If there was any reason to oppose Trump’s re-election, this is it.
He’s said it many times, he’s included this in his Agenda47, but this week he laid it out very clearly for Univision. If he’s re-elected Trump will use the Justice Dept. to attack his enemies. He’ll also invoke the Insurrection Act and place Troops in the streets to put down protests against him using deadly force. It may sound like a joke, but Trump is planning to implement a totalitarian regime.
(The relevant comments start at 3:32)
While discussing the former president's interview with Univision, in which he vowed to use the United States Department of Justice to arrest and indict multiple political opponents, Mattingly emphasized that he didn't think that anyone should believe Trump was merely speaking off the cuff.
"Those aren't flippant remarks," he said. "That's insane."
Former federal prosecutor Elie Honig shared Mattingly's analysis
"If he says he's going to do this, I believe him," he said. "If we look back at the first Trump administration... Trump would often call for the prosecution of his political enemies, whether it was James Comey, Andy McCabe, the prosecution of Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton."
Honig then said that even former Attorney General Bill Barr, whom Honig wrote an entire book attacking, deserved at least a little credit for refusing to carry out Trump's every order.
"Barr had a line he would not cross," he said. "He wasn't going to go out and indict Barack Obama or Andy McCabe. What Donald Trump is telling us, I'm going to pick different types of people the next time around, people who don't even have that line, and that to me is really really dangerous."
[Nobody points out that if Trump were re-elected, he can’t run for the White House again — so in exactly what election would he be indicting people who he can’t run against? Or does he simply not know the 22nd Amendment exists?]
As Honig points out, this isn’t an idle threat. Trump may be blaming his current batch of indictments as the reason he can now do this, but the fact is he already tried to do all this — it was just that it was a bridge too far for the appointees he had at the time.
And again, this isn’t the only time he’s said it.
Even if you believe this ridiculous claim of “persecution” considering the fact that four different prosecutors in three jurisdictions have been the ones to file charges — and there’s no evidence that they have coordinated — plus Merrick Garland has had no discussions with Joe Biden on who to prosecute and he’s said he would resign if the White House tried to influence him in that way.
WASHINGTON — Attorney General Merrick Garland said in an interview that aired Sunday that he would resign if asked by President Joe Biden to take action against Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump. But he doesn’t think he’ll be put in that position.
“I am sure that that will not happen, but I would not do anything in that regard,” he said on CBS “60 Minutes.” “And if necessary, I would resign. But there is no sense that anything like that will happen.”
There’s also the point that Garland didn’t try to prosecute Trump for the 10 instances of Obstruction from the Mueller Report or for his being “Individual #1” in the Michael Cohen case.
He should have been prosecuted on those charges 2 years ago, but he wasn’t. He should be in custody right now considering the seriousness of the charges against him, but he isn’t. From my perspective, the DOJ has granted him with enormous deference and treated him with kid gloves.
If I thought Trump was being rail-roaded purely for partisan reasons — or just to stop him from running again — I know that I and every Democrat I know, WOULD BE SCREAMING BLOODY MURDER over it.
That shit is wrong, no matter who does it.
And yet, this kind of talk has caused Rick Wilson to respond pointing out that Trump had previously tried to investigate him and the Lincoln Project.
(Relevent portion starts at 4:09)
"He is going to use the power of the state," Wilson explained. "All my libertarian friends should be paying attention: the power of the state to achieve his personal, political vengeance on people who he believes have wronged him." "This is not America, to quote David Bowie," he continued. "This is something much darker and much different and much more dangerous. We have to pay attention to it, we have to listen to it."
"If he's, back he's going to cause enormous damage in this country to individuals, groups, political opponents at every level and every scale," he added. "The people around him this time will not be restrained by grown-ups or adults or establishment Washington types. It going to all be the crazies. They are going to go absolutely wild with this guy, and he's going to let them do it."
You can just imagine how the “crazies" — like Libs of TicTok, the Moms For Liberty, Christopher Rufo, Peter Navarro, Steve Bannon, Kari Lake, Michael Flynn as well as hordes of violent Anti-Asian, Anti-Islamic, Anti-Latino, Anti-Black and Anti-Semitic “Great Replacement” nutbags — will feel unleashed, empowered and emboldened by a new Trump term. Trump himself is bad enough, but he brings with him all the fuckwits who attacked the Capitol as well as all their enablers and the Cesar Sayoc brigade of domestic terrorists as well.
He may be using the “political prosecution” claim as an excuse to allow him to do the “same thing” now, except let’s recall that Trump already tried to prosecute Hillary Clinton and James Comey back in 2018.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump told his counsel’s office last spring that he wanted to prosecute political adversaries Hillary Clinton and former FBI Director James Comey, an idea that prompted White House lawyers to prepare a memo warning of consequences ranging up to possible impeachment, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
Then-counsel Don McGahn told the president he had no authority to order such a prosecution, and he had White House lawyers prepare the memo arguing against such a move, The Associated Press confirmed with a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to discuss the situation. McGahn said that Trump could request such a probe but that even asking could lead to accusations of abuse of power, the newspaper said.
