Republican lawmakers are warning that any Department of Justice prosecution of former President Trump will turn into a political battle, setting a high bar for Attorney General Merrick Garland to act on an expected criminal referral from the House’s Jan. 6 committee.
The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol previewed its likely referral to the Justice Department in a court filing made public last week and experts say the evidence assembled by House investigators would provide a strong impetus for prosecutors to act.
But Republican lawmakers and strategists warn that any federal prosecution of Trump will be accused of being politically motivated, boost Trump within the GOP and turn into a partisan food fight at a time when President Biden is pivoting to the center and trying to keep his 2020 campaign promise to unify the country.Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) said any criminal referral from the House “would probably have as much political taint on it as you can get.”
“To me it’s clearly politically driven,” he said.
Braun said Democrats are scrambling to change up the political narrative in response to Biden’s moribund job approval ratings and predicted launching a federal prosecution of Trump would be viewed along partisan lines.
“At least half the country would say it’s all politically motivated,” he said.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said “the Department of Justice has a high bar” to clear before launching an investigation of Trump and raised concerns over the partisan fighting that surrounded the formation of the Jan. 6 committee.
Republican strategists close to Trump are predicting a battle royale if the Department of Justice moves to indict the former president."
“I think it could backfire in a way that they have no clue,” said Republican pollster Jim McLaughlin. “I think it’s going to backfire because it just so political and it’s tainted.
“The country wants to move on. Nobody is proud of what happened on Jan. 6 but people are like, ‘With all the problems we have going on in the country right now, this is going to be the focus of the Democrats?’ ”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a close Trump ally and senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told The Hill Thursday any recommendation to prosecute from the House select committee would lack credibility.
“I don’t see anything coming out of this committee not tainted by politics,” he said.
A key GOP complaint is that Pelosi didn't seat radical right Republican Trump supporters like Jim Jordan on the 1/6 investigation committee. That's is understandable because Republicans like Jordan had and still have no interest in truth. Their interests are partisan political. They have every interest in sabotaging and slowing a congressional investigation as much as they possibly could. Is that political? Yes, because the Republicans politicized it right from the get-go. Does it change the underlying facts? No, because Trump did what he and his conspirators did, even though the Republicans deny it and desperately do not want the public to know.
From a demagogic despot's or demagogic political party's point of view, an ignorant public is a much better public than an informed one. An ignorant public is more open to lies, irrational emotional manipulation and partisan motivated reasoning than an informed public. If that sounds implausible, just looks at what the Russian dictator Putin has done to real truth about Ukraine and how effective it has been in deceiving the Russian people.
The Russian public, either deceived about Ukraine and
believing Putin's lies or aware of the truth and afraid to speak
A couple of thoughts come to mind. First, the GOP owes allegiance first to Trump, but also to its laissez-faire capitalist donors and Republican Christian nationalist authoritarians. Republican rhetoric and actions are more evidence in an already significant accumulation of evidence that the GOP is loyal to none of democracy, the American people as a whole, the US Constitution, the rule of law, and inconvenient facts or truths.
Second, I recall the time in 2016 when Obama had the chance to raise and criticize Trump's authoritarian activities and Russian attacks on the election. Obama backed down in the face of McConnell threatening to politicize the matter and further polarize an already highly polarized electorate. Well, the Republicans are still playing the same card by making the same threats over similar issues.
Yes, Trump supporters would say a DoJ investigation and/or prosecution of him for crimes and treason is politically motivated. They are already saying that. They have been saying that ever since the issue of investigation and prosecution of Trump was first mentioned in 2017, maybe even in 2016. Starting a prosecution now will change very little. Social hyper-polarization and political battle lines are drawn and set in stone. People either fight for or against democracy, actual truth, the rule of law, civil liberties. The Republicans fight against. The Democrats . . . . who knows what they are doing.
To be direct, if Republicans were in charge of the House, there would be no serious 1/6 investigation, most likely no investigation at all. If there was not investigation, then there would be nothing to whitewash. The public would never know the truth of what Trump and his conspirators did. It would be whitewashed as much as Republicans could whitewash it.
Finally, Republicans making these threats now make a mistake. Such threats are unnecessary. Biden and Garland have been quite clear by their words and/or actions that they are not going to investigate for prosecute Trump for his crimes and treason. The rule of law has fallen for rich and powerful elites, especially cooked or treasonous neo-fascist Republicans. All the radical right Republicans have to do is keep their foul mouths shut and whatever the 1/6 Committee in the House does or finds will just fade into oblivion and go unpunished.
The Republican party elites, major donors and politicians clearly are anti-democratic neo-fascists. The open question is how effective their propaganda, deceit, lies, irrational emotional manipulation and slanders will be in the 2022 and 2024 elections. So far, it has been quite effective. The next two elections ought to make clear whether democracy, truth and the rule of law will fall to autocratic Republican neo-fascism, lies and the rule of the dictator. Time will tell.
No comments:
Post a Comment