Tag Archives: January 6

An Uncensored View of Facebook “Censorship”

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I have no problem with a social media platform that, having given the multitudes free rein to publish their views for others to see, has finally decided to address the use of the platform for promoting false information about, among other things, public health, politics, public policy issues (guns, for example). The attempt to prevent the use of these generally free platforms to spread disinformation is not subject to “free speech” principles under the First Amendment that only relates to government action. In fact, and in law, attempts to have the government interfere with the content-control policies of private platforms are themselves, in most cases, in conflict with the First Amendment.

The issues are complex, obviously. To some of us, there are some “opinions” that simply are based on false ideas and platforms do not have to serve as passive instruments for the spreading of such information. Examples abound but certainly include the QAnon conspiracy theory, the claim that the 2020 election was rife with fraud and the claim that the January 6 attack on the Capitol was not actually Trump supporters but was BLM and other left-wing groups pretending to be Trump supporters.

On that latter issue, I cannot fail to note the “reasoning” behind the Trumpers’ argument that the winners of the election, disguised as Trump supporters, tried to stop the certification of the Biden victory and install the person those left-wing groups despise the most as president and dictator. As one Twitter meme notes, to believe that takes a special kind of stupid.  Nevertheless, it appears that many Americans have convinced themselves that the claim is true. Facebook, in my view, has no obligation to allow the propagation of such nonsense by permitting postings containing that claim.

Now, considering what I’m about to tell you, you may chuckle to yourself and think, “well, wise guy, you got hoisted by your own petard,” because Facebook has “censored” one of your posts. Ha ha ha.

It is true that Facebook “unpublished” one of my posts. It was this one: Time for Strong Action Against Unruly Air Travelers, https://bit.ly/38m76Zb Facebook said the post violated its Community Standards because it was “spam.” Facebook defines “spam” this way:

We don’t allow people to get likes, follows, shares or video views in a way that’s misleading to others.

We define spam as things like:

·      Repeating the same comment

·      Getting fake likes, follows, shares or video views

·      Coordinating likes and shares to mislead others about the popularity of something

At that point in the Facebook process, you are given two choices: Back or Continue. Choose Continue and you get this gem:

You disagreed with the decision

We usually offer the chance to request a review, and follow up if we got decisions wrong

We have fewer reviewers available right now because of the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. We’re trying hard to prioritize reviewing content with the most potential for harm.

This means we may not be able to follow up with you, though your feedback helps us do better in the future.

Thank you for understanding.

Here you have one “choice:” Close.

So, Facebook has blocked the post but has no process by which to question that action. But, hey, thanks for understanding.

There are many aspects to this. First, the post was placed on my blog on May 25 and was placed on Facebook manually by me that same day per my usual practice. The notice from Facebook announcing my “violation” arrived August 26. I have no idea when the public’s view of the post was blocked. Facebook doesn’t know, doesn’t care.

Second, there is no plausible way that Facebook’s “system” could rationally conclude that the post in question was a repeat comment (I post each blog post manually on Facebook in two distinct places – my timeline and, if and only if relevant to the purposes of the group, to a private group of which I am a member; I have done this dozens of times and never been challenged by Facebook for duplicate postings).

Third, the post in question was simply placed on Facebook by inserting the link to it. No rational inference could be drawn that doing so was for the purpose of “Getting fake likes, follows, shares or video views,” whatever that means.

Fourth, there is no evidence, because it did not happen, that I tried “coordinating likes and shares to mislead others about the popularity of something.” I would have no idea how to do that even if I wanted to. And I don’t. The item was posted to be read by those interested.

It is a fact, however, that the post about unruly air passengers is the third most-read post since I started the blog. The explanation for that is simple: air travel is a popular subject, many of my followers are in the travel industry and … never mind, it’s just too obvious.

So, what are we left with as the explanation for Facebook’s delayed “decision” to “unpublish” my post is one thing: INCOMPETENCE. The so-called artificial intelligence that manages the Facebook censorship process is simply unable to do its job properly.

Is this better or worse than the purposes attributed to Facebook by many on the political right and the political left who claim every day that Facebook is engaged in some pernicious politically motivated campaign to stifle the views of the [insert ‘right’ or ‘left’ here]? I don’t know.

It’s dangerous, of course, to generalize from a single experience, but the Facebook action to bury my post seems blatantly unreasonable and downright stupid. It would be silly to think that Facebook’s algorithms were written to promote dangerous behavior on airplanes. Not even the most dedicated QAnon believer would …. well, those people might believe it but no one else would.

The action could not be the product of conscious thought by a rational person or “reviewer” as Facebook calls them. The post related to a public policy problem – a growing number of air travelers refusing to comply with flight crew instructions and airline policies regarding, among other things, wearing of masks to combat the spread of COVID. The passengers in question have engaged in various acts of violence that have, among other things, threatened the safety of aircraft in flight. Serious stuff. Some of them are being visited by huge fines for their misconduct. My argument was that the government should crack down even harder on that behavior. I proposed several additional policy actions that could help.

For some inexplicable reason, Facebook rates that as “spam.”

The most disturbing aspect of this, beyond the plain stupidity of it, is that Facebook has essentially said, “we’re too short-handed here to review your objection to our action, so… get lost. Thanks for understanding.” Not a chance.

Facebook’s financial statements for 2020 show more than $85 billion in Gross Revenue, an increase of 22 percent over 2019; Income from Operations up 36%; Operating Margin of 38%; Net Income up 58% and Provision for Income Taxes -58%. That’s right. Taxes down 58% with income up 58%.

If it chose to do so, Facebook can afford to hire more reviewers so that it’s “decisions” to block content are not merely arbitrary and capricious, yet it chooses to say, “so sorry, we’re short-handed so drop dead.” This strategy may work in the short term – it is in fact working now – but I question whether it’s viable in the long-term. On the other hand, this approach to business has worked for many giant companies in the past for extended periods. See Climate Change. Until, usually, competition did them in or forced major changes in how they do business. See American Automobile Companies. Time will tell about Facebook.

Meanwhile, yes, I am posting this post on Facebook. We’ll see what happens.

A Tale of Two Worlds

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I love the New York Times. I hate the New York Times. It has the best stories.  It has the worst stories….

What?

Maybe that reminds you of the remarkable opening of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities that didn’t occur to me until I had penned the opening lines of this post:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Dickens, writing in 1859, two years before the start of the American Civil War, was on to something fundamental. He could have been writing today.

