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:
Tucker Carlson:
"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. Nobody reported it." pic.twitter.com/x7GTVyf6fg
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.
“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.
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.”
Reading the comments/quotes, a generational divide appears to be that older folks have become accustomed, dare I say desensitized, to gun violence. They don't understand the anger displayed here b/c their anger died out long ago. They think it's fake outrage. Trust me, it's not. https://t.co/T181Fq1Z1F
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.”
🔥 Must-watch
Parkland school shooting survivor David Hogg spoke at a rally at #uncchapelhill today, two days after a shooting that shook the campus.@davidhogg111, who's become a leader in youth activism against gun violence, said young people need to demand change. #ncpolpic.twitter.com/VCRV7jgt0L
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.
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.
I will just point out that so far today Trump has made 102 social media posts including 31 different video clips of himself. And the night is young. But Biden is a stark raving lunatic. Got it, Chief. https://t.co/JQRDPdDMK4
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This is what many millions of Republicans watch and believe is true. The internet sources are even worse. Do we need to look any further than this to understand what’s happened to them and why our country is in such desperate trouble?
Over on Truth Social they’re getting it from the horse’s mouth:
In case you wondered about the process that led to the preposterous finding that slavery was beneficial for the enslaved in the Florida “AP standards” here it is. It’s as bad as you might have thought:
The newspaper obtained copies of internal state documents after the state said in January that it would not allow schools to offer the new Advanced Placement course. The state claimed at the time the pilot program “significantly” lacked educational value and violated Florida law. The decision came amid Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R) ongoing effort to target so-called “woke” culture, including the passage of the “Stop WOKE Act” last summer meant to limit teaching about systemic inequality.
The documents, however, appear to show an effort to whitewash the country’s history of slavery. In one lesson, the AP curriculum focuses on how enslaved Africans were removed from the continent and taken to plantations on Portuguese colonies that later became “a model for slave-based economy in the Americas.”
State reviewers said they were concerned the lesson “may not address the internal slave trade/system within Africa” and “may only present one side of this issue.” In a separate lesson that discussed how Europeans benefited from the slave trade, state reviewers claimed the curriculum “may lead to a viewpoint of an ‘oppressor vs. oppressed’ based solely on race or ethnicity.”
In yet another case, a reviewer said a unit about abolitionists that worked to free slaves was not “factually inclusive or balanced.” The curriculum, the reviewer said, would be more accurate if the word “owners” was used rather than enslavers.
The documents noted there were many times reviewers said the course should include perspectives from “the other side,” but didn’t add any detail as to what perspectives they meant.
The Herald notes one of the reviewers was linked to conservative groups including the Civics Alliance, which seeks to bar “woke” standards from teaching curriculum. Many of the comments in the document were not attributed to specific individuals.
Florida is apparently allowing this to happen. I guess the majority doesn’t care. But anti-history, anti-science doesn’t bode well for them.
For the record, there isn’t another side to slavery. But any intelligent person knows that.
Donald Trump’s legal problems just got very real. We now have trial dates being set, jockeying among various co-defendants and even his former Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, taking the stand to essentially say he was only following orders. It now appears certain that one way or the other, Trump will be facing a jury before the 2024 election. And for all his blustering about how every indictment makes him more popular, he wants his Republican supporters to do something about it.
Salon’s Amanda Marcotte has a full rundown of the Republican hysteria around the threat to their Dear Leader. The party is in such disarray that it’s difficult to anticipate how successful they might be at their various gambits to interfere in the 2024 elections around the country. But the outlines of what the MAGA caucus in the House plans to do in Washington are clear. They want to impeach Joe Biden, as we all predicted the moment they took the majority in 2022, and flood the zone with investigations. And they want to hold the government hostage by shutting down the government. If all goes well, they might even wreck the economy in the process.
Trump has exhorted them on his social media platform Truth Social for months to put a stop to what the GOP refers to as the “weaponization” of the Department of Justice. And he’s taken it to the campaign trail as well. At a Pennsylvania rally this summer Trump excoriated congressional Republicans whom he believes have not been fighting for him hard enough:
The Republicans are very high class. You’ve got to get a little bit lower class…Any Republican that doesn’t act on Democrat fraud should be immediately primaried and get out — out! They have to play tough and … if they’re not willing to do it, we got a lot of good, tough Republicans around … and they’re going to get my endorsement every single time.
