More weasel dancing by the Biden DOJ

This story snuck by fast, leaving barely a ripple, but coming on the heels of the Department of Justice appealing Judge Amy Berman Jackson’s ruling that Bill Barr’s disingenuous “deliberative” Mueller memo must be released to the public, it is alarming. The Washington Post:

The American Civil Liberties Union of D.C., Black Lives Matter, other civil liberties groups and individual protesters accuse Trump and senior officials of driving the June 1 events. Military, federal and local police forcibly cleared the square using batons, clubs, horses, pepper spray, smoke and fired projectiles 30 minutes before a citywide curfew began. Images of violence drew a national backlash against Trump’s calls for “overwhelming force” to put down those he called “THUGS” and domestic terrorists. The nation’s top military official later apologized for walking with Trump before television cameras that day.

Lawyers for the ACLU said that despite legal precedents, the government’s defense would “authorize brutality with impunity” in the heart of Washington at one of the most symbolic spaces within the seat of the federal government.

source

DOJ lawyers argued a few days ago that the case must be dismissed. They argued that the ACLU’s lawsuit over the June 2020 violent dispersal of a peaceful crowd so that Trump could walk to a photo op must be thrown out because the President and Attorney General were acting within the scope of their authority, Barr exercising the “paramount” government interest of protecting the president when he ordered federal anti-riot police to use force to drive a peaceful crowd from Lafayette Park.

The Washington Post notes that right before Trump’s walk to the church to menacingly hold up a Bible:

Trump called on governors to “dominate your city and your state” in the hours before the crackdown, adding, “In Washington, we’re going to do something people haven’t seen before.”

Earlier, he tweeted, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts” as protests raged in Minneapolis. Trump also threatened that if demonstrators outside the White House breached its gates, they “would have been greeted with the most vicious dogs and most ominous weapons I have ever seen.”

Finally, the suit asserted that even as police moved on the square at 6:43 p.m., Trump spoke a few hundred yards away in the Rose Garden, saying, “[If] a city or a state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them.”

President Donald Trump holds a Bible as he visits outside St. John's Church across from Lafayette Square.

The ACLU had the better argument, that peaceful protesters have rights that prevent the federal (or state) government from burning, beating, shooting or giving them asthma attacks with chemical irritants:

The lawsuits seek damages and a court order declaring that authorities conspired to violate civil rights statutes and the First and Fourth amendment rights of protesters injured after being burned, beaten, shot or put into respiratory distress.

As Trump told his riled up supporters during his #Stop the Steal rally on January 6:

“When you catch somebody in a fraud you’re allowed to go by very different rules.”

Presumably the same goes for lawful protesters, when they represent something as ugly and divisive as police accountability for the murder of unarmed, unresisting citizens — when they refuse to stand down in the face of concrete threats and ultimatums, you’re allowed to go by very different rules.

The DOJ, because, as it points out, the current president would never use violence against peacefully protesting anti-racists, moves to dismiss the case against Barr and Trump on those grounds, and on the grounds that Barr and Trump were acting completely within the scope of their duties when they used violence against a crowd, after numerous ugly provocations and threats by the president and the Attorney General, culminating in a calculated show of unconstitutional force to violently and “illegally” deprive citizens of their rights.

Compare Trump and Barr’s response to the peaceful protest on June 1 to the federal response to the January 6 riot, during which a violent crowd of excited normal tourists fought police, breached, overran and vandalized the Capitol to prevent the final certification of Trump’s loss to Biden. Because, when you’re with president Trump, you’re allowed to go by very different rules.

Nothing to see here. If you have asthma, don’t go to a peaceful protest that might be broken up by unaccountable government force including pepper spray, smoke bombs, stun grenades, tear gas and the armed charge of horse-mounted anti-riot police — in defense of the president’s unlimited right to provoke and order violence. You have to use common sense!

Judge Amy Berman Jackson denies Trump rioter’s request to run free before his trial

I am thankful that American court cases, however otherwise messed up and biased our system of justice is, are still decided based on the available evidence, facts proved in court, beyond a reasonable doubt. The ideologues on the Supreme Court can sometimes employ narrow legal theories to overturn a trial judge’s findings, invalidate or uphold a law, but judges in our trial courts are generally constrained by the facts in evidence in the case before them.

Some of our judges are heroic in this perilous moment when a Big Lie is better than the truth to millions of our countrymen. I think of federal judges like J. Nicholas Ranjan, appointed by Trump, who nonetheless took days to write a 140 page appeal-proof ruling dismissing Trump’s evidence-free voter fraud case as the seamless tissue of bullshit it was.

Another judicial hero is Judge Amy Berman Jackson, a trial court judge on the DC federal court. The trial judge’s first job is fact-finder, the court establishes the facts of the case before applying the law to the facts in evidence. Appeals courts review only alleged errors of law by the trial court. It is extremely rare for an appeals court to disturb the findings of fact by the trial judge.

Judge Berman Jackson’s fact finding sets out a great deal of detail in her rulings, she illustrates her decisions with vivid facts from the record. She recently denied the motion for pre-trail release filed for enthusiastic Trump rioter, Karl Dresch, after weighing the facts before her.

Here are few of the colorful facts she provided to support her findings, excerpted from many letters in support of Dresch’s motion for pre-trial release, from a long footnote of examples:

 T.L. (pastor of a local church): “[Defendant and his wife] are not yet members of the church.” “We have shared a few meals together, and [defendant] has done some work for the church. . . . That is the extent of our relationship.” “[As] a fairly quick judge of character . . . I do not believe that [defendant] is any real danger to our community or government. I ‘think’ that [defendant] got wrapped up in a movement and made some very foolish decisions.”