I pretend no such comparison, of course. It’s just that as I read the New York Times Sunday Review “Guest Essay” by Christopher Caldwell, entitled, What if There Wasn’t a Coup Plot, General Milley? [https://nyti.ms/3fsvPPC], I experienced the cognitive dissonance that I wrote about in a prior post: Media Bias—Who Are the Victims? [https://bit.ly/2Vf7PIH] Caldwell is the author of a book, published in January 2020, that Amazon describes as explaining how the social justice “reforms of the past fifty years gave the country two incompatible political systems—and drove it toward conflict.” I haven’t read the book, but the description suggests, not surprisingly, that the liberal movement toward equality, educational opportunity and the rest are the root cause of Donald Trump’s appeals to racism and xenophobia. That’s an argument for another day, perhaps.

Here we are in August 2021, more than six months past the January 6 mob attack on the Capitol that killed police officers among many other outrages and Mr. Caldwell suggests that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, was hallucinating when he viewed Trump’s post-election assault on the Constitution as “some kind of coup.”  Caldwell is offended by Milley’s suggestion, reported in a new book, that a coup would fail because the military would step up to prevent it.

While some might greet such comments with relief, General Milley’s musings should give us pause. Americans have not usually looked to the military for help in regulating their civilian politics. And there is something grandiose about General Milley’s conception of his place in government. He told aides that a “retired military buddy” had called him on election night to say, “You represent the stability of this republic.” If there was not a coup underway, then General Milley’s comments may be cause more for worry than for relief.

Caldwell claims that Milley’s only evidence of a coup was the January 6 attack, and this is where the idea of Two Worlds comes in. Caldwell says, “that day’s events are ambiguous.”

Seriously? Ambiguous? This is better, I suppose, than the argument I encountered on LinkedIn recently in which a large number of Trumpers stated, I kid you not, that the January 6 attack did not happen and that the videos are “all lies.”

To be more than fair, Caldwell accepts the reality that,

On the one hand, it is hard to think of a more serious assault on democracy than a violent entry into a nation’s capitol to reverse the election of its chief executive. Five people died. Chanting protesters urged the hanging of Vice President Mike Pence, who had refused Mr. Trump’s call that he reject certain electoral votes cast for Joe Biden.

But then Caldwell dismisses the entire event as “something familiar: a political protest that got out of control.” Caldwell says that what he describes as merely “contesting the fairness of an election” and calling the election a “steal,” while “irresponsible” coming out of the mouth of a president, are mere hyperbole equal to “calling suboptimal employment and health laws a “war on women.”

Nor did the eventual violence necessarily discredit the demonstrators’ cause, any more than the July 2016 killing of five police officers at a rally in Dallas against police violence, for instance, invalidated the concerns of those marchers.

There are so many problems with this exercise in deflection and what-about-ism, it’s hard to know where to begin. Suffice to say, Mr. Caldwell has chosen to ignore the planning that we now are beginning to understand went into the January 6 attack. The “protest that just got out of hand” is a convenient intellectual ruse to plaster over the realities revealed by, for example, the New York Times’ video, “Day of Rage”. See https://nyti.ms/2VLfDSI

Caldwell is quite comfortable observing that Trump “ended his presidency as unfamiliar with its powers as with its responsibilities. That is, in a way, reassuring.” In effect, Caldwell seems to argue that Trump was too ignorant and incompetent to bring off a real coup. So, no need to worry.

Then, after noting that the few rational people in Trump’s administration left or were ousted, his claims of a stolen election inspired his followers. And, Caldwell hastens to declare,

Republicans had — and still have — legitimate grievances about how the last election was run. Pandemic conditions produced an electoral system more favorable to Democrats. Without the Covid-era advantage of expanded mail-in voting, Democrats might well have lost more elections at every level, including the presidential.

If you’re going to claim legitimacy for arguments of electoral unfairness arising from a public health crisis, then you must also address how that public health crisis unfolded. And there, my friends, is where we find Mr. Caldwell’s hero stuck in the sucking muck of his incompetence and indifference. Trump’s legendary and thoroughly documented mishandling of the pandemic is likely at the heart of his defeat, and he cannot have it both ways. If the pandemic was another “Democrat hoax,” it cannot be blamed for his defeat.

Mr. Caldwell continues his monologue lost in the illogic of his argument that what began as a perfectly rational, if not necessarily correct, dispute about election procedures spun out of control in the hands of an “infuriated and highly unrepresentative hard core.” That “hard core” was precisely the group of politicians and supporters that Trump turned to in his desperation. His one true skill, inspiring hatred and irrational behavior, rose to the occasion just when he needed it most. Trump urged the mob to go to the Capitol, told them he would be there with them – and they believed him. Many of them have argued in court that they could not have committed crimes because they were “invited” into the building by Trump himself.

Undeterred by reality, Caldwell says.

The result was not a coup. It was, instead, mayhem on behalf of what had started as a legitimate political position. Such mixtures of the defensible and indefensible occur in democracies more often than we care to admit. The question is whom we trust to untangle such ambiguities when they arise.

Caldwell assumes away the central issue by simply declaring the situation was ambiguous and that the debate about the election just got out of hand when the mob listened to Trump claiming that the nation would be destroyed if the election were allowed to stand.

Under the rules of logical reasoning, defects in the premise remain in the outcome of a logical progression from that premise. By January 6 there was no even superficial plausibility to the argument that the election was flawed by fraud and “stolen,” notwithstanding the absurd claims of Republican politicians that the mob was just a bunch of friendly tourists. It is therefore impossible to logically argue that a rational dispute about the validity of the election simply got out of hand and led to the vicious beating of police trying to protect Members of Congress carrying out explicit Constitutional responsibilities.

In the end, Caldwell’s argument is that January   6 was not a coup attempt because he says so. And, therefore, he concludes that military leaders should not have “any kind of role in judging civilian ones.”

Most thoughtful people who respect the Constitutional scheme, despite its flaws, would agree that in normal circumstances the military should stay out of politics. Trump’s aspiration to turn the US into a “banana republic” notwithstanding, we remain a democratic republic and our military is subordinate to civilian authority. However, the Trump crowd should not get the wrong idea about that. Recall that it was Trump who called out military forces against civilian demonstrators in Washington. Gen. Milley had every reason to be concerned that Trump’s disrespect for, and fundamental ignorance about, the Constitution and his oath of office might lead to an attempt to use the military to overturn the election. I, for one, am happy to hear the General say “hell, no, not now, not ever.”

