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Month: August 2023

Trump donors help No Labels

Published by digby on August 31, 2023

I wonder why?

This is distressing. It appears that No Labels is going ahead with its plans to sabotage the election in favor of Donald Trump. And they’re taking money from Trump donors to help make it happen:

A major Republican donor and one-time financial backer of former President Donald Trump is now a leader in the Florida chapter of No Labels’ third-party presidential bid.

Allan Keen, a Florida-based real estate developer and investor who gave more than $137,000 to Trump-related election entities last cycle, has joined the centrist political group in a leadership role with its Florida chapter.

“I help when I can help. I believe in the cause,” Keen told POLITICO. After Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021, he said he surrendered his Republican voter registration card for one that says, “No Labels Party of Florida.”

Keen’s involvement with No Labels is an extension of the work he has done with the group since 2016, including donating to its Problem Solvers PAC. But it is likely to heighten Democratic criticism that the third-party presidential bid will only hurt President Joe Biden’s reelection prospects.

No Labels, which referred all questions to Keen, has insisted that it does not want to play the role of spoiler in electing Trump. But it has also directly solicited financial help from GOP fundraisers, of which Keen is a member. And some Republicans concede that its presence on the ticket will harm the current president.

“A third party will likely benefit Trump,” said former Trump spokesperson Sean Spicer, whether it’s No Labels or Green Party candidate Cornel West. He compared such efforts to Jill Stein’s Green Party campaign in 2016. “West only needs 30,000 votes” to tip Wisconsin to Republicans, Spicer said at the Republican debate in Milwaukee last week.

Much earlier in his political-giving career, Keen supported Democrats. But his most recent roster of beneficiaries includes GOP luminaries such as Mitt Romney, John McCain, John Boehner, Marco Rubio and the Bush-Cheney ticket. He has also donated to Arizona Democrat-turned-Independent Sen. Krysten Sinema‘s campaign as recently as this year.

Keen initially backed former Gov. Jeb Bush in the 2016 primary before, in his words, “reluctantly” voting for Trump. Though he did not approve of everything Trump did — “he did a bunch of stupid things,” Keen said, like attacking the late Arizona Sen. John McCain — the Florida businessperson supported Trump for reelection and hosted an $11,500 per person fundraiser for the then-president in February 2020.

“I did support him. I gave him money and went to a few events. I felt he was a better candidate at that time,” Keen said in an interview.

Keen attributes Trump’s attacks on McCain in part to his loss in Arizona. He also criticized “all the shenanigans” of Jan. 6, which, he said, prompted him to go all in on No Labels. Keen didn’t think what Trump did was “appropriate.”

The Florida investor first became involved with No Labels in 2016 and joined the board of the Florida affiliate after the 2020 election. The Florida group is headed by Kathleen Shanahan, a businessperson who previously served as chief of staff for then-Gov. Jeb Bush.

Keen said he has no “predetermined opinion” on who might top a No Labels presidential ticket. “That, of course, will be a process,” he said. “I think everyone feels that reason and good judgment will prevail such that there is no anointed person — the way it should be.”

That’s a good line but I don’t believe it. Trump donors who give money to No Labels aren’t Never Trumpers, they are “Anybody But Biden.” There’s a difference. If they really wanted to stop Trump they’d hold their noses and vote for Biden. Otherwise, they are supporting Trump. These aren’t unsophisticated idealistic young people. They know what they’re doing.

Georgia GOP leaders say no, no, no

Published by digby on August 31, 2023

Thank you

Brian Kemp is a right wing Republican whose political views are abhorrent to me. But at least he isn’t a coward. He continues to stand up to the MAGA cult, as do some others in the Georgia GOP:

Gov. Brian Kemp is telling several far-right Georgia lawmakers to lay off the calls to impeach Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

Georgia Sen. Colton Moore has led a charge via a letter to Kemp requesting a special legislative session to impeach Willis after a grand jury handed up an indictment against former President Trump and 18 of his allies in the state and beyond alleging a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election here in Georgia.

During a news conference Thursday, Kemp said, despite his personal feelings about the investigation, he does not have the authority to call a special session.

“We have a law in the state of Georgia that clearly outlines the legal steps that can be taken if constituents believe their local prosecutors are violating their oath by engaging in unethical or illegal behavior,” Kemp said.

