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Arizona: Republican Candidates Ridicule the 1/6 Commission

By dianeravitch
June 27, 2022 //
18

Arizona Republican candidates are running as die-hard supporters of Trump’s Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen. They laugh at the 1/6 Conmisssion and ignore the many Republicans who testified that Trump knew he lost the election but decided to destroy democracy rather than admit he lost.

Is stupidity contagious? Or is it gullibility?

Tens of millions of people have watched the first two Congressional hearings probing the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol last year, but several of Arizona’s Republican candidates for governor were not among those viewers.

The GOP candidates largely dismissed the hearings as political theater and wouldn’t answer a question from The Arizona Republic about former President Donald Trump’s role in the riot.

Meanwhile, their Democratic opponents seized on the chance to call out their conservative competitors as complicit in the false claims of election fraud that fueled the violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

“The hearing is a stark reminder of the lengths at which they will go to attack America.”

“I watched the Jan. 6 hearing because right here in Arizona we face dangerous threats from candidates like Kari Lake who continue to spread conspiracy theories and lies to try to undermine our democracy,” Secretary of State and Democratic candidate for governor Katie Hobbs said.

Lake: ‘I think it’s a waste of time’

Lake, a leading Republican candidate and former Fox 10 news anchor, did not respond to questions for this article. During her campaign, Lake has championed the unproven claims the election was corrupt, and that insurrectionists were held without charges or were welcomed into the Capitol by police.

Lake said in an interview on the conservative channel Newsmax that she would not watch the Jan. 6 hearings, which she dismissed as an effort by Democrats, mainstream Republicans and the media to discredit Trump.

“So this is their effort to try to make Donald Trump and his followers go away forever and it’s not going to work,” Lake said in that interview Friday. “This is theater. They’ve obviously been spinning and splicing and taking different video clips, removing the pertinent parts that would put the truth out there and trying to tell a story that spreads their lies. So I’m not going to be watching it. I think it’s a waste of time.”

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Democracy, Elections, Lies, Stupid, Trump

NY Times: How the Proud Boys Organized and Led the 1/6 Insurrection

By dianeravitch
June 26, 2022 //
25

The New York Times created a 17-minute video showing conversations and actions among the leaders of the odious Proud Boys as they directed the mob on 1/6/21. The PB referred to the other members of the mob as “normies,” people who were naively swept up in their efforts to storm and capture the U.S. Capitol and stop the certification of the election.

It is a dramatic video of those who nearly carried out a coup intended to keep Trump in power.

A recent poll shows that most Republicans believe that the insurrection was the work of Antifa and other enemies of Trump. If that were true, Trump would have sent in the National Guard at once. Anyone who believes that Antifa was running the riot is delusional.

The video reminds us how close we came to a coup.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Disruption, Fascism, Trump

Robert Hubbell: After the Fall of Roe, the Way Forward

By dianeravitch
June 25, 2022 //
153

Blogger Robert Hubbell brings clarity and reason to the abortion debate. The Court’s decision overturns a precedent that had been in place for 49 years. Both Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh pledged to Senators that they would not overturn roe. They lied. What now?

Hubbell writes:

There is much to discuss after the Supreme Court’s brutal ruling in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health, but the most important question is, “What are we going to do about it?” We have several effective paths forward and must pursue all simultaneously.

First, Alito claims he is returning the decision of reproductive freedom “to the people and their state representatives.” Let’s ignore (for the moment) Alito’s smoldering bad faith and thinly veiled contempt for the rights of women. We need to flip state legislatures to repeal antiabortion legislation and capture statewide executive offices that can veto legislation abortion bans. While this path is not an answer in every state, it can make a difference in states where the GOP margin of control is thin.

Second, we must demand that Congress pass legislation codifying Roe. That means gaining a 54-seat majority in the Senate, carving out an exception to the filibuster, and retaining control of the House. Will national legislation be challenged? Sure! Will the Supreme Court invalidate it? Possibly, but it is worth the effort.