Twilight Time?

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It is a desultory day in Washington, overcast and gray, with predictions of potentially catastrophic storms, flash floods and tornados, almost none of which are likely to happen. They are predicted every time a “storm” passes through. We persist. But the weather threatens to postpone the baseball game on which I have been counting to distract from all the other negatives – being alone on Saturday night, the air outside so heavy that it is hard to breathe (earlier the heat index was 111, now a refreshing 92), Chinese leftovers from last night for dinner (wasn’t great then, likely less so now), and so on.

And then there is the blow to my already dwindling hopes for our country. No doubt I am under the stultifying influence of having, foolishly I admit, undertaken to argue with a bunch of “business people” on LinkedIn, which has, sadly, become yet another forum for right-wing hysteria. At times the people involved have been vicious, but what is most dispiriting is that they, as classical Trump acolytes, simply cannot accept what I believe to be reality. One example: they reject the reality of the January 6 assault on the Capitol. One of them flat-out called it “all lies.” The videos are just “fake news” to them, further evidence that the “left” has stolen from them their rightful leader whom some still appear to believe will be “restored” in August. They think the violence following George Floyd’s murder is no different than the insurrection at the Capitol.

I have been seeking to understand that type of thinking for some time. For a while I was impressed by George Lakoff’s Moral Politics, that argues the core issue is different understandings of proper family life and hierarchies of morality and social order. And there are others that, at one time or another, seemed to be on to something.

Then, today, I finished Anne Applebaum’s Twilight of Democracy, subtitled The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism. I didn’t much care for most of it; too much personal style and mostly about Europe, Poland in particular, but … near the end, I am afraid to think she nailed it. The book mainly lays out the ways in which authoritarian ideas emerge and irreparable divisions develop in societies that were seemingly oriented toward, if not in fact, functioning democracies. The stories are compelling if remote from my experience.

But the ultimate conclusion is something else again: it’s as if the explanation was staring us in the face, was so obvious, and the same time so frightening, that we didn’t see it.

Applebaum notes that Trump’s inaugural speech signaled the beginning of the revelation in its early and repeated references to the decline of America and its values, what he called the “American carnage.” He posited a state of fundamental conflict between the government and the people, and between the United States and the rest of the world. Trump’s solution: “America First.”

Applebaum tellingly analyzes Trump:

To the millenarianism of the far right and the revolutionary nihilism of the far left he adds the deep cynicism of someone who has spent years running unsavory business schemes around the world. Trump has no knowledge of the American story and so cannot have any faith in it. He has no understanding of or sympathy for the language of the founders, so he cannot be inspired by it. Since he doesn’t believe American democracy is good, he has no interest in an America that aspires to be a model among nations.  [Twilight at 154]

Applebaum then observes that Trump’s embrace of Vladimir Putin’s rhetoric translates directly to a form of moral equivalence. The essence of that equivalence is that all countries, certainly all governments, are corrupt in equal measure. If all are corrupt, then “whatever it takes to win is okay.” [Twilight at 155] This, she notes,

is the argument that anti-American extremists, the groups on the far-right and far-left fringes of society, have always made. American ideals are false, American institutions are fraudulent, American behavior abroad is evil, and the language of the American project – equality, opportunity, justice – is nothing but empty slogans. The real reality, in this conspiratorial view, is that of secretive businessmen, or perhaps “deep state” bureaucrats, who manipulate the voters into going along with their plans, using the cheesy language of Thomas Jefferson as a cover story. Whatever it takes to overthrow these evil schemers is justified….

This form of moral equivalence – the belief that democracy is no different, at base, from autocracy – is a familiar argument, and one long used by authoritarians….

… this is what Trump has proven: beneath the surface of the American consensus, the belief in our founding fathers and the faith in our ideals, there lies another America, Trump’s America – one that sees no important distinction between democracy and dictatorship. This America feels no attachment to other democracies … The unity of this America is created by white skin, a certain idea of Christianity, and an attachment to land that will be surrounded and defended by a wall. This America’s ethnic nationalism resembles the old-fashioned ethnic nationalism of older European nations. This America’s cultural despair resembles their cultural despair. [Twilight at 155-158]

This explanation flies in the face of much of the rhetoric of the Republican Party, including Trump’s most ardent acolytes who speak passionately, but falsely, after freedom and “the American way of life.” The relentless drumbeat of USA, USA and the flags and all the rest obscure the real message.

Applebaum’s book has many other insights to commend it for reading by anyone interested in the question whether we are in the twilight of democracy, but for me, she has encapsulated in the above quotes the true explanation of the Trump phenomenon. It comes down to the simple proposition that Trump and those who support him do not believe in the democratic principles on which the country was founded.

Some time back I had speculated that Trump’s election in 2016 led him to believe that he had somehow been granted ownership of the country, that he was owner and CEO of the United States vested, as he saw it, with unlimited power (“I can do whatever I want”). He is another dictator in the making, another Viktor Orbán (Hungary), another Vladimir Putin wannabe. Those men aren’t interested in democracy – they just want to rule. That is Trump as well, and the Republican Party now belongs to him, just as Don Jr. proclaimed a while back.

These people do not recognize the fundamental legitimacy of the legal and traditional arrangements that have been the foundation for our democracy since the Constitution was ratified. Think back to Trump’s statements and behavior. Trump does not believe in democracy. That is why Trump saw no real problem in proclaiming, against all the evidence, that the election was stolen and why he saw no problem in directing a mob of true believers to attack the Capitol on January 6.

This is not about policy disputes over immigration policy or tax philosophy or deficit spending. It is about the essential principles that must be respected if a democratic republic is to function. Thinking of this as just another, though perhaps more serious, dispute about political philosophy, fatally overlooks the reality that the Republican Party no longer operates under the rules and principles of a free democracy.

Democratic politicians who think that Trump is just a temporary phenomenon who can be dealt with by traditional political means are making a potentially fatal mistake. The danger of further attacks on the national government is very real. All elements of the government, including particularly law enforcement and the military, must be prepared to respond as necessary to put down any such assaults. The next time must be the last or surely we will lose our republic, just as Ben Franklin warned. It is past time for the government to demand accountability for the many crimes committed by Trump and his henchmen while in office. This is necessary to make clear that there will be no repeat.

