It smells like bullshit that they weren’t claiming specific charges for specific crimes? Have you read this thread? Here, I’ll help you if scrolling is too much fatigue for you.
That’s the OP. Or you can read the thread title. And a bit farther down…
It’s not a “leap of logic” to read what people fucking wrote. He wasn’t ever going to go after Trump on anything. This wasn’t solely about the January 6th insurrection, in fact that wasn’t even mentioned until the 17th post of the thread. Though that was certainly foremost on people’s minds for much of the thread and used as a shining example of what should be pursued and wasn’t going to be, the claim was that he would never go after him.
My quotes here aren’t to call people out, just FYI, since some people have already acknowledged they were mistaken, but just to show how wrong folks were, and how your attempt to move goalposts over a year later is just so badly done.
Go after Trump for what? What is it you think they’re talking about?
The only thing they 100% definitely were not talking about is the classified documents case, because that didn’t exist yet.
Arguing that they weren’t talking about anything specific, but just in general, like if Trump committed a crime in the future, is quite disingenuous. Definite waft of bullshit.
The original OP stands correct as of today. The crimes the OP wanted Garland to go after Trump for, Garland still has not gone after Trump for. Instead, Garland appointed somebody else to go after Trump for something else that hadn’t even happened yet. This isn’t the humiliating own you think it is.
For fucks’ sake, your willful ignorance is pathetic. I quoted it to you. Your childish fingers in the ears is sad.
That is what they said you blithering idiot. They said he wouldn’t go after Trump for anything. They even explained why. Garland was too much of a political creature. He didn’t want to affect an election. He was following a doctrine set by Bill Barr, that a former president is hands-off.
You are completely full of shit and should be ashamed. Your argument is downright Trumpian.
Hell, a few people with a lot more integrity than you came back and said they were wrong. Are you calling them liars too? The same people you are white-knighting for? Stop taking whatever you’re on, it’s clearly not working.
According to the WaPo article, the bottom-up approach didn’t actually build any case against Trump or his inner circle. When they started the probe into Trump and his people, it was based off of all the other “stupid coup” stuff with the fake electors and fraud and whatnot, and it was based off of evidence that they had the evidence to go after from the start, and which they were beaten to by the house, some investigations they weren’t a part of and the media.
To be fair: as of this moment nobody is going after Trump, Meadows et al. for what happened on J6, despite mountains of video/communications evidence.
Apparently the DoJ does not think it is responsible to police what an administration does when in office. (Which is a perfectly valid pov)
The documents case is about something that happened after they left office.
And currently Donald Trump has not been convicted of anything. I’ll wear sackcloth and ashes when he’s declared guilty. Even if all I could say at that point is that Garland didn’t get in the way I’ll still concede. But if he’s not found guilty of a federal crime then Garland gets no credit at all. In that case I don’t really expect to see those who have been defending him, and consequently defending Trump post any apologies though, that would be par for this course.
This has moved the goalposts so far you’re not even in the stadium anymore.
The whole point of this thread was the mistaken assertion, now proven completely wrong, that Garland will not take action against Trump for political reasons. With an avalanche of charges and other investigations ongoing, that argument is done.
So who appointed Jack Smith? Are you now trying to spread the lie that Garland had nothing to do with that?
I don’t think you will. You clearly don’t care much about truth, so I expect you’ll just continue lying.
We are 18 months past the televised, live tweeted, investigated by the house, etc. event.
If you are seriously claiming they (the DoJ) are “investigating” you must have little faith in their (the DoJ) competence.
I think the DoJ thinks it is not their job. Just like Mueller’s investigation provided plenty proof of wrongdoing and 0 charges for the administration (I might or might not agree with the DoJ’s interpretation of their jurisdiction – that is not the point.) They apparently believe it is the job of House, Senate and voters to reprimand a president and have stated such repeatedly following the Mueller thing.
Again: kudos to the DoJ for actually procecuting Trump. But i’m not hopefull of the “investigation” into J6 coming to an end anytime soon.
What do you think you’re winning here? This is a thread about Garland going after Trump. Whether he has or not is still open to question because he intentionally waited 2 years to do anything and it’s open to question if this approach is intended to result in a conviction or just to stall until it’s too late. Go ahead and act the fool by proclaiming that Garland is doing a great job going after Trump, It’s just like the MAGATs bragging about their wall.
Let me add, I’ve never been a 100% Garland apologist. I expressed frustration multiple times at how slow things were, though assurances by others mollified my concerns somewhat. I do think that frustration was justified with the news that Garland deliberately kept the investigations into 1/6 focused on the small players and not Trump or his orbit, and that strategy did not build a case against Trump. I’m absolutely not happy with that.
