It's too dangerous to vindicate the rule of law against the rich or powerful?

A Washington Post article, Prosecuting Trump would set a risky precedent. Not prosecuting would be worse, looks at the issue of whether to prosecute the ex-president for crimes committed in office. There is solid evidence that he committed felony obstruction of justice while trying to subvert the Mueller investigation. Almost 700 former prosecutors signed a public letter stating they would prosecute on the basis of evidence the Mueller report disclosed. One legal analysis finds four instances of obstruction. That is four felonies.

Another analysis found five felonies.

The question that WaPo asks whether it is too dangerous to prosecute the ex-president, not whether there is enough evidence to bring charges. There is enough evidence.[1] 

Before he was elected, Biden stated that he did not want to prosecute the ex-president. His rationale was imbecilic nonsense, something about not wanting to divide the country. Therefore, Biden and Attorney General Garland appear to have decided that it is too dangerous to vindicate the rule of law. 

The WaPo analyzes it this way:

In September 1974, however, one month after Nixon left office, his successor, Gerald Ford, pardoned him. Ford later told a congressional subcommittee that the pardon was designed to “shift our attentions from the pursuit of a fallen President to the pursuit of the urgent needs of a rising nation.”

It didn’t — not in the immediate aftermath and, in some ways, not ever. .... Some were livid. One powerful man had essentially condoned the criminality of another. The get-out-of-jail-free card exacerbated public cynicism and deepened the nation’s social fractures.

Nearly five decades later, Joe Biden is president, and a pardon for Donald Trump isn’t happening. But whether Trump will eventually be prosecuted for his conduct in the White House is more of a conundrum: If the country crosses this inviolate threshold, all hell will break loose. If we don’t cross it, all hell will break loose. There will be no “shifting our attentions” by advocates of either course. And whichever path the nation follows will have lasting repercussions. One thing is increasingly clear — fear will play a greater role than facts in determining it.

.... Trump’s words and deeds have demonstrated that his actions tend to be intentional. If an ordinary citizen had pressured Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” votes to overturn the 2020 election; systematically misrepresented the value of his assets to the IRS and banks; funneled money to silence a paramour; or put government documents down a toilet, this person would almost certainly be facing an array of criminal charges. More than a year after he left office, Trump isn’t facing any such thing yet.

The stakes are enormous. The rule of law, the notion that we are all equal under our criminal justice system, is among the noblest of principles but also the ugliest of myths. The question of putting Trump on trial before a jury of his peers is a test for a principle of democracy that has often proved out of reach for most Americans.

How this unequal system of justice faces a crossroads. Any decision about prosecuting the former president centers on two conflicting fears: Inaction mocks the nation’s professed ideal that no one sits above the law — and Americans might wonder whether our democracy can survive what amounts to the explicit approval of lawlessness. But prosecuting deposed leaders is the stuff of banana republics.

The fear of the banana republic is hardly an idle one — and here Trump is a central figure, too. He has boasted of his willingness to go that route: In 2016, he ran by pledging that he intended to use the power of federal law enforcement to help his friends and pay back his enemies. His rallies routinely erupted with chants of “lock her up,” directed at his opponent, Hillary Clinton. When as president he told then-FBI Director James Comey that he should be “letting Flynn go,” he was doing as he had promised, using the presidency to try to save an ally from criminal investigation. Trump sees the law and law enforcement as a weapon: .... Trump has said that if he gets a second term, he would pardon hundreds of violent insurrectionists charged in the attack on the Capitol. More recently, his remarks about the investigation his administration began under special counsel John Durham suggest that he is still game to go after foes by wildly accusing them of crimes. .... and he issued a statement saying that “in a stronger period of time in our country, this crime would have been punishable by death.” This was “treason at the highest level,” he said.

Not prosecuting Trump has already signaled to his supporters that accountability is for suckers. “The warning signs of instability that we have identified in other places are the same signs that, over the past decade, I’ve begun to see on our own soil,” political scientist Barbara Walter wrote in “How Civil Wars Start.” The signs include a hollowing out of institutions, “manipulated to serve the interests of some over others.” (emphasis added)

Questions: Is there not enough evidence to prosecute Trump for anything? Should Garland refuse to prosecute in the name of political or social unity? Is American unity currently more illusion than reality? 

Footnote: 

1. The WaPo article describes the ex-president’s legal situation like this:

Prosecutorial threats are multiplying: Bank and tax fraud charges are under consideration in Manhattan. In Fulton County, Ga., a special grand jury is investigating Trump’s interference in the 2020 election. In a Washington courtroom, U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta told a convicted Jan. 6 Capitol rioter that he was a pawn in a scheme by more powerful people, .... The National Archives requested that the Justice Department open an investigation into Trump’s mishandling of top-secret documents that the government recently retrieved from his Florida estate. Trump still faces legal jeopardy for obstructing justice during Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election (remember that one?). During the 2016 campaign, Trump allegedly orchestrated hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels (the charges that landed his handler Michael Cohen in prison referred to Trump as Individual #1). This list is hardly exhaustive and omits the dozen-plus civil lawsuits and civil investigations Trump faces. (emphasis added)

What do you think?

 

In a media press conference on Friday, President Biden said he’s ‘convinced’ Russia will invade Ukraine, based on advice from U.S. intelligence agencies.

But so far, so good… no Russian-Ukrainian war yet.  Seems we’re still trying to give peace a chance.

