Yesterday was still hot, as it’s supposed to be today also, cooling some on Saturday. It’s hard to work up much enthusiasm.
Cartoon –
Short Takes –
The Hill – https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/565378-the-17-republicans-who-voted-to-advance-the-senate-infrastructure-bill
Quote – The vote — the first of several steps expected before the Senate decides whether or not to ultimately pass the bill—comes one week after all Republicans blocked a similar move, arguing that Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) was rushing the process as senators tried to finalize their agreement.
Click through for list. Some of these not only surprised me but made me think there’s something fishy (nothing new with the GQP)
Mother Jones (Kevin Drum) – The Real Source of America’s Rising Rage
Quote – [T]he past couple of decades have seen a steady increase in the belief among white people—particularly Republicans—that anti-white bias is a serious problem. Fox News has stoked this fear almost since the beginning, culminating this year in Tucker’s full-throated embrace of the white supremacist “replacement theory” and the seemingly 24/7 campaign against critical race theory and its alleged impact on white schoolkids. This is certainly not all that Fox News does, but it’s a big part of its pitch, and it fits hand in glove with Trump’s appeal to white racism.
Click through for his reasoning. Kevin is another who’s pretty sharp. And Fox is certainly huge. But even media could not create racism, white nationalism, the Great Replacement paranoia, etc. out of thin air. It can only weaponize them by bring ing them out of hiding.
BuzzFeed News – A Judge Questioned If Capitol Rioters Are Getting Off Too Easy For “Terrorizing Members Of Congress”
Quote – Howell in the end accepted Griffith’s guilty plea, but, like Walton, put the government and defense through several paces before she did. She asked whether the government was concerned that an agreement involving a low-level misdemeanor was enough not only to deter Griffith from participating in a similar event in the future but also the broader universe of the hundreds of people who descended on the Capitol that day. The circumstance that led to the Jan. 6 insurrection, a presidential election, happens every four years, the judge noted.
Click through for story. Of course it’s Beryl Howell – not that she’s the only one with a head on her shoulders, or the only one who is outspoken, but she’s certainly one of a few.
Food for Thought (I know it’s long .. but it’s all needed):
9 Responses to “Open Thread for July 30, 2021”
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Cartoon: I was still stationed in PR. ‘Resolution containing three articles of impeachment adopted July 30, 1974; the impeachment proceedings ended in August 20, 1974 without an impeachment vote, after President Nixon resigned from office.’ *wiki
The Hill: A win-win! Though I do agree with you that it’s kinda stinky w/the R’s.
BZ: Kudos to Judge Howell for her statements re: the criminal horrible actions of those involved that day, on 1/6. The sentences of those there on that day should be lengthy, imho. Nothing less.
Gotta run, hope y’all have a good day. Thank you, Joanne for post.
ONE TJI today. RE: JIM JORDAN “We need to see ALL texts and phone call transcripts between Rep. Jim Jordan + Donald Trump in days before the insurrection, on Jan 6th and days after. REMINDER: GOP leadership assigned Gym Jordan to House Intelligence Committee before impeachment hearings.”
~ ClockOutWars ~
Tji – Very important, and excellent point. And even Nixon’s DOJ never suggested that a sitting Comgressman could not be criminally charged.
TJI#1: Glad to hear that they’re getting more dirt on the bas*ard. I too hope he’s prosecuted for all of it. That goes for his side kicks too.
Here is a different response to the ‘Toon than usual:
Trump Pressed Justice Dept. to Declare Election Results Corrupt, Notes Show“Leave the rest to me” and to congressional allies, the former president is said to have told top law enforcement officials.
The demands are the latest example of President Trump’s wide-ranging campaign during his final weeks in office to delegitimize the election results.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesBy Katie BennerJuly 30, 2021Updated 1:55 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — President Donald J. Trump pressed top Justice Department officials late last year to declare that the election was corrupt even though they had found no instances of widespread fraud, so that he and his allies in Congress could use the assertion to try to overturn the results, according to new documents provided to lawmakers and obtained by The New York Times.
The demands were an extraordinary instance of a president interfering with an agency that is typically more independent from the White House to advance his personal agenda. They are also the latest example of Mr. Trump’s wide-ranging campaign during his final weeks in office to delegitimize the election results.