 

January 6 Video: Capitol Under Siege

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The New York Times has published a video covering the events of January 6, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol Building. There is nothing to add to this at the moment, except to wish that the government arrests, convicts and sends to long prison terms the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and other white supremacist groups that planned their attack, along with those who joined them in a lunatic rampage of violence and desecration. I also urge everyone to subscribe to the New York Times. You may not agree with everything the publish (I don’t) but their comprehensive coverage and analysis is unparalleled in journalism.

Here is the link to the video: https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/politics/100000007606996/capitol-riot-trump-supporters.html?

 

What Do You Call a Collection of Traitors & Cowards?

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There is a gaggle of geese (also a press gaggle and, generically, any group)… a coven of witches, pride of lions (definitely not lions), herd of giraffes (also cattle) … getting warmer.

Not that important, I suppose, to have a name for the mob of people who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021, in an attempt to stop the election of Joe Biden and replace him with the dictator Donald Trump. I was inspired to think about this when I found this site https://bit.ly/3xRc2QA which the FBI’s display of 1,175 photos of people they are still seeking to arrest for their role in the January 6 insurrection (a very few since arrested). The list bears this note:

If you have any information on the individuals pictured above, please call 1-800-CALL-FBI or submit a tip online at tips.fbi.gov. Please reference the photo number, including the AFO or AOM if applicable, when calling or submitting information online.

Aside from the outrageous nature of the attack itself, the shocking thing about these photos is that many of them are very clear, full face shots that could be identified readily by any number of friends, family, acquaintances, co-workers or customers. Still, however, these people are at large. I’m sure most people who read this blog will not know any of these charmers, but just in case, I am writing this post in the hope that readers will review the photos and report anyone they know.

I understand the idea that “ratting out” someone is frowned upon, even by upstanding people of strong religious and patriotic values. But these people were trying to overthrow the democracy on which your freedoms depend. Don’t think for a moment that if they had succeeded in installing Trump for a second term, despite his election loss, everything would just have continued as before. Recall that Trump himself spoke on multiple occasions about a third term, to rousing applause from his rally acolytes. It was no joke then and certainly no joke after January 6. So, please review the photos and see if you recognize anyone. If you do, report them to the FBI.

And don’t miss the list of arrest announcements at the bottom of the pages of photos. Each is linked to a press release with details of the person’s involvement in the January 6 attack. Makes interesting reading.

While I’m on this subject, I want to make a few comments about some of the “defenses” that I have heard made by January 6 defendants who have been arrested.

One is the “pure of heart” defense, which goes something like, “I was there because I truly believed what Trump had said and I thought I was patriotically defending my country…blah, blah.” Nonsense, you don’t get passing grades in school even if you convince yourself that Martians ate your homework. Belief is a choice you make and every person who claims they believed Trump had access to information that would have shown he was lying about the election. No defense.

Then there is the “I didn’t know it was illegal” defense, based on the idea that the Capitol is a “public building” and therefore the public has the right to go there any time and under any circumstances the public chooses. No, actually, untrue and any person with a functioning mind would know, from personal experience and casual observation, that “public” buildings are normally guarded now-a-days and access is strictly controlled. Moreover, and it pains me to have to add this, there were Capitol police on site who were obviously indicating that access to the building was not open, and no normal person would think it’s just fine to ignore their presence and their resistance to entry.

Finally, there is the “I just got caught up in the crowd” argument. Well, that could possibly be true for a few of the people who walked to the Capitol from Trump’s incendiary speech, but … once there, it should have been clear, again to anyone with a functioning mind, that the crowd had turned into a violent mob and that it was better to skedaddle than to just go along to get along. This “defense” is nonsense and, in my view, even if factually accurate in a handful of cases, it is no excuse. It reads a lot like “yeah, I knew my friends were going to rob the store, but I drove the get-away car anyway because, you know, they were my friends.”

Rant over. Please look at the FBI photos and see your fellow Americans at play. If you recognize anyone, turn him/her in to the FBI. You will feel better for it.

 

A Darkness in the Heart

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A few days ago, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, Chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, releaseddocuments showing ex-President Trump’s efforts to pressure the Department of Justice (DOJ) to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.  https://bit.ly/35wq4uL Maloney’s release says, in part,

These documents show that President Trump tried to corrupt our nation’s chief law enforcement agency in a brazen attempt to overturn an election that he lost. Those who aided or witnessed President Trump’s unlawful actions must answer the committee’s questions about this attempted subversion of democracy.

This is not really new. Recall that on May 3, 2017, more than four long long years ago, I published, https://bit.ly/3vObOrS that included a 24-item list of indictable/impeachable offenses by Donald Trump. That was long before the March 2019 Mueller Report, laying out conclusive evidence of at least ten instances in which Trump obstructed justice. And longer still before the July 2019 phone call in which Trump threatened the President of Ukraine that he would withhold Congressionally-approved aid if Ukraine did not announce an investigation of Joe and Hunter Biden. See https://bit.ly/3vBQ7LF It was even longer before the January 6, 2021 Trump-inspired and Trump-led (“I will be there with you.”) attack on the Capitol, for which I recommended that Trump be indicted, arrested and charged with Sedition & Felony Murder. https://bit.ly/3q7iaSb

Thus, it comes as no surprise that unleashed Trump has once again committed multiple crimes. [An aside: this is not an exaggeration. I will soon be reviewing the extraordinary memoir, Where Law Ends, by Andrew Weissmann, the inside account of the Mueller investigation that reveals in horrifying detail the determination of Donald Trump to retain power and remain unaccountable to the people, including multiple crimes in office]

In a nutshell, as exposed in the released documents, here is how Trump attempted to subvert the Department of Justice in the wake of his 2020 election defeat [full details here; https://bit.ly/35wq4uL]:

Trump Sent Bogus Election Fraud Claims to Top DOJ Officials Minutes Before Announcing Their Promotions to the Top Two Spots in the Department

Trump Used Official White House Channels and a Private Attorney to Pressure DOJ to Urgently File a Supreme Court Lawsuit to Nullify the Election

      • The draft 54-page complaint demanded that the Supreme Court “declare that the Electoral College votes cast” in six states that President Trump lost “cannot be counted,” and  requested that the Court order a “special election” for president in those states.