Based on media reports, we are getting a lot of mixed messages such as: Troops being ‘put in place’ and ‘at the ready’; Russian military commanders being given the ‘go-ahead’ by Putin; a summit between Biden and Putin being agreed to ‘in principle’, according to French President Macron; Ukrainian President Zelensky pushing for ‘preemptive sanctions’ to be put in place as a deterrent; etc.  It really is hard to know what’s actually going on.  But such can be expected in the fog of a pre-war.  So, here’s the question:

Do you think Russia will invade Ukraine?  If yes, how soon?  If no, why not?

Republican election subversion: Update 3

The New York Times reports on Rusty Bowers, speaker of the Arizona House. Bowers killed a state bill that would have given the Republican-controlled Legislature the power to unilaterally overturn the results of an election. Arizona Republican radical right autocrats are very unhappy with Bowers and want him out of power. The NYT writes:

The bill’s sponsor, John Fillmore — who boasts of being the most conservative member of the Arizona State Legislature — told us in an interview that Bowers’s tactics amounted to saying: “I am God. I control the rules. You will do what I say.”

Fillmore’s bill would have eliminated early voting altogether and mandated that all ballots be counted by hand.

Bowers did not respond to multiple requests for an interview, but his public comments indicate a deep unease with how Trump and his base of supporters have promoted wild theories about election fraud and have pushed legislation that voting rights groups say amounts to an undemocratic, nationwide power grab.

“We gave the authority to the people,’’ Bowers told Capitol Media Services, an Arizona outlet, earlier this week. “And I’m not going to go back and kick them in the teeth.’’

Bowers’s resistance to the shifting currents of Republican politics has made him a frequent target of the pro-Trump right.

Last year, when he survived an attempt to recall him from the Legislature, he complained about the aggressive tactics of the Trump supporters behind it.

​​“They’ve been coming to my house and intimidating our family and our neighborhood,” Bowers said, describing how mobile trucks drove by his home and called him a pedophile over a loudspeaker.

Fillmore, who insisted he was willing to bargain over any aspects of his bill, said he was “disappointed that members of my caucus do not have the testicular fortitude” to stand up to Bowers.

But he hinted at moves afoot to remove the speaker, whom he accused of sabotaging what he said was a good-faith effort to rein in voting practices that, in his view, have gone too far.

“I’m an old-school person. I do not go calmly. I do not go quietly,” Fillmore warned. “I believe Republican voters are solidly in line with me.” (emphasis added)

This is more evidence of the aggressive authoritarianism and detachment from reality and reason of most Republicans. The autocratic-plutocratic-Christian theocratic GOP is dead serious about subverting elections and installing radical right Republicans in elected offices. 

Republican election subversion: Update 2

This is from the New York Times today:

MADISON, Wis. — First, Wisconsin Republicans ordered an audit of the 2020 election. Then they passed a raft of new restrictions on voting. And in June, they authorized the nation’s only special counsel investigation into 2020.

Now, more than 15 months after former President Donald J. Trump lost the state by 20,682 votes, an increasingly vocal segment of the Republican Party is getting behind a new scheme: decertifying the results of the 2020 presidential election in hopes of reinstalling Mr. Trump in the White House.

Wisconsin is closer to the next federal election than the last, but the Republican effort to overturn the election results here is picking up steam rather than fading away — and spiraling further from reality as it goes. The latest turn, which has been fueled by Mr. Trump, bogus legal theories and a new candidate for governor, is creating chaos in the Republican Party and threatening to undermine its push to win the contests this year for governor and the Senate.

The situation in Wisconsin may be the most striking example of the struggle by Republican leaders to hold together their party when many of its most animated voters simply will not accept the reality of Mr. Trump’s loss.  

“This is a real issue,” said Timothy Ramthun, the Republican state representative who has turned his push to decertify the election into a nascent campaign for governor. Mr. Ramthun has asserted that if the Wisconsin Legislature decertifies the results and rescinds the state’s 10 electoral votes — an action with no basis in state or federal law — it could set off a movement that would oust President Biden from office.

“We don’t wear tinfoil hats,” he said. “We’re not fringe.” 

Wisconsin has the nation’s most active decertification effort. In Arizona, a Republican state legislator running for secretary of state, along with candidates for Congress, has called for recalling the state’s electoral votes. In September, Mr. Trump wrote a letter to Georgia officials asking them to decertify Mr. Biden’s victory there, but no organized effort materialized.

State Representative Timothy Ramthun of Wisconsin, is running for 

governor on a platform of decertifying the 2020 election and 

reinstalling Donald J. Trump as president

Things are shockingly bad when tinfoil hat wearing, reality-detached, freak politicians claim they are not fringe. That is arguably true for most of the Wisconsin Republican Party. It depends on how one defines fringe. 

The NYT reported that Wisconsin’s Democratic incumbent governor, Tony Evers, commented recently, “Republicans now are arguing over whether we want democracy or not.” Evers correctly states the situation with the GOP there. 

Republican politicians who understand that efforts at decertification are tinfoil hat drivel are speaking out of both sides of their mouths. They know their base is enraged, or as one enraged politician correctly put it, “foaming at the mouth” about the solen election. But those GOP politicians who know the election was not stolen nonetheless do not say that in public. This is evidence that for most Republican politicians nationwide, re-election is more important than defending democracy or truth.

The Republican election fraud lie with its intentionally fomented anti-election rage and hate is not going to go away. That is the case for most Republican states and for most rank and file Republicans in all states. This is rock solid evidence of the anti-democratic, autocratic-theocratic mindset that now dominates the morally rotted GOP.[1] 

Footnote: 

1. Opinions will differ, but my definition of political moral rot includes denying inconvenient facts and reality and rejecting sound but inconvenient reasoning. Deceit, lies and crackpot reasoning are immoral, or if malice is in it, evil.