TPM's David Kurtz takes us through the "corrupt retribution" taking place in full view in the (former) Justice Department by the Malignant Fascist's minions:
President Trump’s corrupt retribution against the Justice Department is now fully underway, with a series of moves over the past 24 hours that in any other era would be the defining political and legal story of the age. Today, it didn’t even make the front page of the New York Times.
- Trump’s acting attorney general sacked the career prosecutors who worked on the Trump prosecutions. Among those let go were Molly Gaston, J.P. Cooney, Anne McNamara, and Mary Dohrmann, NBC News reported.
- Trump’s acting U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., a political lackey from Missouri, launched an investigation of the prosecutors who brought the criminal charges against hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters.
- DOJ’s most senior career official was sidelined by being moved to a department backwater. Separately, the DOJ official who oversaw the prosecution of public corruption, who had previously been reassigned to the same backwater, resigned rather than continue in a reduced role.
The corrupt wholesale cashiering of career prosecutors who worked on the Mar-a-Lago and Jan. 6 cases against Trump was the most egregious of the corrupt acts, in defiant violation of the civil service rules and the rule of law. But the most absurd development was acting U.S. Attorney Ed Martin’s purported investigation into why DOJ had pursued obstruction charges against Jan. 6 rioters. While the Roberts Court ultimately cut prosecutors legs out from under them, the obstruction charge was ratified by multiple federal trial judges and the DC Circuit before the Supreme Court held otherwise.
If you were taking a measured approach to see how things played out once Trump took office, the waiting is over. It’s a five-alarm fire at the Justice Department. Ousting independent career prosecutors is just Step 1, a prelude to Step 2, which is using the Justice Department to protect Trump and his administration from accountability for their wrongdoing. Step 3 turns DOJ into a weapon against anyone who Trump perceives as less than fully loyal and obedient.
The retribution is being exacted precisely as promised. As Joyce Vance put it: “The real witch hunt is here.” (our emphasis)
The fascists are determined to put the justice system under the MF's tiny thumb, and our "watchdogs of freedom" in the media continue to assume a fetal position. These are career prosecutors, not political appointments. They were tasked to bring the most criminal, dangerous felon ever elected to public office to heel. Their failure to do that, due largely to the fatal flaws of that same justice system, have now seen them corruptly defenestrated by toadies led by that same criminal.
Oh, how low we've fallen.
