Bye Bye Liz (Not?)

Two nights ago, Liz Cheney did something that everyone expected her to do.  She lost the Wyoming U.S. House primary. As her father might put it, big time.

Cheney lost to Trump-backed candidate Harriet Hageman by about 37 percentage points for the crime of telling the truth about Trump's insistence that he won the 2020 presidential election.  Most of the House Republicans who voted to impeach him for January 6 are already on their way out, but Liz Cheney's loss was like a cherry on the top of Trump's ice cream sundae, given her service on the January 6 select committee as its vice chair.

About two out of every three Republicans nominated for office this year are election deniers, people who believe that Joe Biden is an illegitimate President.  As Trump might say, they're getting ready to win their elections in November, and frankly, many of them will win their elections.  They can't all lose, and those who win elections for secretary of state or governor in swing states could be the ones who help put Trump back into power in January 2025.    

Except for one thing: Liz Cheney plans to keep fighting Trump once her third and final term as Wyoming's at-large U.S. Representative is done.  In the meantime, she will continue to do her work on the January 6 select committee, and she plans to build up a political action committee as a private citizen.  She will continue to work tirelessly to make sure that Trump does not get back into the Presidency - and maybe even run for President herself in 2024 as a way of stopping him.

"We're facing a moment where our democracy really is under attack and under threat," Cheney said in an interview with CBS News. "And those of us across the board - Republicans, Democrats and independents who believe deeply in freedom and who care about the Constitution and the future of the country - have an obligation to put that above party."

She has her work cut out for her.  But she might actually pull it off. 

The January 6 Hearings - Part Eight

The public hearings of the U.S. House select committee investigating the January 6 attempt to stop the certification of the presidential election of 2020 are over until the fall, but they went out for the summer with a bang.

The committee, under the stewardship of Vice Chair Liz Cheney (Chairman Bennie Thompson came in remotely due to a COVID infection), illustrate how Donald Trump spent the three hours and change - 187 minutes to be exact - in which the insurrection at the Capitol took place.  He made no effort to contact the military or law enforcement even as is top advisers and even his daughter Ivanka urged him to call off his dogs.  The government officials who were trying to do just that were Senate leaders Charles Schumer and Mitch McConnell and Vice President Mike Pence.  Pence was closer to the insurrectionists seeking to make him the first Vice President to be assassinated than many people originally suspected, and  many agents protecting the Vice President were convinced they weren't going to get out alive.  Trump's two tweets during the insurrection only egged on the insurrectionists to do their worst.

Here's how afraid people are to testify against Trump: The agents protecting Pence testified anonymously.

I know it may be in bad taste to make light of that, but before the hearing, the committee reported that these agents would testify in disguise, which intrigued CNN anchor Jake Tapper.  I was hoping they'd testify in public, possible wearing ski masks, fake beards, or from behind a partition, but in fact they audio-recorded their testimonies in advance and their voices were distorted.  Mascot costumes would have been a neat way to disguise them for public testimony, or maybe painted clown faces, but you can't have everything.

Here's one funny detail: Although Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri expressed solidarity with the insurrectionists-to-be as he entered the Capitol to take part in the certification of the electoral votes of the 2020 presidential election . . .

. . . he high-tailed it out of there when they came in with full guns a-blazin' - he was HAWLIN' ASS!

Fa-fa-fa-fa, fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-far better . . ..  Run, run, run, run, run, run, run away! 😛

But even this wasn't as much of a hoot as the outtakes of Donald Trump trying to tape a statement the next day condemning the violence he encouraged without selling himself out - and refusing to say he lost the election.  Or the word "yesterday."  Man, that was more entertaining than finding the lost take of Bob Dylan singing "She's Your Lover Now" in its entirety!

