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Dershowitz, Barr, Durham, and lawfare against political opponents — 46 Comments

1. Even a werewolf is entitled to legal counsel. Or so we thought in 1974.

2. “When the whole system is corrupt, how can justice prevail?”

   It can’t. We are rapidly heading towards a violent resolution. At some point soon an FBI raid will be met with a gun blazing, then we will all be in a situation no one except the Democrats want.

3. Durham’s an ass. Nobody should carry as much as a teaspoon of water for the tool.

4. “At some point soon an FBI raid will be met with a gun blazing, then we will all be in a situation no one except the Democrats want.”

   Oh, there are others t hat want the situation which is why such a situation once begun will metastisize.

5. Repost:
   “Don’t Take the Bait”—
   https://americanmind.org/salvo/dont-take-the-bait/
   …though this ought to raise the question: Why is “Biden” baiting his political opponents in the first place?

   Things are no doubt accelerating…(in time for the November election?)…
   Related:
   ‘Is FBI using security clearances to muzzle critics? Whistleblower’s lawyer says yes;
   ‘ “They can take them off the payroll, take their badge and gun, sideline them,” said former Senate investigator and whistleblower attorney Jason Foster.’—
   https://justthenews.com/accountability/whistleblowers/fbi-using-security-clearances-muzzle-critics-one-whistleblowers
   “FBI whistleblower’s wife suspended from Facebook after sending a private message;
   ‘Part of the reason Friend spoke out against the FBI was that he believed the January 6 investigations were violating constitutional rights.”—
   https://justthenews.com/government/federal-agencies/fbi-whistleblowers-wife-suspended-facebook-after-sending-private
   “Postal Service conducted surveillance on protesters with pro-gun, anti-Biden agendas, report”—
   https://justthenews.com/government/federal-agencies/postal-service-conducted-surveillance-protesters-pro-gun-anti-biden

   + Bonus…
   And in more “uncontroversial election” news:
   “Pennsylvania county sues Dominion Voting Systems over alleged ‘severe anomalies’ in 2020 voter data;
   “County claims “inaccuracy and/or inability to reconcile voter data with votes actually cast and counted.” ”
   https://justthenews.com/government/courts-law/fulton-county-pa-sues-dominion-voting-systems-over-alleged-severe-anomalies

6. I’ve thought about this a while and came to the same conclusion as physicsguy, though I don’t think blazing guns will be required just 100% refusal to cooperate accompanied by major citizen resistance. It will metastasize and develop into counter attacks on FBI offices which will grow from there. No more Wacos or Ruby Ridges where the FBI gets to surround its target, they will be surrounded instead.

   The ultimate issue is who will restrain the FBI’s lawless behavior in the next two years? (Actually the lawless behavior of much of the Biden Administration?) Even if the Republicans gain control of both houses what can they do? They only have the power of the purse and the ability to investigate, which will be resisted and undermined by the Democrats and the MSM in every possible way.

   Interesting times, unfortunately.

7. Barr is certainly not stupid but neither is he naive. At best, he is willfully blind.

   The tyrannically inclined always imagine that force is their purview alone. A State’s claim, to it alone having the right to use force, rests upon its legitimacy. A State whose justice system makes a mockery of the rule of law has entirely forfeited its claim to legitimacy.

   The Biden administration, through its Federal Agencies and the democrat party have in their actions, betrayed their allegiance to the Constitution.

   All they have left is force.

8. “When the whole system is corrupt, how can justice prevail?”
   We can’t have “justice”. Like physicsguy said.

   But what Republicans in charge of Congress CAN do is use their power.
   Of the purse.
   To zero out money for the FBI.
   And reduce by 50% in budget, the Dept. of Justice, minimizing headcount reduction (lay off the most expensive, senior folk).

   Justice would be criminal cases, like what Durham almost totally failed to get – none will get more.
   [Perhaps like many, I do have fantasies of the Military Police being called up in a temporary state of emergency to arrest the top 100-500 most responsible, but it ain’t gonna happen]

   The Congress should put Term Limits on bureaucrats – maximum of 10 years; the last year is year-long contract that ends. And hire more older, experienced, private sector folk.

