Five Years Later: It Was STILL An Insurrection

I hate that January 6th is now known for the trump-led rioting at the nation's capitol, and won't be forgotten any time soon.

The damage done - engraving into a section of the American conspiracy mindset that "trump's victory was stolen" - still hasn't gone away, even after trump issued a blanket pardon his first day back in the White House, and even as the arc of time is proving trump's lie for what it is (via Alan Feuer and Dan Barrya through gift link to the New York Times): 

The pardon proclamation saved them, opening prison doors and ending all of the criminal prosecutions related to the Capitol attack. Even more, it gave a presidential stamp of approval to their inverted vision of Jan. 6, 2021: that those who assaulted the police and vandalized the historic building that day were victims, and those who spent the next four years using the criminal justice system to hold them accountable were villains.

But nearly a year after Mr. Trump’s sweeping proclamation asserted that he had cleared the way for “a process of national reconciliation,” many recipients of his clemency remain consumed by conspiracy theories, angry at the Trump administration for not validating their insistence that the Capitol attack was a deep-state setup and haunted by problems from both before and after the riot...

A lot of the rioters were "promised" some level of validation for their fear and hatred of the dirty libruls "ruining" their lives. And it didn't help a number of them were already troubled, criminally-minded bastards in the first place:

In the five years since the Capitol was stormed, no new facts have emerged to undermine the basic findings of congressional and Justice Department investigators that many of the rioters acted in the misguided belief, pushed relentlessly by Mr. Trump, that he had been robbed of victory in 2020 — and that in attacking the Capitol they not only injured about 140 police officers but also struck at a cornerstone of American democracy: the peaceful transfer of presidential power.

Even so, Mr. Trump has long maintained that the rioters endured horrible, even illegal, mistreatment during their prosecutions.

And yet if that is true, some pardoned rioters are now asking, then why haven’t their persecutors been thrown in jail? And if the rioters are martyrs to a righteous cause, as the president and his allies have often said, then why haven’t they been made whole through financial reparations?...

What J6ers rarely seem to acknowledge is the possibility that Mr. Trump’s government has failed to reveal the hidden truth about Jan. 6 because there is no hidden truth, no deep-state conspiracy, and therefore no legal reason to bring further charges related to the riot...

By feeding a steady diet of unfounded conspiracy theories not only to the J6ers but also to others in their base, Mr. Trump and his allies have spawned what some experts have likened to a zombie army of followers. And now, by failing to follow these theories to their logical conclusions, they are seeing that army begin to turn on them.

“When you’re told day after day that you’re a victim — when you’re told that for four years straight — it sinks in,” said Jon Lewis, a research fellow with the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. “They’ve become conspiratorial-minded people looking for the next thing to mobilize for...”

For many Jan. 6 defendants, clemency was not enough. From the moment Mr. Trump issued his proclamation, there came demands for more: deep-state actors held accountable, hidden truths revealed and reparations — some form of monetary apology — paid.

Nearly two months after Mr. Trump’s decree, lawyers representing Jan. 6 offenders were making plans to sue the Justice Department. They intended to argue that the cases stemming from the Capitol attack amounted to malicious prosecution and that many rioters had been grievously harmed by their own government.

Two lawyers were behind the effort: Mark McCloskey, known for brandishing a semiautomatic rifle in 2020 as Black Lives Matter protesters paraded past his home in St. Louis, and Peter Ticktin, a friend of Mr. Trump since their teenage years at the New York Military Academy.

The men had reason for hope. Asked in the spring about possible compensation for the rioters in an interview on the right-wing news channel Newsmax, Mr. Trump gave a typically opaque answer...

But there is a yawning chasm between talk and action — especially in Washington. And recognizing the hurdles to winning lawsuits against the government, Mr. McCloskey began pitching top Justice Department officials on a more audacious plan, establishing a panel to award damages to the rioters, similar to the special master who distributed money to victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks...

But as the first year of Mr. Trump’s second term drew to a close, Mr. McCloskey’s proposal was in limbo. It was not lost on many pardoned rioters that Mr. Trump himself had demanded that the Justice Department pay him up to $230 million in similar claims for the criminal inquiries it conducted into him...

The conspiracies all work only if trump is the one getting paid, understand? Anyone else thinking they're going to earn a windfall from a settlement payout isn't going to see a wooden nickel (because pennies are no longer minted).

It's not helping the case of the rioters that a number of their own who were pardoned are turning back up in prison on unrelated charges ranging from sexual child abuse to homicide. You all were troubled souls joining up for trump's rampage against law and order, and you all are going to get in trouble again because most of you still see yourselves above the law like your golden idol.

This is not a good anniversary for anyone. But at least these rioters are in a hell of their own making.

Never Forget: trump's Treason

On January 6th, 2021, donald trump betrayed his oath of office and incited a mass riot to break into Congress and disrupt the vote count certification so he could steal the presidential election results.

In a sane and just universe, trump would never have been allowed anywhere NEAR the White House again. he should have been put on trial within weeks of the assault on our political institutions and the sanctity of the Constitution. Hundreds of the MAGA rioters - around 1,600 of them - had gone through exactly that, either pleading out or getting convicted with serious jail time. trump should be rotting in prison alongside them.

And yet, no. Biden's Justice Department led by Merrick Garland dragged their feet, resisting the necessity of holding trump accountable because of whatever "good faith" political decorum - the refusal to hold presidents accountable for ANY acts at all - still informed their world-view. It took a hotly contested congressional inquiry to force Garland's hand and appoint a special prosecutor to pursue the matter. And while Jack Smith did bring charges eventually, the electoral calendar swung back around to where trump ran for the presidency again - in spite of his insurrectionist misdeeds - and won the damn thing even with a majority of Americans knowing he was a crook, rendering any further federal criminal charges moot (because the courts determined Presidents are immune from criminal charges while sitting in office).

And now, trump is trying to rewrite history. he lies about the level of violence that happened that January 6th, declaring it was all "a day of love". he calls each of the imprisoned rioters "patriots" and "heroes" and will likely pardon every one of them as soon as he's in the Oval Office (arguably after he issues executive orders confirming mass deportations, declaring war on Mexico, and insane tariffs on Canada).

There were 140 police officers assaulted that day. Property damage in the millions. Seven people dead, including one Capitol Police officer who was driven to suicide from the trauma of that day. There was no love that January 6th. Just violence, rage, fear, and the closest collapse of our nation's existence since the Civil War.

trump reveled in that violence, enjoyed spinning the narrative to twist it into his great day of dominance over the American spirit, and will do everything in his power to relive that moment through further acts of violence and illegality upon our nation and the world.

To the 77 million Americans who voted for this insurrectionist: what the actual hell. You saw this. January 6th was on the front page of every paper, on the news broadcasts of every channel. And you STILL VOTED for the son of a bitch.

There will come a future when we are free of this trumpian madness, and there will be a reckoning for you and this nation for the sins trump will inflict upon us.

Until that day, fuck you. You're going to earn the nightmare we're all about to endure. 

"Just Let ME and ME ALONE Get Away With Everything," Begged trump

Today was a huge day in the American constitutional system when the appellate court considered donald "it's all about ME" trump begging the court to let him get away with EVERYTHING under his claim of "absolute immunity" while as President Loser of the Popular Vote (Twice) (via Carrie Johnson at NPR): 

In arguments that extended for more than an hour, three judges for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit pressed Trump's attorney on his sweeping claims of immunity from federal prosecution...

Trump has pleaded not guilty to four felony counts that accuse him of leading a conspiracy to cling to power and disenfranchise millions of voters in 2020. Prosecutors say that this culminated in violence at the U.S. Capitol three years ago that injured 140 law enforcement officers and shook the foundations of American democracy...

Prosecutors working for Smith say in court papers that if the U.S. Court of Appeals accepts Trump's sweeping claims, it would "undermine democracy." The special counsel team says such reasoning would give presidents license to commit crimes while in the White House, such as accepting bribes for directing government contracts or selling nuclear secrets to a foreign adversary.

James Pearce, representing the special counsel, argued Tuesday that "the president has a unique constitutional role, but he is not above the law." He added that a former president enjoys no immunity from criminal prosecution. To conclude otherwise, he said, would give rise to a "frightening" future.