Representative Cheney ended the hearing applauding the patriotism of Trump supporters but declaring that they'd been had by Trump, especially those of them who chose to take part in the insurrection.  She probably had as much luck reaching them as Abraham Lincoln had in his first inaugural address when he urged Southerners not to start a civil war.  But Cheney, wearing white in recognition of the women's suffrage movement of over a hundred years ago, also made it a point to thank the many women - may of them loyal to Trump who testified against him and helped set the record straight.

Hint: She wants to run for President.    

I know this is going to upset a lot of Democrats, but the woman who may finally break the mother of all glass ceilings - in addition to saving our democracy - may be a conservative Gen Xer from the West, and not a coastal bourgeois liberal Baby Boomer.  But she will be from a dynasty.

I can't wait to see what the committee has in store for September.

There's still one thing I don't get . . . Jared Kushner was in the shower?   

Stand Pat

Former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone has agreed to testify to the January 6 select committee in the House after refusing to testify for three months.  He will do so tomorrow, which should help the committee - and, accordingly, pressure the Justice Department to investigate Trump's efforts to steal the 2020 presidential election - considerably. And while all of this is going on, another public hearing is scheduled for July 12. 

Meanwhile U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham has been subpoenaed by Fulton County (Georgia) District Attorney Fani Willis and refuses to do so, even though he spoke to Georgia election officials on Trump's behalf and he represents South Carolina and not Georgia.  But Willis has subpoenaed so many other Trump intimates in the process that Graham may have to capitulate just like Cipollone did. 

All of this makes it clear that the nose around Trump is tightening, but given the trouble President Biden and the Democrats are in, it may be Florida governor and 2024 Republican presidential prospect Ron DeSantis who would benefit the most from the trap door being released.  He may even release it himself.  

The January 6 Hearings - Part Six

And what did we learn at yesterday's hearing? Donald Trump not only loves violence done in his name, he does it in his own name.  He even likes to throw his lunch against the wall when he gets news he doesn't like.

I've heard of average men (Leon Czolgosz, Lee Harvey Oswald) who murdered Presidents, but I'd never heard of a President who attempted to murder an average man. And while Indian leader Indira Gandhi may have been killed by her own bodyguards, I could not, until now, imagine a bodyguard being killed by his own leader.  

Or a leader accused of an attempted carjacking.

But we all know now that Donald J. Trump encouraged violence by allowing the crowd that assembled for his fight speech on the morning of January 6, 2021 to attend his rally without surrendering their weapons so they could use them when they approached the Capitol.  We know that his promise to go down to the Capitol with his supporters was not an empty promise.  He wanted to go and ordered his Secret Service man to take him there in the presidential monster wagon.  When the agent refused, Trump reiterated his order, yelling, "I'm the f**kin' President!"  When the agent refused again, Trump tried to hijack the vehicle and grab the agent by the collarbone . . . and could have possibly choked him.  

And then White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows just sat back and took it all in stride.  And White House Counsel Pat Cippolone had to bend over backwards to keep Trump from going down to the Capitol and open up himself and the administration to a whole slew of crimes. 

And we all know this thanks to Mark Meadows' deputy, Cassidy Hutchinson.

My heroine!

It should be only a matter of time before Trump's rear end is hauled into a federal courtroom for indictment.

The good news is that Trump is likely not going to be able to run for President in 2024.  The bad news? Hell, we'll get DeSantis!

The January 6 Hearings: Surprise!

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to summer reruns . . . the legend continues.

The January 6 House select committee is having a special hearing, scheduled for today at the last minute, with new, timely evidence that the committee members say can't wait.

If they can't put off a hearing around this evidence until July, it must be really, really important.

As far as Trump is concerned, it could even be . . . a smoking gun.

The hearing today starts at 1:00 P.M. Eastern.

The January 6 Hearings - Part Five

The final hearing of the January 6 House select committee - for this month - looked at efforts to get the Justice Department to handle the accusations of voter fraud to steal the 2020 election for Donald Trump.  And the key cog in this wheel of misfortune was a little-known lawyer named Jeffrey Clark.

