I’m sticking with MAGAt. There’s no confusion on that one.
On another note, I haven’t heard anything on Ali Alexander lately. I’m hoping they’re leaning on him to turn on Biggs, Gosar, and that guy from… Arkansas? Alabama? One of those ‘A’ states, about the Stop the Steal stuff.
I would like to take a quick break from the topic and introduce a smart Republican Idea of the Day, straight from Donald John Miller Trump himself:
There’s also another redcap definition:
There was even a pretty decent TV drama about them.
However, I still vote the original use in this thread “not confusing at all”
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
Oh, please, oh please. 
He’s seeing all his grifters move on to “medical tyranny”, he’s still not President and it’s killing him. I’m pretty sure I predicted it, he going to make any candidate that wants his support campaign vociferously for his reinstatement.
He’ll blow it all up without hesitation.
And I couldn’t t help but notice he’s still using the mob boss language in a way that accords him deniability. He never told any Republican voters to stay home, he’s simply warning conservative leadership about what might happen if they don’t change their tune and fight for his reinstatement
it is taking its fucking time
Oh, no doubt. He has said so explicitly, I believe—the ‘rebuild the reputation’ part, anyway, though not the ‘we’re not going after the seditionists’ part.
But there is such a thing as erosion of belief in the rule of law. Too great a delay, with no hints that cases are being built, contributes to such erosion. It feeds into already too-powerful lines of attacks* about Democrats being ineffectual and unable to run a government.
/
*Unjust, but carefully cultivated for decades by oligarchic, anti-democracy (and deep-pocketed) factions.
But the problem is, if Garland were to release such information, that would be completely contrary to the way cases have been handled by DOJ for, well, forever. They don’t even confirm or deny there is an open case. We only learn there’s a case when charges are laid.
Norms are shattered nowadays in such a scary, shockingly short amount of time. How many people even on this board are appalled that Biden didn’t fire Christopher Wray? They’ve already forgotten that in the absence of gross malfeasance on the part of an FBI director, that director has been appointed for a 10-year term. Wray may not be everyone’s ideal, but the norm is for Biden to leave him in place, not fire him. There’s a reason for that 10-year term – to straddle multiple administrations. But of course, Trump fired Comey, so Biden “should” fire Wray. Good god.
I trust Garland. He’s not a shrinking violet. His Wiki page is a good summary of who he is and has been throughout his career. Nothing to indicate he’ll shy away from pursuing justice. In fact, he chose public service over a lucrative career in private practice.
There are things I like and things I don’t, but on balance, I believe he’s pretty much a Truth-andJustice sort. I want there to be trust more is going on behind the scenes than we’re aware. And good on him if he’s been able to keep it this quiet. I’d expect nothing less.
I’m one of the ones that wants Chris Wray fired, although I wouldn’t say that I’m appalled that Biden didn’t fire him.
I want him fired because I believe he aided and abetted the corruption of the Trump Administration. I think he was about as non-corrupt as anyone in his position could be and still keep the job, but that still pretty corrupt and it’s no excuse.
Well, I’ve ranted about this before and here’s what I wrote. I found this in my notes, I think I posted it here but I’m not sure.
Unfortunately, law enforcement seems to have bought into the Republican definition of free speech - which is “Republicans can’t in trouble for saying things”. It doesn’t matter what you say. Trump could give North Korea out nuclear codes over the phone and the FBI would say “Trump has the right to free speech”.
Chris Wray is a tool, and Biden should lose confidence in him and kick him to the curb. I’m not buying his “I only stuck the tip in the Constitution and wiggled it around a little a few times because if I didn’t, Trump would have fired me and hired someone that would’ve given the Constitution an enthusiastic rogering on a daily basis” excuse, the excuse that is immensely popular among “good” Republicans.