Kemp said, up to now, he has not seen any evidence that warrants any action by the prosecuting attorneys oversight commission.

The governor said not only does he believe calling a special session to remove Willis from the investigation would be unfeasible, but he also said it would likely be unconstitutional.

“As long as I am governor, we’re going to follow the law and the Constitution, regardless of who it helps or harms politically,” Kemp said.

The move comes one day after Georgia House Speaker Jon Burns senta letter to his caucus saying he too was not supportive of the movenor was there any legal precedence for them to impeach her.

The letter states in part, that “we continue to have a few members of the General Assembly making misleading or false claims about the General Assembly’s lawful powers regarding an ongoing criminal case before our Judiciary.”

Burns called it an unfortunate part of modern politics, saying that “theatrics sometimes garner more attention than genuine human needs.”

Additionally, the Speaker said efforts to defund Willis’ office directly would both interfere with the criminal justice system in Georgia at large but have impacts across the state.

“Regardless of your views of this case, removing this funding would also have the unintended consequence of causing a delay or complete lack of prosecution of other serious offenses, like murder, rape, armed robbery, gang prosecution, battery, etc.,” Burns said in part.

Here’s an example of the people Kemp and Burns are responding to:

Georgia is now a swing state and savvy politicians like Kemp understand that. He also hates Trump. That combination has led to a different dynamic than other southern states.

When they go low he goes lower

Published by digby on August 31, 2023

Oh Tucker, you really are a jackass:

Donald Trump can boast all he wants about his interview with Tucker Carlson being “the Biggest Video on Social Media, EVER” (it’s not), but it sure seems like Carlson is missing Fox News. He’s, uh, not doing great based on a recent chat with Adam Carolla on The Adam Carolla Show podcast.

When asked by the former The Man Show host if “they” are going to let Trump be president (“they” is probably everyone who doesn’t roast their nuts in the sun), Carlson answered, “No, of course. I mean, look, if, you know, they protested him, they called him names. He won anyway. They impeached him twice on ridiculous pretenses. They fabricated a lot about what happened on January 6 in order to impeach him again,” etc. You get the idea. But then Carlson predicted Trump will get assassinated if he becomes president.

“If you begin with criticism, then you go to protest. Then you go to impeachment. Now you go to indictment and none of them work. What’s next? I mean, you know, graph it out, man! We’re speeding toward assassination, obviously, and no one will say that! But I don’t, I don’t know how you can’t reach that conclusion. You know what it been like. They have decided, permanent Washington. Both parties have decided that there’s something about Trump that’s so threatening to them, they just can’t have it.”

Carlson wasn’t done. He also claimed that in 2008, “it became really clear that Barack Obama had been having sex with men and smoking crack and a guy came forward, Larry Sinclair, and said ‘I’ll sign an affidavit and I’ll take a lie detector’ and he did.” That’s not the craziest part of the interview, however. Carlson’s camera angle is:

By the way, they’re also pushing the “Michelle Obama is really a man” thing hard these days:

Is there anything more to say???

The Meadows testimony

Published by digby on August 31, 2023

In case you were still wondering, this is Mark Meadows’ strategy:

To get his case “removed” to federal court, Meadows needs to establish three things. The first, that he was a federal officer at the time of the alleged offense, is not in dispute. The second is that the conduct alleged against him has a “causal connection” to federal office. The third is that he has a colorable federal defense against the charges. To satisfy the third prong, Meadows has asserted a federal defense called Supremacy Clause immunity, which shields federal officers from state prosecutions arising from conduct they subjectively and reasonably believed to be “necessary and proper” in carrying out their federal duties.

I had been under the impression until this week that only state law would apply to a case that had been “removed” to federal court. But no. The Supremacy Clause immunity is the big enchilada.

The author of that paragraph Anna Bower of Lawfare was in the courtroom and ran down the entire proceeding. It’s quite interesting. Perhaps the most important part is the fact that Meadows’ defense is now right out in the open and it isn’t all that great for Donald Trump. He’s trying to save his own bacon so he’s saying he was just following orders, doing mundane tasks leaving all the important stuff in Trump’s lap. Let’s just say he didn’t offer a rousing defense of the Big Lie or his Dear Leader.