The exchange unfolded during a phone call on Dec. 27 in which Mr. Trump pressed the acting attorney general at the time, Jeffrey A. Rosen, and his deputy, Richard P. Donoghue, on voter fraud claims that the department had disproved. Mr. Donoghue warned that the department had no power to change the outcome of the election. Mr. Trump replied that he did not expect that, according to notesMr. Donoghue took memorializing the conversation.
“Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me” and to congressional allies, Mr. Donoghue wrote in summarizing Mr. Trump’s response.
Mr. Trump did not name the lawmakers, but at other points during the call, he mentioned Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, whom he described as a “fighter”; Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, who at the time promoted the idea that the election was stolen from Mr. Trump; and Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, whom Mr. Trump praised for “getting to bottom of things.”
Mr. Jordan and Mr. Johnson denied any role in Mr. Trump’s efforts to pressure the Justice Department.
“Congressman Jordan did not, has not, and would not pressure anyone at the Justice Department about the 2020 election,” said Russell Dye, a spokesman for Mr. Jordan, who voted to overturn election results in key states but has downplayed his role in the president’s pressure campaign. “He continues to agree with President Trump that it is perfectly appropriate to raise concerns about election integrity.”
Mr. Johnson had “no conversations with President Trump about the D.O.J. questioning the election results,” said his spokeswoman, Alexa Henning. She noted that he acknowledged Joseph R. Biden Jr. as the president-elect but that he has also called for what he sees as election irregularities to be fully investigated and addressed to restore confidence in future elections.
Mr. Perry did not immediately respond to requests for comment. He has continued to assert Mr. Trump won, but has not been tied directly to the White House effort to keep him in office. And
The Justice Department provided Mr. Donoghue’s notes to the House Oversight and Reform Committee, which is investigating the Trump administration’s efforts to unlawfully reverse the election results.
Typically, the department has fought to keep secret any accounts of private discussions between a president and his cabinet to avoid setting a precedent that would prevent officials in future administrations from candidly advising presidents out of concern that their conversations would later be made public.
But handing over the notes to Congress is part of a pattern of allowing scrutiny of Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. The Biden Justice Department also told Mr. Rosen, Mr. Donoghue and other former officials this week that they could provide unrestricted testimony to investigators with the House Oversight and Reform and the Senate Judiciary Committees.
Image Richard P. Donoghue, the Justice Department’s No. 2 official, pushed back on Mr. Trump’s allegations of election fraud in Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Arizona.Credit…Demetrius Freeman for The New York TimesThe department reasoned that congressional investigators were examining potential wrongdoing by a sitting president, an extraordinary circumstance, according to letters sent to the former officials. Because executive privilege is meant to benefit the country, rather than the president as an individual, invoking it over Mr. Trump’s efforts to push his personal agenda would be inappropriate, the department concluded.
“These handwritten notes show that President Trump directly instructed our nation’s top law enforcement agency to take steps to overturn a free and fair election in the final days of his presidency,” Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, Democrat of New York and chairwoman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, said in a statement.
Mr. Trump’s conversation with Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue reflected his single-minded focus on overturning the election results. At one point, Mr. Trump claimed voter fraud in Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Arizona, which he called “corrupted elections.” Mr. Donoghue pushed back.
“Much of the info you’re getting is false,” Mr. Donoghue said, adding that the department had conducted “dozens of investigations, hundreds of interviews” and had not found evidence to support his claims. “We look at allegations but they don’t pan out,” the officials told Mr. Trump, according to the notes.
The department found that the error rate of ballot counting in Michigan was 0.0063 percent, not the 68 percent that the president asserted; it did not find evidence of a conspiracy theory that an employee in Pennsylvania had tampered with ballots; and after examining video and interviewing witnesses, it found no evidence of ballot fraud in Fulton County, Ga., according to the notes.
Mr. Trump, undeterred, brushed off the department’s findings. “Ok fine — but what about the others?” Mr. Donoghue wrote in his notes describing the president’s remarks. Mr. Trump asked Mr. Donoghue to travel to Fulton County to verify signatures on ballots.
The people “saying that the election isn’t corrupt are corrupt,” Mr. Trump told the officials, adding that they needed to act. “Not much time left.”
At another point, Mr. Donoghue said that the department could quickly verify or disprove the assertion that more ballots were cast in Pennsylvania than there are voters.
“Should be able to check on that quickly, but understand that the D.O.J. can’t and won’t snap its fingers and change the outcome of the election, doesn’t work that way,” Mr. Donoghue wrote in his notes.