9. but its totes legit,

   https://www.ntd.com/fbi-changes-total-number-of-documents-seized-from-trumps-estate_846898.html

10. The left has decided to destroy our institutions by politicizing them. Playing tit-for-tat won’t save the institutions, it will just destroy them faster.

    Now given that our institutions are going to be destroyed, is there a tactical or strategic advantage to going tit-for-tat now? I don’t know.

    Another question – Are we sure that Democrats actions will destroy institutions, because if Republicans start playing the same game it guarantees destruction.

11. But we aren’t sure the Democrats intend to destroy (fundamentally transform) our demicracy™ (sarc). But if Republicans react in opposition, Shirley, our democracy™ will be destroyed (sarc). Quite a concern.

12. I thought Barr was doing his job when he appointed Durham. But, maybe he knew that he had a “can kicker” who would let the clock expire.

    I don’t know what the Barr/Trump relationship was like before; but since the 2020 election it has been poisonous. Clearly, Barr has developed a hatred for Trump that is manifest in everything he says.

    It is also clear that Trump developed a contempt for Barr that he did not try to hide. The same goes for Pence.

    I do not fault Trump’s frustration and anger. Any person with a grain of sense, or who is not hopelessly partisan, acknowledges that the election was “questionable” to employ a euphemism, and that neither the courts nor Trump’s alleged allies had the stomach to pursue the questions. And when all is said and done, I think a lack of intestinal fortitude (another euphemism) drove the pre and post election decisions.

    So many claimed to put themselves on the high road, protesting that to act risked a constitutional crisis. In the end they created a chasm that may never heal. Approximately half the country does not, and probably never will, trust the electoral process.

    But, the water has breached the dam; the train has left the station; the ship has sailed. Whatever cliche you prefer. At this point, I sincerely wish Trump would step aside and let someone who can unite the GOP, and appeal to thoughtful independents take the stage with his blessing. Then he can hope that history treats his Presidency fairly.

13. Addendum to my post. I did not edit within the allowed time

    I will not refer to modern Democrat ‘activists’ as “sewer rats” to avoid insulting authentic sewer rats that cannot help what they are.

14. “The left has decided to destroy our institutions by politicizing them. Playing tit-for-tat won’t save the institutions, it will just destroy them faster.”

    That is in fact, a salient point….and it is the DEMOCRATIC PARTY’s strongest suit; their “Get-out-of-Jail Free” card (bringing to mind, as it does, the Biblical story of “The Judgment of Solomon”)….

    One should know, however, that any Republican-Party resort to the Law, to the Constitution, for redress—for JUSTICE—will (continue to) be portrayed by the Democrats as a full-frontal “assault” on Democracy—as a dastardly “attack” on the country—by those GOP, enemy-of-the-people, enemy-of-the-state, “semi-fascist” Trumpists, who are hell-bent on destroying the USA.

    Which leaves us where, exactly?

    One can only hope that the November elections, if they are allowed to take place (and if they are conducted with a modicum of fairness and legality), will be a crystal-clear indication of what the electorate thinks of its current rulers….

15. The cat is out of the bag. It’s a fait accompli or should be.

    To stop an aggressor you need at least as much aggression as put upon you to just survive. To win, you will need a bit more, preferably a lot more. Sure, that aggression can be subtle, but it still has to be there whether it’s via size, intimidation, or outright acts.

    I am not confident at all the Republican party has the fortitude to stop this, let alone have the will to just survive except as a secondary political power. When given the chance to be first class act, they decided that they prefer playing second fiddle to the point of actively sabotaging their star violinist.

    And this last iteration of this phenomenon was not their first.

16. Paul in Boston … the current occupiers of DC have pushed the conflicts into the state and local levels of governance, where their overbearing ways face opposition via the exercise of federalism and/or Irish Democracy in the face of even the Federal Bureau of Inquisition.

    As to why they are going down this road … they have come to believe that the conflict is not Left vs. Right, but the Righteous Normal vs. the Evil Other who deserves no respect of their rights.

