Not Looking Back in Anger

 

The Biden Administration wasn't perfect, but it was professional. You want the most benign, bloodless take I can make on it--there you go. We'll be asking ourselves for a long time what else could have been done:

Did they do all they could to prevent Trump 2.0 and bring him to any kind of justice? Did they try hard enough to whip inflation--or at least, leave a bigger impression that's what they were doing? Did they do enough for Ukraine? Could they have done less for Israel and prevent the worst of the suffering in Gaza?

Here's what I do know; hindsight is 20/20. The Biden Administration, like Biden himself, weren't perfect and weren't able to do everything they wanted to do. Biden himself would say, "Don't compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative." You can pick apart what might have been different, in terms of policy, in terms of politics, that might have given us a second Democratic term. You can ask if Biden should have, oh, right about after the midterms, said that he wanted to concentrate on seeing out his term and promoting a new candidate to lead his party. 

TWGB: Sedition and Espionage

 

Before I talk Trump, I just want to discuss the sentences of Stewart Rhodes and Kelly Meggs. The Oath Keepers were found to be guilty of a seditious conspiracy. They acted in the belief that it is acceptable in a civil society to take up arms in the case of a political disagreement over an election on the basis of lies--and I don't think they cared whether those lies were lies or not. The "tree of liberty is watered with the blood of patriots" types never seem to note that in a representative government, sometimes your particular flavor of "patriot" isn't winning elections and violence isn't so much a revolutionary action as a pity party gone badly wrong. They said, basically, "Fuck who voted for Biden, we want our Trumpy Bear," and somehow convinced themselves that was exactly on a par with what our founding fathers would have wanted. 1776, you guys! 

Stewart Rhodes, Yale-trained lawyer, was especially prolix on the subject of a "divided nation", and in reply, the judge pointed out that Rhodes presented an ongoing threat and raised the "t-word"--treason. To undermine our government because one can't fathom that other people differing in opinion are allowed to protest, speak, and vote, even win elections lawfully, and not have those elections overturned by the force of a determined few, heedless of the knock-on effects to our civil society, is an exceptional lack of a grasp on basic civics, let alone law. 

Garland Appoints a Special Counsel for Biden

 

Sure, people can complain about the swiftness with which Merrick Garland appointed a Special Counsel to investigate the Biden documents case compared with the time it took to do so in the Trump case, but you can't not know why, right?

Biden is the current president, and has to be held to a high standard, and Trump is corrupt as hell, and his party would prefer to hold him to no standard at all. The difference in degree and in the way the two men have comported themselves (Biden with cooperation, Trump with obstruction) doesn't figure into the math, here. Misplaced documents are serious and the issue has to be treated with seriousness--

Period. If somehow no special counsel were appointed for the Biden situation, the House Republicans would scream bloody murder. They will, anyway (some conservatives will now read the Robert Hur tea leaves for any indication that he's been anything but a conservative all this while), but they've been undercut; Trump is investigated, and Biden is also being investigated.  It is being taken seriously in both cases. Biden isn't being given some "special treatment."

There's another thing that I can't put my finger on and want someone looking into: what documents, why were they mixed with other Biden materials, why were they discovered now? I don't want to say the Trump era has made me paranoid (I've always been) but isn't it--weird?

I don't know. I just think that lefties who want to rap Garland for appointing a special counsel here are missing the point. Sure, Biden has been a responsible public servant for like fifty years and Trump is a corrupt ass. I'd be certain Biden's possession of these things was innocent and without his knowledge--but that literally isn't the point.  It's about demonstrating the USG takes classified document storage seriously, and it only bolsters a case against Trump by demonstrating he isn't just a poor embattled martyr getting picked on for no reason.

Which he will do and is doing anyway (WITCH HUNT!!!) but again, he looks sillier and more butthurt for it.

TWGB: Something Special?

 

With Trump's announcement that he was going to run in 2024 (not that I think that should have come as much of a surprise--although for my part, I was surprised to see that he not just announced, but also filed FEC papers), I don't think the appointment of a special counsel to insulate the investigate from claims of partisanship and political fuckery sound too far out of whack. 

I mean--it's pointless because Republicans have been crying partisanship and political fuckery all along. Trump's own announcement contained the claim that he was "a victim".  The announcement of the appointment of  a special counsel has GOP stalwarts in much umbrage--which is wild since the new GOP majority in the House has been crowing about how happy they will be to investigate Hunter Biden and impeach the current president. Public perception is a fine thing to talk about, but our national perspective is pretty far out of whack...and on a very particular side. (Although Trump's own AG, Bill Barr, the one who squashed the Mueller investigation, but also negated claims of mass voter fraud, admits that Trump is very likely headed for indictment--I say, he's partisan, but he is not a dummy.)