Will national legislation be challenged? Sure! Will the Supreme Court invalidate it? Possibly, but it is worth the effort.

Third, we must break the Supreme Court. Democrats should expand the Court to thirteen justices. This path also requires holding the House, gaining a 54-seat majority in the Senate, and carving out an exception to the filibuster. Expanding the Court requires only a majority vote in both chambers of Congress and signing of the bill by the president. Will Republicans expand the Court to nineteen? Maybe. But what Republicans might do in the future shouldn’t deter us now. Will tit-for-tat expansions of the Court undermine its legitimacy? It is far too late for that.

Fourth, reproductive choice must be on the ballot in every race. Republicans have finally achieved what they wanted—no right to abortion and no exceptions for rape or incest. We must make every Republican running for every office in the land own the GOP position on abortion in its ugliest manifestation. The outcome in Dobbs is opposed by a strong majority of Americans and should provide a basis for a sweeping Democratic victory in 2022.

Finally, the right to same-sex marriage, same-sex relations, contraception, and other privacy-based rights must be on the ballot in every race. Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurrence declared war on those rights and invited reactionary legislatures to pass laws to serve as test cases. We would be foolish to assume that the other members of the reactionary majority will not follow his lead, given a chance.

None of these approaches will be easy or provide a complete answer. Readers have already sent emails that preemptively identify the problems with some of these approaches and dismiss their chances of success. But these are the paths available to us. We can choose to pursue them or do nothing. We must pursue them relentlessly until we have regained control of every branch of government, including the Supreme Court. Only then can we reverse the ruling in Dobbs and preserve other liberties grounded in the same right to privacy that supported reproductive rights for a half-century.

We are the majority, and American democracy presumes majority rule while protecting the rights of the minority. Republicans are attempting to reverse that presumption by seeking to impose permanent minority rule with no protection for the rights of the majority. That cannot stand. It will not stand. But it is up to us to restore the natural balance to democracy. It is not enough that we vote with greater passion or conviction. We must motivate those who did not believe this day would not come or who were not paying attention. We can do that—if we act with greater passion, conviction, and urgency.

The ruling.

Alito’s final decision is a judicial insult. In a single blow, he has demoted American women to second-class citizens. It is filled with venom and contempt in addressing a contentious issue on which people of good faith can disagree. He refers to physicians as abortionists when they seek to save a woman’s life or terminate a pregnancy forced on a teenager by a rapist. He misrepresents, minimizes, and dismisses the burdens and risks of pregnancy. He substitutes his Catholic dogma for judicial analysis.

Alito’s final version of his opinion changed little from the draft leaked last month. As such, it retains the dishonesty and intellectual sophistry of the “deeply rooted tradition” analysis contained in the draft—an analysis that deliberately misrepresents the American tradition relating to abortion. See Aaron Tang in The Los Angeles Times, Op-Ed: The Supreme Court flunks abortion history.

But most ominously, Alito’s “deeply rooted” analysis signals Alito’s intent to attack other privacy-based rights, such as same-sex marriage. Alito dissented in the Court’s decision recognizing same-sex marriage, Obergefell v. Hodges. Alito wrote in Obergefell, as follows:

          To prevent five unelected Justices from imposing their personal vision of liberty upon the American people, the Court has held that “liberty” under the Due Process Clause should be understood to protect only those rights that are ‘deeply rooted in this Nation’ s history and tradition.’ And it is beyond dispute that the right to same-sex marriage is not among those rights.

There it is: Alito’s analysis in overruling Roe v. Wade does not stop with reproductive rights. It reaches to same-sex marriage. He said so in his dissent in Obergefell. And Justice Thomas made that explicit in his concurrence in Dobbs:

          In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.