The problem is that there isn’t a whole lot his loyal House majority can do to help him. They are running investigations as fast as they can think of them. Aside from all the bogus Hunter Biden nonsense and the absurd impending impeachment inquiry against Joe Biden, they’re now set upon investigating the Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg and Fulton County prosecutor Fanni Willis with the supposed intention of defunding them for their alleged misconduct. They don’t seem to realize that these are local and state offices and are hardly dependent upon whatever small amounts of money the federal government might provide. It does make for a good Truth Social post though.
But they do have one card up their sleeves that it looks like they are going to play quite soon. You’ll recall that the House Freedom caucus was quite bent out of shape last spring when Kevin McCarthy made a deal with the Democrats to raise the debt ceiling. They even staged a little hissy fit soon afterwards blocking a vote on the floor and putting the House into gridlock for week. They now plan to flex their muscles over the appropriations bills with a renewed threat of a government shutdown. And if the putative leader of their majority, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, doesn’t like it, they are pretty much on record saying that they are ready to pull the plug on his speakership. (All it would take is one member to call to vacate the chair and it will only take 4 GOP votes against him to put an end to his reign. )
During this summer’s recess the rebels, led by former Sen. Ted Cruz chief of staff, Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, the battle lines have been drawn. (Roy was working for Cruz back in 2013 when he helped the House Tea Party caucus lead that disastrous government shutdown.) The Freedom Caucus released a statement making it clear that they will oppose any short term funding bill that doesn’t meet their demands:
“In the eventuality that Congress must consider a short-term extension of government funding through a Continuing Resolution, we refuse to support any such measure that continues Democrats’ bloated COVID-era spending and simultaneously fails to force the Biden Administration to follow the law and fulfill its most basic responsibilities,”
They are hand-waving about cuts, including Ukraine military funding and “woke” pentagon spending. But the most important ransom demand, which is gaining traction in the whole caucus, is to cut funding for the Department of Justice and the FBI if they don’t succumb to their demands. That’s right, the Republicans are now agitating to defund the police.
Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., has two amendments that would “prohibit the use of federal funding for the prosecution of any major presidential candidate prior to the upcoming presidential election on November 5th, 2024.” Another one, proposed by Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz is to “defund Jack Smith’s office and end the witch hunt.” He has the support of one of the most powerful people in the Republican Party:
Jack Smith is a terrible attorney with a lot of failures in his career.
Now, he’s abusing his power, the power of the special counsel, and the power of the Department of Injustice.
I will not fund Jack Smith’s special counsel and I will use the Holman Rule to defund his office.… pic.twitter.com/IFblJ7YC0i
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) August 1, 2023
The Holman rule would allow amendments to House appropriations legislation to reduce the salary of or fire specific federal employees, or cut a specific program. It has never been used for the purpose Greene proposes and was completely out of use since 1983 until the Trump crazed GOP took over in 2017. (Greene was still an obscure Trump devotee posting about space lasers and QAnon on Facebook groups at the time.)
None of this is going to happen, of course. Even if they could easily pass these ridiculous proposals in the House, which is unlikely, the senate isn’t going to go along with it. And in case they’ve forgotten, they’ll need to get a presidential signature on it too. I’m pretty sure President Biden isn’t going to do that.
And if they do shut down the government just for kicks anyway, one of the functions that will just keep going is the Department of Justice. NBC News reported:
The Justice Department said in a 2021 memo that in a shutdown, “Criminal litigation will continue without interruption as an activity essential to the safety of human life and the protection of property.” The Justice Department’s plans assume that the judicial branch remains fully operational, which it has said in the past can carry on for weeks in the event of a funding lapse.
Special counsel Jack Smith’s office is funded by a “permanent, indefinite appropriation for independent counsels,” the department said in its statement of expenditures. Given its separate funding source, the special counsel would not be affected by a shutdown and could run off of allocations from previous years.”
This is all more of the performance art that passes for politics in the Republican Party these days. A government shutdown over something that will make no difference is a perfect illustration of how preposterous they’ve become. Unfortunately for them, Republicans always take a big hit in popularity when they pull this stunt but they just can’t seem to help themselves. And better leaders than Kevin McCarthy have gone down with the ship when they do it.
Unfortunately for the rest of us, each time this happens people get more cynical about their government. And that way lies (even more) madness.
