I subscribe to Marc Elias’ blog called “Democracy Docket.” Marc is a veteran prosecutor who is actively pursing lawsuits against the crimes of the Trump administration and winning many of them.
Together they discuss how the Trump regime has corrupted the rule of law; how grand juries have usually stood firm in defending it; why Trump and his cronies must be held accountable for their efforts to destroy our democracy; why Merrick Garland was weak but Jack Smith was strong; why the Department of Justice must always be apolitical and hold members of both parties accountable; how Pam Bondi has repeatedly broken the law; and why the Epstein Files will eventually reveal a massive coverup.
All that is to say that I found the discussion to be enlightening and informative. These two—Elias and Kirschner–are truly experts, not just someone fulminating at the latest outage.
Since the content of the blog is for subscribers only, I can’t post it in full. It is definitely worth your while to subscribe.
Here is Marc Elias’ introduction to the dialogue:
For decades, the American justice system has operated on a “presumption of regularity” — the idea that the government acts in good faith. But as we enter the second year of this administration, that presumption has become a dangerous fantasy. Glenn Kirschner spent 30 years as a federal prosecutor, and he knows that when the rule of law is hanging by a thread, there’s no such thing as “business as usual.”
Glenn joined me to explain why we need a “scorched earth” mission to investigate the criminal enterprise currently occupying the White House. We also dive deep into the Epstein files cover-up and discuss what it takes to hold the Trump administration accountable when we take back the White House in 2029.
And here is a brief snippet from Kirschner’s remarks:
Glenn: I think accountability doesn’t look like “you’ve got to throw them all in prison, they all need to be in orange jumpsuits.” That’s not accountability. My version of accountability, my definition of accountability, is if we fairly, impartially, aggressively — and I mean scorched earth — investigate in an apolitical fashion every crime that we see with our own eyes. The President and his cabinet, basically this is a criminal enterprise. I prosecuted lengthy RICO cases in federal district court in Washington, D.C. I don’t say that flippantly. This is a criminal enterprise.
So what we need to do is make sure every crime gets fully investigated through an apolitical investigation whereby we give all of the evidence to the grand jury and we let them serve as the first check on our instincts with respect to who should be prosecuted. Do we have enough evidence to make out, one, probable cause, and two, beyond that, do we prosecutors believe we have a reasonable likelihood of success on the merits, which looks like a conviction at trial? That’s some of the language taken from the U.S. Attorney’s Manual. That is our procedural Bible at the Department of Justice. Once we secure indictments against everybody who has been victimizing the American people and violating our nation’s laws, then we move into the courtroom. We try the case as best we can. We deliver it to the jury and they begin to deliberate.
Accountability is done at that point. That may sound counterintuitive coming from a prosecutor who liked winning convictions. I enjoyed holding perpetrators accountable, vindicating the rights of victims, and protecting the community. But the result is not as important as the process. Justice is a process. And once we deliver it to the second check on our instincts—the trial jury sitting as the conscience of the community, just as grand jurors do—we live with the result, win, lose, or draw: conviction, acquittal, or mistrial because it’s a hung jury where the jurors couldn’t agree unanimously on a verdict. That’s what accountability looks like: putting everybody fairly and apolitically through the criminal justice system and let first the grand jurors decide and then we let the trial jurors decide.
Peter Greene retired after 39 years of teaching, and now is the best-informed and most prolific writer about misguided and sometimes malicious efforts to “reform” public schools.
Peter has his own blog–Curmudgucation–and also writes a column about reform frauds for FORBES.
In this post, he tells the remarkable and unsavory story of vouchers in Nebraska. Nebraska is a solid red state, but its voters don’t want vouchers. Rural legislators–even Republicans–know it’s a waste of money and are sure to defund their public schools.
But the voucher-pushers keep looking for clever ways to bypass the voters, who have made it clear that they don’t want vouchers.
Peter Greene writes:
Nebraska’s voucher fans are bound and determined, like legislators in many states, to get around the voters so they can get vouchers installed.
In May of 2023, Nebraska’s Governor Jim Pillen signed into law LB 753, creating tax credit vouchers for subsidizing private schools.
The concept has been floated in Nebraska before, notably turning up more than once in 2022’s session. In 2023, it finally progressed through the legislature. But NSEA political action director Brian Nikkelson told the Nebraska Examiner that the public did not support the vouchers, and if the bill was passed, there would be a petition drive to force the bill to go on the ballot for voters to decide.
