A wee little timeline:
March 16, 2016: President Obama nominates Merrick Garland to an empty seat on the Supreme Court.
March 17 - November 8, 2016: Senate Republicans blockade Garland, vowing to hold "no hearings, no votes, no action whatsoever" on his nomination.
November 3, 2020: Joe Biden is elected president of the United States.
March 11, 2021: Garland is sworn in as Biden's attorney general.
November 12, 2021: Garland's Justice Department indicts Steve Bannon for contempt of Congress following Bannon's refusal to obey a subpoena to testify before the 1/6 committee.
Revenge is indeed a dish best served cold. I wouldn't be surprised if Bannon isn't the last to be indicted.
I think your last sentence contains an unintentional double negative.
I'd be surprised if Bannon is the last to be indicted.
I'm not holding my breath. They'll all get bail, will never serve a day in prison, and will never actually 'fess up. This is all kabuki.
I think that’s pretty much true. Remember, Bannon would need to be tried, convicted and all appeals exhausted before the new Congress when the subpoena will be withdrawn and the committee refocused on the Democratic Party stealing the 2020 election.
Congress can withdraw the subpoena, but it can't issue a pardon. If Congress withdraws the subpoena before Bannon is sentenced, that might be a factor that would convince the judge to impose a lighter sentence, but the minimum sentence that the judge can impose is one month. So if Bannon is convicted, and that conviction is not overturned on appeal, Bannon will serve time in prison.
It’s an interesting question. Assuming that the Republicans will take control of Congress after November of 2023, the Congress an ask the DOJ to dismiss the case and my assumption is that they would do so. There’s also the extremely high likelihood Bannon being able to stretch his appeals out until a Trump restoration would free him.
In any case, Bannon has been in jail before and could do a month standing on his head.
I don’t think that there was really any choice so I wouldn’t read very much into this. The Biden administration and the DOJ seem to be relentlessly focused on looking forwards. There’s been no effort to even investigate anyone involved with the January 6th attempted coup d’était beyond the cannon fodder. And that speaks much louder than this charge against Bannon.
Every President forgives the crimes of the previous one because they know they are all criminals. In 2025, President trump will have no problem arresting Biden, harris, both Clintons and Obama. And then he’ll hang mike pence.
I think that’s an oversimplification. There are only two presidents (Trump and Nixon) and one Vice President (Agnew) who committed real crimes as opposed to doing things which one might characterize in a rhetorical flourish as “crimes”.
I hope you’re right about Trump hanging Pence. Apart from self immolation, it’s the one thing Trump could probably do that I would applaud. I wish him the best of luck in that regard. But,I regret that you’re right about everything else.
Warren G. would disagree.
Johnson committed crimes with Vietnam. Bush implemented torture and invaded Iraq on false pretenses. Obama did Libya and Yemen with KSA. They’ve all assassinated and bombed with reckless abandon and to no tangible benefit. I realize that many here don’t think of these as war crimes, worthy of even an apology, but I do.
Why even today, there is a migration induced conflict on the Polish border with Belarus. Those migrants are refugees from all of America’s failed Middle East wars. Their suffering is the result of all the recent Presidents’ crimes too.
It’s sad that so many think of all this death and destruction as somehow justified.
It must be hard to be so pure in an imperfect world.
Asking my government to avoid killing people all over the world is a pretty low bar for decency, morality, or “purity” as you call it.
It’s very hard to imagine that you think it’s all good, but maybe you do. Maybe you have such nightmares and fears that you feel the need to go killing people half way around the world. I have no such fear. So it’s not really a matter of my purity as much as it is the cowardice of others. In my opinion.
Agree. For a "Christian nation" that interprets the Bible whatever way they want, interpreting the phrase, "Thou shalt not kill" seems like a continuing exercise in preaching their Bible however "they" happen to feel that day.
Bush implemented torture and invaded Iraq on false pretenses.
America's invasion of Iraq was clearly illegal. But Congress approved that war. If Bush is arrested for that, so too should every living member of Congress who voted "aye" on that resolution.
Some who voted to enable the war do so due to a lie that may have seemed plausible when Colin Powell was persuaded to present the administration's case. The case for torture as defined by that administration didn't convince everyone in Congress.
Justin-
You mean like Brother Trump did in 2019?
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/13/us/us-airstrikes-civilian-deaths.html
{snip}
In the last days of the battle against the Islamic State in Syria, when members of the once-fierce caliphate were cornered in a dirt field next to a town called Baghuz, a U.S. military drone circled high overhead, hunting for military targets. But it saw only a large crowd of women and children huddled against a river bank.
Without warning, an American F-15E attack jet streaked across the drone’s high-definition field of vision and dropped a 500-pound bomb on the crowd, swallowing it in a shuddering blast. As the smoke cleared, a few people stumbled away in search of cover. Then a jet tracking them dropped one 2,000-pound bomb, then another, killing most of the survivors.
