More of the same to disturb one’s Saturday night. Likely Trump will continue to riff on distractions from the Congressional investigations closing in and will probably pimp the minority version of the Senate Judiciary report. The GOP claim is that it vindicated Trump rather than implicating him. NewsMax has scheduled three hours of “preshow”. Apparently Chuck Grassley has chosen an Iowa hill to die on for Trump. There will be fried bread and fried butter aplenty.
But what's happening Saturday night is unprecedented: Former President Donald Trump, who is teasing another run, is holding a large rally at the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines.
The latest Iowa Poll, published this week in The Des Moines Register, says Trump is more popular in the state after leaving office. Pollster J. Ann Selzer says Trump remains very popular with Republicans and has made recent gains with independents.
The Grift Continues... Chuck Grassley is concerned that Democrats might be responsible for doing 'lasting damage to our country.'
"Today's report shows the American people just how close we came to a constitutional crisis," Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin said in a statement.
WASHINGTON, Oct 7 (Reuters) - A review by U.S. Senate Democrats of Donald Trump's attempt to use the Justice Department to overturn his 2020 election defeat provided new details on Thursday about an official's bid to push out the acting attorney general to advance Trump's false claims.
The report by Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats details how Jeffrey Bossert Clark, then a senior Justice Department official, met with Trump more than once in late 2020. The then-president was growing angry that acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen would not launch a public investigation into Trump's false claim that his defeat to now-President Joe Biden was the result of widespread fraud.
Rosen assumed his position in the final weeks of Trump's presidency after William Barr resigned effective Dec. 23, 2020, rather than use the department to pursue Trump's false claims, which were rejected by multiple courts, state election officials and his own administration.
[...]
Rosen told the committee that Trump opened one meeting with him by saying, "One thing we know is you, Rosen, aren't going to do anything to overturn the election."
Trump also asked Clark if he would be willing to take over as acting attorney general, the report said, adding that Clark relayed this message to Rosen.
"Rosen recalled Clark indicating that he hadn’t yet decided whether he would accept Trump’s offer, wanted to conduct some 'due diligence' on certain election fraud claims, and might turn down the offer if he determined that Rosen and (Rosen's deputy, Richard Donoghue) were correct that there was no corruption," the report said.
www.reuters.com/...
Major media outlets have been reporting that in late December 2020, one of then-President Donald Trump's loyalists in the U.S. Department of Justice, Jeffrey Clark, pursued a scheme for overturning the presidential election results in Georgia — and Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, to his credit, flat-out refused to go along with it. But Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa is finding ways to defend Trump and blame Democrats, and journalist Steve Benen calls Grassley out in an op-ed published by NBC News' website on August 10.
Benen explains, "The recent revelations about the then-president's abuses toward the Justice Department, in particular, point to a profoundly important political scandal — about which congressional Republicans have said effectively nothing. Indeed, as investigations continue and new details emerge, the GOP's silence becomes even more unsettling. The good news is, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee (and its former chairman), delivered floor remarks on the ongoing controversy. The bad news is, the Iowa Republican is taking Trump's side."
When the U.S. Senate rendered its verdict in Trump's second impeachment trial in February, Grassley voted "not guilty." And when he spoke on the Senate floor this week, the veteran senator said, "This country has had to deal with the Democrats' obsession with destroying Trump for much too long. In the process, I fear my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have done and will do lasting damage to our country."
In response, Benen writes, "Oh. So, Trump tried to orchestrate a scheme in which he'd overturn the results of an American presidential election; he tried to use federal law enforcement as a political weapon to achieve his goals; and he dispatched a violent mob to attack the U.S. Capitol in the hopes of disrupting the certification of a legitimate election. But Chuck Grassley is concerned that Democrats might be responsible for doing 'lasting damage to our country.'"
www.alternet.org/...