Trump has repeatedly and publicly called on the Justice Department to investigate Clinton, and he has tweeted his dismay over what he saw as former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ reluctance to go after Clinton. Trump’s former lawyer, John Dowd, urged Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in a memo last year to investigate Comey and his handling of the Clinton email investigation.
[Trump also tried to sue Clinton, Comey, the DNC and Peter Strzok but the filing was thrown out on its ear as ridiculous. He has a suit currently pending against Christopher Steele for his dossier.]
There was no basis for any such prosecution as confirmed by the Inspector General’s report — which didn’t find any political bias in the investigation of Hillary’s emails or Russian election interference — but even despite that he did eventually get Bill Barr to assign John Durham to further investigate Clinton and the FBI for “Russiagate.” It’s just that Durham ultimately turned up bupkiss. Both of the people he tried to prosecute for supposedly “lying to the FBI” were acquitted.
The limping conclusion to John H. Durham’s four-year investigation of the Russia inquiry underscores a recurring dilemma in American government: how to shield sensitive law enforcement investigations from politics without creating prosecutors who can run amok, never to be held to account.
[...]
As Mr. Horowitz uncovered and criticized, the F.B.I. later cited the Steele dossier in wiretap applications, despite learning a reason to doubt its credibility. But Trump supporters often go further, falsely claiming that the F.B.I. opened the entire Russia investigation based on the dossier.
Mr. Durham’s report appeared to nod to that false claim, saying that “information received from politically affiliated persons and entities” in part had “triggered” the inquiry. Yet elsewhere, his report acknowledged that the officials who opened the investigation in July 2016 had not yet seen the dossier, and it was prompted by the Australian diplomat’s tip. He also conceded that there was “no question the F.B.I. had an affirmative obligation to closely examine” that lead.
Tom Fitton, a Trump ally and the leader of the conservative group Judicial Watch, expressed disappointment in the Durham investigation in a statement this week, while insisting that there had been a “conspiracy by Obama, Biden, Clinton and their Deep State allies.”
“Durham let down the American people with few and failed prosecutions,” Mr. Fitton declared. “Never in American history has so much government corruption faced so little accountability.”
But Aitan Goelman, a lawyer for Mr. Strzok, said that while the special counsel accused the F.B.I. of “confirmation bias,” it was Mr. Durham who spent four years trying to find support for a preformed belief about the Russia investigation.
“In fact, it is Mr. Durham’s investigation that was politically motivated, a direct consequence of former President Trump’s weaponization of the Department of Justice, an effort that unanimous juries in each of Mr. Durham’s trials soundly rejected,” he said.
Going past political prosecutions, there are also reports that on Day One Trump will implement the Insurrection Act and place the Military in the streets.
Trump and his think tank loyalists are collecting the ingredients and refining the recipe for an authoritarian regime should he win the 2024 presidential election. According to a page one story in The Washington Post Monday, Trump plans on the first day of his new administration to invoke the Insurrection Act so he can dispatch the military to counter any demonstrations that might resist his policies.
Why might he need the Insurrection Act? Well, the piece also notes Trump intends to turbo-politicize the Department of Justice and order prosecutions of his former aides and officials who have criticized him. Perhaps he thinks the country won’t let him go buck wild on the rule of law without a stink, so he wants to be ready to sic troops on the inevitable protestors. Fingered by Trump for legal beat-downs, the Post reports, are one-time Trump stalwarts and staffers like former chief of staff John F. Kelly, former attorney general William Barr, his ex-attorney Ty Cobb, and former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Mark A. Milley. Trump has singled out other officials at the FBI and the Department of Justice for prosecution, the piece adds, as well as President Joe Biden and his family.
Leading Trump’s Insurrection Act initiative is Jeffrey Clark, a Trump-era Department of Justice official currently being prosecuted for his part in an alleged scheme to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results. According to the Post piece, Trump intends to leaven the entire federal bureaucracy with appointees like Clark who are willing to do his bidding. (Told by a colleague that there would be riots in the streets if Trump sought to stay in office despite losing the 2020 election, Clark is said to have responded, “That’s why there’s an Insurrection Act.”)
How much of this Trump power lust is new? Recall that he called for the Constitution’s termination in December 2022 so he could return to the presidency. Also, he’s always loved to entertain himself and his followers by talking about throwing opponents in jail.
Over the summer, ABC News compiled a list of plenty of people he wanted indicted or jailed for their crimes, including ex-FBI Director James Comey, former special counsel Robert Mueller, Steele dossier author Christopher Steele, Bill and Hillary Clinton, former national security adviser John Bolton. You may recall that locking up Hillary Clinton was elemental to his 2016 campaign. As for testing the limits of presidential power, that’s old hat, too. During his first administration, he banned Muslim visitors, issued an emergency declaration to build a border wall after Congress refused to pay for it, and sought to overturn the 2020 election results.