It was March 18, 2019. At the U.S. military’s busy Combined Air Operations Center at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, uniformed personnel watching the live drone footage looked on in stunned disbelief, according to one officer who was there.
“Who dropped that?” a confused analyst typed on a secure chat system being used by those monitoring the drone, two people who reviewed the chat log recalled. Another responded, “We just dropped on 50 women and children.”
{snip}
War stinks no matter which one you talk about. The war on terror stinks even more because it is not fought conventionally.
Mistakes will be made
But I have a hard time with investigations that get stopped in their tracks for whatever reason.
People SHOULD be held accountable. If the intelligence was good and the strike was justified? I have no problem with some collateral damage. But in this case? If the reporters are correct? Makes me wonder..............
Clearly, that was the Obama deadender Deep State that imposed that drone strike to make Trump, who I do not support, look bad.
I like the whole assumption that “all presidents/politicians are criminals” usually followed up by “why can’t we have better presidents/politicians?” Because of course decent law-abiding people are just clamoring to join the ranks of a group of people everyone just assumes are criminals.
They don’t have to be criminals. But they choose to. Bush implemented policies to torture people. But wouldn’t it be great if trumps garden variety corruption were somehow actually illegal and he was held accountable? I think it would.
there's this line from, i don't know, a while back, something about power, corruption. but you know, what did the ancients know anyway? and we have social media now, so it must all be different.
Your comment reminds me of something I saw recently about those economically anxious GQP diehards in the roadside diners of Ohio: in one breath, they will say they don't vote Democrat because the Democrat Party doesn't respect them, & in the next they will say all Democrats are part of a Satanic Blooddrinking Paedophile Cult that must be exterminated. This had the person noting that disconnect saying, "So, these voters are desperate to be respected by paedophiles?"
Cognitive dissonance is alive & well - healthier than the economy & much else. Much like support of Israel (to support the "Rapture") by people who love Jesus & hate Jews - among many others.
Every president forgives the crimes of the previous administration because he doesn't want to set the precedent of an internecine squabble that may too easily turn into tit for tat prosecutions, as seen in other countries where nothing can get done.
But we've put this off for too many generations, increasingly motivating wingnuts to imagine there's some way they aren't criminals. Inevitably a line has to be drawn and if it can't be drawn at sacking the capitol it can't be drawn anywhere.
👍🏼
Yup.
Well said, sir. The facade must be torn down. The "voter" sees rich and entitled folk get off while the "voter" must serve time for, virtually, the same "violation".
Mr. "no more black pastors" really should have dressed in something he is more comfortable with, like white robes.
The investigation into those who funded & conspired to organize the event includes Bannon, who met with other instigators the previous day, but it is expected to take longer than the prosecution of lower-level participants
I hope that everyone appalled by the trump encouragement of the seditionists votes & that congressional Democrats don't lose so badly that the investigation isn't shut down by 2022 victors, as seemingly everyone is predicting.
Insofar as I’m aware, there is no investigation being conducted by DOJ into anyone who organized or funded the attempted coup d’état. There is an ongoing, if slightly lackluster, investigation into the cannon fodder who showed up to do Trump’s bidding but absolutely no indication that there’s any interest in upper echelons of the Republican Party who were involved in the coup. And there would almost certainly be very public indications if an investigation were afoot.
To begin with, the potential suspects activities would be investigated, and witnesses would be questioned, which doesn’t seem to be happening. A grand jury would be convened, documents would be obtained, witnesses would be called to testify but, again, none of that seems to be happening. The lower-level players would be pressured to provide information about the attempted coup d’état and to implicate higher ups who could themselves be persuaded to cooperate, and so on. None of this seems to be happening and, as with the Mueller “non-investigation,” it could not happen in total secrecy so it is reasonable to conclude that there is no investigation and there will be no investigation.
Why would you know if an DOJ investigation was going on?
I think we’d know because it’s nearly impossible to keep that kind of extremely high profile “historical conspiracy” investigation a secret. The starting point is for agents to formulate an investigation plan (which could be kept secret but probably wouldn't be) and then begin interviewing all the possible witnesses and suspects. And possibly to bring some or all of those people before a grand jury to lock in their testimony. None of this would be secret and, as we’ve seen, witnesses, lawyers, and suspects associated with this movement would not want having been interviewed by the FBI or called before a grand jury kept secret. This is the pattern we've seen with other investigations of people in Trump's orbit or high-level GOP members.