Griswold recognized the right to use contraceptives of choice; Lawrence recognized the right to enter into a same-sex relationships; and Obergefell recognized the right of same-sex couples to marry. Justice Thomas notably omitted a right based on “substantive due process precedents”—the right of members of different “races” to marry, a right first granted in Loving v. Virginia in 1967. If the Court reverses Loving v. Virginia, Thomas’s marriage to Ginny Thomas would be illegal in some states.

For a longer discussion of the threat to other rights, see Mark Joseph Stern in Slate, The Supreme Court decision overruling Roe v. Wade puts marriage equality in immediate jeopardy.

It will take weeks to understand the implications of Justice Alito’s decision, but a good place to start is with Ian Millhiser’s analysis in Vox, The Roe v. Wade abortion decision, explained.

Finally, for a discussion of self-inflicted damage to the Court’s legitimacy, see Dahlia Lithwick, in Slate, Roe v. Wade overturned: The Supreme Court will pay for abortion decision.

The corruption and illegitimacy of the Supreme Court.

As currently constituted, the Supreme Court is illegitimate and corrupt. It is illegitimate because two justices appointed by Trump resulted from norm-busting “rules” made up by Mitch McConnell on the fly. Gorsuch sits in a seat stolen from an Obama appointee, and Barrett sits in a seat that belonged to the incoming president.

The Court is corrupt because Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett lied to the Senate about their pre-determined intent to overrule Roe v. Wade. And it is corrupt because Justice Thomas has refused to recuse himself from cases in which his wife assisted in an attempted coup.

The trust of the American public in the Court has plummeted to an all-time low of 25%. It will decline further if the January 6th Committee proves that Ginny Thomas funneled information about Court deliberations to John Eastman. It will fall further if the Committee demonstrates that Justice Thomas knew of and condoned his wife’s insurrectionist activities.

Jennifer Rubin succinctly summarizes the death blow to the Court’s legitimacy in her column in WaPo, The Supreme Court eviscerates abortion rights and its own legitimacy. Per Rubin,

The hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty of the court’s right-wing justices lead to the conclusion that they have simply appointed themselves super-legislators free to impose a view of the United States as a White, Christian and male-dominated society despite the values, beliefs and choices of a majority of 330 million modern Americans.

The court’s decision may result in women’s deaths. But it has certainly killed off what is left of the court’s credibility. And for that, there is no solution in sight.

Concluding Thoughts.

On a day like today, it does not feel right to end on an optimistic note. Rather, we should acknowledge the anger, frustration, fear, and grief that tens of millions of women in America are feeling after the ruling. There will be a time to rally and rejoin the fight for the dignity and equality of women—a fight we will win.

But today, we should acknowledge what women have lost and give them the time and space to absorb and recover from a once-in-a-generation shock. As they do, everyone in their lives should let them know we are at their side every step of the way. Walk along in silence and listen. Nothing can be “fixed” today, but we can begin the long journey back in the coming days.

Categories Accountability, Civil Rights, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Extremism, Freedom, Health, Inequality, Injustice, Lies, Trump

Trump Supreme Court Strikes Down Limits on Gun Control

By dianeravitch
June 23, 2022 //
126

In a new ruling, the Supreme Court struck down a New York State law that limited access to guns. The New York law requires that people seeking to carry a handgun outside their homes must obtain a permit and show “proper cause.” There are similar laws in California, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island.

To those who claimed in 2016 that it didn’t matter if Trump was elected, this is what Trump’s three appointees to the Supreme Court have done: required Maine to pay for discriminatory born-again religious schools; overturned gun controls in New York; and will probably overturn Roe v Wade in the next few days. Elections have consequences. The lesser of two evils is always preferable to Pure Evil. A candidate who is good but not perfect is preferable to one who is ignorant and bigoted.

The Washington Post reports:

The Supreme Court said Thursday that Americans generally have a right to carry a handgun outside the home for self-defense and that a New York law requiring special need for such a permit is too restrictive.


The vote was 6 to 3, with Justice Clarence Thomas writing for the majority and the court’s three liberals in dissent.


“The Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home,” Thomas wrote, saying New York’s requirement of a specific need to carry a weapon violates that right.

