Here’s a good graphic demonstrating how powerful minority rule is in our dodgy experiment in representative democracy.A wealthy conservative senator from one of the poorest states in the US has flatly announced his veto of Build Back Better. Manchin, who has almost always voted with the political right (he voted for Sessions, Barr, Gorsuch, banning abortions after 20 weeks, Kavanaugh) won his seat by a slim 19,397 margin over his Republican challenger, in an election less than half of West Virginia voters turned out for. What we Americanscall a mandate.
He abruptly announced on Rupert Murdoch’s FOX network that he is tanking the popular Build Back Better Bill he has pretended to negotiate over for months. He said he cannot “in good conscience” support a bill to tackle catastrophic climate change (fossil fuel industry donors and coal barons hate this), lift children out of poverty (back to austerity, little West Virginians), create jobs for caregivers, home care options for seniors and otherwise shore up our shaky social safety net. President Manchin claims he’s concerned about inflation, and the national debt, and that poor people will only waste direct government child care payments (on drugs) if it’s given to them, that providing seniors with dental and vision care as part of the Medicare we all purchase is a slippery slope to … communism?
Then, after snarling about being called a liar and an obstructionist, he gets in his Maserati and drives to the yacht he lives on. Oh, well, at least he doesn’t own any slaves.
If the GOP manages to take back the Senate in 2022, expect this millionaire man of the people (his people) to immediately defect to the party that will immediately end the “bipartisan” filibuster.
Even as House Republicans have condemned the investigation as a political witch hunt, the committee found support this week from Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the top Republican in the chamber. Mr. McConnell, who in May led a filibuster that blocked the creation of an independent commission to investigate the attack, said this week that he believed the House committee was uncovering valuable information.
“It was a horrendous event,” Mr. McConnell said of the Capitol siege in a TV interview. “I think what they are seeking to find out is something the public needs to know.”
Which, of course, is obviously why I led a filibuster to prevent the creation of an independent commission to investigate the horrendous event.And why I waited almost two months to concede that President Biden won the election. And why I need your money and support more than ever.
Self-proclaimed totally innocent rat fucker Roger Stone, one of Trump’s closest long-time advisors (unofficial! No legal connection to Trump!) and coiner of “Stop the Steal” (2000, 2016, 2020, 2024) appeared before the January 6 Select Committee for a few minutes yesterday to assert his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. He claimed that Democrats just want to trap people into fake perjury so they can persecute them. The multi-millionaire then began a crowd-funding campaign for his legal defense and to pay for around the clock security guards.
Dirty trickster Stone is an innovator in political dirty tricks who raked in a mountain of cash with his former partner Paul Manafort (no connection to Trump! He worked for free!). Stone has been integral to the disinformation, outright lying and threats of right-wing political violence culture we now live in.
Here is a capsule description of this cynical, destructive man’s career as a presidential campaign disinformation specialist from a recent episode of historians Heather Cox Richardson and Joanne Freeman’s Now and Then podcast called Disinformation and Democracy:
Heather Cox Richardson:
. . . And one of the things that’s interesting about the Nixon campaign . . . is that one of the people involved as a young man who carries an image of Nixon on his back to this day in a tattoo, and that is Roger Stone, who was a 20 year old operative in that campaign. And he did things in that, like making a donation from a fake organization called the Young Socialist Alliance, to somebody who was opposing Nixon in the primary, using things like that to go ahead and again, slime opponents. And that business of running politics by lying is going to make a huge difference in our lives in the year 2000. Thanks again to Roger Stone.
So Roger Stone, again, cuts his teeth in this idea of running politics by convincing people of things that are not true, by changing the trajectory of reality by creating narratives and creating images. And he is instrumental in, what’s known as the Brooks Brothers riot in 2000 after the election of that year. And the way that that played out was that the election of that year was on November 7th. And on that election, it became clear that the outcome of the 2000 election would depend on the electoral votes from Florida. There were a lot of problems with that Florida election; there was a butterfly ballot in which you didn’t actually read down one side of the page and then down the other, you were supposed to read page to page, which meant that a bunch of democratic voters get siphoned off to vote for a far-right candidate. There were a number of people kicked off the roles immediately before the election. But after the election, it becomes clear that Bush has a lead in the state, but as they continue to do recounts, the numbers of votes that put Bush in the lead start to drop, and they start up by a lot. Usually recounts don’t change the vote very much, but in fact, the recounts in Florida drop Bush’s lead in the state from 1,784 votes, to 327 votes,, then to 154 votes.