 A.P. (defendant’s longtime family friend): “While [defendant] may have been in the wrong place at the wrong time and got swept up in the unfortunate events of the day, I cannot imagine that he had any intent to inflict injury to persons or property.”

 P.L. (defendant’s longtime friend and local attorney): “[Defendant] has very strong political views concerning government, in particular the legislative and executive branches, and law enforcement.” “[T]o be candid, [defendant] has occasionally exercised rather poor judgement.” “I have never known [defendant] to be violent in any way nor do I believe him to be flight risk nor a person who would obstruct justice.”

 S.F. (casual acquaintance of defendant for past two years): “I can vouch for [defendant’s] sincere friendly character, morals and integrity over the time I have known him.”

source

In laying out the facts that support her decision to detain Dresch as a flight risk, and a danger to society, she includes a few pages of his social media posts, here’s one, from January 7:

 On January 7, 2021, defendant commented on an unidentified post that “Mike Pence gave our country to the communist hordes, traitor scum like the rest of them, we have your back give the word and we will be back even stronger.”

and:

Bro you shoulda been there . . . . the news is all fake . . . and just to correct shit . . we wasn’t violent but we took the capitol . . . . antifa didn’t do it they may have had some idiots undercover in the crowd but it was us that got in . . . and we didn’t fuck shit up . . . I seen a broken window . . . we picked up water bottles and shit cleaned up . . it was grand . . . best day ever . . . I think it was a good show of force . . . look what we can do peacefully, wait til we decide to get pissed.

Of course, there is also a detail like this. In his home in Calumet, Michigan:

Among other items, agents located several hundred rounds of rifle (7.62) ammunition, a Russian rifle, shotgun shells, a shotgun, and an Atlanta Braves backpack. The ammunition was located in multiple places throughout the house, including the dining room, the master bedroom, an upstairs hall room, and inside the backpack. Specifically, the backpack contained a Pilot gas station receipt from Hagerstown, Maryland dated January 5, 2021, a Metro SmartTrip card, and 8 boxes of 7.62 ammunition, containing a total of 160 rounds. The boxes matched the boxes of ammunition found in the house. The firearms were identified in the Michigan State Police Report as a Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun and a Russian-made SKS 7.62 mm x 39 caliber rifle.

The Judge then turns to Dresch’s motion to set him free until the trial and analyzes the applicable law, in light of the facts.

Defendant argues that that government lacked sufficient grounds to move for his detention under the Bail Reform Act. Section 3142(f)(2) states that the judicial officer shall hold a hearing upon motion of the government or its own motion in a case that involves “(A) a serious risk that such person will flee; or (B) a serious risk that such person will obstruct or attempt to obstruct justice, or threaten, injure, or intimidate, or attempt to threaten, injure, or intimidate, a prospective witness or juror.”

Then she sets to work ruling that the section 3142(g) factors support detention on the grounds of dangerousness by clear and convincing evidence (and here, due to formatting limitations, I will not indent, but the following is all from the May 28 decision)


A. The nature and circumstances of the offense charged


The United States Capitol was not open to the public on January 6, 2021.

There was important business going on, though, because on that day, in accordance with Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, a joint session of Congress was convened to certify the vote of the Electoral College in the 2020 Presidential Election.


This was after every single one of the fifty states, including those under Republican control or with Republican election officials, had certified its own count, and after court challenges to those counts or certifications had been rejected by more than sixty courts across the country – by state judges, and also by federal judges appointed by Presidents of both parties, including former President Trump. Vice President Mike Pence, also a Republican, was present and presiding, as the Constitution required. See U.S. Const. art. II, § 1.

The United States Capitol Police, federal law enforcement officers surrounding the building, and the members of the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department who were summoned to assist, were overcome.


Defendant was one of many individuals who made their way through the barricades and past the officers who were attempting to keep the crowd away from the building. He was one of the individuals who entered the closed building. And that day, the certification process prescribed by the Constitution was interrupted as members of Congress of both parties and the Vice President had to be spirited to safety or were forced to barricade the doors or hide.

(back to me) These facts are not in dispute. The “normal tourists” who forced GOP elected officials to flee for their lives and barricade themselves in safe rooms while these normal tourist crowds, after smashing their way into the tourist attraction, roamed the halls chanting “hang Mike Pence” and calling for “Nancy” to come out and face the music, had been whipped up by Trump and the most extreme members of his remaining extremist support group. Like this guy:

The judge quotes defendant again:

Ok all you conspiracy theorists . . . don’t worry I loves you all just setting the record straight. antifa did not take the capitol. that was Patriots . . . don’t give them the thunder, we the people took back our house, the news is all bullshit. and now those traitors Know who’s really in charge.

As to Dresch’s likely future actions, the judge cites the incendiary power of Trump’s ongoing lie:

Defendant’s promise to take action in the future cannot be dismissed as an unlikely occurrence given that his singular source of information, (“Trump’s the only big shot I trust right now”), continues to propagate the lie that inspired the attack on a near daily basis. See generally From the Desk of Donald J. Trump, https://www.donaldjtrump.com/desk (last visited May 27, 2021). And the anger surrounding the false accusation continues to be stoked by multiple media outlets as well as the state and federal party leaders who are intent on censuring those who dare to challenge the former President’s version of events.