“The constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not ‘a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.’ ” Thomas wrote, referring to a previous Supreme Court ruling. “We know of no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need.”


He was joined by the court’s conservatives: Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.


In dissent, Justice Stephen G. Breyer pointed to the nearly 300 mass shootings since January and to data showing that gun violence has surpassed car crashes as the leading cause of death among children and teens. The majority’s decision, he said, will make it more difficult for state lawmakers to take steps to limit the dangers of gun violence.
The Second Amendment allows states to “take account of the serious problems posed by gun violence,” wrote Breyer, who was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. He added: “Many States have tried to address some of the dangers of gun violence … by passing laws that limit, in various ways, who may purchase, carry, or use firearms of different kinds. The Court today severely burdens States’ efforts to do so.”

The party that claims to be “right to life” authorizes easier access to weapons of death. More people will die because this ruling. Under this court, the only protected class is the pre-born or the unborn. The born are in big trouble.

Categories Accountability, Guns, Safety, Trump

Texas: GOP Rejects Democracy, Embraces Theocracy

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2022 //
148

Dean Obeidallah, a regular contributor to CNN, describes the Texas GOP’s defiant rejection of democracy. In an earlier post, I pointed out that the state convention booed Senator Jon Cornyn for daring to negotiate a bipartisan gun control deal (which did not include any of President Biden’s demands). That was the mildest of their actions.

He writes:

CNN) – Disturbing video from the Texas Republican Convention this weekend shows convention-goers mocking GOP Rep. Dan Crenshaw — a Navy SEAL veteran who lost his right eye to a bomb in Afghanistan — with the term “eye patch McCain.”

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson coined the derisive nickname after the Texas lawmaker dared to express support for beleaguered Ukraine following Russia’s barbaric attack on it.

But apparently even more heinous in the eyes of some attendees is that Crenshaw rejected former President Donald Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen. One man wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat can be seen yelling in an online video, “Dan Crenshaw is a traitor!” and “He needs to be hung for treason!”

As despicable as the behavior toward Crenshaw was, even more alarming were the actions taken by the Texas GOP and the convention’s 5,000-plus delegates.

The gathering rejected the outcome of a democratic election, supported bigotry toward the LGBTQ community and imposed far-right religious beliefs on others by seeking to have them enshrined into law. And that wasn’t half of it.

In fact, the convention showed us one thing: Texas Republicans are no longer hiding their extremism. Instead, they are openly embracing it.

Even before the opening gavel, they gave us a glimpse of the party’s extremism in the Lone Star State by banning the Log Cabin Republicans from setting up a booth at the convention.

Texas Republican Party Chairman Matt Rinaldi cast the deciding vote on the move to bar the group that has advocated for LGBTQ Republicans for decades. “I think it’s inappropriate given the state of our nation right now for us to play sexual identity politics,” Rinaldi told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Once it formally got underway, the convention took a number of appalling and un-American actions. First, delegates approved a measure declaring that President Joe Biden “was not legitimately elected.” In short, the Texas GOP — like Trump himself — is embracing a lie because it’s unhappy with the election results. Put more bluntly, the Texas GOP voted to reject American democracy.

Republican delegates also booed John Cornyn, the senior US senator from Texas, at the convention Friday because of the Republican lawmaker’s role leading negotiations to reach a Senate deal on a bill to stem gun violence. Those legislative efforts follow last month’s horrific shooting that claimed the lives of 19 schoolchildren and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas.

The platform approved at the convention called for repealing or nullifying gun laws already in place, such as the Gun Control Act of 1968, which prevents felons and other dangerous people from being able to purchase a gun legally. Apparently, the Texas GOP believes that even dangerous people should have a constitutionally protected right to buy a gun.