And finally, attention comes down to Miami-Dade County, which is a democratic stronghold. And there, it seems likely that Gore is going to pick up a lot of votes in a recount. So on November 21st, the Florida Supreme Court authorized a manual recount in four counties and set a deadline for November 26th on that. And then on November 22nd, the Miami-Dade County Canvasing Board decided to focus solely on the contested ballots in order to meet their deadline. And so, they’re trying to hunker down, and trying to avoid the media frenzy that’s descending on them. And so in order to go ahead and avoid that they move into a smaller room on the 19th floor of the County Building, so that they can be close to the ballot scanning machine. That day hundreds of people from around the country, including a bunch of Republican staffers descend into South Florida to protest the recount.
There’s a New York Congressman, for example, a man named John Sweeney who was working for the Bush campaign, who ordered protestors to shut it down, meaning to shut down the recount. And there’s more and more pressure on the Miami-Dade recount that eventually becomes known as the Brooks Brothers riot, because the protestors who were trying to shut it down, come dressed in buttoned shirts and sport jackets. And they appear at the room outside where the counting is taking place, and they start screaming, “Stop the count, stop the fraud, let us in.” And the protestors increasingly accuse the Miami-Dade counters of stealing ballots and of stealing the election. The guy in charge of that was the democratic county chairman, a guy named Joe Geller. And six days after the Brooks brothers riot, Geller told Salon, and this is a quote, “This was not a Miami moment. It was outsiders, Hitler Youth sent in by the Republicans to intimidate the election officials.”
And that’s actually exactly what it was. It was a Stone operation to go ahead and orchestrate that protest in Miami. He recruited a bunch of Cuban American protestors by warning on the radio, for example, that democratic candidate Al Gore was going to stage a coup, the same way that Fidel Castro had staged a coup in Cuba. He’d organized phone banks to encourage Miami Republicans to storm the counting site. And on the day of the rioting, he actually was in a Winnebago outside, organizing the protests. So there was this sense that by manipulating the media and getting people to think that there was something untoward going on in what was really quite a legitimate recounting, that he could go ahead and orchestrate and end to that recount. And that is exactly what happened.
Joanne Freeman:
And think about the layers of impact of that. So first of all, you have the people doing the recount who have the impression there’s this mass of people banging down the doors, wanting to end it all, and that there’s mass opposition. You’re getting an awareness outside of that place that somehow or other there’s a mass movement, mass opposition against what, of course, must be some kind of illicit attempt to steal the election. And that the fact that there’s that kind of protest shows that things not right down there in Florida. So on many, many levels, this out and out fabrication can spread to voters, can spread to the public, can have an impact in Florida, and in the counting of votes in Florida, it echoes, it resounds out in a lot of different ways. And it’s completely fabricated.
Heather Cox Richardson:
Well in a sense, we’re talking about information, and how in a democracy, you desperately need to have an informed public, but the manipulation of that information into disinformation that then can be transmitted increasingly quickly over first telegraph lines, then telephone lines, then radio, then television, and now the internet, means that we have a real problem with disinformation, and with its ability to whip people up to an emotional reaction to go ahead and change our history, change our political history. And in the case of 2000, stop a recount that looked as if it were going to put a Democrat who won the popular vote into the White House, rather than a Republican.
Joanne Freeman:
To act on impulse and act on emotion rather than to act on real information. So first of all, that in and of itself, not only is it disinformation, it’s anti-information. It’s trying to get people emotionally riled up. And that kind of emotion is always going to be more effective than plain old, boring truth when it comes to what’s being publicized and what’s catching the public eye. And as you just said, Heather, different forms of technology are helping that transformation, that spread of deliberately emotion rousing lies, to change the whole political picture and alter American political history.
You know, if you think about it, democracy in and of itself is a conversation of sorts between people who hold power, and the people who have given it to them. And the process of governing has to do with the communication back and forth of people with power, and the people who’ve given it to them, that’s where accountability comes in. But any form of technology that alters the nature of that conversation, alters democracy. It makes perfect sense, if democracy is a conversation between people with power and those who’ve given it, any technology that changes that conversation is going to transform democracy. And the question then really becomes: how does the nation adjust to that new technology? How is that new technology reigned in or accommodated what happens in that moment when people are trying to figure out in essence, a new language of politics. And depending on what happens there, really depends the direction of the nation’s politics.