No former president has ever been charged with a crime. Trump is the first. So an eventual ruling will be a landmark no matter which way the court rules. If the court sides with Trump, the federal case in Washington would be all but over...

Several conclusions from today's brief hearing as noted by Perry Stein at the Washington Post (paywalled):

...The judges seemed skeptical that presidential immunity extends as far as Trump’s lawyers claim it does.

Trump attorney D. John Sauer argued that presidential immunity means that a president cannot be prosecuted for any actions that fall under his presidential duties — unless the House first votes to impeach him and the Senate then convicts him.

Judge Florence Y. Pan, an appointee of President Biden, asked Sauer if a president could be criminally prosecuted if he ordered SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival. Such a scenario — ordering the military to do something — would fall under presidential duties. But having a rival murdered would also be a clear violation of the law.

Sauer said the Justice Department could only charge the president for giving such an order if the Senate votes to convict him first. Pan also asked him whether a president could sell pardons or nuclear secrets without being prosecuted. Sauer responded similarly.

Pan seemed skeptical and said that conceding that a president can be prosecuted for official acts in any instance — say, after the congressional impeachment and conviction process — undermines the president’s presidential immunity argument.

“Given that you’re conceding that presidents can be criminally prosecuted, doesn’t that narrow the issues before us to, ‘Can a president be prosecuted without first being impeached and convicted?’” Pan said. She added, “Once you concede that presidents can be prosecuted under some circumstances, your other arguments fall away.”

The judges were clearly concerned that accepting Trump’s argument would open a Pandora’s box of horrible acts by future presidents that would go unchecked and unpunished.

Trump’s lawyer tried to convince the panel that the real danger was letting this case go forward and opening a door to future presidents operating in fear of being prosecuted when they left office.

Gee, making future Presidents realize they can be held accountable if they break shit? MORE of that, please.

2. The judges’ ruling could rely on their reading of the impeachment clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Lawyers for both sides and the judges spent a chunk of oral arguments debating the Constitution’s impeachment clause. Under Trump attorneys’ reading of the clause, a president can only be criminally prosecuted once Congress has voted to both impeach and convict him.

Congress had voted to impeach Trump for his actions around the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The Senate then voted to acquit him. At the time, some Republicans said they were voting against conviction because they said the Justice Department could investigate and decide whether to charge Trump...

This becomes part of the circular Catch-22 that the Far Right argued that trump shouldn't be impeached if his conduct was criminal, but then that he shouldn't be charged with crimes because he should have been impeached.

But we've seen impeachment and how it doesn't work: It is too partisan a mechanism. Relying on impeachment for accountability would never happen if the corrupt President's party controlled Congress and refused to be bipartisan enough to vote for removal. Impeachment is a political tool, not a prosecutorial one. That argument also ignores how previous former Presidents facing criminal charges for acts done in the White House - Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton - still had that happen even though impeachment never removed them from office (Nixon resigned first and then took a pardon, and Clinton survived the Senate vote and pled out his perjury counts). Saying that impeachment triggers double jeopardy doesn't pass the established case law.

3. The judges questioned whether Trump’s actions around the Jan 6. attack on the U.S. Capitol qualified as his official presidential duties — and whether the appeals court should even decide this.

Sauer said Trump’s actions around Jan. 6 — including meeting with the Justice Department and members of Congress about his belief that the election was stolen — were part of his presidential duties.

He also said Trump’s Twitter social media posts, some of which encouraged people to go to the Capitol on Jan. 6, also constituted an official presidential communication channel.

“All of those tweets were obviously immune,” Sauer said.

In a notable exchange, Judge Karen Henderson, an appointee of President George H.W. Bush, seemed skeptical of that claim, saying: “I think it’s paradoxical to say that his constitutional duty to take care [that] the laws be faithfully executed allows him to violate federal laws.”

But she also raised the idea of sending the case back to the U.S. District Court to untangle whether Trump’s alleged acts were part of his official duties or discretionary and carried out in his capacity as a private citizen...

Judge Henderson may express that concern but it's uncertain if the other two on the panel will agree with her. This could prove a potential delay in the March trial related to this matter, but by the looks of it the whole panel isn't buying that inciting a mob to riot against Congress is part of the Executive's duties.

4. Trump attended the hearing in person, suggesting he believes his criminal prosecutions could boost his presidential bid.

One of the paradoxical problems with putting trump on criminal trial for his actions is that trump can use this to paint himself the victim of "the real crooks, the Democrats" even as he faces every likelihood of failing these appeals and finding himself in a federal court three months from now. trump is also using these trials as a means of keeping his MAGA supporters stoked and angry and ready to riot - again - on his orders should a Guilty verdict be reached before the November general election.

But trump is also powered by his narcissism. He showed up in court today as though his mere presence could intimidate the appellate judges into granting him the immunity he craves.

trump isn't interested in the legal ramifications of what he's arguing for - that a sitting President can never be held accountable for any actions committed during his tenure - he is only interested in making sure that immunity from the law applies to himself. That trump's arguments would clearly grant Joe Biden - the current sitting President - to apply that immunity by ordering a SEAL Team to assassinate trump doesn't seem to register in that Id of his. Probably because he's convinced Biden is too much of a political wimp - that Biden as a career politician respects the limitations of the office, and won't break actual laws no matter how much the Far Right lie to themselves about Biden being corrupt - to take the dark route to power trump aspires to take.

We have to remember: For decades trump has been thumbing his nose at the legal system as a businessman committing corrupt act after corrupt act, bankrupting his casinos, breaking contracts with workers, bullying victims to settle out of court, making a mockery of regulations because our prosecutors and oversight agencies never take white-collar fraud serious enough. trump is used to the idea of being immune from accountability, and he's struggling to come to terms with all the recent courtroom setbacks that are about to cripple his empire.

trump is hoping - begging even, although he'll never admit it - that the appeals court grants him that immunity, because it clears the electoral battlefield of the federal charges he's facing in DC and South Florida and makes it easier to defy the state-level trials awaiting him in New York City and Fulton County. Without that haunting him, trump can then attack Biden with impunity while his allies in the US House and Red states conspire to throw the Electoral College to trump in spite of the likely popular vote going Biden's way.

And if trump achieves all he desires, if trump regains control of the Presidency? With that belief in HIS absolute immunity, trump will run amok as a dictator the likes of which our nation's never seen (via Greg Sargent now at New Republic after the WaPo downsized him):

But there’s another way to understand Trump’s move: It’s about what comes next. If he wins on this front, he’d be largely unshackled in a second presidential term, free to pursue all manner of corrupt designs with little fear of legal consequences after leaving office again.

That Trump might attempt such moves is not idle speculation. He’s telling us so himself. He is openly threatening a range of second-term actions—such as prosecuting political enemies with zero basis in evidence—that would almost certainly strain the boundaries of the law in ugly new ways.

Now imagine him pursuing this project with a get-out-of-prosecution-free card in his pocket. “It really would permit him to be completely unconstrained if he were reelected,” Neil Eggleston, who served as White House counsel under President Barack Obama, told me...

It’s been said on social media that if Trump wins here, his second-term powers would be quasi-absolute—that he could order, say, the assassination of political foes with impunity. That overstates the matter. As former White House lawyers told me, if Trump prevails, the courts will likely affirm that actions within the “outer realm” of official duties are immune to prosecution, not that any actions (such as assassinations) are.

But a favorable decision could still unshackle Trump in a big way. Trevor Morrison, associate White House counsel under Obama, says the key is whether the courts rule that Trump has immunity on the theory that his alleged criminal conduct does fall in the outer perimeter of presidential duties—and how the courts define that perimeter. If they accept Trump’s broad version of immunity or something like it, he might argue that future potentially criminal acts also fall within that perimeter...

Kristy Parker, counsel at Protect Democracy who served as a lawyer in multiple administrations, notes that Trump has signaled clear intent to do exactly this sort of thing. He has attacked Willis’s prosecution of him as corrupt, hinted at full-scale persecution of “vermin” Americans who oppose him, and openly threatened to prosecute President Biden as retribution. “If I don’t get immunity, then Crooked Joe Biden doesn’t get immunity,” Trump recently raged.

In saying this, Trump essentially declared that if he is denied immunity, he will prosecute Biden on a fake finding of corruption, just as he invented corruption as a pretext for his alleged election crimes. What happens if those efforts to name and target fabricated corruption are in some sense deemed official acts?