So really, it's about the end of the 1/6 Committee in the House and Merrick Garland being subject to the clown parade of a GOP-led Oversight Committee. Sure, there will still be some criticism from the right--but hopefully, things proceed from this point will all deliberate speed.

I don't have an opinion about Merrick Garland's or the DOJ's ideas about timing because, as always, I don't play a lawyer on this blog. I'm seeing on Twitter the usual war between the "there's a plan, just be patient" folks (who told us Mueller had it in the bag-- and I am old enough to recall folks wishing one another a very Merry Fitzmas) and the people who believe justice is being delayed and denied RIGHT NOW! Because obviously the man is guilty as a sonuvabitch and so are all his little friends!

It's dueling banjos. There are two things to look at--part of which I know hardly anything about, which is the time it takes to build a case that will be effective in a court of law, and the part I think I've got a handle on--the flagging attention span of the public and the easily-manipulated notion that if the man hasn't been indicted yet, then truly, they must have nothing on him. It might not be true, but it feels true. Because tell me, legitimately: if someone was behind a coup to overthrow the lawful government, or stole top secret documents, shouldn't their ass be under the jail by now?

This is how Trump goes around with his whole chest out telling people he "won't partake" in an investigation as if he was declining a glass of wine. Although there's plenty of evidence, as far as he's walking around able to run for president and be a pest about whether our elections are fair and running his various (under investigation) companies, he can claim he's as pure as the driven snow. 

He's pure as a driven slush fund. 

So, while I'm skeptical about results (after all this time), I don't think the appointment of Jack Smith has anything to do with slowing things down--he's being called up from where he's been prosecuting war criminals at the Hague, and that sounds to me like a guy who can handle a case against heavy hitters. He's not starting from scratch, and he will be getting what the 1/6 Committee already has. I don't have a reason to believe any of this is a set-up for failure.

But this case better move along with strength and speed, because it carries a lot of freight with it, including our national security and the future of democracy. 

TWGB: The Picture Worth a Thousand Takes

 

The rebuttal to the Trump filing I referred to as the "Clown Suit" from DOJ made some of the points I expected it to make, to wit--the former guy and his lawyers were lying about turning over all of the documents and they were already gone over so there was no need for a special master. It also included a picture of the kind of documents that had been found during the search, just to hammer home how clearly the top secret/classified docs were marked.  The white space is redacted. You aren't being exposed to anything other than what should be obvious to you by now--these were sensitive materials that should not have been in desk drawers or closets or boxes in a basement. They should have been in NARA's hands. 

Trump and his defenders are in denial. How dare anyone show these documents on the floor as if to suggest that was where he would carelessly leave them? Why would they take a picture of them if they were so secret? Is this how the FBI handles these docs?

Oh, for fuck's sake. This kind of picture is the story of many a bust. Cops love to pile up the evidence so people can get a tangible picture of what they were doing in a search:

In this case, the point is that you can see the clear markings on the docs, which were mixed in with random other shit and in boxes and in different rooms, because it's Trump who didn't care. The docs were on the floor (and they never did imply it was Trump who put them there) only to show the extent of what they were finding. And then those docs were put into containers and taken to where they were actually secure. The FBI didn't mishandle them--they were documenting what they saw.

Playing With Our Tolerance

 

NEW: The surveillance footage the DOJ subpoenaed was for a 60-day period. According to a person familiar with the footage, it showed that after one instance in which the DOJ was in touch w Trump's team, boxes were moved out of the storage area. https://t.co/JKTTvk2a5H

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) August 14, 2022

Trump seems to be entering some kind of "finding out stage" after a lifetime of fucking around, and he's not just spinning out, but so are his remote lickspittles. There's some kind of Bundy Ranch type shit amassing outside of the Phoenix FBI station, and that's just stupid. Are the Trump cranial vermiform-infected genuinely thinking the entire agency is so compromised that any agents anywhere are in on the plot against the Once and Future Guy?

The guy who some would pretend was just bringing his work home with him? 

His work was over because the American people said "You're fired!" He didn't have any more work. He was no longer the president. THE. FORMER. GUY.

And let's make no mistake--former guy is what he is. Despite his beautiful plumage, his presidency is dead. Trump's presidency has passed on. It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to meet its maker. If not for his cult he would not have a ghost of a future. His political processes are now history. He's kicked the bucket, he's shuffled off his presidential coil, rung down the curtain, and joined the choir civilian--he's an ex-president. 