And so there was. It was a heck of a battle, with the pro-voucher forces have attracting a mountain of money, some of it from outside the state. Paul Hammel at the Nebraska Examiner reported that big money contributors include C.L. Werner, an Omaha-based trucking company executive ($100,000), Tom Peed and his son Shawn of a Lincoln publishing company ($75,000 each), and former Nebraska governor U.S. Senator Pete Ricketts ($25,000). Governor Pillen himself has contributed $100,000 to the campaign to save vouchers from a vote.
At the same time, Hammel reported, the American Federation for Children, the school choice advocacy group founded by Betsy DeVos, has contributed $103,000 in in-kind services and $583,000 in cash to the campaign.
It didn’t matter. Support Our Schools needed 60,000 signatures to force a referendum. They ended up with about twice that number (that’s roughly 10% of all eligible voters in the state). So this November, the voters of Nebraska were supposed to have their say. So you’d expect that voucher fans, who keep telling us how much everyone loves vouchers, would just sit back, secure in the knowledge that their program would win the referendum handily.
Well, no.
Instead, legislators cooked up LB 1402. This bill proposed to repeal the Opportunity Scholarships that were created under LB 753, and then to replace them with a new version of Opportunity Scholarships. This version would have been an education savings account (ESA) style super-voucher that hands over taxpayer money to send a student to a private or parochial school. It was more sketchy than last year’s bill because it appropriates state funds (rather than tax-credited contributions) to pay for the vouchers.
But mostly what it did it render the petition drive moot, because it repealed the version of vouchers that the public was going to vote on. “Ha,” they apparently thought. “That’ll stop those damned voters.”
In 67 days, the coalition of opponents gathered the necessary signatures—again. That repeal passed in November 2024, with 45 out of 49 legislative districts voting to repeal, and Nebraska’s voucher law was toast. The voters had sent a clear and unequivocal message.
Surely the state’s leaders would say, “Well, the voters have spoken, so that’s that.”
Fat chance.
Voucherphiles were back with a new proposal in January 2025. “I’m not dissuaded by the fact that it was defeated at the ballot box,” said freshman State Sen. Tony Sorrentino of Omaha.
Pillen’s new idea is to sell vouchers for the “gap” year, the year between the time when Nebraska’s vouchers are required to end and the time when the federal vouchers are supposed to kick in. The proposal is being sent through the state’s Labor Department rather than the Department of Education because that would skirt the requirement for any sort of hearing or debate, probably because voucherphiles have a pretty good idea of how that would go.
Nebraska is one of those states where rural Republicans have opposed all attempts at vouchers, and they aren’t sounding any friendlier about this one. Zach Wendling at Nebraska Examiner talked to State Sen. Tom Brandt of Plymouth, a Republican who opposed Linehan’s previous proposals; he said he is opposed to using any public money for private school choice. He’s still waiting to see how the federal tax credit program includes public schools (because, remember, there are no actual rules yet attached to the federal voucher program).
“The referendum simply eliminated that. Period, end of story,” he continued on the state policy. “There’s no other interpretation you can draw from that.”
The gap funding would cost about $5 million for around 2,500 students. Of course, with no rules in place, it’s possible that not all of Nebraska’s current voucher students would qualify for federal vouchers. Nor can we predict what slice of the federal money pie Nebraska would be entitled to. If it comes to that, we could expect voucherphiles to argue that more gap funding is needed to cover new gaps, or maybe to expand above and beyond the federal offerings.
Nebraska voucher fans are making a lot of “think of the children” noises, but families have plenty of time to look for new arrangements (i.e. finding the student a new school or going back to paying the full tuition with their own money).
This is the same story we’ve seen over and over again. Vouchers never win when voters have a chance to be heard. Every single taxpayer-funded voucher program in this country has been created without giving the taxpayers a say or ignoring the say they had already said. Taxpayer-funded vouchers are all the result of legislators backed by deep-pocketed voucher fans deciding they are going to inflict these on the taxpayers. Nebraska’s taxpayers just happen to have a few more tools to fight back with, but Nebraska’s voucherphiles just keep looking for a way to avoid that whole pesky democracy thing.
As many of you know, I was born and raised in Texas. I grew up in Houston, third of eight children. I went to public schools, then to college in Massachusetts. I have never stopped being a Texan. I live in Brooklyn now but a part of my heart will always be in Texas. So I keep a close watch over developments in my home state.
The victories of James Talarico for Senate and Gina Hinojosa for Governor put Texas Democrats in a good position to turn Texas blue.
Gina Hinojosa coasted to victory in the Democratic primary over seven opponents. Soon after the polls closed, she had 61% of the vote. She will face incumbent Greg Abbot in November.
Talarico won the primary by 52.8% to Crockett’s 45.9%.
(Full disclosure: I contributed to all three campaigns.)