“Trump has threatened to use the presidency to punish enemies, reward friends, and protect himself,” Parker told me. “If the courts recognize immunity for the broad array of official acts of the presidency, that will incentivize Trump to abuse those powers further...”

Gods help us if this happens.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AND DEMOCRACY AND THE RULE OF LAW, JUDGES, DO NOT GRANT trump ABSOLUTE IMMUNITY.

And for the LOVE OF GOD, AMERICA, DO NOT VOTE FOR trump.

Dare Call It Insurrection, What trump Ordered This Day

Much like the days of national tragedy - April 14th, December 7th, November 22nd, September 11th - January 6th is now entering the American memory as a major anniversary.

The day donald trump talked a mob into raiding the United States Capitol to disrupt the formal vote on the Electoral College results that named Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 Presidential Election.

We're now at the point where our elected leaders - President Biden himself - are making speeches about the impact and seriousness of this anniversary. As quoted from Biden's Valley Forge Speech:

Today, we gather in a new year, some 246 years later, just one day before January 6th, a day forever shared in our memory because it was on that day that we nearly lost America — lost it all. 

Today, we’re here to answer the most important of questions.  Is democracy still America’s sacred cause?  I mean it.

This is not rhetorical, academic, or hypothetical.  Whether democracy is still America’s sacred cause is the most urgent question of our time, and it’s what the 2024 election is all about...

Three years ago tomorrow, we saw with our own eyes the violent mob storm the United States Capitol.  It was almost in disbelief as you first turned on the television. 

For the first time on our history, insurrectionists had come to stop the peaceful transfer — transfer of power in America — first time — smashing windows, shattering doors, attacking the police. 

Outside, gallows were erected as the MAGA crowd chanted, “Hang Mike Pence.” 

Inside, they hunted for Speaker Pelosi [of] the House, was chanting, as they marched through and smashed windows, “Where’s Nancy?”

Over 140 police officers were injured.  Jill and I attended the funeral of police officers who died as a result of the events of that day. 

And because Donald — because of Donald Trump’s lies, they died because these lies brought a mob to Washington. 

He promised it would be “wild,” and it was.  He told the crowd to “fight like hell,” and all hell was unleashed...

There's hundreds of video clips out there highlighting the rioters attacking, getting into places that should have remained secure, waving the historic flags of insurrection and cheering each other on as trump watched his followers do his dirty work. In spite of all the attempts by the Far Right and the Republican leadership to downplay the violence of that day - claiming it was peaceful, focusing only on the parts where the mob stood around not knowing what to do next - people died. People were scarred.

All because donald trump is terrified of being seen as a loser. All because trump dare not lose the legal protections the presidency gave him.

Everything trump did on January 6th - and all the things he did leading up to that riot - were violations of the Oath of Office Presidents are sworn to: "I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

trump was NOT faithful to the Constitution or the office of the Presidency. trump did NOT act to the best of his ability to Preserve or Protect or Defend the Constitution. he actively attacked the Constitution, tried to stop the Electoral Count, got his followers to raid the legislative branch to undo that count, and then continued to lie about the election results - to deny that he lost - to keep his mob ready to fight in the next Presidential election cycle (which is now).

It is that violation of the oath of office that is a serious matter today, this anniversary of trump's betrayal. It is because of that betrayal of the oath that trump is on the brink of being denied from running for office again. The Colorado State Supreme Court ruling - and the Maine's Secretary of State's findings - found that trump engaged in insurrection when he incited his mob:

Trump’s attorneys also had urged the Colorado high court to reverse Wallace’s ruling that Trump incited the Jan. 6 attack. His lawyers argued the then-president had simply been using his free speech rights and hadn’t called for violence. Trump attorney Scott Gessler also argued the attack was more of a “riot” than an insurrection.

That met skepticism from several of the justices.

“Why isn’t it enough that a violent mob breached the Capitol when Congress was performing a core constitutional function?” Justice William W. Hood III said during the Dec. 6 arguments. “In some ways, that seems like a poster child for insurrection.”

In the ruling issued Tuesday, the court’s majority dismissed the arguments that Trump wasn’t responsible for his supporters’ violent attack, which was intended to halt Congress’ certification of the presidential vote: “President Trump then gave a speech in which he literally exhorted his supporters to fight at the Capitol,” they wrote...

Even the judges who are giving trump his due process are finding he incited violent insurrection, which means he violated Section 3 of the 14th Amendment:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

This all matters on today's anniversary because the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the Colorado ruling by February 8th, leaving it to them - the highest arbiters of constitutional law - to determine what trump truly did reaches the level of insurrection. SCOTUS would have to accept or overrule the lower court's findings that trump incited insurrection, they would have to figure out what the 14th Amendment means by "taken an oath of office" and if Presidents are officers of the Untied States (you would think by common logic that both apply here).

If the Supreme Court fails here - if they go by partisan design and grant trump the right to run for office in spite of the public acts he's done - we are guaranteed future insurrections every four years on January 6th as rioters disrupt another Electoral count. It won't stop with trump, it will continue on with all the mini-trumps following in his wake.

If the Court finds that trump did engage in these riots - which doesn't require the Due Process of a criminal court trial (which trump is still facing this March) - and applies the 14th Amendment to deny his spot on the ballot, we may get MAGA riots in the streets soon after: But the anniversary of January 6th will fade into a calm reminder that violence had no place in the American democratic republic. It didn't work in 1861 and it shouldn't work in 2021.

Let justice prevail, SCOTUS. trump violated his Oath of Office that January 6th. Hold him accountable to it.

Disqualifying trump

As we bear witness to the growing indictments surrounding donald trump, as we enter into a historic moment where every alleged crime in trump's name and on trump's orders all build into the Trial of the (21st) Century, there are serious questions about how far the consequences should apply to trump should he be found guilty on even one felony out of the 91 (so far) he's facing.

The implications of a guilty verdict are staggering: Not only because we've never had in American history any former President convicted like that in a court of law, but also because trump is frantically campaigning for another term as President to use that office to avoid any conviction or jail time.

It's been discussed elsewhere, and mentioned a few times at this blog, that trump could be blocked from his Presidential campaign, to avoid the risk of a convicted candidate somehow winning the Electoral College votes. There's a provision in the 14th Amendment Section 3:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof...

Considering the charges trump faces regarding his - and his allies' - efforts before and during the January 6th Insurrection, there is hope that a conviction on any of those charges will trigger that clause and bar trump from any office no matter how much he screams "unfair".

There are now arguments - from respected legal and constitutional scholars - that we don't even need a conviction to bar trump from the Presidency (and his last remaining refuge from justice). Just on the evidence alone trump's conduct merits the disqualification, according to J. Michael Luttig - former federal judge from the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals - and Laurence H. Tribe - Emeritus professor of constitutional law at Harvard - over at The Atlantic (paywalled):

The historically unprecedented federal and state indictments of former President Donald Trump have prompted many to ask whether his conviction pursuant to any or all of these indictments would be either necessary or sufficient to deny him the office of the presidency in 2024.

Having thought long and deeply about the text, history, and purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment’s disqualification clause for much of our professional careers, both of us concluded some years ago that, in fact, a conviction would be beside the point. The disqualification clause operates independently of any such criminal proceedings and, indeed, also independently of impeachment proceedings and of congressional legislation. The clause was designed to operate directly and immediately upon those who betray their oaths to the Constitution, whether by taking up arms to overturn our government or by waging war on our government by attempting to overturn a presidential election through a bloodless coup.

The former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and the resulting attack on the U.S. Capitol, place him squarely within the ambit of the disqualification clause, and he is therefore ineligible to serve as president ever again. The most pressing constitutional question facing our country at this moment, then, is whether we will abide by this clear command of the Fourteenth Amendment’s disqualification clause...

And by "we," Luttig and Tribe are asking the federal officers currently upholding the Constitution - the judges, the prosecutors, the elected officials - as well as the public at large to make the call.

Someone, somewhere in the chain of command between the Justice Department or the Judiciary branch of government is going to have to step up and enforce that clause.

Someone among the ranks of Republican candidates for 2024, any of trump's challengers for those primaries, needs to consider filing a legal ruling to have the GOP remove trump's name from consideration due to that amendment. Someone among the ranks of the Republican party leadership itself - elected officials in Congress, party administrators, financial backers, anybody - has to make the hard decision here.

