a step above but still too similar to how they’ve handled the Ukraine matter. They’re investigating the right hand (the deals Rudy cooked up to help pro-Russian Ukrainians and Kremlin favored oligarchs bribe US pols, but not the deals that Rudy got in exchange for that help: getting manufactured dirt on Joe & Hunter Biden and help pressuring the new Zelenskyy gov’t to legitimize those claims by way of a formal investigation which Trump would use as campaign fodder to beat Biden to a pulp).
In the Ukraine matter, the DOJ doesn’t even acknowledge (3 years and now a war after the fact) that what Rudy and Trump did to shake down Zelensky may have violated US laws. In this J6 matter, we’re at least getting the DOJ acknowledgement that it’s very plausible that Trump and the inner circle are intimately connected to the event that happened on J6 (electoral county conspiracy + the riot which disrupted a form gov’t proceeding) and that it could be illegal, but there are doubts as to whether the DOJ will go the extra mile to make that case as a novel matter (or analogize Trump’s behavior to that of a mob boss or terrorist leader).
We don’t know which way this will go, but I’m not particularly holding my breath on it. I will say that if DOJ does end up dropping the hammer and starts charging meaningful higher ups that it will be a huge shot in the arm for Dems because one thing people voted for was a fair and impartial justice system where the rich and powerful don’t get all the breaks and deference and average folks get the iron shaft.
One other point on the DOJ investigation - I suspect that this tactic of refusing to show up when subpoenaed is not going to work very well. Those mofos better hire legal counsel.