"One out of three Americans so desperately wants to believe that Trump is our rightful leader that they bought a truckload of bullshit dumped on their front porch daily by a whole syndicate of right-wing manure merchants. The main component of the Big Lie is to never give up, and to repeat the Lie incessantly." - Jaime McNeil, smirkingchimp.com
"The Justice Department apparently didn't mean what they said in their warning letter to Arizona Republicans because they never followed up or took any visible action. After the DOJ sent that letter, warning about mishandling of ballots and voting machines and plans to go door to door asking voters about how they voted ... nothing. Is the Justice Department going to do anything about that other than their stern warning they sent in May followed up with no action in response? Anyone? Is this thing on?" - Rachel Maddow last night on failure of DOJ to respond to flouting of federal election laws in Arizona.
Last night Maddow - bless her little heart - called out the lackadaisical DOJ again after it's been learned the Arizona Fraud audit ("Fraudit") renegades have been going door to door in Maricopa County asking citizens how they voted. This is a direct violation of federal law and yet the DOJ continues to sit on its thumbs waiting for....I don't know what, and neither does Maddow - who has become more flustered by the department's inaction as we all ought to be.. This is especially as this undermining of the 2020 election now threatens to infect many other states with more and more actual ballots being defiled - and after Arizona Reeps have already blown off a DOJ warning letter in May.
As I wrote in my April 28 post, we need the DOJ to take action and put a halt to the odious, democracy destructive shit show and atrocity being carried out in Arizona in the guise of a post-2020 election "audit"., e.g.
The AZ state Senate commenced this latest bloodless (so far) insurrection by using its subpoena power to take possession of all 2.1 million ballots in Maricopa County and the machines that counted them, along with computer hard drives full of data. In so doing, and by using a fraudulent intent and process, they have effectively tarnished all the county ballots so they now become unusable for any future judicial review
One theory making the rounds is that Merrick Garland doesn't have the stomach to take on these asswipes because of a fear of political blowback. We've already seen this in the DOJ appeal - after a court order by judge Amy Berman Jackson - to release a legal memo detailing Attorney General William P. Barr’s “rationale” for not charging Trump, after the special counsel examining the Russia scandal documented that Trump likely committed extensive criminal obstruction of justice.
This is not good enough, and Rachel Maddow is correct that this sort of timidity threatens to normalize future DOJ policy - bad enough given the abhorrent spectacle of lawlessness in Arizona. Some are saying - and I tend to agree- that Merrick Garland really ought to have been a Supreme Court justice, the job really tailor made for him. This would suit a personality inclined to caution and weighing every decision. The better pick for DOJ then, would likely have been a 'street fighter' like Sally Yates. (Though her confirmation may have been blocked by the ever slimy Reeps- aware of the threat she'd have posed to their slo-mo insurrection.)
In the meantime we need Garland's DOJ to act decisively and not wait any longer, as they risk becoming impotent stooges or unwitting accomplices to the lawlessness going on now in Arizona and threatening to metastasize to Pennsylvania, Georgia and beyond.
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by Heather Digby Parton | June 22, 2021 - 7:51am | permalink
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