Attorney General Garland Just Fornicated The Canine

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This is not good news. MSNBC just reported that in the last possible hour, the Merrick Garland Justice Department just advised the court of federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson that they will appeal her order that a Barr era memo be released to the public. This single decision gives me serious pause as to just how serious the Garland DOJ is about cleaning out the mulch and moving on.

Barr had fought release claiming that it involved internal DOJ deliberations into whether or not to allow Trump to be indicted in the Trump-Russia investigation. Judge Berman Jackson called bullshit, and demanded that the memo be turned over to her for her perusal. After reviewing the document, Berman Jackson determined that there was no actual internal legal discussion as to legality of allowing Trump to be indicted, simply political screed about the inadvisability of allowing Trump to be indicted. She ordered the document released, and gave the Biden DOJ until midnight tonight to appeal her ruling. Which they did in the last hour.

I cannot tell you how terrible this decision is. To be sure, Biden has promised that he will maintain a hands off attitude with the DOJ, and there is no indication that he took any part in this deliberation, which is why I didn’t name him directly. But this is still a terrible precedent, because Biden has promised to turn the page, and you can’t turn the page until you clean house.

Tubby the Ewok is the Trump of American justice. Where he treads, nothing green grows. Barr treated the DOJ the exact way the Trump treated the US government, as his own personal play toy. And covering for Barr is no way to turn the page and make a clean break.

Because we are just getting started! Former Trump EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland just filed a $1.8 million lawsuit against former Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, as well as the US government to recover his legal fees in preparation for and execution of his testimony in front of congress in the lead up to the Trump 1st impeachment. Sondland claims that Pompeo volunteered to pay his legal fees, and then backed off when Sondland testified, and crucified Trump.

At the time of the alleged offer, Pompeo was the Secretary of State. The Garland DOJ is now going to have to send a DOJ lawyer to court to defend the US government against being held liable for Sondland’s legal bills. But it will also be up to the Garland DOJ to determine whether or nor, at the time of his offer to Sondland, Pompeo was acting as the Secretary of State, in which the DOJ will have to send a layer to court to defend him, or if he was operating off of the books as a rogue Trump operative, in which case, he’s on his own for his legal fees.

I wish that were all, but it’s the opening page. Don’t think you’ve heard the last of that asshole Wilbur Ross, turns out he was trying to run a rogue deep cover ops intel crew to protect Trump, quite possibly illegally. When the Biden department heads start actually taking the time to read through the Inspector General’s reports for their departments, they are going to find more and more criminal behavior from high level Trump appointees.

Look, I get it. El Pendejo Presidente was the most divisive public figure in modern American history. Biden wants to turn the page on the Trump atrocity, and heal the nation. But if you’re just going to give all of the Trump underlings a pass simply because Trump was such an asshole, you’re missing the point. If you’re going to have an effective functioning government, then there has to be accountability. And it doesn’t stop just because the assholes are out of power.

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22 COMMENTS

  1. NEVER let A MTFKR like him in office because of lyng,draft digging ignorant no spirituality in him. He is a figure of hate sexism and homophobic attitude only destroys what is right in the USA. But GOD!??✍

  2. Murf! Christ’s sake, man, yank back on the doomsday throttle and think a second. Why would Merrick Garland, a man who has zero incentive to do the Trump crowd favors, do this? First, it’s only a SMALL part of the memo that’s being discussed here. The rest is as good as released. Second, if you want to avoid problems later in any form of political game (and make no mistake, judicial proceedings are just that at their core), you sometimes have to do contradictory moves early to accomplish that. Hell, Manchin has been playing that very game for months now in the Senate.

    Bottom line: MSNBC just lied to you for some cheap ratings boost. Wait a few months and see.

    • Garland is making disgusting excuses for Trump and Barr. Read their brief. How can they then go after any of these murdering traitors. They are giving these bastards a pass instead of arresting them.

  3. My reaction reading the headline was “Huh?” And after reading the article my reaction was WTF?

    Although I’m far from happy-camper status I’ve calmed down some. I don’t know if I’m correct or engaging in bat-shit crazy fantasizing, but I think there’s more than a small chance Garland is just trying to buy some time. Why would I think such a thing, much less make the case here for it? There are two important and interrelated facts to keep in mind. First, the DOJ had all kinds of fires (set by Bilirubin Barr) raging by the time Biden was sworn in. A lot of divisions/departments had a lot of messes and Trumpkins left behind to thwart attempts to both put out the fires and then clean up the mess. The second is that the GOP assholes in the Senate KNEW this, and delayed Garland’s confirmation (with Democrats not pushing anywhere near hard enough as far as I’m concerned) beyond all reason.

