A challenge for Garland critics.

...tell us how YOU get to a Trump conviction on... anything.

More to the point, what evidence do you believe Garland has right now that he can take to court today and convict Trump? Not just generalities. Tell us what evidence, where it's to be found, and how it measures up against the probable defenses offered in court by perps.

If that seems impossible from where you sit, you might want to consider the challenges Garland's DOJ faces in building solid court cases with strong chances of conviction. Nothing reported is a slam dunk for a jury without an overwhelming amount of evidence against Trump. That's not going to be achieved by just reading articles from the NYT or The Nation to the jury.

I go hard at this because I haven't yet seen the state of DOJ's evidence, or measured any of that against the defenses that will be offered in court. I can certainly surmise that Trump and his cronies are guilty as hell. But, I can't tell from where I sit if DOJ prosecutors have all they need to overcome all of the obstacles that trials can present. It's just not possible.

What I can discern is there is an ongoing, if not recently ramped-up investigation and prosecution of the Trump WH, for Jan. 6, Mar-a-lago, and other criminal activity. NOTHING is out there to evidence that it has flagged or ambivalent in its efforts. Absolutely nothing. The evidence is to the opposite, considering the sedition convictions in the past weeks of individuals suggested to be linked to the Trump WH.

If anyone knows a better path to prosecuting these crimes, other than presenting news reports as actual evidence ultimately supportable in court on just the words printed, they should tell us and we can debate it with all due clairvoyance.

Bearing witness to tragedy

...I've noticed an unusual number of prominent folks expressing their intention to refrain from viewing either the video of the deadly beating of Tyre Nichols, or the brutal assault on Paul Pelosi. That's understandable, especially for people who've experienced trauma firsthand, as victims like Nancy Pelosi have, or others who are overwhelmed by prevalent violence and hatred.

It is important, however, that these visual accounts are available to be viewed by the general public in full so that there are no misunderstandings or misinfo which has become the reflexive norm with the right wing these days. That used to be the standard tactic and expectation from our nation's foreign enemies, but this generation of republicans has made obfuscation and prevarication their go-to political response to... everything.

That makes it even more imperative that Americans try to avoid shying away from these staggeringly brutal images and overcome our uncomfortableness with facing the horror, if only to be witnesses for our generation and generations to come.

here's what Dwight D. Eisenhower had to say about viewing the horrors of the nazi death camps:

“The same day [April 12, 1945] I saw my first horror camp. It was near the town of Gotha. I have never felt able to describe my emotional reactions when I first came face to face with indisputable evidence of Nazi brutality and ruthless disregard of every shred of decency. Up to that time I had known about it only generally or through secondary sources. I am certain, however that I have never at any other time experienced an equal sense of shock."

“I visited every nook and cranny of the camp because I felt it my duty to be in a position from then on to testify at first hand about these things in case there ever grew up at home the belief or assumption that `the stories of Nazi brutality were just propaganda.’ Some members of the visiting party were unable to through the ordeal. I not only did so but as soon as I returned to Patton’s headquarters that evening I sent communications to both Washington and London, urging the two governments to send instantly to Germany a random group of newspaper editors and representative groups from the national legislatures. I felt that the evidence should be immediately placed before the American and British publics in a fashion that would leave no room for cynical doubt.”

...and Eisenhower quoted speaking on April 25th 1945 to the members of Congress and Journalists who had been shown Buchenwald the day before:

“You saw only one camp yesterday. There are many others. Your responsibilities, I believe, extend into a great field, and informing the people at home of things like these atrocities is one of them… Nothing is covered up. We have nothing to conceal. The barbarous treatment these people received in the German concentration camps is almost unbelievable. I want you to see for yourself and be spokesmen for the United States.”

..."to see for yourself."

President Biden called out this thuggish republican party in November

from The Hill:

“Look at the response of Republicans, making jokes about it,” Biden said Nov. 1st at a reception for Florida Democratic gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist in Golden Beach, Fla.

“The guy purchases a hammer to kneecap” the number two in the line of succession, Biden noted, referring to the suspect in the attack who prosecutors say told investigators he wanted to break the Speaker’s kneecaps.

The president also said that no one in Republican Party leadership condemned the attack despite a few leaders who have.

“These guys are extremely extreme,” he added, referring to Republicans just days before Election Day.

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/3714809-biden-rips-gop-over-paul-pelosi-jokes/

excerpt from Pres. Biden's remarks at the Crist reception:

You know, remember what happened down in Virginia, when those folks came out of the fields, carrying torches — and carrying not only torches, but also swastikas? Not a joke. I mean, it’s hard to remember and believe it — as well as making sure that they had white supremacists with them.

