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fictionadventurer · 8 months

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Hey, so it turns out that not only did James and Lucretia Garfield finally fall in love with each other after years of marriage, but we have proof of it in one of the sweetest love letters I've ever read.

Willard's, Nov 24, 1867

My Precious Darling,

It is nearly ten o'clock Sunday night, and I will not lie down to sleep till I have told you again that I love you. Surely, "love is the fulfilling of the law," and the law of our love is liberty. We no longer love because we ought to, but because we do--the Tyranny of our love is sweet. We waited long for his coming, but he has come to stay. I hope wish, my dear love, that God would let us die together when we die, that neither of us might be left in the empty world for a single hour. It would be unkind of me, to tell you, if I could, how lonely and lost I am without you. Part of the machinery of my life seems to be gone, and I wander around unconsciously as if in search of it, that I may set nature at work again.

Your precious words of the 21st came to me this morning--and fell down into my heart like benedictions. Did you know how unutterably sweet it is to be praised by you? The words you wrote have lifted me and made me proud and happy all day. How sweet the privilege I have had, this summer! The alchemist sought to transmute other substances into gold--I have done far better. I have been able to transmute gold into esthetic joys, intellectual growth, heart life--and better than all--have been permitted to see it transformed into sweet and beautiful decorations of the noblest and truest woman I ever saw--and she as glad to be mine as I to be hers. This surpasses alchemy. It is divine. It is a new proof of the truth that "God is love."

Well Darling, I have done nothing of worth except to hunt houses and read. I am satisfied that the price of the house I wrote you of is too great and we ought not to pay it. I hope I can do better. I am thinking of buying a house on time and hope to sell it again when we are done with it. If we had done so, four years ago, we should have owned it now. I am anxious to receive your answer to my letter of Thursday--It may help me to a decision.

[political paragraph cut for irrelevance]

Dear Love, do write me very often. Kiss the sweet [???] and tell them Papa loves them all.

Ever Your ownest own James

#history is awesome #presidential talk #hey question: how come guys don't write like this anymore?#men gotta up their game to keep up with the love letters of the nineteenth century #there are a few words here that might be wrong because his handwriting's not great #gotta say jimbo your handwriting was much better in your youth #like i much appreciate the personal development keep it up #but your writing was a lot nicer looking when you were a young buck trying to impress a girl with your mad penmanship skills #if you were wondering the political paragraph is about him potentially being head of the house ways and means committee #and they're coming up on johnson's impeachment proceedings #i could have and probably should have cut the paragraph about house hunting #but i was so amused by the turn from flowery love letter to #'well darling i have done nothing of worth except to hunt houses and read'#i feel like it grounds the declaration of love in the mundane moments of everyday life and makes it seem more real

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ivygorgon · 9 months

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📈 Exclusion of Donald Trump from future ballots under Fourteenth Amendment hit 2,000 signers! https://resist.bot/petitions/PGOQGM

The Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution, specifically Section 3, disqualifies individuals who engage in insurrection or rebellion against the Constitution from holding office. This provision is applicable to former President Donald Trump due to his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and the subsequent attack on the U.S. Capitol. This disqualification operates independently of criminal proceedings, impeachment, or legislation. Legal scholars William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen support this interpretation. It's crucial to uphold the Constitution faithfully, even if it may lead to social unrest. Therefore, it is requested that the name of Donald Trump be excluded from future ballots in accordance with the Fourteenth Amendment. This action will demonstrate a commitment to protecting our constitutional democracy.

▶ Created on August 25 by @resistbot Action Fund · 2,029 signers in the past 7 days

Text Sign PGOQGM to WhatsApp / Messenger / APPLE MESSAGES / SMS

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codewithcode · 1 year

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EXPLAINER: Texas’ extraordinary move to impeach scandal-plagued GOP Attorney General Ken Paxton

AUSTIN, Texas — After years of legal and ethical scandals swirling around Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, the state’s GOP-controlled House of Representatives has moved toward an impeachment vote that could quickly throw him from office. The extraordinary and rarely-used maneuver comes in the final days of the state’s legislative session and sets up a bruising political fight. It…

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#4 #attorney #EXPLAINER #extraordinary #general #General news #gop #impeach #Impeachment #Indictments #Ken #Legal proceedings #move #Paxton #Politics #scandalplagued #Texas #U.S. news

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wilwheaton · 9 months

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A Trump appointee with little experience on the bench, Cannon was then randomly assigned to preside over the criminal case when Trump was indicted in June. Meanwhile, a string of errors she’s made in her short time as a judge has come to light. Her most recent hiccup came in June, when she closed jury selection in a child pornography case—denying the defendant’s family and others a seat in the courtroom to watch jury selection. The misstep, an apparent violation of the constitutional right to a public trial, nearly invalidated the proceedings entirely. She also neglected to swear in a prospective jury pool—a mandatory procedure. Cannon, 42, was appointed by Trump in the waning days of his presidency in 2020. She’d been a federal prosecutor for seven years, but has only been a part of eight criminal trials that resulted in jury verdicts—four as a prosecutor and four as a judge. She’s spent a total of just 14 days in trial as a federal judge, The New York Times reported.