If Meadows gets off the hook with the Supremacy Clause, it’s certainly possible that Trump will too and that will be that for the Georgia case. But if he does have to stand trial I hope Donald Trump isn’t counting on him to back him. Meadows will save himself and no one else.

UNC shooting aftermath

Published by Tom Sullivan on August 31, 2023

Bringing the fight

“I shed many tears while typing up these heart-wrenching text messages sent and received by UNC students yesterday. Our campus was on lockdown for more than three hours,” writes Caitlyn Yaede of The Daily Tar Heel.

Another storm was brewing in Chapel Hill, NC on Wednesday even as Hurricane/Tropical Storm Idalia traversed the lower part of the state (WSOC):

A shooting that left a faculty member dead and frightened students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has galvanized gun safety advocates and local Democrats, who rallied the grieving campus community Wednesday to fight for stricter state gun laws.

About 600 students held protest signs on a large lawn in the heart of campus and bowed their heads during a moment of silence as the iconic campus Bell Tower rang in honor of the deceased associate professor, Zijie Yan.

Yan, who led a research group in the Department of Applied Physical Sciences, was fatally shot Monday by one of his graduate students inside a science lab building at the state’s flagship public university, authorities said.

Photo via Cardinal and Pine.

NC Democrats’ state chair, Anderson Clayton, 25, lit into the state’s Republican-controlled legislature for failing to address gun violence, calling for “a reckoning in our state capital.”

Rep. Lindsey Prather (D-Buncombe), a former schoolteacher, posted on the “generational divide” between the students who live with gun violence and their “desensitized” elders. “They think it’s fake outrage. Trust me, it’s not.”

March For Our Lives founder David Hogg, a survivor of the Parkland, FL mass-shooting, addressed the crowd. In light of the daily shootings, “We need to repurpose the meaning of run, hide, fight. We need to run for office to replace those and change our government,” Hogg said. “There are some people on the stage with me where this is their third shooting … and they aren’t even old enough top run for Congress yet.”

Days earlier, Tennessee Republicans voted to silence state Rep. Justin Jones (D) for demanding that state’s lawmakers do something in the wake of the Nashville elementary school shooting in March. The “GOP-dominant Statehouse refused to take up gun control measures” for which the special session was called.

Coincidentally, I had a conversation on Wednesday with a Young Democrat leader about 2024 strategy. He and others from his cohort had spent the last two days nearly nonstop on the phone organizing in the wake of the UNC shooting.

Young people like Clayton and Hogg and Jones are showing voters and college students, especially, that there is still fight in the Democratic Party. Younger voters, if they turn out in numbers, can dominate American elections:

I’ve noted before: How many Rocky movies did Stallone make? And they’re all the same movie. So why do people keep going? Because so many Americans themselves feel like underdogs. We want to root for the little guy with heart. Facing insurmountable odds. Risking it all. We want to feel the thrill up our spines and in the tops of our heads when Bill Conti’s trumpet fanfare introduces the training sequence. We want to hear that. Wait for it. Cheer for it. Pay for it. Over and over and over.

It’s past time for younger progressives eager to fight to take the lead. And for Democrats who won’t to retire.

An elephant in the headlights

Published by Tom Sullivan on August 31, 2023

Mitch McConnell freezes up again

Sen. Mitch McConnell, whatever parts are failing him, is yet another entry into the decline of the Washington, D.C. gerontocracy (Washington Post):

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) appeared to freeze for more than 20 seconds Wednesday while taking questions from journalists in an incident that mirrored another occasion when he abruptly stopped speaking in late July.

McConnell took questions from reporters in Covington, Ky., after talking with a local group. A reporter asked him about running for reelection in 2026, then repeated the query twice when McConnell said he couldn’t hear, according to video of the incident.

McConnell, 81, chuckled and said, “Oh, that’s, uhh —” and stopped speaking. After about seven seconds, an aide approached and asked the senator if he had heard the question.

She was covering, clearly, to make it appear his problem was hearing.

McConnell stared straight ahead, and the aide asked reporters to give them a minute.

Another aide then walked over and spoke to McConnell, who signaled that he was fine. McConnell then cleared his throat, said “Okay,” and continued to take questions. His answers were stilted.

In total, the minority leader was silent for more than 20 seconds.