    To give those “fires” more time to burn out of control and do more damage. (I said the two factors were interrelated)

    There are multiple, huge and critical matters Garland had to confront the moment he was finally sworn in. It’s also worth keeping in mind that in addition to picking his team that he could trust, some of that team also required/requires Senate confirmation and Republicans have thrown sand in those gears as well. What I’m driving at is that damage assessment alone was going to be a huge task, and setting priorities was going to take even more time. Think back for a minute on how many matters you thought Garland needed to fix literally on Day 1! Things that couldn’t wait a single day. Wrongs that had to be righted like right freaking NOW. And again remember that Garland hasn’t even gotten his whole team in place yet thanks to obstruction from the Senate – mostly Republicans but some asshole Democrats whining about the need for “bi-partisanship.”

    Maybe, just maybe Garland is risking the ire of people like you and me to buy some time. He still needs to get his team confirmed, and he’s already gotten conservative’s backs up with some moves like letting SDNY off the hook. You don’t think conservatives are all in a sweat about what SDNY alone was forced to sit on and now can get going again, AND now working hand in hand with the Manhattan D.A. and NY State AG on CRIMINAL matters? He’s got the whole Jan. 6 mess on his hands and an overwhelmed department with a Trump appointee that walked into the press room and threw a monkey wrench into the process of investigating and charging insurrectionists – and believe me it will be an issue that comes up in the appeals process after convictions are obtained. I could go on and on but you get the point.

    It’s possible that what Garland needs is time and space to operate more than anything else, and at least the appearance of “bi-partisanship” with McConnell and other GQP assholes in the Senate. We have learned much already and are sure to learn more regarding Barr’s fuckery as he shielded Trump. Maybe Garland, having served on the DC Court of Appeals knows full well that they will uphold Jackson’s order sometime this summer. Maybe at that point he will throw in the towel. He doesn’t HAVE to appeal all the way up to SCOTUS.

    Using a sports analogy, maybe what he’s done is a version of a quarterback in football. You know how sometimes on fourth down and very short yardage they will line up in a tight formation like they are going to run the ball? And the quarterback tries to use tricky snap-count calls to draw the defense offside and when that doesn’t work calls timeout at the last second? It happens quite a bit, those situations where the offense never intended to run the play and was going to punt but the stunt works often enough that if you have a timeout to burn it’s worth a shot.

    So, I’m going to grab on to the possibility/hope that Garland has higher priorities right now and the resulting political explosion releasing that memo IN FULL (we already know a lot about it) at this particular time would invite a battle (or more than one) that simply aren’t worth fighting given other stuff going on. Because he knows it won’t be that long before the appeal he’s had DOJ file will be rejected, and by that time he will have things at DOJ up and running.

    • YES .. if you can you should post Denis Elliott at bottom of your blog… at least mention it. Every word is good.
      AND WHILE Posting this, I just noticed a MT @kylegriffin1 tweet
      RE HUGE TROVE OF NEW INFO FROM #Giuliani
      Breaking: Prosecutors investigating Rudy Giuliani have seized material from a wider array of individuals than previously disclosed, including messages from email and iCloud accounts they believe belong to two former Ukranian government officials.
      GARLAND ET AL are plodding through in careful measured pace as they should.

      • I could agree about6 Denis but he needs to learn to be way more economical with words. A lot of people will not plod through a wall of text.

        • I frequently saw the same criticism back when I first started airing my views over on DK. Sometimes it was meant as constructive criticism and sometimes it was shall we say rather less kind in tone. I have had writers I respect greatly including our fearless leader here coach me on the art of writing something that will hold most people’s attention. Sometimes it has “taken” and sometimes not and that applies both to posts/articles I write and post myself or my comments on other people’s work as is the case here.

          I will freely admit to being not just wordy (and frequently so) but overly so. I also know that there are better writers out there than I will likely ever be that can write something lengthy and are well known enough that people will take the time to read and even think about posts that take fifteen or twenty minutes to read. Even for them, many won’t bother, and (I mentioned this just recently) because we turned into a society of folks that forces writers to follow the editorial rule stated by Jeff Goldblum’s character in The Big Chill – not to write anything longer than the average person can read during the average crap.

          Yes, I know people are busy. I know that it’s an ask to get someone to take the time to read a detailed piece of writing even on a complex topic. There is a LOT out there to sort through. What both saddens and irks me is that so many people who share so many of my own views that frequent sites like this or the other one where so many of us have and/or still hang around is that there’s a sense of being special in the sense of wanting serious discussion of important, even critical matters. Discussion, real discussion means more than a catchy headline and a page (if written out on an actual piece of good ole fashioned paper) of writing. Many important things are going on and there’s not only a LOT of information about them floating around but a LOT of DIS-information. Sometimes quite a bit more of the latter and I suspect that like me it infuriates you how easily the disinformation takes hold on a wide scale basis.

          Writing, whether in newspapers, magazines or on sites like this has slowly but inexorably shifted towards TV political style shows where one side states it’s talking points of the day. And that’s it. Or, we have the both-siderism of both sides having two or a small group of equally divided people stating their talking points and that it. All that airtime in the world of 24/7 news and so little in depth discussion and analysis. People like to think that we learned a lesson from Jon Stewart’s takedown of the mental masturbation that was CNN’s Crossfire, but I contend it just got slicked up some and packaged a little better.

