No, that is a bet I will take. Since first of all, his health won’t allow , and next if anyone can rally the Democrat vote, it is trump. But he will continue to spread his poisonous support until he is dead.
Nonsense. Plenty of indictments have come down. But Garland has to wait for congress for trump.
No, he doesn’t
If he does it all Executive branch, then everyone will scream “witch hunt” “political revenge”.
So although technically, Garland doesn’t have to wait, he is smart enough to realize that politically he has to . That is the whole idea here.
I know people would like nothing better than to see Garland bring charges against trump early, but then the jury would be hung, trump would be “exonerated” , that would lose the midterms and in 2024. So it would be really fucking stupid to do that. For the pleasure of seeing trump in the defendants chair for a few weeks- we’d lose Democracy. It is a bad, BAD bargain.
Edgy.
This is what I think, too.
Of course the AG doesn’t have to wait to bring charges. But in this case, it is wise to do so.
When this prosecution is set in motion, it is going to be the most galvanizing, provocative action that can (and will by a large segment of the country) be construed as political that the DOJ has ever undertaken. One way or another, the country is going to blow up.
Garland is smart to minimize the consequences as much as possible by letting the Committee thoroughly explain the basis for DOJ’s actions and why those actions are inevitable.
Re the Committee making or not making a criminal referral to DOJ, Jamie Raskin explained the sticking point a little while ago. He said that, while the process is very well defined for when a legislative committee can make referrals for criminal contempt, there is no such process in place for a legislative committee to make general criminal referrals, such as would be required in this case. I am sure they are ever-mindful of setting a dangerous precedent.
It’s also true that DOJ can determine for itself when facts merit criminal prosecution. No Committee required – or likely wanted.
I agree with all this. The one note of hope I have–and that others have, too–is that Monday’s hearing seems to have ignited interest in the crimes committed by Trump and his minions in the service of extracting a quarter-billion dollars from his dupes. The problem for Trump is that there are avenues both federal and state for pursuing fraud charges: at the state level the Trump pleas for cash may well have violated consumer protection laws, and at the federal level there are potential wire fraud and mail fraud charges.
Garland and Wray are (in my view) demonstrably unwilling to prosecute Republican office holders, past or present, for charges such as sedition or obstructing Congressional proceedings. I think this stance is bad and wrong and violates the rule of law in every important way: but it does appear to be their position.
But if Trump committed wire fraud (for example)—Garland is going to have a much harder time saying ‘that can’t be prosecuted because it’s political.’ It ain’t.
Do not fuck with the daughter of Darth Cheney.
Yeah! Let’s wait until Congress is done! I mean what could possibly go wrong?
:cough: Ollie North :cough:
I agree. There’s no upside that I can see for having the Committee present a referral to the DOJ.
The Committee should finish the hearings and release a full report; that’s what’s needed.
Indictments of Republican office-holders?
Let me ask you a few things: If Scott Perry, Jim Jordan, Paul Gosar, Josh Hawley, Lauren Boebert, Mike Lee, Tommy Tuberville and Marjorie Taylor Greene (these are the ones I can think of off the top of my head), all sitting Republican members of Congress, are simultaneously arrested and indicted for seditious conspiracy, do you think the resident supporters in their states are going to believe it was for any reason other than a political one?
Do you think the Republican party is going to do something other than scream “WITCH HUNT!!!” at the top of their lungs?
Remember, quite a number of these are running for reelection in 2022. Do you think being indicted for this crime shortly before the mid-terms will help or hinder their reelections?
And remember, just because someone is indicted, it takes time for cases to wend their way through the judicial process to adjudication and possible conviction. Convictions are the only things that matter.
How much do you want to see Democrats have even a chance to remain in Congress after the mid-terms?
Timing really does matter here, in my view.
Moved the goalposts eh? Now it isn’t top Republicans, but they have to be in office?
Ken Paxton, the Trump-backed attorney general, was indicted and arrested on criminal [securities-fraud charges]
I don’t think @Sherrerd meant to move any goal posts, and I do appreciate her and others’ frustration at how slow this process is. It’s like waiting for an undigested piece of pork to make its way through the colon. Tough to wait it out.