Not all of his followers get that. They didn't understand it was over 1/6 and they don't want to know it now. They need to be shown it. We can handle a little political difference. We can't handle people who think Trump is still in charge, or, given what the crime scene suggests, should ever have been, let alone get near to again. 

TWGB: The "Raid" on Emperor Commodus

 

There's nothing like starting your damn dumb day out knowing you are going to have to post about your fucking Moby Dickless white supremacist whale, but when I cracked open yon internets this morn to finally unload about the weekend's vote-a-rama and how it demonstrates Republican fecklessness, I already knew I was committed to talking later about how the Trump presidency has gone down the toilet. Literally. 

It's been widely and accurately AFAIK reported that Trump tore up docs that were required to be preserved and may have even eaten docs he didn't care to be preserved, despite the presidential records act. For someone who derided and persecuted his 2016 opponent over records retention, it is astounding that this is the guy who presided over an entirely unaccountable wipe of DHS, DOD and Secret Service digital records. 

I mean, astounding for a value of being shocked when a chronic liar somehow does something the exact opposite of what he claims he finds important. 

What might get lost here is that today, the anniversary of Nixon's resignation announcement, Paul Manafort had admitted that yeah, he did give Trump Campaign polling data to someone he wants to pretend he didn't know full well was connected to GRU because why not? I mean, thanks, we have several volumes of Senate Intelligence Committee data on the various connections between the Trump campaign and Russia, but it's nice someone wants to skirt about copping to it in order to secret-boast about it. He's literally humble-bragging he does coups, you guys. Do you need an election fixer? Manafort is out here putting out feelers. He is broke and in need of the only work he knows-fuckery. Kilimnik, you guys, goes back to Ukraine shit, too. It all does.  Russia was always going to fuxxor Ukraine in Trump's second term, but they are fucked because they tried it in Joe Biden's first. 

I really wish MAGA so-called patriots tried to suss out where in their Daddy fixations they decided Trump or Putin were real men. They are baby-nard projectionists. 

Anyway, today we also got a glimpse of what an anti-democratic, pro-Nazi shit Trump is with respect to his relationship with the military and entire misunderstanding of the history of American service, which includes thinking Nazi generals were al loyal and this was somehow great (ok, Operation Valkyrie, and also, this dope heard of the idea of the "good Nazi" and thought it was a compliment?) and also there was a confirmation of Adam Serwer's most salient observation of the Trump presidency--that the cruelty was the point. We also learned Trump didn't want disabled vets at his military pride parade because he thought it would look bad. 

He thought heroes who showed physical valor in the line of duty was a problem, you guys. That their physical ordeal wasn't a visible reflection of sacrifice to a higher cause.

So how would I be shocked if Mar-a-lago was "raided"? (For a value of "raided" that means subject to a lawfully executed warrant based on probable cause because of due process.) This former president took 15 boxes of apparently classified shit out from the White House with him. 

We're supposed to give a shit that MAGAs are mad about it. Of course they are. They are conditioned to be mad because of a steady diet of mad-fuel. They believe a free and fair election was stolen with no proof at all--of course they are mad about their little God King. They literally don't know what due process is or appreciate that Trump is not inviolate but is still just a citizen subject to the same laws as anybody else. 

Literally any day could be the day when MAGAs decide to explode. They did on 1/6. It looks like for some reason some /Donald peeps thought 8/8 was some kind of big deal.  (88 stands for Heil Hitler in some Nazi iconography.) Who cares? Democracy isn't about the feelings of losers and bigots. 

And justice isn't about politics either. Sometimes, your boy is just guilty as fuck and you need to acknowledge it. The GOP is having problems with the basic idea of right and wrong. But the pursuit of the evidence and the facts matters. 

TWGB: The "Keeping Secrets" Service?

 

There is something very wrong with a picture wherein a government agency charged with protecting the physical well-being of the president and the vice-president becomes engaged in the protection of the president in what looks for all the world like a violation of his oath to defend the republic from all enemies, foreign and domestic. But that's what it looks like we have when the Secret Service seems to be engaging in shenanigans regarding their texts regarding what was witnessed in the lead-up to the events of January 6th, 2021. 

With the story of why the texts haven't materialized changing several times, it appears that now the texts have been recovered? Why, how fascinating! Is it possible the stories were a stall tactic that wasn't going to work if a whole lot of scrutiny fell on an agency that should also, being law enforcement recognize both their responsibility to hold on to data for record keeping purposes as a federal agency and also the ability of cyber forensics to recover data that isn't really gone? 

Yeah. Probably something like that. Should we feel weird about what those texts will say--like, knowing Mike Pence has a good instinct about the threat kind of weird?