          Learning on any subject is a process, and it sometimes takes meaningful effort that requires some time. Providing context, actually exploring concepts and opinions and providing sourcing for them so that readers can do some checking of their own is, I believe a good thing. And it is increasing less valued than it was when I was younger. The legendary Edward R. Murrow’s “Lights and wires in a box” speech was about TV and he had good reason way the hell back then to make it. And it made a LOT of people in the audience uncomfortable I might add. Sadly, he turned out to be well-justified in his concerns.

          And he lived and worked in an era where there were only three national broadcast networks that came on the air at six am and signed off at midnight! News was only part of the programming! He would have been very unhappy at the evolution of broadcast journalism over the next twenty years after that speech, and his fucking head would explode at what’s transpired after CNN proved that 24/7 “news” was possible. At the lack of depth in reporting.

          I maintained the same issues Murrow was worried about, the lack of depth in reporting on news/current events applies every bit as much to print (and this is a form of print) journalism as TV and radio.

          So, I guess my (significant) tendency to (as I have again in this response to you) have an ingrained rebellious streak. And that includes coming across as insulting people by suggesting that for all their patting themselves on the back for coming to places like this to become informed, they either can’t be bothered to read something that takes more than a few minutes to read or if they do resent “getting sucked in” to something that took them what they took was too long.

          There are some things for which TMI applies. I don’t happen to believe that the issues that our country and world face are among them. So I will often take my time and write in a fair amount of detail. Sometimes not, and even though those are the times, the times when I leave out a significant amount of information that truly can educate someone on a given matter and/or provide them will information the can use to back up their own case in discussions with others are the ones people tend to like.

          But sometimes I refuse to “People Magazine” my stuff. Some things are just too important and if people can’t be bothered to really take some time and digest a full exploration of something that’s complex then as far as I’m concerned it’s as much on them as it is on me.

          If you are offended and feel called out I apologize. In fact I think you meant to be kind and even at least somewhat supportive. But what you wrote is far from the first person to say what you did about something I’ve written. I DO try sometimes to write short, “pithy” stuff. But (again) sometimes I just feel compelled to have my say. My “full” say.

          • Denis, Really enjoy your long commnents packed with information, theories, and deep dive detail. Please don’t change/edit a thing. Agree with you that the Murfster is over-analyzing and there are many moving parts and in the long run the reason for Garland objecting/blocking this one doc will be revealed. It will likely have something to do with timing and confidentiality that could give away too much of the NY AG’s hand to the proposed Defendants at this time. May also be to temporarily protect witnesses who have turned states evidence such as Weisselberg may have already done – until they and their families are placed under full witness protection.

          • You don’t have to be pithy or “People Magazine” your stuff, but you also do not have to go on and on. When I scrolled down and saw ten or more paragraphs, I perused but I did not read. If you are writing for yourself, fine. But if you want the maximum number of people to read, you need to figure out how to organize it to move the reader through paragraph by paragraph. Depth and extraneous details or repetition are not the same thing. Maybe study some well-regarded long form writers to see how they move the reader through the material.

          • Thank you for being thoughtful and constructive with your criticism. I went back and reread my own comment. If there was some repetition later on it was in trying to provide examples people might use in casual interactions.

        • I don’t want to create contention but I just want to say that while I am hooked on this site and look forward to all of the editors’ comments, I truly love reading Mr. Eliot’s comments. I think he is an erudite speaker with a great deal of experience, insight and wisdom to impart to those of us with those of us who are relatively new political junkies with much less background knowledge than many of the many more knowledgeable commentators on here.

          • I am not disputing all that. I am only suggesting that his readership would increase with a bit more craftsmanship.

      • I don’t have a blog of my own. I wouldn’t know how to start one. If I have something to say I can come here or to another site and say it and that’s good enough. Especially given the next comment by dana fairfield that I’ll respond to there.

      • Probably a combination of covering his ass, and trying to keep as low a profile as possible in the hopes that with all the cray going on even Trump will forget all about him. And he can slide into a quiet retirement when the time comes without being hounded by MAGAts furious at him not “exposing” the “truth.”

  4. The whole swamp is bad on both sides. Just read the book Drain the Swamp. I could not believe the corruption that goes on and the abuse of power. This has been going on for years and when someone new comes in and doesn’t play by the rules of the speakers they are bullied. I’m sure it is the way the DOJ and all the other branches are.
    Now its Bidens turn and Obama is using him to finish all of the crap that he didn’t. Pelosi and Schumer are some of the worst. Pelosi thinks she is the Queen and should be obeyed.

    • Please stop listening to false equivalent both-siderism from brainwashed Trump lemmings like Ken Buck. They thrive by turning every swamp they touch into a cesspool and then blame everyone else but themselves for their crimes against the US using their Nazi propaganda books.

  5. Because A.G. Garland has such impeccable credentials, and because he has extensive experience in prosecuting public corruption, while disappointed, I’m inclined to extend a little trust.

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