She sums up, a few pages later, after reciting defendant’s criminal history, including a drunk driving high speed chase (he did an impressive 145 miles an hour crossing from Michigan to Wisconsin to evade police) that landed him in jail, he served prison time in both states:

Given defendant’s offer to return to Washington to engage in a similar effort to disrupt democratic processes again, his warning that authorities here cannot reach him at home, the utter contempt he showed for law enforcement and the safety of the community during the high speed chase, the threatening remarks directed at an individual who was reporting participants in the attack to the FBI, defendant’s other convictions for obstructive conduct, and his knowing possession of multiple weapons and a considerable supply of ammunition after two felony convictions, the Court has clear and convincing reasons to believe that defendant poses a danger to the community that cannot be alleviated by the imposition of any conditions.

The court of public opinion may contain tens of millions who sincerely believe that Tom Hanks traffics and rapes children, then kills them and drinks their blood, and that because of heinous freaks like the falsely smiling Hanks, our country is in mortal danger and only Donald Trump can save us.

The American court of law, so far, has been fairly consistent in requiring proof, beyond the sincerely, even passionately, held opinions of those who honestly believe that their violence is necessary to save us all from Satanist, pedophile, cannibal, socialist, fascist, antifa, BLM culture warriors, dangerous monsters like blood-drinkers Tom Hanks, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Talib, George Soros and company.

It’s true– they’re all lying, except me.

No skin off my nose, pal

As the narrator of this tale, or the plaintiff in a related medical malpractice nuisance suit, I have the great advantage that you won’t need to squint or strain to see the fingernail sized permanent divot on the bridge of my nose. You can see what I’m peeved about at a glance, even in low light.

This lifetime scar gives me instant credibility as the teller of this particular story, and a bit of pathos too. Juries like pathos, if they shudder to imagine having been subjected to the same thing the plaintiff was forced to undergo.

It’s always a mistake, of course, to believe that a gratuitous scar on one’s face, inflicted by a doctor who has not performed the medical procedure he prescribed, the one authorized by insurance, is a legally cognizable injury.

Let the lawyers fight it out, I say.

“Is this scar going to fill in?” I asked the confident doctor three weeks after the surgery, a single gouge deep into the bridge of my nose, to remove a basal cell invisible to the naked eye, a large round wound which was then cauterized instead of stitched.

“No, that’s about as good as it’s going to look,” he said, with admirable candor.

My next question was based on the four or five previous Mohs surgeries I’d had to remove much more visible, deeper, more advanced basal cells (the most benign form of skin cancer). Each of these surgeries had taken several hours, as opposed to the 30 minute procedure his surgeon had done on my nose.

“I was supposed to have Mohs surgery, which removes one thin layer at a time to preserve as much healthy tissue as possible and minimize scarring. Your surgeon basically took a small, sharp ice cream scoop and scooped out all the surrounding tissue in one pass, down to the cartilage,” I said.

“Yes,” said the doctor. In that moment I didn’t have the presence of mind to say anything more. I suppose my psychic efforts were focused on not cauterizing the good doctor’s nose right then.

The doctor’s attitude about the prominent scar in the middle of my face was a slightly impatient “no skin off my nose, pal.” His body language said “are we done here? Any more rhetorical questions?” He thought for a moment then told me about a powerful prescription cream that reduces scarring.

“But your insurance won’t pay for it,” he told me a moment later. The kindly doc then sent his nurse off to find a few of the free sample tubes the pharmaceutical company rep had left him a case of. The cream, which came with no instructions except his nurse’s “apply in a very thin layer”, seemed to irritate the scar which became increasingly uncomfortable until I stopped using the stuff.

In the debate over “socialized” medicine we often hear the critique about the “rationing” of medical care not provided on a competitive, profit-driven “free market” basis. Healthcare, in Communist nations like Great Britain, Canada, Japan, France, etc. is rationed, we are told, because everyone is presumed to be equal when it comes to health care and so there is often a line for some procedures. While it’s true that the wealthy can skip the lines, even in those countries, by going to a private doctor, health care for most is still “rationed”. Here, under our system, the level of care you are “entitled” to is rationed by your ability to pay a monthly health insurance premium. The more you pay, the higher the quality of care you are entitled to, the less rationing you will be subject to.

Here in America every doctor, even the kind orthopedist I’ve visited a couple of times for the arthritis in my knees, knows exactly the level of your insurance coverage as you sit discussing medical options. “Unfortunately, your insurance won’t pay for it, though it works very well to keep the knee pain-free for six months or so while you strengthen the surrounding muscles,” she said of an injection she proposed. She nodded when I told her I’d be on Medicare soon, hopefully. Medicare will absolutely pay for the shot, she told me with a smile.

A cardiologist, who revealed himself as a mask-shunning Trumpist during the pandemic, billed almost $12,000 for each of the four procedures I had on veins in my calves. He’d told me confidently “your insurance will cover it.” My insurance paid him almost half. Not a bad hour’s work for those first three veins. I had a mirthless laugh when I got my “Explanation of Benefits” for the fourth and final venous ablation. He’d billed $12,000 and received zero. His office, apparently, had failed to renew the authorization to be paid. I guess their lawyers will have to fight it out, and good for them both.

A doctor working for a patient with low-cost health insurance (dictated under the ACA according to your declared income, the only choice a low-income patient has is to accept the offered insurance or reject it — and have none), knows exactly how much of the amount his office bills will be paid by the insurance company. This dermatologist motherfucker had every incentive, based on the small fraction of his billed Mohs surgery fee he’d receive, to get me in and out of his office as quickly as possible. Thus incentivized, I was in and out quickly. Even though the surgeon couldn’t see the tiny spot he was supposed to remove.