Judge Aileen Cannon Comes Out Swinging in Trump’s Favor (Again) in Classified Docs Case

Cannon was deemed UNQUALIFIED by the American Bar Association. In her FOURTEEN DAYS of activity on the bench, she’s confirmed that, over and over again.

This political operative masquerading as a federal judge is a disgrace. She needs to be impeached and removed from the bench.

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the-garbanzo-annex-jr · 24 days

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by Seth Mandel

A hideous article in the Washington Post goes out of its way to flaunt its disregard for journalistic ethics in the service of exacerbating the national anti-Semitism crisis. The piece itself is the reporting equivalent of corking the bat, filling an article with examples that undermine its thesis and hoping nobody looks inside.

The topic of the piece, written by Pranshu Verma, is the assertion that cancel culture is being applied to defenders of Hamas, so now cancel culture is bad. But the most objectionable part of the article is where Verma misrepresents an incident so egregiously that the credibility of the whole piece crumbles to dust.

To be clear, the rest of the article isn’t accurate either. For example, people weren’t being punished for “criticiz[ing] Israel,” as the headline declares, but usually for behavior such as destroying posters or chanting genocidal slogans and the like. Unfortunately, that sort of obfuscation is ubiquitous in media reporting on the aftermath of Hamas’s massacre on Oct. 7. The truly appalling part of the article is in the following excerpt:

Since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7 and Israel responded by attacking Gaza, groups have poured resources into identifying people with opposing political beliefs, sometimes deploying aggressive publicity campaigns that have resulted in profound real-world consequences. Within weeks of Oct. 7, ‘doxing trucks’ prowled the campuses of Harvard, Columbia and Princeton, displaying the names and photos of students and professors who had signed statements declaring solidarity with Palestinians. In January, a Rutgers Law School student sued the university, alleging that he had faced discriminatory disciplinary action after sharing what he deemed ‘pro-Hamas’ messages from his classmates with school administrators.

So here’s how the Washington Post frames the Rutgers situation: Pro-Hamas people are having their lives ruined by Jews who highlight their public comments, and this Rutgers fellow is an example not only of that but of essentially doxxing. (Doxxing means to reveal personal identifying information that is either nonpublic or requires enough effort to find that it is, in a practical sense, nonpublic.)

Here’s what actually happened. Members of the Student Bar Association sent their group chat anti-Semitic and pro-Hamas messages after the Oct. 7 massacre, and an Orthodox Jewish law student in the chat, Yoel Ackerman, responded. He shared the messages with the Rutgers Jewish Law Students Association. For this, the law school opened disciplinary proceedings against Ackerman, with the law school dean telling her colleagues “we have a Jewish law student seeking to take and publish the names of those he deems to be supporting Hamas.” He was then subject to a Sovietesque impeachment hearing from the Student Bar Association. Ackerman, without receiving sufficient explanation, was berated for three hours in what amounted to administrative harassment. In order to dispense of their troublesome Jew, the SBA then moved to suspend its own constitution in order to expel Ackerman.

That’s when Rutgers University stepped in, and briefly suspended the SBA while it could sort out the mess that Hamas propagandists and their enthusiastic supporters among the deans had made of the school. The SBA was soon reinstated.

This, the Washington Post tells us, is an example of a Jew oppressing the poor gentile.

This is not biased reporting. It is Jew-baiting propaganda with a long and very disturbing history. The rest of the article, meanwhile, is biased reporting: Verma simply launders the exterminationist language of domestic extremists into legitimate criticism of a foreign government.

The whole article is science fiction. But the apology the paper owes Ackerman is very real.

#hamas #gaza #washington post #media bias #rutgers university #sba #student bar association #yoel ackerman #pranshu verma

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 10 months

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Forget hush money payments to porn stars hidden as business expenses. Forget showing off classified documents about Iran attack plans to visitors, and then ordering the pool guy to erase the security tapes revealing that he was still holding on to documents that he had promised to return. Forget even corrupt attempts to interfere with election results in Georgia in 2020.

