Republican Assault on Democracy and March Towards Fascism

[LFC]

The fascist violence continues as this Texas teen felt emboldened to harm people who he just seemed to find annoying.

When a 16-year-old driver in a black pickup truck “coal-rolled” cyclist Chase Ferrell last Saturday, intentionally spewing a cloud of acrid diesel smoke in his face, he didn’t find it particularly amusing.

“It pissed me off,” Ferrell, who was training along Old Highway 290 in Waller, Texas with a larger group for the upcoming Ironman Texas triathlon, told The Daily Beast. “I was trying to pedal fast to catch up to him and give him a piece of my mind, tell him he was an asshole. And then he tried to do the same thing to the people in the pace line in front of me.”

This time, however, the driver sped up and slammed into the group, hitting six riders.

“He...just hit them,” said Ferrell. “Ran them over. It was nuts.”

“Some have broken lumbars, some have broken wrists, arms, some required surgery,” Khan told The Daily Beast. “To get life-flighted alone, that was a huge bill. And bikes are not cheap—these racing bikes can go as high as $15,000.”

The driver, whose name has not been released by authorities, is “a young man in high school with college aspirations,” his lawyer said five days after the crash. “He’s a very new and inexperienced driver.”

But he has not yet faced any legal repercussions, leaving the cycling community outraged.

In June, a Waller man was sentenced to life in prison for intentionally driving into a group of cyclists during a race in 2017, killing two riders. In August, an intoxicated Maryland man who plowed into seven cyclists—killing one—was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the crash.

I suspect these kind of personal assault crimes to rise thought stats will be tough to come by as red states try to hide, bury, settle, or dismiss them.

[goldenvalley]

Sept 30, 2021 1:37:01 GMT LFC said:

The fascist violence continues as this Texas teen felt emboldened to harm people who he just seemed to find annoying.

When a 16-year-old driver in a black pickup truck “coal-rolled” cyclist Chase Ferrell last Saturday, intentionally spewing a cloud of acrid diesel smoke in his face, he didn’t find it particularly amusing.

“It pissed me off,” Ferrell, who was training along Old Highway 290 in Waller, Texas with a larger group for the upcoming Ironman Texas triathlon, told The Daily Beast. “I was trying to pedal fast to catch up to him and give him a piece of my mind, tell him he was an asshole. And then he tried to do the same thing to the people in the pace line in front of me.”

This time, however, the driver sped up and slammed into the group, hitting six riders.

“He...just hit them,” said Ferrell. “Ran them over. It was nuts.”

“Some have broken lumbars, some have broken wrists, arms, some required surgery,” Khan told The Daily Beast. “To get life-flighted alone, that was a huge bill. And bikes are not cheap—these racing bikes can go as high as $15,000.”

The driver, whose name has not been released by authorities, is “a young man in high school with college aspirations,” his lawyer said five days after the crash. “He’s a very new and inexperienced driver.”

But he has not yet faced any legal repercussions, leaving the cycling community outraged.

In June, a Waller man was sentenced to life in prison for intentionally driving into a group of cyclists during a race in 2017, killing two riders. In August, an intoxicated Maryland man who plowed into seven cyclists—killing one—was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the crash.

I suspect these kind of personal assault crimes to rise thought stats will be tough to come by as red states try to hide, bury, settle, or dismiss them.

He's new and inexperienced?  So he didn't know that hitting people on bikes with a pickup would hurt the people?  

[goldenvalley]

Sept 30, 2021 1:37:01 GMT LFC said:

The fascist violence continues as this Texas teen felt emboldened to harm people who he just seemed to find annoying.

When a 16-year-old driver in a black pickup truck “coal-rolled” cyclist Chase Ferrell last Saturday, intentionally spewing a cloud of acrid diesel smoke in his face, he didn’t find it particularly amusing.

“It pissed me off,” Ferrell, who was training along Old Highway 290 in Waller, Texas with a larger group for the upcoming Ironman Texas triathlon, told The Daily Beast. “I was trying to pedal fast to catch up to him and give him a piece of my mind, tell him he was an asshole. And then he tried to do the same thing to the people in the pace line in front of me.”

This time, however, the driver sped up and slammed into the group, hitting six riders.