Lawyers for two misguided patriots who attacked Capitol Police on January 6 and made their way into the building to impede the final counting of Electoral College Votes for the candidate who won the election argued their clients did not violate 18 US Code Sec. 1512 and moved to have the federal criminal charge under 1512 dismissed.
The lawyers argued that the joint session of congress was, for a variety of arguable legalistic rationales, not an “official proceeding” and that “corruptly obstructs, influences or impedes” gives unconstitutionally ambiguous notice to rioters who break into a closed Capitol building to merely stop the steal, because “corruptly” is a vague, overbroad and essentially meaningless word.
Federal judge Dabney L. Friedrich, of the DC District Court, was having none of this and wrote a precise and basically unappealable decision denying the motion. In 25 crisp pages she clarified why the law applied directly to the actions of two men who assaulted police with a variety of deadly weapons and forced their way into the Capitol to obstruct, influence or impede the official proceeding then underway.
As for explaining what “corruptly” means in the legal sense (and in the popular sense), she did so unambiguously:
In this sense, the plain meaning of “corruptly” encompasses both corrupt (improper) means and corrupt (morally debased) purposes. … The Court agrees that § 1512(c)’s proscription of knowing conduct undertaken with the specific intent to obstruct, impede, or influence the proceeding provides a clear standard to which the defendant can conform his behavior.
It’s hard to think that this same federal law would not apply to an elected official who had been informed by the Attorney General of the United States that voter fraud claims had been exhaustively investigated and were “bullshit” and who nonetheless aggressively spread a knowing lie, organized a rally, and an unpermitted march (no reason to have phalanxes of DC cops on the route to the Capitol, which would have happened with a permit for a march, you understand), to corruptly obstruct, influence or impede the last official session of Congress relating to the peaceful transfer of power.
Exposure to prolonged fear of terrible sickness and death from a highly infectious disease, against which we are largely at the mercy of others doing their part, leads to changes subtle and dramatic in the human psyche. Some respond to this reasonable fear by lashing out, insisting on their right to infect whoever they want, in the name of opposing tyranny. Others isolate and wear two or three masks in public. The endlessly morphing pandemic is terrifying, worldwide and it has changed societies everywhere. It has changed families, friendships, relations between neighbors, mostly not for the better.
At the same time, life must go on. So there was an organized attempt, coming up on a year ago, by our avatar of Covid madness, Donald Trump, to overturn the 2020 election. They did this using a daft, quasi-legal theory that, under the 12th Amendment, the defeated Vice President, whose role it is to certify the electors as the last step in the peaceful transfer of power, is actually in charge of deciding who the new president and vice president will be. You know, democracy. The president’s top lawyers who espoused this bat shit crazy “theory”, or made unfounded fraud claims, or both, John Eastman and Jeffery Boessart Clark, are now standing on their Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate themselves by answering questions under oath.
The second paragraph of a NY Times article entitled “Meadows and the Band of Loyalists: How They Fought to Keep Trump in Power” underscores the objective madness of our current moment in history. The Times ordinarily bends over backwards to present the reasonable-seeming side of utterly unreasonable situations and positions, in the interest of appearing always above the controversy in question. Last night readers saw this:
WASHINGTON — Two days after Christmas last year, Richard P. Donoghue, a top Justice Department official in the waning days of the Trump administration, saw an unknown number appear on his phone.
Mr. Donoghue had spent weeks fielding calls, emails and in-person requests from President Donald J. Trump and his allies, all of whom asked the Justice Department to declare, falsely, that the election was corrupt. The lame-duck president had surrounded himself with a crew of unscrupulous lawyers, conspiracy theorists, even the chief executive of MyPillow — and they were stoking his election lies.
The lame-duck president had surrounded himself with a crew of unscrupulous lawyers, conspiracy theorists, even the chief executive of MyPillow — and they were stoking his election lies.
Damn, Grey Lady! You too? Never mind, good to know that at this perilous moment, even you show a bit of relatable human emotion. Unscrupulous lawyers, indeed.