The federal indictment just handed down by special counsel Jack Smith is not only the most important indictment by far of former President Donald Trump. It is perhaps the most important indictment ever handed down to safeguard American democracy and the rule of law in any U.S. court against anyone.

For those who have been closely following Trump’s attempt to subvert the results of the 2020 election, there was little new information contained in the indictment. In straightforward language with mountains of evidence, the 45-page document explains how Trump, acting with six (so far unnamed, but easily recognizable) co-conspirators, engaged in a scheme to repeatedly make false claims that the 2020 election was stolen or rigged, and to use those false claims as a predicate to try to steal the election. The means of election theft were national, not just confined to one state, as in the expected Georgia prosecution. And they were technical—submitting alternative slates of presidential electors to Congress, and arguing that state legislatures had powers under the Constitution and an old federal law, the Electoral Count Act, to ignore the will of the state’s voters.

But Trump’s corrupt intent was clear: He was repeatedly told that the election was not stolen, and he knew that no evidence supported his outrageous claims of ballot tampering. He nonetheless allegedly tried to pressure state legislators, state election officials, Department of Justice officials, and his own vice president to manipulate these arcane, complex election rules to turn himself from an election loser into an election winner. That’s the definition of election subversion.

He’s now charged with a conspiracy to defraud the United States, a conspiracy to willfully deprive citizens the right to vote, a conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, and obstructing that official proceeding. If you’re doing the math, that is four new counts on top of the dozens he faces in the classified documents case in Florida and the hush money case in New York.

So far Trump has not been accountable for these actions to try to steal an American election. Although the House impeached Trump for his efforts soon after they occurred, the Senate did not convict. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, in voting against conviction in the Senate despite undeniable evidence of attempted election subversion by his fellow Republican, pointed to the criminal justice system as the appropriate place to serve up justice. But the wheels of justice have turned very slowly. Reports say that Attorney General Merrick Garland was at first too cautious about pursuing charges against Trump despite Trump’s unprecedented attack on our democracy. Once Garland appointed Jack Smith as a special counsel to handle Trump claims following the release of seemingly irrefutable evidence that Trump broke laws related to the handling of classified documents, the die was cast.

It is hard to overstate the stakes riding on this indictment and prosecution. New polling from the New York Times shows that Trump not only has a commanding lead among those Republicans seeking the party’s presidential nomination in 2024; he remains very competitive in a race against Joe Biden. After nearly a decade of Trump convincing many in the public that all charges against him are politically motivated, he’s virtually inoculated himself against political repercussions for deadly serious criminal counts. He’s miraculously seen a boost in support and fundraising after each indictment (though recent signs are that the indictments are beginning to take a small toll). One should not underestimate the chances that Donald Trump could be elected president in 2024 against Joe Biden—especially if Biden suffers any kind of health setback in the period up to the election—even if Trump is put on trial and convicted of crimes.

A trial is the best chance to educate the American public, as the Jan. 6 House committee hearings did to some extent, about the actions Trump allegedly took to undermine American democracy and the rule of law. Constant publicity from the trial would give the American people in the middle of the election season a close look at the actions Trump took for his own personal benefit while putting lives and the country at risk. It, of course, also serves the goals of justice and of deterring Trump, or any future like-minded would-be authoritarian, from attempting any similar attack on American democracy ever again.

Trump now has two legal strategies he can pursue in fighting these charges, aside from continuing to attack the prosecutions as politically motivated. The first strategy, which he will no doubt pursue, is to run out the clock. It’s going to be tough for this case to go to trial before the next election given that it is much more factually complex than the classified documents or hush money cases. There are potentially hundreds of witnesses and theories of conspiracies that will take much to untangle. Had the indictment come any later, I believe a trial before November 2024 would have been impossible. With D.C. District Judge Tanya Chutkan—a President Barack Obama appointee who has treated previous Jan. 6 cases before her court with expedition and seriousness—apparently in charge of this case, there is still a chance to avoid a case of justice delayed being justice denied.

If Trump can run out the clock before conviction and be reelected, though, he can get rid of Jack Smith and appoint an attorney general who will do his bidding. He could even try to pardon himself from charges if elected in 2024 (a gambit that may or may not be legal). He could then sic his attorney general on political adversaries with prosecutions not grounded in any evidence, something he has repeatedly promised on the campaign trail.

Trump’s other legal strategy is to argue that prosecutors cannot prove the charges. For example, the government will have to prove that Trump not only intended to interfere with Congress’ fair counting of the electoral college votes in 2020 but also that Trump did so “corruptly.” Trump will put his state of mind at issue, arguing that despite all the evidence, he had an honest belief the election was being stolen from him.