He called in the dermatologist for a quick consultation, they looked at the photos of the two biopsies (the second had been necessary because the first was done in haste) and concluded it was there, just next to that broken blood vessel. I had a strong reflex to hesitate, as if in a moment of precognition.

“If you can’t see it clearly, I’d rather wait a few months until it’s visible,” I said with mild panic, knowing that these slowly growing cells can be there for a long time with no terrible effect. The confident dermatologist told me that they concurred, knew exactly where the basal cell was and that there was no need to put off the surgery. Like a schmuck, I sat back and let the surgeon hurry to gouge out the entire surrounding area, taking out a circle of healthy tissue to ensure he got the basal cell.

I was in and out of the office in just over a half hour, less time than even the first phase of Mohs surgery usually takes, as I know from experience, having had the procedure now five times out of six. Cah-ching.

As for Dr. “No Skin off My Nose”, what are the odds that a patient with a scarred face, given one more small scar for good measure (and to maximize the good doctor’s billable hours) will have the ability to coherently make a case that a doctor who prescribed surgery A, had that surgery (as well as a skin graft to minimize the scar) authorized by the patient’s insurance and then provides surgery B, including the burning of the flesh around the unnecessarily large wound, deserves a little shit, from his medical ethics board and a payment from his malpractice insurance carrier for the nuisance he inflicted (I have pain at the site of the surgery months later, in addition to the small crater) to the guy whose nose he brutalized?

It may take me a little while longer, but this slick, confident operator needs his smug fucking face cauterized too, just a little. No? After all, it is really no skin off my nose.

Democracy loses in the Senate 35-54

Fair is fair, when dealing with uncompromising transactional extremists.

In fairness to the 35 courageous Republicans who showed up today to vote for the filibuster to block formation of a bipartisan commission to investigate the January 6 riot, they and many close colleagues might well be implicated in the planned insurrection, or just as bad, forced to commit perjury if called to testify, so you can hardly blame them for objecting.

Some who voted “nay” today may well have career-related reasons for paranoia and legitimate concern, particularly those, like Lyin’ Ted Cruz [1], Tom Cotton, Josh Hawley, Ron Johnson from Wisconsin, Lindsey, who made fiery speeches about the millions of Americans who believe the election had been stolen from their leader, how they are entitled to a special commission to thoroughly investigate disproven claims of voter fraud to protect the integrity of the election process before Biden could be sworn in, and then, after the riot, voted to block certification of Joe Biden’s victory. Then amplified ridiculous claims to keep the lie that fomented the riot alive in everyone’s social media feed, on cable news and all over the internet.

There are many intriguing questions we don’t yet have answers to about Trump’s MAGA riot at the Capitol, basic questions of fact.

For example, how many of the rioters currently on trial for violently breaching the Capitol on January 6th were given guided tours of the building by radical new members of Congress, like the Jew-loving firebrand from Georgia, on January 5th?

How many then headed over to the torchlit rally headlined by fiery Q-Anon enthusiast Mike “Lock Her Up” Flynn and self-proclaimed Republican Ratfucker Roger Stone that night?

How many members of Congress, and their staff, were out in the ruckus on the streets of DC, excitedly whooping it up the night before the riot, fraternizing with the extremist “militias” and those ready to fight the Steal?

Many simple questions will require perjury to answer in a way favorable to Mr. Trump.

Was Kevin McCarthy’s colleague lying when she affirmed, in an affidavit introduced at the second impeachment trial, that Trump had told an agitated McCarthy “Well, Kevin, I guess some people are more upset about this than you are” and that Kevin responded “who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?”

Yes or no question, Kevin.

Was your colleague lying when she swore to the veracity of those two quotes?

As Robert Reich wrote yesterday, on the eve of the rigged vote to further obstruct justice:

The 35 GOP zealots who gave the thumbs down on debate may have shot themselves in the demanding Trump’s dick today, though. A Democratic party controlled House Select Committee will be far worse for them than the bipartisan one they negotiated for, and then, after Democrats agreed to all their terms, voted to prevent debate on.

Showing as much character, integrity and artistry in deal-making as their leader himself. They filibuster because their dear leader can’t get over his temper tantrum about the election he insists was stolen from him, in spite of his muscular efforts to rig it in his favor.

That’s the real devilish ugliness of the filibuster — it prevents DEBATE, public discussion of the merits of the issue under consideration. In the legislative house where open debate is required before lawmakers decide what is best for our great nation, or, as today, with the prevention of any debate, what is in the best interests of an insane giant baby.

Paging senators Manchin and saucy Kyrsten Fucking Cinema…

[1]

Barr obstructed justice…

Attorney General William Pelham Barr, live on TV, prior to releasing the Mueller Report:

“The Special Counsel found no collusion by any Americans in IRA’s illegal activities. In other words, there was no evidence of the Trump campaign collusion… There was in fact, no collusion.”

The 140 instances of coordination (or its synonym “collusion”) between Trump’s campaign and Putin found and cited by Mueller, without more, were insufficient to support a prosecution for Criminal Conspiracy, as Mueller concluded. This was in part because several Trump associates who spoke under penalty of perjury lied to Mueller’s investigators, the Russians Mueller subpoenaed were beyond the reach of American law and other evidence was destroyed.

Since Mueller issued his report more evidence has come out about direct ties and significant, direct collusion between Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and the Kremlin, via Konstantin Kilimnik (some of this is documented in the post-Mueller Marco Rubio chaired Senate Report, a report Rubio touted as further exonerating the former president).

