GOP House plans new season
Republicans don’t want to govern, they want to rule, I’ve insisted repeatedly. What that formulation misses is their need for revenge and to perform. Watch any of the professional wrestling-inspired introductions at conservative conventions for proof of the latter.
Turning Point USA is just previews. Now that the GOP will have control of the U.S. House in January, they’ll be bringing the full stage show to Capitol Hill sans the pyrotechnics and rock show lighting.
Prior to Nov. 8, Republicans wailed about inflation. They screamed about crime in the streets. Until they didn’t (Media Matters). Don’t expect them to spend their time addressing the issues they ran on:
“Remember when democrats spent all that time and taxpayer money trying to figure out what ivanka and her husband did in the White House? Oh wait,” tweets Molly Jong-Fast.
The play’s the thing. All of Capitol Hill’s a stage.
Even with their threadbare House majority, Republicans doubled down this week on using their new power next year to investigate the Biden administration and, in particular, the president’s son.
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But House Republicans used their first news conference after clinching the majority to discuss presidential son Hunter Biden and the Justice Department, renewing long-held grievances about what they claim is a politicized law enforcement agency and a bombshell corruption case overlooked by Democrats and the media.
That’s “bombshell,” if it wasn’t clear. Biden’s son is not in government and did not help instigate an attack on the Capitol or interfere with a peaceful transfer of power, as some of his salivating prosecutors may have.
Marcy Wheeler reads into Merrick Garland’s announcement Friday of a special prosecutor for Trump investigations:
When he announced the appointment of a Special Counsel yesterday, Merrick Garland described that “recent developments,” plural, led him to conclude that he should appoint Jack Smith as Special Counsel to oversee the investigations into Donald Trump.
The Department of Justice has long recognized that in certain extraordinary cases, it is in the public interest to appoint a special prosecutor to independently manage an investigation and prosecution.
Based on recent developments, including the former President’s announcement that he is a candidate for President in the next election, and the sitting President’s stated intention to be a candidate as well, I have concluded that it is in the public interest to appoint a Special Counsel.
The recent developments he focused on were presidential: Trump’s announcement he’d run again and Joe Biden’s stated plan to run for reelection. But he also described the basis for the appointment not as a conflict (as Republicans and Trump are describing the investigation by a Biden appointee by his chief rival), but as an extraordinary circumstance.
Unsurprisingly, Garland never named Trump as the reason for the appointment. The only time he referenced Trump, he referred to him as the former President. That’s DOJ policy.
When he described the subjects of the January 6 investigation, he included both “any person” but also any “entity” that interfered in the transfer of power.
The first, as described in court filings in the District of Columbia, is the investigation into whether any person or entity unlawfully interfered with the transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election or the certification of the Electoral College vote held on or about January 6, 2021.
The scope of the January 6 investigation that Smith will oversee is far broader than Trump and will almost certainly lead to the indictment of multiple people in addition to Trump, if it does include Trump — people like Jeffrey Clark, John Eastman, possibly Mark Meadows.
But if we assume that everyone who has had their phone seized in that investigation is a subject of it, then Scott Perry, the Chair of the House Freedom [sic] Caucus, would also be included. Perry was the one who suggested that Trump replace Jeffrey Rosen with Jeffrey Clark so DOJ would endorse Trump’s challenges to the election outcome. He pushed a number of conspiracy theories at the White House and DOJ (including the whack Italian one). Along with Meadows and Rudy Giuliani, Perry was putting together plans for Trump to come to the Capitol on January 6. After one meeting with Perry, Meadows burned some papers.
Perry isn’t even the only one who was closely involved in the plot to steal the election. Jim Jordan, the incoming Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, was closely involved as well and is very close to likely subject Mark Meadows.
Indeed, if you include all the members of Congress who discussed or asked for pardons, the number grows longer, in addition to Perry, including at least Matt Gaetz, Andy Biggs, Louie Gohmert, and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Jordan, Perry, Gaetz, Biggs, Gohmert, and Marge would amount to most of the probable seven person majority in the House.
Marge, as it turns out, is already dreaming up ways to defund this investigation (the means by which she wants to do this, the Holman Rule, probably wouldn’t work; I believe there’s a preauthorized fund from which Special Counsel expenses come from).
In any case, the GOPers mentioned above plan to put on a series of shows in the House meant to distract from possible DOJ investigations/prosecutions coming their way.
Maybe Jordan, Perry, Gaetz, Biggs, Gohmert, and Greene should have stuck to community theatre.