Yes. The idea that it’s necessary or even proper for DOJ to spend years trying to flip every one of the thousands who entered the Capitol—and let years go by without talking to Hutchinson and others who worked in the White House, because ‘we have to build a foundation first’—is counter-logical.
The Jan 6 Committee hearings forced DOJ, through the power of public opinion, to move beyond what does appear to be a position of ‘it doesn’t matter if we don’t talk to WH personnel for three or four years.’
And yes: taking years would have mattered. ‘Getting the Capitol-invasion thousands to flip on their militia-leaders, then getting those leaders to flip on people working for Stone, Flynn et al, then get those people working for Stone, Flynn et al to flip on Stone, Flynn et al’ would have taken many years. And meanwhile the potential testimony of Hutchinson and dozens more working in the Trump WH on 1/6 would have become less valuable, simply because of the passage of time.
The position ‘anyone suggesting Garland isn’t a brilliant tactician doing exactly what needs to be done at every moment, must be ignorant or stupid or malicious or all three’ is indefensible. Common sense rules it out.
Yup. The apologists keep saying we just don’t understand. We do understand, Garland was too slow. When the crime is committed in public you don’t need to start at the bottom. And he continues to use weasel words in regard to prosecution of Trump, or anyone. Apparently he’s not sure that a conspiracy to overthrow the government which is acted upon and captured on camera is against the law.
No one is suggesting that the DOJ has to work their way up, fucking individual insurrectionist after insurrectionist.
I don’t know what the DOJ has planned, but I’m not ready to cry that the sky has fallen. Good luck with that.
We get it you want Trump behind bars ASAP. I want Trump behind bars ASAP. Aspenglow wants Trump behind bars ASAP, and in all likelihood Garland wants Trump behind bars ASAP too.
If this was a movie and Trump was some Mafioso it would make sense for the bright newly elected DA to ride into office and say “Now that I’m here Boss Trump’s days are numbered, I’m coming for you big guy and you’re gonna pay!” But Trump isn’t an ordinary perp, he’s the fucking head of the fucking opposition party. And if If Garland completes his swearing in ceremony with an announcement that the top priority of this administration is to get Donald J Trump dead to rights, he loses the war right there. It isn’t about investigating the crime its about getting rid of the opposition. He had Trump marked from the start and was just searching for a crime to pin on him.
So for that reason it is vitally important that Garland starts the investigations somewhere away from Trump, then work your way inwards following lead after lead so that when you do eventually get to Trump you can show that he wasn’t specifically targeted, he was just where all of the evidence led. He know what the picture on the puzzle looks like he’s seen in on the front of the box, but he still needs to show that he put it together piece by piece. And he needs to do so quietly.
This is also where the Congressional investigators have an advantage. They don’t have to appear to be non-partisan, everyone expects that of them. So if they come in and dig up a bunch of dirt specifically aimed at Trump and publicize it on national TV, it’s no problem. And now that the cat is out of the bag, the DOJ can play off it as just following up on leads that others brought to light.
I will say that I might be talking out of my ass, but I assume Garland realizes that if he’s going to charge Trump over his role in the January 6 riots, he knows that doing it after Trump is re-elected as President is too late.
I’m sure he realizes he doesn’t literally have an unlimited amount of time to do it.
I don’t want anything ASAP, I want it done right, and Garland has had plenty of time. He’s obviously moving too slow. He has to stop considering Trump untouchable. The evidence will speak for itself but it has to be gathered. He’s given a year and half for the key players involved to make up excuses for their actions. They should have been put under oath long ago. Now we’ve found that text messages related to Jan. 6 were deleted by Trump appointees and this was known long ago, investigated by other Trump appointees who didn’t bother to gather evidence when it was offered to them. Where was Garland in all this? Why wasn’t he looking for those messages a year and a half ago?
Trump and the filth that follow him will say that Trump was targeted with phony evidence no matter what. I repeat, no matter what. I repeat again, no matter what. There is no point in considering the Trump side reaction. The evidence has to be gathered, evaluated, and if it is sufficient he has to seek an indictment. There is nothing more to it and that’s where he’s been failing because he has spent way too much time without even interviewing any of the key figures yet. Tick tock Garland.
I blame the FBI and that Federalist Society Trump crony Christopher Wray, way more than Garland. They’re supposed to catch them, it’s Garland’s job to cook them.
Yet Wray has publicly stated that he just doesn’t see a connection between the January 6th riots and Trump’s election loss.
As for the idea that this is a normal investigation, completely non-partisan and unrigged…….is it normal for the cops to publicly announce halfway through the investigation that there’s no evidence of a crime, even when said evidence is public record?
I think nothing’s going to happen to Trump or anyone connected with him, and I think that was decided before he left office, probably in exchange for him not pardoning the everyone. They agreed to let the rioters take the heat and protect their pals. I hope I’m wrong, but that’s what it smells like to me.