There were what, 12, 14, criminal referrals that allegedly emerged from the Mueller investigation? How did that pan out? They arrested one Democratic lobbyist, Greg Craig, for failing to register as a foreign agent, because it wasn’t fair that they arrested a bunch of Republicans without arresting a Democrat. Of course it was a totally trumped-up charge because Craig had disclosed his work to the DOJ and was told he didn’t have to register. He got off, as did Andrew McCabe, but both cases were pure harassment.
But when the entire Trump campaign staff took a meeting with someone that claimed to be an agent of the Russian government for the express purpose of obtaining incriminating information on a US citizen, that was cool — because free speech now means there are no consequences whatsoever for talking.
Let’s see what else the FBI was cool with:
They were cool with Trump using the National Enquirer as his private detective agency, getting them to harass journalists (Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski) and using the material they collected in an attempt to extort them into changing their coverage.
And when Trump maligned FBI agents,including publicly humiliating them over an extramarital affair, did Wray saw one word in their defense? No. Wray was perfectly content to let Trump call his entire agency corrupt constantly without publicly defending them to any extent, even though it put the lives and livelihoods of the men and women that worked for him at risk
Then there was the time that Trump’s son-in-law worked withthevNational Enquirer and a senior official of a foreign nation to hack the phone of the owner of a major news outlet in order to squash coverage of the murder of journalist, and to destroy the newspaper owners marriage in the process, because that’s what happens if you go up against Trump. The totality of the law enforcement response was…….nothing, sending the message “that’s what happens when you go against Trump, so don’t go against Trump.
And then there was the concerted three year long effort by the President and his friends to profit from Eastern European corruption at the expense of the energy security of Western Europe, which included extorting the leader of a foreign nation. That’s pretty cool with Wray’s FBI, I guess….because extortion is just speech……freedom of speech, again.
Then there’s all the little things, which would be groundbreaking scandals in any Presidency. The time Trump goons forcibly invaded and robbed a doctors office in order to retrieve his medical records. The whole Michael Cohen/Stormy Daniels thing.
But I’m rambling. I could go on for pages. And they’ll never do anything. There are probably too many sedition loyalists imbedded in high level law enforcement
Ok, I’m ranting. I know it was mostly the DOJ, but I’m still not giving Wray a pass for playing along to keep his job. Especially since he hasn’t gotten any better.
It’s obvious they have no intention of looking at anything regarding the lead up to January 6th. Did you hear Wray testify? I’m paraphrasing, but he said stuff like “ Everybody that was there had a different motive and a different reason for being there”. When asked if he was aware that Trump wanted to stop the certification of the election he furrowed his brow like he was trying to remember something obscure and said something to the effect of “I think I might have read something like that on the Internet”.
So I don’t know that I’ve given up, exactly — but I’m in a wait and see mode. Because the one thing I do know is things change, we will not be in this position in a year or three. Things will die down, or they will escalate and the DOJ and FBI are setting the stage for escalation, as apparently mustering an army to attack Congress and murder Mike Pence no longer rises to the level of “illegal”.
There will probably be another attack, another incident of some sort, who knows? It’s either going to die down or escalate, it doesn’t seem to be dying down and federal law enforcement seems lukewarm about the whole sedition thing. Maybe they’ll take it more seriously next time
He couldn’t burn the country to the ground in January so now he’ll burn down the only thing he still has any control over. The Republican party. I wish him the best of luck in this very specific endeavor.
I wish I had time to take your assertions point by point, and I don’t disagree with some of them. But what you posted above is false. I watched Wray during congressional hearings vigorously defend his agents. It would not have been appropriate for him to make point-by-point refutations against what Trump was saying about Pete Strzok, or Andrew McCabe, either – both of whom I consider to be patriots to the bone and horribly maligned.
I think Wray viewed his service as trying to hold the FBI together with baling wire and spit through one of the most wrenching, tumultuous periods in its history. When it counted, he spoke truth to power. Trump did want to fire him and repeatedly discussed doing it with his aides.