    They have become the busybodies C. S. Lewis described as a greater threat than robber barons … busybodies who see the rest of us as infants, imbeciles, and/or domestic animals to be directed with coercive force if we do not submit,

    They are what they have decried all my life: a fundamentalist theocracy, based upon total trust in selected members of a species with a well-documented record of error, greed, lies, delusion, violence and evil, despite the good intentions of some of them.

17. Of course, Barr is corrupt. The man has lied repeatedly and knowingly protected criminals.

    He said that investigations showed no evidence of election fraud when the reality was that he acted to shut down investigations that others had begun. He lied. Bigly.

    He has continued to support and defend the FBI and DOJ despite knowing that they are corrupt, dishonest and infested with criminals.

    “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.” Barr isn’t even ‘good people’. And he has done far worse than nothing. He knows he has the information and standing to make an enormous difference for good. He has chosen to be part of the coverup instead. Given his background, he has an affirmative duty to take an active role in cleaning up the sewer that polluted America during his tenure. He’s a failure.

    Note — it would not surprise me at all if he were a victim of blackmail. Democrats have been using the NSA, FBI and CIA to spy on Americans for decades. They’ve used their henchmen to sift through all the NSA intercepts looking for useful dirt. (See Judge Collyer’s FISA opinion). I suspect they have some on Justice Roberts.

18. Stan, I will agree that blackmail is not out of the question, but consider a more benign yet plausible reason those like Barr act the way they do,

    Those who have made their careers in DC come to think that it is the mere existence of the institutions they have invested their lives within, that guarantees what is right and good – and that they must be protected at all costs, individual liberty be damned.

    They are much like Nick Fury in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, who argued against public disclosure of S.H.I.E.L.D. and its dealings after Hydra had all but taken over the institution, thinking it could still be of use if confidences were kept.

    Fury came around; many, like Barr and the Bush/Cheney faction, have not. They cling to the status quo because they see departing from it as destroying what is right and good.

    They have forgotten, if they ever knew, that the law, that their institutions were built to administer, is to serve liberty.

    Not the other way around, for that eventually descends back to emulating another group of elites who had invested themselves in their institutions and became petty tyrants.

    Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others … Matthew 23:23

19. Well that was a shake and bake snowden metaphor or possibly manning in winter soldier relying on the companys ties to the gehlen org

20. Barr, and his predecessor, Jeff Sessions, were too high minded to even prosecute Hillary Clinton for her obvious (at least to anyone who’s ever had a security clearance and worked with classified materials) violations of laws governing handling of classified information.

    Because it would “set a bad precedent” to prosecute a former (and possibly future) political opponent, even when that person had clearly and obviously broken the law.

    And I agree with the problem of finding honest judges and juries in the places where these crimes have been committed (mostly DC, but a few other places, all Dem monoculture areas). Kind of like trying to find juries in the antebellum South who would convict ships’ captains and crews for violating laws barring importation of slaves.

21. Move agencies’ headquarters out of DC. Ag to Wichita, DOJ to Cedar Rapids, Defense to Oklahoma City, for instance. Then empanel grand juries there.

    Viola’! No more DC juries consisting of federal employees, lobbyists and welfare recipients. IOW, rabid Democrats.

22. stan:

    Barr didn’t lie. He was speaking in legal terms, and he was correct in that sense. Please quote him accurately. This is what Barr said:

    …”to date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”…

    …Before the election, he had repeatedly raised the notion that mail-in voting could be especially vulnerable to fraud during the coronavirus pandemic as Americans feared going to polls and instead chose to vote by mail.

    Both those things go together, because not only is mail-in voting susceptible to fraud, but it is susceptible to fraud that is almost impossible to prove, and especially difficult to prove that it affected the outcome of an election. That’s an almost impossibly high bar. I’ve written elsewhere about why that’s the case. The only real remedy is an ounce of prevention. It was too late for that once the COVID changes were set and courts approved them.

23. Consider the possibility that prosecuting Clapper, Brennan, or Comey would not have been the right thing to do.

    It is a common misconception that “doing something bad” is always equivalent to “committing a crime.” That’s more or less the basis of OMB/TDS. The left says that Trump is a bad man. Bad men commit crimes, so Trump has committed crimes and the only thing left to do is to figure out which ones will be the basis of his prosecution. It’s also the basis of the January 6th overreach. They reason that January 6th was bad, which it undoubtedly was, therefore everyone who participated must be guilty of and should be prosecuted for some crime. That line of reasoning, however, is dead wrong.