Trump Enlisted Assistant AG Jeffrey Clark in an Attempt to Advance Election Fraud Claims; The White House Chief of Staff Pressured DOJ to Investigate Conspiracy Theories At Least Fives Times

 Examples [“Rosen” refers to then Deputy AG Jeffrey Rosen]:

      • On December 30, 2020, Mr. Meadows forwarded Mr. Rosen an email from Cleta Mitchell, a Trump advisor who later participated in a January phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.  During that call,  President Trump reportedly asked Georgia election officials to “find” enough votes to declare him the winner of the state.  The December 30 email contained allegations of “video issues in Fulton County.”  Mr. Meadows wrote to Mr. Rosen:  “Can you have your team look into these allegations of wrongdoing.  Only the alleged fraudulent activity.”
      • Later on December 30, 2020, Mr. Meadows emailed Mr. Rosen a translation of a document from an individual in Italy claiming to have “direct knowledge” of a plot by which American electoral data was changed in Italian facilities “in coordination with senior US intelligence officials (CIA)” and loaded onto “military satellites.”  This individual claimed that the true data, as well as sources within the conservative wing of the Italian secret service, confirmed that Donald Trump was “clearly the winner” of the 2020 election.

Further nuances and details about these sorry episodes were reported in the Washington Post. https://wapo.st/3q4tP49 One element of that recital is the repetition of “no comment” and no response to inquiries from the press about the narrated events. Even those Justice Department officials who were steadfast in declining Trump’s overtures to overturn the election are apparently unwilling to address the revelations in the emails released by the Oversight Committee. And, quite expectedly, Mark Meadows and Trump himself had nothing further to say regarding their blatant attempts to overturn the election.

 What Should Happen Now

Trump and all of the people involved in attempts to suborn the Department of Justice should be indicted under 18 USC § 371,arrested and tried. It’s past time to put a stop to Trump’s campaign to undermine the central fabric of our democracy.

The US Criminal Code, 18 U.S.C. § 371, if violated when two or more persons conspire either to (a) commit any offense against the United States, or (b) defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose. Both offenses require the traditional elements of conspiracy: an illegal agreement, criminal intent, and proof of an overt act.

In Hass v. Henkel, 216 U.S. 462 (1910) the Supreme Court stated:

The statute is broad enough in its terms to include any conspiracy for the purpose of impairing, obstructing or defeating the lawful function of any department of government . . . (A)ny conspiracy which is calculated to obstruct or impair its efficiency and destroy the value of its operation and reports as fair, impartial and reasonably accurate, would be to defraud the United States by depriving it of its lawful right and duty of promulgating or diffusing the information so officially acquired in the way and at the time required by law or departmental regulation.

In Hammerschmidt v. United States, 265 U.S. 182 (1924), the Court elaborated:

To conspire to defraud the United States … also means to interfere with or obstruct one of its lawful governmental functions by deceit, craft or trickery, or at least by means that are dishonest. It is not necessary that the Government shall be subjected to property or pecuniary loss by the fraud, but only that its legitimate official action and purpose shall be defeated by misrepresentation, chicane or the overreaching of those charged with carrying out the governmental intention.

A multitude of later cases confirm the ongoing vitality of those early definitions.

Proof of conspiracy requires knowledge by the perpetrators that the statements were false. The claims made by Trump, Meadows and others acting on Trump’s behalf were not just obviously false but bordered on hallucinatory. Trump’s repeated claims that there was “no way” he lost Georgia, for example, have no plausible factual predicate and after sixty lawsuit failures, no plausible factual basis has been presented. Trump’s claims were a blatant attempt to both “interfere or obstruct legitimate Government activity” and/or to “make wrongful use of a governmental instrumentality.”

The Manual of Model Criminal Jury Instructions: 8. Offenses Under Title 18, referring to 18 USC § 371,  states,

A conspiracy is a kind of criminal partnership—an agreement of two or more persons to commit one or more crimes. The crime of conspiracy is the agreement to do something unlawful; it does not matter whether the crime agreed upon was committed….

One becomes a member of a conspiracy by willfully participating in the unlawful plan with the intent to advance or further some object or purpose of the conspiracy, even though the person does not have full knowledge of all the details of the conspiracy. Furthermore, one who willfully joins an existing conspiracy is as responsible for it as the originators.…

An overt act does not itself have to be unlawful. A lawful act may be an element of a conspiracy if it was done for the purpose of carrying out the conspiracy. The government is not required to prove that the defendant personally did one of the overt acts.

A conspirator may not defend on the basis that he believed in fantasies when he made claims he knew were unjustified. In this case Trump and his henchmen tried to enlist the personnel and resources of the nation’s top law enforcement agency to accomplish what they failed to accomplish in the election, knowing to a moral certainty that their claims lacked a basis in reality. The conduct in question occurred almost two months after the election and after numerous lawsuits throughout the country failed to persuade a single judge (including some Trump himself appointed) that there was any basis for claims of election fraud that could change the result. Even Trump’s Attorney General Barr publicly rejected the fraud claims.

I am not alone in advocating strong and prompt action to stop Trump’s continuing effort to overturn the election . Jennifer Rubin suggested the following in the Washington Post on [https://wapo.st/3wz0sJM]:

    1.  criminal investigation into post-election actions in which officials were pressured to change election outcomes, including attempts at DOJ and at state officials such as Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger,
    2. create strict guidelines for Justice Department attorneys regarding efforts to undo lawful elections, including whistleblower protections and mandatory duty to report such actions to Congress,
    3. sue to stop the bogus so-called “audits” in Arizona and elsewhere,
    4. develop federal legislation to strengthen the Electoral Count Act, such as requiring a supermajority to challenge electoral votes.

Rubin’s final recommendation is probably the most important: establish an election-monitoring program for 2022 and 2024 that will assign Justice personnel to prevent voter intimidation, measure wait times, observe election counting, receive complaints and, ultimately, render a report on the functioning of elections in all 50 states.  That’s the most critical because Republicans throughout the country are legislating changes in local election procedures to enable Republican-controlled legislatures and political appointees to control and even overturn election results.

Following Republicans’ uniform refusal to hold Trump accountable for any of his many crimes in office, it is now clear that the fate of the nation’s election system is under systemic attack. It is no exaggeration to say that Republicans are prepared, without compunction, to adopt totalitarian tactics to establish themselves as the permanent ruling party in American politics. They seem to believe that the majority of Americans will accept such actions in peaceful submission. That, I believe, is a fundamental misjudgment, the consequences of which are unimaginably horrible. Among many other things, the United States is no longer separated from its enemies by oceans that take weeks or months to cross. A violent civil conflict would expose the country to attacks from which it could never recover.