It should be noted that a good deal of crucial evidence was withheld by non-rat Trump associates who dummied up, or simply lied, in return for a dangled pardon for perjury or related crimes. Unlike in many of Trump’s other business dealings, he actually kept his end of the bargain, pardoning Manafort, Flynn and Stone, along with a rogue’s gallery of others. Can you say quid pro quo?

quid pro quo

In the former president’s defense, he is often called “transactional” — a transaction is a negotiated exchange of promises, goods or services. I give you this, you give me that. You don’t incriminate me, for example, I give you a full unconditional presidential pardon, for example. In Latin the phrase is quid pro quo.

Which leads us back to obstruction of justice. Same deal, note how carefully Barr phrases his lying spin on Mueller’s findings in Volume II, which detailed Trump’s tireless (and ongoing) pattern of obstruction of justice. While Mueller was prevented by DOJ policy from charging the sitting president with this crime, he stated that he would have exonerated him if he could, but that the evidence of obstruction of justice he had gathered did not allow him to exonerate the president. Here’s Barr’s take:

“The evidence developed by the Special Counsel is not sufficient to establish that the president committed an obstruction of justice offense.”

Telling your White House counsel to fire the Special Counsel, and when he refuses, instructing him to write a memorandum falsely stating he was never asked to fire the Special Counsel? This single incident of arguable obstruction of justice (to create a false document to cover up a possibly incriminating act) is not sufficient, even read together with the other nine instances detailed by Mueller, to establish that the president attempted to obstruct justice, or cover up that obstruction. In Bill Barr’s estimation, anyway.

Which is, no doubt, why he had Trump assert a ridiculously all-inclusive privilege that allowed White House counsel Don McGahn (and everyone else Trump had ever spoken to) to defy a Congressional subpoena until long after the first impeachment was over (and the second impeachment too, for that matter).

And Barr has a falsely classified legal memo to prove that he was on the up and up the whole time. This secret memo sets out the legal advice he got and details the legal discussions he had before he made the decision, even if that advisory memo, it turns out, was finalized after he sent his letter to Congress saying Mueller hadn’t found jack shit on the Unitary Executive.

This “privileged” memo, you see, contains the exact legal reasoning on which he relied when dismissing Mueller’s investigation as a partisan witch hunt that basically exonerated Trump of all wrongdoing.

The memo purports to show that Barr made his considered, legally nuanced decision only after getting legal advice that confirmed every jot and tittle of his determination.

Even though, it emerges, the same team (with Barr’s input) simultaneously prepared the letter AND the secret post-letter “deliberative” memo that justified it and they exchanged emails with edits as they prioritized finalizing the lying letter to Congress and the American people over the advisory memo, which they agreed could always be finished after the letter was sent.

The hilarious stand up comic pictured above (mocking those alarmed about the autocratic Unitary Executive theory embraced by right-wing zealots like Barr and the Federalist Society audience he is performing for) needs to be prosecuted for his role in the obstruction of justice he claimed there was inadequate evidence to prosecute Trump for.

History suggests that Merrick Garland may not be prepared to go this far, though I hope very much that I’m wrong. A few years ago Barack Obama made history by candidly stating that “we, uh, tortured some folks”. It was wrong, he said, and against our values, international law and the treaties we may have signed, but some very good people did it, during a very scary time, truly believing they were doing the right thing, so you know, to clear the air once and for all … yes, we tortured some, uh, folks.

Many Democrats in power only seem to register that fire can seriously burn them after they are actually being burned to death. They don’t want to be accused of being vindictive, politically correct, “woke” culture warriors by doing something that can be spun as viciously partisan, like millions of tax dollars spent on a long-running, high-profile Benghazi investigation, ten of them, actually, against then Secretary of State/presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Modern Republicans are admired by the base (al Qaeda, in Arabic) for shooting before they can be asked a smart assed question.

What kind of knife are we bringing to the obstruction of justice gunfight, Nancy? Chuck? Merrick?

Some reassuring words from a pro

I was perplexed by the DOJ’s appeal of Judge Amy Berman Jackson’s ruling that the falsely classified March 24 “deliberative memo” to Barr must be made public in its entirety.

Sekhnet asked me what Glenn Kirschner had to say.

Kirschner is a former federal prosecutor who retired a couple of years ago after thirty years on the job. He has been doing daily videos putting the agonizing legal shit show into perspective for over a year. He never missed a day, but he’s been off the last few. I told her that Kirschner was vacationing in Cancun, Ted Cruz-land as he phrased it, where he made one quick video, and that his wife, by the pool, had probably said, as he read of the DOJ appeal, “don’t you dare!”

As luck would have it, the former prosecutor was back at his desk yesterday, in a suit, and he gave this very reasonable account of why Merrick Garland’s DOJ would fight to keep a compromising, falsely classified memo secret. He gives some good insight.

(Heh, I love the clown nose arrow superimposed on his face, great look).

From the judge’s now unredacted decision (at page 26).

The DOJ already has the memo, knows that Barr was lying, and Garland is arguably protecting the institution of the DOJ, and its ability to keep future confidential documents confidential, with this appeal. On the other hand, (and it would not hurt the DOJ’s obstruction case against Barr) as Neal Katyal wrote in today’s NY Times, The Public Deserves to See This Legal Memo About Donald Trump.