I don’t like her extreme right-wing views, or that her father is one of the most evil and destructive men ever in US government, but I have to tip my hat to Liz Cheney. She has been fearless, and laser focused, in her determination to see justice done in the matter of a wildly scheming defeated president inciting a violent siege of the Capitol building to disrupt a joint session of Congress performing their constitutional duty to ensure the peaceful transition of power.
Here is her recent public statement on a key question before the committee:
“We know hours passed with no action by the president to defend the Congress of the United States from an assault while we were trying to count electoral votes,” Ms. Cheney said. “Mr. Meadows’s testimony will bear on a key question in front of this committee: Did Donald Trump, through action or inaction, corruptly seek to obstruct or impede Congress’s official proceeding to count electoral votes?”
This tracks the language of a federal criminal statute:
18 U.S. Code §1505 – Obstruction of proceedings before departments, agencies, and committees
Whoever, with intent to avoid, evade, prevent, or obstruct compliance, in whole or in part, with any civil investigative demand duly and properly made under the Antitrust Civil Process Act, willfully withholds, misrepresents, removes from any place, conceals, covers up, destroys, mutilates, alters, or by other means falsifies any documentary material, answers to written interrogatories, or oral testimony, which is the subject of such demand; or attempts to do so or solicits another to do so; or
Whoever corruptly, or by threats or force, or by any threatening letter or communication influences, obstructs, or impedes or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede the due and proper administration of the law under which any pending proceeding is being had before any department or agency of the United States, or the due and proper exercise of the power of inquiry under which any inquiry or investigation is being had by either House, or any committee of either House or any joint committee of the Congress—
Shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 5 years or, if the offense involves international or domestic terrorism (as defined in section 2331), imprisoned not more than 8 years, or both.
apologies, I was unable to embed FOX’s link to this hard-hitting report
Ms. Cheney has said that the investigation could very well lead to Mr. Trump facing her questions, with criminal penalties hanging over his head if he lies.
“Any communication Mr. Trump has with this committee will be under oath,” Ms. Cheney said this month. “And if he persists in lying then, he will be accountable under the laws of this great nation and subject to criminal penalties for every false word he speaks.”
As someone who dislikes liars, bullies and shameless self-promoters, I’m encouraged by what the January 6 Committee has been doing lately. Chairman Bennie Thompson has announced that in the first months of 2022 they will lay out their case to the American public, and the world. They’ll present detailed evidence that there was an organized, well-funded conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election that resulted, when all other efforts failed, in the storming and sacking of the Capitol. There will be live testimony, there will be graphics, there will be blow ups of the text messages sent back and forth between the conspirators as the attack on the Captiol was going on.
It seems it’s taken a ridiculously long time, and much time was wasted when Democrats negotiated in good faith with Trump’s Republicans over the investigation, but the committee has seemingly uncovered a mountain of damning details. Details they are now strategically releasing in a teaser of what’s to come when they put on their case. I have a few thoughts about the difference between a trial with and without witnesses and evidence.
When Nancy Pelosi decided that Mueller’s findings about apparent obstruction of justice by former president Trump, charges Mueller explicitly wrote he could not exonerate the president for, were too complicated for Americans to understand she opted to impeach him over his attempt (the day after Mueller’s monosyllabic testimony to Congress did no further harm to Trump) to enlist a foreign government to smear his likely opponent, Joe Biden. Whatever you make of Pelosi’s decision, and I think it was a very poor decision, here is the problem with a purely political “trial”. You can have all the proof of your case at hand — the detailed report of the perfect phone call to Zelensky, suspiciously hidden in a top secret government safe, the attempt by Barr to illegally bury the urgent whistleblower complaint, the vicious, public attacks on those who properly reported the improper call to Zelensky, in some cases as they were testifying — but if the head juror announces he will be working closely with the defense, and not allowing witnesses to testify or new evidence to be introduced, and that head juror is the deciding vote, you lose. 100% of the time.
When you can have witnesses testify live, under oath, and evidence can be produced that must be rebutted by actual counter-evidence, and where the fact-finder has not corruptly announced he will be working closely with the defense to get this fake, witch hunt fishing expedition thrown out of court, the outcome is an open question.