He also will likely assert First Amendment defenses. As the indictment itself notes near the beginning, “the Defendant has a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won.” But Trump did not just state the false claims; he allegedly used the false claims to engage in a conspiracy to steal the election. There is no First Amendment right to use speech to subvert an election, any more than there is a First Amendment right to use speech to bribe, threaten, or intimidate.

Putting Trump before a jury, if the case can get that far before the 2024 elections, is not certain to yield a conviction. It carries risks. But as I wrote last year in the New York Times, the risks to our system of government of not prosecuting Donald Trump are greater than the risks of prosecuting him.

It’s not hyperbole to say that the conduct of this prosecution will greatly influence whether the U.S. remains a thriving democracy after 2024.

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soberscientistlife · 3 months

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The Republicans that set up the impeachment proceedings should be charged with treason.

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republicansaredomesticterrorists · 2 months

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They want to impeach the Secretary of Homeland Security to make Biden look bad on the fake border crisis they fabricated and sold to the MAGA morons.

😡

#alejandro mayorkas #homeland security #impeachment #unethical Republicans #Republican dirty tricks #republican assholes #traitor trump #crooked donald #traitor #republican values #resist #maga morons #never trump

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qqueenofhades · 10 months

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Sorry I didn’t mean to bring you down with negativity. I guess I just wish there was an easy way to unbrainwash people from the qanon/maga cults, but alas unbrainwashing isn’t as easy as that one episode of the Simpsons made it seem where all they had to do was give Homer a beer lol. Another great thing about more charges for trump (besides the obvious) is that it’s going to make us lawyer bills go way up…I would absolutely love it if he had to sell every building/business with his name on it just to pay his lawyers.

It's okay, you're all good. I hope I didn't come off as too snippy, it's just that the chorus of "this doesn't matter at all" doom-and-glooming happens EVERY time, and I just don't know what to say to it. For one, I don't think you can say that a twice-impeached one-term loser who only won his first term thanks to the electoral college, who lost his re-election and then 60+ lawsuits challenging that, and is now facing in the neighborhood of 100 serious felony charges in soon-to-be-four state and federal jurisdictions, hasn't suffered any institutional repudiation at all. Especially when the trials haven't actually started, and when as noted, they've clearly done a lot of work at picking juries and getting indictments, which should logically lead to convictions. At this point, there's nothing saying that won't happen as the next step in the process, so... yeah.

As I have said, democracy is slow, messy, imperfect, and cumbersome. It is also the best system for self-governance we have yet invented, and it's worth working hard to preserve and improve. So while justice has taken far longer than anyone wanted, it is nonetheless proceeding at a decently good clip; we are up to Kaiju, uh, Indictment Events every six weeks/two months, and it will almost surely not be that long until the Georgia indictment lands; it could be as soon as the second half of this week. Then the process will continue, and yeah. We are in fact making progress, even if it's hard to wait, and I get tired of people automatically discounting it and changing the goalposts and constantly revising what they expect and when they think it should be done, so that's why I was possibly a bit short with you. I 100% agree I would love Trump to just fucking pick through the Mar-a-Lago couch cushions to pay his legal bills, but alas, he will just grift his cult members some more. To which I say, good luck with that, guys. At this point if you're still stupid enough to give him money, you deserve to go broke on a "billionaire's" behalf.

#anonymous #ask #politics for ts #the giant orange monster

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reality-detective · 9 months

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Biden’s Impeachment Looms as Congress Unleashes a Storm of Revelations!, Conspiracy Cabal on Telegram

The clock is ticking, and the removal of Joe Biden from power has begun! Congress is gearing up to announce the dates for his impeachment, marking a pivotal moment in American history. But that’s not all – House Speaker McCarthy drops a bombshell, hinting at the potential impeachment of Attorney General Merrick Garland for mishandling the Hunter Biden investigation.

These strategic moves are poised to shake the very foundations of the mainstream media. Finally, the impeachment hearings will force their reluctant hand, compelling them to report on the crimes and misdemeanors linked to Biden’s impeachment. Prepare for a seismic awakening as millions of Democratic voters are red-pilled, confronted with the shocking revelations surrounding their beloved president and the notorious Hunter Biden laptop.

CNN, a prominent player in this unfolding drama, will lead the charge in broadcasting the impeachment proceedings. Could this be a sign of their gradual transformation, as they slowly flip their narrative and challenge the established order? And behind the scenes, whispers echo of a monumental interview where Trump returns to CNN, leaving the MSM, CIA, and FBI in a frenzy. CNN holds the key to unveiling information that has long been suppressed.