Hopefully the DOJ is also working up a criminal prosecution against Mr. Barr, a gigantic, foul turd in human form. As Judge Amy Berman Jackson pointed out in her decision (at page 27), the plaintiffs (seeking the full memo under the Freedom of Information Act) had pretty much nailed the lying Bill Barr in their pleadings :

That the “deliberative memo” Barr disingenuously claimed he used to make his decision was prepared the same day he completed his cover-up letter to Congress, falsely telling them that Mueller hadn’t found jack shit that incriminated the Unitary Executive, (in fact, it turns out the “advisory” memo, written simultaneously by the same team that worked on Barr’s letter to Congress, was finalized AFTER Barr completed the misleading letter he sent to Congress — see the handy email time line the judge attaches at page 37 [1]) tells us all we need to know about the Bagpiper’s character, integrity, and his intent.

Now the only question is — will the DOJ pursue justice by prosecuting the bellowing culture warrior for his pattern of partisan obstruction of justice during his term as the unimpeachable Mr. Trump’s most powerful gunsel?

Hah, total fucking witch hunt by godless secular humanist scum!

[1]

One of the key players in this DOJ conspiracy to pretend there had been deliberations and legal debate before Barr sent Congress the fake news that Trump was “exonerated” by the Mueller Report (by preparing a false, ass-covering, after-the-fact memo of privileged “legal advice”) was a lawyer named Rabbitt, Brian C. Rabbitt. Yes, I know.

On the other hand, WTF?

At 11 pm last night, in the last hour to do so, Merrick Garland’s DOJ appealed a federal judge’s order to produce the full nine page memo that Bill Barr “disingenuously” classified as a protected, deliberative memo he used to make his decision to dismiss the findings of the Mueller Report. The judge, who’d read the memo, ruled that it had been produced as a mere a rationale, for the decision Barr was determined to make regarding the Mueller Report since auditioning for the Attorney General job. Curiously, and shedding doubt on Barr’s story, it was dated the same day Barr wrote his immediate, misleading letter to Congress about Mueller’s findings.

Think back through the intense shit storm that was Trump’s term as president. After Mr. Trump’s cruel disappointment with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, his first mainstream supporter, who, with complete disregard for his duty of loyalty to the president, honored an DOJ ethics ruling and recused himself from supervising the investigation into a matter he’d lied about his involvement in, the president got a beautiful audition memo from William Pelham Barr.

Barr’s position in the legal memo was that Mueller’s witch hunt was basically illegal from the git-go and that the AG, under current law, could therefore dismiss its findings. Trump loved it and hired Barr (who had both gravitas and experience in creatively covering up likely presidential crimes, as he had at the end of the George HW Bush administration) to take over from Sessions’s interim replacement, an angry weight lifter in over his head.

Barr distorted the findings of the Mueller Investigation (which concluded they could not exonerate Trump on ten counts of Obstruction of Justice), essentially carrying out his promise to Mr. Trump (quid pro… never mind). Recently a federal judge found that the memo he’d classified, a supposedly “deliberative” memo (again, prepared the same day as Barr’s misleading letter to Congress announcing that Mueller had basically exonerated Trump) was, in fact, a legal fig leaf to give the illusion of deliberation to a decision Barr had made before Trump hired him. “Disingenuous,” wrote Judge Amy Berman Jackson, ruling that the DOJ must produce the full memo — or appeal it by midnight May 25 (George Floyd Day).

In the last hour available to do so, Merrick Garland’s DOJ appealed the judge’s decision that the DOJ must produce the un-redacted memo. The DOJ released the first one and a half pages of the nine page memo, followed by seven and a half black pages.

Scroll to the bottom of the black pages of the memo and you are rewarded with this, the top of the un-readacted final page:

What the fuck?

Take it, Grey Lady:

“Although the special counsel recognized the unfairness of levying an accusation against the president without bringing criminal charges, the report’s failure to take a position on the matters described therein might be read to imply such an accusation if the confidential report were released to the public,” wrote Steven A. Engel and Edward C. O’Callaghan, two senior Trump-era Justice Department officials [in the last paragraph of the un-redacted section of the Barr DOJ’s controversial memo — ed]

The Mueller report itself — which Mr. Barr permitted to become public [1] weeks after his letter to Congress had created an impression that the fruits of Mr. Mueller’s inquiry cleared Mr. Trump of obstruction — detailed multiple actions by Mr. Trump that many legal specialists say were clearly sufficient to ask a grand jury to consider indicting him for obstruction of justice.

Those actions included attempting to bully his White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, into falsifying a record to cover up an earlier attempt by Mr. Trump to fire Mr. Mueller, and dangling a potential pardon at Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, to encourage him not to cooperate with investigators.

The new Justice Department filing also apologized for and defended its Barr-era court filings about the memo, which Judge Amy Berman Jackson had labeled “disingenuous,” saying that they could have been written more clearly but were nevertheless accurate….

…“The government acknowledges that its briefs could have been clearer, and it deeply regrets the confusion that caused,” the Justice Department said. “But the government’s counsel and declarants did not intend to mislead the court, and the government respectfully submits” that any missteps still did not warrant releasing the entire memo.

Mr. Barr’s claim — which he made weeks before releasing the Mueller public [sic] — that the evidence gathered showed that Mr. Trump did not commit a chargeable offense of obstruction has been widely criticized as deeply misleading.

source

What the bloody hell?

See? Completely partisan witch hunt!