TWGB: Meetings of the MAGA Minds

 

It's been a weird Trump World kind of day for a day when a scheduled 1/6 Committee Hearing had been postponed, but we nonetheless got very good 1/6 information. In my heart of hearts, I feel like the postponement isn't just some technicality thing, but probably is (fingers crossed) something more interesting, but I will take what I can get. 

I think the penny being dropped on Rep. Loudermilk's 1/5 Capitol tour is pretty interesting because of all the different stories he had about it. Does someone tell several different stories and file an ethics complaint against people trying to tell the truth on them just to get showed up like this, ever? Someone needs to be Whey Quieter, am I right? Ok. That sucked. I am having one of those days. And I do not believe that some totally innocent people are just super-excited about sconces. I remember a lot of people had stories post 9/11 about law enforcement getting freaked out about people taking photos at out of the way places around national landmarks. In the criminal vernacular, these folks are casing the joint--

(Although they didn't apparently take note of security cameras?) 

Now, interestingly, this idea that people expecting to go "wild" on 1/6 would infiltrate and occupy government buildings was backed up with a document, "1776 Returns", that was filed as a part of a Proud Boys' sedition case. Here is the meat of it:

The nine-page document, filed in federal court Wednesday, lays out a plan to fill buildings “with patriots and communicate our demands." Its stated goals include maintaining control "over a select few, but crucial buildings in the DC area for a set period of time" and getting as "many people as possible inside these buildings." 

 “These are OUR building, they are just renting space,” the document reads. “We must show our politicians We the People are in charge.”

Loudermilk's tour group was casing the area for the benefit of people like this, who wantedto do domestic terror to accomplish deeply misguided (because Trump lied to them about the election) goals. And the 1/6 Committee says there were other tour groups, and since at least one member Tweeted "This is 1776" I would be very interested to know more. 

As it was, we had people like this guy and his son and their Confederate flag showing up where they had no business being. 

That image will never fail to rouse something in me--maybe about how the past isn't even the past--but maybe about how we need to put the ghosts of the past all the way down if we want to move forward. 

Does it seem, after all this, gratuitous that we learn that the committee has emails showing that Ginni Thomas and her husband's former clerk, John Eastman, corresponded? Or should we have already fully expected as much? I would think that additionally raises the likelihood that the current Supreme Court Justice should try and make himself a former Supreme Court justice, because his foreknowledge of his wife's interference in the lawful transition of power seems awfully likely. If he wouldn't do that for the benefit of the dignity of the court, at least he could consider it for his own historical legacy? 

What I am seeing here is a meeting of the MAGA minds--people so far gone that the law was no longer a barrier to trying to continue Trump's reign of error because they felt they were at active warfare with the existing government for simply--not substituting actual reality with their own, warped version. 

It's like Pete Navarro's perverse idea that people who disagreed with him were part of the "deep state"--a charming (not!) idea that people who maintained the rule of law and acted as guardrails against the mayhem of abuse of power were just being...meanies. Their insistence on the law applying to all was the real way Nazi Germany got started! (Extreme and painful eyeroll.) 

And yet--there is a paradox to what should look like the obvious story that the 1/6 shitfit was ugly and out of pocket. When Ryan Kelley got picked up for his involvement in the 1.6 insurrection attempt, my first thought was, ok, next do Doug Mastriano. (His Reichstag theory is amusing because I think something similar--except the GOP wanted to blame antifa to take over the way the Fascists blamed Commies--and I think I have the right of that one, TBH.)  But I am not so sure anymore, because the way butthurt Republicans deal with adversity is apparently to circle the wagons. (I don't want to belong to a party that acts like a cult, but when Democrats are in a little trouble why aren't we more like this, right?) 

I understand why Merrick Garland is staying quiet--I do. But the answer isn't to not prosecute these SOBS anyway. You only just have to get enough of them to make them know the law is the law. 

But Why This Case?

ICYMI: The Justice Dept. will keep fighting to defend Donald Trump against writer E. Jean Carroll's defamation case.

Biden had criticized this effort last year on the campaign trail. Key phrase in DOJ's filing last night: "institutional interests" https://t.co/LTuq3vv58F

— Zoe Tillman (@ZoeTillman) June 8, 2021

I joke that I am no sort of Suzy Silverlinings, and I try to maintain a fair amount of cynicism, but when it comes to this case, I genuinely hope that the claim that this is to protect "institutional interests" is with the hope that the case fails in this instance. Of all Trump's "l'etat c'est moi" bullshit, the idea that the DOJ had any business in what was wholly a case of Trump's gross personal life is exceptionally egregious.