It can't be a Democrat making this move: Too many people - even fellow Democrats - would consider it too much a partisan ploy.

Thing is, whoever steps up to do this is also stepping up to take the hit when trump's rabid voting base goes on the warpath. We are talking about cultish MAGA followers who believe every trumpian lie, buy every trumpian grift, and revel in every trumpian call to violence. There's already been a trump supporter in Texas put in jail this week for issuing death threats against the judge overseeing trump's January 6th indictments. 

trump himself is still - even after multiple warnings from different judges about his public statements threatening juries and prosecutors as well as themselves - posting social media rants designed to keep his MAGA believers riled up and ready to rise up.

Anybody actively stopping trump from regaining the Oval Office - even using a lawful method - will see a bloodthirsty rampage against them.

trump may be courting potential contempt charges and detainment if he keeps doing this, but in all respect this is one of the few means left at his disposal to avoid all accountability. I wrote before that trump's political "career" - such as it is - is the last con game he's got left. There is nothing else past this that will refill his coffers to pay off his (growing) debts. trump needs to re-enter the White House and receive that OLC protection from criminal liability to save his own ass.

And we all know what will happen if trump does regain the Presidency. he dare not leave that office again. he and his Far Right allies will shred whatever's left of the Constitution under whichever excuse he can wield to ensure he stays in there - grifting and stealing millions more, and inflicting pain upon the people he hates from immigrants to political rivals - until he dies.

Should we dare risk the possibility that trump somehow wins - by hook or by crook, but knowing trump's previous actions in 2016 and 2020 it will definitely be by crook - in November 2024?

Or should we risk the trigger of open civil war with the Far Right population - already eager to fulfill their Turner Diaries fantasies - by stopping trump from campaigning for an office he's already debased and threatens to abuse again? We run the risk of that violence if trump fairly loses the next election, on a far greater scale than the violence they unleashed on January 6th.

There is even the risk that trump and his lawyers can force delays on all of the criminal trials he's facing to where he won't see a conviction before Election Day, leaving open the possibility of his gaslighting enough voters into supporting him even as his legal troubles are so serious he does not deserve that support.

Whoever is in a legal position to do so must refer to the 14th Amendment and prevent trump from a Presidency he does not deserve, and hold him accountable for the oath of office he clearly violated. This is too serious a matter to "leave to the voters," as we've seen time and again the power of the vote twisted or undone to allow the likes of trump to avoid any semblance of justice and accountability.

That may not happen, alas. The political will to make such a move is not hearty enough. It may take a jury convicting trump - either on the documents case in Mar-A-Lago, either on the Insurrection case in DC, in any pending federal indictments trump has yet to face - for one of the judges or prosecutors to push for the 14th Amendment to apply.

We best pray for speedy trials. I've been asking for the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas of this year, but it's looking like January through May in 2024 for now.

Let justice be done. trump deserves disqualification from office. Our nation needs to hurry on ensuring that.

Third trump Indictment the Charm, And Still More To Come

Ask, and it shall be given you. Seek, and ye shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.
-- Matthew 7:7 

Well, I demanded indictments and BY GOD Special Counsel Jack Smith delivered with regards to trump's involvement in the January 6th Insurrection. Via Dareh Gregorian and Ryan J. Reilly at NBC News:

Former President Donald Trump was indicted Tuesday on charges he conspired to defraud the country he used to lead and attempted to prevent the peaceful transfer of presidential power to Joe Biden. 

“The purpose of the conspiracy was to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election by using knowingly false claims of election fraud to obstruct the government function by which those results are collected, counted and certified,” the indictment from special counsel Jack Smith’s office says. 

The indictment marks a historic moment for a nation less than 250 years old — the first time a former president has faced criminal charges for trying to overturn the bedrock of democracy, a free and fair election. While Trump's failure to reverse his defeat was a credit to the guardrails of that democracy, the ability to prosecute him may renew the stress test on the constitutional design.

The allegation that Trump used "dishonesty, fraud, and deceit" to subvert the 2020 election with "pervasive and destabilizing lies about election fraud" comes after a sprawling investigation that included testimony from dozens of White House aides and advisors ranging in seniority up to former Vice President Mike Pence.

The indictment accuses Trump of taking part in three criminal conspiracies: "to defraud the United States by using dishonesty, fraud and deceit" to obstruct the electoral vote process; to "impede the January 6 congressional proceeding at which the collected results of the presidential election are counted and certified;" and "against the right to vote and to have that vote counted."

There is a link to the indictments provided here.

I would like to refer to Emptywheel for her legal expertise, but she's only posted a quick review and promises to have more later (and gives us clues as to who the yet-indicted co-conspirators are):

It’s late here, so this may be my only analysis before you all wake up.

But I wanted to lay out the structure of the Trump indictment.

The indictment charges him, alone, with four crimes:

18 USC 371 (conspiracy to defraud the US)

18 USC  1512(k) (conspiracy to obstruct the vote certification)

18 USC 1512(c)(2) (obstructing the vote certification)

18 USC 241 (conspiracy to violate civil rights)

They all are entirely overlapping. That is, Trump’s conduct, and those of 6 alleged co-conspirators, is cited in all those charges.

These are four charges for the same crime. So if the DC Circuit or SCOTUS overturns how DOJ has applied 1512, there are two back stops.

The other most important part of this indictment is who is named as a co-conspirator (and who might well be charged, as far as we know, today, separately by sealed indictment):

• Co-Conspirator 1, an attorney who was willing to spread knowingly false claims and pursue strategies that the Defendant’s 2020 re-election campaign attorneys would not. (Rudy Giuliani)
• Co-Conspirator 2, an attorney who devise and attempted to implement a strategy to leverage the Vice President’s ceremonial role overseeing the certification proceeding to obstruct the certification of the presidential election. (John Eastman)
• Co-Conspirator 3, an attorney whose unfounded claims of election fraud the Defendant privately acknowledged to others sounded “crazy.” Nevertheless, the Defendant embraced and publicly amplified Co-Conspirator 3’s disinformation. (Sidney Powell)
• Co-Conspirator 4, a Justice Department official who worked on civil matters and who, with the Defendant, attempted to use the Justice Department to open sham election crime investigations and influence state legislatures with knowingly false claims of election fraud. (Jeffrey Clark)
• Co-Conspirator 5, an attorney who assisted in devising and attempting to implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding. (WaPo says this is Kenneth Chesebro, and I think that’s sound.)
• Co-Conspirator 6, a political consultant who helped implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding. (Note: Emptywheel doesn't speculate but others are thinking it's Boris Epshteyn)

I argued since April 2022 that DOJ could — and should — charge Trump first and build in the stuff around him. I reiterated that a few weeks ago.

There’s a lot here...

One thing I would note is how Jack Smith spelled out more indictments are coming, not just for the conspirators but that trump is still on the hook for other matters the grand jury haven't voted on yet. For example, there's charges related to the Fake Electors scheme that Conspirator Number 6 oversaw that haven't been directly indicted yet (possibly waiting for Georgia's indictments on their Fake Electors to set up the charges for that state and several others).

Why these charges matter is that Smith presents as a legal matter before the courts strong evidence that donald trump has been - still is - lying about the 2020 election results, and using those lies to conspire against the Constitution and the United States and the People it represents.

Throughout the indictments, time and again Smith and his team point out where trump had been told the election results were fair, there was no proof of stolen or faked ballots, and yet trump still schemed to undo those results. Worse, trump and his co-conspirators were planning out ways to disrupt the formalities of our electoral system through means of violence: First towards trump's own Vice President Pence and towards Congress, and then violence towards any Americans who would rise up in protest against trump's coup attempt.

For all of trump's screaming that these indictments are a "WITCH HUNT", for the love of God the whole world witnessed what happened on January 6th when trump's rally turned into a riot that smashed into the halls of the Capitol. There's been hundreds of court cases that convicted - or forced plea deals - almost half of the trumpian MAGA rioters by now. There's been two-plus years of Congressional hearings and grand jury inquiries into trump's misconduct that presented enough evidence that the Justice Department can now take to trial.