You keep saying this. But I keep hearing people who are very familiar with the process making complaints about Garland. Schiff and Raskin have been complaining for a while now. You think they don’t understand how this works? I’ve seen Garland criticisms from former DoJ people. From law professors, including one who was one of Garland’s teachers. Quite frankly, I have more trust in them than you. Go lecture Adam Schiff please. He’s apparently as stupid as we are.
But do you need to start with the people who were several layers under Alice? Start with Alice.
Why wasn’t she there a year ago? Which of her underlings did they need to charge before calling her in?
I don’t care how much you think he’s doing a great job: nov 2022 is the fucking deadline for US democracy. Either Trump is behind bars by then or Garland is.
^ I inadvertently left out something like this in my reply to Bobot. Yes, the crucial fact we should be taking away from DOJ’s recent questioning of Hutchison is that it it recent. They publicly admitted they were blind-sided by her 1/6-hearing testimony. That this could occur means that not only did DOJ fail to talk to Hutchinson in a timely fashion, but they also failed to talk to other Trump-WH personnel in a timely fashion.
I largely agree, though I think it’s possible that DOJ will attempt to quiet criticism by going through the steps involved in indicting John Eastman. And possibly Jeffrey Clark, though that’s less likely since he was actually an official in Trump’s Administration. (Eastman was only ever a hired hand, and thus more likely to be seen as fair game by Garland.)
By alternating snippets of information about Eastman’s progress through the process, with stern statements before cameras about DOJ working without fear or favor (etc.), a lot of time can be made to pass without any danger of having to indict GOP officials or office-holders.
This is stupid, because neither will happen by November 2022.
Even if Trump were to be indicted, it would take about a year to bring him to trial.
And even if the GOP takes over Congress in November, they don’t take office until January, and even a Republican congress doesn’t change the fact that the Democrats control the Justice Department for at least another 2 years.
Sure, November is stupid as a end date of US democracy.
I don’t really care about the date.
I just want to emphasize that there is a clock ticking and if there haven’t been some clear consequences for the shenanigans of 1/6 they will just try again.
The rabble they have rounded up so far is replaceable, they need to get to the politicians and time is running out.
His former law professor, Laurence Tribe. wrote this a year ago: “As wrote in my Boston Globe op-ed, what I’m saying to Merrick Garland is: Wake up! You’ve got to do something to hold this man accountable.”
To be fair, he followed it up with this: “it’s not easy to get a conviction of a president. What appears compelling to a layperson is going to be difficult in practice. It will also be difficult to put down the riots that the very announcement of an indictment may bring. There may be a great deal of worry about fomenting civil war to no good end, because we will not succeed in holding the president accountable.”
But he’s clearly concerned that they weren’t investigating. And he thinks Trump need to be indicted now:
Right. Does this sound like a dept. deep into am investigation? Getting close to Trump?
And the timing of actual reports of active investigation sure seem to correspond with the Jan. 6 public hearing.
So, maybe enough with the smug “you don’t understand like I do!” bullshit. Intelligent, knowledgeable people are doubting they were investigating competently. Maybe they are, but other opinions can’t be hand waved away with “you don’t get it”.
I get that people want to believe ‘the system is working’ and that all will be well. And certainly it’s true that there are some online–not really on the Dope, but online elsewhere–who post impatient, impossible wishes about the fates of Trump and his enablers.
But people here really are NOT posting ‘Trump must be imprisoned NOW!’ or even ‘Merrick Garland must be fired NOW!’ And defenses of whatever it is that Garland is doing that depend on a pretense that all DOJ critics are foolish children are not effective defenses.
Someday the entire story will come out. Okay, that may be overly optimistic: someday more of the story will come out. It may well be that Garland’s options have been curtailed all along by either open or covert opposition from Chris Wray and much of his FBI, for example (a situation to which Ann_Hedonia alluded). For all we know, Wray has told Garland in so many words ‘we’ll go along with the occasional public display of law-enforcement action, such as seizing John Eastman’s phone, but our position is that anything and everything Trump and his staff did was an exercise of their First Amendment rights–and nothing more. And if you try to violate that position, you will find yourself labeled in the press as a partisan political hack.’
If something like that is part of the dynamic at DOJ, obviously I hope a whistleblower will come forward to disclose it. In the meantime we have to watch and wait—but not keep silent if enough time goes by and it appears that some Americans are being given the “above the law” pass.
Prepare yourself to find out that in America, New York real estate con man Donald Trump is above the law. I don’t want it to be that way, but prepare for it. Expect it.
If it works out otherwise, that’s a victory for the good guys. But don’t expect that. For your own sanity.
Nah, prolly not. He needs someone to tell him this. Send him a link to the SDMB, why dontcha?