    I think it’s beyond dispute that Brennan, Comey, Clapper, (and probably more) did bad things with respect to Russiagate. Their actions were hugely damaging to the institutions that they claimed to be serving. Whatever public trust existed in the CIA, FBI, DOJ, etc. prior to the Obama years is gone. In a just world, they would have been banished from public service in disgrace.

    But crimes? Maybe you could try to shoehorn their behavior into some kind of broad “obstruction of government operations” statute. They are probably too smooth to fall for the “memory games with prosecutors” trick that would allow charges for lying to investigators, but you could try that. Heck, Flynn was pretty sophisticated too and he fell for that one. Maybe you could indict some of them for lying to Congress, but that is almost never prosecuted and unless the target acts like a showboating fool, the jail time for that one is minimal. Maybe you could dredge up a forgotten statute like FARA and find that they are in technical violation. Maybe you could launch dozens of abusive investigations and scour their income tax and business records to try to find some other sort of technical violation.

    In other words, it may be that the only way to criminally pursue Brennan, Comey, Clapper and their ilk would have been to engage in the same abusive, destructive, “lawfare against political opponents” that they did.

    Barr and Durham had enough integrity not to do that. Brennan, Comey, Clapper, Mueller, Letitia James, etc. did not. Merrick Garland does not.

    I suppose you can make the case that all is fair now and that Barr and Durham were fools for not playing the game. Maybe, but we’re really going to miss our non-partisan government institutions now that they are gone.

24. “Approximately half the country does not, and probably never will, trust the electoral process.” – Oldflyer

    Paper ballots, valid & audited voter rolls, in-person voting (vast majority), public hand vote counting at the precinct when the polls close [precinct vote counting recorded by video camera] – can quickly win back trust. Since voters want to trust the process.

    In every precinct, allow observers – require access to at least 3 registered Republican and 3 registered Democrat observers. (So when one leaves for a toilet break, the limited space is not taken up by a new guy from the other party).

    For absentee ballots, require each ballot envelope be approved by both a Republican & Democrat signature checker. More costly, but more honest – require campaigns who advertise in that state to spend for half a checker in every precinct. (Gov’t pays for one, R+D half each to pay for second.)

    **Perhaps most important ** – if the rules aren’t followed, multiple state Supreme Court judges empowered to require a new vote if there are serious questions.

    … in my dreams. (I have so many)

25. Barr walked up to the precipice, looked into the abyss, and retreated to the safety of the establishment.

26. Neo: The only real remedy is an ounce of prevention. It was too late for that once the COVID changes were set and courts approved them.

    Definitely the best remedy to prevent a compromised election like 2020, There is a difference between compromised processes and proven fraud, but not much of a difference – the compromises, as you note, can bury any fraud too deep to detect. People know this, so compromises erode confidence in any election from dog catcher to President.

    The burden of proof is always upon government – primarily by adhering to proper electoral processes and verification measures – to proactively assure that elections are conducted honestly. The expediences extended in the name of panic-demic so compromised the 2020 election that it became impossible for the government at its various levels to meet that burden of proof.

    But there was a work-around available for that: no certification of an Electoral College majority should have been extended, and the House, per the Constitution, should have made the choice of President. But that course of action was not taken for two reasons:

    1> Given the makeup of the House at the time, and the way the Constitution structures this vote, it would have assured Trump’s re-election … and the Congressional leadership that controls the process was not going to validate 75 million deplorable voters like that.

    2> As I was relating to stan, DC careerists come to think that it is the mere existence of the institutions they have invested their lives within, that guarantees what is right and good – and that they must be protected at all costs.

    Particularly their reputation. For them to send the election to the House would be an admission of failure of the electoral process that would tarnish the reputation of government and its institutions at multiple levels … on top of the tarnishing their response to WuFlu had already imposed upon that reputation.

