Saturday, July 11, 2020

trumpian Abuse Of Power, Expected And Still Shameful

This was, to some extent, expected.

Through all the buildup, through all the arrests...

Through all the trial hijinks...

Through all the facts, and the presence of justice with GUILTY verdicts for Roger Stone's misdeeds...

trump is still trying to wipe away all evidence of his sins with his abuse of pardon powers, by commuting Stone's sentence late Friday night. Via Maanvi Singh at the Guardian:

The commutation does not erase Stone’s felony convictions the way a pardon would, but it allows Stone to avoid setting foot in prison for his crimes.
Echoing the language that Trump has used in tweets and speeches, the official White House statement attacked the “witch-hunts” led by the special counsel, Robert Mueller, who was investigating Russian interference in the 2016 elections...
While not unexpected, Trump’s move to spare Stone from prison will only increase alarm among critics concerned that the Trump administration has interfered with the justice system in order to shield the president and his friends...

A lot of this has to do with Stone, being one of trump's longest-standing partners and supporters, dropping enough hints to trump that he didn't want to spend one day in a jail cell. A lot of this has to do with trump sending more signals to others - Mike Flynn, still awaiting judgment despite all of Bill Barr's meddling; and Ghislaine Maxwell, a person who can link trump to suspiciously-dead Jeff Epstein involving sex trafficking of young women - than he will commute and pardon them as long as they play ball and keep their mouths shut.

trump and Barr and their Far Right allies can yell and scream "witch hunts" all they want, the thing is when it came time to present trump's cronies and buddies in a courtroom to face accusations, almost all of them were found guilty of at least one criminal offense. We are talking about a group of power elites who used and abused the legal system to use and abuse the worlds of finance and business, wrecking human lives in the process and not giving a damn because someone was always covering their asses. Quaint little quid pro quos to let them keep their hold on power going.

It would be pretty to think that the Democratic House can reopen impeachment hearings, this time involving Barr with his intentional sabotaging of the legal process, to confront trump on his cover-ups and his sins. They still should do something about the findings of the Mueller Report, if they've gotten the unredacted parts of it there is still a chance that could go public.

But it will go nowhere because a Republican Senate will NEVER hold trump accountable. The likes of Mitch McConnell profit from having that crook in the White House. The Republican Party cannot admit to their own crooked passions as they hypocritically and falsely accuse the Democrats of being the "real villains" in all of this.

This is why it matters more than ever to get the damn vote out, America. This is why it matters to vote FOR the Democrats to stop the Republicans from their continued criminal misdeeds. Even in the face of obvious electoral suppression and interference by trump and every other Republican official, voter turnout is the one thing they can't control, they can't cheat if it's too big for them to lie about.

Everything's at stake now, America. trumpian abuse of power HAS to end, and you're the only ones who can stop him.

1 comment:

dinthebeast said...

Best case scenario we win the trifecta... and still all kinds of hinky shit goes down in the lame duck.
Still, with a new DOJ, perhaps run by Kamala, some of Fergus' felons could be made to answer for their crimes before the statute of limitations runs out.
If he wins, it all goes down the memory hole and some important parts of the republic are lost forever.

-Doug in Sugar Pine