[1]

Would it not have been more accurate, NY Times, rather than this:

which Mr. Barr permitted to become public weeks after his letter to Congress had created an impression that the fruits of Mr. Mueller’s inquiry cleared Mr. Trump of obstruction

to state:

that Mr. Barr prevented publication of, including Mueller’s executive summaries, for weeks after he misleadingly dismissed the findings?

Truth or Big Lie — your choice

How about Bezos’s recent Washington Post puff piece calling radical Trumpist Senator Josh Hawley “a fierce defender of the Constitution”?

As noted, the ongoing danger of a Big Lie is the culture of lying it brings about, many other lies must be told to support the Big One. The election was stolen (not true) therefore we have a right and responsibility to bring the thieves to justice (hang Mike Pence!) and no puny police force is going to stop us (Blue Lives Matter!) we love our flags (nothing wrong with our Confederate flag, “n-words”) and some of us will beat police officers with the flagpoles (“when you catch somebody in a fraud, you’re allowed to go by very different rules”).

Today the united position of the GOP is that any claim they ran for their lives on January 6 is a bold-faced lie, they were never afraid of the innocent, totally unarmed (virtually no firearms seized afterwards) law-abiding mob they barricaded the doors against and fled from in terror! They claim there is no need for any investigation — which could have dire political consequences for certain elected officials (like the firebrand from the state of Q) who may have aided the peaceful mob — unless you also investigate the claimed terrorism of Black Lives Matter, antifa and the treacherous machinations of traitor Republicans. You do remember the (rare) rioting Barr and Trump used to bring in federal riot troops night after to restore peace in the first of many “anarchist jurisdictions” that needed pacification after the totally justifiable murder of George Floyd and massive nationwide so-called “peaceful” protests by violent haters!!!

Then we have this sobering (and encouraging) poll about the apparently declining but still prevalent Republican belief that Blacks, antifa and disloyal Republicans stole the 2020 election for Biden (down from 70%, by the looks of it) and some eye-popping number crunching (from Heather Cox Richardson’s latest):

If that 14% contains the politically committed 0.01%, the group that has most of the money in America, well, we see the results every day. You get the “spontaneous” creation of the nationwide Tea Party, Election Integrity laws that make it harder to vote, Stand Your Ground Laws that make it easier to legally kill people you’re afraid of, Anti-Protest Laws that make it a felony to assemble while granting immunity to those who run over now felonious protesters in the street, and for religious types, a solid anti-abortion majority on the Supreme Court to finally end government coercion and ensure maximum liberty, etc.

We’re in one heap of a mess, folks, but I like the direction things are going. With every new detail that comes out about the US under Mr. Trump and his gunsel Bill Barr (check out the Manafort stuff– his actual lies to Mueller are now laid out, un-redacted, in black and white [1]), things look a little better, justice-wise. It is inconceivable to me that honest investigations, grand juries and actual prosecutions will not change the face of GOP politics in the coming months. If only fucking Sinema and Manchin had the integrity of your average turd…

“You’re a turd, Widaen! You stink a mile, pal!“

[1]

O`DONNELL: And what was your reaction to what we learned in the newly- unredacted — well, we, the public, learned in these newly-unredacted documents about Paul Manafort dealing with the Mueller investigation and the ways he kept lying to them about Konstantin Kilimnik?

SCHIFF: Well, it`s pretty interesting because in two respects. First, you`re right. It shows Manafort was a bigger liar than we knew, and we knew he was a pretty big liar to begin with. But it also shows the degree of collusion between the campaign chairman for Donald Trump and Russian intelligence.

Here Manafort and Gates, his deputy chairman, are repeatedly giving an agent of Russian intelligence internal polling data, internal strategic documents about their efforts in battleground states and key demographics within those battleground states.

So, you know, this is going on while the Russians are doing a secret social media operation to help the Trump campaign. And so it`s hard to find something more graphic than that in terms of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians and the same Russian intelligence that`s working on the social media campaign.

But what`s also interesting about it is this is now the second federal judge in ordering these things to be unredacted, who has essentially said Bill Barr was misleading the country, misleading the country by saying there was no evidence of collusion, misleading the country by saying that he was compelled to conclude that you could not indict the president on obstruction.

And he`s also — the judge is also saying that essentially Barr has been dishonest with the court about what that memo is about. It`s not about just deliberations.

Apparently it`s about spin. And it`s for that reason, because it`s about how do they spin this pre-decision, this predetermination that they weren`t going to indict the president no matter what — how do they spin that? That`s not something that can be concealed from the public. So it`s interesting at many levels.

source

Your Last Breath

It is a scary thought, breathing out and never breathing in again. Anxiety often expresses itself in this image — I can’t breathe! — Oh my God! — the breath catching, a rising fear of no more oxygen coming in, not enough oxygen, drowning on dry land as the last bit of sand tics through the hourglass of the long soap opera that was, until a second ago, your life.

I saw only one last breath in my life. It was my father’s. A few minutes earlier he’d sent everyone else away, telling them I’d stay with him, that everything was fine. They went down to have a break, to eat dinner in the hospital cafeteria. My father waited until they were gone and then said “I don’t know how to do this.” I assured him that nobody did, that it would be fine.

The moment of his death, maybe fifteen minutes later, was perfectly captured by some poetic Jewish writer two thousand years earlier: like removing a hair from a glass of milk. His death was entirely peaceful, his breathing gently slowed and finally stopped. His last breath was gone a few seconds before I knew it for sure. One benefit, I understand, of dying from liver cancer, it just quietly shuts everything down, making you more and more tired until you simply…

You might think knowing that we all will die would bring out the best in us, our empathy, our higher nature. It is a humbling thing to understand that every life ends with a last breath, the humblest of us and the mightiest. Sadly, the fearsome inevitability of death leads many to indulge the worst side of themselves. Might as well take as many of these fuckers down as I can before I die in a glorious hail of bullets!