But as someone who is painfully well acquainted with how long these things take even as everyone behind the scenes is scrambling like hell, I have a different take, and I think I understand the delays better. I’ve worked on many serious cases involving only one or two defendants. They typically took more than 2 years to get to trial.
I think about the scope of what Garland is handling, and it frankly astonishes me how fast he has moved. But I know it doesn’t feel that way to anyone – including me – who want to see true justice done.
ETA: And until there are arrests, it can look an awful lot like people are doing nothing.
I admit I misspoke when I referred to “people with an R after their name”, I should have said Conservative /Republican political figures. I actually don’t think the publicly available evidence is there yet for any of the elected officials that you mentioned, and I’m not sure that it will be.
But I don’t understand why Jeffrey Clark, John Eastman, Mark Meadows, Roger Stone and Steve Bannon, at minimum, haven’t been indicted for at least conspiracy to defraud the United States. And not only have they not been indicted, there’s no hint of grand juries, interviews, or target letters……and even if the DOJ kept these actions quiet, these men are not known for silence or discretion
This was an attack on my civil rights. Investigation should not be optional.
I believe it was a pleading filed by Peter Navarro suing the Committee that referenced grand jury proceedings, so those appear to be in play already.
All the people you named are in the layer below Trump, and I expect to see action on these people first, soon after the hearings are wrapped up. None of them are running for office, so they are exempt from the “no arrests close to an election” rule.
Criminal charges are brought all the time against people who are never offered an opportunity to give an interview, so that’s really not a good indicator. One fine day, agents fan out and execute arrest warrants with no warning whatsoever.
The only reason to offer an interview is if you don’t have a solid case and you’re hoping for a confession, or if you think your perpetrator may have information that will help you move to the higher layer of culpable people.
Such interviews can take place at any time – including after indictment. In fact, many hostile perpetrators are only willing to talk when they understand the true gravity of what’s at stake in their own situation. Being arrested and arraigned has a way of focusing the mind.
I think Garland already has overwhelming evidence for his cases against all those people you named. The Committee hearings are clarifying all this for the public. Hopefully by the time Garland moves, a larger segment of the public will be baying for their blood as hard as we are.
I do not understand that position at all. If the committee has the ability to give a referral and choose not to, they in effect are saying that they didn’t find anything actually illegal. It’s their duty to refer any and all illegal activity to DOJ.
We already saw this mistake with the Mueller report. Granted, he didn’t really have the power to make a referral, but he could have made a recommendation. But he didn’t. And that became evidence that Trump didn’t actually do anything illegal.
I don’t see the upside in not doing it. What does it accomplish? The claim is that doing so would make the hearings seem political. But why would not doing so make it seem not political to those people? They already believe the whole thing is political, and Garland is a Biden appointee.
I do not want the takeaway from this to be “they couldn’t find anything illegal.” Already we’re seeing people claim that Trump didn’t know the results of the election, when they’re very clearly arguing otherwise: that since all of his advisors told him that he lost, he clearly knew. But they didn’t say that directly, so people didn’t get it.
Say it directly. Say that Trump needs to be prosecuted, by using the power you have to refer him for indictment. To not do so is what gets the hearings labeled as just political grandstanding.
What’s a referral in this context? If they state “It appears Trump and Eastman violated the following laws” and publish their report, does it make a difference if they put a copy in an envelope and mail it to the Justice Department? Should they include the magic word “referral” in their report? I think the confusion stems from referrals for prosecution for contempt of Congress charges, where Congress needs the DOJ to enforce it’s subpoena power, and has to formally ask the dept. to take action. There is no such need for the January 6th Committee.
Kate Riga over at TPM reminds us how lucky we are that Republicans nixed an independent bipartisan January 6 commission, where they could have really gummed up the works.
(Hopefully the link works…)
Last I heard Miller was advising on Dave McCormick’s race for governor in PA.
Just released by the committee:
The man narrating was one of those given a ‘tour’ of the Capitol on January 5th, by Barry Loudermilk.
The Wall Street Journal pubbed an op-ed yesterday saying the J6 committee smeared him. This is the committee’s response.