After Inauguration Day, the Senate will have its plate full with the impeachment removal trial arguments taking up half of each day while Biden administration confirmations occupy the remainder. Meanwhile, the House can start another path to exposing Trump’s legal vulnerabilities with a little help from new Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Former AG William Barr was the good soldier for Trump, immediately mischaracterizing the findings of the Mueller report and inferring that his boss was cleared of any illegality. Trump immediately sited that as proof that there was “no collusion” with Russia in their meddling in the 2016 election.
But Mueller himself later stated that the lack of a criminal referral regarding Trump’s actions was a product of FBI policy not to indict a sitting president. It wasn’t because nothing actionable happened.
As of noon next Wednesday, that limitation no longer exists. New AG Garland can revisit the Mueller report as well as the mountain of documents from which it was derived. Furthermore, he can release those documents to the House committees that issued requests for them. Barr can’t block that anymore.
Within them will be loads of evidence also of how Barr put his loyalty to the President above the process of justice. Another aspect of that will be revealing the cases that Mueller referred for possible indictments that Barr sat on. Any false testimony received, any conspiratorial evidence, will then be in the House’s hands to flesh out their stymied investigations.
And when these documents are revealed to the public, even in redacted form, the scope of the Republican Party’s conspiracy to hide wrongdoing will be laid bare. Many should pay with their careers now, without us having to wait for their terms to end.
After the news that sitting Congressmen and Congresswomen gave tours of the Capitol to prepare seditionists for an efficient infiltration of the hallowed halls, Americans may get their first taste of Congressional expulsion. Every removal will make it easier for sitting legislators implicated in the Mueller report to suffer the same fate.
Biden can preserve his nice guy image, letting the House be the attack dog with the scent rather than his own justice department investigations. After all, the Mueller report isn’t a new investigation; it’s just one that never had a chance to run its course. The narrow scope that Mueller’s team had to work within no longer applies, because the damage to the Commander in Chief in question can no longer tarnish our country.
This is not the time to tiptoe around justice. This is the time to shame and punish those willing to spit on integrity and thrust America towards #RepubloFascism where only rich potential donors matter. And the man that they all staked their reputations on will drag these complicit politicians down the drain too, trapped on his lead coattails,
And the Mueller report revelations can be just the beginning. They can be foundational elements in the task of putting firm guardrails around the presidency through #PPAPA, the Presidential Power Abuse Prevention Act. Every one of Trump’s abuses of power, violations of norms, or besmirching the honor of the presidency, must be identified if we are to craft legislation to insure these travesties don’t happen again.
There’s another great resource that PPAPA can be based on. Amy Siskind has been documenting every deviation that Trump has taken from the norms of his office with her weekly online accounting through “The List.” Here’s a link to the search function of The List:
https://theweeklylist.org/track-the-changes/
Want to learn more about the actions of everyone in Trump’s cabal, every connected Russian oligarch, de facto dictator, or Saudi prince? They’ll all pop up on the timeline over the last four long years. Sort for McConnell, and you’ll see the seeds of his enabling. PPAPA needs to reign in the Majority Leader’s powers too, such as preventing Garland from even being considered on the Senate floor for a Supreme Court seat.
The Constitution laid a great foundation. But evil, greedy men have cracked it and exposed its vulnerabilities. It’s time that we optimize democracy for everyone, not just the super rich who have the power to influence it. There must be an addendum to “all men are created equal” to reference more than just white, landowning males. We know in our hearts that all of us deserve to be equal. And America democracy, in its best form, should reflect that in every aspect of our lives.
We are at rock bottom as a nation, with the lust for unchecked power the intoxicating fuel for our downfall. Truth and unyielding analysis are the ways out of this. Revisiting the Mueller report can’t help but send us down that road, sober and wiser, and ready to do what’s right.