But let’s dig deeper. Who wields the unseen hand, manipulating the very fabric of reality? Who has captured the attention of Twitter, orchestrated changes within CNN, and exposed classified military operations in Ukraine? This enigmatic force fights against the looming threat of a fake alien invasion, safeguarding the interests of Trump and RFK Jr., and shedding light on the dark underbelly of child trafficking and human exploitation. They are the architects of the Great Awakening, leading humanity towards truth and liberation.

And now, in an unprecedented turn of events, Congress uncovers a treacherous web of deceit surrounding the fake alien invasion. Classified military operations, hidden deep within the underground machinations of the deep state, are exposed. These operations harbor groundbreaking technologies that could revolutionize the world, liberating us from the shackles of oil and gas dependency. Prepare for a seismic shift as the grip of the elite cabal, who profit from these finite resources, is shattered.

But that’s not all. Brace yourself for the next chapter in the fight against human trafficking, as Congress prepares to launch an all-out assault on this heinous industry. Epstein, JP Morgan, the Clintons, and Biden are just a few names that will be dragged into the spotlight. The dark secrets of Pizzagate, once concealed by the CIA’s mockingbird operations, will resurface. The time for truth and justice is at hand, exposing the sinister forces that have preyed upon our society for far too long.

Stay tuned, for timing is everything. The stage is set for a dramatic unraveling, where the powers that be will be held accountable. The truth will prevail, and a new dawn is on the horizon.

- Julian Assange

The Storm is Brewing 🤔

#pay attention #educate yourselves #educate yourself #knowledge is power #reeducate yourself #reeducate yourselves #think for yourselves #think about it #think for yourself #do your homework #do some research #do your own research #ask yourself questions #question everything

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truthdogg · 5 months

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“THEY DID IT TO US!” Trump claimed in an August post on his struggling Truth Social platform, demanding Republicans impeach Biden or “fade into oblivion.”

***

Partisanship in this impeachment was never meant to be a secret, but that does not mean Republicans are exposing their political motivations. This article can’t even describe them, so it’s increasingly unlikely that many voters will see them either.

The point of a Biden impeachment is closely related to the point of the Big Lie. Neither are intended to succeed or to appear thoughtful. They are intended to undermine Americans’ interest in democracy.

The Big Lie is continually deployed by conservatives not to change the election outcome. It’s too late for that, and they know it. It is used to sow doubt and distrust, so that more and more Americans will decide that voting is inherently unreliable, and that it is no longer the best way to select our leaders.

Similarly, a Biden impeachment circus would be used not to remove Biden in a fair process, but to claim that all impeachments are inherently politically motivated and unfair, and that turnabout is fair play whether warranted or not.

This goes hand in hand with Trump’s constant bellyaching about being “politically persecuted,” and his often-stated promises to illegally prosecute Democrats, judges, attorneys, and civil servants if elected. When Trump claims that all charges against politicians like himself are politically motivated, it clears the way for him to open politically motivated prosecutions of his own. When Republicans openly state that their impeachment hearings are politically motivated, they are doing so to claim that Democrats had the same motivation in 2021.

The two impeachments of Trump did hurt him politically, and Republicans know it. Therefore, they’re trying to negate that black mark—not by giving Biden a similar one, as most pundits and press will claim, but by demonstrating that there doesn’t even have to be crimes or corruption to start this sort of proceeding. They are betting that Americans won’t remember just how bad Trump looked before, during, & after those trials occurred, and that this stunt will make the earlier impeachments of Trump look like a circus as well.

They may be right. Especially if a so-called liberal media outlet like MSNBC can’t even connect the dots to see what’s going on.

#trump #biden impeachment #trump impeachment #conservatives

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madamspeaker · 9 months

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If you were going to draw up a list of the people most responsible for the latest indictment of Donald Trump, the former president himself would be at the top, followed by the prosecutors who have brought the case. Republicans in Congress perversely deserve a great deal of credit, too, since they could have exiled Trump from political life and perhaps spared him more intense legal scrutiny if they had voted to convict him in the impeachment trial over his role in the siege of the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Ultimately, however, you cannot tell the story of Trump’s historic indictment without Nancy Pelosi. It was the then-Speaker of the House who insisted that there be a congressional inquiry following January 6. And it was the work of the select committee she fashioned that finally appears to have spurred a reluctant Justice Department to action, setting in motion a more intense phase of criminal scrutiny focused on Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election.The resulting indictment closely tracks the select committee’s work and findings, presenting a factual narrative that traces — almost identically — the evidence presented by the committee of a sophisticated, multipronged effort by Trump to remain in power that culminated in the mayhem at the U.S. Capitol.