Clark is an lawyer whom Trump appointed as the United States Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division. This was the equivalent of making W.C. Fields president of the Children's Defense Fund. Clark used his position to make it easier for big business to pollute the air and emit more greenhouse gases.  He was Trump's preferred candidate for Acting Attorney General when another Jeffrey, Jeffrey Rosen, failed spectacularly in that job by refusing to help Trump hold onto power. The hearing showed just how eager Clark, who was happy to help Trump, was to do the Dear Leader's bidding.

Oh yeah, Clark's home was raided by the Justice Department, which is now delving more into an inquiry of what happened up to and on January 6. It looks like Merrick Garland is finally getting the message.

If Trump is indicted and convicted as a result of all this, the United States won't be the first country to send a disgraced and corrupt president with a professional-model wife to jail.  But following the example France set for us would put us in good company.

I can't wait to see what's in store for July.  

The January 6 Hearings - Part Four

 he fourth public hearing of the January 6 House select committee got very interesting yesterday.  And not because of Georgia boys Brad Raffensperger and Gabriel Sterling, who told the stories of intense harassment and pressure from Trump supporters to overturn the 2020 presidential election, which we already knew about.  With House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy trying to downplay the insurrection in the hope of being Speaker of the U.S. House in 2023, the January 6 committee heard from the Speaker of the House of Representatives of the state of Arizona . . . a conservative Republican with far more integrity than McCarthy.

Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers (above) said he was pressured by Donald Trump and Rudolph Giuliani to have the Arizona presidential ballots overturned because they insisted that Joe Biden had won the state through fraud.  When Speaker Bowers asked Giuliani for proof, the Trump lawyer and former New York mayor promised to provide evidence . . . and never did.  Trump even tried to get Speaker Bowers to call a special session of the Arizona House of Representatives to negate the presidential election results, something he couldn't do without a two-thirds majority of the Arizona legislature's lower house (which he could never get anyway).  Trump pressured Speaker Bowers to find any way to overturn Biden's victory, even if it meant cheating and lying.  A religious conservative, the Speaker refused to violate the tenets of his faith.

Oh yeah, his faith . . ..  Bowers is a Mormon, and as a Mormon, he believes that the U.S. Constitution - to which he took an oath to support, an oath he deems as sacred as his local temple - is a divinely inspired document, and to violate the Constitution is to violate the word of God Himself.  Asking a Mormon to violate the Constitution is like asking an Orthodox Jew to work on Saturdays.  Speaker Bowers said he would not be bullied into lying and cheating and going against his faith. 

The day also presented damning evidence that Trump personally went after Georgia poll worker Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shay Moss, for handling voters at their local polling station and accused the pair of manipulating and rigging the vote in their precinct.  Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss, who are black, are now afraid to go out in public and have confined themselves to home.

So, in other words, two black women are afraid to venture out on their own because a white man has ensured that they will be whipped and beaten if they do.

Just like in the days of slavery.  And, truth be told, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's daughter-in-law and grandchildren (his son died) have received death threats as well as he.  Raffensperger had the thankless task of investigating Trump's bogus claims of dead people in Georgia having voted. 

If there's any levity to be found in yesterday's hearing, it's this . . . when Georgia elections official Gabriel Sterling testified about the integrity of the vote . . .

. . . must have been thinking, "Wait a minute! Roger Ebert was involved?  I thought he was dead!"

Yes, and like many deceased Chicagoans, Roger Ebert voted for Joe Biden, too.

We have to laugh once in awhile with regard to January 6.  If we don't laugh, we're going to have to cry.

The January 6 Hearings - Part Three

Or, sing a song of Mike Pence.

Former Vice President Mike Pence was the subject of the third public hearing of the U.S. House January 6 select committee, in which he was viewed as some sort of a martyr because he did not reject the electoral votes of seven swing states and did not declare Donald Trump the winner of the 2020 presidential election.  Pence's top aides and retired federal conservative judge J. Michael Luttig made it clear that Pence could not  negate Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential election and declare Trump the winner, even though right-wing attorney John Eastman (not Linda McCartney's brother) was telling Pence that he could . . . while knowing full well that what he was proposing was illegal!  Eastman was left hoping for a pardon, which he may still get as early as January 2025.  

