Trump Begins Dismantling The Justice Department And Rule Of Law

 

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.

QOTD -- Republicans' Bait And Switch On Abortion

 

"... The GOP platform is an obvious bait and switch, and it doesn’t even try very hard to hide the switch. As the writer Jessica Valenti notes, 'The platform doesn’t change a single thing about what Trump would do if elected, nor does it mean that there’s an actual rift between his campaign and the anti-abortion movement. This is political theater, and the mainstream press is handing out programs.' The GOP platform on abortion does not show Trump or the GOP 'softening' or shifting on abortion rights; it shows them trying to avoid the political consequences of their position on the matter by hiding them in plain sight.

"It has been clear from the beginning that Trump regards abortion rights as a political vulnerability for Republicans and would seek to seem moderate on the issue, just as it’s clear that the anti-abortion camp understands that Trump will do its bidding when in office, as he did last time. One reason he may get the chance is mainstream press organizations’ embracing the narrative of Trump as an abortion moderate—despite all available evidence to the contrary." (our emphasis)--  Adam Serwer, The Atlantic, telling the media to "Stop Soft- Pedaling the GOP's Extreme Positions."  Serwer notes earlier in his article the many examples of the media (NYT, WaPo, NBC News, etc.) falling for the MAGAt spin on its radical abortion platform, cloaking it as a "moderation" when anyone other than a credulous (or biased) news organization would see it for what it is:  a cynical effort to dilute the toxicity of the MAGAt Republican cult's real reproductive freedom agenda.

QOTD -- Wrong? The Media Doesn't Do That!

 

"... The story is no longer whether Joe Biden committed high crimes and misdemeanors by maintaining relations with his ne’er-do-well son. In fact, there has never been any credible evidence to support that conclusion.

"The real story is that the ludicrous Republican impeachment investigation has now been exposed as a Russian intelligence op. This, even as Republicans do Russian President Vladimir Putin’s bidding by blocking support for Ukraine and only a few short years after Trump aides welcomed Russian moves to help the Trump campaign in 2016.

"But the political reporters at our most esteemed newsrooms who went to great lengths to portray the Biden impeachment investigation as a serious inquiry seem unable to change gears.

"I’m not surprised. It  would require them to admit they were wrong. They don’t do that..." -- media critic Dan Froomkin, Press Watch, on the latest media fail "The Hunter Biden story has done a total 180 but the MSM is in denial."  Froomkin brings the receipts, as usual.  Legacy media outlets (the New York Effing Times, WaPo, etc.) continue to succumb to horse race journalism, both sidesism, copying Republican talking points, and lede- burying, the ultimate effect being democracy dying in darkness. To be fair, one non- cable source we monitor that we think does a decent job of exposing the constant Republican lies and gaslighting in a short- attention- span format is David Muir's "ABC World News Tonight."  You be the judge.

BONUS:  More discussion here.

BONUS II:  Another dishonest broker.

Front Page Darkness

 

The ever more disappointing Washington Post ("Democracy Dies in Darkness") had an interesting way of characterizing the flurry of Republican- on- Republican violence and their threats of violence in the headline on today's front page:

(click on image to enlarge)

What they really meant to say was not "legislators," but "Republicans," specifically, Reps. Kevin McCarthy and Tim Burchett and Sen. Markwayne Mullin (see post below).  But, putting that in the headline would've made them a news organization reporting facts, as opposed to what they've become.