We've seen real witch hunts, by the by: Far Right Republican pursuits after Bill Clinton in the 1990s that only uncovered adulterous affairs that had nothing to do with financial or political crimes; Far Right Republican allegations against Obama for everything they feared but could never prove; Far Right Republican attacks on Hillary's handling of Benghazi and her emails, which all turned into nothingburgers that could never stand up in a court of law.

We've never been in a moment like this, with a former President Loser of the Popular Vote (Twice) facing criminal charges for attacking constitutional norms and in most respects the nation itself. All because we've never had as blatant a con artist and would-be mafia boss like trump reach that level of power before.

Gods help us, our nation needs this moment to force trump into the crucible of a courtroom, to face the reality of the schemes he's plotted and the sins he's committed. Anything to stop him from his constant Big Lies that have brought us to this place. Anything to stop him before he can lie and bully his way back into the Presidency where the law will be impotent to hold him accountable (ever again, if he gets his wish of dismantling every federal system to stay in power for the rest of his aging life).

Let Justice be done. For everything that the United States represents in the long arc of human history.

The Conspiracy Proved, trumpian Rot Exposed. Keep Going, Justice Department

Didn't plan on blogging much this week, but this news dropped about the ongoing trials for the trumpian insurrectionists who rioted on January 6 2021, especially one of the big fish to get caught (via Carrie Johnson at NPR): 

Former Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio and three other members of the far-right Proud Boys group have been found guilty of seditious conspiracy by a federal jury in Washington, D.C.

Jurors also convicted Tarrio and the others of obstructing an official proceeding, conspiracy to prevent an officer from discharging their duties, obstruction of law enforcement during a civil disorder and destruction of government property with value of over $1,000 in one of the most important cases to date stemming from the siege on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021...

The convictions amount to a significant victory for the Justice Department, which has now secured them against top leaders of both the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers for their roles in the attempt to keep former President Trump in power and stop certification of the 2020 election...

The sprawling case included 500,000 chat messages, video clips, podcasts and even a police riot shield. FBI special agents, police on the front lines on January 6, and former members of the Proud Boys who pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors made up the bulk of the Justice Department witness list...

As the then-leader of one of the more militant extremist groups in open support of donald trump's reign of terror, Tarrio is a big piece of the overall puzzle that makes up trump's efforts to overturn the legitimate election results of 2020.

trump regularly associated himself, through speech and through public appearances at his non-stop rallies, to the Proud Boys and a number of videos/photos show Tarrio in close proximity to trump at several of those events. Tarrio himself emphasized his ties to trump to bolster membership and stoke his followers into acts of protests, and as proved in today's jury decisions incited them to riot on trump's behalf.

There hasn't been a lot of evidence - at least not shown at this trial or any of the other Proud Boy and Oath Keeper trials that also found Guilty verdicts to most of the insurrectionists - of any direct ties between Tarrio and trump when it came to the planning and execution of the January 6th riot.

But there's a shit-ton of evidence linking Tarrio and his Proud Boys to Roger Stone. There's a shit-ton of evidence - some of it from Stone's own documentarians - that Stone was heavily involved in the planning and arguably evidence of him managing it from his war room that day.

And Stone is practically tied to trump by the hip.

With Tarrio's case proved - that Seditious Conspiracy on January 6th did take place - there's standing here to follow through on the conspiracy angle and go after everyone linked to Tarrio that day.

Tarrio gets you Roger Stone.

Roger Stone gets you trump.

Let justice be done.

Today: Going Public on Insurrection

After about a year of relatively cloistered investigation, aside from charging a number of Republicans refusing to testify with Obstruction - Hi, Peter Navarro! - The House Investigation Into donald trump's "Proud Boys Capitol Conniption Carnage" of January 6 2021 is going to air public presentations on what they've uncovered starting tonight after Jeopardy! finishes up.

So how should the average American tuning in to this program view it all? Let's steal entire content, uh link to Ben Jacobs at Vox for more:

The legal and political impacts the public hearings will have are uncertain. Even with all the attention they are sure to get, few expect findings will massively shake up public opinion or shift the political winds for Democrats, who currently face dismal poll numbers for midterms elections. There is no scenario in which the work of the select committee leads to Donald Trump being frog-marched out of Mar-a-Lago, or even with top Republicans publicly denouncing him in the same way they did in the immediate aftermath of the attack.

Instead, the test for many on the Hill is whether the hearings can, at the very least, produce sufficient momentum to ensure passage of reforms they hope would prevent efforts like the one taken after the 2020 election from happening again...

Well, I don't care what Jacobs says about the unlikelihood that trump will get arrested at the end of all this: The real hope out here is that the congressional hearings will provide enough spark to get Attorney General Merrick Garland OFF HIS TIMID ASS AND ARREST EVERY TRUMPIAN ASSHOLE - trump INCLUDED - WHO RIOTED IN OUR NATION'S CAPITOL! LINE 'EM UP AGAINST THE WALL MOTHERF--- Ahem, back to Jacobs:

Thursday’s primetime hearing will be the first installment in a series of hearings throughout this month and perhaps into the summer. It will begin at 8 pm ET and be carried live by the major broadcast networks, most cable networks and online (but not on Fox News)...

That's because Fox Not-News pundits have been warned by their legal counsel that anything they say in televised rebuttal can be used against them in a court of law. But I digress.

The committee’s goal over the course of the summer is to lay out the effort to overturn the 2020 election in detail, not just its culmination in the attack on the Capitol but the step-by-step effort by Trump to reverse his loss, including efforts to pressure local officials and plotting with figures like lawyer John Eastman and Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark to provide some sort of legal justification for his actions.

Democrat Elaine Luria of Virginia, a member of the committee, told Vox that the hearings will provide an “opportunity for people to have a comprehensive, chronological and thorough” accounting of the events leading up to January 6...

The real test is simply what revelations come from the hearings. The past 18 months have seen an endless trickle of news out about the events leading up into the attack on the Capitol. This hasn’t just happened in court documents filed by the committee or in leaks about its proceedings. There have been best-selling books on the topic that have broken new ground.

The question is whether what emerges from the hearing, either as a new discovery or as a viral moment of some kind, can break through. And, of course, even if it does, it’s unclear what impact it will have on public opinion...

In truth, the Far Right MAGA cultists won't believe any revelations will be criminal for them, because they genuinely believe they're the good guys in all this.

But this should help Democratic voters - and the Independent voters who are still rely on coherent thought - remind themselves of what's at stake in the upcoming midterms and the importance of turning up to vote to ensure the Republican wailing about "fake votes" is too overwhelming for them to lie about.

For myself, I'm hoping there's enough evidence already to indict trump's inner circle who ran the riot war rooms, and that by the end of the month we'll have handcuffs on not just Navarro but also Bannon, Stone, Eastman, and the rest of that clown car of chaos.

Get to it, Garland! ARREST THOSE MOFOS (rage rage rage)

(why YES, I am biased just a little against goddamned rioting seditionists)

The trumpian Farce Exposed

One of the Marxes - it might be Karl, but it's probably Groucho - once quipped that history repeats, first as tragedy and then as farce.

The tragedy was Richard Nixon, a smart ambitious but spiritually broken man who rose to the height of political power but threw it all away in a self-destructive cycle of paranoia and failure.

The farce, if you've probably figured out by now, is donald trump, not as smart and without any soul at all but still ambitious and greedy in a gaslighting con artist way.

Part of the comparison comes from the fact that these are two men who faced political adversity and responded in different ways. In Nixon's case, he resigned in the face of a likely impeachment and fall from grace as a means of retaining some dignity on which he could build a reputation for statesman at least within his own party's ranks.

In trump's case, he faced political adversity by doubling down on the gaslighting lies, stirring up violent insurrection, and speeding out of town with boxes of illegally-kept official records refusing to admit he was ever the loser he truly was.

trump's farce is under examination because it came out this week after forced to reveal the official White House telephone logs on the day - January 6 2021 - that trump riled a mob into violent acts, there is a gap of seven-plus hours in those logs during the hours of the rioting.

As David Frum at the Atlantic notes (paywalled): 

We know the president spoke by phone during that gap. As the crowd came crashing toward the office of the Republican House leader Kevin McCarthy, McCarthy called the president to demand he stop the violence. Trump instead excused it. “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.” Witnesses reported seeing the president on the phone many other times during the day.

As president, Trump often avoided using official lines. He used multiple phones of his own. He borrowed phones from other people...