Mike Pence, however, shouldn't be exalted for doing the right thing, though, not even after the mob camethisclose to getting their hands on them and made him the first Vice President of the United States to be assassinated.  Even though Trump and Eastman pressured Pence greatly to do Trump's bidding - and at one point Trump egged on the January 6 mob to lynch Pence - Pence should have known as early as November 4, 2020 that he had no right to reject the results of the election.  If he had been a true hero, he would have made this clear right after the election, or at least right after Trump's election lawsuits failed, and such a statement would, while it may have not prevented a demonstration outside the Capitol on January 6, have likely prevented such a demonstration from turning into an insurrection.

Judge Luttig, by the way, left the January 6 committee with this warning.  Trump's threat against democracy is still ongoing, and he and his supporters are already planning how to hijack the 2024 election.  Once back in office, of course, Trump will likely find an excuse to make sure he stays in power after that.  In which case, we may be "celebrating" the nation's 250th birthday in 2026 with bayonets at our backs.     

Attorney General Garland, are you listening?

Liz In 2024?

Could the first female President of the United States be a Republican?

Liz Cheney has been getting a large number of donations from leading Republican bigwigs who despise the GOP's biggest wig (or hair weave) of them all, Donald J. Trump.  Her steadfast defense of the rule of law and her tenacity on the January 6 House select committee have gotten noticed by Republicans who want to keep Wyoming's only House seat in their camp and not surrender it to a Trump supporter.  So they're sending Liz cash and checks faster than you can say "Lincoln Project."  If she survives the Wyoming Republican U.S. House primary - which in the Equality State is tantamount to winning the general election - she could become a (the?) front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination among anti-Trumpers in 2024.  This could make Cheney, not a Democrat, this country's first female President, as well as the first Wyoming resident and the first Generation Xer to win the White House.

In no way am I suggesting that I would be happy with a President Liz Cheney.  She's still her daddy's girl, which means she's still a right-winger.  And she voted with Trump 98 percent of the time between 2017 and 2021.  But she's also voted with the Constitution 100 percent of the time, and at a time when it looks like President Biden is damaged goods for 2024 and Cheney may be the best chance to stop a Trump restoration, that is more important.

If Biden ends up not running for re-election in 2024, though, I'd like to see Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar get the Democratic presidential nomination next time.  How about that? A Klobuchar-Cheney presidential contest? That's an election campaign I'd like to comment on.   

Trump Triple Threat

If last week was a bad week for President Biden, this week was a bad week for Donald Trump. 

The Supreme Court - proving that, while it is sometimes foolish, it is not insane - rejected Trump's claim of executive privilege in his effort to keep the House January 6 select committee from obtaining his presidential documents.  Among the first such documents made public: a plan to seize voting machines to keep votes from being counted and to keep Biden's victory from being certified by Congress.  More revelations are sure to follow.

More people close to Trump have been drawn into the spider's web of the plot to subvert democracy.  Rudolph Giuliani was subpoenaed by the committee to answer for charges - which are very credible I might add - that we was greatly involved in the plot to seat Trump electors in seven states Biden carried in the 2020 election.  Trump's own daughter, Ivanka, can expect a subpoena herself, as the select committee wants to hear from her and has invited her to show up. Since she likely won't - she's a whole lot smarter than her brother Eric, who did cooperate - the committee will have no choice to go from asking her to come in and tell what she knows to ordering her to.

Meanwhile, in Georgia, the Fulton County District Attorney's office has called for a grand jury to help investigate charges that Trump attempted to interfere in the counting of votes in Georgia  to prevent a Biden win there.  District Attorney Fani Willis explained in a letter that she "has received information indicating a reasonable probability that the State of Georgia’s administration of elections in 2020, including the State’s election of the President of the United States, was subject to possible criminal disruptions."