Talarico was a member of the state legislature. He has studied theology and is working towards a Master of Divinity at the Austin Presbyterian Seminary. He hopes to win independents and Trump voters with his deep religious faith and his rhetoric of love and reconciliation.
Under Governor Greg Abbot–now seeking his fourth term–Texas became an extreme MAGA state. Abbot echoes whatever Trump says , or says it first. Abbot is mean and has a stone heart.
Gina Hinojosa swept the Democratic primary for Governor. She is smart, articulate, beautiful, and Hispanic. One of the reasons that Democrats have not won a statewide office since 1994 is low turnout and growing Hispanic support for Trump. Gina was a featured speaker at the last conference of the Network for Public Education in Columbus, Ohio, and she was wonderful! As she explains in her PBS interview, strengthening neighborhood public schools is her top priority.
The Republicans running for Senate will compete in a May run-off. Jon Cornyn, the incumbent, is a reliable vote for Trump but not really MAGA. He seems like a moderate Republican who votes with Trump to protect his hide. Cornyn is running for his fifth term.
His opponent Ken Paxton is Attorney General of Texas, and it’s fair to say that he’s been scarred by scandals. His wife is a state senator. He cheated on her. Some of his staff blew the whistle on him and said he took payoffs from men he was investigating. The Republican House impeached him; the Republican Senate cleared him, thanks to generous donations by hard-right MAGA billionaires.
Paxton and Cornyn will have a runoff in May.
Talarico will be a strong candidate for the Senate. Hinojosa will be a strong candidate against Abbot, if Texans are sufficiently sick of pay-to-play politics.
The outcome will depend on turnout. Right now, Texas is run by a handful of oil billionaires. They want low taxes and minimal public services. They are Christian nationalists who love money and power.
If Talarico can attract the support of non-MAGA Republicans and if Gina can bring Hispanic voters to the polls, Texas will flip blue.
See Gina Hinojosa speaking at the Network for Public Education conference in April 2025, before the Republican-dominated Texas legislature passed vouchers. The passage of vouchers happened only after Governor Abbot primaried anti-voucher Republicans with the millions given him by billionaire Jeff Yass, the richest man in Pennsylvania.
See Talarico on how the worst people quote Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on MLK Day and then violate his teachings every other day of the year.
Talarico on Christian nationalists, who–he says–are “more committed to the love of power than to the power of love.”
I love these two and will support them both. There will be a tidal wave of money pouring into Texas Republican coffers from other states to try to stop these two exciting Democrats!
Jess Piper lives in a rural part of Missouri. She is under the impression that the people elected in her district should listen to her grievances. She tried to speak to her representative and almost got arrested.
I am not an investigative journalist. I am a storyteller, but the story I am about to tell you has me feeling a little like Erin Brockovich. It keeps getting bigger. I keep taking notes. I keep hearing from others who are experiencing the same thing.
Something stinks in Missouri, and the stench is spreading fast — like a feed lot in July.
Republican Congressional Representatives are up to something nasty, and I think it is coordinated.
On January 30th, a few local Kansas City groups decided to go to one of our Congressman’s regional offices. He has five offices, and his constituents pay the rent for each.
My Congressman is Sam Graves. He has been in office for 24 years. He wins by a landslide every two years. He hasn’t held a town hall since 2012, and last fall, when I asked him to his face when he would hold a town hall, he told me, “I don’t do those.”
Many folks in his district have grievances with his policies and his fealty to the regime, so several of us went to his Kansas City office to voice our concerns to his staffers. The event was publicized and drew over 200 people.
When I arrived at the building that houses Sam’s office, I noticed a “No Trespassing” sign. I thought it was odd. The building is large, but it houses constituent offices for both Sam Graves and Senator Eric Schmitt.
Sam Graves’s KC Office, North Ambassador Drive, Kansas City, Missouri. 1/30/26.
As I pulled into the parking lot, I found the visitor’s parking space and parked. As I opened my back door to grab my protest sign, a woman in an unmarked police car told me I couldn’t park in the visitor’s lot, while a man in the passenger seat of the car filmed me with his phone.
I told her to take it up with someone else. I had every right to park in that spot.
She told me the building’s owner didn’t want us there. I told her I parked in the correct spot to speak with my Congressman in the office I paid for.
She told me to move my car, or I would be towed, because I was on private property.
I told her to do whatever she needed to do, but they’d have to tow dozens of vehicles. I grabbed my sign and walked toward the crowd gathering on the sidewalk.
I walked to the building to find Sam’s constituent office, and a man inside the building opened the door for me. I smiled at his courtesy, and I was about to pass through the open door when he stepped in front of me.
I looked up at his quick movement, and he asked me if he could help me.