“I knew on January 6 that he had committed a crime,” Pelosi told me late Friday afternoon, squeezing me in for a roughly 30-minute interview at the tail end of a remarkable week in Washington.

I wondered what was going through her head as someone who had played an essential role in bringing about the most important criminal prosecution in the history of our country, and I was curious, in particular, when it had occurred to her that Trump’s conduct following the 2020 election had not merely been politically destructive or outrageous but may have crossed the line into actual criminality.

During the Trump administration, Pelosi emerged as one of Trump’s most persistent and effective political antagonists, and the personal rancor between the two was often on public display. She went toe to toe with him in the Oval Office. She authorized the third-ever impeachment of an American president after Trump’s effort to shake down Ukraine’s president to get dirt on Joe Biden. She famously tore up Trump’s 2020 State of the Union speech while standing behind him. As Trump’s supporters began to approach the Capitol on January 6, Pelosi said that if Trump joined them, “I’m going to punch him out. I’ve been waiting for this. For trespassing on the Capitol grounds, I’m going to punch him out. And I’m going to go to jail, and I’m going to be happy.”

The rioters proceeded to ransack her office, and instead of punching Trump, who was prevented from going to the Capitol by the Secret Service, Pelosi impeached him again. To this day, Pelosi seems to get under Trump’s skin like no one else. Early Sunday morning, Trump called her “a sick & demented psycho who will someday live in HELL!”

Long before January 6 itself, Pelosi had been preparing for Trump to try to disrupt the transfer of power. “During the election, I thought, ‘He’s going to try to pull a stunt and we have to try to have as many states in the Democratic column as possible,’” she told me, contemplating the possibility that Biden’s victory might not be certified and that the House would have to move to an obscure procedure in which each state’s congressional delegation would cast a single vote to determine the next president.

Trump promptly proceeded to validate that concern, undertaking an extraordinary effort to remain in power after Election Day by falsely claiming that he had won and by trying to work various levers of official power to stay in office. “As we got closer to January 6, I knew he was cooking up all these things, but what was he going to do about it?” Pelosi recalled. “It was clear that he knew he did not win the election,” she explained. “It was clear, and he had to disrupt” the joint session of Congress to certify the election. As the indictment alleges, Trump did this not only by pressuring Vice-President Mike Pence to illegally cast aside Biden’s electoral votes but also by watching with apparent pleasure as a mob tore through the Capitol and by exploiting the violence fed by his lies.

“When we saw what he did on January 6, I knew that was a crime,” Pelosi added. She acknowledged that it is not possible to predict “what can be proven” successfully in court, “but I know he committed a crime that day.”

After Biden’s inauguration, Pelosi set about to organize a bipartisan 9/11 Commission–type investigation into the events that led up to January 6, but she was repeatedly stymied by congressional Republicans. “We yielded on every point,” Pelosi recalled of the negotiations with her Republican counterparts at the time. “We gave them an equal number of commission members, which we always would have done — equal member staff, equal member funding for everything — and equal subpoena power, which the majority never gives away, but nonetheless, we did it because this was so awful for our country, so necessary to have this.”

In what turned out to have been a historic miscalculation, Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell blocked the initiative in the Senate. “He went around to members and said, ‘Do me a personal favor and do not vote for this,’” Pelosi told me. “Even though he knew that night — and said — that the Republican president was responsible, they didn’t even want to have an investigation.”

Pelosi has earned a reputation as one of the most tactically savvy leaders in the history of the Congress, and she chuckled as she recalled McConnell’s maneuvering. “People said to Mitch, ‘You think Nancy is going to let this go?’ What could he have been thinking?”

Pelosi then shifted gears to negotiating over a select committee in the House with Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, who took the project about as seriously as McConnell had by proposing to name, among other people, bomb-thrower Jim Jordan to the panel. Pelosi quickly decided the negotiations were not going anywhere, explaining that McCarthy wanted to appoint members who would “totally undermine” the committee. “Okay,” she recalled thinking. “That’s really nice. So you get consultation as to who will serve [on the committee], and I have consulted with you, and I’ve said ‘no’ to who you want. That’s the power of the Speaker.”

Pelosi then assembled a group led by Democratic chair Bennie Thompson and Republican vice-chair Liz Cheney, along with six other Democrats and Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger. It did not take long for observers to conclude that McCarthy may have monumentally misplayed his hand, particularly after the committee produced a riveting series of hearings last summer that were mercifully free of the clownish and disruptive antics of the House GOP’s right flank.