Trump’s phone choices were powerfully intentional. What was he intending on January 6? The answer is obvious: concealment. But concealment of what?

Trump’s actions that day were not secret. They all happened in full public view. He incited a crowd to attack Congress in order to overturn by violence his election defeat. He refused to act to protect Congress and the Constitution when the attack began, and for a long time afterward...

Trump encouraged the violence and welcomed it in real time. The whole world saw that.

But the world does not know everything about January 6—not yet, anyway—and Trump’s phone behavior may suggest the answer to the most important remaining questions:

1. Did Trump in any way authorize the attack in advance?

2. Did Trump in any way communicate or coordinate with the attackers as the attack unfolded?...

Frum doesn't speculate on it but his second point - that trump spoke at least once to his war room people coordinating the riot from the Willard Hotel - is probably the big reason why trump edited/burned/flushed those seven hours from the official records. Unable to make sure they would keep their stories straight about who called whom and when and then edit judiciously to hide those calls, trump and his handlers probably figured to cut whole pages out of the logs and taunt Congressional and Justice Department investigators with blatant acts of destroying records and committing obstruction.

This seven-hour gap in the phone logs created flashbacks for many of the reporters and historians who covered the Watergate scandal of Nixon's administration. One of the details of that scandal was how, even with the shattering revelation that Nixon recorded many conversations in his Oval Office, there were missing or erased gaps in those conversations that made people suspicious about what potential criminal misdeeds were mentioned. The infamous 18-and-a-half-minute gap was in truth a set of different gaps of various minutes, but all added together into one memetic concept of an accusatory self-own.

(Arlo Guthrie would later joke that the length of the 18-and-a-half-minute gap fit the same time as his epic "Alice's Restaurant" ballad, as though Nixon was rolling up a joint and enjoy the hell out of Guthrie's shaggy dog story)

Others are noticing the similarities, and the criminal overtones of both (via Alex Shepherd at New Republic (also paywalled)):

It’s longer—by nearly three hours—than the Grateful Dead’s longest concert. Longer by an hour than a flight from New York City to Seattle. It’s only 30 minutes shorter than the longest baseball game played in the modern era—though that game was played over the course of two days. More to the point, it’s more than 20 times longer than the gap in the Watergate tapes that caused a scandal for President Richard Nixon, ultimately leading to his resignation in 1974...

For Democrats, the gap is also an opportunity to return the focus onto Trump’s own role in the attempted coup, as well as the Republican Party’s extensive efforts to protect him from facing accountability. For months, even amid a series of damaging revelations, most of the attention has focused on Trump’s efforts to prevent congressional investigators from accessing records relating to his activities on January 6. Slowly but with increasing surety, Trump has become a larger focus of the January 6 committee’s efforts. The way this lengthy gap in the official record recalls the Watergate scandal is advantageous to those seeking accountability: It provides an accessible and familiar reference point both to make their case and to underscore its seriousness in ways that people who haven’t been following the story closely might more easily understand...

I can personally recall how the Republicans during the tenure of both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama would run around screaming "Worse than Watergate" every time a perceived scandal would crop up to justify a retaliation against Democrats for the shame the fall of Richard Nixon inflicted on the GOP's reputation. In Clinton's case, it led to a prolonged investigation into Whitewater and Foster's suicide that all culminated in an honestly minor scandal of blowjobs, and in Obama's case setback after setback of Republicans jumping on incidents - even a tragedy like Benghazi - that refused to blow up to the level of a Watergate.

And now here we are again - with a Republican Party left holding the bag of a trumpian administration so mismanaged and scandal-plagued that trump holds the dishonor of being the only man impeached twice - with a reminder of how both Nixon and trump played loose with the facts, fought against any form of accountability, and destroyed records that for all we know hid deeper scandals.

Nixon paid the price for his obstruction with resignation and shame.

trump is incapable of shame and will never yield or resign from the destructive course he's set himself upon. In his case, criminal charges are the only way to hold him accountable for the lives he's ruined and the laws he's broken.

DAMMIT, GARLAND, DO SOMETHING.

What Republicans Believe In The Dark Of Their Own Making

So it got leaked this weekend that Ginni Thomas, wife to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, texted a number of messages to trump's then Chief-of-Staff Mark Meadows about the plan to stage a riot and insurrection on January 6th at Capitol Hill. Via Andrew Prokop at Vox:

Newly revealed text messages show that Virginia “Ginni” Thomas — conservative activist and spouse of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas — wanted President Trump to take extreme measures to stay in office in the days following the 2020 election. The messages between her and then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows were provided to the congressional committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attacks and obtained by journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa.

One major takeaway from them is that her alarm was apparently sincere: These seem to be Thomas’s genuine beliefs, expressed in private to Trump’s top aide, when no one was looking.

Thomas shared with Meadows conspiracy theories that Trump had a secret plan to expose election fraud (“I hope this is true”) and to send its perpetrators to Guantanamo Bay, urged that Trump should “not concede” because “it takes time for the army who is gathering for his back,” said the “Left” was “attempting the greatest Heist of our History,” championed the ludicrous claims of Trump’s lawyer Sidney Powell (“Sounds like Sidney and her team are getting inundated with evidence of fraud”), complained about being “disgusted” with Vice President Mike Pence for approving the results, and declared Biden’s win meant “the end of Liberty...”

As Prokop noted, this was what Thomas was saying to a fellow Republican with the belief her messages would never see daylight, what she was openly thinking when no one was looking.

As I tweeted meself:

these are messages she expected would never see the light of day. this is what she thinks, what she believes when the public eye isn't on her. Ginni Thomas is a full-on conspiracy nutcase, and she's a major player in the GOP circles AND has the ear of a SCOTUS Justice. WTF.

— Witty Librarian For Ukraine (@PaulWartenberg) March 25, 2022

Just to point to an example, Thomas wrote a text about Sidney Powell - she of "release the Kraken" infamy - getting a ton of "evidence of fraud." In the real world, Powell never proved any voter fraud happened, did not win a single legal battle to throw the election to trump, and has since faced numerous disbarment matters across the states she tried to sell her accusations. Powell had already lost many of her lawsuits by the time Thomas texted Meadows, and yet there she is still selling that broken lie.

A cynic might think that the Republican/conservative leadership in this country are merely pandering to the less-informed more ignorant voting base, and some - like Mitch McConnell - are. But these Ginni Thomas text messages reveal that the conspiracy rot - the outright gaslighting by trump, the wingnut fearmongering, the lies bought at face value without a shred of provable evidence - has worked its way up to the movers-and-shakers to where they will never act rationally no matter the situation... and who will insist that everyone else among their ranks to be as irrational and destructive as they are.

If character is what you are in the dark, then Ginni Thomas and everyone else like her are at best delusional and irrational, at worst raving lunatics.

And yet, will anyone do anything about it?

There may be a moment where Ginni Thomas could get called to testify before the Congressional hearings into the January 6th Insurrection.

Regarding her husband on the Court, there is a likelihood that Clarence Thomas failed to recuse himself from a legal matter involving the insurrection - he was the only dissenter, by the by - and may have violated a law or three if it's proven his wife was part of that matter brought before the jurists.

It would be nice to think accountability will apply here, but too often the Republican leadership has skated on these matters - and failing to resign over them - and until the hammer drops on both of them we're just speculating.

The larger problem is the rest of the Republican leadership. This "pulling the curtains to see behind the scenes" moment reveals that Ginni's madness did not set off any alarm bells with them, and a number of them have already revealed they are fully supporting that mad narrative of trump's "stolen election" Big Lie.

How the hell can the rest of America deal with a sizable political faction - Conservative Republicans - living among us who cannot be reasoned with?

We're coping with a reality that our fellow Republican neighbors do not live in the Real World. They live in a Fox Not-News Fantasyland where Democrats are Evil, Libruls are Pedophiles, the Others are raiding our sacred borders to steal our jobz and takes our womenz, and only GOD'S CHOSEN GRIFTER donald trump CAN SAVE US ALL. 

And they are perfectly willing to fight in the halls of power and the streets of our cities to make that fantasy real.

You cannot deal with madness like this. You cannot negotiate over something that has no basis in fact. You cannot compromise with those who believe themselves so utterly in the right that they can never betray their absolute beliefs.

