In a court filing seeking access to emails between President Trump and attorney John Eastman about the 2020 election, the January 6 Committee tipped its hand:
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol said on Wednesday that there was enough evidence to conclude that former President Donald J. Trump and some of his allies might have conspired to commit fraud and obstruction by misleading Americans about the outcome of the 2020 election and attempting to overturn the result.
....The evidence gathered by the committee “provides, at minimum, a good-faith basis for concluding that President Trump has violated” the obstruction count, the filing, written by Douglas N. Letter, the general counsel of the House, said, adding: “The select committee also has a good-faith basis for concluding that the president and members of his campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States.”
Of course, it will be the Department of Justice that ultimately decides what to do with all this evidence, which means a trial is a long way off even if they decide to go ahead with the charges against Trump.
Personally, I'd love to see Trump on trial over this stuff. He should be. But where are they going to round up 12 impartial jurors? The moon?
And I “might” be breathing.
Unfortunately, I'm less sure about Merrick Garland.
I know people keep saying they're doing their work on the down-low, but we would have seen activity by now. If absolutely nothing else, various rightwing lawyers would have gone shouty by now, either in fear or to share info with co-conspirators.
Garland's just useless.
My favorite part of the ap version :
“The Select Committee is not conducting a criminal investigation,” Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the committee’s Democratic chairman, said in a statement. “But, as the judge noted at a previous hearing, Dr. Eastman’s privilege claims raise the question whether the crime-fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege applies in this situation.”
Does that mean those idiots opened a door that would have remained closed if Eastman hadn’t claimed privilege?
No, to the contrary. In the absence of a claim of lawyer-client privilege being interposed Eastman and the third parties that hold the documents being sought would have to turn the documents over to the committee immediately or risk being held in contempt.
This is going nowhere. The house committee investigating Jan. 6th will be disbanded next January when the Republicans will control the House. In all likelihood they will immediately start “investigations” on Biden and Harris and impeach them both. It wouldn’t surprise me a bit if the “investigations” are led by Margorie Taylor Green. The idea that we believe in “rule of law” and “no one is above the law” are ancient lies.
Clearly, the only way to stop this is to work hard to elect Democrats. At ALL levels of government.
Fwiw, I'm increasingly rejecting the "nothing we can do here" argument. True, it's fashionably cynical, indicating a sophisticated and worldly worldview, but it's also an excuse for laziness and procrastination.
What was that old Margaret Mead quote? "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
I have voted Democratic my entire life and, in the absence of a viable center-left party, I'm sure that I will continue doing so. I particularly agree with you that the Democratic consultant class has basically decided to forfeit state and local elections because there's neither glamour nor money to be found there. Just political power, which I suspect is actually not a high priority of my party's leadership and consultants.
Nevertheless, you might have noticed that the Democrats control two of the three branches of government, including the executive branch which is in charge of enforcing the laws. They have the power. They've chosen not to use it.
The results of the 2022 mid-terms have not yet been determined.
Funny, I opposed pretty much everything he ever set out to do as President (Warp Speed is the one thing that comes to mind that I supported). I lived half my life in the NewYork media market, so I’ve known he is a racist since the Central Park Five case. I think he was hands-down the worst President of the United States, ever. Yet, I don’t think I would have any difficulty being impartial with respect to specific charges relating to January 6, 2021. He is a horrible human being, but each expression of his awfulness has to be weighed on its own, in the light of the laws as written and interpreted by our courts.
There is that.
I also am pretty sure that impartiality is not actually a requirement - just the ability to set partiality aside and weigh the actual evidence. It's possible to both be prejudiced against a person AND weight charges impartially, whatever you may think of them.
But a lot of people don't think that way. For example, this kind of thinking gets me a lot of hatemail in fan forums when I defend some sportsball manager's actions as making sense/not being egregious in context, but of course they didn't work out so the fans hate it so the manager was wrong and was always wrong. And maybe also bad. That's not how I see it.
if impartiality was an absolute requirement there could never be trials of famous or infamous defendants. the boston bombing case quickly comes to mind to name one fairly recent example.
Trump is going to have his 1-800-ambulance-chasers appeal every tiny court decision to the Supreme Court, so any criminal case will surely take 15 years minimum.