I wonder who Trump would have installed if he had fired Wray. And I shudder to think. We’d have been, what, a year in on a new 10-year term with an even worse Trump toadie?
I’m not a Wray fan, but I started out prepared to despise him. It was bad enough that he was hired on the recommendation of Chris Christie – who had hired Wray to act on his behalf for the Bridgegate scandal. But Wray surprised me more than once, and I now feel some grudging respect, if not admiration, for the very challenging role he assumed in Trump’s dumpster fire of an administration.
I’ll also add that there should have been 12, 14 criminal referrals from Mueller’s investigation. But not if Barr shut them down before they ever got started. And let’s not forget Rod Rosenstein’s role in all this. He told Mueller what he could and could not investigate. Not hard to think he likely warned Wray off pursuing things, too.
It’s early days to learn exactly what Wray was up to with respect to many of the potential cases you mentioned. He certainly wasn’t free to pursue them while Trump was in office, and Biden/Garland have had control for, what, 6 months? How long did McConnell delay Garland’s confirmation?
I’m prepared to give it some time and see if Wray is doing a better job under a Garland DOJ. I hope so.
A toss-up between this and the ‘Republicans are evil’ thread. I can find only two sources so far on this - one has a cookies pop-up and the other requires a subscription, so citeless so far.
Was wondering what the hey our favourite human marsupial Steven Miller was up to lately, and lo behold something seems breaking, about his goofy gig - America First Legal - investigating a ruh roh shocking Mr. Garland memo.
All I have is his dumb-ass tweet:
ETA: posts demanding I apologize for besmirching marsupials coming in 3…2…1…
“Stephen Miller defends rights of racists, film at 11.”
More Orwellian BS to. Miller thinks the people who want to teach an honest history of slavery and it’s effects are the “real racists.”
Even racists have rights.
But no one - racist or not - has the right to threaten a public servant in the performance of their duties, and anyone who does so should be investigated and, if they have committed a crime by so doing, charged.
Arizona state representative, House candidate, and insurrection supporter Walt Blackman says he didn’t know the Proud Boys were white supremacists when he said last month that having them at his rally was “one of the proudest moments of my life.”
“Jim Jordan is running for re-election on the rarely used “Bring Back Polio” platform.”
Wait, a black republican man named “Walt Blackman”? Is this some white supremacist comic book muppet character?
You guys have a great talent for humor
I was willing to give Wray a chance, too. But he blew it when he got up before Congress and said that the January 6th protesters had lots of different motivations for being at the Capitol and he didn’t really see a connection between Trumps election loss and January 6th.
I found something I wrote while I was watching the hearing in June.
Oh man, I just tuned into a House of Representatives hearing on January 6th - missed most of it, but I have a few takeaways.
I’m shaking my head at how disingenuous Chris Wray is. I get it, free speech, the FBI isn’t supposed to investigate anyone over speech. But calling the entire post-election “Stop The Steal” movement “online chatter? Repeating refusing to say that the motivation for the majority of the insurrectionists was the belief that the election was stolen? Give me a break.
I dug around and while I couldn’t find a good transcript of the hearing, I found the tape of the actual hearing and transcribed some of the exchanges that were disturbing.
When asked if he was aware of the Stop the Steal movement, Wray replied.
“Certainly we were aware of scattered online disputing of the election results.”
When asked about the whether the crowds had been encouraged to come to DC by President Trump, he replied
“I think they were encouraged by a variety of things, but there were a large number of people here in the national Capitol region on January 6th”
(So while Wray isn’t denying the existence of the mob, he claims they just all spontaneously showed up for different reasons.)
When asked if the crowds were motivated by Trumps election loss, he said
“Well, certainly there were a lot of people that believed or felt that way and I’m sure some of those people were among the crowds of January 6th. But it’s a little hard for me to characterize with a broad brush all those people and what motivated them”
I don’t think he’s legitimately that stupid. I think he’s complicit.