“He...just hit them,” said Ferrell. “Ran them over. It was nuts.”

“Some have broken lumbars, some have broken wrists, arms, some required surgery,” Khan told The Daily Beast. “To get life-flighted alone, that was a huge bill. And bikes are not cheap—these racing bikes can go as high as $15,000.”

The driver, whose name has not been released by authorities, is “a young man in high school with college aspirations,” his lawyer said five days after the crash. “He’s a very new and inexperienced driver.”

But he has not yet faced any legal repercussions, leaving the cycling community outraged.

In June, a Waller man was sentenced to life in prison for intentionally driving into a group of cyclists during a race in 2017, killing two riders. In August, an intoxicated Maryland man who plowed into seven cyclists—killing one—was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the crash.

I suspect these kind of personal assault crimes to rise thought stats will be tough to come by as red states try to hide, bury, settle, or dismiss them.

He's new and inexperienced?  So he didn't know that hitting people on bikes with a pickup would hurt the people?  

[pnwguy]

He must have thought the "Real President" Trump would pay for his medical and legal bills. "Just beat the crap out of them". Anyone riding a bicycle must be a liberal Democrat socialist who hates America, or a caravan of illegals on the run from ICE because they are too poor to have cars.

[LFC]

Sept 30, 2021 16:04:29 GMT pnwguy said:

He must have thought the "Real President" Trump would pay for his medical and legal bills. "Just beat the crap out of them". Anyone riding a bicycle must be a liberal Democrat socialist who hates America, or a caravan of illegals on the run from ICE because they are too poor to have cars pickup trucks.

FIFY

[pnwguy]

Sept 30, 2021 17:41:48 GMT LFC said:

Sept 30, 2021 16:04:29 GMT pnwguy said:

He must have thought the "Real President" Trump would pay for his medical and legal bills. "Just beat the crap out of them". Anyone riding a bicycle must be a liberal Democrat socialist who hates America, or a caravan of illegals on the run from ICE because they are too poor to have cars pickup trucks.

FIFY

And a pickup truck isn't real unless the MPG is a single digit -- just like the highest grade they finished. 

[LFC]

This needs to happen. Any fascist involved in an attempt to overthrow an election must be prosecuted and never allowed anywhere near an election for the rest of their lives. If they're a lawyer they should be disbarred for life. We can't allow the fascists to win.

A group of high-profile lawyers on Tuesday called for the Washington, D.C. Court of Appeals to investigate Jeffrey Clark, a former Department of Justice official, for his efforts to have the DOJ declare the 2020 election results unreliable.

Clark, the letter said, violated professional rules against dishonesty when he attempted to weaponize the DOJ in Donald Trump’s effort to steal a second term as president.

“Mr. Clark’s actions were based on falsehoods with no factual support and were designed to advance his own personal and political interests at the expense of his client, the government of the United States,” the lawyers wrote.

“This complaint is not about politics, political beliefs or political alliances,” they added. “It is instead about law, in the form of ethical rules that govern the conduct of every lawyer who practices in the District of Columbia, from the solo practitioner to the Attorney General of the United States. There is substantial evidence that Mr. Clark violated those rules as he took deliberate steps that seriously risked electoral chaos and a constitutional crisis.”

Among the letter’s signatories were Stuart M. Gerson, the former acting attorney general and George H.W. Bush administration official, Norm Eisen, a co-counsel for the House Judiciary Committee in Donald Trump’s first impeachment hearing, Debra Katz, a civil rights lawyer known recently for representing Christine Blasey Ford, and several others.

[LFC]

A group of patriots is calling for fascist attorney Josh Eastman to be investigated and potentially disbarred in California. To me his actions sound an awful lot like conspiring to overthrow a federal election and he should be imprisoned for his actions.

A bipartisan group of former officials and legal heavyweights, including two former federal judges, asked the California bar association Monday to investigate the conduct of John Eastman, the adviser to then-President Donald Trump who mapped out a legal strategy to overturn the 2020 election results.

The complaint, also signed by two former justices of the California Supreme Court, cites Eastman’s work in election challenges rejected by the Supreme Court and his speech at a Jan. 6 rally in Washington before a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol. But the 24-page memo centers on Eastman’s alleged role in pressing Vice President Mike Pence not to count electoral votes on Jan. 6 and certify President Biden as the winner.