The Republicans are wholly committed now to trump's Big Lie, utterly convinced that they should never give power to Democrats or let liberals/progressives have any say in their own lives.

Republicans are at war with everything and everybody they do not believe in. The laws they're passing - to abolish abortion, to cancel out education about racism and sexism, to remove the gay/lesbian/trans people from public sight - is part of that war.

The madness will not end until the rest of us stand up and say ENOUGH, until the rest of us deny these wingnut assholes any power over us. That means fighting them every minute of the day, at the ballot box, in the media op-eds, in our homes and schools and workplaces.

The Republican War On Everybody is upon us whether we liked it or not. We dare not let them win.

An Insurrection By Any Other Name Is Still Damaging To Our Nation, Stop Lying About It Republicans

So during this weekend, the national-level leadership of the Republican Party censured the Congresscritters who called trump out for his January 6th insurrection - Liz Cheney, Republican Or Not? - and also decided that the rioting mob that smashed their way into Capitol Hill were, and I quote, "A Legitimate Political Discourse."

About as brazen a lie as anything trump himself could cook up. Then again, the GOP have gone all in to defend the indefensible since 2016...

Lemme refer to Vixen at Strangely Blogged for some observations:

The phrase "legitimate political discourse" sounds, in the phrasing of the Republican party, like a new and not-improved version of "the Aristocrats": there are a lot of ways to tell that joke, but the point of it is its filthiness. Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger have been censured by the gutless old party for bothering to look into a national security incident affecting the seat of our democracy, but the party chooses to see them as persecuting "ordinary citizens"...

Who stuffed their brains with the nonsense of German servers, Venezuelan voting machines, Chinese thermostats, and Italian satellites? And how are the people who perpetuated that level of absurd fraud, and a White House that not only tolerated but encouraged it, not anything but illegitimate? This isn't legitimate discourse, but weaponized bullshit. It was dangerous agitprop designed to produce a chaotic and violent result on the ground, and a disruption to the country's leadership at the top, and Ms. McDaniel wants to argue semantics? 

The interest of justice lies in the pursuit of truth with neither fear nor favor, and the oath to the Constitution deserves no less fervor...

But this is where the Republican Party HAS been for years now, well since before 2015 when I declared it dead and void of principle, well before trump became its standard bearer, its guarantor of crassness, and the wingnut's golden calf. OF COURSE the Republican Party leadership would rebuke even a conservative stalwart like Liz Cheney, all because she dared to point out that rallying to trump is a bad idea.

Whatever conservative principles Cheney may think she's defending, those principles are meaningless to the Republican leadership's utter obsession with winning at ALL costs even if it alienates them further with more Americans. Because those leaders genuinely think they still have enough of a voting base to eke them through, and that they're successfully rigging future elections to favor only themselves.

We're at the point the Republicans - as a Minority Party in all but name - are getting to where they're kicking to the curb every other American who could actually give them hope to stay in power anyway.

If David A Graham at The Atlantic (paywalled) is right about any of this: 

Once upon a time, not so long ago, the Republican Party prided itself on being a big-tent party. This didn’t mean that anything went—generally, members were expected to adhere to a philosophy of free markets and small government—but the party tolerated the left-leaning Nelson Rockefeller as well as the rock-ribbed Barry Goldwater, the conservative Ronald Reagan and the moderate Arlen Specter. The GOP no longer has many coherent policy goals, mixing free traders and tariff fanatics, entitlement-cutters with populists. The single unifying requirement is paying fealty to Donald Trump. Pretty much anyone willing to do that is welcome. This resolution is a demonstration of that fealty...

The RNC is trying to be cute here, winking at the insurrectionists without actually endorsing the violent assault on the Capitol. Trump allies have been working on this quickstep for months, downplaying the violence without explicitly accepting it, while supporting other parts of the attempt to overturn the election. The censure appears to have been written so that everyone could read into it what they wanted; McDaniel’s amendment is evidence this worked all too well...

One might say that these contortions to pacify Trump are really just attempts to respond to the desires of Republican voters, but this defense is flawed. First, pandering to voters who wanted to overturn a legitimate election (and coddling their false claims that the election was stolen) is an abdication of citizenship and leadership.

Second, if Trump service is intended as voter service, it’s at least a second-order effect; the participants seem most concerned about what the former president will do. Trump is still the favorite for the GOP nomination in 2024, but there are signs that voters are a bit weary of Trump. Glenn Youngkin’s victory in last year’s Virginia gubernatorial race showed that a candidate can win while keeping Trump at arm’s reach. Some recent polls have even found that fewer than half of Republican voters—including many Trump fans—want to see him run again in 2024...

Thing is, nobody can rile up that fervent, violent base of the Republican Party like trump can. He may seem weak now, but that's only because he doesn't have the primary rallies and the constant media attention that nets him. If he's still out and about by 2024, smashing his way through every state primary like he did in 2016, all of the nightmares and threats he represents are coming back with him.

The Republican leadership still doesn't seem to understand just how dangerous this all is: Not just to Democrats and to Americans outside of their power circle, but to Republicans themselves. They're debasing themselves into lesser creatures, unthinking and unfeeling and unable to take care of the simple basic things that keeps us a civilized society.

Yet the GOP will lie to us, lie to themselves about how they are in control, oh yes they are please believe us, of their own party ranks and their own party standard bearers and their own violent angry voting base.

I said it before and saying it again: This is not going to end well.

Do Call It Sedition, Do Hold Insurrectionists Accountable

At last, some good news in the year-long case into the trumpian rioters who stormed the nation's Capitol to disrupt our electoral system. The Department of Justice arrested the leader of the Oath Keepers - one of trump's militant backers - on the charge of seditious conspiracy, a more serious charge than the Obstruction charges most of the 725 previously detained rioters have been hit with (via Carrie Johnson and Ryan Lucas at NPR): 

Federal authorities arrested Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes in Texas on Thursday morning and also took Edward Vallejo into custody in Arizona. The other nine people had already been accused of some crimes related to the siege on the Capitol last year.

The grand jury indictment in the District of Columbia is the most serious and sweeping case to emerge from the federal investigation into the Capitol riot and the first to include the seditious conspiracy charge, which carries a maximum of 20 years in prison. Rarely seen in recent years, seditious conspiracy charges are made against those who plot to prevent the execution of U.S. law.

The Justice Department said the Oath Keepers were determined to stop the lawful transfer of power, with two groups marching in military-style formations toward the Capitol that day and other personnel labeled "quick reaction forces" waiting outside D.C. to transport firearms and other weapons. Vallejo allegedly helped coordinate one of those quick-reaction teams.

The court papers said the defendants organized teams to use force and bring firearms to the Capitol, recruited members to participate, organized trainings and brought paramilitary gear, knives, batons and radio equipment to Washington.

Rhodes communicated with other leaders on Jan. 6 using a chat group on the encrypted app Signal, according to court documents.

"Pence is doing nothing. As I predicted," Rhodes typed to the group that day. "All I see Trump doing is complaining. I see no intent by him to do anything. So the Patriots are taking it into their own hands. They've had enough..."

Just in case you're interested, the actual law being enforced here is 18 USC 2384:

If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.

It may have taken a year, but it likely involved the slow digging through the 700-plus foot soldiers of Rhodes' army to flip enough documented evidence to bring this charge to the judges. This is big league stuff now, and the organizers of this planned riot - hi, trump's inner circle working the war room at the Willard Hotel! - are the next link in this flowchart of shame.

Let's go to Emptywheel - who's been covering this with great detail - and see what she has to say about it:

The charges are, at once, no big deal, because they’re really just the same conspiracy charged in a different way with two conspiracies added. They’re a huge deal, because now Republicans will be hard pressed to continue to downplay January 6. And they’re a solution to some problems and a tool to move on...

Though Kenneth Harrelson released some of the key communications from the Willard Hotel from earlier in the day, those still don’t show up in this indictment. So the government is remaining coy about what it knows about coordination with people at the Willard Hotel. That’s probably because it still needs others to flip — Joshua James would be ideal, but Roberto Minuta might be useful as well — to confirm whatever Mark Grods and Mike Simmons (if he is cooperating) were able to offer about it.

But they are making it clear that they know more about some communications they’ve been talking about for some time...

This indictment will, presumably, impress all those who’ve been wailing the existing 20 year charges the Oath Keepers were facing were not adequate. But it may also clear a path to move up the chain...

