Recall that immediately after McConnell, McCarthy, Graham and other top Republicans publicly denounced Trump’s riot on January 6th, Congress went on a brief break.   The House drafted articles of impeachment designed to make sure the insane, riot inciting bastard was disqualified from ever running for president again.   McConnell waited a few days before returning to Washington to accept the articles of impeachment officially, right before Biden was sworn in.

It’s too late, McConnell solemnly argued as the impeachment trial began, Trump has already left office, we can’t impeach a former president, as a procedural matter the charges must be dismissed.   Mueller had concluded after a long investigation that though the evidence of obstruction of justice against Trump was strong, that he was prevented by a DOJ memo from recommending prosecution of a sitting president.  The proper venue for doing that, he wrote, was Congress, which was, sadly, controlled by Trump’s flying monkeys.   McConnell intoned during the quick second impeachment trial that the former president could be investigated, indicted and tried for any crimes he may have committed, now that he’d left office.  After the four day rope-a-dope, Republican senators acquitted Trump on the technicality that the House had not served the articles of impeachment in a timely manner.  More Republicans voted to impeach a Republican president than at any impeachment in US history (generally party line votes) but too few to make sure Trumpie was done, and facing criminal charges as an ordinary corrupt oligarch, or mob boss, in private life might.

It is striking how quickly law enforcement grabs people with no power and how carefully it proceeds against the powerful.  If you are an anonymous driver with a broken tail light, there is reasonable cause to legally pull you over, and if you are not judicious in how you express fear of police who are almost never held accountable for overkill, you can be legally killed, for a variety of standard reasons.   If you are a wealthy white male scofflaw with an army of lawyers, and a political machine behind you, you can enjoy absolute freedom for years before anyone comes looking at you for crimes everyone knows about.

Now, after the most recent J6 hearing, we know why the Stop the Steal January 6 organizers never got a permit for a march from the rally at the Ellipse to the Capitol.  Trump was hiding the planned march so he could argue that it was just a spontaneous outpouring of love for him and the police that sent thousands barrelling down Pennsylvania Avenue to Stop the Steal and hang the disloyal coward Mike Pence so that president pro tem Chuck Grassley could do the right thing and throw the presidential decision to the House, which under a never used rule, could install Trump in spite of his huge electoral loss.  The hundred or so out-numbered police who wound up in the hospital?  Never mind them, the riot was about patriotism, law and order, freedom from tyranny!  As we see time after time, a coherent narrative is unnecessary when passionate feelings are in play.

Notice how none of these people testifying to the January 6th Committee, people who offered damning testimony about the fevered machinations of Trump and several crazy dead-enders plotting to keep the Apprentice star in power after he lost, NOT ONE, came forward while illegal plans were being hatched, during the second impeachment trial or at any time since.  One and a half years later, Patsy Baloney needed public pressure from Liz Cheney and a subpoena to become a frank, candid, supremely careful witness to weeks of Trump’s insane conspiracy theorizing and illegal actions planning.  

True enough some of these shocked patriots, both White House insiders and journalists, published tell-all books, several of them best sellers, which laid out much of the sordid story of an unhinged loser just claiming he won, at the urging of “an apparently inebriated Rudy Giuliani” (one of Liz Cheney’s best lines), Sloppy Steve “Build the Wall scam” Bannon and folks so clearly insane they are now called “the crazies” by “normal” Republicans — traitor Mike “Declare Martial Law” Flynn, clearly mad Sidney Powell, passive, silent, seething Mark “we might be able to stay in power” Meadows, Lin Wood, John Eastman, Jeff “Let me put my pants on” Clark and others.  I saw one, that white mustached asshole John Bolton, another “I told you so” guy who refused to testify, in part because he was paid a large sum to withhold everything he knew about Trump’s madness until publication day, publically venturing his latest opinion of coups d’etat, Trump, the J6 hearings and the hundred failures of Biden.  I declined to watch.

When Trump lost virtually all of the five dozen RNC-financed post election cases his spokes-sphincters claimed the courts had never reached the merits, that all sixty lawsuits were all dismissed for procedural reasons (mostly lack of a scintilla of evidence for any claim).  “If only courts had heard the actual arguments!” they argued.  The actual arguments were so frivolous and weak, and unsupported by credible evidence, that defending herself against strong claims of defamation Sidney “Unleash the Kraken” Powell said nobody in their right mind could have taken any of her legal claims seriously.

Of course not.

Bannon got slapped down in his latest eleventh hour attempt to postpone his contempt trial that starts Monday.  The crime of contempt of Congress was committed, 100%, by a defiant Bannon who is still bravely talking shit, between breaks for actual diarrhea.   The Trump-appointed judge underscored Bannon’s guilt when he agreed with Bannon’s desperate lawyer that since there are no legal defenses for Bannon what is the point of even going to trial?

The question on millions of minds is where is Merrick Garland, as the J6 committee lays out more and more damning evidence, sworn to under oath by hundreds of eye witnesses.   Garland appears regularly defending other DOJ actions, to protect asylum seekers’ rights, to protect school board members threatened by angry Trumpists, to protect LGBTQ persons under attack by new discriminatory state laws, to protect what’s left of a woman’s right to abortion and so on.  Witness tampering? Obstruction of Justice?  Obstructing an official proceeding?  Planning and launching an armed insurrection to overturn the results of a valid election?    Nothing, Dogg?