“The available evidence supports a strong case that the State Bar should investigate whether, in the course of representing Mr. Trump, Mr. Eastman violated his ethical obligations as an attorney by filing frivolous claims, making false statements and engaging in deceptive conduct,” the letter said. “There is also a strong basis to investigate whether Mr. Eastman assisted in unlawful actions by his client, Mr. Trump,” to overturn the results of a legitimate election.

[goldenvalley]

Oct 5, 2021 20:15:46 GMT LFC said:

A group of patriots is calling for fascist attorney Josh Eastman to be investigated and potentially disbarred in California. To me his actions sound an awful lot like conspiring to overthrow a federal election and he should be imprisoned for his actions.

A bipartisan group of former officials and legal heavyweights, including two former federal judges, asked the California bar association Monday to investigate the conduct of John Eastman, the adviser to then-President Donald Trump who mapped out a legal strategy to overturn the 2020 election results.

The complaint, also signed by two former justices of the California Supreme Court, cites Eastman’s work in election challenges rejected by the Supreme Court and his speech at a Jan. 6 rally in Washington before a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol. But the 24-page memo centers on Eastman’s alleged role in pressing Vice President Mike Pence not to count electoral votes on Jan. 6 and certify President Biden as the winner.

“The available evidence supports a strong case that the State Bar should investigate whether, in the course of representing Mr. Trump, Mr. Eastman violated his ethical obligations as an attorney by filing frivolous claims, making false statements and engaging in deceptive conduct,” the letter said. “There is also a strong basis to investigate whether Mr. Eastman assisted in unlawful actions by his client, Mr. Trump,” to overturn the results of a legitimate election.

Disbarment...big deal if you want to practice law to make money.  This guy probably hasn't practiced law in years.  Our concepts of insurrection and treason need to be updated.  Writing up a BS justification to support an illegal move is just as much a treasonous act as passing the nuclear codes to a Chinese official.  

[LFC]

Another Republican fascist who announces his disdain for American democracy ... unless, of course, he wins. Stealing elections is now completely and openly accepted in the Republican Party.

Republican Senate candidate in Nevada wouldn’t say whether he would vote to overturn the results of the next presidential election, an issue that more GOP candidates running for both state and federal office may be called on to confront.

Former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt dodged a question about certifying the 2024 results in Reno last week.

“I’m not going to answer that kind of hypothetical,” he told a KRNV interviewer during a campaign stop Oct. 1 when asked whether he would overturn the outcome.

Pressed by the interviewer, Laxalt said, “It’s absolutely not a fair question ― four years from now, who may be in an office and who may be running. We stood for election integrity in 2020. I continue to think it’s a problem for our state.”

Former President Donald Trump has teased another White House bid in 2024, which could give Trump-aligned senators and House members another opportunity to vote against certifying the election results based on phony claims of election rigging. In both chambers, 147 Republicans voted against certifying the 2020 Electoral College results that declared Joe Biden the winner of the presidential race.

Like many Republicans running to swing control of the House and Senate next year, Laxalt has promoted the bogus narrative that widespread fraud was to blame for Trump’s losses in six key battlegrounds.

Looking to the midterms and beyond, his remarks signal the willingness of Republicans to project fraud on elections that haven’t even happened. And whether to certify election results has become something of a litmus test for GOP candidates.

Last week, Kari Lake, Trump’s choice for Arizona governor in 2022, told One America News Network that she wouldn’t have certified her state’s election results for Biden had she been governor.

[LFC]

From NY MAg:

Anybody Fighting Joe Biden Is Helping Trump’s Next Coup

All Republican politics is now functionally authoritarian.

In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s bid to secure an unelected second term, his former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, in an extensive interview with Tim Alberta, registered her disgust: “He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t let that ever happen again.” According to Haley’s self-exonerating account, Trump had changed in a way she failed to anticipate. “The person that I worked with is not the person that I have watched since the election,” she said. “Never did I think he would spiral out like this … I don’t feel like I know who he is anymore.”