Similarly, the rules of the DOJ would require high-level approval for the opening of the investigation file and the adoption of the investigation plan (Either the head of the Criminal Division at main justice or possibly the AG himself). Since we know that the DOJ was heavily infiltrated at all levels by Republican operatives and that the new Attorney General chose to keep them in place, it seems likely that the existence of the investigation would be leaked to Fox News within hours of its being approved or even considered. But we’ve heard nothing about such an investigation.
And, of course, there would be a considerable number of third-parties (cell phone companies, internet service providers, banks and brokerage firms, etc) whose records would require a grand jury subpoena before being produced and who would almost certainly be making court challenges before complying with any such subpoena. And it isn’t clear that the DOJ could get a “no tell” order for a purely “historical conspiracy” type investigation which would mean that those subpoenas would almost certainly be public knowledge by now.
Without those activities (interviewing witnesses, interrogating suspects, and gathering documents, etc) there is no investigation. Nearly all of these actives are exposed to public view either by the players (who have strong incentives to talk to Fox News or by the their-parties who have strong incentives to challenge the SDT’s in court (which would probably be open to the public or at least leakable). The absence of any signs of an investigation leads me to conclude that there is no investigation nor will there ever be an investigation.
Yeah, this is kinda pointless, except from a theater and maybe historic perspective.
I mean, there's nobody else to vote for, but at some point, if the Dems won't even save themselves, it starts looking like time to look for work abroad for those of us with that option.
Pretty sure that control of the Supreme.Court for Steve Bannon's head is a trade most in the GOP is willing to make.
I’m in contempt of congress after this nonsense.
https://www.cnn.com/style/article/ivy-getty-wedding-photos-san-francisco-city-hall/index.html
Artist and model Ivy Love Getty put a high-fashion spin on the idea of a city hall wedding. Getty, the great granddaughter of late billionaire oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, married photographer Tobias Alexander Engel Saturday on the ornate steps of San Francisco's City Hall, walking down the aisle in a sparkling John Galliano for Maison Margiela Haute Couture gown covered in mirror shards, according to Vogue.
US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi officiated the star-studded ceremony, at which actor Anya Taylor-Joy (the maid of honor), singer Olivia Rodrigo and California Governor Gavin Newsom were among the attendees.
Pelosi. WTF?
Yes, for most of us, the idea of hobnobbing with these people is the same as flapping our arms and flying. But this is a rich country, and expecting that the most powerful politicians in *either* party are going to don the hair shirt is naive.
Hey, my wife and I were married there! Not quite as fancy and Nancy, Gavin, Olivia, and Anya weren’t there, but we didn’t invite them. And my wife’s outfit wasn’t covered in broken glass.
I don’t expect Pelosi or anyone to criticize the happy couple. But one need not officiate at the spectacle put on by the super rich either. The fact is we live in dangerous political times and this sort of thing just tells me that Pelosi is not a “woman of the people”. She is a creature of the super rich. And it’s not a good look from where I’m sitting. I thought she was smarter than that.
Have you tried breathing oxygen first before having an opinion? If you're curious as to how to tell whether a politician is good or not, look their actual policy advancements and voting record. If you look at anything else, you're the one with your head up your ass. Literally everything is kabuki except policy.
There is also this weird idea that politicians don't implement good policy because they're all corrupt and evil. Spare me. Politicians don't do what we want because what we want isn't representative of the entire country. Politicians are either nullified by other politicians who oppose them or they are compromising with other politicians who don't completely align with them. That's politics.
Does money influence politics? It sure as hell does. At least look and what money is going to which politician before generalizing the entire bunch and calling them all evil. ffs. If the game was simple, anyone could play.
That Pelosi should just tell the bride, presumably her constituent, to drop dead is a more civically engaged and politic manner?
Maybe they're close personal friends. 🙄
Once upon a time Pelosi and the bride's grandmother both banged Timothy Leary.
Wasn't everybody?
Just like everyone today is descended from Genghis Khan, in 500 years, everyone will be descended from Grace Slick.
I’d like to think there is some middle place between this officiating at this spectacle and telling them to drop dead. The super rich own congress. Occasionally they collect in ways that are embarrassing. I would have hoped Pelosi understood that.
Nancy Pelosi officiated at the wedding of friends of hers. The outrage!
Shirley you do not mean to suggest Garland is motivated by anything other than adherence to the law…
No, just that even when you think you've buried a player, as Golddigger Mitch did visavis Garland, he's not out of the game.
I feel we are being f*cked without a kiss. I want to see some of these bozos actually be convicted and go to jail, including but not limited to Trump, Don Jr., Jared, Flynn, Meadows, Bannon, Stone, Rudy, Eastman. And I want guilty pleas from Ivanka, Eric, Manafort, Pompeo, Conway, Price, Zinke, Perry, Acosta, Sondland, DeVos and Erik Prince.
and a bunch more for insider trading...
Wow KD this post is so beneath you.