In any case, there is no reason to sit idly by while the Republicans attempt in plain view to subvert the Constitution and establish a Republican dictatorship under Donald Trump. Aggressive and immediate actions can prevent the unthinkable and avert more drastic measures later. Trump and his co-conspirators should be indicted forthwith. Time and opportunity are wasting.

Trump, Seriously

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It is tempting to treat Donald Trump as a sick joke at this point. He sits in Trumplandia, aka Mar-a-Lago, spewing lies about the 2020 election and lashing out as his enemies, perceived or otherwise. He is apparently planning to hold more “rallies,” that many view as simply another way for Trump to scam his political base.

Twitter is ablaze with mocking commentary about Trump, his family who can’t resist tweeting about all the outrages against them, his political allies in the Republican Party who, terrified that Trump’s supporters will turn on them, are willing to sell the country down the drain to avoid his anger. Hundreds of the people he inspired, indeed directed, to attack the Capitol on January 6 are facing serious prison time, loss of jobs, financial ruin, loss of respect and more.

And, according to multiple reported sources, Trump is asking whether he is, as many of his supporters have declared, going to be restored to the presidency in August or perhaps later. The apparent basis for this is the collection of so-called “election audits” being conducted by a rag-tag bunch of Republicans in Arizona and other closely contested states.

As ludicrous as all this is, and as tempting as it is to believe that the left-leaning side of Twitter is justified in mocking all of it, there remains a serious undercurrent of concern that Trump’s followers will, once again, attempt to disrupt the government through a violent insurrection. A group of 100 scholars of history/democracy has signed a letter expressing their belief that anti-government sentiment inspired by Trump should not be simply dismissed. They and many other serious observers have drawn the parallels from history elsewhere as evidence that the threat of undoing the American republic and its democratic ideals is real.

Recall that, despite his gross mishandling of the pandemic, among many other failures, 74 million Americans voted to give Trump a second term. Those people were, for whatever reasons, unimpressed with Trump’s admission that he downplayed the seriousness of the coronavirus, undeterred by his overt racism, misogyny, criminality and indifference to the plight of so many – approaching now 600,000 dead from COVID-19. There is little reason to believe that the majority of those 74 million people feel any differently today. Many, apparently, would readily yield their democratic freedoms, such as the right to vote, in exchange for restoring Trump to power by whatever means necessary.

I restate these concerns because the threat is, in my judgment and that of many serious thinkers with far greater credentials than mine, very real.

An easy case can be made that Trump’s delusions of grandeur, his belief in so many unbelievable things (for example only, the idea that the “ election audits” can somehow put him back in power) are evidence of mental decline, perhaps severe mental illness, held up by his rage and inability to accept that, finally, he was defeated in a way that cannot be overcome by lawsuits, threats, bribes or anything … anything short of violence, that is. Violence is the one tool left for Trump, and there may well be large numbers of Americans prepared to engage in it if he tells them to do it. No different than many of the so-call Third World countries that Americans often ridicule as “not us.”

I am not, obviously I hope, suggesting there is a high probability that Trump will attempt to retake power through violence. On the other hand, we have already seen in the events of January 6 that he is not beyond doing it. His most ardent followers are easily misled. The stories of his increasing anger and irrationality from apparently reliable inside sources should, therefore, be taken seriously. I hope, and believe, that the current President is doing so but is just not giving oxygen to the idea that Trump is a real threat.

So, we can continue to have our fun on Twitter and Facebook by mocking Trump’s delusions, but everyone dedicated to Benjamin Franklin’s prescient declaration, “a republic, if you can keep it,” should remain alert and focused. Hopefully, the Department of Justice will, as it is intended to do, act aggressively against the members of the January 6 mob and show the world that we take our democracy seriously here. Any who would be its enemies, foreign or domestic, will be dealt with fairly but with severity appropriate to the nature of the challenge. It’s our republic and, yes, we mean to keep it.

I Am Never Wrong

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I also never exaggerate. Believe me.

Why then do things not always work out the way I want them to? I realize that my unerring instincts were not one of the self-evident truths to which Thomas Jefferson referred in the Declaration of Independence, but still, things should be working out better because I’m always on the right side and always right.

How, for example only, can it be true that, as former Republican congresswoman Barbara Comstock said on Meet the Press, May 30:

.… many Americans“ still don’t realize how violent that [day] was. … People are still talking about [sic] these were like tourists. We need to have that full story out. It’s going to get out one way or the other.

[As noted in an opinion piece by Washington Post Digital Opinions Editor (??) James Downie. https://wapo.st/3uzxCqM]

Because I’m never wrong and that is one of the most improbable statements I’ve seen made about the January 6 Trump-directed attack on the Capitol and the 2020 election, I went to the Meet the Press transcript, conveniently provided by NBC at https://nbcnews.to/3uIo7pc in search of context.

[An aside: Chuck Todd opened the show with, “And a good Sunday morning. And I hope you’re enjoying this Memorial Day weekend, wherever you are.” Interested to note that the Republican Party has not demanded hysterically that Todd be removed, nor has it questioned his patriotism for suggesting that Memorial Day was a time that could be enjoyed. No, they saved that vitriol for Vice President Harris who tweeted almost exactly the same sentiment. You’d have thought she’d asked for help from Russia or something.]

Returning to what passes for reality, Ms. Comstock was on the show apparently because she “spent the week unsuccessfully lobbying Republican senators” to vote for a commission to investigate the January 6 insurrection. Her effort failed in part because Mitch McConnell, aka MoscowMitch on Twitter, was opposed: “There’s no new fact about that day we need the Democrats’ extraneous commission to uncover.”

Well, if McConnell is right about that, I must be wrong. Impossible. How, for example, would McConnell know that we already know everything that’s important to know about what happened on January 6? Hmmhh? How does he know that? That claim alone requires further investigation. If McConnell knows everything important there is to know about the Capitol attack, he should be examined under oath to find out what he knows. If he is lying and doesn’t know anything important, he’s going about his business in a curious way. The truth, of course, is that he doesn’t care what happened on January 6 as long as no one can pin it on him, his Congressional buddies in the far-far-right wing of the Republican Party or the former president whom McConnell worships as a living god.