Haley pleaded that she missed every sign — decades of signs — that Trump posed a menace to American democracy. This is an excuse that can only be used once. But now, having admitted she never would have followed Trump had she known where the path would lead, she is prepared to follow him once again. “We need him in the Republican Party,” she told John McCormick in a new interview. “I don’t want us to go back to the days before Trump.”

Haley’s journey follows a path most of her fellow Republican officeholders have trod: first denying Trump’s authoritarian inclinations and then ultimately accepting them. Robert Kagan, a prominent neoconservative and formerly influential Republican adviser, seized the attention of the intelligentsia by warning in a Washington Post essay that the constitutional crisis had already arrived. Trump is likely to win the party’s presidential nomination; ergo, the Republican Party is presumptively a vehicle for Trump’s authoritarian ambitions. Therefore — and here was the sharp end of the argument — anything advancing the Republican Party is a vehicle for Trump’s attack on the Constitution.

Kagan’s provocation irritated his former allies because it closed off any pretense that Republicans engage in normal politics without endangering the republic. Five years ago, they could hyperventilate about Hillary Clinton’s email server while denying they had any connection to Trump’s already evident threat to democracy. Now, all plausible deniability is gone. Anybody who supports the party’s normal political operations — even the handful of remaining open Trump critics — is throwing lit matches around the kindling of Trump’s next Reichstag fire.

What’s striking is how few Republicans accept the idea that the insurrection has fundamentally changed anything. None of them are acting as if their party poses any danger. Most of them are carrying on as if the next Republican nominee might well be somebody like Nelson Rockefeller. Zero Republicans have even entertained joining with Democrats to support a bill to protect voting or elections from the subversion campaign Trump’s allies are energetically carrying out in various red states.

Their apparent calculation is that even if they still harbor private concerns over the party’s direction, “normal” Republican partisanship remains completely kosher. Neither Kevin McCarthy nor Mitch McConnell has faced any defections from his caucus — the one major bipartisan effort in Congress, an infrastructure bill, was a ploy designed to wedge off support for Biden’s broader social agenda and came with the approval of leadership.

Mitt Romney, the bravest of the Republican Trump critics in the Senate, explained that he was supporting his party’s filibuster on a Democratic plan to lift the debt ceiling. “We’re not voting in any way to help raise the debt ceiling,” he told reporters. “As a group, we are all together.” As a raw partisan gambit, it makes perfect sense: Threaten a debt-ceiling breach, and potential economic meltdown puts pressure on Biden and compresses his party’s space to maneuver its agenda through Congress. Romney did not seem to have any misgivings that increasing the chance that Biden fails would necessarily increase the chance that Trump returns to power. He seemed able, like his entire party, to compartmentalize.

The reason you can’t cordon off Trump from the rest of the party is that we now live in something functionally resembling a parliamentary system. Biden leads the governing party. Trump is the leader of the opposition. To oppose the one is to support the other.

The primary rationalization for refusing to treat Trump as a national emergency has remained consistent all along: He either doesn’t mean what he says or he lacks the ability to do what he wants. “What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time? No one seriously thinks the results will change,” an anonymous Republican official told the Washington Post days after the election.

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat has advanced versions of this case several times and returned to the subject again recently. Forming a popular front to block Trump and his party was simply unnecessary, he insisted, because the threat did not justify such an extreme step. “My thesis,” he argued, “is that Trump is an adventurer of few consistent principles rather than a Hitler, that we’ve seen enough from watching him in power to understand his weaknesses and incapacities, and that his threat to constitutional norms is one of many percolating dangers in the United States today, not a singular danger that should organize all other political choices and suspend all other disagreements.”

Douthat continues to get raked over the coals, and it seems deservedly so.

[goldenvalley]

Douthat and company desperately want to believe that if Trump drops dead, the Republican Party will return to not sure what... He seems to overlook the people who faithfully vote for their image of Trump and those that capitalized on Trump's popularity to propagate their own ideas (and grifts.

[LFC]

Oct 7, 2021 0:49:39 GMT goldenvalley said:

Douthat and company desperately want to believe that if Trump drops dead, the Republican Party will return to not sure what... He seems to overlook the people who faithfully vote for their image of Trump and those that capitalized on Trump's popularity to propagate their own ideas (and grifts.