We’re living through a time as bad as any in human history. This is a time of vast human panic, irrationality, fear, rage and hopelessness. There are good reasons to be afraid, to be angry, to feel hopeless. Look at the facts. Heck, just look at the lies.

During a deadly, highly contagious pandemic we had autocrats in several large countries telling their nations that the whole thing was a hoax created by our enemies, only weak people believed it, only the pathetic died from it. It would be over soon. No need to worry. A few million died worldwide, continue to die, whose fault is that? Don’t blame the Strongmen!

Our own exceptional American Strongman, the orange one, simply told the nation it was not his fucking problem, that’s what States’ Rights are for, let the states fight it out, that’s what the Constitution was written for, the Civil War fought over.

A few months later, before and after another party-line acquittal in a “partisan” impeachment for doing nothing but speaking his angry mind, in a masterful show of his epic, childish will, he refused to accept the results of the election. He attacked the counting of the votes cast by the American people, denounced it as fraudulent, tried to convince state officials to change the certified vote tallies.

His case is pretty much air-tight, in his mind: a president who, according to the lying polls, had supposedly never cracked 50% in popularity during his time in office got more votes in 2020 than he did in his landslide of 2016. His vote tally, 74,000,000, almost 47% of the vote, set a record for votes cast for an incumbent, therefore– obviously– he won. He continues to insist he won, in a landslide.

His opponent tallied 81,000,000 votes, and there is no real question about those numbers, so Trump and his myrmidons kept reminding people that this corrupt, lying, sleepy, nefarious puppet of the Chinese Communist Party had stolen the election by nefarious means, exactly as he predicted his opponent would do when he himself was attempting to rig the election (in part by conspiring to limit mail-in voting, smug Louis DeJoy ruthlessly removing urban mailboxes and dismantling high-speed mail sorting machines in cities, backed by hundreds of lawsuits and aided in this anti-theoretical mail fraud campaign by no less than Bill Barr)!

70% of the former president’s steady 39% believe the election was stolen from their man, in fact, more than that — 70% of all Republicans. $50,000,000 was spent on an advertising campaign to convince the credulous that the election had been stolen from Trump, no matter what Republican state officials, and every court Republicans brought lawsuits in, kept saying. Finally, another $3,500,000 was spent to organize the rally the Capitol rioters attended to get fired up right before they marched down to breach the Capitol, like normal tourists, and Stop the Steal on the day the vote for the thieving Biden was being certified and made official.

Outside of the millions Trump milked MAGA nation for, all the dark money that funded this incendiary lie came from secret sources, like the money that funds “climate change skepticism” during a time when we are witnessing new instances of rapidly unfolding climate catastrophe weekly. Among these dark money funders, and possibly the smartest of them, is Charles Koch, an evil zombie who refuses to die. Koch (the surviving Koch Brother — Charles and David beat their other two brothers to a pulp in years of litigation) is the mastermind engineer of the radical right-wing long game.

Koch enjoys plenty of company and generous tax-deductible support among his well-born, fellow-traveler classmates. Their billions make sure the credulity of the masses of “low information” Americans serves the cause of liberty from government coercion. The autistic genius billionaire Robert Mercer, who supported Lyin’ Ted to the end, threw his money, expertise and support behind Trump, when the time came, and Mercer’s support– plus the campaign-saving introductions to Steve Bannon and Kellyanne “Alternative Fact” Conway — was critical to the Mercer family’s new candidate’s success. Their endgame is all the same. Pay no tax, preserve absolute liberty from “coercion”, have a strong, violent police force, and fuck the poor.

Men like these die only after inflicting tremendous suffering on as many of the rest of us as possible. It seems to me that the suffering they inflict means as much to them as the profit they reap from inflicting this harm. We had one of the worst of them, for four years, attacking almost everybody in the world, daily, on his hyperactive Twitter feed. It was quite clear from his angry, vindictive behavior, that no victory was complete for him without somebody he hated being publicly humiliated.

His America longs for the good old days, when a rich guy like him could hire goons to break legs, have a mob string up any charismatic opponent, call in a favor from the military, if things got really bad between him and the workers he was trying to screw out of their pay.

Those great lost days when America was great, before the “political correctness” that has made us a “laughingstock” are what MAGA is all about. A time (before women could vote, apparently) when bitches didn’t need $130,000 bribes to keep their big mouths shut about a great man’s innocent “side-action,” when angry Blacks (ungrateful for not being enslaved AND being allowed to vote) didn’t try to sell this horse-shit about their lives mattering, when politically correct losers didn’t suddenly become “woke” and believe that crap about “all men being created equal”.

Obviously that’s not true, they say, people were never created equal, the men who wrote that owned other human beings, creatures they regarded as inferior. There are such things as genetics, eugenics, blood, soil, glory, after all. Only a weak nation allows itself to be taken over by soft-hearted eggheads who think they know everything, feel superior because they arrogantly feel the “truth” is on their side.

This MAGA type dies, like anyone else, but the worst of them are prepared to do things, like participate in a violent mob to stop an election being certified because their enraged leader lied to them, that more thoughtful people wouldn’t do. They die, no question, as we all do. The only question is how many of us will breathe our last before they’re done fouling the air with misdirected anger, miscalculated vengeance and unquenchable desire for the illusion of total domination?