I told him I was going in to speak to my Congressman’s staff. He told me there were no appointments that day. I stated I didn’t need an appointment…I had a sticky note to deliver. He said I couldn’t come in, and he would deliver anything I had to Sam’s staff.
And that was it. I was met by a guard at my Congressman’s door and not allowed in the building. I was denied my First Amendment right to petition my government for a redress of grievances.
I thought this was where the story would end, but what happened to me and others in Kansas City that day is happening all over the state. Missouri constituents are being met with hostility and locked doors and threats of citations and even arrest for showing up at our own Representative’s offices…
Remember when my Congressman told me he doesn’t do” town halls? He meant it. He is adamant. No contact with constituents and no questions answered and no relief delivered. He is a man beholden to his donors, not his voters.
And this applies to Ann Wagner and Eric Schmitt and Eric Burlison. They don’t care.
Petitioning our government is our First Amendment right. A right that exists even under this regime. Even under a Missouri GOP supermajority.
Someday, I hope the rest of Missouri will wake up to this fact.
These Representatives don’t care about you. Stop voting for them.
This is an excerpt from Heather Cox Richardson’s latest dispatch. The beginning, which I skipped, is about other countries’ holding important men accountable: former Prince Andrew, for his association with Jeffrey Epstein; and the former President of South Korea, who was sentenced to life in prison, for leading an insurrection to take control of the government.
There’s an implicit lesson here about accountability and lack thereof. None of the powerful men who are named in the Epstein Files have been prosecuted in this country. The Department of Justice redacted many or most of their names to be sure they would not be held to account. Those who led the insurrection of 2021 were never held accountable. Its foot soldiers were tried and convicted, but have since been pardoned by the leader of the insurrection.
The part that I thought you would find interesting are the latest examples of Trump’s vaingloriouness.
Today Trump’s Commission of Fine Arts swore in two new members, including Chamberlain Harris, Trump’s 26-year-old executive assistant, who has no experience in the arts. Then the commission, now entirely made up of Trump appointees, approved Trump’s plans for a ballroom where the East Wing of the White House used to stand, although the chair did note that public comments about the project were over 99% negative.
According to CNN’s Sunlen Serfaty, Harris said the White House is the “greatest house in [the] world. We want this to be the greatest ballroom in the world.” Trump says the ballroom is being funded by private donations through the Trust for the National Mall, which is not required to disclose its donors.
Today workers hung a banner with a giant portrait of Trump on the Department of Justice building.
On Air Force One as Trump traveled to Georgia this afternoon for a speech on the economy, Peter Doocy of the Fox News Channel asked Trump about the arrest of Mountbatten-Windsor. “Do you think people in this country at some point, associates of Jeffrey Epstein, will wind up in handcuffs, too?”
Trump answered: “Well, you know I’m the expert in a way, because I’ve been totally exonerated. It’s very nice, I can actually speak about it very nicely. I think it’s a shame. I think it’s very sad. I think it’s so bad for the royal family. It’s very, very sad to me. It’s a very sad thing. When I see that, it’s a very sad thing. To see it, and to see what’s going on with his brother, who’s obviously coming to our country very soon and he’s a fantastic man. King. So I think it’s a very sad thing. It’s really interesting ‘cause nobody used to speak about Epstein when he was alive, but now they speak. But I’m the one that can talk about it because I’ve been totally exonerated. I did nothing. In fact, the opposite—he was against me. He was fighting me in the election, which I just found out from the last three million pages of documents.”
In fact, Trump has not been exonerated.
When he got to Georgia, Trump’s economic message was that “I’ve won affordability.” More to the point was his focus on his Big Lie that he won the 2020 election and that Congress must pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act to secure elections. In fact, in solving a nonexistent problem, the law dramatically restricts voting. Republicans in the House have already passed it. If the Senate passes it, Trump told an audience in Rome, Georgia, “We’ll never lose a race. For 50 years, we won’t lose a race.”
Why did she say he was not exonerated? She may have been referring to this case or to the many photos of Epstein and Trump together, in some photos with young girls.
The Republican-sponsored SAVES act has been passed by the House but not the Senate. It would cancel online registration. It requires voters to present a birth certificate or a passport. Millions of American citizens do not have either. Women, in particular, would be disadvantaged because the name on their birth certificates do not match their married names. .
Like me, you probably read that the FBI raided the office of the Fulton County voting headquarters in an effort to prove that the 2020 election was rigged. Just another evidence of Trump’s paranoia.
No, say the authors. That’s a cover story. The truth, they say, is that the raid was intended to rig the elections of 2026 and 2028. It was part of the GOP’s long-running effort to cancel the votes of Blacks and students, groups that favor Democrats.