However I hope this gooses the IRS to hand him a bill for $500 million plus 30 years interest.
The IRS will be too busy going after Etsy crafters and Uber drivers.
Forget Trump for a moment, and remember that the real danger to America is the tens of millions of our fellow citizens who still support him and would do anything to restore him to power.
They're the threat going forward, not Trump.
Meh. Most of them won't even get off the couch. All those truckers who "support" Trump--where was the SOTU convoy? All hat, no cattle.
What about Power Bottom Ron de Santis trying to domme high schoolers into stripping off their masks?
those kids weren't wearing masks in fear of covid, rather the brain-rotting disease that infects de santis.
I would love to see Trump in prison, but I understand the hesitation. What will his supporters do? Would a trial lead to violence? It's a gamble. Letting him off the hook has other risks.
The big unanswered (and unasked!) question is what happens if Trump or Trump's designated successor wins the presidency with a congress controlled by the likes of Greene, Boebert, and Gosar. What, exactly, will they do with this power?
The answer to that question is the calculation we must make about prosecuting trump. Is it a war? Or just hardball politics?
The crazies won’t ever control Congress, but as long as the House is led by spineless dipshits like Kevin McCarthy, they’ll keep obstructing, while their party continues spreading divisive lies, and corroding democracy by fomenting distrust of government.
"But where are they going to round up 12 impartial jurors? The moon?"
Is this Trump's trump card?
He KNOWS there is absolutely zero chance of finding 12 people who will vote to convict, even in NY or DC.
So Trump is NOT GUILTY of any crime. At this point, he could shot someone on Fifth Avenue and the jury would probably only vote 9-3 for conviction.
There was at least one MAGA jury nullificationist on the Roger Stone jury just a few years ago.
Surely, there are others -- perchance even crypto-glibertarians Robert Costa & Dave Weigel -- living in DC available to a jury pool.
Well, if the court filing said "definitely did", the committee wouldn't need access to these emails, and so the court would have to throw out the application.
Donald Trump is evil and January 6th was a shameful event. With that said I am hesitant about prosecuting Trump. IF you bring criminal changes and Trump is acquitted he will become stronger.
Please be near certain of success, before you start this process....
I suspect that's why the Justice Department is moving so slowly.
Re: the former guy's two impeachment trial "wins": In both cases, a majority judged him guilty. Constitutionally, that's an acquittal. But we all know better.
Wrong. ‘Equal justice under the law’ dictates that he be treated like any other suspect.
So, jail him pending trial & let Hillary assassinate him, like happened to Epstein?
I wonder how fauxgressive trustfund tumblr twits like Molly Lambert are coping with Ghislaine Maxwell having not killed herself.
We already know how the Falangist propagators of the Climpton Kill List coped: organizing the Ottawa Trucker Standoff.
Works for me.
Any attempt to bring Trump to justice will be tied up in legal wrangling and appeals until the end of time. His lawyers are masters of this. He'll be long dead before he ever sees the inside of a courtroom.
His lawyers aren't even masters of grooming.
It's been a long time since Rudy Giuliani wasn't a curio at the Barnum n' Bailey Circus World Museum, or Sidney Powell was debrainwormed.
Giuliani and Powell aren't his courtroom attorneys -- they're moronic carnival barkers hired (at one point) to yell and stamp their feet and create soundbites for Fox News or OAN. He sends actual lawyers if something serious is on the line.
really? actual lawyers like to get paid, and deadbeat donnie has a rather stiff reputation (although he's more flaccid these days).
That’s not how the criminal justice system works. There’s very limited opportunities to stretch things out, particularly in a high profile case. Very limited discover, so no endless bickering about pretrial stuff. If the judge wants a trial to go fast, that’s typically what happens.
Being able to find 12 “impartial peers” in any high profile case is of course impossible and in truth a myth.
This is just one of the problems with your juridical system
The requirement is not the absence of preconceived notion’s but the willingness to set them aside and judge the facts fairly and impartiality.
does sweden still use the old "if he floats, he's guilty, if he drowns, he's innocent" system?
(if you're going to criticize our system, at least know how it works.)