Like Frum went through he's finding it hard to admit that he has no team anymore. It took years and a humiliating defense of Romney for Frum to snap. Even though he's not a kneejerk reactionary Ross will never really side with the Dems except on the occasional specific issue. But his team has descended into insanity, endless lies alternative facts, and fascism and that leaves him stranded. It's tough being out in the wilderness with no political power but it's where honest conservatives have to place themselves. Honest, patriotic conservatives will side with the Dems just to snap the fascism cycle but that takes a lot more guts than most of them have.

[LFC]

Yes, Trump and his cronies really were trying to weaponize the DOJ in order to steal the election. What a shock. 

Some Key Takeaways:

• The report zeroes in on the Jan. 3 Oval Office meeting with DOJ bigwigs.
• Jeff Clark spearheaded the campaign to have the DOJ declare the election corrupt.
• DOJ leadership threatened to resign en masse if Trump installed Clark as acting attorney general.
• White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and his deputy Patrick Philbin threatened to resign as well.
• The panel confirmed that Trump wanted to fire U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia BJay Pak because he believed the prosecutor was a “never-Trumper,” sparking Pak’s forced resignation.
• Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) played a key role in pressing a DOJ official to participate in the Big Lie.

The Senate Judiciary Committee released a sweeping, 400-page report on Thursday delving into former President Trump’s attempts to wield the Justice Department to subvert the 2020 election.

The report documents efforts that include the forced resignation of U.S Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia BJay Pak, as first reported by TPM, and former assistant attorney general Jeffrey Bossert Clark’s attempts to have the DOJ declare the election tainted by fraud.

The report, issued by Democrats in the majority, is based in part on interviews with senior Trump-era DOJ officials who were allowed to testify after Attorney General Merrick Garland waived privilege that would normally have barred them. Clark, the panel said, has not yet agreed to testify, while the National Archives have yet to supply the panel with documents. The Committee’s probe is ongoing.

“This report shows the American people just how close we came to a constitutional crisis,” Judiciary Committee Chair Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) said in a statement.

I guess we now know why Bill Barr stepped out of the way. He probably realized they didn't throw out enough honest people to make it work so he didn't want to be tainted by failure. Judging from his behavior as AG I have no illusions that he had any higher motives. He's been all about presidential authoritarianism his entire career.

[LFC]

Oct 7, 2021 15:10:53 GMT LFC said:

I guess we now know why Bill Barr stepped out of the way. He probably realized they didn't throw out enough honest people to make it work so he didn't want to be tainted by failure. Judging from his behavior as AG I have no illusions that he had any higher motives. He's been all about presidential authoritarianism his entire career.

Well confirmation of that didn't take long. TPM has a running set of posts here on the findings in the report. Barr was setting up the DOJ to make unfounded accusations of fraud before he left.

Though Trump’s bid to hijack the DOJ to stay in power began in earnest after Barr left, the report makes it clear that the former AG took the first crucial steps towards giving the DOJ an unprecedented role in determining the election outcome.

Barr did this via a Nov. 9 policy change which overturned a decades-long policy that banned federal prosecutors from taking overt steps to investigate election-related issues before the results were decided.

This cleared the way for Trump and his allies to demand that the DOJ do as much as possible to cast doubt on the election. And, in some cases, the report says, it resulted in real investigations into baseless claims.

“Consistent with this directive and following additional personal involvement by Barr, DOJ took overt steps to investigate false claims of election fraud before certification in one instance detailed to the Committee—and likely others,” the report reads.

[LFC]

More on Barr's help in pushing The Big Lie.

Barr Played Along With Trump In Keeping Georgia Investigations Going

Even after Barr issued the memo allowing investigations to take place before the results were certified, federal prosecutors in DOJ’s Public Integrity Unit tried to stop some of the probes from going forward.

The report says that in most cases, DOJ leadership overruled concerns to allow the investigations to go forward.

The report details one case in which Barr overruled Public Integrity. That was the case of baseless allegations that “election workers at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena secretly tabulated suitcases full of illegal ballots.”

The Public Integrity Unit suggested that the claims were baseless and unworthy of investigation — the Georgia Secretary of State had already dismissed them.