In the course of our discussion, Pelosi was reluctant to take any sort of credit for the committee’s work or Trump’s indictment with the exception of taking “credit for the appointees” on the committee, whom she described as providing a “beautiful balance” in their approaches and a crucial “seriousness of purpose.”

Pelosi said she knew from the beginning that, in order for the committee to succeed, it could not operate in the way of typical committee hearings, and she worked to ensure that the members shared that perspective. “When people were accepting the offer to be on the committee, they knew that it wasn’t going to be every five minutes that they’d be speaking,” she said. “It would be part of the plan [to present] a narrative for the public to understand.”

In the end, Pelosi told me, “the quality of the membership, the effectiveness of the staff, and the excellence of the presentation made it one of the best presentations in the history of our country.”

Meanwhile, there were questions about what the Justice Department was doing to address the potential criminal culpability of Trump and those in his orbit. The committee’s members and staff were uncovering — and presenting to the public — damaging evidence that they had obtained from Trump administration officials, but the DOJ was not pursuing those same threads — despite public frustration among some observers — seemingly content with focusing on the people who had stormed the Capitol or who played a role in organizing the violence that day.

I asked Pelosi whether during this period she had ever tried to speak with Attorney General Merrick Garland, President Biden, or anyone in the White House about making sure the Justice Department was properly investigating Trump’s conduct. “No,” she quickly responded, telling me that she did not think it was appropriate for her to try to influence the department’s work behind closed doors.

“I did want them to pay attention, and I hope that we got their attention,” Pelosi told me. “That’s why the presentation — the narrative — had to be the way it was,” she explained, so that the public record could be as clear and credible as possible. “We couldn’t have people, like the Republicans wanted to put on, who would be disruptive, disruptive, disruptive. Too much was at stake.”

Still, there was palpable anxiety among House Democrats about the Justice Department’s progress — or lack thereof — investigating Trump directly. That anxiety may have reached a high point this June, when the Washington Post published a remarkable 8,000-word story providing the most comprehensive account to date of the department’s investigation into Trump’s conduct.

According to the Post, it took “more than a year” after January 6 “before prosecutors and FBI agents jointly embarked on a formal probe of actions directed from the White House to try to steal the election,” and “even then, the FBI stopped short of identifying the former president as a focus of that investigation.” One source told the paper that “it felt as though the department was reacting to the House committee’s work as well as heightened media coverage and commentary” as the department’s investigation finally gathered steam last year.

“When the Washington Post article came out,” Pelosi told me, “not that it was a complete shock or surprise to our members, but they were very concerned about it.”

Now that Trump has been indicted over his effort to steal the election, we are in the midst of a singular moment in American history — one that will have dramatic long-term implications for our country and one that will likely be covered in history books for generations to come. The difference, of course, is that as we live through this period, we have no idea how it will end — with Trump in prison or with Trump in the White House again.

I asked Pelosi how she thought this would all end, and she struck a tentative but cautiously optimistic tone. “As we always say, it all depends on what happens at the end of the day, but you have to determine what the end of the day is. Yesterday was the end of a day. The former president of the United States was arraigned, and that was a triumph for the truth.”

“The indictments against the president are exquisite,” Pelosi added, referring to both the latest set of charges and the earlier federal indictment over Trump’s hoarding of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and his subsequent efforts to obstruct investigators. “They’re beautiful and intricate, and they probably have a better chance of conviction than anything that I would come up with.”

As for the prospect of a second Trump term, Pelosi immediately recoiled when I brought it up. “Don’t even think of that,” she told me. “Don’t think of the world being on fire. It cannot happen, or we will not be the United States of America.”

“If he were to be president,” she continued, “it would be a criminal enterprise in the White House.”

There was a time in American life, not that long ago, when that would have been clear hyperbole. These are categorically different times.

#nancy pelosi #madam speaker #interview

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odinsblog · 2 months

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The Republican impeachment push against President Joe Biden has always rested on the thinnest of evidentiary ice, but with one of their key informants facing criminal charges for lying to federal investigators, the charade is now on the verge of falling apart.

On Wednesday, the House Oversight Committee — one of the three Republican-controlled committees overseeing the Biden impeachment inquiry — held a hearing in an attempt to salvage the effort.

Democrats brought in Lev Parnas, a former Rudy Giuliani crony who was a key figure in the Ukraine scandal that led to Trump’s first impeachment. During his testimony, Parnas declared that he had found “zero evidence of the Bidens’ corruption in Ukraine” and that “no credible source has ever provided proof of criminal activity […] no respectable Ukrainian official has ever said that the Biden’s did anything illegal.”

“The only information ever pushed on the Biden’s in Ukraine has come from one source, and one source only: Russia and Russian agents,” Parnas said. “The impeachment proceedings that bring us here now are predicated on false information spread by the Kremlin.”