Palast and Hartmann write:
For god’s sake, let’s get to the REAL agenda behind Wednesday’s-FBI raid on the Fulton County elections office. IT’S NOT ABOUT THE 2020 ELECTION. The warrant says the FBI wants the envelopes from the 2020 election to hunt for crimes. But that’s just the legal excuse for the storm trooping.
This is NOT, as the media seems to think, about Trump’s attempt to prove he won the 2020 race, as if he’s some political Captain Ahab was trying to chase the Moby Dick of 2020 revenge.
This is all about 2026 and 2028. Look at a map. Fulton County is the heart of “Blacklanta.” And Atlanta is the electoral heart of Georgia. And Georgia is the swingiest of swing states. If Republicans don’t cut down the Black vote in Atlanta, they lose the crucial seat now held by Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff. And in 2028, the GOP, if they don’t suppress the vote in Fulton, they lose the White House. Fulton was the fulcrum of Trump’s loss in 2020 and could spell doomsday for Republicans in 2028.
So, how exactly do you stop Fulton County Black folk (and the LGBTQ community and the hipsters who left rural Georgia because they hate their parents) from voting? The answer is in one word: DROP-BOX.
Surveillance footage of a drop box in Atlanta, used in the film 2000 Mules as evidence of a “mule” whom filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza claimed was paid to stuff this and 26 other ballot boxes. According to D’Souza, this was “the smoking gun! O.J. Simpson…leaving the scene of a crime!” But it doesn’t show anything more than a Black man voting.
Follow me on this.
First, let me explain to my White readers a fact about African-Americans: In the majority, they vote early, having suffered the cruel absurdity of six-hour lines on Election Day. (And remember, it’s a FELONY crime in Georgia to give an elderly voter standing in line, thirsty a bottle of water). From long, sad experience, Black voters have learned to use early voting opportunities, especially mail-in ballots that can be placed in a drop-box.
For example, in the election run-off following the 2020 vote, which put two Georgia Democrats into the US Senate, over a million mail-in ballots (1,084,021) were cast, mainly in drop-boxes, mostly in Fulton/Atlanta.
Republicans took note. So, in a bill signed by GOP Governor Brian Kemp, the infamous SB202, the state declared all-out war on early voting, especially early votes placed in secure drop-boxes.
Early voting days, when you can use the drop box, were cut from 60 to just seven (!). And drop boxes — meant to serve voters who can only vote when they get off work at night — were sealed up at night in state office buildings.
The result, not reported by a single US outlet (except, God bless him, Thom Hartmann) was that the number of mail-in ballots cast dropped by 83% — 83%! — from over a million to 0.2 million (191,286) by the run-off of 2022.
Why? It goes back to what Donald Trump calls, correctly, one of the most influential documentaries of all time: 2000 Mules. The film, premiered by Trump at Mar-a-Lago, accused 2000 Black men of taking $10 from George Soros, Mark Zuckerberg and Stacey Abrams to stuff drop-boxes with tens of thousands of fraudulent ballots, especially in Fulton County. It was the perfect Sturm for the right, a stimulating concoction of racism and anti-Semitism.
There wasn’t a bit of evidence, of course, but it looked convincing to MAGA-nauts. Every single drop-box in Georgia has a video camera over it to prevent fraud, and the videos are public. So, the Trump front called True the Vote, showed videos of Black men “stuffing” the drop boxes with extra ballots.
Except it wasn’t true. The “star” criminal was a Black man accused of “running from the scene of crime like OJ Simpson.” In fact, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which is Republican controlled, ran all over the state to arrest each Black alleged ballot stuffer (a felony crime) — but found that every one, EVERY ONE, was a legal voter. The man accused of thievery was Mark Andrews, who is a Verizon executive who legally dropped his family’s ballots in the drop box. But, as LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter says, “He was seen guilty of a crime because he was Black.” That, literally, was the only “evidence” of the crime.
Note: I want you to see Mark Andrews, supposed Black “criminal” supposedly caught in the act of VWB, Voting While Black. Next Thursday, February 5, at 6:30pm Central time (4:30pm Pacific), chapters of Indivisible will host a special online showing of my film, Vigilantes Inc., America’s New Vote Suppression Hitmen, which rips Trump’s True the Vote a new one. If you’re in the Chicago area, you can attend the live showing with Q&A to follow.
Early voting, mail-in voting and casting an early vote in a drop were the keys to Joe Biden’s victory in 2020, key to a huge surge in minority and student votes nationwide.
And massive suppression of early, mail-in and drop-box votes were key to Trump’s triumphant return. (Did anyone note that, seen from the Oval, the demolition of the East Wing only leaves the Right Wing.)
