"The GOP is a garbage scow of the corrupt, the seditious and their enablers." - Michael Gerson, Washington Post yesterday
"It doesn't matter that Trump tried to murder democracy. Establishment Republicans - like Charles Grassley - are flocking to him for endorsements....Even as Trump celebrates the insurrection he is getting more radical and extreme as the Chuck Grassleys of the GOP take his endorsements and defend him on TV.
The larger point is that as long as Donald Trump remains the figurehead, kingmaker and likely nominee of the Republican party, there is no way to separate the Republican party as an entity from the authoritarian aspirations of Trump himself. They are a conduit for those aspirations, the vehicle he is driving and engaged in his attempts to subvert American democracy. You cannot separate them." - Chris Hayes, last night on ALL In.
"It used to be that presidents conceded when they lost, members of Congress would not dream of overturning results, and state and local officials would never countenance interference with their duties — or recommend phony election audits to create uncertainty about the outcome. That universe no longer exists. That’s because one party has abandoned democratic norms and decided nothing should prevent it from obtaining power. In such a universe, laws are needed for all sorts of things that politicians never used to contemplate." - Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post Today, 'A Step By Step Guide To Heading Off The Next Coup Attempt'
Now that 4 former aides to Traitor Trump have refused to comply with subpoenas it's time to bring the hammer and haul all into the Capitol jail. This would be under the legal basis of "inherent contempt" which has not been used since the 1930s but is still real and applicable despite lying dormant. This heavy step needs to be done and now or the House Select Committee pursuing the basis of the January 6th insurrection will be regarded as a mere toothless tiger. All growl and no bite, a pussy cat.
Can the nation halt its sleepwalking toward the end of democracy? Maybe, but it will require all hands on deck including the DOJ and Merrick Garland who up to now have been no shows vs. the Trump Big Lie, fake audits and slow motion coup.
Right now a new fake audit is set to start in Wisconsin even as former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, strategist Steve Bannon and Pentagon aide Kash Patel are defying subpoenas for documents and testimony, under instruction from the traitor Trump. Yes, the word traitor is used by me because I refuse to use euphemisms to describe this criminal cockroach like too many are. As noted by Alternet blogger John Stoehr:
"Senator Dick Durbin and the Senate Democrats still insist on swaddling Trump's crimes in gauzy rhetoric. It not only veils who did what to whom. It's veiled what must be done to whom. After the report's release, Durbin said this is “a full-blown constitutional crisis.....I like Durbin, but he's wrong. If Trump were still president, it'd be plausible to assert that we're facing a constitutional crisis. Many said the same during Trump's one term. (I did, too.) But the former president is now a private citizen who committed the highest of crimes."
Adding:
Therefore, we are not facing "a constitutional crisis" unless we're talking about a crisis of internal fortitude of a political party, the Democrats, and an administration, run by Democrats, that fear doing what's right. Fear is the predicate to Durbin's "strong words." Howling about a "constitutional crisis" is starting to sound like a dodge."
In other words, TREASON! Call a spade a spade. Why? Because now there is even more evidence, in a newly released Senate Judiciary Report, Trump tried to pull out all stops to overturn the 2020 election and make himself permanent dictator.
Meanwhile, in addition to ordering his traitor allies not to appear before the House Select Committee, Trump has attempted to use the phony claim of "executive privilege" to block release of key files, documents showing what he and they were up to on January 6th.
For now it will not work as President Biden has refused to grant the traitor this dodge, ordering the National Archives to turn over the material. Adam Schiff also greeted this decision by the Biden administration not to invoke executive privilege over documents pertaining to the Capitol attack. However, the scribe class - as is often the case - is second guessing the move as outside the presidential norm playbook. i.e. current presidents are supposed to protect the secrets of previous ones. Thus from a recent AP piece in The Denver Post:
The move by Biden isn’t the final word; Trump says he will challenge the requests, and a lengthy legal battle is likely to ensue over the information. Courts have ruled that former presidents are afforded executive privilege in some cases.
However, there can be no executive privilege for traitors, or their allies with whom they conspired to foment an insurrection. All relevant materials, documents must be turned over to the House Select Committee.