Well, that's bad news for America, if every administration is going to be focused on revenge for the previous one. I wish Kevin no ill as a person, but if preventing America from becoming Venezuela, Cuba, or Nicaragua requires indicting and imprisoning Democratic propagandists, then he will have to be sacrificed to the greater good. This is the course he has chosen, by defining politics as the war of all against all.
That's the course that's defined social conservatism since the dawn of man and is nothing like Kevin's point of view.
If there are no consequences for crime what will criminals think, what do you think happens next?
Yes!
Preserving the rule of law is actually a very good thing and just the opposite of what usually occurs in the countries you named. In fact, Bannon's clear involvement in the seditionist acts in January is right of the authoritarian playbook.
Yup.
And another yes - why would a call for justice under the law be conflated with a trump-like call for vengeance??
Gee, seems as if Kevin Drum can't win - from practically accused of being complicit to being thought of promoting vengeance.
Again, a little simple math shows that the chances of actually convicting Trump and other higher-ups are very poor. About 47% of the electorate voted for Trump in 2020 despite clear evidence of his crimes, so why would any of those people on a jury vote to convict him? The chance of randomly selecting a jury with no Trump supporters from a pool of the national composition is 0.53^12 = 0.00049. Chances would improve going down the ranks of Trump supporters, especially if he turns on them himself as he is prone to do. But prosecutors generally do not take up cases if they think their chances are less than even - it is a waste of time and money, and failure to convict would would be hyped as a victory by the indicted.
There are at least two tiers in the "justice" system of the United States. Least us ponder which the subject of this post is in.
Let us ponder the execution of law for those who say maybe shop lift or smoke some pot or can't scrape enough money together to keep their licence tag current. And then let us ponder how the law will be executed for a public figure who thumbed his nose at the one of the highest levels of government during an investigation of Constitutional importance.
And then let us ponder why there are riots in the streets and people yell things like defund the police and daily there are dead folks from gunshots over petty differences.
A lot to ponder. I wonder if we'll get anywhere with righting that keel. Probably as much luck as with climate change negotiations.
And so it goes.
Aside from class bias, you can't expect an objective decision from either a judge or a jury in a highly politicized, partisan case. This also holds true even more in international matters - when group identification enters, it take priority over rationality.
This is true as well. But with the span of history behind us, how can anyone deny what occurs daily? It's not a new development.
...@painedumonde:
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
Best Wishes, Traveller
What your rider Robert E. Lee was fighting for!
Hows about Steve Bannon did not answer a valid subpoena so has a contempt case to answer? Maybe that is all there is to it?
How did Bannon or any members of the Trump administration block Garland's nomination to the SC? Garland's office is indicting Bannon because he refused to obey a subpoena issued by a committee of the House of Representatives investigating the 1/6 riot, which he should do based on the involvement of the Trump administration with the attempt to block certification of the presidential election. A surprising action considering Democrats usual unwillingness to hold their political opponents responsible for any unlawfulness.
This will probably go to the Supreme Court. The last person to be held in contempt of Congress was Justice Gorsuch’s mother.
Is that dish cold enough?
Was she convicted of criminal contempt? I don't remember that at all.
Reagan appointee ignored the referral,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contempt_of_Congress#Partial_list_of_those_held_in_contempt_since_1975
Criminals in the trump administration should be arrested and tried for this.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/13/us/us-airstrikes-civilian-deaths.html
But we won’t.
Steve Bannon has a cynical view of the US electorate, but at least he's up front about it. I think that, as a confidential advisor to a president, he should to refuse to testify.
How would you feel if a close advisor to Hillary was called before a congressional committee and asked about confidential conversations with Hillary? You might say, "But she hasn't been accused of any crime." Well, neither has Trump! (He didn't act at all wisely on Jan. 6 but all presidents have done unwise actions or inactions.)
In view of the fact that it's perfectly obvious the purpose of this committee is not to "investigate" Jan. 6 but rather as a kind of de facto grand jury developing evidence that can be used to indict Trump, Bannon's position is defensible and I would not be suprised if it weren't upheld by SCOTUS.
If conversations with HRC were being investigated by a Congressional committee, I would feel fine with honoring a legal subpoena. It's perfectly obvious that Bannon is using this as another attack on American institutions. Bannon's position is indefensible, and I'd be surprised if the SCOTUS even agreed to hear it. This is not the case to lay down precedent on executive privilege.
For absolutely nonsensical, ridiculous takes, you win the prize!
I take it you haven't heard of the House Select Committee on Benghazi?
Huma Abedin's lesbian sex with Hillary involving John Podesta's risotto scene.
The matter under consideration has nothing whatsoever to do with the time that Bannon "served" in an official capacity. It is about his involvement in informal communications related to the planning of the January 6th attack in our Capitol.