If Don McGahn had been forced to testify, repeat publicly the things he told Mueller’s investigators, under oath, the American people would have seen the former White House counsel admit that Trump asked him to fire Mueller and then, after he declined, to write a memo claiming that Trump had never asked him to fire Mueller. Obstruction of Justice 101. Then add Hope Hicks to the witness list, and have her repeat what she quotes Trump as saying when Sessions told him a special prosecutor had been appointed, his soliloquy and anguished call for Roy Cohn’s ghost, in which he despaired “I’M FUCKED!”
There were many more witnesses of apparent obstruction of justice, who’d already given sworn testimony to Mueller, but Bill Barr took care of that. He created the most expansive executive privilege claim in American history, an absolute blanket protective privilege against any attempt by anyone to get any information whatsoever, and told Trump to run with the absurdly broad claim, that he could run out the clock. And so they did. Two impeachment trials in the narrowly GOP Senate, no witnesses or updated evidence allowed, two party line acquittals. Everything was ducky for the former president. Until Trump lost the election and his powerful gunsel Barr finally had to quit.
I have to say, I’ve always been in favor of disclosure. Things kept in the dark molder and fester. Sunlight is said to be the best disinfectant. I can think of endless instances of things hidden and forbidden from discussion coming back to haunt the parties that demanded their banishment. We pay a high price for backing a person’s right to lie if they find themselves in a tight spot, facing shame, loss of career, criminal charges. I’m looking forward to a little public sunlight on this hideous attempt to install an American dictator.
The judge who dismissed this lawsuit brought to thwart an illegal “fishing expedition meant to embarrass the former president” was appointed by the former president. The disloyal ingrate added that Trump was wrong on the law and gave him a minimal fourteen days to file an appeal in hopes of finding a reversible error that could bring the dismissed case back to life.
The Supreme Court should pencil this one on its shadow docket for a few months from now …
Tea Party Congressman turned final Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows handed over a trove of documents, 9.000 pages, then, on the day his lawyers chose for him to speak to the January 6 Committee (the day his book came out), he suddenly cited Bill Barr’s absolute, blanket, protective privilege for anything relating to his boss, Mr. Trump. In spite of the fact that Trump, the arguable owner of executive privilege, had not invoked the fabulous Barr-created absolute privilege in relation to Meadows. In fairness to Meadows, Trump was furious at Meadows betraying him in the book. It is hard to imagine the terror that Mr. Trump’s rage produces in his loyalists.
Several of Rupert Murdoch’s top FOX news entertainers, including Laura Ingraham and Trump-confidante Sean Hannity, texted Meadows during the 187 minutes when Trump was riveted to live coverage of his riot, urging him to get Trump to make it stop, telling him Trump was destroying his brilliant legacy. Don Jr. also texted Meadows, urging him to get his father to call this shit off.
“He’s got to condemn this shit ASAP,” Donald Trump Jr. texted Meadows as the attack was underway.
FOX, who took a much different public position on the totally innocent protest on January 6, did not cover last night’s hearing of the January 6 Committee where the case for Meadows’ contempt of Congress was voted on, neither did OANN or Newsmax, nor did der Sturmer, for that matter.
Here is Mehdi Hassan, covering the revelation of the unprivileged texts Meadows has decided he will answer no questions about, until the courts eventually rule on the issue of Bill Barr’s absolute blanket privilege against anything that could compromise the prospects of his master, Mr. Trump.Check out Liz Cheney.
Jeeze, Louise…
Here’s the two minute version, featuring Liz Cheney’s reading of the texts, vs. what FOX hosts told their viewers on the Fair and Balanced Network:
Jennifer Rubin salutes the DC Appellate panel, gives some pertinent excerpts from their recent decision denying Trump’s “privilege” appeal, and lays out how the decision should be used in the ongoing battle to preserve our strained democracy in this largely lawless power grab by American zealots, backed by an army of angry white Christians.
The Supreme Court may have lost its luster due to its blatant partisanship, but lower federal court judges are consistently upholding the Constitution and not allowing Jan. 6 to go down the memory hole.
The three-judge U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Thursday issued a unanimous opinion shutting down former president Donald Trump’s ludicrous claim that he can assert executive privilege over White House documents in contravention of the current president’s waiver of privilege claims.