But there is still the chance that Merrick Garland - out of some misplaced notion of "neutrality" - might resist if the Select Committee issues a contempt citation for one or more Trump allies. Say to haul the given imp before a grand jury. Such a move would basically allow the Trump traitors to continue their slow moving coup toward autocracy by 2024. This cannot happen! If it does it would amount to complicity on Garland's part, e.g.
by John Stoehr | October 10, 2021 - 7:52am | permalink
He needs to find the courage to resist political blowback and assist the Committee in making the Trump insurrectionists and traitors accountable.
On Friday, in a letter announcing their client’s decision not to comply with his subpoena, attorneys for Bannon attempted to assert executive privilege themselves. Observers pointed out that executive privilege applies to communications involving the president the White House wishes to keep confidential – but though Trump was in power on 6 January, Bannon was not working for him.
Trump repeated the lies about electoral fraud which fuelled the attack at a rally in Des Moines, Iowa, on Saturday. Two senior Republicans, Senator Chuck Grassley and Governor Kim Reynolds, stood with him.
Referring to a Senate judiciary committee majority report this week about how Trump pressured his acting attorney general before the Capitol attack, Schiff said: “We saw Grassley [the senior Republican on the judiciary committee] in Iowa yesterday, unable to condemn the president’s effort to to get the justice department to overturn the election.”
The unthinkable is also still possible since Garland and the DOJ have refused to put the criminal Trump behind bars for his crimes. Trump’s Iowa rally indeed is part of a shadow campaign to mount a full scale coup in 2024 and succeed where the last attempt failed.
Bill Maher on Friday night compared the next effort to the full 9/11 attack on the twin towers while the earlier one was more like the half-assed truck effort made in 1993 on the same towers. As Maher pointed out, the next one will succeed since too many are too complacent and not taking Trump's moves seriously enough. Maher has repeatedly warned of a “slow-moving coup”, shorthand for processes by which Republicans at state levels have since 2020 moved to change voting and electoral laws and to install sympathetic officials in positions which monitor and certify elections.
Trump, let's remember, remains eligible to run for the White House because enough Republican senators stayed loyal in his second impeachment trial, for inciting the Capitol attack, to stave off conviction. While Trump has not formally declared a run, he;s doing all he can to get all the pieces into place for it including getting allies to work for him in Repuke states..
Former Trump lackey (White House press secretary) Stephanie Grisham, author of a tell-all book about her former boss, appeared on NBC on Sunday. She warned that if Trump “does run again in 2024, he’ll have no guardrails because he will never have to worry about re-election, so he will do whatever he wants."
Adding:
"He will hire whomever he wants. And I think that includes people of the 6 January mind … imagine who he could put into the DoJ in 2024, knowing he’s got no consequences there.”
Asked if Trump would “destroy the democracy”, Grisham replied: “
"I think it will be a very terrifying time. I think it will be nothing but revenge, retribution and how he can benefit himself. There will be pardons happening. I think there will be very draconian policies that go way too far. So I believe if he is re-elected it will be a really, really scary time.”
If that doesn't scare the bejeeezus out of somnolent, complacent people - especially Merrick Garland and sleepwalking Dems - I don't know what will. Can you say FASCISM? E.g.
by Thom Hartmann | October 13, 2021 - 8:10am | permalink
The mere thought of this apex predator cockroach attempting to grab power again ought to put the fear of god into everyone with a working brain. It ought to motivate Garland to nail Trump for the crimes he's already committed and get him behind bars. Maybe at SuperMax with the other global terrorists.
See Also:
The Trump nightmare looms again
And:
by Meaghan Ellis | October 13, 2021 - 7:44am | permalink
Trump’s never-ending parade of election falsehoods
And:
by Robert Becker | October 11, 2021 - 6:58am | permalink
Excerpt:
Wrongdoers who escape punishment naturally up the ante, taking escape as permission to do worse. Thus emboldened, they confirm their entitled status, for themselves and followers: would the Creator (or whatever) allow such a mess without special dispensation? Thus, not getting punished for law-breaking (even, shockingly, Trump still being favored for re-nomination) is the worse scenario: the failure to exact justice is as bad as the crimes themselves. No foreign force will impose fascism but, echoing this apocryphal line, today’s Christian, white supremacist, gun-toting version comes “wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”
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