Press: Where’s Merrick Garland when we need him?
Where’s the attorney general? On perhaps the most serious threat facing the country, Merrick Garland
Merrick GarlandBannon’s subpoena snub sets up big decision for Biden DOJ Navy engineer, wife accused of espionage plot Blinken warns Haitian migrants against making ‘dangerous’ trip to US MORE seems to be asleep on the job.
Let’s face it, we’re in trouble. Led by Donald Trump
Donald TrumpPennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro enters governor’s race GOP lawmakers introduce measure in support of Columbus Day Bannon’s subpoena snub sets up big decision for Biden DOJ MORE, both while he was still in the White House and ever since, anti-democratic forces are waging war on America’s most sacred political institutions. Our democracy itself is under attack. We’re not creeping toward, we’re already smack dab in the middle of, a constitutional crisis. And Merrick Garland’s doing nothing about it.
Any doubts about the threat to democracy were erased last week with release of the Senate Judiciary Committee report on the insurrection of Jan. 6. As well-documented in the report, the attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters didn’t spontaneously occur on Jan. 6. It was the inevitable end game of two months of attempts to overturn the results of the Nov. 3 election, all coordinated by the Trump White House.
We knew about the bulk of those efforts: over 60 frivolous lawsuits filed to assert election fraud; pressure on state legislatures in Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin; calls by the president himself imploring election officials in Georgia to miraculously “find” enough votes to make him the winner; pressure on Vice President Mike Pence
Michael (Mike) Richard PenceThe Hill’s Morning Report – Presented by Altria – Political crosscurrents persist for Biden, Dems Pence treads carefully with Trump The Memo: New Trump revelations bolster critics while fans shrug MORE to reject the outcome of the Electoral College vote.
What’s new in the Senate Judiciary report is the account of a previously-unreported Oval Office meeting of Trump with top DOJ and White House lawyers on Jan. 3 — where over the course of three hours Trump threatened to fire Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen unless he agreed to order the Justice Department to pressure states to overturn the results of the 2020 election because of alleged (and non-existent) massive voter fraud. Only after Rosen and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and their top deputies threatened to resign en masse did Trump back down. The report shows “just how close we came to a constitutional crisis,” said Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin
Dick DurbinDemocrats set up chaotic end-of-year stretch The Hill’s Morning Report – Presented by Facebook – After high drama, Senate lifts debt limit The Memo: New Trump revelations bolster critics while fans shrug MORE (D-Ill.).
But, of course, Donald Trump did not entirely relent. Three days later, at a rally on the Ellipse, he again claimed the election was…