The Texas GOP platform also embraced ramping up anti-abortion rhetoric in public schools. For example, the platform states that “Texas students should learn about the Humanity of the Preborn Child, including … that life begins at fertilization.” It even seeks to force students to watch “a live ultrasound” and for high-schoolers to read an anti-abortion booklet that critics say “includes scientifically unsupported claims and shames women seeking abortion care,” according to The Texas Tribune.

It sounds like the curriculum that you might find in a theocratic government such as the Taliban — not one in the United States funded by taxpayer dollars. But the GOP in large swaths of this country is no longer hesitant to support laws to impose its religious beliefs — as we see with measures some Republicans champion that would totally ban abortion. The GOP convention’s document additionally urges officials “not to infringe on Texas school students’ and staffs’ rights to pray and engage in religious speech.”

The Texas GOP platform also does its best to demonize those in the transgender community. It describes transgender people as suffering from “a genuine and extremely rare mental health condition.” And it sees sexual reassignment surgery as a form of medical malpractice.

The platform takes aim at gay Americans as well with the statement that homosexuality is “an abnormal lifestyle choice.” Instructively, the Texas GOP platform did not include such language in 2018 and 2020.

This platform gives us a glimpse into the views of the Republican base on key issues that in turn will pressure GOP elected officials in Texas — and possibly beyond the state — to adopt similarly extreme positions or run the risk of a primary challenge from an even more extreme Republican.

What caused this move to the far right? Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston, told The Texas Tribune about the state GOP’s new extreme platform, “Donald Trump radicalized the party and accelerated the demands from the base.” He added alarmingly, “There simply aren’t limits now on what the base might ask for.”

I agree — in part. I don’t think Trump radicalized the base — rather he simply gave people permission to be who they always wanted to be.

But I agree with Rottinghaus that there are now no limits for what the GOP base might seek — be it rejecting election results it doesn’t agree with to enacting more laws based on extreme religious beliefs. And that should deeply alarm every American who wants to live in a democratic republic.

The convention also issued a call to repeal the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which guaranteed the right to vote for every citizen of voting age.

The only thing the Texas GOP neglected to do was pass a resolution congratulating the shooter at Uvalde for exercising his “God-given right” to use his AR15 as he saw fit.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Democracy, Elections, Extremism, Guns, Ignorance, Politics, Republicans, Trump

Trump Blasts Pence for Refusing to Overturn the Election, Violate the Constitution

By dianeravitch
June 19, 2022 //
81

Donald Trump, a man without any religious faith or moral principle, addressed an evangelical religious convocation called “Faith and Freedom” in Tennessee. He used the occasion to ridicule the Republicans who did not support his attempt to demolish the rule of law and the Constitution so he could have a second term in office. He is a very sore loser.

NASHVILLE — Former president Donald Trump used an evangelical conference here to ridicule former vice president Mike Pence for upholding the Constitution on Jan. 6, 2021, choosing an audience that represents Pence’s political base as a venue to attempt to undermine him.


“Mike Pence had a chance to be great. He had a chance to be historic,” Trump said in his first remarks about his onetime governing partner amid Jan. 6 committee hearings revealing the intense pressure Pence withstood in deciding to go forward with his constitutional role certifying the election.

“Mike did not have the courage to act.” He added: “Mike was afraid of whatever he was afraid of.”
Trump also referred to Pence, who did not attend the conference, as a “human conveyor belt” for his role in moving the election process forward, saying that he had considered labeling him as a “robot.”

Trump’s own aides have testified they told the president it would not be constitutional for Pence to move to overturn the election.

Trump also attacked Adam Kinzinger, calling him a crybaby. Kinzinger responded far too generously on Twitter.

Categories Elections, Lies, Trump

The Most Shocking Story Yet About the Failed Coup

By dianeravitch
June 19, 2022 //
29

As we watched the January 6 Commission and its interviews, we have seen the connecting of the dots in the most audacious effort in our history to overturn the results of a free and fair election. We have seen overwhelming evidence of a conspiracy to destroy our democracy and our Constitution. 2020 was not a close election. Trump could not bear the thought, the reality that he lost. He lost. He is a loser.

