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Congressional subpoenas are now optional, I guess

Just think of all those poor, naive schmoes in the 1950s who were subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee and were forced to fly to Washington to testify about all their communist buddies. I suppose it never occurred to them that they could just say, "Meh, who's gonna make me?"

They really missed a bet. It's a good thing we have the modern Republican Party around to set things straight.

31 thoughts on “Congressional subpoenas are now optional, I guess

  1. sturestahle

    What did you expect?
    In a country where the outvoted president can instigate a rebellion trying to nullify the election in order to stay in power and still not being arrested , still not facing charges.
    In a country where the rebellion was supported by a vast majority of the ousted presidents party, elected representatives who still are sitting in the National Assembly being able to set of another (slow motion) rebellion in order to give them the right to legally nullify any election they choose if the result doesn’t please them
    Did you actually expect a clown like Bannon should obey a juridical system that isn’t going after the big guys behind the rebellion
    An inconvenient truth from a Swede

    1. Spadesofgrey

      Bannon will be arrested. Thus he will flee. That said, the "rebellion" isn't quite as you think. According to FBI drops, as I have said before, the plan was for a strong counter protest against the Trump " side" and then a "proxy" fight outside the capital. The problem is, it never came to fruition. By Noon, the Trumps knew they had been played and crafted a sloppy, quickly planned backup which was as to storm into the capital for their jew.

      Bannon should be killed. As should most of Trump's flock. Slowly, stealthily. A warning to future attempts at subverting American Democracy. Nothing more than the "left hegelian" side of white supremacy would love is to shatter the Republic and attack the last 1500 years of history. My guess the Christards and Republicans may not like that. Racial civil war.

      1. Justin

        The right wing military and security forces are more likely to go after democrats than anyone in trump's flock. The justice department may well get a warrant for Bannon's arrest, but good luck finding a cop to arrest him. That will be the next act of uncivilized disobedience.

    2. mudwall jackson

      i don't know about sweden's judicial system, but here criminals or alleged criminals don't have an option as to whether to obey the criminal justice system. if he's caught, his ass is the courts. also note: congress is not the criminal justice system. unlike a court, it has to make a referral to the justice dept. in order to have its subpoenas enforced

  2. antiscience

    When I naturalized back in '82, part of the oath was that I swore that, if subpoenaed by the HUAC, I would appear. Can't believe it's come to this.

    1. Spadesofgrey

      Foreign espionage via Semites. It's why all white supremacy is not created the same. Something liberals should learn. Trump's father was Ashkenazi. His mother partially. The Oligarchs are Ashkenazi and partially Ashkenazi. They deal with Semitic Arabs. White Christianity supporting identity or supporting multiracial Christianity were desperate by 2014. It lead to the weird Trump coalition which further embraced falsely new age philosophy like the Obama campaign. Helping with unaffiliated voters. Coupled with poor political choices made by Democrats during the Obama era(everything from not supporting domestic production, to not replacing Ginsburg, to not understanding the post financial crisis era) it made a bizzare and contradictory coalition that was built to compete to a tie.

  3. Justin

    While this particular commission is, I think, quite legitimate, there are plenty of other hearings which are terrible. We the people have a bad habit of electing freaks to congress and they, in turn, have turned congressional hearings into a freak show. Mostly this was done by republicans because, of course, they are simply evil. And they all think it makes for great TV and social media content. It's entertainment now.

    Bannon is right, I think, to tell congress to go to hell. This is what lying, treasonous, no good, so and so's always do. In 2025, all those sitting on the commission will be sent to re-education camps by President Trump.

    There is no hope.

    1. mudwall jackson

      freaks in congress? of course there are, just like there are freaks among doctors, lawyers, insurance sales reps and plumbers. we are a representative democracy, after all.

    2. PaulDavisThe1st

      As was noted by someone on the committee today, Bannon has the right to take the 5th in front of the committee, that is clear. It is far less clear (and in fact is almost certainly wrong) that he has the right to ignore the subpoena.

  4. Joseph Harbin

    I guess this would be laughable if it weren't so dangerous. But the reporting on the case fails to get across just how far out into legal cloud cuckoo land the Trump/Bannon argument is.

