There Is No Excuse for Failure to Charge Trump for His Role on January 6

"There is a criminal case sitting right there on the ground in front of them."  (photo: Shuran Huang)

Charles Pierce / Esquire 08 March 22

readersupportednews.org 

The Justice Department cannot be so afraid of losing a case—or of political blowback—it fails to do its duty.

That filing that the lawyers for the congressional committee looking into the events of January 6 dropped in court last week, part of the committee’s continuing effort to get John Eastman to turn over email correspondence, seems to have fallen quite hard on the heads of congressional Republicans. The whole smoke-fire thing has a new salience in their minds, and they’re lashing out, poor dears. From The Hill:

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.

I love it when they get all butched up and start throwing out threats and admonitions, especially when it’s in defense of a vulgar talking yam that most of them would like to see blasted off to Neptune at the earliest opportunity. And nobody is a better show at this than Senator Lindsey Graham and his many dancing personalities.

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.

The senator is not merely “tainted” by politics at this point. He’s positively whitewashed in politics. But more important, the piece is a classic Republican attempt to get Democrats to start crawfishing like the Union staff officers did when U.S. Grant first came east to take charge. The officers wouldn’t shut up about the genius of Robert E. Lee. Grant shut them up:

Oh, I am heartily tired of hearing about what Lee is going to do. Some of you always seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double somersault, and land in our rear and on both of our flanks at the same time. Go back to your command, and try to think what we are going to do ourselves, instead of what Lee is going to do.

It is past time for the Democratic members of Congress to stop worrying about what the Republicans are going to do. It is past time for the Department of Justice to stop worrying about the possibility they might lose a case, and about the political fallout whether they win or lose. There is a criminal case sitting right there on the ground in front of them. The filing from the committee lays it out fairly convincingly.

Albert Alschuler, a professor emeritus of law and criminology at the University of Chicago Law School, said the Department of Justice would appear to have a strong case against Trump based on the public evidence of his attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. “It looks like a quite strong case for criminal prosecution, particularly conspiracy to defraud the United States and maybe obstruction of official proceedings charge,” he said.

“I see a lot of comment and some people seem to be saying, ‘Well, it’s so hard because they have to prove that the defendant really was lying by projecting all these false claims, you have to prove that he actually did not believe them himself.’…But it seems to me the evidence is pretty strong,” he added. “Juries infer intent from the circumstances all the time, and they infer a criminal intent beyond a reasonable doubt.”

No excuses are adequate anymore. There is no risk that isn’t worth taking. If the institutions of democracy mean anything anymore, they have to be strong enough to keep the former president* as far away from political power as he is kept from teenage beauty queens. This isn’t calculation anymore. It is duty, plain and simple. And if it means political war, let it come.

"I love it when [Republicans] get all butched up and start throwing out threats and admonitions, especially when it’s in defense of a vulgar talking yam."