Mentioning Cheney reminds me that if the 'pubbies get 2/3 of the House, they’ll just expel her.
Nah, those turkeys in the current minority party in the House and the Senate are nothing but harmful.
From Glenn Greenwald: Congress’s 1/6 Committee Claims Absolute Power as it Investigates Citizens With No Judicial Limits (substack.com)
Republicans won’t need to dissolve the committee, the resolution creating it provides that the committee terminates 30 days after filing its final report.
And if the ‘presumed guilty’ parties succeed in delaying the turning over of documents and delay testifying to the truths they are aware of through first hand experience until after the swearing in of those elected during the 2022 mid-term elections, the final report may not be completed by then.
This plays into a version of Trump’s argument that using existing legal maneuvers to win illegal and immoral profits or political victories is just “smart business” simply because it is legal. So guilty parties, conspirators and bad actors getting away with trying to overthrow a free and fair democratic election through quasi-legal means is similar to Trump cheating contractors and others out of money he legitimately owed them through misuse of bankruptcy law which was actually meant to protect those who were sincerely trying to legitimately succeed but were not able through no fault of their own.
I have not bothered to look up who Glenn Greewald is (he has not come across my radar before now), but it seems he has a very specific point of view that is at least as partisan (or more) than the accusations he is making about the January Sixth Committee.
And just as was true of the 1950s House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) that prompted those Supreme Court rulings, the 1/6 committee is not confining its invasive investigative activities to executive branch officials or even citizens who engaged in violence or other illegality on January 6, but instead is investigating anyone and everyone who exercised their Constitutional rights to express views about and organize protests over their belief that the 2020 presidential election contained fraud. Indeed, the committee’s initial targets appear to be taken from the list of those who applied for protest permits in Washington: a perfectly legal, indeed constitutionally protected, act.
Given that the committee is investigating conspiracy to overthrow the democratically elected United States Administrative Branch of Government, I would think that secret subpoenas are a small price to pay considering that if the information is withheld or destroyed it may very well be impossible to prove a conspiracy. Because this guy did not commit violent acts himself does not mean that he did not pay for those who did to travel to the area or pay for their hotel rooms.
If the companies were unwilling to comply with this "request,” then the committee requested that they either contact the committee directly or just disregard the request — in other words, the last thing they wanted was to enable one of their targets to learn that they were being investigated because that would enable them to seek a judicial ruling about the legality of the committee’s actions.
That presumes that the purpose of the secrecy is deny the investigated the ability to seek judicial review. That seems like a false conclusion (and an intentionally false conclusion at that) at the very least. The obvious reason for keeping the subpoenas secret is to keep the investigated from knowing they are being investigated so they could flee the country or commit an additional criminal conspiracy to hide their previous criminal behavior. Considering the fact that we are dealing with citizens who align themselves with someone worse than Nixon – and even more, someone who has NO sense of shame and openly tries to get away with improper, immoral, and often illegal behavior, a little discretion is perfectly acceptable.
That Being Said: We certainly do not want McCarthy era overreach nor anything approaching it!! If the committee decides to start investigating subjects or topics other than January Sixth and any conspiracy that contributed to it. If they start to investigate anything that is not related to the coup attempt that January Sixth Twenty-Twenty One was an organized part of-- then we need to shut them down and call in any powers they have.
I am certainly not a fan of unchecked governmental power! But I am a strong believer that sunlight is the best disinfectant. If there is nothing for these people to hide, there will be no problem (and yes, I know how that sounds). The people under investigation have aligned themselves with the a loathsome power monger who would overturn and abuse any person or institution to retain the power he seeks. If they are not guilty of helping with the coup attempt there is little other than possible embarrassment over how the person manages or spends his money to a very small group of people. But if he did participate in an attempted coup . . . yea, let’s see those banking records. Investigators are entitled to see the records based on what is at stake.
Glenn Greenwald went off the rails some years ago. I don’t bother with anything he writes. He’s a complete nutter.
I’ll just add that he got his start during the Assange years.
Thank you for the background.
I thought it was worth stating that the Commission has legitimate reasons to serve secret subpoenas and they are as far away from McCarthyism as they possibly could be.
If fans of Mr. Greenwald want to take issue with my comments or contradict my conclusions, I welcome the discussion. I do not believe it should be okay to drop in an accusation of the committee that is trying to preserve our democratic norms and hold responsible those who tried to undermine our entire system of peaceful transfer of power through free and fair elections and not be challenged.