Among the many devious, dishonest plots to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election, the following story may be the worst, in my judgment, although there are surely other contenders.

Michael Kranish of The Washington Post told the story of Trump’s attempt to appoint a new Attorney General in early January 2021 who would send letters to several states informing them that their electors should be withdrawn due to serious concerns about election fraud. Trump met with an official, Jeffrey Clark, in the Justice Department who wanted to be appointed Attorney General and stop the certification of Biden. Clark’s superiors said he was totally unqualified and threatened to resign en masse if Trump elevated him. Faced with the threat of a mass resignation of the top officials at the Justice Department, his own appointees, Trump backed down.

Three days before Congress was slated to certify the 2020 presidential election, a little-known Justice Department official named Jeffrey Clark rushed to meet President Donald Trump in the Oval Office to discuss a last-ditch attempt to reverse the results.


Clark, an environmental lawyer by trade, had outlined a plan in a letter he wanted to send to the leaders of key states Joe Biden won. It said that the Justice Department had “identified significant concerns” about the vote and that the states should consider sending “a separate slate of electors supporting Donald J. Trump” for Congress to approve.


In fact, Clark’s bosses had warned there was not evidence to overturn the election and had rejected his letter days earlier. Now they learned Clark was about to meet with Trump. Acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen tracked down his deputy, Richard Donoghue, who had been walking on the Mall in muddy jeans and an Army T-shirt. There was no time to change. They raced to the Oval Office.

As Rosen and Donoghue listened, Clark told Trump that he would send the letter if the president named him attorney general.


“History is calling,” Clark told the president, according to a deposition from Donoghue excerpted in a recent court filing. “This is our opportunity. We can get this done.”

Donoghue urged Trump not to put Clark in charge, calling him “not competent” and warning of “mass resignations” by Justice Department officials if he became the nation’s top law enforcement official, according to Donoghue’s account.

“What happens if, within 48 hours, we have hundreds of resignations from your Justice Department because of your actions?” Donoghue said he asked Trump. “What does that say about your leadership?”


Clark’s letter and his Oval Office meeting set off one of the tensest chapters during Trump’s effort to overturn the election, which culminated three days later with rioters storming the U.S. Capitol. His plan could have decapitated the Justice Department leadership and could have overturned the election.


Clark’s actions have been the focus of a Senate Judiciary Committee investigation and an ongoing probe by the Justice Department’s inspector general, and now are expected to be closely examined during June hearings by the House committee investigating the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021.


After the New York Times reported in January 2021 about Clark’s actions, he said he engaged in a “candid discussion of options and pros and cons with the president,” denied that he had a plan to oust Rosen, and criticized others in the meeting for talking publicly and “distorting” the discussion.
Now, however, key witnesses have provided Congress with a fuller account of Clark’s actions, including new details about the confrontation that took place in the Jan. 3 Oval Office meeting, which lasted nearly three hours.


A reconstruction of the events by The Washington Post, based on the court filings, depositions, Senate and House reports, previously undisclosed emails, and interviews with knowledgeable government officials, shows how close the country came to crisis three days before the insurrection.

The evidence, which fills in crucial details about Clark’s efforts, includes an email showing he was sent a draft of a letter outlining a plan to try to overturn the election by a just-arrived Justice Department official who had once written a book claiming President Barack Obama planned to “subvert the Constitution.”

But larger mysteries could still be solved at an upcoming Jan. 6 committee hearing slated to examine Clark’s actions, including the crucial question of whether Clark and his allies were acting on their own initiative — or whether they were one piece of a larger, well-planned effort to keep Trump in power. That question gets to the heart of the committee’s professed mission: proving there was a “coordinated, multi-step effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election.”
Clark, 55, and his lawyer, Harry MacDougald, declined to comment.


The House committee unanimously voted to hold Clark in contempt of Congress after he declined in December to answer most questions on grounds that his interactions with Trump were privileged. But Clark later appeared before the committee and asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, CNN reported; his testimony from that appearance has not been released.


Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who participated in the Judiciary Committee’s investigation, said investigators should key in on whether Clark was working on behalf of others not yet identified.
“It certainly could be a symptom of a much larger and more coherent plan than has currently been disclosed,” Whitehouse said. Clark “does not appear to have elections expertise or experience, which raises the question, did he really sit down at his computer and type it out or does somebody produce it for him?…”

Trump met in the White House with Clark and the top officials in the Justice Department, including Jeffrey Rosen and Richard Donoghue. Trump told them of his plan to make Clark the Attorney General. They were outraged.

Trump repeatedly went after Rosen and Donoghue, saying they hadn’t pursued voter fraud allegations.


“You two,” Trump said, pointing to the two top Justice Department officials. “You two haven’t done anything. You two don’t care. You haven’t taken appropriate actions. Everyone tells me I should fire you.”


Trump continually circled back to the idea of replacing Rosen with Clark.


“What do I have to lose?” the president asked, according to Donoghue.


“Mr. President, you have a great deal to lose,” Donoghue said he responded. “Is this really how you want your administration to end? You’re going to hurt the country, you’re going to hurt the department, you’re going to hurt yourself, with people grasping at straws on these desperate theories about election fraud, and is this really in anyone’s best interest?”


Donoghue warned Trump that putting Clark in charge would be likely to lead to mass resignations at the Justice Department.


“Well, suppose I do this,” Trump said to Donoghue. “Suppose I replace [Rosen] with [Clark], what would you do?”


“Sir, I would resign immediately,” Donoghue said he responded. “There’s no way I’m serving under this guy [Clark].”


Trump then turned to Steve Engel, the Justice Department’s assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel, whom Trump reportedly had considered for a seat on the Supreme Court.
“Steve, you wouldn’t resign, would you?” Trump asked.

“Absolutely I would, Mr. President. You’d leave me no choice,” Engel responded, according to Donoghue’s account. Engel declined to comment.

“And we’re not the only ones,” Donoghue said he told Trump. “You should understand that your entire department leadership will resign. Every [assistant attorney general] will resign. … Mr. President, these aren’t bureaucratic leftovers from another administration. You picked them. This is your leadership team. You sent every one of them to the Senate; you got them confirmed. What is that going to say about you, when we all walk out at the same time?”

Donoghue then told Trump that Clark had no qualification to be attorney general: “He’s never been a criminal attorney. He’s never conducted a criminal investigation in his life. He’s never been in front of a grand jury, much less a trial jury.”
Clark objected.

“Well, I’ve done a lot of very complicated appeals and civil litigation, environmental litigation, and things like that,” Clark said, according to Donoghue’s deposition.

“That’s right,” Donoghue said he responded. “You’re an environmental lawyer. How about you go back to your office, and we’ll call you when there’s an oil spill.”

Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel, told Trump that Clark’s proposed letter was “a murder-suicide pact,” according to Donoghue’s deposition. “It’s going to damage everyone who touches it. And we should have nothing to do with that letter. I don’t ever want to see that letter again.” Cipollone declined to comment.

Read the rest of the story if it is not behind a paywall.

The account goes on, filling in details about Clark’s effort to be named Attorney General of the United States and overturn the election. It is a shocking story. Had Trump appointed Clark, some Republican-led states might have recalled their electors. The Constitutional process, the orderly transition of power, would have been halted. The nation would have endured an unprecedented crisis. Trump would have been in control of the military and the levers of government.

No one knows what would have happened next.

My favorite part of the story:

“That’s right,” Donoghue said he responded. “You’re an environmental lawyer. How about you go back to your office, and we’ll call you when there’s an oil spill.”