Criminal disruptions, like, Trump asking Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find" the exact number of votes Trump needed to carry Georgia. 

Hey, Trump - you "winning" yet?  You must be sick and tired of winning!

Our democracy hasn't been safeguarded yet.  But all of this news has made me feel a little better about the future.

Taking Garland Down

It's been a year since the January 6 insurrection, and with an ongoing Justice Department investigation of what happened that day,  Attorney General Merrick Garland spoke yesterday in what was billed as a major speech.   Garland declared that the investigation is being pursued vigorously and that all participants in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, from the actual attackers to those who planned the attack, will face justice.  

"The actions we have taken thus far will not be our last," Garland said in his speech. "The Justice Department remains committed to holding all January 6th perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law - whether they were present that day or were otherwise criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy.  We will follow the facts wherever they lead."

In other words, nothing new to bother with.

Merrick Garland is a man of integrity, but his slow, lethargic process and his efforts to appear nonpolitical in this case suggest that President Biden misjudged his man when he chose the former would-be Supreme Court justice to be the nation's chief law enforcement officer.  His diligence has to be speeded up if he wants to get results.  Also, his investigation seems focused more on the attack on the Capitol than on the efforts to overturn the election before the attack.  It's easy to see why the PBS NewsHour's nightly news report failed to even mention the speech last night.

I can't believe how many people still think the election was stolen and how many Republicans are downplaying the investigation and getting away with rigging the system for 2024 and beyond.  Have Republicans lost their minds? COVID is surging and our democracy is in a tailspin, and everything seems to be getting worse.  Now I'm really angry . . ..        

Garland On Top

When it came time for Joe Biden to pick an Attorney General, the front-runners for the job were former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, who was a thorn in Trump's side in the early days of his term, and former U.S. Senator Doug Jones of Alabama, who has a strong civil rights record.  But Yates, apparently was too politically sensitive four such a choice, and Jones, of course, is a white male Southern Protestant who didn't check any "diversity" boxes. Merrick Garland seemed to be an appropriate choice; he's cordial, he's methodical, he's drama-free, and the post of Attorney General was a nice consolation prize for a man who had been rejected for a Supreme Court vacancy because the Senate Republican majority wouldn't grant him a hearing.

Nearly ten months after President Biden took office, though, it appeared that, up to that point at least, Biden had misjudged his man.  The U.S. House January 6 select committee cited Steve Bannon for contempt of Congress in refusing to honor a congressional subpoena to cooperate in their investigation of the insurrection, and their referral went to Garland's desk and stayed there for three weeks or so.  In all that time, liberals were frustrated that he hadn't moved to get Bannon indicted, insisting that Yates or Jones would have moved much more quickly.  It looked like Bannon was never going to be indicted 

Until yesterday.  A federal grand jury indicted Bannon on one count of refusing to answer a subpoena and one count of failing to provide documents to the select committee.  Bannon is expected to turn himself in on Monday. 

Merrick Garland got a lot of flak from the left for not moving faster enough against Bannon, but it is now obvious more than ever that he has been living up to his vow to go by procedure and make his decisions based on the merits of the law and not on the altar of politics.  He more or less got the green light from Tanya Chutkan's ruling against Trump's effort to protect his presidential papers in the National Archives, which made it easier to pursue the indictment.

Garland's statement on the indictment reads as follows: 

"Since my first day in office, I have promised Justice Department employees that together we would show the American people by word and deed that the Department adheres to the rule of law, follows the facts and the law, and pursues equal justice under the law. Today's charges reflect the Department's steadfast commitment to these principles."

The case in federal court is going to take awhile to reach a conclusion, and the January 6 select committee may be done before it's resolved.  But any witnesses called by the committee in the meantime - including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows - now have incentive and reason to cooperate with the investigation.