Following the 2020 election, over 20 Red States passed laws eliminating or restricting drop-boxes. And in every single case, legislators cited the bullshit “evidence” of 2000 Mules. Fact check: The state of Georgia recounted and reviewed every single Fulton County drop-box and mail in ballot and didn’t find one single forged ballot. Every vote had an identified, verified vote. Not ONE ballot.
White Democrats don’t seem to understand how important early drop-off votes mean to Black and student communities. But the Republicans understand it completely. In fact, GOP Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said that, had he not gone to court and stopped Houston from mailing out absentee ballots to all voter, “Donald Trump would have lost Texas.” Texas! (Note: Houston has the largest number of Black voters of any city in America.
By seeking every envelope from drop-box and absentee voters, Attorney General Pam Blondi is saving her job by saving the GOP from the voters’ wrath. The game is to force a state (i.e. Republican) takeover of Fulton County voting (possible under SB 202). And you can’t separate the invasion of Atlanta voting offices from the Purge’n General Blondi’s demand that Minnesota hand over its voter rolls.
The underlying purpose of Blondi’s seizure of Minnesota’s voter files is the restoration of two other racially poisonous vote suppression tricks. One is the return of the “Interstate Crosscheck” purge program and its sister, the purge of “aliens” from the rolls. Interstate Crosscheck cost nearly one million voters their registrations in 2016, key to Trump’s first election. Crosscheck was ruled illegal through a grassroots campaign led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sen. Bernie Sanders and litigation brought by PUSH, the NAACP and the ACLU based, I’m proud to say, on the evidence presented to the courts by the Palast Investigative Fund. But. now, Crosscheck is BAAAACK! Want to know about Crosscheck. Read my investigation for Rolling Stone.
And there’s the canard of allegedly MILLIONS of alien voters swimming the Rio Grande just to vote for Democrats. When Florida used the ICE lists to purge 187,000 (!) voters from the rolls, mostly Hispanics, it turns out only ONE was an illegal alien: A Republican from Austria.
But that’s a story for another day — and for our film, Vigilantes Inc.Grab some popcorn and save America.
The Palast team is preparing to launch a full-scale, national investigation of vote suppression in coordination with PUSH, Black Voters Matter Fund, the NAACP and the Transformative Justice Coalition. But dammit, we can’t do it without funding. We don’t need a lot, but if you don’t stand up and help, who will?
Greg Palast Investigates is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Investigative journalist and author of the NY Times bestsellers Armed Madhouse + The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. See my latest film at: https://WatchVigilantesInc.com
Margaret Hoover is host of a weekly program about public affairs every Friday night on PBS. It’s called “Firing Line,” the same title as William Buckley’s talk show of decades back.
Margaret, a direct descendant of Herbert Hoover, is a Republican but is not especially conservative.
Elliot Abrams is an expert on foreign affairs and national security. He worked for President Reagan, President George H.W. Bush, and President Trump, in his first term. Abrams is known as a hawk.
What’s fascinating about the conversation is that Abrams is highly critical of Trump’s invasion.
He acknowledges that Maduro was a ruthless, brutal dictator who ran the Venezuelan economy into the ground and caused millions of Venezuelans to flee the country. Some of maduro’s top leaders have hidden bank accounts in which they have stowed hundreds of millions of dollars.
He asks why Trump failed to consult Congress.
He wonders why Trump ordered the arrest of Maduro and his wife but not the others who were indicted and are now running the country.
He wonders why Trump left the leaders of this corrupt regime in place. He assumes they will wait Trump out and continue to reap the rewards of their corruption. Given the cost and difficulty of reviving Venezuela’s oil industry, he doubts that any of the major American oil companies will risk doing so.
It’s a fascinating conversation. I urge you to watch.
I saw the show where Rachel Maddow tried to understand why Trump sent troops to invade Venezuela, kidnap its President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, and bring them to the U.S. to stand trial.
She reviews the usual reasons and determines that each of them is insufficient.
Like many of you, I sat glued to the television on January 6, 2021, and watched the terrible events unfold. I had seen Trump’s tweet a few weeks earlier, urging his followers to show up on January 6 and promising that it would be “wild.”
They did show up. Thousands of them. Some dressed in military gear, some in bizarre costumes, some armed. All eager to “stop the steal.” As Trump promised, it was indeed wild.
Trump had gone through 60 court cases, appealing the vote in different states. Every court ruled against him. Trump-appointed judges ruled against him. There was no evidence of fraud. The US Supreme Court ruled against his claims–twice. His closest advisors told him he lost. But he listened only to those who told him the election was rigged, like Rudy Giuliani, the My Pillow Guy, Sidney Powell, etc.