(continue reading)

#politics #donald trump #republicans #election interference #lev parnas #biden impeachment #electioneering #election fraud #republican dirty tricks #russia #ukraine #russian propaganda #russian disinformation #russian assets #foreign agents

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pennsyltuckyheathen · 6 months

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(via Grifters, wannabees and Putin-style autocrats: Here's why the GOP is no longer a legitimate political party - Raw Story)

I’ve been saying the same thing ever since Trump was elected and the Republican party abandoned the checks and balances of the Legislative branch. By doing so, the Democrats were left to defend our democratic republic and its institutions while Republicans made excuses for Trump, cited a prepared script full of lies and deceit provided by the White House or were complicit in their silence and never spoke up for fear that they would be “primaried” when it came time to seek re-election.

Republicans adopted well established propaganda techniques such as WhatAboutism’s and finger pointing aimed at Democrats to cast them as politically motivated to ‘persecute’ Trump. This further emboldened Trump to be as reckless, unethical and destructive as he wanted without consequences.

When House Democrats defended our government and the Office of the Presidency by rightfully filing evidence-based impeachment proceedings not only once but twice against Trump, Republicans in the Senate showed their contempt and disrespect for the impeachments by dismissing them as political exercises. They sat and looked at their phones, yawned, made disparaging remarks and pissed all over the proceedings.

The election of MAGA Mike Johnson as the House Speaker with no “moderate” Republicans voting against the Trump-worshiping election denier and christo-fascist shows that the corrupt Republicans have gone ape-shit over Trump. Disgusting and anti-American.

#CorruptRepublicans #MAGARepublicans #GOPTraitors #TraitorTrump #TrumpCrimeSpree #BigLie #ChristoFascists #FakePatriots #FakeChristians #FakeAmericans

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secondhand-snow · 24 days

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But...I mean, every president has definitely fucked in the oval office. That being said, what I think would be shocking would be if a clip of them fucking was leaked. Something that was obviously filmed with a phone. The scandal is more along the lines of "national security." How in the hell someone so close to them *cough* secret service *cough* was able to pull that off. So, a huge investigation is launched, and they caught a guy, blah, blah, blah, he says some tabloid paid him handsomely. Secretly, it was all a ploy from Jeryd's himself to distract the public while he's working on passing some controversial bill or funding some war... All the while, the video keeps being number one in all porn sites, no matter how many times it's taken down. The people at Playboy even joke about offering the first lady a centerfold if her husband wasn't so damn scary. Roman jokes that dad is turning on his grave, Shiv is secretly jealous because she feels so boring in comparison to her step sis. Connor thinks they need family therapy again, and Ken is once again screaming in a bathroom because he's the oldest boy, and the press isn't talking about him

this is making my head go brrrrrr- i have such a kink for sex tapes

The tape is only a few minutes long, the footage relatively grainy, but unfortunately still clear enough to get a view of President Mencken fucking the First Lady on the desk of the Oval Office. The entire situation blows up after only a few hours of the the tape being leaked. It's trending on Twitter, the subject of articles from dozens of publishers, even making it's way to international news channels. The CIA is fast though, and is able to spin the narrative to one of "national security," taking away from the fact the president was having sex in the White House. Publicly, the resolution is a trial in federal court and the eventual imprisonment of a certain secret service agent. The proceedings are live streamed on the national news, with an audience in the tens of millions.

American citizens are split in their opinions. Some consider the entire thing worthy of an impeachment, others think it makes Mencken more interesting and authentic. One thing is for sure- social media is obsessed with it. No matter how many times the video gets taken down, it climbs its way back to the #1 spot on Pornhub within minutes of a reupload. Playboy posts a photoshopped cover, joking about how well the magazine would sell with a photo spread of Mrs. Mencken. The Roy siblings end up temporarily deleting social media to avoid seeing the viral clips. Well, Roman keeps his, but everyone else takes a break. The sibling group chat is reignited after having been quiet for a few weeks, with a message from Connor asking about a family therapy session. Even though he promises his hypnotherapist is one of the best, nobody agrees to it.

What the population doesn't see is the shady deals Mencken signs during all of this commotion. Sure, some activist groups try to stage protests and make infographics, but their work gets swallowed by the internet in favor of news on the sex scandal. And what only Mencken and his wife sees, is Jeryd's own phone propped up on the Oval Office bookshelf, recording a couple very aware of their surveillance.

#requests #jeryd mencken #jeryd mencken smut #whitehouse au #succession #snow's drabbles #americacumsfirst

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