Hoo boy, here we go again.
In a recent exchange with reporters, Attorney General Merrick Garland was asked whether an ex-president could be prosecuted. The query did not come as a surprise, arising as it did after months of criticism regarding his Justice Department's reluctance to go after the high-ranking officials who planned the January 6 insurrection, who organized the armed mob and who then turned them loose on Congress. "No person is above the law in this country. I can't say it any more clearly than that."
Give the man credit. He knew what to say.
In a follow-up interview, Garland repeated his vow to hold everyone involved in the assault on the Capitol "accountable." His department's investigation will follow the evidence "without fear or favor." Maybe so. You've been told he's an honest broker. You've been told he's making the right moves. It only looks as if the DOJ isn't doing anything, all these months later. In fact, it's doing a lot, moving slowly, carefully, methodically, exactly as it should. But time is running out. The mid-terms are right around the corner. Republicans have vowed to go medieval if they regain control of the House. Will Garland follow the evidence? Will he honor his word and finally drop the hammer on Trump and his treasonous co-conspirators?
According to new reporting in the Washington Post, the answer is yes. Anonymous sources have revealed that the DOJ is finally investigating the disgraced, twice-impeached ex-president for his role in the coup. Grand jury testimony from two of VP Mike Pence's closest advisors, Mark Short, his chief-of-staff, and Greg Jacob, his lawyer, indicate the feds are narrowing their sights on Trump.
We'll see.
From the get-go, if history proves a guide, the image of a member of the elite being frog-marched to prison is laughable. Garland has been judicious with his words. But the law is no level-headed Portia cuddled behind a blind-fold, objective, class-less, informed by a Greater Truth and programmed to apply justice equally to all. She's morphed into a robe-tied, racketeering Ayn Rand, binding basic human rights with tightly braided nets and gins of legal promiscuity. She's there to tilt the scale not balance it, to maintain racial and class purity not undo them. The irony is evident in the icon: Lady Liberty covering her face in shame, sickly, crippled by corruption, the horrors of a rapacious aristocracy, from Enclosure Acts to Citizens United, propriety, decorum and teaching the rabble how to behave. She has become what she feared, a visual representation of legalized oppression, the subversion of justice and top-down propaganda for the wholly deceived. She's the method to their madness. Same as it ever was.
How is it possible, you ask? Let us count the ways.
**Mark Meadows, Trump's chief of staff and a key player in the January 6 coup, was recommended for contempt of Congress charges after refusing a subpoena to testify before the committee. The DOJ demurred, "uh, we don't think so," thus failing to enforce a legally binding congressional order. One is tempted to assume it's because Meadows' crimes were committed in service to corporate power. Bank on it. He's a member of the club. He'll never be prosecuted.
**Daniel Snyder, owner of the previously racist-named Washington football team, has refused to testify about the toxic work environment he helped to create. He tried to derail an NFL investigation, refused to comply with a congressional subpoena, intimidated witnesses and blamed everyone else for things he got caught doing. He's as crooked as a country road. But he's one of them. He'll never be prosecuted.
**Virginia Thomas, like her husband, Clarence, is a religious extremist, a habitual liar and, given her participation in the attempt to subvert democracy, a traitor. She badgered White House officials to throw out the results of the 2020 presidential election, a federal crime. She pressured over two dozen Arizona lawmakers to submit a slate of fake electors, also a federal crime. Once her contributions to the coup became public, she refused to cooperate with the January 6 committee and dismissed threats of a subpoena with a wave of her hand. She knows. She's one of them. She'll never be prosecuted.
But wait, there's more.
There's Andrew Cuomo, the corrupt former governor of NY who resigned in disgrace after a number of women credibly accused him of sexual harassment. There's former Asst Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, who is on tape helping to plot an illegal coup in Ukraine. Who can forget George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice lying about "weapons of mass destruction"? Or Donald Rumsfeld lying about Abu Ghraib? Or Jay Bybee and John Yoo lying about the US gov't's torture program? Or Gina Haspel destroying court-ordered evidence of the CIA's use of torture? Or Colin Powell lying about mobile weapons labs? Or James Clapper lying to Congress about surveilling members of the intelligence committee. Or the neo-catholic Supreme Court justices lying repeatedly in their confirmation hearings. Or, my personal fav, Barack Obama, who started five illegal wars and unleashed, through his drone assassination program, "the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times."
Crimes against humanity. Large-scale slaughter of innocents. "Death from above" unleashed on sovereign nations that posed no threat. Acts of unimaginable savagery. And not one of these rat bastards has ever been hauled into a court of law and forced to testify, under oath, about their crimes. They weren't thrown in prison. They weren't banned from polite society. They were rewarded. Bush gives speeches and goes to baseball games, Rice hangs with BFF Jon Stewart, Haspel, Yoo and Bybee were promoted, Clapper is a regular on TV, Cheney lives quietly in a bunker somewhere and Obama was given a $12 million estate on Martha's Vineyard. Who says crime doesn't pay?
Which brings us back to AG Merrick Garland and his faith in the law.
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