Lying Eyes
To be honest, I feel like the American Justice system has let us down. From the Supreme Court to the line judges and prosecutors, our Judicial system was “played”. If justice delayed is justice denied, then we, the American people, have been left high and dry. And if our justice system was supposed to be the last bulwark, the final defense of democracy, I have a sad conclusion. It doesn’t work.
I have eyes and ears. I sat horrified on January 6th, 2021, watching as the Capitol was stormed by a mob. It was sent by a President trying to remain in office. Then, I listened to the President of the United States, on the phone with the Secretary of State of Georgia. He demanded that Georgia “find votes” so that he could remain in office, and threatened retribution if they didn’t. And I viewed the photographs of classified documents. They were stacked on the performance stage of a supper club and piled in the shower of the “golden bathroom”.
But our Court systems, from a Georgia county judge to the Supreme Court of the United States, failed. They are telling me not to believe my “lying eyes” or my “failing ears”.
Mueller
I’ve heard it all before. I watched as a good man, a powerful public official, was stymied by those who were willing to “fix the game”. Robert Mueller may not have been at his best at the end. He was dragged into a House hearing really physically incapable of testifying. But what Mueller didn’t tell us was that his investigation, the first foray into the ugly world of Trump, was hamstrung. He reported to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who placed guardrails that Mueller felt duty-bound to follow. So he never, to use a Watergate phrase, “followed the money” – that wasn’t inside the “lines”. And he allowed the Trump team to “stonewall” his investigation He sadly lamened the fact they lied to his investigators. But he did not file charges against them.
And Rosenstein’s boss, “the institutionalist” Attorney General William Barr, set the political stage for the judicial failure of the Mueller investigation. He doctored the outcome, leaving his “friend” Mueller high and dry.
By the way, it shouldn’t be a surprise that Rosenstein’s protégé, Robert Hur, found a way to ambush President Biden without bringing charges. He learned from a master (see an essay earlier this week, Comey Revisited).
Perfect Calls
And Trump’s phone call to Raffensperger in Atlanta now falls into the same category as Trump’s call to Zelenskyy in Kyiv; a “perfect call”. The Senate failed in their duty to protect the Nation. They let Trump “off” for the Zelenskyy call, extorting a foreign President to find “dirt” on his political opponent, Joe Biden, in exchange for US military aid. This week, Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee threw the Raffensperger call out of the Fani Willis trial. (Though it might be refiled). The Judge is telling us all, our “lying ears” didn’t hear the most powerful man in the world try to intimidate a state official into “giving” him votes – even though we did.
Shooting Straighter
Hard to imagine, but I do need to give the Trump legal team credit. For years, the “Trump lawyers” have been a laughing-stock of the legal community. They’re briefs and pleadings looked worse than high school performances, much less law school graduates. But the “gang that couldn’t shoot straight” are batting nearly a-thousand right now. The Trump strategy of delay-delay-delay worked at every level.
The Supreme Court did their “duty”. They decided to hear the specious “I’m immune from any prosecution” case and delayed the January 6th trial until after the election. And the Department of Justice, (the President Biden appointed Garland Department of Justice), managed to stall the New York-Stormy Daniels case. SDNY held thirty-one thousand pages of evidence until the last minute, then dumped them on both the prosecution and the defense.
That fits with the entire Garland Department handling of the Trump cases. While it’s easier to blame judges, in the end, it was main-Justice that held the cases away from Trump. It took almost two years before a Special Prosecutor was even appointed to investigate the twice-impeached former President.
And of course, the Trump sycophant Federal Judge in Florida is running the classified documents case with “all deliberate speed”. The emphasis is on deliberate. It still bears examination: how did “random chance” get that case in front of Judge Cannon, the one judge in the district, bound and determined to protect the former President above all else. Don’t believe me: ask the 11th Appeals Court, who overruled her twice in the beginnings of this legal debacle.
The Last Defense
For those few who had hope that our legal system would stand when the House, the Senate, and the Executive branch did not, if have bad news. It didn’t happen. If Donald Trump by hook or by crook, wins the Presidency again, the Federal cases will “go away”, and the state cases will be delayed until, if or when, he leaves the Presidency.
What’s left is us, both in the you and me meaning, and the United States meaning. We are the last bulwark of justice and democracy. We have the “final answer” to this long running show, the ultimate authority in what will sadly be called by future history teachers as the “Trump Era”. America gets to vote in November, and decide the most important issue: is our future with Trump, or with democracy.
We can’t depend on anything else.