    They clung to the status quo because they see departing from it as destroying what is right and good … and chose what they saw as the lesser of two evils for them, and pushed through a compromised election as legit.

    Ignoring that the law, that their institutions were built to administer, is to serve liberty.

    Not the other way around.

27. Trust?
    Absolutely!
    Same guy who “ran” the Whitmer “kidnapping” ran the J6 “insurrection”.
    That’s one guy you can certainly count on!!
    Knows what he’s doing.
    Fantastic at what he does.
    Wholly reliable.
    Absolutely trustworthy.
    (He had some help, of course…but he kept ’em all “on track”…)

    “It’s now been proven that there were just as many FBI informants in the Oath Keepers as there were actual members.;
    “Just like the fake Whitmer kidnapping, it’s clear as day that J6 was a total set up done by the Feds.”—
    https://twitter.com/alexbruesewitz/status/1574735747374108674
    H/T Lee Smith twitter feed.

    + Bonus:
    “Twitter censors and spy services fear the news and analysis
    @brendonfallon
    and I are rolling out on ‘Over the Target’ — they just suspended the show’s account. Here’s a link to our latest episode on
    @EpochTVus
    — and watch them all!”—
    https://twitter.com/LeeSmithDC/status/1573696440706207744?cxt=HHwWgMC4yeak8tYrAAAA

    Oh, and remember good ole’ boy Ray Epps?
    “Despite promises by the January 6 select committee that [Ray] Epps’ sworn interview would be released to the public, his testimony remains under wraps NEARLY NINE MONTHS LATER.”—
    https://twitter.com/JeffClarkUS/status/1574878205458145280?cxt=HHwWgICzjcjYi9srAAAA

    Seems to be just another “Biden” coverup…
    The M.O. is pretty obvious…

28. “Trust” (continued):
    Andrew McCarthy….
    “Biden’s $420B student loan boondoggle is blatantly illegal — but progressives don’t care”—
    https://nypost.com/2022/09/27/bidens-420b-student-loan-boondoggle-is-blatantly-illegal-but-progressives-dont-care/

    Blaming “progressives” now, are we?…

    Don’t think we’re watching the same movie…

29. Bauxite essentials – nothing to see move along,

    Your bad thoughts can get you prosecuted or incarcerated. Their bad actions have no consequences; see Comey, Clapper, Brennan, Lerner, Clinesmith, Strock, Wray, Milley, and so on.

30. Another wrinkle, another warning…
    ‘Ex-FBI official who led Unabomber task force decries deployment of SWAT teams for Jan. 6 arrests;
    ‘ “The more you escalate the use of force, the more you take a chance of having possible injuries in some catastrophic failure of agents and civilians alike,” said former FBI Deputy Assistant Director of the Counterterrorism Division Terry Turchie.’—
    https://justthenews.com/government/federal-agencies/ex-fbi-boss-who-led-unabomber-task-force-decries-swat-teams-jan-6

    Warning noted…except this fellow, for all his decency and courage in speaking out, doesn’t seem to understand that “catastrophic failure” (make that “controlled catastrophic failure”) was THE PLAN all along…with all the cameras rolling(!)—and different angles at that—where at least one of the “perps” was even wearing a GoPro to record all of HIS OWN “planned mayhem”.
    …

31. Trust….(ad nauseum)….
    “The U.S. Government’s Vast New Privatized Censorship Regime;
    “Censorship of wrongthink by Big Tech at the behest of the government is government censorship, which violates the First Amendment”—
    https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/government-privatized-censorship-regime
    H/T Blazingcatfur blog.
    Key graf (RTWT):
    “…The Missouri documents, along with some obtained through discovery in Berenson v. Twitter and a FOIA request by America First Legal, expose the extent of the administration’s appropriation of big tech to effect a vast and unprecedented regime of viewpoint-based censorship on the information that most Americans see, hear and otherwise consume. At least 11 federal agencies, and around 80 government officials, have been explicitly directing social media companies to take down posts and remove certain accounts that violate the government’s own preferences and guidelines for coverage on topics ranging from COVID restrictions, to the 2020 election, to the Hunter Biden laptop scandal….” [Emphasis mine; Barry M.]