For reasons that defy understanding, Chuck Todd described McConnell as “being honest publicly” in admitting that the greater the light shed on January 6, the worse for Republicans in the 2022 mid-terms. Todd: “That’s why he’s against it, period.” The irony, of course, is that Todd implied, correctly, that McConnell is rarely “honest publicly.” And if that’s true, it’s not a stretch to conclude that he’s rarely honest in private either. The truth  hurts. Or it should. Todd gets a C minus for this non-revelation. McConnell gets an F.

But let’s get back to Comstock’s assertion that “… many Americans still don’t realize how violent that [day] was….” She cites as proof that “People are still talking about [sic] these were like tourists.”

Completely wrong. “People” aren’t talking about the Trump-mob as if they were tourists. One Member of Congress said that. A Republican, of course. As for “many Americans,” I suggest Comstock is gaslighting us. After a bazillion words and hours-and-hours of videos have been produced on the subject, it is simply not possible that “many Americans” do not understand the violence of January 6. To be sure, many of them continue to assert that the mob was actually “antifa,” all of whom came dressed in Trump paraphernalia & carrying Trump flags, and if there were any Trump supporters in the mob, they were simply carried along with the crowd of antifas. Oh, and Black Lives Matter people also. BLM was also involved in the attack, wearing Trump gear and bearing Trump flags. Sure.

If it were true, and it’s clearly not, that the January 6 mob was antifa and BLM, why would the Republicans not be jumping at the chance to expose the truth about the attack instead of resisting the creation of a January 6 Commission at every turn? How would the Republicans explain the presence of Ashli Babbitt, the woman shot trying to force her way into the House chamber?

And if antifa and BLM were behind the attack, wouldn’t the Republicans want to know who planted the pipe bombs on January 5 at the RNC and DNC? The video shows a person in a hoodie whom many of us believe was a female whose form and movements suggest Lauren Boebert, a Republican Member of Congress. We have no hard evidence beyond the video, but you’d think that the Republicans would be anxious to put that question to rest and to pin it on antifa or BLM. But, no, they oppose any further investigation.

You’d have to be either dead, severely ill or a delusional Republican to be unaware of the violence of January 6. Comstock is wrong and I’m right. The Republicans in Congress know the awful truth about January 6 and are living under the delusion that they can somehow prevent the truth from being told. They know Trump is guilty. The Republicans are protecting Trump and almost certainly some of their own Members of Congress. Their claims about January 6 are as nuts as Marjorie Taylor Greene, aka MTGCuckoo, who claims school shootings were staged and … forget her, too bonkers to warrant more attention.

But I bet the Republicans in Congress and, formerly, the White House, are not sleeping too well, wondering who among the more than 400 people arrested so far is going to spill the beans to secure a lighter sentence. This issue is never going to go away. It will be like a weight, a yoke if you prefer, around the necks of every Republican running for office in 2022 and beyond. The real question is whether the Democrats will be sufficiently astute to use the weight effectively. It’s past time. Tick tock.

Has the Washington Post Gone Over to the Dark Side?

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I was astonished and disturbed that the Washington Post would give a member of the January 6 insurrection streaming time on the Washington Post Live, but that’s exactly what it did with Senator John Hawley on May 4. The full transcript may be read here: https://wapo.st/3eT235C

I am doubly disturbed about this now that I am aware that it was the Washington Post that invited Donald Trump to sit at its table at the 2011 White House Correspondents Association Dinner at which then-President Barack Obama mercilessly and deservedly chided Trump for Trump’s role in the birther conspiracy regarding Obama’s birthplace. Trump was clearly very unhappy at being the butt of President Obama’s humiliating jokes. I’ll have more to say about that when I review Obama’s magnificent memoir, A Promised Land.

The interview at hand was conducted by Cat Zakrzewski, identified as a tech policy reporter and author of The Technology 202 newsletter. She was chosen, perhaps, because the program was billed as “The Missouri senator discusses breaking up big tech, antitrust reform and the post-Trump era for the Republican Party,” but it did not go well, in part because Zakrzewski opened the interview by testing Hawley on other subjects for which she was, it seemed, ill-prepared to cope with his aggressive style.

Zakrzewski opened the discussion by asking the open-ended question, “what responsibility do you feel for the cascading events that resulted on January 6th?” This presented Hawley with the perfect opening to gaslight, both-sides and what-about the country regarding his role. And he did. Hawley claimed that what he did was nothing compared to Democrats who had lodged objections to three past presidential elections.

True, as far it goes. But there are a few critical differences Hawley conveniently failed to mention. They are set out in detail at https://bit.ly/33kU7ES Suffice to say that in 2000, after the Supreme Court’s 5-4 extremely questionable decision to stop the Florida recount, it was Al Gore, the losing Democrat, who, serving as Senate President, enforced the rules to stop the objections. In 2004, overwhelming bipartisan votes rejected the objections lodged by just one member from each house. In 2016, it was again a Democratic Vice President who insisted that the rules be followed in the final certification and, absent any support in the Senate for objections, the tally in Trump’s favor was approved.

In 2020, on the other hand, Republicans brought, and lost, more than 60 legal challenges to multiple swing state outcomes. They never produced evidence of voter fraud on which the claim of “The Big Steal” was based. The entire claim was nonsense and Hawley knew it. His disassociation from facts mirrors the subordination of the entire Republican Party to the Big Lie by Donald Trump that the election was stolen.

Hawley then ran away with the interview in a late-in-coming exegesis on his disapproval of the January 6 mob attack on the Capitol, the same attack he encouraged with the fist pump that was photographed and seen by millions. And, again, Hawley attempted to minimize the attack by deflective references to other acts of violence to which he also objected, returning at the end to refer to the non-existent issue of “election integrity” that he insists was at the root of his objections to the Electoral College certification.

…in terms of having a debate about election integrity, I promised my constituents I would. I did, and I don’t regret that at all. That’s me doing my job.

When Zakrzewski challenged Hawley, noting that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court had dismissed challenges to the Pennsylvania count, Hawley rejected the Court’s decision, claiming it was not on the merits, was partisan,  that the court “also interfered with the count itself,” and was “in violation of their own precedent.” In other words, Hawley rejected the action of the highest court in Pennsylvania because he disagreed with it and proceeded to demand the overturning of the election in that state. So much for Republican devotion to “law and order.” Zakrzewski barely got a word in.

