Coup Coup Train 🌻🌻🌻

January 6 Hearings:  Yesterday was all about the Former Guy’s efforts to get the Department of Justice on board his coup coup train. In his words, the FG just needed Jeffrey Rosen, the acting Attorney General who had stepped into Bill Barr’s position on his departure and one of yesterday’s in person testifiers to “issue a statement calling the election results into question,” and "leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen,” a direct quote provided by Rosen’s second, then acting deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, another one of yesterday’s testifiers, who took contemporaneous notes during the meetings where the FG tried to cajole and threaten them into cooperating with his plan.  Unfortunately for the FG, though Rosen and the remaining leaders at the DOJ, including Steven Engel, then the Assistant DA for the Office of Legal Counsel, who also testified yesterday, were all Republican appointees they had no interest in getting on the coup train.  They pushed back at his persistent attempts which involved countless calls and weekend meetings to get them to cooperate or step aside and let quisling environmental lawyer Jeffrey Clark whose knowledge of election law was non-existent but whose willingness to coup was abundant assume the acting Attorney General so that he could issue that statement calling the validity of the election into question.  The intent of that missive was to smooth the way for bogus swing state electors to make their way into the official count.  The coup was only avoided because Rosen and his team, including just about every other one of the senior attorneys at the DOJ said, or whined in the words of Jared Kushner, that they would quit if the FG put Clark into the top spot pointing out that their mass exit would be a grande problemo for the FG.  By the way, we also saw some tape of former AG Barr, who insists that he had to do go against DOJ policy and investigate the fraud that wasn’t because if he hadn’t the violence on and after January 6^th would have been worse.  That Barr, he has a ready excuse for all his transgressions.  There will be more hearings in early July, the reason for the delay is that the Committee keeps finding more incriminating information to go through.  

The Quisling: As to Jeffrey Clark, who Eric Hershmann, the hold no punches, one time White House lawyer who also had served as one of the FG’s impeachment lawyers told to shut up and hire himself a lawyer because he was going to need one, he really does needs one.  On Wednesday, Federal investigators showed up at his suburban Virginia house with a search warrant, making him stand outside in his pajamas while they used electronic sniffing dogs to help find his cell phones and other devices and still he appeared on Fox last night to complain about that “Stasi like treatment.”  Further, it appears that Clark didn’t write his fraudulent election statement on his own, he had help from kraken lawyer John Eastman’s acolyte, Ken Klukowski, who was planted at the DOJ in December 2020. It was Klukowski who drafted the letter that urged Georgia state officials to take actions that would question the results of the election in the state as well as pressure VP  Pence to overturn the election.  The bottom line, the coup wasn’t a spur of the moment thing, it was planned and put into operation way before the not so spontaneous January 6 insurrection, and significantly the ties between all of the plotting parties are becoming more and more evident.    

Pardon Me:  As Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney told us during the first hearing, a gaggle of House members really did ask for pardons.  Yesterday at the end of the hearing we learned that the “pardon me please” crowd included: Alabama’s Mo Brooks, Panhandle Putz Matt Gaetz,  Arizona’s Andy Biggs, Texas’ Louie Gohmert,  Pennsylvania’s Scott Perry and Georgia’s Margie Q.  Gaetz’s request was particularly specific, the alleged sex trafficker curiously, or maybe not so curiously, asked to be pardoned way before insurrection day from “the beginning of time for any and all things.” At the end of the day, as far as we know, none of them got one of those golden tickets, even Perry who introduced Clark to the FG, possibly because granting them pardons would have required each of them to state what they were being pardoned for, and that would have likely implicated the FG.  Also not receiving pardons were some Republican officials in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada and Georgia, who were visited by and/or received DOJ subpoenas this week, something having to do with the faux elector scam that the FG and John Eastman were pushing as part of their coup.  That’s especially notable because it reveals that Merrick Garland’s DOJ actually is on the case.

Guns, Guns, Guns:  Yesterday with 15 Republicans joining all the Democrats/Independents the Senate passed its gun legislation.  The legislation now goes to the House where it will likely pass despite the efforts of GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy who together with his second in command gunshot survivor Steve Scalise, is whipping his crowd to vote it down. Naturally, the FG who for one brief moment back when he was in office expressed a willingness to do something about guns, has also come out against the legislation.  Unfortunately, though the passage of any gun reform, even a package that’s less inclusive than it should have been, is something to celebrate, the gun news yesterday was depressing because in a 6-3 opinion  written by Ginni’s husband Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court overturned a 100 plus year old New York law that had made it extremely difficult for New Yorkers to get permits to carry guns outside their homes, ruling for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to carry a handgun in public for self-defense because isn’t that what we need in New York and everywhere else, more people running around with “legal” guns?  In a concurring opinion “I Love Beer” Kavanaugh said states can still impose requirements on people seeking licenses to carry firearms including fingerprinting, background checks, mental health checks and firearms training classes so at least there’s that.  In addition, by a similar 6-3 conservative dominated vote SCOTUS ruled that “Miranda” rights” are not really “rights” at all, holding that the Miranda rule is merely a “prophylactic” means to avoiding rights violations. As a result, if the police “forget” to read you your Miranda rights, tough noogies, you can’t sue under the federal civil rights statute so remember to remain silent, not so easy as both Jeff Clark and Peter Navarro have demonstrated, repeatedly, and they’re lawyers.