“Barr nonetheless directed the FBI to interview witnesses about the State Farm claims; like the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office, the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office also concluded they were meritless,” the report reads.

An integrity unit in Barr's DOJ was like a vestigial tail on a baby, just a useless throwback to another era. And again I'm more and more convinced that Barr would have been all in if he thought stealing the election would have worked. He's evil and anti-democracy but he's not dumb.

[LFC]

Man, Clark really is a hard-core fascist.

Clark Wanted AG To Give Presser Stating ‘There Was Corruption’

Later on Dec. 28, the report said, Clark met with Rosen and Donoghue in the attorney general’s conference room.

There, in what was described as a “difficult” and “heated” conversation, Clark demanded again that Rosen send the “proof of concept” letter that would clear a pathway for various states to overturn the election results.

According to the report, Clark told Rosen that he wanted the acting AG to “hold a press conference where he announced that ‘there was corruption.'”

[LFC]

Trump was pissed at Rosen for not openly helping him overthrow the election.

On Jan. 3, days before Donald Trump’s supporters went on to ransack the U.S. Capitol, the president allegedly opened a high-stakes Oval Office meeting by complaining to his acting attorney general that he was doing nothing to help him “overturn” his election defeat by Joe Biden.

The extraordinary claim was made by former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen in an interim report released by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday morning. It concludes that Trump and his top aides repeatedly put pressure on Justice Department officials to endorse his election conspiracy theories and help him reverse the result.

In one particularly egregious example, Rosen recalled that Trump opened an Oval Office meeting on the evening of Jan. 3 by complaining to the gathered officials: “One thing we know is you, Rosen, aren’t going to do anything to overturn the election.” The meeting would end with several DOJ officials and White House counsel Pat Cipollone threatening to quit over Trump’s plan to replace Rosen with a MAGA loyalist.

Overall, the interim report lists nine calls and meetings with Rosen and Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue between mid-December and early January in which Trump demanded help in his quest to delegitimize the election and remain in the White House.

In an excoriating conclusion, it states: “Beginning on the day former Attorney General William Barr announced his resignation and continuing almost until the January 6 insurrection, Trump directly and repeatedly asked DOJ’s acting leadership to initiate investigations, file lawsuits on his behalf, and publicly declare the 2020 election ‘corrupt.’”

“In attempting to enlist DOJ for personal, political purposes in an effort to maintain his hold on the White House, Trump grossly abused the power of the presidency. He also arguably violated the criminal provisions of the Hatch Act, which prevent any person—including the president—from commanding federal government employees to engage in political activity.”

Of the nine meetings and calls, two of them happened on one manic day— Jan. 3—when Trump had become obsessed on the idea of ditching Rosen and installing loyalist Jeffrey Clark as acting attorney general.

The report states that Clark—who was, at the time, a little-known Justice Department official—held multiple meetings with Trump in the dying weeks of his presidency about how to reverse the result, and Clark allegedly urged bosses Rosen and Donoghue to falsely inform Georgia officials that the DOJ had identified “significant” issues with its election result.

[goldenvalley]

I’ve managed to read 3 post Trump books. One or another of them recounted these events. Once again my question is why didn’t these loyal patriots go public at the time it was happening. Yeah they didn’t carry out his schemes but that’s not enough. Loyalty to the office of the president does not justify covering up the president’s illegal scheming and that of his enablers.

[AnBr]

Idaho Wants Mike Lindell To Pay for Frivolous Audit he Forced on State

[LFC]

More from the TPM coverage link. Trump wanted to use SCOTUS to keep him in the White House. This is one of the reasons why Moscow Mitch and the GOP in general has been so diligent about packing the courts with Federalist Society drones. Imagine if the race had been closer and instead of Trump they actually had somebody who wasn't a moron in the Oval Office.

In the days after DOJ leadership had, among other things, fended off an attempt to have the Department file a pre-written Supreme Court case demanding an injunction blocking Biden swing state electors from going forward, Trump met at the Oval Office with Donoghue and Rosen, the report said.

It was Dec. 31. Trump was “very frustrated” to hear that DOJ would not file the Supreme Court case, which had been pushed by private citizen and Texas lawyer Kurt Olson.