On the subject of a national 9/11 style commission to investigate the January 6 attack, Hawley, being the loyal Trumpist, objected to focusing on the attack and argued that the commission should instead address the security failures that allowed the attack to take place. Those issues, however, have already been investigated and Hawley has no explanation, other than deflecting from the core issues of the attack and its inspiration by Trump, for expanding the commission’s scope to other issues. It doesn’t take much imagination to foresee how a commission with a multiple-element mandate would be derailed by Republicans who clearly intend to protect Trump from accountability for his role in directing the assault. Just watch any hearing in which Rep. Jim Jordan participates and you’ll understand.

When again asked about the attacks on Capitol Police, Hawley again deflected to other incidents, mentioning for the second time the Nation of Islam. No objection from Zakrzewski. When asked about the fist-pump incident, Hawley, for the third time brought up BLM protests and riots.

The interview then shifted to other subjects related to the power of tech companies and Hawley’s proposal to break them up. Hawley was able to talk over Zakrzewski on every issue. It brought to mind the first Biden-Trump debate in which Trump simply ran over the moderator throughout the program. After each Hawley monologue, Zakrzewski just moved on to the next topic. But when she tried to explore the effects of the Big Lie about the stolen election, Hawley just continued his rant about political censorship by tech companies. She let him get away with it and turned to the then-pending plan to remove Liz Cheney from leadership to which Hawley demurred (she’s in the House so their problem).

The “interview” ended with Zakrzewski asking “would you support former President Trump running again for office in 2024?” Hawley again deflected, saying Trump’s decision was his to make, Hawley would never give him advice, etc. In short, no answer. Interview over.

Other than providing Hawley a platform from which to practice his both-sides deflection routines, what did the Washington Post accomplish by giving this supporter of January 6 this exposure? Whatever it was, it didn’t work. Instead, Hawley was given the opportunity to promote himself and his  “oh, no, it wasn’t me. I’m opposed to violent protest in all forms. Did I mention Portland? I was just doing what my constituents wanted me to do. Oh, yeah, I’m just a humble servant of the people of Missouri, though I reserve the right to reject the rulings of the highest courts in states like Pennsylvania and vote to overturn elections whose outcomes I don’t like. Did I mention antifa? Riots? Yeah, I’m for law and order unless it means following the decisions of the highest courts in a state whose election result I don’t like.”

If the Post is fooled by Hawley’s professed devotion to protecting free speech and the First Amendment, we are in even more serious trouble than I have thought. The Post should know by now that it cannot escape the fascist propensities of the rightwing politicians who shout at every opportunity, “fake news, enemy of the people” about the mainstream media. I fully accept that the Post should report genuine news – the Capitol attack on January 6 was news – but it should stay out of the business of creating news by giving platforms to the very people who would destroy the free press in a heartbeat if given the power. @WashingtonPost, do better. Before it’s too late.

Congress is Failing the Country Again

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The Washington Post reports that the prospects for Congress establishing an independent commission to investigate and report on the January 6 attack on the Capitol are dimming. https://wapo.st/3v3Nh2o In a report that could have emerged from Alice in Wonderland, the Post says,

Congress’s pursuit of an independent investigation into the Jan. 6 insurrection is facing long odds, as bipartisan resolve to hold the perpetrators and instigators accountable erodes, and Republicans face sustained pressure to disavow that it was supporters of former president Donald Trump who attacked the U.S. Capitol.

Once again, it seems, “political interests steadily overtake lawmakers’ appetite to push for accountability.”

Apparently, the Republicans in the House are demanding “equal representation” and “subpoena authority” despite their position as the minority party in Congress. If Republican resistance continues, which seems a virtual certainty, Speaker Pelosi reportedly could appoint a “select committee” or allow the multiple Congressional committees already bogged down in multiple proceedings. Republicans have undermined efforts to move ahead in the manner of the post-9/11 commission by demanding, in classic deflection style, that any such commission also investigate “left-wing extremism” which would include the “antifa” movement.

Republican resistance is reportedly still driven by the bizarre reality that “a majority [of rank-and-file Republicans] still believe the election was stolen from Trump.”

Norm Ornstein, an emeritus scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, was quoted in this confession:

“The political imperative at this point is to discredit any investigation, to deny any ties either to Donald Trump or to the members of Congress . . . who either helped to plan the [riot] or helped to incite it.”

The Republican strategy is apparently working, as

“public hearings held by the House Judiciary and Armed Services committees have devolved into shouting matches, as GOP members accuse Democrats of ignoring threats from the far left, while Democrats accuse them of equivocating to distract from the fact that far-right extremists have become an active force in the Republican Party.”

Much of the current focus appears to be on the question of how the government security apparatus was caught off-guard and failed to respond properly to the unfolding threat to the Capitol. Those are certainly important questions that must be addressed. But the most significant forward-looking issue is how the attack came to pass: who planned it, who inspired it, who coordinated it, who supported it? Those questions include not only the active participants in the insurrection but the critical question whether Members of Congress were involved in any actions related to planning and/or executing the attack. The purpose of the assault was to stop the Constitutional process of final accounting for the election outcome and certification of the Electoral College votes. There are numerous indications of involvement by Members of Congress in both houses.

It is time to move this process forward rapidly and to focus on the key questions. It is obvious now that the Republican Party is 100 percent dedicated to preventing any substantive accountability for the attack that led to multiple deaths, many severe injuries and exposed members of Congress to possible capture and even death. Recall the battle cry of the insurrectionists: “Hang Mike Pence!”

The stalling and deflection by the minority party are unconscionable. It’s time for the Biden administration to take charge and get his task done. There is no space for “bipartisanship” here – Republicans have no interest in that, so it’s fine to ignore them.

The administration should bring this to a head by having the Justice Department take charge of the investigation on a top priority basis. Every passing month with no answers to the complicity of the Republican Members of Congress makes it that much harder to get political accountability in the mid-term elections as memories fade and new bright objects overtake the public consciousness of the threat to democracy that the January 6 attack represented. If Members of Congress are culpable, action should be taken against them promptly. They do not enjoy the same privileges regarding indictment and arrest for criminal conduct as does the President. https://bit.ly/3n1lH2H  Gravel v. United States, 408 U.S. 606 (1972).

Attacks on the central elements of our democracy cannot be tolerated. The First Amendment allows Americans in most circumstances to advocate many types of change in the operation of government. It does not sanction violence to stop the execution of Constitutional duties related to national elections. That is what was attempted on January 6 and justice must be brought to bear on the perpetrators inside as well as outside the Congress.