What do they want revenge for? Assholes, complete fucking assholes, who say they are driven by revenge. There’s a lamppost for every one of those vicious bastards, in the kingdom of just, bloody revenge. Take it to the bank.
Category Archives: January 6 MAGA riot
His only regret
Was how ungratefully the Führer treated him at the end, really unfair, after all he’d done for the man. Otherwise, no regrets, no mistakes!
Not a toady, a gunsel, in the classical film noir sense of a loyal sidekick/future prison wife. Final interpretation of the Mueller Report was 100% in the wheelhouse of his unappealable discretion as the nation’s top law enforcement agent, case closed. Trump had a Führer-worthy shit fit when told the election fraud claim was bullshit, slammed his hand on the desk, screamed. He basically fired Barr, who gave him one last rim job for the history books, that loving resignation letter, submitted right before the insurrection.
I just saved you 30 bucks.
Rewrite of NY Times subheadline
Today’s NY Times. under its headline on yesterday’s filing by the January 6th Conmittee to compel litigious Trumpist John Eastman’s compliance with its subpoena:
In a court filing, the panel said there was enough evidence to suggest that the former president might have engaged in a criminal conspiracy as he fought to remain in office.
To “suggest” there “might have been” a crime? Very daintily put, Grey Lady. Seems from the rest of the article that the January 6th Committee laid out a detailed, evidence rich argument for criminal conspiracy and obstruction of an official proceeding. Attoney-client privilege does not protect discussions of criminal plans, or conspiracies to defraud. How about this rewrite?
In a court filing, the panel cited evidence to establish that the former president’s communications with his private lawyer must be turned over under the “crime/fraud exception” to attorney-client privilege, laying out the elements of a criminal conspiracy to fraudulently keep the defeated candidate in office.
I have to admit, the rest of the article was not as weak kneed as the subheadline. Here’s a good paragraph:
The filing laid out a sweeping if by now well-established account of the plot to overturn the election, which included false claims of election fraud, plans to put forward pro-Trump “alternate” electors, pressure various federal agencies to find irregularities and ultimately push Vice President Mike Pence and Congress to exploit the Electoral Count Act to keep a losing president in power.
My only correction is lose the “if” in describing the well-known facts, as “if” might suggest (hah) that the evidence being well-known somehow weakens it, à la Barr’s corrupt dismissal of Mueller’s mountain of well-known evidence. Leaving in the unnecessary qualifier betrays an eagerness to show your ass, for some reason (see previous post).
The Washington Post ran this paragraph in its story:
“The Select Committee also has a good-faith basis for concluding that the President and members of his Campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States,” according to the filing.
Dig it, Merrick.
Nice ending to Washington Post article on new January 6th evidence
It sometimes seems that we will never see an end to this long fought Koch-network financed hellscape we live in today (though we will). A desperate, destructive imbecile con man still has tens of millions who believe in him, and the pernicious, often ridiculous, myths that enable his unprincipled ilk. The January 6th committee is now looking at evidence of the angry squabbles behind the scenes among organizers of the Ellipse rally the morning of Trump’s riot. I love the ending of this article, though it is also quite horrible.
In the middle of the afternoon on Jan. 6, Pierson sent another set of texts to Meadows, according to records gathered by the committee.
“Note: I was able to keep the crazies off the stage,” she texted at 2:40 p.m. “Glad it fought it,” she added.
By that time, the mob of Trump supporters had violently descended on the Capitol.
I’ve got to give it to them
Putin’s favorite 2016 candidate illegally took top secret documents from the White House?
I don’t see why he would, which is to say, of course, I don’t see why he wouldn’t. In fact he did, as the National Archives has confirmed. What could go wrong with a transactional, money hungry, deeply in debt, beleagured, compulsive liar having a trove of top-secret national security information for over a year in his private villa? What could go wrong?
Colbert I. King lays out the answers in a piece he calls What worries me most about the classified information discovered at Mar-a-Lago (link below).