“Leader McConnell felt momentarily lightheaded and paused during his press conference today,” a spokesman for McConnell said in a statement afterward.

At 81, McConnell is not okay while President Joe Biden, 80, is out bicycling.

Biden’s quadruply indicted predecessor, 77, is … what he is.

Many families face that moment when it’s time for the kids to take away mom’s or dad’s car keys. Dents and broken taillights testify that their eyesight is shot and their reflexes too. Or worse, they wander off and cannot find their way home or remember who they are talking to or where they are. It does not happen to every elderly person. The spouse has a friend who at 100 still writes cogent letters to the editor. She can’t hear well, but she’s otherwise remained sharp and mobile. Both my grandmothers made it to 92 with their wits about them even as their bodies declined. (Fingers crossed here.)

Senators with tenure build up an infrastructure around themselves of executive perks plus staff and advisers whose livelihoods depend on the senator continuing to be a senator. So much so that that they don’t know when it’s time to go, and there’s no one to take the keys. Their retinue has little incentive to.

Whatever is ailing McConnell, he is clearly ailing. Likely, he never has to drive himself anywhere, so that’s a plus. Perhaps it’s Parkinson’s which I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California reached that point some time ago:

Feinstein, Jane Mayer’s sources tell her, suffers from significant short-term memory loss. Republican Sen. Strom Thurmond’s was so notorious in South Carolina by his late-80s (I was told) he was said to have introduced himself to one of his sons at an event. During the Clinton impeachment, a reporter recounted Thurmond (96) mistaking him for an aide outside a hearing room and taking his arm as his escort “to the toilee.”

The back end of that Thurmond story was an aide bursting into the men’s room in a panic over having lost the senator. But so long as the staff could wind him up each morning and keep him moving without falling over they could keep their jobs.

McConnell is having trouble not falling over.

They believe what they want to believe

Published by digby on August 30, 2023

New polling from Georgia:

Most Republican voters in Georgia polled by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution say they still believe the 2020 presidential election was tainted by large-scale fraud — despite abundant evidence to the contrary.

The poll of likely Republican Party primary voters shows that 61% of respondents said there was widespread fraud in the last presidential election, a distrust that has persisted for nearly three years as another race looms.

So most of them think the election was stolen in Georgia. They believe Trump but not their state officials who claim that he is lying. And yet, a majority supports them too:

Though many GOP voters retain their unproven suspicions about the 2020 election, they haven’t turned against Georgia Republican leaders who rejected Donald Trump’s unfounded claims.

Gov. Brian Kemp, who refused Trump’s call for a special legislative session to question the election results, achieved an 80% approval rating. Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a major Trump supporter, won approval from 44% of poll respondents, with 45% undecided.

And a plurality of Republicans, 49%, approve of Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger even though he resisted Trump’s demand that he “find” enough votes to reverse the results. About 23% were undecided on Raffensperger.

Three vote counts and dozens of investigations upheld the results of the 2020 election, which Democrat Joe Biden won by about 12,000 votes in Georgia. Investigations debunked claims of double-counting by poll workers, ballot stuffing, counterfeit ballots and dead voters.

I suspect that quite a few of these people know that the Big Lie is a lie. They just don’t care. They love Trump and as far as they’re concerned he can lie all he wants.

Rudy’s most abominable crime

Published by digby on August 30, 2023

His defamation of Shay Moss and Ruby Freeman

I dearly hope it sends him to the poorhouse. And it may. The judge in the case just brought the hammer down:

A federal judge has ruled former New York mayor and Donald Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani liable for defaming two Georgia election workers whom he falsely accused of tampering with the 2020 election results.

Judge Beryl A. Howell entered a default judgment against him “as a straight-up sanction” for his failure to provide necessary documentation to the plaintiffs.

Giuliani will still go to trial in D.C. federal court on the amount of monetary damages he owes to Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss. But Howell has already ordered Giuliani to pay roughly $132,000 in sanctions between his personal and business assets for his failures to hand over relevant information. And she said those failures, combined with Giuliani’s own admissions, compelled her to rule without a trial that he defamed both women, intentionally inflicted emotional distress on them as part of a civil conspiracy and owes punitive damages.