When his supporters showed up on January 6, he gave a passionate speech, telling them that the election had been stolen. He urged them to march to the Capitol, where the ceremonial counting of the electoral vote was taking place, and said he would march with them.
He didn’t march with them, though he wanted to. He returned to the White Hiuse, where he sat back and watched his loyal fans attack the U.S. Capitol, smash its windows, break through its doors, assault Capitol police, and ransack the seat of our government.
It was the worst day in our history because never before had an American president rallied his passionate fans and called on them to attack the seat of our government. Never before had a mob of American citizens tried to overturn a free and fair election by violence.
Trump demonstrated that he is a sore loser. He was beaten by Joe Biden fair and square. He refused to accept that he lost. He continues to claim that he won.
He is either delusional or the world’s biggest crybaby and liar.
I will never forget that day of infamy. Yes, it was wise than Pearl Harbor. It was worse than 9/11. On those days, we were attacked by foreign powers and terrorists. On January 6, our democracy was attacked by Americans.
Trump rallying a crowd before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol: “You will have an illegitimate president. That is what you will have, and we can’t let that happen.”
A version of this article was posted in October behind a paywall as part of the “On Trump’s Bullshit” series. I am making it available to all subscribers on the fifth anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
In October, Donald Trump posted on social media what appeared to be a message to Attorney General Pam Bondi: “The Biden FBI placed 274 agents into the crowd on January 6…What a SCAM – DO SOMETHING!”
When Bondi launches her investigation, she’ll soon discover an uncomfortable fact: Joe Biden wasn’t president on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump was — and he sought to block Biden from taking office. (And it was his government that deployed agents after the riot began.)
The post is emblematic of Trump’s most astonishing piece of bullshit — his effort to rewrite the history of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol that he orchestrated and encouraged.
Trump knew he faced criminal liability for his role in obstructing the peaceful passage of power after his 2020 defeat, so it’s quite possible he ran for president mainly to derail the investigation. As a tactic, it was successful. Through repeated legal challenges, he managed to delay the trial until after the November election. When he won, the Justice Department was required to drop the case because of an existing policy that a sitting president cannot be prosecuted.
Then, as soon as he became president, Trump pardoned more than 1,500 people convicted or charged in connection with the riot, while commuting the sentences of fourteen members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, two far-right groups.
Trump now routinely refers to the “January 6 hoax,” attempting to erase the event altogether.
Even more amazing, Trump has managed to convince many of his supporters that a riot that resulted in $2.7 billion in property damage, security expenses, and other related costs, according to the Government Accountability Office, was a “beautiful day” and “a day of love.” The rioters assaulted 140 law enforcement officers, while 123 people were charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to law enforcement.
The reality is that Trump incited the brutal assault on the Capitol, starting with his lie that he won the 2020 election. His refusal to accept the election results, despite his convincing losses in key battleground states, set the stage for a day of outrage by his supporters.
The final report of Special Counsel Jack Smith documented how Trump tried to browbeat Republican state officials in battleground states to alter the results or nullify them. Thankfully, people such as Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger —who Trump demanded to “find 11,780 votes” — or Michigan Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey — who bluntly told Trump he lost because he had underperformed with educated females — refused to yield to his pressure.
So did Vice President Mike Pence. Trump wanted Pence, who had the ceremonial role of presiding over the Electoral College count, to overturn the election by rejecting votes for Biden from six battleground states. Pence knew he didn’t have the authority to do so, despite the theories offered by what he called Trump’s “gaggle of crackpot lawyers.”
But the most damning evidence of Trump’s misconduct are his own actions on January 6, after the crowd he urged to march on the Capitol turned into a mob.
As the scale of the attack became clear, Trump was reluctant to try to calm the situation, even as his staff pleaded with him to tell the rioters to leave the Capitol. Trump’s tweets were so inadequate, in the view of staff members, that many resolved to resign. Even his children Ivanka and Donald Jr. found the tweets to be inappropriate. Nearly three hours passed before Trump finally told the rioters to “go home.”
The House select committee report on the Jan. 6 attack shows that Trump learned only 15 minutes after he concluded his remarks on the National Mall at 1:10 p.m. that the Capitol was under attack. Less than half an hour later, the Metropolitan Police Department officially declared a riot. Minutes later, rioters broke into the Capitol andswarmed the building.
Yet it was not until 2:24 that Trump issued his first written tweet — and it made things worse.
Trump wrote: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”
According to the House committee’sreport: “Evidence shows that the 2:24 p.m. tweet immediately precipitated further violence at the Capitol. Immediately after this tweet, the crowds both inside and outside of the Capitol building violently surged forward. Outside the building, within 10 minutes thousands of rioters overran the line on the west side of the Capitol that was being held by the Metropolitan Police Force’s Civil Disturbance Unit, the first time in the history of the DC Metro Police that such a security line had ever been broken.”