I’m glad that they did eventually get around to that investigation which is ongoing. And the documents case seemed to be pursued without much if any dithering. Bringing in Jack Smith was a great move that hopefully will pay off. We already have serious charges with what looks like a very strong case Trump has no chance of wiggling out of.
The only thing I’m anxious about is how quickly a conviction will come, what the sentence is, and how much that hinders Trump’s ability to do more harm to the country.
That’s not what @Grrr wrote. It’s quite a jump you’re making.
Yes. Again, that’s the fucking point. This delayed the investigation of Trump and his cronies a year or more. This isn’t difficult.
They did nothing about Trump and the leaders of the coup.
Meanwhile, the damage has been done. Trump has been given a lot of extra time running free and damaging the country.
Would this have happened without the Jan. 6 committee? He eventually did the right thing. Maybe without them, he eventually would’ve, but how much longer? After the 2024 election so it wouldn’t look political? He finally caved to the pressure. But should he get credit for that?
No it’s not. The documents case is a bit easier to get a conviction on.
And look, we’re all happy he finally appointed Jack Smith. What took so long?
Did he cave, or was this his plan? Or a million other possibilities? I don’t know for sure, and neither do the reporters – they’re just speculating based on what various sources say about Garland’s feelings. Let’s see how this plays out. It’s too early to be concluding that he did a bad job (or a good job for that matter).
IMHO, much of the bickering in this thread could have been avoided, if the OP were titled “F Merrick Garland (He’ll be taking too long to go after anyone involved in trying to overturn the 2020 election (beyond a slow but steady prosecution of Jan 6 DC coup-attempt “foot-soldiers”), and this may make it more likely that that the higher-ups like Trump go unpunished)”
The title just says “anyone,” though — leaving the door open to silly semantic tussles.
Except that when people argued that justice might be slow but would eventually happen, others said they were wrong and it would never happen. Trump was immune to prosecution.
I’ve been trying to push back on this recent attempt at revisionist history belied by the very words written in this thread. No, this wasn’t an issue of semantics. There were some who argued that it might be slow but would eventually come, others said they were wrong and Garland should be fired because he was too afraid to act.
So yes, you’re right, bickering would have been avoided if people weren’t putting on a fatalist “we’re all doomed” emo bullshit argument. And it wouldn’t be going on now if they weren’t still doing it.
True. We’ll know more in a year or two, but we’ll never know for sure how things might have played out differently, if blah blah.
I agree some in this thread haven’t wanted to see the nuances — the gray areas. As you said, they are convinced no justice will be done for any higher-ups. That seems increasingly unlikely…but they are probably partially right, in that (when all is said and done), more justice could have been done toward more higher-ups, had the DoJ acted more aggressively and sooner.
Absolutely. I’m glad that justice is being done, and there is a 0% chance that Trump gets out of this unscathed. All that remains to be seen is what the effects are.
It’s clear that more could have been done sooner. If Garland was worried that people would accuse him and the Biden administration of a politicized witch hunt, well, guess what. It happened anyway. I don’t think he understood what kind of deplorables he was dealing with, both in Congress and in the public.
But at least for whatever reason it did eventually happen, and he deserves credit for putting a tenacious and efficient attack dog on the case. Let’s see where it ends up.
I was afraid that Trump was immune to prosecution. Now that he is being prosecuted, it is clear that those fears were groundless.
I remain afraid that Trump is immune to conviction. I really, truly believed that George Washington had estabished that the president was “first among equals,” which obviously includes being subject to the rule of law. Apparently, I misunderstood, because there’s a lively debate as to whether sitting or former presidents are subject to the law in the same way that ordinary Americans are.
It’s because my long-held belief in equality before the law has been so vociferously challenged that I began to question Garland. That WaPo article, while not as authoritative as an interview with Garland himself, suggests that his office is also less sure than I was that former presidents can / should be prosecuted, and took some time to get going on the project.
I will be thrilled to see Trump jailed or personally fined or experience any other real, personal consequence for his crimes, but I remain skeptical. It remains easy for a 77-year-old with lawyers to run out the clock. His personal clock is probably somewhere between 0 and 10 years, and the election clock is 18 months (with a possible two months off if you count the November results).
It’s pretty clear, though possibly falsely, that Garland did not place this nearly as high a priority as I and others in this thread think he should have. It’s also evidently true that he, at least via his office, didn’t completely punt. So I’ll change my opinion on Garland and give him a grade of C, and raise that to a B- on Trump’s conviction. I’m afraid he lost the chance at an A-grade a long time ago.