Oh, I support your post entirely. I just wanted to note that Glenn Greenwald is not a reliable purveyor of information, and any assertions he makes are best swallowed with more than a grain of salt.
Noted, thank you.
I was always mildly fond of Elbridge Gerry because, during the Constitutional Convention, he was consistently raising objections to the proposed setup, when he saw a way to cheat the system that was being created. His innate crookedness helped him to spot the chinks in the armor and - where he saw it, at that moment - he tried to fight it.
Once he was off the Convention, to be sure, he took advantage of the rules as others had made them - it’s not like he hadn’t warned them - but, given the opportunity to do so, he would use his insight for the good of the country.
When Trump was elected, I had hoped that he would be a Gerry type and work to start trimming out the loopholes in the system, that allowed him to take advantage of the laws. After all, he took an Oath to take on the job of executing the laws so that all would be fair, across the entire scope of his electorate and advising Congress on how to enable him to better achieve that.
Suffice it to say, that is not what happened.
And, regrettably, I don’t foresee anyone, anytime soon, trying to pick up that task either. The legal world thrives on the existence of more suits and more appeals. With a Congress full of lawyers, they’re in no hurry to fiddle with the rules to try and trim down the ability of people to run out the clock or otherwise use the courts as a means to “launder” crime.
I’m probably being wooshed here, but if not, why in Og’s name would you even consider for a second that there might have been remotest possibility of that happening?
Well, the options were that the man was an idiot or that he was smart enough to understand that he’d get popular by playing the idiot. I had no reason to believe either way, until seeing how he actually managed things and operated. (Though, I should correct my timeline to “somewhere during the middle of the election”. By the time he started to call for Russian aid and I’d started reading depositions on how he ran his own businesses, I was convinced that he was an idiot.)
If he was smart then, like Gerry and Nixon, he’d understand that you need to limit the urge for self-enrichment when your job is to manage the nation that you, yourself live in. Ransacking some other guy’s house and pilfering all the goods makes sense only because it’s someone else’s house. Doing it to your own house, is nonsense. Or, in short, don’t shit in your own bed.
Gerry and Nixon were two crooks who, put in positions of sufficiently high importance, tried to rise to the task. It was the smart thing to do.
Trump really was as stupid as he presented himself. From there, the expectation of anything positive ran away and hid under a rock.
Why Mark Meadows, who for a while seemed to be cooperating with the 1/6 Committee, later stopped (and was subpoenaed and ignored the subpoena and by the way that’s just been hanging fire for more than six weeks now, with no visible DOJ action): Trump gave him a million dollars.
Trump really, really, really doesn’t like giving away money. But he’s been doing it in some targeted ways that don’t seem to be all that difficult to figure out:
Gosh!
I would love this to be an open-and-shut case of bribery, but the timing doesn’t support it:
The donation to Meadows’ nonprofit was dated July 26, 2021.
Meadows initially cooperated with the House panel investigating the Capitol riot but reversed course in December, refusing to appear for a deposition and suing to block two subpoenas, one of which was issued to Verizon for his phone records.
(Bolding mine) Unless Trump’s 4D chess plan was for Meadows to bollix up the Committee by pretending to cooperate and then refusing to, it’s far from a quid pro quo.
However, I agree with you in wondering what the hell the DOJ is waiting for. Why isn’t Meadows being charged with contempt?
Seconding this for the benefit of @Temporary_Name . Glenn Greenwald is a clown. Full stop.
Glenn Greenwald has had a very distinguished career. However, some people don’t like the fact that he’s been critical of the Trump-Russia investigation. That’s about it.
If he’s ever in a jury trial, he’ll never be convicted because of the impossibility of excluding all MAGAts from the jury. Regardless of the outcome, he will claim a full exoneration. But at least the record of the trial will be available for historians. Maybe some of his henchpersons will be punished, but I’m not holding my breath. Fuck I hope I’m wrong…
I don’t know that I agree with that. Trump committed a lot of his crimes in Washington DC, the one place in the US where it might be possible to impanel a jury with no MAGAts. It might also be possible to do that in NYC. Georgia, no way.
I don’t know. The county where Atlanta sits is probably not a bad choice.
All it takes is one heroic MAGAt to throw a monkey wrench.
Greenwald is an egocentric weirdo who seems to judge every issue and person in terms of “what did they do or say with regards to Glenn Greenwald”, based on my reading. Maybe he once was a serious journalist, but now he’s just a grievance guy. At some point progressives and liberals pissed him off, so he decided they are the enemy, no matter the facts.
EDIT - some details: Glenn Greenwald - RationalWiki