Does AG Merrick Garland Know Democracy Is Under Attack And Time Is Of The Essence?

November 10, 2021

Despite the motion of prosecuting the T-Rump and his cronies moving quickly forward, the legal ramifications of ignoring the due process of law have so far been a wash.
And despite, too, the ruling last night from a federal judge that T-Rump’s White House records can/and must be handed over to the Jan. 6 committee, the supposedly-long arm of the law is way short.
Via the Guardian this afternoon:

A federal judge in Washington has ruled that hundreds of pages of White House records from the Trump administration can be turned over to the House committee investigating the deadly 6 January attack on the Capitol, defying objections from Donald Trump.

The decision, handed down late on Tuesday by the US district judge Tanya Chutkan, clears the way for the National Archives, the federal agency holding Trump’s White House materials, to start transmitting the records requested by Congress as early as Friday, though attorneys for Trump immediately vowed to appeal the ruling.

Trump sued to block the release of materials, claiming presidential executive privilege.

But Chutkan stated: “His position that he may override the express will of the executive branch appears to be premised on the notion that his executive power ‘exists in perpetuity’… but presidents are not kings, and plaintiff is not president.”

In her ruling, she further said: “The court holds that the public interest lies in permitting — not enjoining — the combined will of the legislative and executive branches to study the events that led to January 6,” Chutkan wrote in a 39-page opinion that delivered a major win to the select committee.

As is his asshole nature to stall, obstruct and bullshit his way past legal woes, T-Rum immediately filed an appeal to the D.C. appeals court, where he may draw a more favorable three-judge panel that includes two of his appointees, and then maybe, the Supreme Court — only to delay, and then delay further, the main objective.
Yet where is the DOJ in all of this shit?

Yesterday, the House select committee issued 10 subpoenas for assholes from the T-Rump administration, including racist asshole Stephen Miller, and asshole, straight-faced liar Kayleigh McEnany, along with eight other lessor assholes who could, however, know a shitload about T-Rump’s antics provoking the insurrection/riot at the US Capitol. The committee is digging deep into the bowels.

Wrinkle in the noodle is whether any of these assholes will cooperate. Although reportedly, the committee has already taken testimony from about 150 former Trump people, like Mark Meadows, Kashyap Patel (chief of staff to T-Rump’s Acting Defense Secretary Christopher C. Millier), and former communications aide Alyssa Farah, the real test of the adventure is whether the rest will follow the law or not. Assholes are hard to pin down.
Main question right now is where the shit is AG Merrick Garland?

Major asshole Steve Bannon was found to be in criminal contempt of Congress nearly three weeks ago, and nothing has happened, nothing. The citation went to the DC US Attorney’s office with Garland’s DOJ right next door, legally speaking, with the go/no-go sign. So far, zero shit, with consequences from that lack of action — Adam Schiff: ‘“If the Justice Department doesn’t hold Steve Bannon accountable, it only lends credence to the idea that some people are above the law, and that cannot be true in this country.”

I hope Garland isn’t a chickenshit:

Even though supposedly you want to take a slow, rightful process to reach a destination fraught with potholes along the way, this is WTF! Deliberate slow-walking sucks — Michelangelo Signorile wrote on Monday this could be a last chance for democracy and law as the DOJ shuffles:

This line of thinking is enormously problematic. The DOJ, according to CNN, is more concerned about its long-term reputation than about an imminent threat to our democracy.
There isn’t an emergency posture there; no sense of the urgency we face.
Instead, they’re worried about how they’ll be seen. Sure, of course they have to get it right so that it holds up right now.
Any mistake can jeopardize the case and the work of the January 6th committee.

But again, it doesn’t sound like they’re focused so much on getting it right for this case as much as they’re worried about the DOJ’s longer-term processes, as Garland prioritizes efforts to bring back the DOJ’s integrity and its independence from the White House, even if it means brushing aside the four years of corruption the country experienced.
We’ve seen that already in a few outrageous actions, such as defending Trump in a defamation suit brought by E. Jean Carroll, who accused Trump of raping her.

We all get that Garland’s larger mission is important — but it’s not more important than the immediate threat we face.
Every day that Bannon is flouting a legally-served subpoena he is thumbing his nose to the federal government.
And he is teaching the rest of the Trump loyalists exactly what they need to do.

Former Trump DOJ official, Jeffrey Clark, the low-level staffer whom Trump was intent on installing as acting attorney general because he’d been pushing to pressure Georgia officials to overturn election results, stonewalled the January 6th committee last week.

Much was made of Clark actually complying with the committee, rather than following in Bannon’s footsteps and ignoring the subpoena the committee issued.
But instead of answering questions, Clark gave committee members a letter from his attorney, who’d himself worked on a lawsuit challenging the Georgia election results. That letter amounted to a bogus claim of executive privilege, which is exactly what Donald Trump has told loyalists to claim in refusing to talk.

Now the select committee is threatening a contempt of Congress referral to the DOJ for Clark.

“That’s on the table,” Rep. Bennie Thompson, chair of the committee said last week as committee members were infuriated and, oddly, seemed surprised by Clark’s refusal to talk.

But isn’t that becoming an empty threat? Does the committee’s bark mean much if the DOJ doesn’t provide the bite — and quickly enough so we get real results and protect democracy?

Trump and his stooges are expertly playing the game they did during his presidency: stalling, and stopping any action that would bring them to justice.
A long delay in a Bannon indictment, or any others — and there will be more than Clark facing contempt charges, that is for sure — could prevent the committee from finishing its work in early 2022.

It’s already perilous for Democrats in the 2022 mid-terms, with the GOP further gerrymandering Congressional districts and passing extreme voter suppression laws.
The inability to deliver swift justice will not only depress voter turnout among Democrats and independents who will feel betrayed; it will allow the GOP’s promotion of the Big Lie to be even more successful for 2022 and beyond.

And any investigation of January 6th will then be buried forever.

A way-shitty ending. Barack Obama pulled the exact same bullshit in 2008 in not going after GW Bush and his boys for Iraq — looking forward, not backward — and later allowing something horrible like T-Rumpism to explode and gestate in the bowels of America.

And to all liars, always:

Here we are, once again…

(Illustration out front is of a New York state high-school student exhibit: ‘The piece was displayed during student-driven art show at Shenendehowa High School. It consisted of at least 12 identical black-and-white pictures of Donald Trump. There was also a sign above the pictures that read, “Draw on Me.” Using markers from the art classroom, some students opted to scribble critical messages and profanities on the pictures‘ — and found here).

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