“On the record before us, former President Trump has provided no basis for this court to override President Biden’s judgment and the agreement and accommodations worked out between the Political Branches over these documents,” the court held. “Both Branches agree that there is a unique legislative need for these documents and that they are directly relevant to the [House select committee’s] inquiry into an attack on the Legislative Branch and its constitutional role in the peaceful transfer of power.”Advertisement
Rarely is the court’s recitation of the facts as powerful as this one, given the MAGA crowd’s ongoing gaslighting:
On November 3, 2020, Americans elected Joe Biden as President, giving him 306 electoral college votes. Then President Trump, though, refused to concede, claiming that the election was “rigged” and characterized by “tremendous voter fraud and irregularities[.]” … Over the next several weeks, President Trump and his allies filed a series of lawsuits challenging the results of the election. The courts rejected every one of the substantive claims of voter fraud that was raised. … The events of January 6, 2021 marked the most significant assault on the Capitol since the War of 1812. The building was desecrated, blood was shed, and several individuals lost their lives.
In case anyone had forgotten, the court offers a reminder that any claim of a stolen election was and remains a lie. This was not a “normal tourist visit.”
The court reiterated that the current president waived executive privilege, writing, “In this case, President Biden, as the head of the executive branch, has specifically found that Congress has demonstrated a compelling need for these very documents and that disclosure is in the best interests of the Nation. Congress, which has engaged in a course of negotiation and accommodation with the President over these documents, agrees.”
The court then reaffirmed that the current president holds the privilege:
“To start, as the incumbent, President Biden is the principal holder and keeper of executive privilege, and he speaks authoritatively for the interests of the executive branch,” the court held. “Under our Constitution, we have one President at a time.”
The court also emphasized the legitimacy of Congress’s inquiry:
The very essence of the Article I power is legislating, and so there would seem to be few, if any, more imperative interests squarely within Congress’s wheelhouse than ensuring the safe and uninterrupted conduct of its constitutionally assigned business. Here, the House of Representatives is investigating the single most deadly attack on the Capitol by domestic forces in the history of the United States. Lives were lost; blood was shed; portions of the Capitol building were badly damaged; and the lives of members of the House and Senate, as well as aides, staffers, and others who were working in the building, were endangered. They were forced to flee, preventing the legislators from completing their constitutional duties until the next day.
Proceeding through the test the Supreme Court laid out in Trump v. Mazars, in which the high court ruled against Trump’s bogus claim of absolute privilege while he was in office, the appeals court concluded, “At the end of the day, the Mazars test is of no help to former President Trump’s effort to demonstrate a likelihood of success in invalidating the January 6 Committee’s request.”
With some rhetorical flourish, the court wrapped up with this:
Benjamin Franklin said, at the founding, that we have “[a] Republic”—“if [we] can keep it.” The events of January 6 exposed the fragility of those democratic institutions and traditions that we had perhaps come to take for granted. In response, the President of the United States and Congress have each made the judgment that access to this subset of presidential communication records is necessary to address a matter of great constitutional moment for the Republic. Former President Trump has given this court no legal reason to cast aside President Biden’s assessment of the executive branch interests at stake, or to create a separation of powers conflict that the Political Branches have avoided.
The court’s opinion is so tightly reasoned that it is hard to imagine even this Supreme Court riding to Trump’s rescue. (Indeed, it did not do so in Mazars.) The appeals court performed three essential functions in rendering its decision.
First, it demolished the “big lie” of a stolen election and restated the seriousness of the violent insurrection that disgruntled Republicans launched. Every member of Congress should read the opinion and prepare to explain how, if at all, the court’s recitation of facts goes astray. Lacking any facts to refute the court, Republicans’ refusal to accept the 2020 electoral votes and their dismissal of the insurrection should be seen for what they are: Partisan bad faith in violation of their oaths.
Second, it obliterated the basis for the assertion of executive privilege from Trump cronies Stephen K. Bannon and Mark Meadows. They are looking at conviction for contempt of Congress, as will other witnesses attempting to cover for Trump. (Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, one of two Republicans on the House select committee, explained in a series of tweets that these stunts have not slowed the committee, which “has already met with nearly 300 witnesses … [and is] conducting multiple depositions and interviews every week.”)
Third, in so thoroughly shredding Trump’s bogus legal arguments, the court made clear that Trump’s entire legal strategy is to stall and run out the clock. The facts and the law are not on his side, and the court has refused to help him delay the process by reviewing every document. In this case, the wheels of justice turn swiftly.
For its clear-eyed opinion and reaffirmation of the rule of law, we can say to the D.C. panel, well done.
gratuitousblahg 