Yeah, why piss off just one judge!
Good. Any of the insurrectionists who kick up a fuss in the courtroom should be bound and gagged, like Bobby Seale.
This was the right call by Pelosi. As you say, they would have sought to turn this into a “Well what about…” exercise.
We sometimes get ensnared in the ethical trap of assuming that we ought to give the other side a platform to respond, but that assumes that the other party operates in good faith. When they don’t, you have to take away that platform in order to ensure that only the facts and the truth come out of the testimonial process.
Have we learned any new facts yet? It seems to me that Congressional investigations are campaign events in disguise, more than they are attempts to unearth information for better decision making. There was a recent committee hearing (may have been during one of Trump’s impeachments) where one of the members sounded like she was actually asking questions she didn’t know the answers to. Usually the questions are mini-speeches; the difference in that case was striking.
I don’t say that to excuse the insurrectionists, or those in Congress who did what they could to block the investigations. And I don’t watch them gavel-to-gavel, so maybe the speechifying is what gets covered on the news. It’s just that, for something called an “investigation”, I don’t see much investigating.
Well, there’s only been one hearing so far. They’re looking into what specifically should be investigated.
The Committee just formed. They have subpoena power, which means that they can gather more information and call witnesses under the threat of contempt of Congress. I’d say there’s more to come.
But as we saw this past week, one of the functions of this committee is to provide certain witnesses who witnessed and experienced the insurrection firsthand an opportunity to present their testimony in an unfiltered form to the American public. It was powerful testimony, and it’s a good thing that Jim Jordan wasn’t there to muck it up.
It seems to me that this argument can’t possibly be allowed, otherwise every blatantly guilty defendant and/or his or her counsel could do or say something obnoxious and then claim the judge was biased against them for it. If getting charged with contempt doesn’t stop trials, doing something short of that won’t either.
Maybe masks are to MAGATs what garlic is to vampires. “The Science it burns!”
This is truly breaking news, as in, happened yesterday with zero expectations of it happening:
Jeffery Rosen, acting Attorney General after Barr resigned, reached out to the DOJ and offered seven hours of testimony related to Trump’s Insurrection.
7 hours. On a Saturday. In August.
Reasoning: he didn’t want to be sued into silence. Now he can’t be.
Link to NYTimes reporter:
https://twitter.com/ktbenner/status/1424107343567101955?s=19
I’m pretty sure much of his testimony was about the series of events described here.
Jeffrey Clark,( a Trump-corrupted DOJ official that believed a theory about smart thermostats flipping vote) sent Rosen the draft of a DOJ letter he wanted to send to Georgia officials, urging them to convey a special legislative session to toss the election results and confirm slate of Trump electors.
It’s stunningly corrupt. Rosen’s immediate reply was (paraphrased) “I’m not signing this, I would never in a million years consider signing anything that remotely resembles this, it’s all kinds of wrong”.
I just hope there’s some action that comes from this. Chris Wray will probably dismiss it, saying the DOJ has freedom of speech and therefore they can write absolutely anything they want and send it to anyone without the possibility of repercussions. It’s why he made extortion legal if a Republican does it. He’s a tool that was installed by a corrupt administration and needs to be kicked to the curb.
The actual letter is included in the linked article, but here’s a direct link.
Not so fast! We all know that the Grand Reinstatement™ is coming on Friday (unless it’s delayed two weeks); maybe Rosen was afraid the Dems would sue to prevent him from helping to implement it.
Well, that makes just as much sense as Clark’s theory that smart thermostats were causing machines to switch votes. If not more.
Bolding mine.
I’m trying to keep up with the stupidity, I really am, but WHAT?
This I hadn’t heard.
I was a little surprised as well. A smart thermostat?
I’ve heard of smart thermocouples, sure. Those guys can transmit temperature differentials to who knows which adverseries? But I always considered thermostats benign and a little less than smart.
Clearly the smart thermostats were using 5G to link to the microchips put in the vaccine by Bill Gates so that the Chinese could control people into voting for Biden on their special bamboo-fiber ballot papers.
Wow! The crazy just keeps pouring in! Somebody get a bucket…
Hey! I had a smart thermostat installed last August when I had the heat pump replaced. And I got the jab in March – two times!! And I live in Maricopa county!!!
I distinctly remember opening an envelope clearly marked with heathen Chinese writing to get my ballot and furthermore, fully intending to vote for CFSG in October but I inexplicably filled in Biden’s bubble instead, sealing the ballot in another envelope that felt distinctly like bamboo and signing it.
A coincidence? I think not!!1!
Are these the thermostats that control the temperature so that you don’t know you’re turning into a boiled frog? But do boiled (or fried) voting machines necessarily favour one candidate over another?
My brain hurts. Is there something in the water over there?
I have not been able to find a full summary of the “smart thermostat” election fraud theory, I imagine the meat of it is buried in some long YouTube video. But the theory was advanced by an election fraud nutter named Russell Ramsland and former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrnes.
It is apparently a theory because someone noticed that a room in Savannah GA, where votes were being tabulated had a smart thermostat that was made in China! Absolute proof!
But it’s just distraction. If you haven’t, you should read the letter that Jeffrey Clark wanted the DOJ to send to Georgia and other states. It says, among other things
“The State Legislators right to appoint electors is plenary… cite snipped…and a State Legislature cannot lose that authority on account of acting statutes to join the National Election. Whatever provisions may be made by the statute or by the state constitution to choose electors by the people, there is no doubt of the right of the legislature to resume the power at any time for it can no longer be taken away or abdicated.”
What this pseudo-legal babble is saying is that the state legislature has the absolute and undisputed right to ignore the results of any election for any reason and that the DOJ thinks they should. In Clarks letter, the DOJ is strongly recommending that they call a special session to appoint Trump electors and tell the citizens of GA to screw themselves if they don’t like it.
I’m skeptical as to whether Clark thought up this legal theory or wrote this letter himself. The letter also seems to hint at the legal theory behind Pence’s alleged authority to reject votes.
This is a rather unique interpretation of the something that happened in the 1960 election. Hawaii had some sort of election dispute, one which would not have affected JFK’s win - but they sent two competing slates of electors. Nixon, the losing candidate, was VP the time and in a unifying gesture, accepted the slate for Kennedy.
This was interpreted by John Eastman, the uber-partisan Trump lawyer, to mean that Mike Pence had a role that was more than ceremonial and had full authority to reject any votes he didn’t like. Pence rejected this theory, as did pretty much everyone else but Trump. I bet Eastman had a hand in this scheme.
Anyway, I’m glad Rosen testified before Trump could try and stop him. I hope they don’t further bury this, it needs to garner more attention than it’s getting,
It’s only Byrne, but - wish granted.
Insurrectionist charged with destroying evidence, She’s a former cop, wife of a retired cop.