If you have followed Marcy Wheeler‘s posts on the Jan. 6 investigations, you know she has been dismissive of complaints that Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice is doing nothing about throwing a net over Donald Trump and his White House courtiers for their part in the Jan. 6 insurrection. The DoJ is working, just slowly and methodically from the foot soldiers up to the kingpins.
Events, however, continue to erode confidence that the justice system is up to the task.
Case in point from this week (New York Times)
One of the senior Manhattan prosecutors who investigated Donald J. Trump believed that the former president was “guilty of numerous felony violations” and that it was “a grave failure of justice” not to hold him accountable, according to a copy of his resignation letter.
The prosecutor, Mark F. Pomerantz, submitted his resignation last month after the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, abruptly stopped pursuing an indictment of Mr. Trump.
There are still other investigations underway of Trump by New York Attorney General Tish James and Georgia’s Fulton County DA Fani Wallace. Even so.
News hit this week that Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife Ginni was involved (with Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows) in efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) revealed that Trump was still seeking ways to rescind the 2020 election and see himself reinstalled in the Oval Office as late as last September. Both reinforce the notion that, like Wall Street bankers, there exists a class of people in this country for whom following the law is optional. They appear the way Trump presents: untouchable.
Lack of official accountability for the untouchable class encourages numbskulls like this (below) to believe they are a law unto themselves.
After the Ginni Thomas revelations, I asked, “Why am I throwing up my hands and asking what is not broken about American justice? Is that question fair to the many dedicated public servants? No. Is it what I feel? Yes.”
David Rothkopf Friday morning expressed the same sinking feeling in a thread:
David Rothkopf
I don’t want to stir up the hornets nest of Merrick Garland defenders (yes, I know, seeing nothing is exactly what we should be seeing), but I’ve got to say, so far all we get daily is more proof of serious crimes from Trump & his bunch and so far…
…not one single example of holding them accountable. This is true at the state and local level too. (The @ManhattanDA situation is a clear example of the wrong decision being made at the wrong time in the wrong way.) Yes, yes…don’t @Me…it all takes time.
Yes, yes…the processes are all deeply secretive. Yes, yes…there are clues buried in the fourteenth paragraph of the twelfth page of the most recent DoJ filing that suggest that it is possible that Trump might be a person of interest in some unspecified investigation someday.
Yes, yes…I know I’m not a lawyer and that all the lawyers and judges and former DoJ people I know and talk to regularly are wrong to be as nervous and upset as me and you, voices of the Twitterverse are right. So, let’s set all that aside. Let’s stipulate my ignorance.
What is indisputable as of now, whatever may or may not being happening behind the scenes, is that Trump and Co. and the purveyors of the Big Lie are empowered by the current silence and inaction.
At the same time, the people of the country, seeing the evidence and shocking stories pile up followed by months and months and months of silence and apparent inaction, are losing faith in our system of justice.
Trump’s legacy so far is that he more than any individual in US history hast throughout his life demonstrated that the rich & powerful are, effectively, above the law, even if they are serial criminals as Trump is. Even if they have sought to undermine our entire system of gov’t.
The inscrutability of due process aside, given the cynical politics of the GOP in our Senate and House, the political activism of the right on our courts (and then some), and the polarization and near-insanity of our state politics, people are losing faith in our system.
The coming election is not likely to improve that situation. Victories by the GOP will elevate a party that has embraced as a leader a man who led a coup and sold out our foreign policy to the most dangerous, evil foreign leader on the planet.
Their past behavior indicates that given more power that will further corrupt our system, gut our democracy, and place themselves above the law. Systemic corrosion will have precisely the same effect as the disinformation campaigns of Putin or Trump or the rest of the GOP.
We will lose faith in the foundational principles and structures of our government. They will weaken and ultimately become unrecognizable. That’s the issue of the moment. We are facing a crisis of faith in our justice system of a scope that many Americans have seldom seen before.
(Black Americans have never seen that system work. Nor have the poorest among us. This isn’t new for many.) So, leaving the reading of DoJ chicken entrails aside for the moment, let’s agree, Trump & Co. must be held accountable soon or the damage done may be irreparable.
I’d say Amen, but it might be sacrilege.
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