    + Bonus:
    “Drug Companies Test New Booster on Eight Mice and Zero Humans, FDA Approves It Anyway”—
    https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/pfizer-moderna-test-covid-booster-eight-mice-zero-humans-fda-approves-anyway

32. yes, Barr lied his ass off. That is, he deliberately, knowingly, and intentionally misled the American people on a point that was critically important.

    His statement implies investigations are ongoing. That is a LIE. He actually was quashing any look into illegalities.

    Worse, his smothering the investigations was a gross dereliction of duty. He chose to be an active participant in covering up the crimes. That cover up is an outrage.

33. Jestor,

    There is no defense for dereliction of duty. The officials who decided not to follow the law did so (as you argue) because of massive hubris. They have decided that they know better than we silly commoners. They have decided that they are so special, so moral, so discerning, so wise, that they should ignore the law and ignore their responsibilities because they know better. They have decided they have the right to play God with our lives, our rights and our country.

    Everything that our founders correctly understood about human nature says that these morally defective abusers of power were wrong. Hubris destroys. Process matters. In the end, it is all that supports the rule of law and the constitution.

    Barr and his fellow moral defectives deserve tar and feathers. He’s a stain on the national fabric.

34. stan:

    You assert something and provide no proof and no links.

    Here’s what Barr did.

    The various efforts by the right in general, both prior to the election and after, went nowhere in the courts because of things like laches, lack of standing, and – as I mentioned before – the extreme difficulty of proving that the things that happened affected the election outcome enough to have mattered.

35. To be more specific — the word “seen” very clearly leads us to believe his is “looking”. Instead, he had his eyes clenched tight to make sure he did not see. And he made everyone else stop looking.

    If a manager of a business explained to his boss that he hadn’t seen any evidence of employee theft while:

    1. he had the duty and responsibility to look for it and stop it,
    2. he’d been told repeatedly that employees were stealing
    3. one of his subordinates approached him with a video showing theft, but
    4. he deleted the video without looking at it

    He should be fired for being dishonest and failing to attend to his duties.

36. A US Attorney has written that he provided evidence of election fraud to Barr and Barr shut down his investigation.

37. stan:

    You keep stating the same thing over and over with no links.

    Also, pay attention to the timeline. Barr said there were ongoing investigations just a few days after the election. He also said (about a month later) that many of the legal remedies could not be federal, procedurally speaking, but state actions. That was the case, but as I said, the state actions went nowhere for the reasons I’ve already stated.

    He also said (from that same link I offered earlier):

    Barr said earlier that people were confusing the use of the federal criminal justice system with allegations that should be made in civil lawsuits. He said a remedy for many complaints would be a top-down audit by state or local officials, not the U.S. Justice Department.

    “There’s a growing tendency to use the criminal justice system as sort of a default fix-all,” he said, but first there must be a basis to believe there is a crime to investigate.

    “Most claims of fraud are very particularized to a particular set of circumstances or actors or conduct. … And those have been run down; they are being run down,” Barr said. “Some have been broad and potentially cover a few thousand votes. They have been followed up on.”

    You need a link to provide the information: which US attorney? What was the investigation and the timeframe? Of course some investigations would be shut down for lack of evidence at some point. Among them, ultimately were the ones that alleged widespread Dominion fraud. That allegation turned out to have been incorrect or at the very least there really wasn’t evidence for it.

38. But what Republicans in charge of Congress CAN do is use their power.
    Of the purse.

    Have you noticed the Republicans in Congress protesting the Garland Gulag ? Me neither.

39. Playing by the rules works just fine if all sides play by the same rules.
    The problem is that if one side plays by the rules and the other does not, the “honest” player is basically committing suicide or at best just spinning their wheels.

    Reminds me of the argument, ” we hold the moral high ground;” an argument tossed about by the “good” guys whenever the “other” side was committing atrocious acts.
    This point of argument merely encouraged bad behaviour because it demonstrated that the “bad” guys could proceed without anybody interfering.

    Those individuals shot in the back, sprawled upon the barbed wire and left to die there as they attempted to escape East Berlin had the moral high ground.
    The million tossed into Stalin’s and Hitler’s gulags, had the moral high ground.
    The moral high ground is one of those nice sounding, rational expressions that, in the real world, has no real power or influence.

