Looking into whether to move forward on proceeding
Attorney General Merrick Garland named a special counsel on Friday to oversee the Justice Department’s investigation into the presence of classified documents at former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate as well as key aspects of a separate probe involving the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and efforts to undo the 2020 election.
The presence of classified documents=Trump’s theft of classified documents.
Though the appointment installs a new supervisor atop the probes — both of which are expected to accelerate now that the midterm elections are over — the special counsel will still report to Garland, who has ultimate say of whether to bring charges.
The role will be filled by Jack Smith, a veteran prosecutor who led the Justice Department’s public integrity section in Washington and who later served as the acting chief federal prosecutor in Nashville, Tennessee, during the Obama administration. More recently, he has been the chief prosecutor for the special court in the Hague that is tasked with investigating international war crimes.
But law people are saying this is just another unnecessary extra step. Never mind yet more investigating whether to charge him, just charge him already!
Can’t say I’m surprised by this move. Democrats are so scrupulously principled sometimes that it turns into fecklessness. (Which, I’m convinced, is one reason why many voters don’t trust Dems on issues like national security — they’re too damn nice.)
Garland may technically have the power to overrule the special counsel, but the entire point of appointing one is to give the impression of political neutrality, so there is no way that Garland in particular, or any Dem AG who succeeds him, is going to order Trump be charged if the special counsel advises against it.
So the bottom line is that an enormous amount of power is being handed to Smith. If he turns into another Mueller, you can forget about Trump being held to account.
But hey, now Trump can’t claim that the investigation is politically biased, right? I mean, he never impugned Mueller’s integrity, right? Right?
Yes I’ve seen a lot of Mueller analogies, in among the gnashing of teeth. How ironic that it’s Merrick Garland, who would be a Supreme Court Justice if McConnell hadn’t been so shameless, and here he is being all scrupulous & feckless so that the other team can steal yet another goal. Brilliant.
Well, the reason Garland was nominated in the first place was because he was seen as a mild-mannered moderate, not a liberal firebrand.
I suppose the optimistic take is “Garland is feckless, so he needs a special counsel as cover — he can justify an indictment as ‘well, the SC recommended it, so….'”
We do all the “Well here’s one who’s really not a liberal at all, not a political choice, very bipartisan, very safe and scrupulous, surely you won’t object,” and they do all the “Fuck you here’s the meanest women-hatingest Bible-huggingist Trump-lovingist sadist we could find, BAM, confirmed.”
Face it: Trump ain’t gettin indicted for nothin, never.
And boys will be taking over girls’ teams.
The western world is broken.
Something kind of related:
There is a webcomic I’m following & a recent page of it includes a shot of a tour of the White House with the guide saying
“Some of that is the same art that Dolley Madison saved from the British in 1814, and THIS is the the painting reclaimed from Mar-a-Lago in 2028”