The rioters doing the dirty work busting into Congressional chambers and offices have ties to the Oath Keepers. This seditious conspiracy charge shows the coordination between the Oath Keepers, and provides a link to trump's people. And trump's people are linked to trump himself: NONE of them could have done this without his blessing. 

Where Mueller had a problem proving a link between trump's 2016 campaign to Russian business and political allies - because of the Obstruction that the Congressional Democrats failed to investigate towards impeachment - there's already a lot of evidence between the rioters to the war rooms (there were two, one at Willard Hotel and one in the Eisenhower Executive Office (!)) and between the war rooms and trump.

Evidence but not enough proof yet to take to a court of law. THAT'S where the Justice Department needs to hurry up. There's not a lot of time between now and November 2022 when the midterms could lead to the Republicans reclaimed part or all of Congressional control to obstruct any further investigations and arrests.

I know they want to get it right, but dammit the clock is not on the nation's side. If any accountability, if any justice can be done to punish trump for his coup attempt, it's got to be soon.

Deep Scars

(Update: Thanks again to Batocchio for including this article at Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! Please do me a favor and review the articles I'm considering for the FWA Royal Palm Literary awards this year.)

Today was the one-year anniversary of donald trump's Insurrection, the massing and angering up of a mob of his supporters to go smash their way into the halls of Congress to disrupt the Electoral Vote count and prevent Joe Biden from winning the 2020 Presidential election.

And while today's press coverage and blogging memorials provided some catharsis - with President Biden using the moment to speak against trump's ongoing Big Lie campaign, openly calling trump a "defeated former President" without even calling trump by name - the facts remain that 1) we have not yet reached a full accounting of justice for those - from trump himself to all the handlers running "war rooms" in nearby hotels coordinating with the extremist groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers who enacted the violence - who planned and executed the riots, and 2) the insurrection itself shows just how broken and divided the United States truly is.

We still have a sizable number of Republican voters - not just the hard-core trumpians but the party in general - who still view the attack on Capitol Hill was "peaceful" or that the violence was overblown. Two-thirds of Republican voters believe trump's Big Lie that the Democrats stole the election with fake votes (either with massive voter fraud that trump's lawyers can't prove or by hiding ballots that favored trump that trump's lawyers can't find).

The problem here is the divide between those who look to the facts and those who look to the GOP Grand Narrative. It's gotten to the point where the MAGA supporters are actively behaving like a religious cult. To refer to that NPR article by Tovia Smith:

This kind of intractability, however, isn't stopping people around the nation from continuing to try to get through to their loved ones. Many are filling up support groups for people struggling to reach family members who've fallen deep down the rabbit hole.

"I get frustrated and angry at my dad," says one such woman, who goes by Rain. "I've always thought of him as so intelligent. But he's being misled, and there's no way to get him to see the light on that."

In a meeting that's run online by Antidote, a group that combats psychological manipulation, the stories are remarkably similar. Shannon, a 37-year-old from Colorado, explains how heartbroken she is that the "big lie" has come between her and her mother. The participants asked that their full names not be used to protect their family members from retribution and so as not to jeopardize their reconciliation.

Shannon tells the group that her mother, who she says was at the Capitol during the insurrection, will barely listen when her daughter tries to bring her evidence that the election was not stolen.

"It's a waste of my breath," she sighs. "I brought up all kinds of information, and she dismisses it immediately. It's blind allegiance. And I've seen it get worse..."

Facts don't matter when the emotional intensity of the Far Right echo chamber means more. This is akin to dealing with a fervent devotee to extremist faith - doesn't matter if it's Christian, Muslim, Hebrew, Hindu, or Unitarian - who won't consider the irregularities or hypocrisy of their own religious texts and insists on the infallibility of the Truth that tells them to strap on a bomb vest and blow up schools. Or if you want a secular analogy, this is akin to dealing with fans of a long-losing football team who won't admit how bad the Washington No-Names are and switch their support to a better-run organization like the Pittsburgh Steelers.

(Awkwardly looks at all the Tampa Bay Bucs gear and memorabilia from the 2021 Super Bowl LV win) Uh, yeah I don't talk much about the years between 1983 to 1996 much... or the 2008 to 2019 years either... But then again I'm self-aware enough to admit the Bucs have been bad... just... um... yeah I can't quit them baby. (I actually got national attention for fifteen minutes ranting FIRE SCHIANO! on a sports blog years ago) ANYWAYS I digress. 

This is how I see how the Far Right is behaving: They are wholly devoted to a Republican Party and Far Right agenda because that is their "team" and they are loyal to the bitter end no matter how racist, sexist, and violent that team becomes (in many cases, they are loyal because of that team being racist, sexist, and violent). 

Back to Smith's article:

These days, identifying as red or blue, or as a die-hard Trumper or anti-Trumper, has become a kind of "mega-identity," as it has been dubbed by Lilliana Mason, a Johns Hopkins University associate professor of political science. She says partisan identity has become so fully fused with cultural, religious, racial, gender and geographical identity that it's very high stakes for people to break with their party — or the party line.

"To feel that they are losing all [those aspects of themselves] wrapped together, that's a devastating psychological harm," says Mason. "And people tend to react to that with a lot of not only anger, but really defensive mechanisms."

That's why Mason says no recount or court case is going to be convincing to Trump supporters who are clinging to the myth that their side didn't actually lose.

"At this point, over one year out, I don't think there is any way to get through to them," Mason says. "They've had this entire fever dream, where Trump is really stoking these ideas of 'No matter what anybody else tells you, I'm telling you you're a winner.' And that feels great. That's just like the most primitive human instincts to follow the good feelings, not the bad feelings."

There is no rational way to reach people like the Far Right who have reached an irrational world-view. Like John Cole said in 2009, "I really don’t understand how bipartisanship is ever going to work when one of the parties (The Republicans) is insane." Only it's not bipartisanship itself that's at risk twelve years later, it's the very nature of the federalist system itself that makes up the United States of America.

I've mentioned it before: The entire model of checks and balances baked into the Constitution and into the operational practices of government itself require acts of compromise and cooperation (forms of "Good Faith" behavior) between all parties. As we've seen during trump's tenure in the White House, almost all of that Good Faith needed for government to function gave way to pandering, policy hostage-taking, and outright grifting that made much of government grind to a halt. The rest of the Republican Party couldn't get much done - outside of a massive tax cut the majority of Americans didn't ask for - because trump kept violating norms even they needed to work with. 

With one major political party broken, the rest of the political structure of the nation itself falls apart. You have states openly dismissing federal guidelines during a global pandemic. You have planned efforts to dismantle electoral systems to guarantee voters have no say. You have federal courts ignoring centuries of Judicial Review to tack towards extreme interpretations of conservative thought just to achieve political agendas against the majority will.

With the political culture broken, the social norms of the United States are breaking as well. We have more angry people lashing out at public workers and nurses than ever before. A violent wave of arrogant privilege towards our neighbors and communities making it harder for people to remain civil at all.

It is in that mood, in this moment, that we need to realize all this public rage and violence are physical markings of emotional scars, deep rooted fears and hates rising up to the skin exposing this all to the world. 

These scars are from wounds that never healed up since the Constitutional enshrinement of slavery, never healed up since the Andrew Jackson years, never healed up from the Trail of Tears and centuries of Native reservation camps, never healed up since the fugitive slave laws of 1850s, never healed up from the Civil War, never healed up after Reconstruction and decades of Jim Crow, never healed up after the union fights, never healed up after women's suffrage, never healed up after the Red Scares and McCarthyist witch hunts, never healed up after Japanese internment camps, never healed up after decades of lynchings, never healed up after the Civil Rights reforms of the 1960s, never healed up after gays rights and trans rights and human rights, never healed up after Obama proved a Black Man could lead America, never healed up at all because too many people - mostly white, mostly male, mostly rich - in power and privilege are too terrified that they're losing both to the long arc of history.

These scars won't heal even if we pursue justice to its natural end in arresting trump and his Insurrectionist mobs for the public crimes - all caught on film they can't deny - they've committed. We cannot ignore the law on this: trump and his cronies must answer for the violence they called into existence that dark January day. But we need to realize their arrests and their accountability will not heal these scars, and will not bring an end to the division across America that they promoted, expanded, profited from.

This fight to rebuild America is not over.