Instead, according to the report, Trump suggested something else to the group, which included White House counsel Pat Cipollone and his deputy Patrick Philbin: a special counsel.

“I think Ken Cuccinelli would be a great special counsel,” Trump said of the former acting DHS deputy secretary.

That's right, they wanted to push the highest court in the nation to block the results of a free and air election to keep Trump in the White House. The use of the presidency to steal an election doesn't get much more blatant than that.

And with the current SCOTUS would anybody here be at all confident that the Fascist Five wouldn't go along? What if it wasn't Trump and their guy was rabidly anti-abortion? Maybe Catholic? I have zero faith that they wouldn't sacrifice American democracy to their God(tm). They're already moving in that direction.

[LFC]

TPM has Five Key Takeaways From The Senate Report On DOJ And The Big Lie. Number 2 was "Trump beckoned a coterie of maniacs to pressure DOJ leaders."

[LFC]

Josh Marshall states the obvious in Treat Trump Like the Common Perp He Is, not that I have much faith it will happen. Would going after an ex-president for things he did in office be unprecedented? Sure. Did Trump do things in office that were unprecedented? Oh HELL yeah. He talks about Trump trying to invoke executive privilege, except that he no longer has that, and trying to invoke attorney client privilege, except most of those being subpoenaed never served as his attorneys. Here's the finish.

Preventing the President from stymieing a lawful investigation will require action by three separate parties. Congress must use fines and eventually imprisonment to compel action. The Department of Justice must refrain from imposing needless barriers under the institutional misapprehension that these are customary defenses of presidential privilege. It must also use its enforcement capacity to assist Congress. Finally, a corrupted federal judiciary must resist the temptation to maim the law to enable the former president’s law-breaking.

The decision on whether to charge a former President with a crime is a weighty one. The decision to conduct a proper investigation of one is not. There are no excuses this time. Trump is just another lawbreaker and target of an investigation. Vindicate the law.

[pnwguy]

It IS executive privilege is you believe you are still President. A jury of MAGAts will vote 12-0 for you. And perhaps SCOTUS will go 6-3 unless Roberts sides with sanity.

[LFC]

At every turn we find another way the Trump administration overstepped the boundaries of precedent and law. If you want examples of "The Deep State" then look no further than Trump. Here's a case of an unaccountable agency of state secret police. Welcome to the Republican dream for 'Murica.

A new government report has revealed that a secretive counterterrorism team interrogated dozens of American activists and journalists at the border as part of the Trump administration’s sweeping response to fears about a large migrant “caravan” that was making its way to the United States’ southern border.

A ProPublica story in May first revealed the involvement of the counterterrorism team. But the new report, from the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general, shows the unit’s assignment was far broader than previously known.

According to the report, at least 51 U.S. citizens were flagged for interrogation — often based on evidence as flimsy as once having ridden in a car across the border with someone suspected of aiding the caravan.

Thirty-nine of those Americans crossed the border shortly after being flagged and were detained and interrogated. All of those interrogations, the report found, were conducted by members of the Tactical Terrorism Response Team, a little-known unit of Customs and Border Protection trained in counterterrorism, not immigration issues. The existence of the inspector general’s report was first disclosed by Politico.

Tarek Ismail of the City University of New York, who’s been investigating the role of the counterterrorism units and is part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking documents on them, told ProPublica that he’d never seen the unit’s work detailed in a government report before. “There’s so little information out there about the TTRT that it’s astounding that the report talks about them in such a matter-of-fact way, as if it’s nothing to be concerned about,” he told ProPublica.

Controls? Only if they choose to follow them. There appears to be absolutely no oversight until well after the fact and a different party in the White House.

The report notes that citizens are only supposed to be flagged for border interrogations when they are suspected of criminal activity themselves. But officials were either unaware of the decades-old policy or ignored it. At least two senior officials told investigators that people could be stopped for questioning for “virtually any reason,” according to the report.

This sounds an awful lot like the approach to randomly arresting and detaining BLM protestors and people just around the protests without having even the remotest hint of "probable cause" which has become "just because." It's one way a fascist government gains and maintains control over the people.