The battle for control of Reality
The war over what is real is constantly being fought by partisan advertisers and influencers of all stripes. On one level it is what all of us do whenever we try to persuade someone to see things from our point of view. On the political level, it gets kind of crude sometimes.
For example, there are always a few clearly marked “Blacks for Trump” posers seated directly behind the great orange man as he orates, proving, of course, that the angry demagogue is no racist. To hammer this home it is good to have messaging like this out there, I suppose, inserted into the unsuspecting viewer’s YouTube suggestions.
It strikes me as highly unlikely that Biden ever foolishly claimed that Trump, though openly racist, was our first racist president. Most of the early presidents were slaveholders, more than one more recent president was in open sympathy with the Ku Klux Klan. Biden surely knows this, but why let the fact that he never said it stand in the way of making a hateful meme about him? It’s all about owning him, like Thomas Jefferson owned Sally Hemings.
So, since it is a war, fire must be strategically returned. I thought this was a pretty good one, with a big plus that it is hard to actually dispute based on the facts.
Foof! Hard to disagree
Trump can be sued under the Ku Klux Klan Act
Clear legal analysis from Jennifer Rubin in a recent Washington Post, laying out the reasons Judge Amit Mehta’s recent ruling against the strained claims of our obsessive ex-president is bad news for 45. Mehta ruled that Trump is not immune from a lawsuit under the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act, which provides punishment for conspiracy to deprive parties of their Fourteenth Amendment rights. Here that violation was done by intimidating officials and preventing them from carrying out their legal duties. The op ed, Trump’s legal problems are about to get much worse, is well worth a read.
Of the angry ex-president’s argument that he is absolutely immune from the lawsuit since he was acting in his official capacity as president when he whipped up an angry mob he’d assembled, Judge Mehta set out several ways the rally and riot were beyond the scope of presidential duties:
[Trump] repeatedly tweeted false claims of election fraud and corruption, contacted state and local officials to overturn election results, and urged the Vice President to send Electoral ballots back for recertification. The President communicated directly with his supporters, inviting them to Washington, D.C., to a rally on January 6, the day of the Certification, telling them it would be “wild.” He directly participated in the rally’s planning, and his campaign funded the rally with millions of dollars. At the rally itself, the President gave a rousing speech in which he repeated the false narrative of a stolen election. The crowd responded by chanting and screaming, “Storm the Capitol,” “Invade the Capitol,” “Take the Capitol right now,” and “Fight for Trump.” Still, the President ended his speech by telling the crowd that “we fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” Almost immediately after these words, he called on rally-goers to march to the Capitol to give “pride and boldness” to reluctant lawmakers “to take back our country.” Importantly, it was the President and his campaign’s idea to send thousands to the Capitol while the Certification was underway. It was not a planned part of the rally. In fact, the permit expressly stated that it did “not authorize a march from the Ellipse.” From these alleged facts, it is at least plausible to infer that, when he called on rally-goers to march to the Capitol, the President did so with the goal of disrupting lawmakers’ efforts to certify the Electoral College votes.
as to Trump’s First Amendment claim:
Having considered the President’s January 6 Rally Speech in its entirety and in context, the court concludes that the President’s statements that, “[W]e fight. We fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” and “[W]e’re going to try to and give [weak Republicans] the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country,” immediately before exhorting rally-goers to “walk down Pennsylvania Avenue,” are plausibly words of incitement not protected by the First Amendment. … It is reasonable to infer that the President would have known that some supporters viewed his invitation as a call to action …
So, when the President said to the crowd at the end of his remarks, “We fight. We fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” moments before instructing them to march to the Capitol, the President’s speech plausibly crossed the line into unprotected territory.
Good editorial for Merrick Garland on the necessity of prosecuting The Orange Loser
From a recent Washington Post, generously gifted to you by the supremely generous Jeff Bezos
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