I do at least know your ratings ain’t that flattering if one is checking the opinions of unbiased international experts..
https://worldjusticeproject.org/rule-of-law-index/country/United%20States
Well, you're the law-talkin' guy, so I hope you're right. They say the wheels of justice grind slowly, but exceedingly fine. From what I've seen so far in the NY cases at least, judges seem to be going along with the drag-things-out-as-long-as-possible strategy and even the DA appears to be getting cold feet now.
That’s a different animal. Criminal cases go fast when judges and prosecutors want them to go fast. But in this case, it’s really clear that the district attorney mostly wants the case to just go away.
”Might”!
Hi I’m Swedish and this is scary.
Is is the future of Republicans ?
Republicans used to be a party of right wing conservatives with a small attachment of right wing extremists, today is it the other way around.
I guess most of us hoped 1/6 just was the embarrassing final chapter of the disastrous presidency of Donald J Trump.
… but it wasn’t.
One can repeatedly find incidents like this in political unstable nations in the third world. Rebellion incited by an outvoted ruler in order to stay in power.
The mission of the mob 1/6 was to murder elected representatives who didn’t fulfill the biddings of Trump and to nullify the result of an election simply because their master didn’t accept it.
When this happens in unstable political systems is the mob consisting of young unemployed uneducated and often mentally unstable men. A dissatisfied and easily manipulated group.
Americans trying to murder Pence and Pelosi was a totally different group. Many was middle age and well established in society. Doctors, architects, engineers. What united them was their color of skin.
This wasn’t the usual established and known right wing activists, this was the minority that calls itself the silent “majority” simply because they finally realized they wasn’t the majority.
When it all did go completely and irreversible wrong was when the Republican elite decided to support the rebellion simply because it was their core voters who supported a violent coup. They also finally realized they couldn’t stay in power simply by continuing to suppress voting rights they needed to be able to nullify results that didn’t go their way.
A game changer!
147 Republican representatives in the Congress supported Trump in trying to nullify the election. US toxic right wing media was trying to outdo each other in order to improve ratings
… this isn’t looking good
There’s an immense amount of published material (including the Mueller report) implicating Trump in an immense amount of criminal activities, including his well documented role in the abortive January 6th coup. There’s absolutely no indication that the DOJ has the slightest interest in investigating any of this.
There’s been no prosecutions of anything related to Trump All of the prosecutions are of low level foot soldiers. None of these prosecutions appear to be designed to move up the food chain past the leadership of the Proud Boys.
There’s no known investigation of any Trump or any high ranking party members. It’s extremely unlikely that such an investigation could be conducted in secret. The subjects of the investigations would have no interest in preserving the secrecy of the investigation so if there was one it would surely be known.
The logic of not prosecuting Trump for fear of his supporters violence is like not prosecuting organized crime or the KKK or motorcycle gangs because you’re afraid of the reprisals. In the long run, Merrick Garland is doing far more damage to the rule of law than Donald Trump.
Moreover, the Democrats' constant fear of "looking partisan" is foolish and counterproductive. When one party "misbehaves" (the media term), and won't police its own, clearly the other party has to do it. Rule of law.
Also, fear of similar reprisals by the criminal party is insane, because everybody KNOWS that's just what Republicans do, all the time, with "justification" or not. Look how long they pursued Bill Clinton, even when he was out of office! And the Hillary investigations went on even longer than Watergate, and came up with even less.
What can we Americans do to encourage or hurry along the needed prosecutions?
Oh, sorry. I meant "Whitewater", not Watergate.
There's nothing to be done. We've consistently elected Democrats and they have consistently been too feckless to fight and too weak to win. I think we're screwed.
The logic of not prosecuting Trump for fear of his supporters violence...
Surely they're not worried about that. Violence on the part of MAGA if anything will help Democrats at the polls.
They're worried about: 1) political blowback from the right, and 2) long odds of getting a conviction.
It’s not like the Republicans have been holding anything back. They’re already at 11, what more could they do?
I don’t see why the odds would be against a conviction. There’s plenty of evidence and Manhattan, Atlanta, or Washington D.C. are MAGA strongholds. And even if they lost the DOJ couldn’t look any weaker and more pathetic than it does now. .
Correction: should be not MAGA strongholds
You seriously think there aren't 12 people who voted for Obama and then Trump and then Biden?