Again, this isn’t an idle threat.
Trump tried to do this during his term, asking his military to “crack skulls and shoot them” as protestors lined the streets.
The top US general repeatedly pushed back on then-President Donald Trump’s argument that the military should intervene violently in order to quell the civil unrest that erupted around the country last year. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley often found he was the lone voice of opposition to those demands during heated Oval Office discussions, according to excerpts of a new book, obtained by CNN, from Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender.
Titled “Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost,” the book reveals new details about how Trump’s language became increasingly violent during Oval Office meetings as protests in Seattle and Portland began to receive attention from cable new outlets. The President would highlight videos that showed law enforcement getting physical with protesters and tell his administration he wanted to see more of that behavior, the excerpts show.
“That’s how you’re supposed to handle these people,” Trump told his top law enforcement and military officials, according to Bender. “Crack their skulls!”
Trump also told his team that he wanted the military to go in and “beat the f–k out” of the civil rights protesters, Bender writes.
“Just shoot them,” Trump said on multiple occasions inside the Oval Office, according to the excerpts.
When Milley and then-Attorney General William Barr would push back, Trump toned it down, but only slightly, Bender adds.
“Well, shoot them in the leg—or maybe the foot,” Trump said. “But be hard on them!”
In order to get past the problem of underlings who refuse to do his bidding, the Heritage Foundation has a plan they call Project 2025. Using “Schedule F” they will make it far easier to remove appointees and civil servants who are squeamish about implementing totalitarianism.
Project 2025 is a coalition of prominent conservative organizations that includes the Claremont Institute, Alliance Defending Freedom, Family Research Council, Hillsdale College, Heritage Foundation, Freedom Works, American Legislative Exchange Council, American Principles Project, and dozens of others. The organization’s goal is to lay out a “first 180 days” agenda for the next administration, and to recruit conservatives to fill positions within the federal government appointed by the executive branch.
“The Mandate for Leadership” is a 920-page document that details how the next Republican administration will implement radical and sweeping changes to the entirety of government. This blueprint assumes that the next president will be able to rule by fiat under the unitary executive theory (which posits that the president has the power to control the entire federal executive branch). It is also based on the premise that the next president will implement Schedule F, which allows the president to fire any federal employee who has policy-making authority, and replace them with a presidential appointee who is not voted on in the Senate.
The document is basically a wish list for social conservatives and mega corporations. The business wish list calls for eliminating federal agencies, stripping those that remain of regulatory power, and deregulating industries. The president would directly manage and influence Department of Justice and FBI cases, which would allow him to pursue criminal cases against political enemies. Environmental law would be gutted, and states would be prevented from enforcing their own environmental laws.
Trump has called for the Death Penalty against human traffickers, firing “Radical Marxist Prosecutors”, he has plans to implement right-wing indoctrination in our colleges, he has plans to “Crush the Deep State” (which would be Federal Employees), he’ll criminalize gender affirmation, he’ll try to criminalize the press that criticizes him under the guise of fighting “censorship” and the labeling of false “disinformation” and hate speech, he’ll end all support for Green Energy and Electric Vehicles, he’ll cut off aid to Ukraine and let Russia keep the land they’ve stolen, the guy who has 114 Trademarks in China and Russia says he’s going to “Stop Chinese Espionage” [How? Shut down Mar-A-Lago?] , he's promised to restart failed racist policies like “Stop and Frisk” and much more [such as snake and alligator moats, mass deportation and prison camps for Immigrants.]
1. President Trump will sign a record investment in hiring, retention, and training for police officers. The bill will increase vital liability protections for America’s law enforcement officers.
2. President Trump will require local law enforcement agencies receiving DOJ grants to return to proven policing measures such as stop-and-frisk, [This policy was found to be a violation of the 4th Amendment in Federal Court.] strictly enforcing existing gun laws, cracking down on the open use of illegal drugs, and cooperating with ICE to arrest and deport criminal aliens.
3. President Trump will take on the radical Marxist prosecutors who have abolished cash bail and refuse to charge criminals. President Trump will direct the DOJ to open civil rights investigations into radical leftist prosecutor’s officers, such as those in Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco to determine whether they have illegally engaged in race-based law enforcement. [By “race-based” they mean police and prosecutors “going easy” on people of color in Chicago, LA and San Francisco. Fat fucking chance.]
4. President Trump will instruct the Department of Justice to dismantle every gang, street crew, and drug network in America. President Trump has also called for the death penalty for drug dealers and human traffickers.
5. President Trump has committed to deploying federal assets, including the National Guard, to restore law and order when local law enforcement refuses to act.
6. President Trump will order the Education and Justice Departments to overhaul federal standards on disciplining minors.
7. Finally, President Trump will sign concealed carry reciprocity legislation, fully secure the border, dramatically increase interior enforcement, and wage war on the cartels.
I think this looks more like waging war on the American people.
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