    What news readers/viewers/listeners get:
    a) Trump told former officials to ignore congressional subpoenas
    b) Congress subpoenaed Steve Bannon, a former Trump official
    c) Bannon ignored a congressional subpoena
    d) Some mumbo-jumbo about "executive privilege," inc. a both-sides look at whether it should apply

    What's hardly mentioned in the reporting:
    1) Bannon has not worked in the White House since Aug. 2017; he's a private citizen and had no official WH capacity during the Jan. 6 event and its planning
    2) Trump's instruction for former aides happened this month, not while he was president; he's a private citizen (if the news were "Trump today declared war on Eastasia," would we need legal experts to weigh in on whether the US must start dropping bombs*)

    When one private citizen instructs another private citizen to break the law, and the second private citizen breaks the law, and the media spends time talking about fairly arcane legal principles that involve the balance of power between different branches of government and with a straight face presents the case as one that courts will have to deliberate on and decide, our news media is broken. Journalism needs a new algorithm. The one they got ain't working, which is how we got Trump in the first place.

    * The way media works, I'm afraid we would.

    1. haddockbranzini

      The media algorithm is how to get Trump back in office (yay, ratings!) without the various audiences catching on. At least Fox is open about it.

      1. mudwall jackson

        i've not heard or read any coverage where points 1 and 2 aren't prominently mentioned. maybe you're watching fox news these days.

  5. mostlystenographicmedia

    Stewart Brannon, a guy who steals money from MAGA supporters and who has for years talked about wanting to burn America to the ground. Also…..a close personal adviser to a former President of America…..one that happened to use MAGA as a punch line campaign slogan. And of course, the MAGA thieving Brannon would be later pardoned for by the principle MAGA con artist former President. Curiously, neither would lose any support from MAGA supporters who seem happy to be un-moneyed for the thrill of burning the Constitution to ash.

    I keep getting “not believable” or “poor quality fiction” when pitching this to book publishers.

  6. middleoftheroaddem

    I WISH this was strictly a Trump area challenge. If I recall, former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder defied a Congressional subpoena....

  7. rick_jones

    Living, I suspect we’re you to apply your consummate skills in data retrieval you could find trust in/respect for government data going back to the 1950s and track its change through all the subsequent years.

  8. ResumeMan

    Wait, what? The entire article is about how Bannon is about to be held in contempt. When he is (and assuming DOJ enforces it, which I acknowledge is a wild card, though it certainly shouldn't be), that will demonstrate that subpoenas are *not* optional.

    Everyone has always been free to declare that they wouldn't comply with a subpoena, whether from a court or legislature. Then they get arrested, meaning that actually complying with the subpoena wasn't voluntary at all.

    Lets hold our (at that point very very justified) complaints for if/when Merrick Garland lets us down

    1. rational thought

      "Then they get arrested".

      Well unless you are Eric Holder and many others who have defied congressional subpoenas or lied to congress and got away with it.

      Maybe Bannon should just testify, lie to congress, go ahead and get penalized by the current democratic administration and then wait for the next republican president to just remove all penalties for lying to congress, as the deal mccabe just got.

      Hypocrisy on this sort of issue seems gauranteed.

      1. mudwall jackson

        whatever you might think of eric holder, he had at least enough claim to executive privilege to hang a hat on. bannon's has none.

      2. Doctor Jay

        The committee that issued the subpoena that Holder ignored had the option of holding him in contempt, taking the thing to court, and letting the courts decide.

        They didn't do that. Why they didn't is in their heads, but it was their choice.

  9. Austin

    Segregationists really missed the boat too by a half century. Had they existed today, they could’ve simply ignored Brown v Board of Ed and other rulings by citing “religious freedom.” (Hell, the Mormons explicitly said black people were inferior in their religious doctrine until the IRS threatened their tax status in the 1970s… so they wouldn’t have even needed to make up a religion to go to SCOTUS with.)

    1. veerkg_23

      Many did ignore it. That's why Busing became a thing, because 20 years after Brown v Board, 90% of schools were just as segregated as they had been during Jim Crow. Some counties in the south even closed their public education system alltogether, moving entirely to religious and private "academies". Thus we saw the birth of the "School Choice" program.

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