Categories Accountability, Biden, Corruption, Courage, Democracy, Elections, Lies, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson: Trump Is Our Own American Monster

By dianeravitch
June 13, 2022 //
19

Heather Cox Richardson, historian, summarizes some of the fallout from the first public meeting of the 1/6 Commissuon:

Today in the New York Times, columnist Maureen Dowd reacted to Thursday’s revelations that Trump was “deadly serious about overthrowing the government,” by laying out the main points: Trump knew he had lost the election, and he was willing to see his vice president hanged in order to avoid being labeled a loser. Dowd called former president Trump an “American monster” and compared him unfavorably to Frankenstein’s monster, who at least “has self-awareness, and a reason to wreak havoc…[and] knows how to feel guilty and when to leave the stage.” Our monster, in contrast, is driven only by “pure narcissistic psychopathy—and he refuses to leave the stage or cease his vile mendacity.”

Yesterday, Politico’s Betsy Woodruff Swan and Kyle Cheney reported that on January 5, 2021, then–vice president Pence’s attorney Greg Jacob wrote a three-page memo concluding that what the president and his supporters were demanding Pence do the next day would break the 1887 Electoral College Act—that is, the law—in four different ways. The memo responded to John Eastman’s memo laying out the plan for Pence to hand the election to Trump by refusing to count a number of Biden electors. Jacob noted that Eastman himself “acknowledges that his proposal violates several provisions of statutory law.” In addition, both historical court decisions and one as recent as the day before contradicted Eastman’s plan.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Elections, Pence, Trump

Michael Gerson: The Pathetic Response of The GOP to the 1/6 Hearings

By dianeravitch
June 11, 2022 //
23

Michael Gerson, former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, describes the response of Republicans to the first day of public hearings of the January 6 commission:

The Jan. 6 committee’s riveting televised opening night might not have converted the pro-Trump revisionists, but it has left them without excuses. The evidence is overwhelming that a sitting president gathered a violent mob and charged it with intimidating members of Congress and his own vice president into illegally reversing the outcome of a presidential election on the basis of an obvious lie.

There is only one narrative about Jan. 6 that history will accept: the evidence meticulously gathered and presented by the House select committee.

In some ways, pressing the case against former president Donald Trump is not hard, because he confirms its general outlines. He still seems to regard the riot as the highest expression of MAGA loyalty to his person. He still insists he should be reinstated as president. He still seems to believe then-Vice President Mike Pence was a weak-kneed traitor for refusing to overturn the constitutional order. Because Trump can’t admit error, he often effectively admits guilt.

The response of congressional Republican leaders to Thursday’s hearing — that it is more important to focus on inflation than sedition — has demonstrated their vast political and moral shallowness. The juxtaposition of testimony by U.S. Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards (“I was slipping in people’s blood”) and a tweet from Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee account (“All. Old. News.”) was telling.

One imagines a 20-something GOP staffer straining (and failing) to be clever. The contrast between the police officer’s sacrifice and the tweeter’s infantile partisanship raises some questions: Is anyone teaching young Republicans that public service can be honorable and costly? Why doesn’t some mature public official shake these shills and urge silence in the presence of patriotic virtues they don’t possess?

Categories Democracy, Lies, Republicans, Trump

The Moral Collapse of Today’s Republican Party

By dianeravitch
June 11, 2022 //
75

Peter Wehner, once a loyal and very conservative Republican, now excoriates the moral collapse of the GOP.

He writes in The Atlantic:

The sheer scale of Donald Trump’s depravity is unmatched in the history of the American presidency, and the Republican Party—the self-described party of law and order and “constitutional conservatives,” of morality and traditional values, of patriotism and Lee Greenwood songs—made it possible. It gave Trump cover when he needed it. It attacked his critics when he demanded it. It embraced his nihilistic ethic. It amplified his lies. When House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy—a man who for a few fleeting hours after the January 6 insurrection dared to speak critically of Donald Trump—traveled to Mar-a-Lago a few days later to kiss his ring, it was an act of self-abasement that was representative of his party, his morally desolate party.

Categories Accountability, Hypocrisy, Lies, Republicans, Trump
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