Last month, as part of the wrangling over the records he had failed to share, Giuliani agreed not to contest that he made false and defamatory claims about the two poll workers. But in the same filings, he said he was not giving up the right to argue that his comments were constitutionally protected speech that did not cause damage, along with other defenses. On Wednesday, Howell said that admission had “more holes than Swiss cheese,” and that Giuliani was trying “to bypass the discovery process and a merits trial — at which his defenses may be fully scrutinized and tested in our judicial system’s time-honored adversarial process — and to delay such a fair reckoning by taking his chances on appeal.”

But, she said, Giuliani cannot “have his proverbial cake and eat it too.”

Giuliani repeatedly claimed in the weeks after the 2020 election that misleading security footage from Georgia showed Freeman and Moss bringing in “suitcases” full of fake votes for Joe Biden. Those claims were quickly debunked by election officials in Georgia, who explained that the so-called suitcases were regular ballot boxes and that nothing untoward had occurred. But Giuliani and others continued to accuse the two of malfeasance; they received death threats and were forced into hiding.

Because Giuliani failed to preserve emails, text messages and social media account information from the time period when he made those accusations, Howell said, Freeman and Moss are “severely hampered” in their ability to prove his statements were intentionally false and part of a broader conspiracy rather than merely negligent.

Among the messages Giuliani failed to preserve and produce, according to the court record, is a Dec. 7, 2020, text he sent in response to a Trump adviser’s request for “best examples of ‘election fraud’ that we’ve alleged that’s super easy to explain. Doesn’t necessarily have to be proven, but does need to be easy to understand.” According to the records, Giuliani replied by highlighting the Georgia video. Trump went on to reference the video in meetings with top Justice Department officials and in a phone call with Georgia’s secretary of state, during which the president asked for the state official to “find 11,780 votes.”

The plaintiffs became aware of large gaps in what Giuliani provided because of records received from others involved, according to the court record. Giuliani claimed that he lost access to much of his electronic information because it was seized by the FBI in an unrelated investigation in April 2021. But Howell found that Giuliani failed to make meaningful efforts to explain what exactly was missing or to retrieve it, instead giving “vague” and “shifting descriptions” of the problem.

The judge also pointed out that Giuliani has “a self-professed 50 years of experience in litigation,” including working as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

“Given Giuliani’s much-vaunted experience as an attorney, he plainly should have known better,” Howell wrote, concluding that his failure to produce the information was “deliberate.” She suggested he was trying to avoid disclosing information that could hurt him in other civil and criminal cases. Earlier this month, Giuliani was charged in Georgia with involvement in a scheme to subvert the election results. The federal indictment brought against Trump in D.C. lists Giuliani as an unnamed co-conspirator and includes the false Georgia claims as part of an alleged criminal conspiracy to keep Biden out of office.

“[J]ust as taking shortcuts to win an election carries risks — even potential criminal liability — bypassing the discovery process carries serious sanctions,” Howell wrote.

While his liability is no longer in dispute, Giuliani still must hand over financial information for the determination of damages, including metrics for a podcast on which he impugned the Georgia workers. He and his businesses must also pay the plaintiffs back for the attorney fees they spent trying to get him to comply with Howell’s rulings. If he continues to withhold his financial records, Howell said, she will instruct the jury deciding damages to “infer that he is intentionally trying to hide relevant discovery about his financial assets for the purpose of artificially deflating his net worth.”

Giuliani political adviser Ted Goodman said in a statement that the ruling was “a prime example of the weaponization of our justice system, where the process is the punishment,” and that it “should be reversed.”

He compared them to drug dealers. He is a disgusting pig and he deserves to be bankrupted in this case.

“I am your retribution”

Published by digby on August 30, 2023

Apparently, he meant that literally

Here’s Trump telling Glenn Beck that he would get payback. Of course, we knew that. Revenge has been his guiding philosophy his entire life:

Former President Donald Trump joined controversial radio host Glenn Beck for an interview on Tuesday and was asked flat out if he would use the office of the president to jail his political opponents – as he promised to do in 2016.

“You said in 2016, you know, ‘lock her up.’ And then when you became president, you said, ‘We don’t do that in America.’ That’s just not the right thing to do. That’s what they’re doing. Do you regret not locking her up? And if you’re president again, will you lock people up?” Beck asked Trump.