The officials also told Mr. Trump that the Justice Department had no evidence to support a lawsuit regarding the election results. “We are not in a position based on the evidence,” they said. “We can only act on the actual evidence developed.”
Mr. Trump castigated the officials, saying that “thousands of people called” their local U.S. attorney’s offices to complain about the election and that “nobody trusts the F.B.I.” He said that “people are angry — blaming D.O.J. for inaction.”
“You guys may not be following the internet the way I do,” Mr. Trump said, according to the document.
In a moment of foreshadowing, Mr. Trump said, “people tell me Jeff Clark is great, I should put him in,” referring to the acting chief of the Justice Department’s civil division, who had also encouraged department officials to intervene in the election. “People want me to replace D.O.J. leadership.”
“You should have the leadership you want,” Mr. Donoghue replied. But it “won’t change the dept’s position.”
Mr. Donoghue and Mr. Rosen did not know that Mr. Perry had introduced Mr. Clark and Mr. Trump. Exactly one week later, they would be forced to fight Mr. Clark for their jobs in an Oval Office showdown.
During the call, Mr. Trump also told the Justice Department officials to “figure out what to do” with Hunter Biden, Mr. Biden’s son. “People will criticize the D.O.J. if he’s not investigated for real,” he told them, violating longstanding guidelines against White House intervention in criminal investigations or other law enforcement actions.
Two days after the phone call with Mr. Trump, Mr. Donoghue took notes of a meeting between Justice Department officials: Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows; the White House counsel, Pat Cipollone; and the White House deputy counsel Patrick Philbin met to discuss a conspiracy theory known as Italygate, which asserts without evidence that people in Italy used military technology to remotely tamper with voting machines in the United States.
The Justice Department officials told the White House that they had assigned someone to look into the matter, according to the notes and a person briefed on the meeting. They did not mention that the department was looking into the theory to debunk it, the person said.
Nicholas Fandos contributed reporting.
Former Guy was impeached twice, now he needs indictment, BIGLY!
TH: Yes, I see what you mean. Too many of those folks have shown themselves to be nothing but bastards, over many years. Did they vote to advance the bill with plan to then kill it, hoping to embarrass Biden?
MJ: Still can’t access MJ, but”anti-white” bias is phony, as is every bit of Faux News. Bigotry, on the other hand, has been too alive and well in the American underbelly, and has been inflamed by the GOP since Nixon. It seems reasonable, to me, that the idiots who live in that world would easily buy into the paranoid anti-white reasoning.
Buzzfeed: Not happy with the plea deals, either. FFT: “Shut the fuck up,” is PERFECT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Of course Glenn discussed this today, so it will be in tomorrow’s Video Thread.
TJI#1, and only: Deeply hoping that this POS is indicted, and jailed!!
Mitch, same here! Thanks for sharing the latest. Also, TJI: Clown puppet’s tax returns,coming right up! BWHAAAA! Karma,baby. (Cat paws crossed.) Stay safe,cool as possible,all.
Cartoon: Too bad it didn’t happen to tRump. After hearing on CNN today, what he was asking them to lie about the election, he should of been impeached.
The Hill: Where are these R’s coming from saying Chuck was rushing the issue? Insane. I likes Mitch’s comments about the rotten R’s.
MJ: Sick of hearing about racism, white supremacist etc. tRump and his buddies were so disrespectful to non-whites that it make me furious. Now we continue having his crap done with creeps like faux Newscasters, gReene, etc. Despicable.
BZ: Good for Judge Hodges, they should be questioning if they’re getting the proper punishment. I feel they have been too easy on them. They better start coming down harder on the ones who harmed many and did major destruction to our Capital.
Food for Thought: Yep, have to agree with Mitch’s comment again.
Hope it does cool off for you tomorrow. It’s the opposite here, much hotter starting tomorrow.
Take care. Thanks Joanne
Cartoon: The good old days, when impeachment still meant something.
TH: Seventeen Republicans voted to vote? If it smells like a fish and it’s dead as a fish then you can rest assured that the GOP is up to something fishy.
MJ: I think your comment is spot-on, Joanne. Even media can’t create something as massive as white racism out of thin air. It can only promote the growth and strengthening of what’s already there. Or its demise, but most of them haven’t got the inclination or the guts to do that.
BZ: Hodges is a level-headed judge if ever I saw one. I hope she won’t let any of the insurrectionists that come before her off lightly, no matter how “guilty” they plead and how sorry they are.
FFT: Excelent!