And seeing the same antisemitic chanting, the same antisemitic bile that was chanted in Germany in the ‘30s. And my predecessor was asked, “What do you think?” And he said, “There are very good people on both sides.” And the Republican Party basically remained silent.

This is not your father’s Republican Party. This is a different group of people...

And look what happened — I’ve been talking to Nancy Pelosi. Look what happened. And look at the response — the so-called response from Republicans, making jokes about it and/or saying, “Well, you know, it’s not because of what’s being said and not said.”

The reason why people are doing what they’re doing — there’s a lot of unstable people in a population as large as ours. When they hear every single day these outrageous lies — these outrageous lies across the board about everything; when they look at the Internet and see what’s being said stated and talk about, you know, where we keep children in basements to molest them and all these kinds of things — look what’s happened. And think however this guy is demonizing

And so you wonder why — how this guy came breaking into Paul — and Paul is a friend, as — as is Nancy. I’ve known them for years and years.

How can you — how can you be surprised? The guy purchases a hammer to kneecap the number three in line to be President of the United States of America — number two in line, I should say, to be the United — President of the United States of America.

And nobody on that party condemns it for exactly what it is. Says it’s not beca- — because when I made a comment about this is to be expected when you have leaders of the other party condoning the kind of conduct that is — that I’ve just discussed and others.

...the lineup:

You'll never again see Pence this candid about classified documents as in this interview

...he gave to Kudlow at FOX about the Biden docs:

"Early in the morning, I received a presidential daily brief at the vice president's residence," he recalled, "I'd rise early. I'd go to the safe where my military aide would place those classified materials. I'd pull them out, review them. I'd receive a presentation (on) them and then, frankly, more often than not…I would simply return them back to the file that I'd received them in. They went in commonly into what was called a burn bag that my military aide would gather and then destroy those classified materials—same goes in materials that I would receive at the White House."

The procedure, done alongside a military aide, was a "formal process" for Pence and he said the "unequal treatment before the law" before the appointment of a special counsel was "deeply troubling" to him.

"The handling of classified materials and the nation's secret is a very serious matter and as a former vice president of the United States, I can speak from personal experience about the attention that ought to be paid to those materials when you're in office and after you leave office," he told FOX Business. "And clearly that did not take place in this case."



...mother.

What's more important in the docs investigations? Politics or the law?

...several of the weekend news appearances by legislators have strained mightly to turn the Biden documents story into a major scandal on par with Trump's open criminality.

So far we've seen voluntary and immediate cooperation from the Biden legal team in informing the responsible authorities practically hours after discovery of potentially sensitive materials in President's storage.

However, the main complaint from reporters, and even some Democratic legislators this morning, is that the press wasn't clued in right away, and that the chambers of government where this issue is being treated like a new box of pastries in the congressional cloakroom wasn't given the heads up to begin immediately wringing their hands and whinging along with the press about the optics they are primed to warp and distort in focus with their own opportunistic political views.

What they're grabbing at in the Biden box, though, isn't the jelly-filled goo and the sugar-dusted dessert that Trump served up with his reflexive prevarications and instinctive obstruction of authority. It's a model of cooperation that used to be the norm, the dedicated adherence to rules and law which serve to keep our fragile democracy together at the seams where it threatens to rip apart.

here's the WaPo account:

In mid-November, in a communication that has not previously been reported, a senior official in the Justice Department’s national security division wrote a letter to Bob Bauer, Biden’s personal attorney, asking for his cooperation with the department’s inquiry. The Justice official asked specifically that Biden’s legal team secure the materials from the Penn Biden Center and refrain from further reviewing them or other relevant documents that might be stored at different locations, according to the letter, the contents of which were shared with The Post.

The Justice official also requested that Bauer give the Justice Department formal consent to review the Penn Biden materials, and that he provide a list of other locations where relevant materials might be stored as the department weighted the proper protocols for future document searches.

That letter, with its implication that the Justice Department would take the lead in the inquiry, paved the way for the Biden team’s approach: They adopted a strategy of caution and deference, making only limited moves in coordination with federal investigators to determine the number of documents involved, their significance and how they were mishandled...

After the Biden White House alerted the National Archives, it did make initial moves to learn how the classified documents had reached the Penn Biden Center and possibly elsewhere, according to two people familiar with the process who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation. But by Nov. 10, ... the Justice Department informed Biden’s lawyers it was launching its own inquiry and within weeks would be sitting down with Biden aides for interviews, according to two people familiar with the process.

At that point, Biden’s attorneys stopped seeking information from his staffers, seeking to avoid any impression they were tampering with witnesses, the people said. Instead, they switched abruptly into a highly cautious mode, deferring almost completely to the federal investigators.