    Fire must be fought with fire.
    It’s best never having to resort to fire, but sometimes that is the only recourse.

40. “Here’s what Barr did.”

    And what faith do you have that anything was actually done?

    Mike

41. I would be very skeptical that Barr and people whose actions he countenanced did anything at all. Recall the ‘suicide’ of Jeffrey Epstein. Exactly what did he do about that issue?

    Here’s a hypothesis about Barr: (1) he knew that Robert Mueller was impaired (their wives are friends); and (2) he was anxious (fed information by Rosenstein) that Andrew Weissmann’s plan to manufacture a self-licking ice cream cone in the form of making the case that Trump was criminally liable for obstructing Weissmann’s obstruction investigation would not only fail but generate a backlash which would incorporate a general housecleaning in the Department of Justice. So, he auditions for the Attorney-General’s job in order to protect lifers like Rod Rosenstein and the Department’s customary (abusive) way of doing business. He was never on the level. Note, he was in office during the Ruby Ridge catastrophe. Every FBI agent implicated in that was in his chain of command.

    Here’s another suggestion: the whole edifice of federal law enforcement stinks and needs to be replaced. Every aspect requires replacement. The code, the rules of criminal procedure, the jurisdictional boundaries, the rules on the liability of judges and prosecutors, the distribution of function between the departments concerned with law enforcement, the tenure of personnel. Not one element should be untouched.

42. If you like your pillow, you can keep your pillow.

43. The left is here to assure that your pillow is correctly fitted and held over your face. Their complete satisfaction is guaranteed.

44. But today few Democratic lawyers will represent Trump Republicans whose constitutional rights have been violated.

    In short, the warmups are over and the war is on. No more pretending. These guys are out to win, to take over, to run the joint as they like and to use all its resources to suppress or demolish any opposition or even any arguments. Whether by some ultimate Great Leader, or just a Politburo-in-being, it’s diktat-or-else as soon as they pull off the final election or coup, whichever comes first.

45. I’m not sure some sizeable number of Democrats think that political prosecutions and small-time harassment are not enough to have the intended effect, i.e. silencing the opposition and scaring enough voters to ensure their continued grip on power. I am afraid that we’ll reach a point where conservative public figures like Tucker Carlson are mugged and beaten to a pulp, complete with photos of his bloodied face splashed on Drudge, the NYT, and WaPo. If that doesn’t get the message across, maybe they’ll decide stronger measures, such as fire bombings of peoples’ homes, or even drive by shootings are needed to make the point.

    This is 3rd world stuff, and once one side goes there that bell cannot be unrung. This is not the 1960s, where the establishment was (mostly) shocked by the violence. Nowadays, half the establishment approves, and the other half is (a) too corrupt to say anything because they see it as a fundraising opportunity, (b) too cowardly to do anything for fear of being called unpleasant names, or (c) is secretly in agreement with the left, so long as it’s directed at Trump voters.

46. The only way to remove a Federal Judge is to impeach them.

    All 4 Fed. judges who signed off on the FIB’s (er, FBI’s) warrants should be impeached.

    They were either incompetently ignorant of the facts, or winkin’ & noddin’ deliberately dishonest. They may claim the FBI lied – but I don’t think that the documents the FBI gave to the judges were lies. They were carefully crafted partial truths that implied something false without saying it.

    It was each judge’s job to make sure that the warrants were not only avoiding false statements, but were comprehensively honest. The judge’s failed to do that.

    Derelictions of duty.
    Maybe mitigation, as end of impeachment trial/ vote, for the judge slightly supporting Trump’s rights at MAL.

    A Rep Congress can do impeachment without fear of Biden’s veto. And the impeachment process is part of the process. Perhaps the only punishment, but it remains real.
    AND if it’s unsuccessful, as impeaching Pres. Clinton for perjury in a sexual harassment lawsuit was unsuccessful, the Dems who vote to acquit will be a bit vulnerable on that point.

    Impeachment failures will increase calls to more radically reform the FBI.

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