“Well, I’ll give you an example. Uh, the answer is you have no choice because they’re doing it to us,” Trump replied, making clear he would.

Trump did NOT say, “we don’t do that in America” and he led “lock her up” chants at his rallies all four years. He publicly demanded investigations into her:

President Donald Trump issued a forceful call Friday morning for the Justice Department to investigate Hillary Clinton over “all of the dishonesty,” writing on Twitter that “the American public deserves it!”

“Everybody is asking why the Justice Department (and FBI) isn’t looking into all of the dishonesty going on with Crooked Hillary & the Dems. New Donna B book says she paid for and stole the Dem Primary,” Trump said, referencing an excerpt of former interim Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Donna Brazile’s forthcoming book published Thursday by POLITICO Magazine.

“What about the deleted E-mails, Uranium, Podesta, the Server, plus, plus. People are angry,” the president continued. “At some point the Justice Department, and the FBI, must do what is right and proper. The American public deserves it!”

He did it privately as well:

U.S. President Donald Trump wanted to order the Justice Department to prosecute two political foes, his one-time presidential opponent Hillary Clinton and former FBI director James Comey, in the spring, but his White House counsel rebuffed him, the New York Times reported on Tuesday.

Don McGahn, the White House counsel at the time, wrote a memo to the president outlining consequences for Trump if he did order these prosecutions.

The outcomes ranged from the traditionally independent Justice Department refusing to comply, to congressional probes and voter outcry, the Times reported.

This:

In 2017, Trump sought to have his then-Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, “un-recuse” himself from the Justice Department’s investigation into whether foreign election interference benefited Trump. According to the special counsel investigation headed by Robert Mueller, Trump wanted Sessions to do this to help in prosecuting Clinton for her use of a private email server while secretary of state, even though the Justice Department had closed its case on that matter in 2016.

It wasn’t just about going after Hillary and Comey. He wanted to protect his pals too:

Since taking office President Trump has regularly called upon the Justice Department to investigate individuals he perceives as political opponents, especially his 2016 general election opponent Hillary Clinton, senior officials within the FBI, and Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Since his acquittal by the Senate in the impeachment trial, the president has exerted further political pressure on the department, including having expressed his displeasure at sentencing recommendations from prosecutors in the case against his associate Roger Stone — complaints that were apparently answered by Justice Department leadership’s intervention in the case, which was in turn praised by the president.

Troublingly, it appears that the Justice Department is allowing itself to be pressured by Trump’s demands. In November 2017, then–Attorney General Jeff Sessions informed members of Congress that he was considering appointing a second special counsel to investigate Hillary Clinton’s alleged role in approving the sale of a uranium company to a Russian state company. In January 2018, after yet another round of tweets from Trump, the Daily Beast reported that Justice Department officials had agreed to take a “fresh look” at Clinton’s use of a private email server. Two years later, in January 2020, the department ended the investigation, conceding nothing of consequence was found.

There also appears to be consequences for officials who do not follow Trump’s bidding. In February 2020, former U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jessie Liu resigned from the Treasury Department after Trump withdrew her nomination to serve as undersecretary for terrorism and financial crimes. News reports suggest that Liu’s resignation and revoked nomination were related to Trump’s dissatisfaction with her work as U.S. attorney — specifically, Liu’s perceived lack of involvement in politically sensitive investigations, including the cases of Trump ally Roger Stone and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

Liu’s resignation occurred following the surprise reversal of Justice Department sentencing recommendations in the Stone case, a reversal that prompted the withdrawal from the case of multiple career prosecutors. In May, another stunning reversal occurred, with the Justice Department said it would be dropping its case against former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. The motion to dismiss the charges was signed by interim U.S. Attorney for the District Timothy Shea, and raised serious questions about political interference at the Justice Department as well as about the involvement of Attorney General Barr.

Biden has not directed the DOJ to do anything despite Trump insisting that he has personally directed the federal indictments of him (even as he’s completely senile and demented.)

Trump was (mostly) thwarted in his efforts to weaponize the Justice Department by people who understood that he had no evidence and was abusing his power. He would not have such roadblocks in place if he becomes president again. In fact, I’m not sure any Republican would. Donald Trump’s criminality has perversely opened the door to future authoritarian types to actually do what they are accusing Biden of doing.