One minute after the tweet, the Secret Service evacuated Pence to a secure location at the Capitol. According to Smith’s report, when an advisor at the White House rushed to the dining room to inform Trump, the president replied, “So what?”
Contemporaneous White House reactions were damning.
Deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger told the House committee that the 2:24 p.m. tweet convinced him to resign that day. “I read it and was quite disturbed by it,” he told the committee. “I was disturbed and worried to see that the President was attacking Vice President Pence for doing his constitutional duty. So the tweet looked to me like the opposite of what we really needed at that moment, which was a de-escalation. … It looked like fuel being poured on the fire.”
White House counsel Pat Cipollone, in his deposition with the committee, said: “My reaction to it is that’s a terrible tweet, and I disagreed with the sentiment. And I thought it was wrong.”
The committee report says that Trump’s daughter Ivanka rushed to the Oval Office dining room, where Trump was watching coverage of the riot on Fox News. “Although no one could convince President Trump to call for the violent rioters to leave the Capitol, Ivanka persuaded President Trump that a tweet could be issued to discourage violence against the police,” the report said.
At 2:39, Trump issued this tweet: “Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!”
The tweet did not condemn the violence or tell rioters to leave the Capitol. As Trump well knew, the crowd was not peaceful at the time.
Even so, the committee’s report said that Trump had resisted using the word “peaceful.” It quotes Sarah Matthews, who was the deputy White House press secretary, about a conversation she had with Ivanka after Matthews expressed concern the tweet did not go far enough. “In a hushed tone [she] shared with me that the President did not want to include any sort of mention of peace in that tweet and that it took some convincing on their part, those who were in the room,” Matthews told the committee.
Trump rejected staff requests to urge people who entered the Capitol illegally to leave immediately. Instead, at 3:13 p.m., when he issued a third tweet, he still did not tell people to go home. “I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful,” he said. “No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order — respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!”
The violence continued.
Finally, at 4:17 p.m., almost three hours after the attack began, Trump posted a video that encouraged people to leave the Capitol — while repeating many of his lies about a stolen election. By then it was clear Trump had failed to derail Biden’s election.
“Down at the Capitol, the video began streaming onto rioters’ phones, and by all accounts including video footage taken by other rioters, they listened to President Trump’s command,” the report said. “ ‘Donald Trump has asked everybody to go home,’ one rioter shouted as he ‘deliver[ed] the President’s message.’ ‘That’s our order,’ another rioter responded. Others watching the video responded: ‘He says, go home.’ ”
Just after 6 pm, Trump offered one more tweet that appeared to justify the violence on one of the darkest days in American history: “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”
It was a sickening, celebratory tweet on a horrific day — convincing even more White House officials to quit — and no amount of Trump bullshit can erase his conduct from the annals of history.
This is an important development. Our nation needs at least two sensible political parties. A two-party system with vigorous third parties is healthy for our democracy.
When one of our two major parties is captured by an extremists cult, it’s a very bad sign. When that cult revels in cutting ties with our historic allies, in brutalizing immigrants and even citizens who look like immigrants (brown skin color), in sending troops to American cities, in killing people on boats that might or might not be transporting drugs instead interdicting them, in abandoning civil rights laws, and in treating the president as a king to be obeyed and worshipped, that cult is not a normal participant in American politics because it is not bound by the Constitution.
Thus, in my opinion, it is very good news that sane conservatives are abandoning the Heritage Foundation–whose leader was the architect of Project 2025–and joining forces with Mike Pence.
Pence is a conservative through and through, and I disagree with him on most issues. But in 2020, he refused Trump’s direct order to join the insurrection by refusing to certify Biden’s election. Pence certified Biden’s election and was reviled by MAGA for following the Constitution, not Trump. They chanted “Hang Mike Pence” on January 6, 2021, and even built a scaffold outside the U.S. Capitol. Trump shrugged with indifference, and the mob searched for Pence.
More than a dozen staffers at The Heritage Foundation are leaving the conservative think tank to join a nonprofit led by former Vice President Mike Pence as the embattled organization continues to reel from ongoing turmoil.
Advancing American Freedom — founded by Pence in 2021 “to defend liberty and advance policies that build a stronger America” — announced Monday that three senior officials who led the legal, economic and data teams at Heritage would be joining the group next year, along with several members of their teams.
This is good news for the conservative Republican Party and good news for our democracy. Genuine conservatives can’t abide the extremism of MAGA.
I’ll be watching to see what Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger do in the future.
Diane Ravitch's blog 